You can run a real marketing operation for a bakery, flower shop, catering kitchen or wholesale round on $0 a month. Not a pretend one: a listing that shows up in local search, a measurement setup, a scheduled month of social posts, and an email list of a couple of thousand people.
What you can’t do is trust a free-tier list you read somewhere. These limits have tightened hard, and most published roundups are quoting numbers the vendors abandoned years ago. Every figure below was read off the vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, and the section on drift shows you exactly how wrong the secondhand numbers have got.
This post covers the zero-budget end of the stack: which free marketing apps hold up, where each one stops, and what to pay for first. For the full picture, including the paid categories and the order to add them in, see marketing apps that actually bring in delivery orders.
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What “free” actually means on a marketing app’s pricing page
Four different things wear the same word, and telling them apart saves you a wasted afternoon:
- Free forever, no ceiling: rare. Google Business Profile and Google Analytics are the real examples.
- Free tier with a hard cap: you keep using it until you cross a number, then it stops or starts charging. Mailchimp, EmailOctopus, Klaviyo and Buffer all work this way.
- Free trial: fourteen days, then nothing. Later is in this group, and so is most SMS software.
- Free software, paid consumption: the app costs nothing but the sends do. Pay-per-send SMS inside a store platform is the common version.
Only the first two are usable if your budget is zero. The other two are for testing a decision you’ve already half made.
Free marketing apps that stay useful past the first month
Google Business Profile: free outright, and delivery businesses qualify
Google states that “creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free,” and its eligibility rule covers you even without a shopfront: a profile is available to any business that “has a physical location that customers can visit, or travels to customers where they are.”
For nothing, you get to post offers and events, publish hours and contact details, add photos, respond to reviews, and read a performance report showing which keywords people searched to find you plus counts for calls, reviews and bookings.
That keyword list is the single most valuable free thing in this post. It tells you what your neighbours are actually typing, which is usually not what you assumed.
Where it stops: it doesn’t. There’s no paid tier to graduate to.
Google Analytics: free of charge, in Google’s own words
Google describes Analytics as giving you the tools “free of charge, to understand the customer journey and improve marketing ROI.”
For a business that delivers, the report to build first is traffic by location against your delivery zones. Finding out that a fifth of your visitors sit outside your Saturday radius changes what you promote and where.
Where it stops: the free version is enough for any operation at this size.
EmailOctopus: 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month
This is the most generous free email tier of the ones checked here. EmailOctopus lists a free plan of 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with Pro from $9/month billed yearly if you outgrow it.
Ten thousand sends a month against 2,500 contacts means four campaigns to your whole list, every month, free. For a weekly-order business that’s the entire email programme.
Where it stops: 2,500 subscribers, or the fourth send of the month.
Mailchimp free: 250 contacts, 500 sends a month
Mailchimp’s own pricing page lists the free plan at a limit of 250 contacts with a max of 500 a month or 250 a day. Essentials starts at $13/month.
At 250 contacts this is a starter tier rather than an operating one. It’s still the friendliest editor of the group, so it’s a reasonable place to learn on. Just expect to move.
Where it stops: 250 contacts, which a decent Mother’s Day weekend can produce on its own.
Klaviyo free: 250 profiles, 500 emails, $5 of mobile messages
Klaviyo lists a free plan of up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, plus $5 of mobile messages a month and $5 of Composer usage, and says the free plan stays free “as long as your account remains under the limits of 250 active profiles and 500 monthly email sends.”
The reason to start here rather than on a bigger free tier is that $5 of mobile messages. It’s the cheapest way to find out whether your customers respond to a delivery-day text before you commit $39/month to a standalone SMS tool.
Where it stops: 250 profiles, or the moment you want real SMS volume.
Buffer free: 3 channels, 10 scheduled posts each
Buffer’s free plan covers up to 3 channels with 10 scheduled posts per channel, refillable as they publish. Essentials is $5/month per channel, billed yearly at $60.
Three channels is Instagram, Facebook and one more. Ten queued posts is two weeks of a realistic posting rhythm, and because the queue refills as posts go out, a Sunday-night session keeps you covered indefinitely.
Where it stops: when you want more than 10 posts queued at once, usually the first time you plan a holiday season properly.
Canva: a free tier, with limits you should check yourself
Canva is the default free design app and the one every roundup names. Its free-tier contents move often enough that we won’t quote a figure here: its pricing page is the only source current enough to trust, and it blocks automated reads, so check it in a browser.
The delivery-specific advice doesn’t depend on the tier anyway. Photograph your product inside the packaging it travels in. Customers buying delivery are buying arrival, and a picture of an intact box does more selling than a studio shot ever will.
Where it stops: brand kits and background removal are the usual paywall, per their pricing page.
Free-tier limits drift, and published roundups go stale
This is worth a section because it will cost you money otherwise.
