What email marketing software costs in 2026
Email marketing software cost runs free to $500+/month. See what Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, and Brevo actually bill at 1k, 10k, and 50k contacts.
What email marketing software cost really depends on
Your email marketing software cost depends far more on how many contacts you store than on which plan name you pick. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, and Kit all price against your list size, so the same plan gets more expensive every time your list grows, even if you never touch a setting. Brevo and Customer.io break from that pattern and price by email volume or tracked profiles instead, which changes the math in ways that help some senders and hurt others. Below is what each tool actually charges at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 contacts, using only the published numbers in each vendor's own pricing page, with the gaps marked where a vendor simply doesn't disclose a price at that size.
Email marketing software cost at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 contacts
| Tool | At 1,000 contacts | At 10,000 contacts | At 50,000 contacts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Not published at this exact size. Essentials ($13/mo) and Standard ($20/mo) start at 500 contacts and rise from there | $350/mo, Premium's published starting price, which begins at exactly 10,000 contacts | Not published; the live pricing page requires entering your list size |
| Klaviyo | Not published. The Email plan's only disclosed step is $20/mo for 251-500 active profiles | Not published | Not published |
| ActiveCampaign | $15 (Starter) / $49 (Plus) / $79 (Pro) / $145 (Enterprise) per month, billed annually. This is the vendor's own baseline figure | Not published | Not published |
| Brevo | Not contact-priced. Starter ($9/mo) covers roughly 5,000 emails a month regardless of list size | Same as 1k: Brevo bills by emails sent, not contacts stored | Same as 1k, as long as your send volume stays inside the plan's email cap |
| Kit (ConvertKit) | $39/mo Creator or $79/mo Pro billed monthly ($33/$66 monthly equivalent billed annually) | Free, if you stay under 10,000 subscribers on the Newsletter plan and only need 1 basic automation. The paid-tier price at 10k is not published | Not published |
| MailerLite | $12/mo Comfort or $25/mo Power at the lowest paid tier. Our verified data doesn't specify the exact contact count that baseline covers | Not published | Not published |
| Customer.io | Essentials floors at $100/mo, which covers up to 5,000 profiles, so 1,000 profiles still costs the $100 floor | About $145/mo. Extrapolated from Customer.io's own disclosed overage rate of $0.009 per extra profile above the 5,000 included in Essentials | About $505/mo by the same overage math, though at this scale Customer.io likely points you to Premium, which is quote-based |
Three of these numbers are computed, not quoted verbatim from a vendor: Customer.io's 10k and 50k figures use its own published per-profile overage rate, and Kit's 10k figure only holds if you stay on the free Newsletter plan. Everywhere else marked "not published," the vendor's own pricing page stops giving a fixed number past its lowest contact tier and pushes you to a live calculator or a sales call.
The one tool that doesn't play the contact-count game
Brevo is the outlier here, and it matters if your list is large but quiet. It charges by how many emails you send in a month, not by how many contacts sit in your account. A store with 50,000 contacts that emails twice a month can stay on a cheap tier, while the same list on a per-contact tool like Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign gets billed for every contact whether you message them or not. The Free plan alone covers 300 emails a day with no card required, and Starter moves to $9/mo for roughly 5,000 emails a month. The tradeoff is that Brevo's free and Starter plans keep its logo on your emails unless you pay to remove it, and CRM features are a separate add-on rather than bundled in.
What the sticker price doesn't include
A free plan sounds like it solves the cost question, until you check the ceiling:
- Mailchimp: 250 contacts, 500 sends a month, cut down from 500 contacts and 1,000 sends on February 17, 2026.
- Klaviyo: 250 active profiles, 500 emails a month, with support only for your first 60 days.
- Brevo: no contact cap at all, just a 300-email-a-day ceiling.
- Kit: the most generous by far, 10,000 subscribers, with unlimited broadcasts and forms, but only 1 basic automation.
- MailerLite: 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, cut down from 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails in June 2026.
