Free email tiers vanish fast—here's the cutoff math
The coffee shop on Sixth Street has a chalkboard behind the register: “Free refills until 11am.” Operators know the rule before they order. Your email platform’s free tier should work the same way—but it doesn’t.
ConvertKit, Brevo, and MailerLite free tiers: where the clock runs out
Each platform advertises free email, but subscriber caps, feature walls, and billing triggers differ wildly.
ConvertKit gives you 1,000 subscribers free, then bills $15/month at 1,001. Brevo caps daily sends at 300 emails—not subscribers, sends—so a broadcast to 2,000 people takes a week. MailerLite offers 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails free, but automation is read-only until you pay $9/month. The caps don’t align, the triggers aren’t comparable, and every operator hits a different wall first.
The surprise isn’t the existence of limits—it’s which limit you hit. ConvertKit’s free tier includes automation and landing pages, so you can run a full funnel until subscriber 1,001. Brevo’s 300-email daily cap means your list size doesn’t matter if you send five newsletters a week; you’ll queue or pay before you grow. MailerLite lets you build automations on the free tier, but they won’t fire. You can preview the logic, map the sequences, and test nothing. Operators waste hours building flows that need a credit card to run.
Billing triggers matter more than headline caps. ConvertKit flips you to paid the moment you import subscriber 1,001, even if they’re unengaged. Brevo starts charging per email sent after you exhaust the daily 300, and overages aren’t metered—they’re blocked until you add a plan. MailerLite auto-upgrades you to paid when you cross 1,000 subscribers or attempt to publish a live automation, whichever comes first. None of these platforms warn you in the composer. You find out when the charge posts or the broadcast stalls.
TACTIC
Newsletter platforms bill subscriber tiers in blocks—not per contact
Most email platforms don’t charge you per subscriber—they charge per tier. ConvertKit jumps from $15/month at 1,000 subscribers to $29/month at 3,000. Cross 3,001 and you’re paying for the next block immediately, even if you added one throwaway test contact. MailerLite and Brevo work the same way: tiers, not marginal pricing. Understanding block billing means you can time imports, prune unengaged contacts before a threshold, and avoid paying for a tier you don’t need yet. Operators who ignore tier cutoffs pay hundreds more annually than operators who watch the blocks.
WORTH READING
Affiliate cookie windows expire faster than your evergreen content stays live
Most affiliate programmes use 30-day cookies, but your best-performing posts drive clicks for six months or longer. Write a product comparison in January, and the May reader who clicks your affiliate link won’t convert in your tracking window if they buy in July. The mismatch between content lifespan and cookie duration means you’re earning less attribution than you’re generating. Operators running affiliate revenue need to align content refresh cycles, promotion calendars, and cookie windows—or accept that evergreen posts deliver traffic you’ll never see credited. The strategy isn’t to write less; it’s to promote smarter and track manually when platforms won’t.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
WordPress revision limits: when saving every draft breaks your database
WordPress saves every draft edit by default. Write 500 posts with ten edits each, and you’ve got 5,000 revision rows in wp_posts—none of which you’ll ever restore. The revision table bloats your database, slows search queries, and makes backups take longer. After a few hundred posts, operators notice admin dashboard lag and assume it’s a plugin. It’s usually revisions. WordPress lets you cap revisions per post or disable them entirely with one line in wp-config.php, but most operators don’t know the setting exists until a database export times out or a host threatens overage fees. Revision limits aren’t about saving disk space—they’re about keeping queries fast as your site ages.
Know someone who would like this? Forward today’s email—every operator we reach is one closer to running an online business with a little less friction.