Setting up an email marketing strategy without spending a penny sounds like a telemarketing promise, but in this case, it’s quite real. When an SME starts its first newsletter campaign, the last thing it needs is to commit to a monthly subscription that eats into the budget before even validating whether the channel works. Fortunately, there is a Spanish alternative that has been refining its free plan for years to make it the most generous on the market: we are talking about Mailrelay, the tool that has enabled thousands of companies to professionalise their marketing without spending a dime.
And no, it’s not one of those “free” plans where you can send 200 emails a month and then get bombarded with notices to upgrade. It’s genuinely free, the good kind that allows serious work.
What makes the free plan special
Most email marketing platforms use the free plan as bait. They let you try just enough to hook you, and as soon as your list grows a bit, they push you to the paid plan. Mailrelay works the other way around: it offers such a broad free plan that many SMEs never need to migrate.
Here are the figures to keep in mind:
- Up to 80,000 emails per month at no cost.
- Storage for up to 20,000 contacts in the database.
- Automations and flows included (yes, also free).
- Complete real-time statistics to analyse campaigns.
- Visual editor with integrated AI that designs newsletters almost on its own.
To give you an idea of how disproportionate this is: an SME with a list of 5,000 subscribers that sends two newsletters a month uses about 10,000 sends per month. That is, it doesn’t even come close to the ceiling of the free plan. There’s room to grow for years before considering paying anything.
Comparison with other well-known platforms
To illustrate this better, here’s a quick table comparing the most popular free plans on the market:
| Platform | Free Contacts | Free Monthly Sends | Spanish Support | Free Automations |
| Mailrelay | 20,000 | 80,000 | Yes (human) | Yes |
| Mailchimp | 500 | 1,000 | No | Limited |
| Brevo (Sendinblue) | Unlimited | 300/day | Partial | Yes |
| MailerLite | 1,000 | 12,000 | No | Yes |
| ActiveCampaign | No free plan | – | – | – |
The difference is so vast that it almost seems like a mistake in the table. But no, these are the actual figures offered by each service in their entry-level free plan.
Why Spanish support changes the game
Here comes one of those details that seem minor until you have to live through them. When you work with a foreign tool and your campaign crashes at 9 AM on a Monday, you open the support chat and find a bot asking you to restart your browser. If you’re lucky, after three hours a human responds in English from another time zone. If you’re not, you’re left staring at the ticket like someone waiting for the night bus.
Mailrelay is a Spanish tool with the panel completely in Spanish and, most importantly, customer support in Spanish handled by real people. They have phone, chat, and ticket systems. This, which seems obvious, is an absolute rarity among the international platforms that dominate the sector.
And it’s not just a matter of linguistic convenience. Having human support means that when you ask about something specific (the configuration of a DNS record, a list that doesn’t import correctly, a deliverability issue), you get a response from someone who understands the context and can genuinely help you. It’s similar to drafting a good business letter: the human touch makes the difference between something working or falling short.
A small detail that is not small: deliverability
What’s the point of sending 80,000 emails a month if half end up in the spam folder? This is where Mailrelay plays another of its strong cards: own IP ranges and specific algorithms to optimise deliverability. This is especially relevant for companies sending very high volumes (we’re talking millions of emails), although it also benefits the small business that only sends monthly newsletters.
Good deliverability means your emails reach the main inbox, not the spam limbo where no one ever sees them. And this factor depends on many things: IP reputation, SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication, list quality, message content. Mailrelay takes care of the technical side so you don’t have to become an email engineer.
The AI editor: designing newsletters without suffering
I confess that when I hear “AI editor” I tend to roll my eyes. Half of the tools that promise AI end up being templates with a new name. But Mailrelay’s visual editor does deliver on its promise: it helps design professional newsletters without needing to know HTML, CSS, or anything that ends in an acronym.
The system allows you to drag blocks, adjust layouts, and apply automatically generated suggestions. If you come from Word and the idea of “layout” makes you break out in hives, this will be useful. If you already have design experience, you’ll appreciate the speed.
Automations: putting marketing on autopilot
Automations are that corner of email marketing where amateurs are separated from professionals. Setting up a welcome sequence, a birthday email, an abandoned cart reminder, or an educational series for new subscribers turns the channel into a machine that works while you sleep.
Interestingly, many platforms reserve automations only for paid plans. Mailrelay includes them in the free plan, which means that an SME can set up advanced flows from day one, without having spent a penny on subscriptions.
Who benefits from Mailrelay
By capacity and focus, it fits especially well into three profiles:
- SMEs starting their email marketing strategy and needing a genuinely free plan.
- Established businesses with medium or large lists looking for stability and close support.
- Companies with mass sends (media newsletters, high-volume e-commerce, SaaS platforms) needing guaranteed deliverability.
The philosophy is the same in all three cases: to offer a scalable platform where you can start with zero budget and grow without having to migrate to another tool. Changing email marketing platforms halfway through is like moving house with all the furniture assembled; no one wants to do it if they can avoid it.
After all, professionalising marketing shouldn’t mean a hole in your bank account. And in this case, it doesn’t even require opening it.
You may also like
