Marketing Email Tools Compared: Pricing, Trade-offs and How to Choose
Which marketing email tool fits your list, your sending volume and your data? Compare MailerLite, Mailchimp, Brevo, Kit, Klaviyo, Omnisend, ActiveCampaign, Customer.io, Drip and Loops with plan-level prices and a migration checklist.
For most small teams that send a regular newsletter or a handful of marketing campaigns, MailerLite is the best starting point. Its free plan covers up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, and the paid Comfort plan starts at $12 a month billed monthly, or $10.80 a month billed annually, for its 500-subscriber tier. That tier includes a monthly email allowance of ten times the subscriber ceiling, which works out to 5,000 emails a month at 500 subscribers. The setup takes an afternoon rather than a project, which is the main reason it is a sensible default.
The default stops working in predictable places: when signups should trigger messages from product events, when purchase history should drive offers, when sales reps need to see every email, or when a single transactional message has to go out reliably from the same system. This guide compares ten mainstream marketing email platforms by the job they are hired to do. Prices below are the plan-level figures listed on each vendor's pricing page, checked on October 7, 2026. Treat them as starting points, because contact bands, sending limits and add-ons change often.
Quick comparison of ten marketing email tools
The table gives each tool's best-fit audience, its entry price with the plan and billing view, and the limitation that most often matters after the first month. The entry price is the lowest figure the vendor lists for a paid plan or the free tier, so always check the contact count it applies to.
| Tool | Best for | Entry price (plan, billing) | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite | Newsletters and small marketing teams | Free up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month; Comfort $12 a month billed monthly ($10.80 billed annually) at the 500-subscriber tier | Automation is simpler than product-event platforms |
| Mailchimp | Broad campaign use and a familiar editor | Free up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month; Standard $20 a month at 500 contacts, monthly billing | Contact bands raise the bill quickly, for example $100 a month for 2,501 to 5,000 contacts |
| Brevo | Teams that buy by sending volume | Free at 300 emails a day for up to 100,000 contacts; Starter $9 a month from 5,000 emails a month | The free plan has a daily cap, and automation and A/B testing start on Standard at $18 a month |
| Kit | Creators, newsletters and digital products | Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33 a month billed annually | Visual Automations and sequences start on a paid plan |
| Klaviyo | Online stores with order and catalog data | Free up to 250 profiles and 500 sends a month; Email plan $20 a month for 500 profiles | Cost tracks profiles, and Email plus SMS bundles are priced on request |
| Omnisend | Small ecommerce stores using email and SMS | Free for 250 contacts and 500 emails a month; Standard $11.20 a month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails | SMS pricing varies by country and volume |
| ActiveCampaign | CRM-linked automation and sales handoff | Starter $15 a month, starting at 1,000 contacts, billed monthly | Higher tiers add segmentation and team features, and setup takes longer |
| Customer.io | Product-event lifecycle messages | Essentials $100 a month; 10,000 profiles $145 a month billed monthly | Needs disciplined event tracking before it pays off |
| Drip | Ecommerce and people-based lists | $39 a month for 1 to 2,500 people with unlimited email sends | Workflow allowances are set per tier, so check the band you need |
| Loops | Lean SaaS product email | Free for up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts; Growing Audience $99 a month | The free plan carries a Loops footer |
What the price actually measures
Marketing email vendors bill on four different units, and mixing them up is the most common budgeting error. Some charge for stored contacts or subscribers, as Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit and ActiveCampaign largely do. Some charge for customer profiles, which is how Klaviyo and Customer.io are structured. Some charge for emails sent in a period, as Brevo does on its volume plans. Drip uses people bands with unlimited sends on its listed tiers. Once you know the unit, you can estimate the bill: a 2,000-person list on a profile-billed platform may cost more than the same list on a subscriber-billed one, while a list that is mostly dormant may cost the same on either.
Read the free plan the same way. Mailchimp's free tier caps contacts at 250 and sends at 500 a month, with no more than 250 sends a day. Brevo's free tier is limited by daily sends rather than monthly volume. Loops' free tier allows unlimited contacts but caps sends at 4,000 in any rolling 30 days, and only to the 1,000 newest contacts. Those limits decide whether a free plan is a real trial of your workflow or only a sandbox.
