If You're Just Starting Out: Mailchimp or Mailerlite
If you have fewer than 1,000 contacts and you're sending monthly updates about upcoming events, don't overthink this. Both Mailchimp and Mailerlite have generous free tiers, clean interfaces, and enough templates to get a professional-looking email out the door in under an hour.
Mailchimp is the industry default for a reason — it's well-documented, widely integrated, and most freelance designers already know it. The free plan supports up to 250 contacts. The trade-off: it gets expensive quickly as your list grows, and features that should be standard (like A/B testing) are locked behind paid plans.
Mailerlite is leaner and friendlier for solo operators. Up to 500 subscribers free, automation included, no unnecessary complexity. If Mailchimp feels like it was built for e-commerce brands (it kind of was), Mailerlite feels like it was built for people who want to send a great email and get back to planning their next event.
If You're Scaling Up: Klaviyo
Klaviyo is the tool that serious operators graduate to; that reason is segmentation. You can filter your list by who bought early bird tickets, who attended last year but didn't come back, who opened your last three emails but never clicked. For a multi-day festival or a club with a loyal regular crowd, that granularity is the difference between a broadcast and a conversation.
It's more expensive than the alternatives and has a steeper learning curve. But if you're running tiered ticketing campaigns, announcing lineup drops to different audience segments, or trying to re-engage lapsed attendees, Klaviyo pays for itself. Free up to 250 contacts, then pricing scales with list size.
If You're Budget-Conscious: Brevo
Brevo is chronically underrated in the event space. It prices by email rather than contact count, meaning you can hold a large list and only pay based on how often you email them. For operators who blast a big campaign before each event but go quiet in between, that model makes far more sense than paying per contact every month.
The free tier allows 300 emails per day. Paid plans start around €17/month and include automation, SMS, and transactional email. It's not the flashiest tool, but it's fast, reliable, and built for people who don't want to think too hard about the infrastructure.
If You're Building an Audience, Not Just a List: Beehiiv or Substack
These two sit in a different category. They're not campaign tools, they're publishing platforms with email built in.
Beehiiv is best suited to promoters, festivals, or venue brands that want to run a genuine newsletter: artist spotlights, lineup deep-dives, scene commentary. Free up to 1.000 subscribers, purpose-built for growth. If you want your email to feel like something people look forward to reading, not just a discount code, Beehiiv is worth a look.
Substack runs on a revenue-share model, making it essentially free to start. It works well for artists, DJs, and cultural figures who want to build a direct relationship with fans. It's not an event ticketing tool and shouldn't be treated as one, but as a way to build the kind of trust that makes ticket sales easier, it's genuinely underused in the event world.
The One Thing All of These Have in Common
None of them will do anything useful unless your ticket sales process gives you the data to work with. The best email campaigns in the event world are built on purchase behaviour, attendance history, and audience segmentation, and that starts with how you collect information at the point of sale.
On WeTicket, every ticket sale captures the attendee data you need to build these segments. Your buyer list is yours, exportable, actionable, and ready to connect with whichever email tool fits how you work. Read more about WeTicket's reporting and attendee data →
The platform you choose matters less than the habit you build. Send consistently. Segment early. Test subject lines. Your list is an asset, treat it like one.
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