Email Marketing Pricing Comparison: What 40+ Tools Cost

Email marketing pricing is confusing by design. Some tools charge by subscribers, others by emails sent, and a few charge by features regardless of list size. This page covers more than 40 of the 59 tools in our database, grouped by what you pay to start.

All prices are the lowest paid plan at the lowest tier on monthly billing, as recorded in our database. Where a vendor only publishes annual pricing, we say so. Tools were last verified between March and October 2026, and each review page shows its own verification date.

Free Tier: Tools That Cost Nothing to Start

“Free” varies wildly. Some plans give you 250 contacts; others give you 10,000.

Most generous free plans:

• Kit (ConvertKit): free for up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited emails, landing pages and forms. Since September 3, 2026, automations and sequences are no longer on the free plan; they need Creator ($39/month).
• Brevo: up to 100,000 contacts with 300 emails per day (about 9,000 per month). If you have a large list but send infrequently, this is the best deal.
• Sender: 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails per month.
• EmailOctopus: 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month, with EmailOctopus branding.
• Systeme.io: 2,000 contacts with unlimited emails plus 3 funnels, 1 blog, 1 course and 1 automation workflow.
• Zoho Campaigns: 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails per month.
• Beehiiv: 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends.

Middle of the range:

• AWeber: 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails per month, with AWeber branding on all emails.
• GetResponse: 500 contacts and 2,500 emails per month.
• HubSpot: 2,000 emails per month with HubSpot branding.

Most restrictive free plans:

• MailerLite: 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails per month. It was 500 subscribers until June 2026.
• Klaviyo: 250 active profiles, 500 emails per month and 150 SMS credits.
• Omnisend: 250 contacts and 500 emails per month.
• Mailchimp: 250 contacts, 500 emails per month (250 per day) and no automation flows.

Under $15/Month: Budget Tier

This is where the best value lives for small businesses and solopreneurs.

• Plunk: $1/month, then $1 per 1,000 emails. Transactional email with workflow automation. Not a full marketing platform.
• Zoho Campaigns: from $4.70/month for 500 contacts. Strong if you already use the Zoho ecosystem. Zoho prices through a calculator, so check the figure for your list size.
• MailerSend: $7/month. Aimed at transactional email.
• Brevo: $9/month for 5,000 emails. The entry tier caps contacts at 500; unlimited contacts only start at the 20,000 emails/month tier. Best for large lists with low send frequency.
• Moosend: $9/month for 500 contacts with unlimited emails and automation. Tied with Sender as our highest-rated budget tool (4.7/5). See the full Moosend pricing breakdown.
• EmailOctopus: $10/month on monthly billing ($9/month billed yearly) for 500 subscribers. Simple and clean, no unnecessary features.
• Buttondown: $9/month for a newsletter with up to 1,000 subscribers; free up to 100 subscribers.
• Mailjet: $9/month. The free plan allows 6,000 emails per month (200 per day) and 1,000 contacts.
• Sender: $10/month for 2,500 subscribers and 30,000 emails.
• MailerLite: $12/month for 500 subscribers with unlimited emails. Rated 4.6/5 and one of the easiest tools to learn. Check our MailerLite pricing page.
• Constant Contact: $12/month. A legacy player with a solid template library.
• Campaign Monitor: $12/month for 500 contacts.
• Mailchimp Essentials: $13/month for 500 contacts and 5,000 emails per month. The brand everyone knows, but the value is middling. See how it stacks up in our Mailchimp pricing guide.

$15-$40/Month: Mid-Range Tier

This tier covers most small to mid-sized businesses. You get proper automation, segmentation, and A/B testing at these prices.

• AWeber Lite: $15/month for 500 subscribers with 3 automations and 3 landing pages.
• Omnisend Standard: $16/month for 500 contacts. SMS credits are no longer sold on Standard for new subscribers since May 4, 2026; SMS needs Pro ($59/month).
• GetResponse: $19/month for 1,000 contacts with autoresponders and unlimited newsletters.
• ActiveCampaign Starter: $15/month billed annually for 1,000 contacts (ActiveCampaign’s pricing page shows annual billing only). The automation is a level above most competitors at this price.
• Klaviyo: $20/month for 251-500 active profiles. Expensive per contact but the ecommerce features justify it for Shopify stores. Full details in our Klaviyo pricing breakdown.
• HubSpot Marketing Starter: $20 per seat per month for 1,000 marketing contacts.
• Flodesk Lite: $25/month at around 1,000 subscribers. Flodesk retired its flat-rate unlimited plan for new members in December 2025, so pricing now scales with list size.
• Kit (ConvertKit) Creator: $39/month for 1,000 subscribers with full automation.
• Drip: $39/month for 2,500 contacts. Built for ecommerce.
• Smartlead: $39/month. Cold email outreach.

