Best for
Best for teams that want to send newsletters at scale on their own servers, without a per-contact bill.
Email Marketing Comparison
listmonk vs. MailPoet
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for WordPress site owners and WooCommerce stores that want newsletters and store emails without leaving the dashboard.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | listmonk | MailPoet |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free and open source, self-hosted There is no licence fee. The server and the email sending provider are your own, and the project offers no hosted service. | Free; Business from $10 / month Business for 500 subscribers with monthly billing. The price rises with the number of subscribers, and yearly billing saves up to 15%. |
| Free trial | Not stated | Free Starter plan for up to 500 subscribers and 5,000 emails a month |
| Users | Not stated | More than 500,000 active installations on WordPress.org |
| Commercial use | Yes, AGPL v3 | Not stated |
| API | Yes, a REST API across subscribers, lists, campaigns, media, templates, transactional email, bounces and imports, with SDKs and granular API tokens | Yes, a PHP API for managing subscribers and lists from other plugins, documented on GitHub |
| Hosting | Self-hosted on your own infrastructure, as a single binary or through Docker, with PostgreSQL | WordPress plugin, self-hosted; sending through the MailPoet Sending Service, the web host or a third-party SMTP service |
| Campaign types | Newsletters and email campaigns, plus transactional messages through the API. Messenger webhooks send SMS, WhatsApp or FCM notifications through providers you supply | Yes, newsletters with scheduling and archives, welcome emails, automatic new post notifications and WooCommerce emails for abandoned carts, first purchases, specific products or categories, order status changes and reviews |
| Automation and journeys | No, listmonk is a one-way mailing list manager with no journey or drip builder; sequenced sends are driven from outside through the API | Yes, basic automation on Starter; paid plans add custom triggers and actions, if/else branches and automated subscriber management |
| Segmentation and personalisation | Yes, subscribers are queried and segmented with SQL expressions, across single and double opt-in lists | Yes, lists and tags on every plan; paid plans add engagement scores, multi-condition segmentation and segments by purchase behaviour, country, order count, spend and active WooCommerce subscriptions or memberships |
| Templates and editor | Yes, a visual drag-and-drop builder, a WYSIWYG editor, Markdown, syntax-highlighted raw HTML or plain text, with Go templating and 100+ functions in subject lines and content | Yes, a drag-and-drop editor with more than 70 mobile-friendly templates that can insert WordPress posts, pages and WooCommerce products |
| Deliverability and testing | Multi-threaded, multi-SMTP sending queues with throughput and sliding-window rate limiting, bounce processing, and analytics for campaign performance, bounces and top links. The sending provider is your own | Yes, the MailPoet Sending Service with sender authentication, automatic handling of undeliverable addresses and complaints, and an inactive-subscriber cleanup; sending through the web host or third-party SMTP is also possible |
| Ecommerce and CRM data | No built-in ecommerce or CRM data; external systems connect through the REST API and webhooks | Yes, built into WooCommerce: an automatically updated customer list, subscription at checkout, purchase-triggered emails, a customiser for WooCommerce transactional emails and detailed purchase statistics on paid plans |
| Integrations and API | Yes, extensive API coverage for all features with SDKs, granular API tokens, messenger webhooks and a media library on an S3-compatible backend | Yes, a PHP API for subscribers and lists, documented on GitHub, plus Zapier and a Google Analytics integration on paid plans |
| Deployment | On-premise | On-premise |
| Support | Not stated | Email helpdesk, Community forum |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Not stated | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized |
| Integrations | PostgreSQL, SMTP, Docker, Amazon S3 | more entries WordPress, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions, WooCommerce Memberships, Google Analytics, Zapier, Mailchimp (subscriber import) |
Add a tool
Adds a column to the table, from the tools in this category.
Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Key Differences
- Starting price listmonk Free and open source, self-hosted MailPoet Free; Business from $10 / month
- Hosting listmonk Self-hosted on your own infrastructure, as a single binary or through Docker, with PostgreSQL MailPoet WordPress plugin, self-hosted; sending through the MailPoet Sending Service, the web host or a third-party SMTP service
- API listmonk Yes, a REST API across subscribers, lists, campaigns, media, templates, transactional email, bounces and imports, with SDKs and granular API tokens MailPoet Yes, a PHP API for managing subscribers and lists from other plugins, documented on GitHub
- Campaign types listmonk Newsletters and email campaigns, plus transactional messages through the API. Messenger webhooks send SMS, WhatsApp or FCM notifications through providers you supply MailPoet Yes, newsletters with scheduling and archives, welcome emails, automatic new post notifications and WooCommerce emails for abandoned carts, first purchases, specific products or categories, order status changes and reviews
- Automation and journeys listmonk No, listmonk is a one-way mailing list manager with no journey or drip builder; sequenced sends are driven from outside through the API MailPoet Yes, basic automation on Starter; paid plans add custom triggers and actions, if/else branches and automated subscriber management
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
listmonk
Strengths
- No licence fee and no per-contact charge, so list growth does not change the bill
- Single binary with PostgreSQL, with a small CPU and memory footprint
- SQL segmentation over subscriber attributes, and Go templating in subject lines and content
- API coverage for all features, plus OIDC single sign-on with roles and permissions
Limitations
- No journey or automation builder; it is a one-way mailing list manager
- You supply, configure and pay for the SMTP sending provider
- SQL segmentation assumes someone on the team writes SQL
- No hosted service from the project, so running and patching the server is your own work
MailPoet
Strengths
- Runs inside the WordPress dashboard, with subscribers stored there
- Deep WooCommerce integration, including abandoned cart and purchase-triggered emails
- Free Starter plan for up to 500 subscribers
- Unlimited seats on every plan, and a Creator plan for sending through your own service
Limitations
- Only works on WordPress sites
- Advanced segmentation, custom automation, detailed statistics and branding removal need a paid plan
- The API is a PHP class inside the plugin rather than a hosted REST API
Plans
Pricing
listmonk
- Self-hosted $0 The open source application under AGPL v3. No licence fee; the server and the SMTP provider are your own.
MailPoet
- Starter $0 Up to 500 subscribers and 5,000 emails a month through the MailPoet Sending Service. Subscription forms, basic automation and summarised statistics.
- Business From $10 / month For 500 subscribers with monthly billing, or $108 a year. Unlimited emails, no MailPoet branding, priority support, segmentation, targeted automation and detailed statistics.
- Agency From $30 / month For 500 subscribers per site with monthly billing, or $312 a year. Everything in Business on up to 50 websites.
- Creator From $8 / month For 500 subscribers with monthly billing, or $84 a year. The features of Business without the MailPoet Sending Service, for sending through your own service.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
listmonk
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
MailPoet
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
How we check reviews
Before sending, the author has to confirm three things: that they have used the product themselves, that they work neither for the vendor nor for a competitor, and that nobody is paying them for the review. We also ask whether the vendor invited them to write it. That answer is required, either answer is accepted, and it stays with the review.
Every review is read by a person before it appears. An email address is required and is confirmed: we send a link to it, and a review does not reach us until the author opens that link, so a review has a sender who was reachable at least once rather than being anonymous. Where what somebody writes needs backing, we ask them for evidence that they used the product, and a review that does not get it is not published. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.
What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on their own declaration, on whatever we ask them for, and on the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.
A vendor cannot buy a review, and cannot have one removed or changed because they dislike it. We remove or edit a review only if it breaks our rules or the law, for example a false statement of fact. Paid placement has no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
listmonk https://listmonk.app · no check date recorded yet
MailPoet https://www.mailpoet.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-25
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.