SendFox vs MailerLite: $29 Once Against $49 a Month, and What Each Price Buys

Affiliate disclosure: CriticNest earns a commission if you buy SendFox through the AppSumo links on this page. We have no affiliate relationship with MailerLite. SendFox is owned by Sumo Group, the company behind AppSumo, so treat SendFox's own comparison pages as marketing. We checked MailerLite's numbers on MailerLite's site.

Quick answer: SendFox wins for creators who send a newsletter to fewer than 5,000 opt-in contacts and want to pay as little as possible: $29 once against $49 a month for MailerLite Comfort at 5,000 subscribers. MailerLite wins for everyone running a business on email. It has stronger automations, websites, digital product and booking sales, Shopify and WooCommerce integrations, and a free plan you can grow out of cleanly. Prices read on 23 October 2026.

SendFox vs MailerLite at a glance

Feature	SendFox	MailerLite
Free plan	1,000 contacts, 3,000 sends a month	250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month
One-time option	$29 lifetime on AppSumo: 5,000 contacts, 300,000 total sends	None
Paid plan at 5,000 contacts	Pro 1: $19 a month, 100,000 sends	Comfort: $49 a month, 50,000 emails
Paid plan at 10,000 contacts	Pro 2 (up to 15,000): $39 a month	Comfort: $89 a month
Automations	Unlimited on Lifetime and Pro, tag triggers and yes/no branches	3 on Free, 50 on Comfort, unlimited on Power, e-commerce triggers
Websites and landing pages	Smart Pages (hosted landing pages)	Full website builder with blog, 10 sites on Comfort
Selling	Paid newsletters via Stripe on Pro	Digital products, bookings, paid newsletters, recurring subscriptions
Shopify / WooCommerce	No native integration	Native integrations
HTML editor	Basic on Lifetime, full on Pro	Custom HTML editor on every plan
Branding removal	Pro only	Comfort and up
Support	Email	Knowledge base on Free, email on Comfort, 24/7 live chat on Power
Account approval	No approval step published	New accounts are reviewed before sending
Refunds	60 days on the AppSumo deal, 7 days on Pro	Only if MailerLite ends your service without cause

What are SendFox and MailerLite?

SendFox is a budget email tool for creators, launched in 2018 and owned by Sumo Group, the company behind AppSumo. It does newsletters, automations, RSS-to-email and hosted landing pages, and it's best known for its $29 lifetime deal. Our full SendFox review covers it in detail.

MailerLite is a larger email marketing platform that says it serves more than one million creators and businesses. Beyond email, it includes a website builder, digital product and booking sales, paid newsletters, surveys and a separate transactional email product called MailerSend. It runs on monthly or yearly subscriptions, with no lifetime option.

The two overlap on the basics: campaigns, automations, forms, landing pages, AI writing help and connections to Claude and ChatGPT. They split on everything a business layers on top of a newsletter.

See the SendFox $29 deal on AppSumoTracking link. $29 once against $49 a month for MailerLite Comfort at 5,000 subscribers.

Which is cheaper, SendFox or MailerLite?

SendFox is cheaper at every list size we checked, and the gap is widest under 5,000 contacts.

MailerLite's pricing page, read on 23 October 2026, prices plans by subscriber count. Yearly billing saves 10%.

Subscribers	MailerLite Comfort (monthly)	Comfort (yearly, per month)	MailerLite Power (monthly)	SendFox
250	Free plan covers it	Free	n/a	Free
500	$12	$10.80	$25	Free
1,000	$19	$17.10	$39	Free (3,000 sends a month)
2,500	$33	$29.70	$49	$29 once, or Pro 1 at $19
5,000	$49	$44.10	$69	$29 once, or Pro 1 at $19
10,000	$89	$80.10	$129	Pro 2 at $39

Sticker prices only tell half the story, because the two tools limit different things. MailerLite Comfort caps sends at ten times the top of your subscriber tier each month, so the 5,000 tier gets 50,000 emails. Power removes the cap, subject to fair use. SendFox's lifetime deal has no monthly cap but a 300,000-send lifetime pool, and Pro plans refresh monthly.

