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Email Marketing & Newsletter

MailerLite

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by UAB MailerLite · www.mailerlite.com

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Has seen every vendor claim 99% deliverability and GDPR compliance on the same page. Reads for the contact-tier staircase, the overage rate, the feature that begins two tiers up, and whether "EU hosting" covers the sending infrastructure or only the database.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Campaigns & automation

How this is scored

Building the mail and the journey around it: editor, templates, segmentation, triggered sequences, A/B testing.

0 — One-off broadcasts from a fixed template; no segmentation and no automation of any kind.

3 — A drag-and-drop editor and simple list segmentation, but automation is a single welcome mail and there is no testing.

5 — Reusable templates, attribute and behaviour segmentation, multi-step automations on common triggers, and subject-line A/B testing.

8 — A visual journey builder with branching on behaviour and data, dynamic content per segment, send-time optimisation, and testing that reports significance rather than raw counts.

10 — Journeys treat the whole lifecycle: event-driven entry from other systems, branching on any attribute or event, holdout groups for measurement, and automations a marketer can read months later without a diagram.

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The Skeptic

The three editors, template library and genuinely deep segmentation — engagement, geography, purchase history, signup source, combinable custom fields with auto-updating segments — are publicly documented, and automations go well beyond a single welcome mail with per-form and group triggers plus tiered automation counts. But I found no public information on subject-line A/B testing for senders, journey branching, dynamic content, or significance reporting; the only A/B testing in evidence is the vendor testing its own product through an analytics subprocessor. 2 1 2 6 9

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Deliverability infrastructure

How this is scored

Whether the mail arrives — authentication, sending reputation, bounce and complaint handling — judged on what the vendor documents rather than the inbox rate it advertises.

0 — No documentation of authentication or bounce handling; deliverability appears only as a marketing number.

3 — SPF and DKIM setup documented, but no DMARC guidance, no stated bounce policy and shared sending only.

5 — SPF, DKIM and DMARC documented with a custom sending domain, automatic hard-bounce suppression, and complaint-loop handling stated.

8 — The above plus dedicated-IP options with a documented warm-up, seed or inbox-placement testing, engagement-based sunsetting, and published guidance on list hygiene.

10 — Deliverability is operated as a service: reputation monitoring surfaced to the customer, per-domain and per-ISP diagnostics, enforced authentication before first send, and postmaster or blocklist handling the vendor documents doing on the customer's behalf.

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The Skeptic

Domain authentication is documented down to the record types — DKIM as CNAME, SPF as TXT, domain verification TXT — with an automatic DNS flow and a pending status while records propagate, and the bounce policy is stated precisely: hard bounces auto-removed, three consecutive soft bounces treated as hard. I found no public information on DMARC guidance, complaint-loop handling, warm-up for the Enterprise dedicated IP, or any inbox-placement testing; deliverability support sits inside an unpriced top tier. 2 7 8

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List ownership, import & exit

How this is scored

Whether the list and its history remain the sender's: import with attributes intact, full export including engagement history, deletion that executes, and no metering that prices leaving out of reach.

0 — Export is addresses only; engagement history, segments and automations cannot leave.

3 — CSV import and export of subscriber fields, but engagement history and unsubscribe state are not exportable.

5 — Full subscriber export including custom attributes, subscription status and unsubscribe state, plus API access sufficient to sync elsewhere.

8 — Everything exportable in open formats — subscribers, engagement history, campaigns and templates — with documented deletion of a subscriber across all records, and no export throttling.

10 — Exit is a documented feature: full-fidelity export of the whole account, contractual data return, deletion that is evidenced rather than asserted, and migration tooling in both directions.

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The Skeptic

Import is real work — CSV/TXT, Excel paste, single adds, API, direct from Mailchimp, field mapping and duplicate cleanup — and export covers custom fields via column selection, status segments including unsubscribed, bounced and spam complaints, per-campaign activity export and automation-flow export, with a documented API to sync elsewhere. I found no public information on exporting whole campaigns or templates, on full-account export, or on throttling; deletion is documented at account level within 30 days, but not per subscriber across all records, and the export function is administrators-only. 3 11 12 13

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Integrations & API

How this is scored

The connection surface a newsletter lives on: shop and CRM systems, events in and out, webhooks, and an API somebody can build against without a partner agreement.

