Compare · Tented vs MailerLite
In June 2026 MailerLite renamed its plans (Comfort and Power), raised prices 10-30%, cut the free plan from 1,000 subscribers to 250, capped Comfort's sends, and kept the full API paid-only. Tented gives you 40x the free contacts, an uncapped team, and AI that does the building.
The short answer
MailerLite built its reputation on being the affordable, friendly option, and its June 2026 restructure spent much of that goodwill: prices up 10-30% at renewal, the free plan cut from 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails to 250 and 2,500, Comfort's old unlimited sends now capped at 10x, landing pages capped at 10, multi-trigger automations moved up to Power, and API access excluded from Free entirely. Tented's Free plan includes 1,000 contacts and full API access; its $25 Pro tier includes a 25,000-contact database, 250 published pages, unlimited users, and AI that generates campaigns MailerLite still expects you to drag-and-drop. The price gap that justified MailerLite's trade-offs is gone.
Choose Tented if
you want room to grow (contacts, pages, teammates) at a flat price, with AI-first creation and an API on every plan including Free.
Choose MailerLite if
you are a hobbyist newsletter under 250 subscribers, or a tiny sender who wants the simplest possible editor and nothing else.
Same audience size, same realistic send volume, published list prices.
Competitor list prices last verified August 2026
| Scenario | Tented | MailerLite | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plans | $01,000 contacts · full API · journeys · 1 published tent | $0250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/mo, 1 page, no API (cut June 2026 from 1,000/12,000) | 4x the contacts + API |
| 1,000 contacts · multi-trigger automation | $25/moPro tier 1 · 25,000-contact headroom · unlimited users | $39/moPower (multi-trigger automations are Power-only; was $30 pre-June 2026) | 36% less |
| 50 landing pages on a custom domain | $25/moPro tier 1 · 250 published tents included | $39+/moPower required (Comfort caps at 10 pages) | 36% less |
| 200,000 contacts · ~250,000 emails/mo | $400/moMax tier 5 · headroom to 5M contacts | $1,119/moPower at 200,000 subs ($819 on Comfort, but sends are capped at 10x) | 64% less |
Most platforms bundle send allowances of 10x, 12x, even 24x your contact count per month, and it reads like generosity until you translate it: 12x means emailing every contact 12 times a month. No list tolerates that. Even 10 emails per contact per month is aggressive, and healthy programs typically land between 2 and 6. Inflated multiples exist to make the contact meter, the thing that actually bills you, feel like a better deal.
Tented sizes sends and database separately so you pay for what you actually do: storing a contact is cheap, so database headroom is generous, and send tiers map to real cadences. The scenarios above assume roughly 2 to 4 emails per contact per month (an actively worked list), with the Tented tier chosen to cover both the audience size and the send volume.
Competitor pricing and packaging are published list prices as of August 2026, converted to monthly USD, and change often; check each vendor's pricing page for current details. Tented prices come straight from tented.ai/pricing.
What ships in the box with Tented, and what MailerLite gates, meters, or skips.
| Feature | Tented | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | $25/moPro from $25/mo with 25,000 contacts and 5,000 emails/month | $12/moComfort at 500 subscribers; sends capped at 10x tier |
| Contact database headroom | 25,000+ from $25/moup to 1,000,000 on Pro, unlimited on top Max tiers | Priced per subscriber$819-$1,119/mo by 200,000 subs |
| Users / seats | Unlimitedevery plan, including Free | 2 / 3unlimited only on Power |
| Free plan | 1,000 contacts, 100 emails/day, full API access | 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails/mo since June 2026; no API |
| Account approval | sign up and start building immediately | manual review before sending; rejections widely reported |
| Feature | Tented | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| AI-generated campaigns end to end | chat-driven editing is the editor; no drag-and-drop grind | AI writing assistant (subject lines, copy) from Comfort; you design in the editor |
| On-brand template library | 200+every template ships with your branding already applied | ~90newsletter templates |
| AI image generation with your branding | Image Agent generates on-brand art with your logo painted in | |
| 1:1 AI-personalized pages per contact | flows generate a personalized page per contact (Create Tent step) |
| Feature | Tented | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Landing pages | 250 on Pro, unlimited on Maxpublished landing pages (tents); hosting included | 1 on Free, 10 on Comfort, unlimited on Power |
| Custom domains for pages | All paid plansbranded CNAME domains, no add-on | unlocked from Comfort |
| Forms create CRM contacts automatically | every form submission creates or updates a CRM contact automatically | into subscriber groups |
| Full CRM with custom fields & dynamic lists | full CRM with custom fields, lists, and dynamic audiences included | subscriber groups and segments; not a CRM |
| Feature | Tented | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-step branching journeys | Every planmulti-step branching journeys; never sold as an add-on | 3 single-trigger automations on Free, 50 on Comfort; multi-trigger needs Power |
| A/B testing | built into email blasts on every plan | campaign A/B broadly; multivariate from Comfort |
| API access | All plans, incl. Free140+ operations; agents can do everything a human can | full API on paid plans only; excluded from Free |
| Built for AI agents | llms.txt, markdown mirrors, and an agent-first API | |
| Support | White gloveevery customer; private Slack channel available | email on Comfort; 24/7 live chat is Power-only |
Seeing is believing
Not a sidebar assistant bolted onto a 2015 editor. Describe the outcome; approve the result. Click any screenshot to zoom.