The US Chamber of Commerce’s free-marketing-tools roundup, a well-linked and reputable page, tells readers MailChimp is “free for up to 2,000 subscribers.” Mailchimp’s own pricing page, read this month, lists a limit of 250 contacts and a max of 500 sends a month. That’s an eightfold gap on contacts and a hard monthly send cap the roundup doesn’t mention at all.
The same page describes Buffer’s free plan as “schedule up to 10 posts per week.” Buffer’s pricing page describes it as 10 scheduled posts per channel, refillable. That’s a different mechanic entirely, and in practice a more useful one.
Neither is dishonest. Free tiers just shrink as vendors chase margin, and roundups don’t get re-checked. Two habits follow from it:
- Open the vendor’s own pricing page before you build a plan around a number. Any roundup, including this one, is a starting point.
- Write down the limit you’re relying on and the date you checked it. When a send fails in the middle of a holiday campaign, you’ll know whether you outgrew the tier or the tier shrank under you.
Where each free marketing tier stops
Vendor-listed figures, September 2026.
| App | Free tier limit | What it costs to pass it |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | No limit | — |
| Google Analytics | No limit at this scale | — |
| EmailOctopus | 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails/mo | $9/mo billed yearly (Pro) |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts, 500 sends/mo (250/day) | $13/mo (Essentials) |
| Klaviyo | 250 profiles, 500 emails/mo, $5 mobile | Usage-based pricing |
| Buffer | 3 channels, 10 posts per channel | $5/mo per channel ($60/yr) |
| Later | 14-day trial, no permanent free plan | $18.75/mo billed yearly (Starter) |
| Canva | Free tier, see pricing page | Per pricing page |
Read the table as a route rather than a menu. Business Profile plus Analytics plus EmailOctopus plus Buffer free is a complete marketing stack at $0, and it stays complete until your list passes 2,500 people.
What free marketing apps can’t do for a delivery business
Two gaps matter, and both are about geography and timing rather than features.
Free tiers rarely segment well. Sending to “everyone except the far ZIP codes” or “everyone except Saturday customers” is usually a paid capability. On a free tier you’re sending to the whole list, which means promoting delivery slots to people you can’t reach. The workaround is to put the constraint in the copy, naming the zones and the cut-off in the email itself, rather than in the targeting.
Free tiers don’t cap demand. Nothing in a free email tool stops a good offer from producing forty stops for a route that holds twenty-five. If you’re marketing on free tools, build the ceiling into the offer: a set number of slots, a named cut-off time, a first-fifty limit. It’s cruder than proper inventory rules and it works.
And the obvious one: no marketing app, free or paid, makes a late delivery acceptable. Free tools make the promise just as loudly as expensive ones.
When to start paying, and what to pay for first
Three signals, in the order they usually arrive:
- Your email list crosses the free ceiling: pay for email first. It’s the cheapest paid step on the whole list at $9–$13/month, and it protects the asset you spent months building.
- Posting has become the job you skip: pay for scheduling second. At $5/month per channel it buys back a recurring hour.
- You want a send that fires from behaviour: “ordered three weeks ago, hasn’t since” is the message that makes real money, and it needs your store and your email tool to be the same system. That’s the upgrade worth planning for, not the one to rush.
What not to pay for early: a standalone SMS subscription before you’ve tested texting inside a free tier, and any all-in-one suite whose sales pitch is consolidation. Consolidation is worth money when you need shared data, not when you’re tired of logins.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best free marketing apps for a small business? Google Business Profile and Google Analytics, because they’re free without a ceiling, then EmailOctopus for email and Buffer for social scheduling, because their free tiers are large enough to run on rather than just sample.
Is Mailchimp still free? Yes, but small. Its pricing page lists 250 contacts and a max of 500 sends a month. Older roundups quoting 2,000 subscribers are out of date.
Can I do SMS marketing for free? Not as a standalone channel. The cheapest honest test is Klaviyo’s free tier, which includes $5 of mobile messages a month. Standalone SMS starts around $39/month once you add a local number, and US marketing texts require prior express written consent first.
How long can a business realistically stay on free marketing apps? Until your email list passes roughly 2,500 people. That’s the first cap most delivery businesses actually hit, and clearing it costs $9/month.
Are free marketing apps worth it, or just a trial in disguise? The four named above are real products with hard caps, not trials. Later is the counter-example in this list: a 14-day trial with no permanent free plan.
The Bottom Line
A delivery business can run a complete marketing stack for nothing: a Business Profile for local demand, Analytics to see where it comes from, EmailOctopus for the list, Buffer for the posts, Canva for the artwork.
Check every limit on the vendor’s page rather than a roundup, because they shrink. And whatever you send on free tools, name the zones and the cut-off in the copy. Free tiers won’t stop you from selling a delivery you can’t make.
Sources: Google Business Profile · Google Business Profile eligibility · Google Analytics · EmailOctopus pricing · Mailchimp pricing · Klaviyo pricing · Buffer pricing · Later pricing · Canva pricing · US Chamber of Commerce, free marketing tools · SimpleTexting pricing · FCC, TCPA prior express written consent