0 — No API and no named integrations; the list is maintained by CSV upload.

3 — A handful of native integrations and a read-mostly API, with no webhooks and no documented rate limits.

5 — Named integrations for common shop and CRM systems, a documented REST API with keys, and webhooks for the core subscriber events.

8 — Maintained bidirectional integrations with named systems including at least one major shop platform, event webhooks with retries, documented rate limits, and a sandbox.

10 — The tool is a component rather than a destination: transactional and marketing sending on one API, events flowing both directions, versioned API with a deprecation policy, and integrations the vendor maintains rather than lists.

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The Skeptic

Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Zapier and Canva are named with 100+ claimed, and the webhook subsystem is the strongest thing here: fifteen events, full create-update-delete management, HMAC-SHA256 signatures, three retries with stated delays, delivery inspection and batching to respect the rate limits. I found no public information on a sandbox or on the vendor maintaining the shop integrations bidirectionally rather than listing them; API sending is also withheld on the free tier. 1 2 13 14

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where subscriber data and behavioural tracking live, who the contracting entity is, and which subprocessors touch the send. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it — which in this category is heavily.

0 — US vendor and contracting entity, US hosting, subprocessors unnamed; subscriber behaviour leaves the EU with no stated basis.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option or for storage only, while sending, tracking or support access remains non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — sending infrastructure, analytics, support tooling — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU or DACH hosting with a named data-centre provider, EU contracting entity, complete subprocessor list published, and any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting, sending and every subprocessor in the EU, certification published, and no transfer that needs a Schrems II argument to survive.

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The Skeptic

For an EEA buyer the contract lands with an Irish entity and data sits in Germany and the Netherlands — but the infrastructure is Google Cloud Platform, a US-headquartered provider, with the EU-residency claim living in FAQ and trust-page copy rather than contract text. The published subprocessor list names US processors for support (Intercom), AI (OpenAI, Google Vertex AI) and payments (Stripe) without stated hosting regions, and a Delaware entity with a Data Privacy Framework certification serves every billing address outside the EEA, UK and Switzerland. 3 3 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a sender can compute the real invoice for their list size and send volume — including overage, extra domains and automation limits — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A headline price per contact tier exists, but send limits, overage rates or the tier where automation begins are not stated.

5 — Contact-tier prices public with the billing period stated and send limits given, but at least one commonly needed capability sits in an unpriced tier or add-on.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with contact and volume limits, overage rates, feature boundaries and VAT treatment stated; only genuinely custom volume lacks a number.

10 — Complete price computability: a calculator producing the annual invoice for a given list size and send frequency, including overage, additional domains and dedicated IPs.

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The Skeptic

Tier prices, billing periods, seats and send ceilings are public — "$0" with 250 subscribers and locked sending rather than billed, "$12" list price for Comfort at 5,000 sends with the stated "10× the ceiling of your subscriber tier", "$25" for Power with unlimited sends — and the overage behaviour is stated plainly: the tier auto-upgrades and the card is charged. But Enterprise and its dedicated IP carry no number, VAT treatment is only "All prices may be subject to applicable taxes", and the captured pricing pages show nothing above the 500-subscriber rung of the contact staircase. 2 2 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Sources (14)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 28 Sep 2026, 16 Sep 2026, 30 Aug 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +3 earlier captures: 16 Sep 2026, 15 Sep 2026, 30 Aug 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 16 Sep 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Security / trust page www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Campaigns & automation — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Campaigns & automation — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Deliverability infrastructure — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Deliverability infrastructure — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Consent, proof & tracking limits — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Consent, proof & tracking limits — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 +1 earlier capture: 30 Sep 2026 Details →
  11. 11 List ownership, import & exit — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 List ownership, import & exit — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Integrations & API — found from sitemap developers.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Integrations & API — found from sitemap www.mailerlite.com Checked 5 Oct 2026 Details →