Every European newsletter platform reviewed
London, United Kingdom
Founded 2013
Free self-hosted / Ghost(Pro) from about $9/month, no revenue share
Free self-hosted
Best for: Independent publishers and newsletters that want to own their audience
Ghost takes nothing from your subscription revenue, and for a publication that is the argument that outweighs every feature. Memberships, paid tiers, newsletters and Stripe integration are in the core product rather than bolted on by plugin, and Ghost charges no revenue share at any scale — a publication earning €100,000 keeps €100,000 minus payment processing, where Substack would take a permanent percentage that grows precisely as you succeed.
The governance matters as much as the economics and is the part most comparisons miss. Ghost is owned by the Ghost Foundation, a non-profit, so there is no shareholder able to accept an acquisition and revise the terms afterwards.
For a business whose entire income runs through a platform, that structural fact is worth more than any feature roadmap.
Ghost is also a full CMS rather than a newsletter tool, with themes, a content API and ActivityPub support, so the site around the newsletter is a real website. Ghost(Pro) is about $9 per month with EU hosting regions available, or free self-hosted under MIT. The honest gap is discovery: Ghost has no recommendation network, so audience growth is entirely your own work, and the theme and plugin ecosystem is small.
What Ghost does well
- No revenue share on subscriptions, at any scale
- Owned by a non-profit foundation that cannot be sold
- Memberships, paid tiers and newsletters in the core product
- MIT-licensed and fully self-hostable, with EU hosting regions
- A real CMS with themes and a content API around the newsletter
Where Ghost falls short
- No built-in discovery or recommendation network
- Small theme and plugin ecosystem
- Editor more constrained than a page builder
- UK-based foundation, so adequacy rather than EU establishment
Standout feature. Zero revenue share under non-profit governance: Ghost is the only platform here where succeeding costs you nothing extra and nobody can change that later.
Vilnius, Lithuania
Founded 2010
Free (500 subscribers) / from about €10/month
Free tier
Best for: Creators and small businesses whose newsletter promotes something else
MailerLite is the best-value way to send a newsletter that is not itself the product. The free plan covers 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month including the drag-and-drop editor, landing pages, signup forms and basic automation — enough for a creator or small business to run a real newsletter for a year without a budget conversation, and the editor is noticeably better designed than what it competes with at that price.
MailerLite operates from Vilnius under EU jurisdiction with intra-EEA processing, so a European sender has no transfer question to answer about a subscriber list.
Beyond email it covers landing pages and simple websites, subscriber segmentation, e-commerce integrations and reporting, with deliverability treated as a stated focus rather than an assumption. Paid plans start around €10 per month for unlimited sending, advanced automation, A/B testing and removal of MailerLite branding. What it does not do is sell subscriptions: there are no membership tiers, no paywall and no payment handling, so a publication charging readers needs Ghost or Steady instead.
What MailerLite does well
- Free plan covers 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month
- Genuinely well-designed drag-and-drop editor
- Landing pages and forms included rather than sold separately
- Lithuanian company, EU jurisdiction, intra-EEA processing
- Competitive pricing at every tier
Where MailerLite falls short
- No paid memberships, paywall or payment handling
- Priced per subscriber, so a dormant list costs money
- Automation less deep than GetResponse or Brevo
- Branding removal requires a paid plan
Standout feature. A free tier a real newsletter can live on: MailerLite gives 500 subscribers the editor, landing pages and automation rather than reserving them for paying customers.
Paris, France
Founded 2012
Free (300 emails/day, unlimited contacts) / from about €8/month
Free tier
Best for: Publications with a large list they mail occasionally
Brevo prices by emails sent rather than subscribers stored, and for a newsletter that is often worth more over a year than any feature.
Unlimited contacts even on the free plan, with 300 emails a day at no cost — so an archive of five thousand old subscribers costs nothing to keep, and you pay only when you actually mail them. On every per-subscriber platform in this category, that same dormant list is a monthly charge, and crossing a tier boundary can raise it sharply without you sending anything.
Brevo is based in Paris with EU processing, so a European sender has no transfer question about the list.
