If you've been thinking about starting an email list but keep putting it off because it feels complicated or expensive, this post is for you.

Email marketing is one of the things I wish I had taken more seriously earlier in my business. Social media is great for visibility, but your following there isn't really yours. Algorithms change, platforms shift, and the people who were seeing your posts one month might not see them the next. Your email list is different. It belongs to you. And the people on it have actively said they want to hear from you.

The tool I use to manage mine is MailerLite, and it's the one I recommend to clients too. Here's why.

It's built for people who aren't email marketers

One of the reasons I chose MailerLite and kept using it is that it doesn't assume you already know what you're doing. The interface is clean and straightforward. You're not staring at a dashboard full of options you don't understand, trying to figure out where to click to do something simple.

Setting up a signup form, writing and sending a newsletter, building a basic automation sequence — all of it is laid out in a way that makes sense. If you can write an email, you can use MailerLite. And as you get more comfortable, there's more depth there to grow into.

The free plan is actually useful

A lot of email platforms offer a free tier, but the limitations make it hard to do anything meaningful. MailerLite's free plan lets you have up to 1,000 subscribers and send up to 12,000 emails per month. For a freelancer or small business just getting started, that's more than enough room to build momentum and figure out what kind of content resonates with your audience before you spend a cent.

When you're ready to grow, the paid plans are reasonably priced and unlock features like unlimited emails, advanced automations, and the ability to remove MailerLite branding from your forms and emails.

What I actually use it for

As a web designer, I use MailerLite to stay in touch with my audience, share new blog posts, and occasionally let people know about resources or services that might be useful to them. But the features I find most valuable day to day are the forms and landing pages.

If you have a free resource, a checklist, a guide, anything you want to offer in exchange for someone's email address, MailerLite makes it easy to build a landing page for it without needing a separate tool. You can create the page, connect the form, set up an automated welcome email that delivers the resource, and have the whole thing running in an afternoon. No code required.

That kind of setup used to require either a developer or a stack of different tools. MailerLite brings it into one place.

Why I recommend it to clients

When I'm building a website for a client and we talk about how they're going to stay connected with their audience after launch, email almost always comes up. And MailerLite is consistently the tool I point them toward.

It integrates cleanly with Webflow, which is the platform I build on. You can embed forms directly into a page, connect signups to automation sequences, and give clients a simple way to send newsletters without needing to touch the website itself. For a small business owner who wants to stay in front of their audience without hiring a marketing team, that kind of simplicity matters.

It also means that when a client asks me how to use it, I can actually walk them through it. I'm not recommending something I've only read about. I use it myself, which makes the conversation a lot easier.

A good starting point

If you've been sitting on the idea of starting an email list, MailerLite is a genuinely good place to begin. The free plan gives you room to experiment, the interface won't slow you down, and when your list grows the platform grows with you.

You can get started with MailerLite here

And if you're building a website and want help thinking through how email fits into the bigger picture, I would love to talk. You can also book a free call with me and we can get straight to your goals on the call.