Setting up a decent email marketing strategy without breaking the bank seems contradictory. Most international platforms show you a "free" plan that, once you scratch the surface, turns out to be a disguised demo: 300 emails a day, 500 contacts, and a little sign saying upgrade your plan every time you click a button. That’s why it’s worth looking closer to home, where Mailrelay has been doing just the opposite for years, truly giving away what others charge for.
The underlying idea is simple and quite liberating: you don’t need an initial investment to professionalise your marketing. You can start today, launch real campaigns, and grow for years before even considering paying a euro. It sounds like a TV shopping promise, I know, but this time the numbers back it up.
Paying for Features You'll Never Use
Here’s the uncomfortable question: how much of your monthly software bill goes towards things that you don’t use? The email marketing sector has a very curious business model. Many tools charge based on the number of contacts you store, creating a sort of success tax. Each new subscriber, instead of being good news, raises your fee before you’ve generated a single euro in return. It’s like your gym charging you more for every kilo you lose.
A SME starting with its first newsletter doesn’t need a dashboard with fifty integrations, predictive intelligence, or a corporate plan designed for multinationals. It needs to send emails, ensure they reach the inbox, and be able to see if anyone opens them. Paying 40 or 60 euros a month for features you’ll never touch is the digital equivalent of buying an off-road vehicle to go to the corner shop.
The smart approach is the opposite: start with an account that more than covers your real needs and scale only when the business truly demands it, not when the provider decides it’s time to pay up.
What the Free Mailrelay Account Really Includes
This is where it gets interesting, because the free plan is not a poisoned candy. The no-cost account allows you to send up to 80,000 emails per month to a base of up to 20,000 contacts, without suffocating daily limits. To give you an idea of how disproportionate this is: a company with 5,000 subscribers sending two newsletters a month uses about 10,000 sends. It doesn’t even come close to the ceiling. You have room to grow for years.
And it doesn’t stop there. The free account includes things that on other platforms are behind a paywall:
- Complete real-time statistics, to know who opens, who clicks, and who politely ignores you.
- Automations and flows available from day one. Welcome sequences, behaviour-based segmentation, and automatic cleaning of inactive contacts.
- Visual editor with integrated AI, designed for normal people and not just for designers. Drag, adjust, and you’re done. The AI speeds up newsletter design so you’re not staring at a blank template like someone looking at an empty fridge on a Sunday.
- No ads or platform logos included in your sends. Your brand, and only your brand.
Human Support in Spanish, Not a Bot Sending You to Read an Article
This point seems minor until you have an urgent problem on a Tuesday at five in the afternoon and no one answers you. Mailrelay is a Spanish tool, with the panel in Spanish and, the rarest thing to find lately, real human support via phone, chat, and tickets. No chatbots responding with a sorry for the inconvenience and directing you to a generic FAQ that resolves nothing.
When you launch an important campaign, the human factor stops being a nice detail and becomes the difference between solving a problem in five minutes or watching the send fail while you write your fourth unanswered ticket. Companies that have tried the automated support of the big suites often end up valuing highly the ability to speak with someone who understands your language and your business.
Comparison: What Each Free Plan Offers
The numbers speak better than any sales pitch. Here’s the market snapshot in its free version:
| Platform | Free Sends per Month | Contacts | Daily Limit | Support in Spanish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailrelay | 80,000 | 20,000 | No limit | Phone, chat, and tickets |
| Brevo | 9,000 | Broad | 300 per day | Limited |
| Mailchimp | ~1,000 | 500 | Restricted | No |
| Doppler | Unlimited | 500 | According to list | Partial |
| ActiveCampaign | No permanent free plan | – | – | No |
The difference is not subtle, it’s abysmal. While most let you manage 500 contacts and send a handful of emails a day, here we’re talking about a volume designed so your strategy doesn’t fall short halfway through the month. The table makes it clear why so many small and medium-sized companies comfortably operate without ever paying a dime.
Deliverability: Ensuring Your Email Reaches Its Destination
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your newsletter is if it ends up in the spam folder, where emails go to die alone. Deliverability is the boring and technical part that almost no one talks about in ads, but it’s what determines the real success of a campaign.
Mailrelay works with its own IP ranges and algorithms designed to ensure your messages reach the main inbox. It’s the same infrastructure used by large companies that send millions of emails a day, so your modest SME newsletter benefits from a top-tier sending reputation. Paying the same (i.e., nothing) for the technology that giants use is one of those details that makes a difference and is rarely seen in the front page of plans.
A Tool That Grows with You, Not Against You
The classic mistake is choosing a simple but limited platform and discovering, two years later, that your database has grown and it’s time for a costly and traumatic migration. Changing email providers when you already have 15,000 contacts and dozens of automations set up is one of those moves that makes you want to throw everything out the window.
Starting with an account that already considers scalability saves you just that. You grow, add subscribers, set up more elaborate flows, and the day you truly need a paid plan, it will be because your business has taken off, not because the tool has become too small at the first hurdle. That’s the nuance that turns a free account into a strategic decision and not just a temporary patch to avoid spending.
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