The platform reaches well beyond newsletters: marketing automation with a visual workflow builder, a CRM with sales pipeline, transactional email and SMTP, and SMS and WhatsApp campaigns orchestrated in the same workflows — SMS open rates above 95% make that a genuinely different channel rather than a cheaper one.
Paid plans start around €8 per month, with automation and A/B testing from about €18. As with the other email platforms, there are no paid memberships or paywalls: Brevo sends the newsletter, it does not sell it.
What Brevo does well
- Priced per email sent, so unlimited contacts cost nothing to store
- Free plan with unlimited contacts and 300 emails a day
- SMS and WhatsApp in the same workflows as email
- CRM and transactional SMTP in the same platform
- French company with EU processing
Where Brevo falls short
- No paid memberships, paywall or payment handling
- Per-email pricing is worse for a small list mailed very often
- Automation and A/B testing need the Business tier
- Editor less refined than MailerLite's
Standout feature. Unlimited contacts at every tier: Brevo is the only platform here where an old subscriber archive costs nothing to keep until you mail it.
Berlin, Germany
Founded 2016
Revenue share on membership income; no monthly fee
No monthly fee to start
Best for: Independent journalists and media in German-speaking Europe
Steady is built for the specific problem of getting German-speaking readers to actually complete a payment.
Card penetration for recurring consumer payments is far lower in Germany than in the US or UK, so a card-only checkout loses subscribers who genuinely wanted to pay and simply did not finish — an invisible loss, because nobody reports the subscription they abandoned. Steady supports SEPA direct debit and the local payment methods those audiences use, which converts materially better and also churns less, since a SEPA mandate does not expire the way a card does.
The second design choice is that Steady works with your existing website rather than replacing it. It supplies membership tiers, paywall integration, member management and analytics, and leaves publishing where it already is — so an independent journalist or podcaster does not migrate their site to start charging.
Steady Media GmbH is based in Berlin with EU data, and charges no monthly fee at all, taking a revenue share on membership income instead. That inverts the risk: nothing to pay while building an audience, and more than Ghost's flat fee once the income is real. Steady has no publishing tools of its own and its reach is concentrated in DACH.
What Steady does well
- SEPA and local payment methods that convert in German-speaking markets
- Works with any existing website — no migration required
- Built specifically for independent media
- No monthly fee; revenue share only
- German company with EU data
Where Steady falls short
- Revenue share costs more than a flat fee at scale
- No publishing tools of its own
- Reach concentrated in DACH
- Less useful outside German-speaking Europe
Standout feature. Payment methods German readers actually use: Steady is the only platform here whose checkout is built for a market where the card is not the default.
Gdansk, Poland
Founded 1998
Free (500 contacts) / from about €16/month
Free tier
Best for: Publications that run webinars alongside the newsletter
GetResponse includes a webinar platform, which no other newsletter or email tool in this category does natively. Live webinars, on-demand replays and paid events for up to 1,000 attendees, with screen sharing, polls, chat and call-to-action buttons — and because it lives in the same system as the email list, registration confirmations, reminder sequences, post-event follow-ups and attendee-based segmentation all run on the same automation, with no Zapier and no separate Zoom Webinars subscription.
GetResponse has operated from Gdańsk since 1998, which makes it the longest-running platform in this category, processing in EU data centres with built-in consent management, data processing agreements and subscriber export and deletion.
Alongside webinars it offers landing pages, conversion funnels, a website builder and AI-assisted content. Pricing needs attention: the Email Marketing plan starts around €16 per month for 1,000 contacts, but the Marketing Automation plan carrying the visual workflow builder, webinars and advanced segmentation starts around €54. Like the other email platforms, it does not handle paid memberships or paywalls.
What GetResponse does well
- Native webinar platform for up to 1,000 attendees
- Webinar data drives email automation with no integration
- Landing pages, funnels and website builder included
- Polish company operating since 1998, EU data centres
- Free tier for up to 500 contacts
Where GetResponse falls short
- Webinars and the workflow builder need the ~€54 plan
- No paid memberships or paywall
- Priced per contact, so list growth raises the bill
- Large feature surface takes time to learn
Standout feature. Webinars inside the newsletter platform: GetResponse is the only tool here where the registration, the reminder and the follow-up are the same automation as the event.
