How much does email marketing software cost? For most small businesses, nothing at first. Free plans cover a few hundred to a few thousand subscribers. Paid plans usually start around $9 to $30 a month, and climb to roughly $70 to $150 a month once your list hits 10,000 contacts.
So how much does email marketing software cost once you stop guessing and look at the actual bill? It depends on two numbers: how many subscribers you store, and how many emails you send. Almost every platform prices off one or both. Understand that, and the pricing pages stop feeling like a maze.
Here is the part most comparison posts skip. You probably do not need to pay anything yet. Free tiers on real platforms are good enough to run a welcome sequence, a weekly newsletter, and a few automations. Start there, prove the channel makes money, then upgrade.
How email marketing pricing actually works
There are three billing models. Knowing which one a tool uses tells you more than the headline price.
Priced per subscriber
You pay for the number of contacts stored in your account, usually in tiers. Go from 980 to 1,020 contacts and your bill jumps to the next band. Mailchimp, Kit, MailerLite, Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign all work roughly this way. Sends are often unlimited or very generous inside the tier.
Priced per email sent
You store unlimited contacts and pay for volume. Brevo is the common example of this model. It suits businesses with a big list that only mails occasionally. It gets expensive fast if you mail daily.
Priced per feature or per seat
All-in-one suites bundle email with CRM, landing pages, and reporting, then charge by contact tier plus user seats. HubSpot sits here. The email itself is cheap. The platform around it is not.
One more thing to watch. Most platforms count unsubscribed and bounced contacts in your total until you delete them. That is how people end up paying for a list half of which never opens anything.
The free way first: tiers that are genuinely usable
We name the free option before the paid one, because for a list under a few thousand people the free option is usually the correct answer, not a downgrade.
MailerLite
Free plan covers roughly the first 1,000 subscribers with a monthly send cap in the low tens of thousands. You get the drag and drop builder, landing pages, signup forms, and basic automation. The free plan has limits on things like advanced templates and multiple users, so check current limits before you build on it.
Brevo
Free plan gives you unlimited contact storage and a daily send limit in the low hundreds. If you have 5,000 contacts but only mail a segment at a time, that math can work for a while. It also includes transactional email and a basic CRM.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
Kit runs a free plan aimed at creators that supports a large subscriber count with a trimmed feature set, including basic broadcasts and landing pages. Visual automations and integrations sit on the paid tiers. Good if you are building an audience before you have a product.
Zoho Campaigns and Omnisend
Zoho Campaigns has a free tier with a modest contact and send allowance, and it connects to the rest of the Zoho stack. Omnisend’s free plan is small on contacts but includes ecommerce automations like cart abandonment, which most free plans strip out. Both change their limits periodically, so confirm on their pricing pages.
The near-free technical route
If you are comfortable with a server, Listmonk is open source and free. You self host it and connect a sending service like Amazon SES, where you pay cents per thousand emails rather than a monthly subscription. Total cost can land under a few dollars a month at real volume. The trade is that deliverability, warm up, and compliance are now your job. Only take this route if you like that kind of work.
What you pay once you outgrow free
Prices move, so treat these as ranges rather than quotes. The pattern holds even when the exact numbers shift.
| Tier | Example tools | Typical monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | MailerLite, Brevo, Kit, Zoho Campaigns | $0 | Forms, broadcasts, basic automation, capped contacts or sends |
| Entry paid (around 500 to 1,000 contacts) | MailerLite, Mailchimp, Kit | About $9 to $30 | Branding removed, more automations, better support |
| Growth (around 10,000 contacts) | Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign | About $70 to $150 | Segmentation, A/B testing, deeper reporting |
| Ecommerce focused | Klaviyo, Omnisend, Drip | Scales with contacts, check current pricing | Revenue attribution, product feeds, SMS add on |
| All in one suite | HubSpot Marketing Hub | Higher, check current pricing | CRM, landing pages, email, reporting in one login |
A rough rule of thumb across the mainstream tools: budget somewhere around $10 to $15 per thousand subscribers per month on standard plans. Ecommerce platforms that attribute revenue to each send usually cost more than that, and all in one suites cost more again.
