EmailOctopus
email-marketing
MailCheap
newsletter-platforms
Two affordable email options with different strengths — compare free allowances, sending frequency, templates, automations, AI agents, and infrastructure ownership.
Dimension-by-Dimension Breakdown
Free Hosted Plan
Starter includes 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails/month, with EmailOctopus branding, 30-day report retention, one landing page, one form, and one user.
No free hosted plan or free trial. Cloud starts at $19/month; self-hosted software has no license fee but incurs infrastructure and delivery costs.
Pricing & Sending Frequency
Paid pricing scales with subscriber count and an associated sending allowance. Compare the current tier against your actual campaign frequency rather than assuming either product is always cheaper.
Starter includes 20,000 emails/month and up to 10,000 active subscribers for $19/month. Two full sends to 10,000 readers consume the entire allowance, before any tests or signup emails.
Email Design & Templates
A drag-and-drop editor, HTML support, and 100+ mobile-friendly templates provide more starting points for varied promotional email designs.
A rich-text editor and eight coordinated website/email themes suit straightforward editorial newsletters, with customizable colors and fonts.
Email Automations
Built-in automation tools support welcome sequences and follow-up campaigns, making it more convenient for recurring nurture workflows without custom code.
Welcome emails and scheduled campaigns are built in. Multi-email sequences require additional orchestration through the API rather than a native automation builder.
AI-Agent Workflows
Provides an API for custom integrations. Agent-driven workflows may require additional integration work rather than MailCheap's built-in campaign-management MCP tools.
Native MCP tools let supported agents draft, schedule, send, manage contacts, and retrieve reports. MCP and the REST API are included on every hosted plan.
Self-Hosting vs Your Own SES Account
EmailOctopus Connect routes email through your own Amazon SES account while EmailOctopus hosts the application. SES charges are separate, and bringing your provider does not make the app self-hosted or open source.
The open-source version lets you run the entire application, database, and sending stack on infrastructure you choose. Cloud is available if you prefer a managed service.
Newsletter Website
Landing pages and signup forms focus on collecting subscribers. They serve a different purpose from automatically publishing each newsletter issue as part of a publication website.
Automatically publishes newsletter issues as search-indexable web pages, alongside a signup form and custom domain options.
Branding on Paid Plans
Pro removes EmailOctopus branding and gives full control over email design; the free Starter plan retains branding.
Every hosted plan includes emails without a MailCheap footer badge and support for your own sending domain.
Editor's Verdict
“EmailOctopus is the easier budget starting point for a small list: its free hosted plan includes 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails/month, while its paid product offers a larger template library and email automations. MailCheap is a stronger fit when you want an automatically published newsletter website, native AI-agent campaign operations, or the option to self-host the whole application. Its hosted plans start at $19/month with all features included, but the best value depends on how often you send and how many active subscribers you have. EmailOctopus Connect is also worth considering if you want to use your own Amazon SES account without running the application yourself; it is not equivalent to MailCheap's open-source self-hosting.”
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