About MailPilot

Last updated: 2026-08-08

MailPilot is an independent review site for small businesses comparing email marketing platforms. We don't take sponsored reviews, and affiliate commissions never change our recommendations.

What we do

MailPilot compares email marketing platforms on the things that decide the choice for a small business: real pricing at real subscriber counts, what each plan actually includes, how the automation builders differ, and where the hidden costs sit. Everything here is built from sources you can check yourself — vendor pricing pages and documentation, published third-party research, and practitioner reports.

Who this site is for

Small business owners choosing their first (or next) email marketing tool — solopreneurs, course creators, ecommerce founders, B2B service businesses, and small marketing teams. The recommendations are written for businesses sending anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 emails per month.

How we work — and what we do not claim

We do not run a deliverability lab, and we do not operate paid accounts on every platform we write about. Plenty of review sites imply otherwise. We would rather tell you exactly where our information comes from, so you can judge it:

1. Pricing — modelled directly from each vendor's public pricing page at common subscriber and volume tiers, including overage and add-on costs. Prices change often; always confirm with the vendor before buying.
2. Features and limits — taken from vendor documentation and plan comparison pages, not from marketing copy.
3. Deliverability — described structurally (shared vs dedicated IP pools, whether transactional mail is separated from bulk marketing mail) and, where we quote a figure, attributed to the vendor's own published data or a named third-party study. We do not publish inbox placement rates of our own.
4. Real-world friction — drawn from public practitioner reports, support forums, and incident write-ups, cited where it matters.

What this means for you: where we say one tool has better deliverability than another, we are describing a structural difference or citing someone else's measurement — never an unattributed number we produced. If a figure appears without a source next to it, treat it as a vendor claim rather than an independent measurement.

What we compare

• Pricing across free, starter, and growth tiers — including contact limits and overage fees
• Setup burden for a non-technical small business owner
• Automation features at each price point (triggers, conditions, splits, goals)
• Deliverability approach — shared vs dedicated IPs, and transactional/marketing separation
• Documented support channels and response commitments by tier
• Migration paths when moving from another tool
• Third-party integrations that small businesses actually use (Shopify, WordPress, Stripe, Zapier)

As of August 2026, the site covers 60+ in-depth reviews, 18 best-of lists, 15 vs-pair comparisons, and 7 alternatives roundups.

Affiliate disclosure (the honest version)

Yes, we earn affiliate commissions when you sign up for tools via our links. This is disclosed on every page with a CTA, and in full at /disclosure/.

Affiliate commissions never change our recommendations. We rate tools on their merits — pricing, features, support, deliverability. If a tool is bad, we say so even when we're an affiliate. If a tool is great but has no affiliate program, we still recommend it.

How we pick recommendations: We weigh pricing and plan limits most heavily, then feature depth, deliverability approach, support commitments, and integrations. Affiliate status is not part of the ranking.

What we don't do

• We don't accept payment to write a review. No vendor has ever paid for coverage or placement on a "best of" list.
• We don't bury the cons at the bottom of a 3,000-word review. Every review has a "What we don't like" section near the top.
• We don't invent first-hand testing. If we did not run something ourselves, we do not claim we did — and we say where each figure came from instead.
• We don't let pricing go stale silently. Every page carries a last-updated date, and pricing is re-checked against vendor pages on a rolling basis.
• We don't include affiliate-only tools in our rankings unless they genuinely earned their position through the criteria.

Recent changes we've made to recommendations

• 2026-06-15: Downgraded Mailchimp's free tier from "best for new senders" to "okay if you already use it" — MailerLite's 1,000 contact free tier beats Mailchimp's 500 contact free tier
• 2026-05-20: Added Brevo to our "best transactional" recommendations — it is the only platform in the list bundling transactional, marketing and SMS on every tier, including the free plan
• 2026-04-10: Removed AWeber from "small business" recommendations — the automation builder is dated compared to MailerLite and ConvertKit
• 2026-03-01: Added Resend as a "modern dev-friendly" SendGrid alternative — launched 2023, best API documentation in category

How to contact us

Found an error in a review? Email our editorial team. Pricing changes, deliverability issues, or feature updates we missed — we want to know and we'll update reviews within 7 days.

Want to suggest a tool for review? Same address. We add 2-3 new reviews per month, prioritizing tools with high search volume and meaningful differentiation from existing coverage.

Disclosure details

MailPilot is editorially independent. Affiliate income funds the running costs of the site but does not influence how we compare tools or what we recommend. Full affiliate disclosure and our editorial guidelines are at /disclosure/.