Free welcome email automation: will a three-email flow fit?

For a list of 200 active subscribers, a three-email welcome series can fit some published free-plan limits, but the answer changes with your broadcast calendar and what should happen when a subscriber becomes a customer. MailerLite and Sender have enough stated monthly sends for the example below. Brevo’s 300-send daily limit requires a busiest-day check. Omnisend’s 500-send monthly limit falls 20 short before any test emails. A free welcome feature by itself does not settle any of those questions.

We compared provider documentation checked on October 4, 2026. The example assumes 40 new, eligible subscribers are already included in the 200-person list. Each receives all three welcome emails, and two broadcasts each reach all 200 people. That is 400 broadcast sends + 120 welcome sends = 520 planned sends. Tests, resends, other automations and growth would add to the count. If your 40 new people are additional to a starting list of 200, use 240 for the audience check and recalculate the broadcasts.

The proposed workflow is joins eligible group or list → email 1 → delay → email 2 → delay → email 3. That is five actions after the trigger: three emails and two delays. A condition inserted after email 2 to check for a purchase makes six actions on a platform that counts the condition as a step. Write down the actual delay lengths and customer-exit rule before selecting a preset; they determine both the builder shape and which day each message is due.

Check four different limits before choosing a free plan

The published limits below answer different questions. MailerLite and Sender cap active subscribers; Brevo separately counts stored contacts and unique contacts entering active automations. Omnisend Free describes both a limit of 250 unique contacts who can receive email and a 250 billable-contact cap that includes subscribers and non-subscribers. Those are its Free-plan rules; its separately named “contact reach” beta applies to fixed-tier plans. Check each account in the unit the provider uses.

MailerLite’s Free-plan update says crossing the subscriber or sending limit pauses sending or automations without automatically charging the account. Sender prevents further campaign sends after its monthly send or subscriber limit and will not reserve credits for a scheduled campaign without enough allowance. Its automation help says emails in active workflows near the monthly limit may be delayed or not sent until the next billing cycle; check the exact fate and timing of a queued welcome email in the account. Omnisend’s plan help says the 500-send limit prompts an upgrade. Brevo documents a manual requeue for campaign recipients beyond the remaining daily allowance, but a mixed broadcast and automation schedule still needs an account-level check before depending on a time-sensitive welcome message.

For Brevo, make a day-by-day ledger. If one 200-recipient broadcast shares a day with 40 welcome messages, that day needs 240 sends, leaving 60 under its published 300/day limit. If both broadcasts and 40 welcome messages are due on one day, demand is 440, or 140 over that limit. These are two schedules for the same 520-send month, not extra messages. Delays can shift welcome sends to later days, but check the chosen schedule rather than assuming a monthly average. The monthly-send worksheet can help when your broadcasts reach different segments.

The plan pages in this research do not provide a comparable daily-send figure for every service. An unlisted daily cap is not a promise of unlimited burst sending. Keep the planned busiest day in the worksheet and confirm any account-level or operational restriction before scheduling a large simultaneous send.

Does the editor support three emails and two delays?

MailerLite documents a “Joins a group” trigger, along with Email and Delay steps. Its Free plan allows five steps in each automation. The linear sequence fits that published shape exactly, assuming one group-join trigger and no extra action inside the workflow. A sixth in-flow purchase condition would exceed the stated allowance. The plan also limits you to three active automations, so count existing workflows before creating this one. These are documented builder rules, not evidence that a particular account’s flow has been activated.

Sender has more room to change the shape of the flow. Its welcome-series instructions build with email, delay and condition actions, and its Free automation comparison lists unlimited triggers and steps. The trigger documentation includes joining a group and a Repeat workflow setting. For a one-time welcome, decide explicitly whether re-entry should remain off when someone joins a group again. A condition after email 2 can check a customer group or field, provided another system actually updates that value. The plan documentation does not turn a purchase in your store into an automatic group update by itself.

Brevo’s welcome message guide uses a contact-added-to-list trigger and shows how to repeat a delay and email step for a series, including a three-email example. Contacts added before activation do not enter that preset retrospectively. The preset starts with a delay; if email 1 should go out immediately, inspect and change that default before counting the actions in your final flow. The documentation supports the series structure, while the Free account’s editor and the 300/day calendar still need to be checked for the exact configuration.