What does each cost over three years?

Here's the total for a weekly newsletter (about 4.33 sends a month to the whole list) on monthly billing. For SendFox at 5,000 contacts, the lifetime pool runs out around month 14, so the math switches you to Pro 1 at $19 a month from month 15.

Scenario	SendFox, 3 years	MailerLite Comfort, 3 years	Difference
1,000 contacts, weekly	$29 (lifetime pool lasts about 69 months)	$684	$655
5,000 contacts, weekly	$447 ($29 + 22 months of Pro 1)	$1,764	$1,317
10,000 contacts, weekly	$1,404 (Pro 2)	$3,204	$1,800

Yearly billing narrows the gap a little on both sides. SendFox Pro gives two months free yearly, and MailerLite saves 10%. It doesn't change the order.

Sending daily changes the picture. At 5,000 contacts, a daily email uses about 150,000 sends a month. That burns SendFox's lifetime pool in two months and overshoots both SendFox Pro 1 (100,000) and MailerLite Comfort (50,000). The realistic options become SendFox Pro 2 at $39 or MailerLite Power at $69.

Which free plan is better?

Winner: SendFox, for list size. MailerLite, for features.

SendFox Free allows 1,000 contacts and 3,000 sends a month, with one landing page, one form and one automation. MailerLite Free stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. In exchange, it gives you a website and a landing page, three active forms, three automations of up to five steps, two user seats, one digital product or booking page, all three email editors including custom HTML, and 100+ integrations.

The two free plans behave differently at the limit. MailerLite says a free account that passes 250 active subscribers has its campaigns and automations locked until you upgrade or remove contacts. SendFox's terms say it may limit or end the free plan at any time.

If you're starting from zero and expect to sell something within a year, MailerLite Free is the better launch pad. If you just want a newsletter and already have 500 readers, SendFox Free fits now and MailerLite doesn't.

Which has better automation?

Winner: MailerLite.

SendFox's automations improved in 2026. Its changelog lists tag-based triggers, adding and removing tags inside a flow, yes/no branches on opens, clicks and tags, and A/B testing inside automations. On Lifetime and Pro, automations are unlimited.

MailerLite goes further. Its visual builder supports up to 100 steps per automation on paid plans, e-commerce triggers, auto-resend campaigns and RSS campaigns. Power adds multiple triggers per automation. It also has dynamic segments and interest groups, so you can target people by behavior without manual tagging.

For a welcome series and a weekly newsletter, SendFox is enough. For abandoned-cart emails, purchase follow-ups or multi-path funnels, MailerLite is the one built for it.

Which has the better email editor?

Winner: MailerLite.

SendFox has a block editor with slash commands, columns, saved templates, reusable sections and AI subject line suggestions. The full HTML editor is a Pro feature. On the lifetime plan you get a basic HTML editor.

MailerLite offers three editors on every plan, including Free: drag and drop, a simple editor and custom HTML. Paid plans add unlimited templates, dynamic email content and multivariate testing.

Which is better for landing pages and websites?

Winner: MailerLite.

SendFox hosts landing pages it calls Smart Pages, plus forms, popups, slide-ins and sticky bars. They're simple and they work without your own site. Whether you can put them on your own custom domain is unclear: the AppSumo listing claims it, while an FAQ on the same page says it's not supported yet.

MailerLite includes a full website builder with a blog section, SEO settings, click maps, password-protected pages and landing page A/B testing. Comfort covers 10 sites and landing pages, and Power makes them unlimited. If you don't have a website yet, MailerLite can be one.

Which is better for selling products?

Winner: MailerLite, clearly.

SendFox's selling feature is paid newsletters through Stripe, and only on Pro plans. It has no native Shopify integration. SendFox's own answer is to use Zapier, webhooks or its API.