Rastede, Germany
Founded 2007
Free tier / from about €15/month
Free tier
Best for: German-speaking businesses that need consent handled correctly
CleverReach is built for a market with stricter expectations than the European baseline. German consent rules around email are more demanding in practice than elsewhere in the EU, and CleverReach treats documented double opt-in as the default path rather than a setting somebody has to find — which matters because a list built without it is a deliverability and legal problem that only surfaces later.
CleverReach GmbH & Co. KG has operated from Rastede since 2007 with German hosting, giving intra-EEA processing under one of the strictest data protection regimes in Europe, and German-language support.
The product covers a drag-and-drop editor, automation workflows, A/B testing, reporting and AI content generation for drafting subject lines and copy, with a broad integrations ecosystem covering the shop and CRM systems German businesses actually run.
Deliverability and sender reputation management are built around German sending infrastructure, which is the practical reason German senders prefer it to a US platform whose reputation is pooled across a very different sender mix. Free tier available, paid from about €15 per month. No paid memberships or paywall.
What CleverReach does well
- Documented double opt-in as the default path
- German hosting, German support, intra-EEA processing
- Automation, A/B testing and AI content generation
- Deliverability tuned to German sending infrastructure
- Integrations with the German shop and CRM ecosystem
Where CleverReach falls short
- Oriented to German-speaking markets
- No paid memberships or paywall
- Priced per contact rather than per email
- Editor less modern than MailerLite's
Standout feature. Consent built for German rules: CleverReach makes documented double opt-in the path of least resistance, which is the requirement international platforms most often get wrong in Germany.
Athens, Greece
Founded 2011
From about $9/month
30-day free trial
Best for: Small businesses and startups wanting affordable email with real automation
Moosend is the cheapest capable option in this category at about $9 per month after a 30-day trial, and what makes that notable is that the automation is not stripped down to justify the price. Marketing automation, segmentation and personalisation, landing pages and subscription forms, and real-time analytics are all there — so a small business gets behaviour-triggered sequences rather than only broadcast sends, which is usually the feature that separates a working newsletter from an announcement list.
Moosend operates from Athens under EU jurisdiction with intra-EEA processing and GDPR handling, which for a subscriber list means no transfer analysis. The interface is straightforward enough to use without a learning project, which matters at this end of the market where nobody has time for a rollout.
The 30-day trial is longer than most and long enough to send several real campaigns and judge deliverability properly. As with the other email platforms here, there are no paid memberships and no paywall, and the ecosystem and integration catalogue are smaller than those of the larger European platforms.
What Moosend does well
- From about $9/month, the cheapest capable platform here
- Real marketing automation rather than broadcast-only sending
- Segmentation, landing pages and forms included
- 30-day trial, long enough to judge deliverability properly
- Greek company, EU jurisdiction, intra-EEA processing
Where Moosend falls short
- No paid memberships or paywall
- Smaller integration ecosystem than the larger platforms
- Priced per subscriber
- Pricing quoted in dollars despite the EU base
Standout feature. Automation at the bottom of the price range: Moosend is the only platform here charging under $10 that still gives you behaviour-triggered sequences rather than broadcasts.
Genk, Belgium
Start from €15/month for 1,000 contacts and 1 user (annual; €17 monthly) / Essential from €31/month / Pro from €70/month / Premium on request
Free trial available
Best for: Belgian and Benelux businesses wanting certified GDPR handling
Flexmail is a Belgian email marketing platform built around a straightforward promise: unlimited sending, transparent per-tier pricing, and GDPR handling backed by an ISO 27701 certificate rather than just a policy statement.
The drag-and-drop builder covers newsletters and campaigns, and a marketing CRM layer adds dynamic segmentation so a list can be targeted by behaviour rather than a static tag. Automation scenarios trigger on subscriber actions, and forms and surveys support conditional logic for collecting the data those scenarios need. For a Benelux business that wants an email tool built close to home, Flexmail is a straightforward fit.
Flexmail nv is based in Genk and prices by contact volume rather than emails sent: Start covers 1,000 contacts and one user from €15 a month on an annual plan, Essential adds automation scenarios and ten users from €31, and Pro adds A/B testing, dynamic content and a survey builder from €70, with an unlimited-user Premium tier quoted on request.