Pricing at specific contact counts
The table below uses only the price points each vendor lists. Where a vendor does not publish a figure at the size you need, the cell says so; the official pricing page is the place to confirm the exact band for your list.
| Contacts or profiles | Vendor and plan | Monthly price | Billing and allowance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | MailerLite, Comfort | $12 a month, or $10.80 a month billed annually | Up to 5,000 emails a month at this tier |
| 500 | Mailchimp, Essentials | $13 a month | Monthly billing |
| 500 | Mailchimp, Standard | $20 a month | Monthly billing; up to 6,000 emails a month at this selector |
| 500 | Omnisend, Standard | $11.20 a month | 500 contacts and 6,000 emails a month |
| 500 | Klaviyo, Email plan | $20 a month | 500 profiles |
| 2,501 to 3,000 | Drip, people tier | $49 a month | Unlimited email sends |
| 2,500 | Omnisend, Pro | $41.30 a month | 2,500 contacts with unlimited monthly emails; SMS billed separately |
| 2,500 | Klaviyo, Email plan | $60 a month | 2,500 profiles |
| 2,501 to 5,000 | Mailchimp, contact band | $100 a month | Up to 60,000 emails a month |
| 5,000 | Klaviyo, Email plan | $100 a month | 5,000 profiles |
| 5,001 to 10,000 | Mailchimp, contact band | $135 a month | Up to 120,000 emails a month |
| 9,001 to 10,000 | Drip, people tier | $154 a month | Unlimited email sends and up to 50 workflows |
| 10,000 | Klaviyo, Email plan | $150 a month | 10,000 profiles |
| 10,000 profiles | Customer.io, Essentials | $145 a month | Billed monthly |
| 22,501 to 25,000 | Drip, people tier | $369 a month | Unlimited email sends, chat and email support |
| 25,000 | Klaviyo, Email plan | $400 a month | 25,000 profiles |
Two patterns stand out. First, subscriber- and profile-based plans rise in steps, so a list that grows by 10 percent can cross a band and cost noticeably more. Second, the cheapest figure at 500 contacts is not the cheapest at 10,000. Model the list you will have in twelve months, not only the one you have today. SMS, transactional sending and extra seats are usually billed separately, and the pricing pages list those as add-ons rather than as part of the base figure.
Tool by tool: where each one fits and where it falls short
MailerLite: the simplest start for newsletters and small campaigns
MailerLite suits a small team that wants to publish, collect sign-ups through forms and send a few clearly defined automations. Its strength is that a non-technical marketer can build a form, write a campaign and check a basic workflow without training. The free plan is generous enough to run a real pilot with a few hundred people. On the paid side, the Power plan is listed with unlimited monthly emails at the same 500-subscriber starting tier, which is useful if your sending frequency rises faster than your list.
Where it falls short is the event-heavy end of the market. If a message should fire when a trial ends, a seat count changes or a specific feature is used for the third time, MailerLite can approximate the logic, but the workflow is not built around product events. Check the automation depth you need against the plan features before you commit, and export your subscriber data with consent fields intact so you are not locked in.
Price: Comfort from $12 a month billed monthly, or $10.80 billed annually, at the 500-subscriber tier; Power from $25 a month, or $22.50 billed annually, at the same tier; free up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. See MailerLite's pricing page.
Mailchimp: broad campaigns and a familiar editor
Mailchimp is a reasonable choice for a team that needs conventional campaigns, a large library of templates and integrations with many other business tools. Its familiarity lowers training time, and it is easy to hand over to a new hire. For a small list the entry price is modest: Essentials at 500 contacts starts at $13 a month on monthly billing, and the Standard selector at 500 contacts is listed at $20 a month.
The cost curve is the main concern. Once the list passes 2,500 contacts the bill jumps to a band that is listed at $100 a month, and at 10,000 contacts the band is $135 a month. Before you commit, test your most important automation, confirm how inactive contacts are counted, and check whether the features you need sit on the plan you are pricing. The free tier is a fair way to try the editor, but its 250-contact cap is low for a list you plan to grow.