MailerLite sells digital products, bookings, paid newsletters and recurring subscriptions directly. It integrates natively with Shopify, WooCommerce and Stripe, and it tracks e-commerce sales in its reports. If email is how you make money, this one category usually decides the comparison.

Which has more integrations?

Winner: MailerLite.

MailerLite lists 100+ integrations on every plan, plus an API, webhooks and an MCP server for Claude and ChatGPT. The free plan gets limited API and MCP access.

SendFox connects through Zapier, its API, KingSumo and Sumo.com, and it has an MCP connection for AI assistants. It doesn't offer SMTP credentials. It does include a transactional email API on every plan, with those emails counted against your monthly or lifetime sends. MailerLite handles transactional email through MailerSend, a separate product.

Get SendFox for $29 onceTracking link. 60-day refund through AppSumo. No affiliate link for MailerLite.

Which has better deliverability?

No verified winner. Neither company publishes neutral inbox-placement data, and we didn't run a placement test for this article.

What both publish is how they police their senders. SendFox's terms let it suspend accounts whose emails perform below its standards, with no refund, and reduce send volume. MailerLite reviews new accounts before they can send. Its terms let it monitor lists and content, and terminate accounts with too many abuse complaints, also without refund. MailerLite's anti-spam rules require removing an address after three hard bounces.

Both approaches protect shared sending reputation. Both mean an old or purchased list can get you shut down. Our sending limits guide covers the setup that matters on either tool: SPF, DKIM, DMARC and list hygiene.

Which has better support?

Winner: MailerLite, on paid plans.

SendFox offers email support only. Several public reviews complain about slow replies. MailerLite Free gets the knowledge base and webinars. Comfort adds email support, and accounts at 50,000+ subscribers get live chat. Power includes 24/7 live chat and priority support.

How do their terms and privacy policies compare?

I read both companies' terms and privacy policies on 23 October 2026. My law degrees (LLB and LLM) are why I read this part closely. These are the differences a buyer should know.

Clause	SendFox	MailerLite
Who counts as a contact for billing	"All contacts both subscribed and unsubscribed" (Terms, billing section)	Active subscribers only. Unsubscribed and bounced don't count, but anyone active during the billing cycle counts for that cycle
Price changes	May change prices at any time after email notice	May revise prices, and changes apply to existing subscriptions too
Refunds	Lifetime: AppSumo's 60 days. Pro: 7 days	Only if MailerLite ends your service without cause before a paid year is over
Deleting your data	Deleted items leave your account, but "we keep the underlying records" until you email for permanent deletion	Account deletion fully deletes or anonymizes data within 30 days
Inactive accounts	Not specified	May be deleted after 3 years of inactivity, with email warnings first
AI processing	AI features and content safety review use OpenAI's API	AI features use OpenAI and Google Vertex AI
Selling personal data	"We WILL NEVER sell your information"	"We will never sell, rent, or lease your Personal Data"
EU transfers	States GDPR and DPA compliance, publishes a DPA	Certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, publishes a DPA
Documents last updated	Terms: 12 April 2024 (still describe the pre-2026 lifetime plan)	Privacy policy: 14 October 2026

Overall, MailerLite's documents are newer, more specific about deletion and better aligned with EU rules. SendFox's are older and don't match its current lifetime plan. That doesn't make SendFox unsafe, but keep a screenshot of the AppSumo deal terms you bought under.

Pros and cons side by side

Who should choose SendFox, and who should choose MailerLite?

Choose SendFox if:

• You send a newsletter to an opt-in list under 5,000 contacts.
• You send weekly or less.
• Your income doesn't run through your email tool.
• You blog or podcast and want posts turned into newsletters automatically.
• Paying $29 once matters more to you than extra features.

Get SendFox for $29 on AppSumoTracking link. $29 once, 60-day refund through AppSumo.

Choose MailerLite if:

• You sell digital products, bookings, courses or physical goods.
• You run a Shopify or WooCommerce store.
• You need a website as well as email.
• You want detailed segmentation and multi-path automations.
• You want live chat support or several team seats.