A free trial is available. What Flexmail does not offer is a paid-membership or newsletter-monetisation layer — like the other email marketing tools in this category, it sends the newsletter rather than selling it, and its transactional email API is priced separately.
What Flexmail does well
- ISO 27701-certified GDPR handling, not just a policy statement
- Transparent per-tier pricing published in full
- Marketing CRM with dynamic segmentation included
- Automation scenarios trigger on subscriber behaviour
- Free trial available
Where Flexmail falls short
- No paid memberships or paywall — sends newsletters, does not sell them
- Priced per contact, so list growth raises the bill
- Premium tier and its unlimited API access are quote-only
- Smaller ecosystem than Brevo or GetResponse
Standout feature. ISO 27701-certified consent handling: Flexmail is the only platform here with an independently audited certificate rather than a self-declared GDPR policy.
Vilnius, Lithuania
Free Forever: 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails/month / Standard from $6.30/month (500 subscribers, billed annually) / Professional from $10.50/month / Enterprise on request
Free forever plan, no credit card
Best for: Small creators wanting the largest genuinely free plan here
Sender.net's free-forever plan is unusually generous for this category: 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, with the drag-and-drop editor, automation and templates included rather than gated behind a paid tier.
For a creator or small business starting a newsletter with no budget, that is enough list size to run a real publication for a year before a plan decision is forced, well beyond MailerLite's 500-subscriber free ceiling. Integrations with WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify cover the platforms a small e-commerce or content business is actually built on, and SMS is bundled into the paid tiers rather than sold separately.
UAB Sender.lt operates from Vilnius, so a European sender's data sits with an EU-established processor.
Once the free tier is outgrown, Standard starts at $6.30 a month for 500 subscribers and 6,000 emails billed annually, and Professional adds deeper automation from $10.50 a month — prices quoted in dollars despite the Lithuanian base, the same pattern this category already has in Moosend. What Sender.net does not do is sell subscriptions: there is no paywall or membership tier, and the entity name appears only in the legal pages, not on the marketing site itself.
What Sender.net does well
- Free-forever plan covers 2,500 subscribers, far above MailerLite's 500
- Drag-and-drop editor and automation included on the free tier
- WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify integrations built in
- Lithuanian company, EU jurisdiction
- Affordable paid tiers once the free plan is outgrown
Where Sender.net falls short
- No paid memberships or paywall
- Prices quoted in dollars despite the EU base
- Company entity named only in the legal pages, not the marketing site
- Smaller feature depth than Brevo or GetResponse at the top end
Standout feature. The free tier alone: Sender.net gives away five times MailerLite's free subscriber limit before asking for a card.
London, United Kingdom
Founded 2010
Standard from €30/month (2,500 contacts) / Premium from €50/month (5,000) / Deluxe from €70/month (7,500) / Enterprise from €170/month (up to 21,000,000 contacts) plus a one-time setup fee from €699; lower on annual/2-year billing
30-day trial
Best for: Marketers who want automation and AI scoring, not just sending
KlickTipp leads with marketing automation rather than newsletter sending: tagging and scoring contacts by behaviour, triggering multi-step campaigns, and — on the higher tiers — an AI copywriter and a "SmartContact AI" scoring layer that most tools in this category do not offer at all.
Landing pages and SMS marketing are built into the same subscription rather than sold as add-ons, and the Deluxe plan's lead- and customer-acquisition tools push it closer to a small CRM than a mailing list manager. That breadth is the trade-off against the simpler, cheaper tools elsewhere in this grid: KlickTipp is built for automating a funnel, not just publishing a newsletter.
Klick-Tipp Limited is registered in London and states that it processes personal data exclusively within the European Union, despite the UK — like Ghost — sitting outside the EEA and relying on an adequacy decision rather than EU establishment.
Pricing runs from €30 a month for 2,500 contacts on Standard up to €170 a month for Enterprise, which scales to 21 million contacts and adds a one-time setup fee from €699; a 30-day trial is available. There are no paid memberships or paywall here either, and the pricing structure rewards a longer commitment: the 2-year rate runs roughly 20% below the monthly one at every tier.