$40-$100/Month: Professional Tier

At this level, you are paying for advanced automation, CRM integration, or specialized capabilities:

• Loops: $49/month for up to 5,000 contacts. Built specifically for SaaS product emails; the free plan covers 1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends per month.
• Reply.io: $49/month. Cold outreach and sales engagement.
• Instantly: $47/month. Cold email outreach.
• Apollo.io: $59/month per user. Sales-focused with lead database and cold email tools.
• Lemlist: $69/month. Cold email with personalization images and video.
• Encharge: $99/month for up to 2,000 subscribers ($79/month billed annually). Marketing automation for SaaS companies.
• Mailmodo: $99/month on monthly billing at 500 contacts ($79/month billed annually). Interactive AMP emails that let subscribers take action inside the email itself.
• Customer.io: $100/month. Event-driven messaging for product teams.

$100+/Month: Enterprise Tier

These are for established businesses with specific needs:

• Maropost: $279/month. Multi-channel marketing for mid-market.
• Keap: $299/month on monthly billing ($249/month billed annually). CRM-first platform with invoicing and payments.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud: $1,500/month billed annually (Marketing Cloud Next Growth Edition). The highest published starting price we track.
• Ortto: no public pricing; contact sales for a quote.
• Braze and Iterable: custom pricing, typically enterprise contracts.

Pricing Models: Per-Subscriber vs. Per-Email vs. Flat Rate

The pricing model matters as much as the dollar amount.

Per-subscriber pricing (most tools): You pay based on how many contacts are in your account. Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, and most others use this model. The risk: costs climb steadily as your list grows.

Per-email pricing (Brevo, Amazon SES, Elastic Email, Plunk): You pay for each email sent, regardless of list size. If you have 50,000 contacts but only email them twice a month, this model saves money. If you send daily, it gets expensive fast.

Flat-rate pricing (legacy Flodesk, Substack): You pay one price regardless of list size or send volume. Flodesk used to work this way, but it retired the flat-rate plan for new members in December 2025. Substack charges nothing for free newsletters and takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe processing fees.

Use our pricing calculator to estimate costs based on your specific list size and send frequency.

Where the Real Costs Hide

The sticker price is only part of the story. Watch for these:

• Contact counting. Mailchimp charges for unsubscribed contacts still on your list unless you archive them. Klaviyo bills on total active profiles, not just the contacts you emailed that month. Clean your list regularly.
• Feature gating. HubSpot Starter is $20 per seat per month, while Professional is $890/month for 2,000 marketing contacts and carries a mandatory $3,000 onboarding fee. Kit moved automations off its free plan on September 3, 2026.
• Overage behavior. Some tools bill overages and others stop sending. Mailchimp pauses sending when you exceed a contact or send limit and applies overage charges on paid plans. MailerLite locks sending (campaigns and automations) on a free account once it passes 250 active subscribers.
• Annual vs. monthly billing. Most tools discount annual billing. In our data: MailerLite 10%, Moosend 20%, and AWeber 17% on Lite and 33% on Plus. Compare tools on monthly prices first; annual discounts only matter if you are ready to commit for a year.

The Bottom Line

For most small businesses spending under $30/month, MailerLite and Moosend offer the strongest combination of features and value. For ecommerce, Klaviyo and Omnisend justify their higher prices with revenue-driving automation. For large lists on a tight budget, Brevo’s per-email pricing model is hard to beat.

Browse our full best email marketing tools ranking or compare any two tools head-to-head on our comparison pages.

Sources

1. Moosend Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
2. Mailchimp Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
3. MailerLite Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
4. EmailOctopus Pricing — accessed 2026-10-05
5. MailerLite — Official Website — accessed 2026-03-31
6. Brevo — Official Website — accessed 2026-03-31