Still deciding? Our best email marketing software guide ranks more options. If you're new to AppSumo, is AppSumo legit covers how its refunds and lifetime deals work.

What this comparison did not do

We did not open accounts on either tool, send campaigns or measure inbox placement for this article. The prices and features above come from mailerlite.com/pricing, MailerLite's terms of use, privacy policy and anti-spam policy, sendfox.com/pricing, sendfox.com/vs/mailerlite, SendFox's terms and privacy policy, and the SendFox listing and deal terms on appsumo.com, all read on 23 October 2026.

Both companies change prices. MailerLite's terms say its price changes apply to existing subscriptions, and AppSumo deals can sell out or be re-priced. Check both pricing pages on the day you decide.

The short version

For a creator who just wants to email an opt-in list under 5,000 people, SendFox costs $29 once against MailerLite's $684 to $1,764 over three years, and it does the job. For anyone who sells through email, runs a store or needs a website, MailerLite is worth the monthly bill. Its automations, commerce tools, integrations and support are a class above. Pick by what your email has to earn, not by the sticker price.

Frequently asked questions

Is SendFox better than MailerLite?

SendFox is better on price for newsletter-only creators under 5,000 contacts: $29 once against $49 a month for MailerLite Comfort at that size. MailerLite is better on features, with stronger automations, websites, digital product sales, Shopify and WooCommerce integrations, and live chat on higher plans.

Is MailerLite free?

MailerLite has a free plan for up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. It includes a website, a landing page, three forms, three automations and two user seats. When an account passes 250 active subscribers, sending is locked until you upgrade or remove contacts.

How much does MailerLite cost for 5,000 subscribers?

MailerLite Comfort costs $49 a month at 5,000 subscribers on monthly billing, or $44.10 a month billed yearly, with 50,000 emails a month. Power, with unlimited emails, costs $69 a month. Prices read on mailerlite.com on 23 October 2026.

How much does SendFox cost compared to MailerLite?

SendFox Free covers 1,000 contacts. The SendFox lifetime deal is $29 once for 5,000 contacts and 300,000 total sends, and Pro 1 is $19 a month for 5,000 contacts. MailerLite charges $19 a month at 1,000 subscribers and $49 at 5,000 on its Comfort plan.

Can I move my MailerLite subscribers to SendFox?

Yes. Export your subscribers from MailerLite as a CSV file, then import it into a SendFox list and map the columns. You'll need to rebuild forms and automations by hand. Only import people who opted in, because SendFox can suspend accounts whose emails perform poorly.

Does SendFox have a website builder like MailerLite?

No. SendFox has hosted landing pages called Smart Pages, plus forms and popups. MailerLite has a full website builder with a blog, SEO settings and up to 10 sites on Comfort. If you need a website and email in one tool, MailerLite fits better.

Which is better for selling digital products?

MailerLite. It sells digital products, bookings, paid newsletters and recurring subscriptions directly, and it integrates with Stripe, Shopify and WooCommerce. SendFox's only built-in selling feature is paid newsletters through Stripe, available on Pro plans.

Do unsubscribed contacts count on SendFox and MailerLite?

On SendFox, yes. Its terms say the contact count includes subscribed and unsubscribed contacts. On MailerLite, no. It bills on active subscribers, though anyone active at any point in a billing cycle counts for that cycle.

Does MailerLite approve accounts before you can send?

Yes. MailerLite reviews new accounts before they can send campaigns. Its help pages say that if your account isn't confirmed right away, you'll get an email explaining why. SendFox doesn't publish a comparable approval step.

Which has better deliverability, SendFox or MailerLite?

Neither publishes independent inbox-placement data, and we didn't test it. Both protect their sending reputation by suspending poor senders: SendFox for low-performing emails, MailerLite for abuse complaints. Domain authentication and a clean opt-in list matter more than the tool.