What KlickTipp does well
- Deep marketing automation, not just campaign sending
- AI copywriter and SmartContact AI scoring on higher tiers
- Landing pages and SMS marketing included in the subscription
- States EU-only data processing despite its UK registration
- 30-day trial available
Where KlickTipp falls short
- United Kingdom entity, outside the EEA and dependent on an adequacy decision
- No paid memberships or paywall
- Enterprise tier adds a one-time setup fee from €699
- Prices are rendered by the site's calculator rather than shown as static text
Standout feature. AI-scored automation over simple sending: KlickTipp is the only tool in this grid built around scoring and tagging contacts rather than just mailing them.
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Marketing Suite from about €99/month, quote-based on send volume; SMTPeter and MailerQ priced separately
Demo on request
Best for: Mid-market teams wanting email, SMS and journeys in one suite
Copernica positions itself as a full marketing suite rather than a newsletter tool: email campaigns, SMS, customer journey automation, website tracking and behaviour-triggered messaging sit in one system, with segmentation and personalisation layered across all of them.
That breadth suits a mid-market marketing team running coordinated campaigns across channels more than a publisher sending a weekly newsletter, and it is the same shape of trade-off GetResponse makes with webinars — more surface area in exchange for a steeper learning curve than a dedicated sender like MailerLite or Sender.net.
Copernica B.V. is based in Amsterdam and states that its infrastructure is hosted exclusively in Europe, which for a European marketing team removes the transfer question entirely.
Pricing starts from about €99 a month and is quoted rather than published in tiers, adjusted to actual sending volume; a free demo is offered instead of a self-serve trial. Copernica also sells SMTPeter and MailerQ as separate, individually priced products for transactional and high-volume sending. As with the other email marketing tools here, there are no paid memberships or paywall — Copernica sends the newsletter, it does not sell it.
What Copernica does well
- Email, SMS and journey automation in one suite
- Infrastructure stated to be hosted exclusively in Europe
- Behaviour-triggered and website-tracking campaigns included
- Dutch company, EU jurisdiction
- Separate transactional (SMTPeter) and high-volume (MailerQ) products available
Where Copernica falls short
- Quote-based pricing from about €99/month, not published in tiers
- No self-serve trial, only a demo on request
- No paid memberships or paywall
- More complex to learn than a dedicated newsletter sender
Standout feature. One suite for email, SMS and journeys: Copernica is built for coordinated multi-channel campaigns rather than a single newsletter send.
Chemnitz, Germany
Founded 1998
Free demo on request
Best for: German enterprises and agencies needing a multi-account setup
Mailingwork has been running since 1998, with the dedicated email marketing product shipped from 2001, which makes it one of the longest-running tools in this category by a wide margin.
That history shows up in the target customer: mid-market and enterprise senders, and agencies or resellers managing several client accounts or brands from one login, rather than a single small business sending its own list. The trade-off for that depth is that Mailingwork is not a self-serve, look-at-the-price-and-sign-up product — there is a demo, not a published tariff.
Mailingwork is now operated by Positive Group Chemnitz GmbH, which took over the German company in late 2023 — the same Positive Group that owns Sarbacane and noCRM.io, though Mailingwork itself remains a separate, German-market product.
No price list is published on the site; every tier is quoted after a demo, which is a genuine gap next to Flexmail's or KlickTipp's fully published pricing and the reason it sits at the bottom of this newly added group. What is published is the multi-account architecture and automation aimed squarely at agencies and mid-market marketing teams, with GDPR handling built around German norms.
What Mailingwork does well
- Running since 1998 — the longest history in this category
- Multi-account setup built for agencies and resellers
- Automation aimed at mid-market and enterprise senders
- German company, EU jurisdiction
- GDPR handling built around German norms
Where Mailingwork falls short
- No published price list — every tier is quoted after a demo
- Not a self-serve product; the buying process needs a conversation
- No paid memberships or paywall
- Recently changed ownership (Positive Group, late 2023), so continuity is unproven
Standout feature. The only tool here with no published price at all: Mailingwork asks for a demo before it tells you what it costs.