- ActiveCampaign and Customer.io: no free plan. ActiveCampaign gives a 14-day trial; Customer.io publishes no trial length at all.
Two free plans shrank in 2026, worth knowing if you picked a tool because its free tier looked generous a year ago. And the free tier isn't the only place the real number hides. A few line items push cost above what the plan name implies once you're paying:
- Mailchimp counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts against your plan limit unless you manually archive them.
- ActiveCampaign moved new signups (as of November 3, 2025) to billing on all contacts, including unsubscribed and bounced ones, instead of only active ones.
- Klaviyo bills on total active profiles, meaning any contact you could email, not only the people you've recently messaged. That change took effect February 18, 2025, though legacy accounts get a discount capping the increase.
- Klaviyo sells newer features (Customer Hub, Helpdesk, Customer Agent, Marketing Analytics) as separate paid add-ons on top of the core Email plan instead of folding them into the base price. Customer.io's own equivalent is quieter: Premium and Enterprise add more object types and higher AI limits, but you won't get an exact price without a sales call.
None of this shows up on the pricing page you compared before signing up. It shows up on the renewal invoice, once your list crosses a threshold or your unsubscribe pile grows.
Picking by list size, not brand name
If your list stays under a few thousand contacts and you send often, Kit's free plan or MailerLite's $12 Comfort tier both beat the equivalent Mailchimp or Klaviyo tier on price. If your list is large but you rarely message most of it, Brevo's volume-based pricing is the one model here designed for exactly that case; our full Mailchimp alternatives ranking covers where it and four other tools fit against Mailchimp specifically. If you're running a Shopify or WooCommerce store and want automation built on real purchase data rather than just list size, Klaviyo's depth is worth the higher active-profile bill, and our Klaviyo alternatives guide lays out the cheaper paths if it isn't. For a built-in CRM alongside automation, ActiveCampaign's published $15-$145 baseline at 1,000 contacts is the clearest starting number in this whole category, which is rare enough to be worth noting on its own.
FAQ
What's the cheapest email marketing software for a small list? Kit's free Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts and forms, and MailerLite's paid Comfort tier starts at $12/mo. Both beat Mailchimp's $13 Essentials plan, which only covers 500 contacts at that price.
Does list size or send volume decide the price? It depends on the vendor. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Kit, and MailerLite all price by contact or subscriber count. Brevo prices by how many emails you send each month instead, so contact count alone doesn't move its bill.
Why did my bill jump after a small increase in contacts? Contact-based tools price in bands, not smooth increments. Crossing a threshold, like Mailchimp's 500-contact starting tier or ActiveCampaign's 1,000-contact baseline, can move your whole plan to the next price band rather than adding a small per-contact fee.
Is there a tool with published enterprise-scale pricing? No. Klaviyo's Enterprise tier, Customer.io's Premium and Enterprise tiers, and MailerLite's Enterprise tier (for 200,000+ subscribers) are all quote-only. Even Mailchimp's annual pricing isn't published and requires a sales quote.
Keep reading
FAQ
What's the cheapest email marketing software for a small list?+
Kit's free Newsletter plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts and forms, and MailerLite's paid Comfort tier starts at $12/mo. Both beat Mailchimp's $13 Essentials plan, which only covers 500 contacts at that price.
Does list size or send volume decide the price?+
It depends on the vendor. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Kit, and MailerLite all price by contact or subscriber count. Brevo prices by how many emails you send each month instead, so contact count alone doesn't move its bill.
Why did my bill jump after a small increase in contacts?+
Contact-based tools price in bands, not smooth increments. Crossing a threshold, like Mailchimp's 500-contact starting tier or ActiveCampaign's 1,000-contact baseline, can move your whole plan to the next price band rather than adding a small per-contact fee.
Is there a tool with published enterprise-scale pricing?+
No. Klaviyo's Enterprise tier, Customer.io's Premium and Enterprise tiers, and MailerLite's Enterprise tier (for 200,000+ subscribers) are all quote-only. Even Mailchimp's annual pricing isn't published and requires a sales quote.