Email software for lead generation, matched to your funnel.

Kit is built around the lead magnet. Its free plan includes unlimited landing pages, forms and email broadcasts, plus audience tagging and segmentation, for up to 10,000 subscribers. For a creator, consultant or small publisher who collects emails from a newsletter signup, a free plan that scales this far is a strong start. You can test a magnet and a welcome message without any monthly cost.

The limitation is automation. Visual automations and email sequences start on the Creator plan, so if your lead funnel depends on branching nurture, you will pay from $33 a month billed annually. Check that the Creator features match what you need before you commit to a magnet-based funnel that relies on automatic follow-up.

Drip prices on the number of people in your database, with unlimited email sends in its listed bands. Each band includes dynamic segments, onsite campaigns and up to 50 workflows. For a lead funnel that uses several magnets and wants visible, workflow-driven nurture, this structure is easy to forecast. The plan you need is determined by the people band you are in, which makes monthly costs predictable as you grow.

The trade-off is that it has no ongoing free plan, only a 14-day trial, and the price step between bands can be sizable. A list that just crossed 2,500 people moves into a higher bracket. Model your growth against the band table before you choose it.

GetResponse is a sensible choice when your lead funnel is built around pages: a landing page, a signup form, a welcome series and, for some businesses, a webinar that moves attendees toward a call. The Starter plan includes landing pages, signup forms, a welcome series and one automation workflow. The Creator plan adds webinars, a website builder and a course creator.

Automation depth is the weak point at lower tiers. One workflow on Starter is enough to test a single magnet, but a funnel with several offers and branching nurture needs the Marketer plan, which adds unlimited workflows, advanced segmentation and abandoned-cart recovery. Price that in before you commit.

Mailchimp is the easiest tool to set up on day one. Its free plan covers one audience with up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, which is enough to launch a first lead magnet and learn where your sign-ups come from. Many small teams already know the interface, which lowers the setup cost.

The problem for lead generation is growth. Contact bands move the price up quickly, and at 5,000 contacts the monthly plan band is $100, rising to $135 at 10,000. If you use Mailchimp for lead capture, plan to clean the list regularly and check which contacts are actually active before you move to a higher band.

Brevo's free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts, which is far beyond where most lead-gen lists sit in their first year. The plan limits you to 300 email sends per day, so it fits a steady nurture cadence rather than a large launch. Paid plans are priced by monthly email volume, starting at $9 a month for Starter at 5,000 emails. Standard adds automation, A/B testing and advanced reports at $18 a month in the same volume band.

Brevo is a good fit for teams that want a large contact store without contact-based billing. The limitation is that its account and automation features are less focused on lead routing to sales than ActiveCampaign or Close. Confirm which automations you need before you pick the plan.

Customer.io is strongest when lead journeys start from what people do in your product or on your site, not from a form alone. Its Essentials plan includes a visual workflow builder, basic data integrations and email support. For a team with clean event data, this lets you trigger a follow-up when someone reads a pricing page three times or leaves a trial before finishing setup.

Pricing is by profile count, so the plan that fits depends on how many people you track. Eligible early-stage companies can receive 12 months free through its Startup Program. The main limit is data readiness: without reliable events, you will pay for a sophisticated tool that cannot act on what it receives.

MailerLite is a practical choice for a new funnel with a small list. The free plan covers up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, which is enough to run a single magnet and a short welcome sequence while you confirm the offer works. The Power plan removes the monthly email cap for a higher subscriber tier.

Because the free plan ends at 250 subscribers, you will move to a paid plan once the funnel starts to work. Check the subscriber tier you need before you commit, because the monthly email allowance on the Comfort plan depends on the subscriber band you choose.

Close is a CRM with email built in, so the lead, the form fill and the reply all sit on one record. If your sales team is the main consumer of leads, this removes a handoff step. Essentials includes unlimited contacts and leads, built-in forms, email, calling and SMS, and a centralized inbox and task list. Growth adds automated workflows and bulk email.

Close is priced per user, so it is not a substitute for a high-volume nurture platform. A marketing team that sends weekly newsletters to tens of thousands of people will usually pay less with a dedicated email tool and connect it to Close. Choose Close when sales follow-up is the bottleneck.