The costs nobody puts on the pricing page
The subscription is rarely the whole number. These are the line items that surprise people.
Dead contacts you keep paying for
If 3,000 of your 10,000 subscribers have not opened anything in a year, you are paying for them every month and dragging your sender reputation down. Run a re-engagement sequence, then delete the people who ignore it. This single habit often drops you back a pricing tier.
Overage charges
Some platforms block sends when you hit the cap. Others keep sending and bill you for the excess. Check which one your tool does before a big launch.
Domain and authentication
You need a domain you control for sending, which is usually $10 to $20 a year. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are free to set up and non optional. Free email addresses at Gmail or Yahoo will not work as a sending address for bulk mail.
SMS, add ons, and extra seats
SMS is always billed separately, per message, and it adds up quickly. Dedicated IP addresses, extra users, and phone support are usually paid add ons too. If SMS is part of your plan, cost it out before you commit, and look at how email and SMS work together so you are not paying twice for the same contact.
Migration time
Switching platforms later means rebuilding automations, forms, and templates. That is hours, not dollars, but it is real. Pick something you can grow into for 18 months.
How to choose without overpaying
Work through this in order. It takes about an hour.
- Count your actual subscribers. Not leads, not followers. People who gave you an email address and consented.
- Decide your send frequency. Weekly newsletter plus a few automations is a different cost profile than daily promos.
- List the three things the tool must do. Usually that is a signup form, a welcome sequence, and a broadcast. Everything else is optional at the start.
- Start on a free plan that supports those three things at your list size.
- Set a trigger for upgrading. For example, upgrade when email revenue clears three times the monthly cost of the next tier, or when a missing feature is blocking a sequence you have already written.
Do not buy a platform for features you have not earned yet. Predictive sending and lead scoring are useless if nobody is on the list. The tool is not the strategy. The sequence is. If you want the structure that goes around the software, the Cheap Marketing Playbook covers it for free, and the Cheap Tech Stack page lists what we actually run.
When paying is genuinely worth it
Free is the right starting point, not a religion. Paying makes sense in a few clear cases.
You are running an ecommerce store and need revenue attributed per email, plus cart abandonment and browse abandonment flows that fire off store data. Klaviyo and Omnisend earn their cost here because you can see what each flow made.
You need branching automation based on behaviour, tags, and deal stages. ActiveCampaign and Kit’s paid tiers do this well, and free plans usually cap you at simple linear sequences.
You want your sales team and your email in one database. That is when a suite like HubSpot starts to make sense, assuming you will actually use the CRM.
You have deliverability problems at volume. Higher tiers get you dedicated IPs, deliverability support, and better infrastructure.
Outside of those, an extra $100 a month on software buys you less than an extra two hours a week writing better emails. If you are not sure which side of that line you are on, a free audit will tell you where the leak is before you spend anything.
FAQ
Is free email marketing software good enough for a real business?
Yes, for most businesses under about 1,000 subscribers. Free plans from MailerLite, Brevo, Kit and Zoho Campaigns include forms, broadcasts, and basic automation, which covers a welcome sequence and a newsletter. You upgrade when a missing feature blocks something you are ready to send, not before.
How much does email marketing software cost for 10,000 subscribers?
On mainstream platforms, expect roughly $70 to $150 a month at that list size, depending on the tool and the plan tier. Ecommerce focused platforms that attribute revenue per send usually cost more. Always check current pricing, since tiers get adjusted regularly.
Why does the price jump when my list grows by a few contacts?
Most platforms price in subscriber bands, so crossing from 1,000 to 1,001 contacts pushes you into the next band. Cleaning out bounced, unsubscribed, and long inactive contacts often drops you back down a tier and improves deliverability at the same time.
Can I just send marketing emails from Gmail or Outlook for free?
No. Personal inboxes have daily send limits, no unsubscribe handling, and no list management, and bulk sending from them will get you filtered or suspended. Use a real platform’s free plan instead. It is also free and it keeps you compliant with unsubscribe rules.
Does email marketing software include SMS?
Some platforms offer SMS, but it is almost always billed separately per message on top of the subscription. Price your expected message volume before committing, because SMS costs can pass the email subscription quickly.