The agentic era
Every platform on this page still centers on the same WYSIWYG editor marketers have been wrestling with for a decade: pick a block, drag it, nudge it, fight the mobile view, repeat. Tented starts from a different premise: you describe the outcome, and the platform builds it, on brand, in seconds. That difference compounds everywhere.
MailerLite perfected the friendly drag-and-drop editor just as the industry moved past editors altogether. Tented's interface is a conversation, its output is finished on-brand assets, and its API treats your AI agents as first-class users on every plan.
Pages, emails, and flows are generated and revised by chat. Iterating is a sentence, not a session. Two hundred plus templates ship with your brand already applied, so the first draft already looks like you.
Everything a human can do in the app, an agent can do over the API, on every plan, including Free. Mint a key, hand it to Claude or Codex, and campaigns, audiences, and landing pages build themselves with approvals still in your hands.
A Tented flow can generate a bespoke landing page for a single contact: enrich the contact over the API, pass the company's logo and context into the prompt, and the flow renders a page for that one prospect. No other platform on this page has that step.
MailerLite's pitch was "almost as good, much cheaper." After the June 2026 reprice ($39/month at 1,000 subs on Power) and free-plan cut, Tented at $25/month includes a 25x bigger database, 25x the landing pages, unlimited seats, and AI generation MailerLite has no answer to.
250 free subscribers, 10 pages on Comfort, 3 seats, single-trigger automations, sends capped at 10x: MailerLite's fences arrive early. Tented's Free plan alone (1,000 contacts, full API, journeys) outruns them, and Pro removes the fences entirely.
MailerLite now excludes full API access from its free plan. Tented gives every plan, including Free, the complete 140+ operation API, because the age of agent-driven marketing should not have a paywall in front of hello-world.
MailerLite's AI helps with subject lines and copy inside a drag-and-drop editor. Tented generates the entire asset (page, email, images, journey) on brand from a prompt, and turns winners into templates AI can spin variants from.
Switching
Fast List Import moves about 250,000 contacts a minute with dedupe and per-row receipts. Lists, tags, and custom fields come with.
Set your logo, colors, and voice a single time. All 200+ templates and every AI generation come out on-brand from the first draft.
Guided onboarding for every customer from the team that built it (Adobe, Salesforce, Microsoft, Marketo, and Lyft alumni), with an optional private Slack channel.
For a hobbyist newsletter that will stay under 250 subscribers, MailerLite's free plan remains a pleasant, polished way to send, and its editor is one of the friendliest in the category. If your entire ambition is a simple newsletter, it is still a fine pick. The case for Tented starts the moment you have growth plans: more contacts, more pages, more teammates, or any interest in AI doing the production work.
Since MailerLite's June 2026 repricing and free-plan cut, Tented: a bigger free plan (1,000 contacts with full API access versus 250 with none), unlimited users, a 25,000-contact paid entry tier, and AI campaign generation MailerLite does not offer at any price. Hobbyist newsletters staying under 250 subscribers can still live happily on MailerLite's free tier.
Since MailerLite's June 2026 repricing, usually yes at like-for-like capability. Multi-trigger automation at 1,000 subscribers needs Power at $39/month versus Tented's $25 Pro tier (which also includes 25,000-contact headroom and unlimited users). At 200,000 subscribers, Power is $1,119/month versus $400 on Tented Max. Only tiny lists on Comfort's capped feature set come in under Tented's entry price.
MailerLite renamed Growing Business to Comfort and Advanced to Power, raised prices roughly 10-30% (applied at renewal), cut the free plan from 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails to 250 and 2,500, capped Comfort sends at 10x the subscriber tier and its landing pages at 10, moved multi-trigger automations to Power, and kept full API access paid-only.
A 25,000-contact database on the cheapest paid tier, unlimited users on every plan, 250+ published pages, AI that generates complete campaigns and on-brand images, 1:1 AI-personalized pages per contact in journeys, a full CRM with custom fields and dynamic lists, and complete API access even on Free.
Yes: export subscribers and groups to CSV, and Fast List Import loads about 250,000 contacts a minute with dedupe and receipts. Groups become lists, custom fields carry over, and white-glove onboarding (every customer, optional private Slack channel) covers rebuilding your automations as journeys.
A newsletter that will genuinely stay under 250 subscribers can live happily on MailerLite's free plan, and senders who want the simplest classic editor may prefer it. For anyone growing, the June 2026 limits and pricing make Tented the stronger value at every tier.
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