Omnisend says Welcome Automation is available on all plans, and its editor documents Delay blocks between emails. It uses a “Subscribed to Marketing” trigger and does not enroll earlier subscribers retroactively. Presets can differ in message count, and a form-only filter may exclude a signup from checkout or an API. Verify the chosen trigger, filters and three-email path in the editor. Even if the flow can be built, the modeled 520 sends do not fit Omnisend Free’s 500-send allowance. Fewer broadcasts, entrants or welcome messages would be a different workload to recalculate.

If you reconsider Omnisend with a smaller sending plan, count the account’s non-subscribers as well as its 200 marketing subscribers. A checkout customer or imported contact without marketing consent can still be a billable contact under Omnisend’s plan rules. An account with 200 subscribers and more than 50 other billable contacts would pass the 200-recipient comparison but exceed the stated 250 billable-contact cap.

Kit belongs outside this free-flow comparison. Its current Free-plan help places Email Sequences and Visual Automations on paid plans, and its automation-action guide repeats the plan distinction. A trial of a paid feature is not an ongoing Free entitlement for this three-message series.

A purchase exit needs a real customer signal

Suppose a subscriber buys after welcome email 2. If email 3 is a first-purchase offer, sending it anyway may be awkward. The question is whether the mail platform has received a reliable customer state before the final delay ends, and whether the workflow uses that state to exit or skip the message. An unsubscribe is a different event: it should stop marketing, but it is not a way to label every buyer as a customer.

MailerLite offers a possible route that preserves the five-step linear flow. For a group-join trigger, its exclusion guide documents an excluded group and an option to exit queued subscribers who later join it. Put purchasers into a maintained customer group and check whether that trigger-level exit works in the intended Free account. The group update needs a store integration or operator action; MailerLite’s exclusion rule is not purchase detection. Its subscriber-status guide separately describes removal of unsubscribed people from active automations.

Sender’s Condition step can examine a group or custom field after email 2, leaving the no-purchase path to continue to email 3. The source documents the building block, while your integration must supply the value and the Free account must be checked with a contact who changes state mid-flow. Sender also documents stopping an individual by unsubscribing them from the associated group. Do not treat that broad group action as equivalent to a customer-only exit until its effect on consent and future campaigns is understood.

Brevo documents configurable automation exit conditions and re-entry controls. Define the exact purchase event or customer attribute your stack can provide, then check that the desired exit is available in the Free editor and removes the contact before email 3. Brevo’s blocklisted-contact rules address email eligibility after unsubscribes and other events; they do not establish a purchase exit.

Omnisend likewise documents workflow exit conditions. The relevant event or segment must arrive from the store or another integration. Its channel settings and automation reports distinguish skipped or exited contacts; inspect whether a skipped email can still leave someone moving toward the next block. This matters for a revised workload, though the present 520-send plan has already failed Omnisend’s monthly allowance.

Run five contact checks before relying on the flow

Build one small acceptance sheet for the chosen Free account. Record the plan, trigger and filters, flow version, delay lengths, contact status and customer-group or field state. Then follow each contact through the provider’s entry, message, skip and exit records. These are checks to perform, not results observed for this article.

Use addresses and events you control. An account event or provider “sent” status can confirm a workflow action, while actual receipt needs a recipient check; neither establishes general inbox placement. If the customer case fails, look first at when the external system updated the contact and which condition the workflow evaluated. That is more useful than changing the email copy or switching providers before the state path is understood.

Independent commentary can be useful for interface expectations, but it does not replace these account checks. EmailTooltester describes Sender as simple and MailerLite as intuitive while noting MailerLite’s small Free subscriber ceiling; TechRadar’s Sender review reports its own examination of forms and automation. Those are their experiences. One EmailTooltester MailerLite pricing table still shows 12,000 Free monthly sends, conflicting with the current MailerLite help page’s 2,500. Use the current provider rule for the arithmetic and recheck it when you open the account.

For this exact month, MailerLite and Sender clear the published audience and monthly-send counts; MailerLite’s five steps fit only the linear flow, with a trigger-level customer exit to verify. Brevo needs a calendar that stays within 300 sends each day, plus an in-account exit check. Omnisend needs a smaller workload or a paid allowance before this plan can run as modeled. Keep the worksheet and five contact results beside the current plan page. If the flow grows into a longer paid sequence, the separate welcome-series tools comparison covers that decision; for the content of the messages themselves, use the five-email planning guide.