Price: Free up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month; Essentials from $13 a month at 500 contacts; Standard $20 a month at 500 contacts; contact bands from $100 a month. See Mailchimp's pricing page.
Brevo: when your costs follow sending volume
Brevo is built for teams that send a lot of email relative to the size of their list, or that want marketing and transactional messages in one account. Its free plan allows 300 emails a day and storage for up to 100,000 contacts, which makes it a practical way to test deliverability and templates. The Starter plan starts at $9 a month for 5,000 emails a month with no daily limit, and Standard adds automation, A/B testing and advanced reports at $18 a month.
Its limit is the gap between the free plan and the features most marketers want. A daily cap is fine for a weekly newsletter, but it is a constraint for a store with regular promotions. Test whether the automation you need is included on the plan you pick, and confirm how contact synchronisation and SMS are priced, since those are separate decisions.
Price: Free at 300 emails a day; Starter $9 a month from 5,000 emails; Standard $18 a month; Professional $499 a month for 150,000 to 10 million monthly sends and up to 2 million contacts. See Brevo's pricing page.
Kit: the creator's toolkit
Kit is designed for writers, course creators and other audience-first businesses. Its mental model is the subscriber relationship: forms, landing pages, broadcasts, tags and sequences all revolve around people who opted in to hear from you. The free plan is among the most generous in this list, with up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited landing pages and forms, unlimited email broadcasts and tagging. For a creator who is still building the audience, that is a long runway.
The limit is that automation sits on paid plans. Visual Automations and email sequences start on Creator at $33 a month billed annually, and Pro at $66 a month billed annually adds unlimited users and deliverability reporting. Kit is not designed as a store or product-event system, so if your signals come from a checkout or an app, you will need a second tool or a different platform. Paid plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.
Price: Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33 a month billed annually; Pro $66 a month billed annually. See Kit's pricing page.
Klaviyo: purchase-aware email for online stores
Klaviyo is the strongest fit for a brand whose decisions depend on product, order and customer data. Its segments can respond to what someone bought, browsed or abandoned, and its flows are designed around those events. That makes it powerful for abandoned-cart sequences, post-purchase messages and replenishment reminders, provided the store's catalog and order data are clean.
The cost is tied to profiles. The Email plan is listed at $20 a month for 500 profiles, $60 for 2,500, $100 for 5,000, $150 for 10,000 and $400 for 25,000. The free plan covers 250 profiles and 500 sends a month. SMS bundles are priced on request, so budget for them separately. A store that only needs a newsletter will often find the tool more than it requires, which is why it belongs on the shortlist only when commerce data is the actual driver.
Price: Free for 250 profiles and 500 sends a month; Email plan from $20 a month at 500 profiles; $150 a month at 10,000 profiles; Email plus SMS priced on request. See Klaviyo's pricing page.
Omnisend: store email and SMS on a smaller budget
Omnisend targets small and mid-sized ecommerce stores that want ready-made store journeys and SMS in one place. Its free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and the Standard plan is listed at $11.20 a month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails, shown with a first-three-month upfront offer rate on the pricing page. The Pro plan is listed at $41.30 a month for 2,500 contacts with unlimited monthly emails, and SMS starts at $0.007 per message.
Its limits are the SMS economics and the contact count. A store that sends texts to a large part of its list should model SMS cost by country and volume before committing, because it can dominate the bill. Test coupon logic, post-purchase timing and unsubscribe synchronisation between email and SMS, since those are where ecommerce campaigns most often misfire.
Price: Free for 250 contacts and 500 emails a month; Standard $11.20 a month for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30 a month for 2,500 contacts; SMS priced by country and volume. See Omnisend's pricing page.
ActiveCampaign: automation tied to sales and CRM
ActiveCampaign is for organisations where marketing automation and sales handoff form one process. Lead scoring, deal stages and automation branches can sit in the same account, so a sales team sees the email history that led to a conversation. That shared context is its main advantage over a pure campaign tool.
The tradeoff is governance and setup time. The Starter plan is listed at $15 a month, Plus at $49, Pro at $79 and Enterprise at $145, each starting at 1,000 contacts. Higher tiers add segmentation, landing pages and team features, so the plan you choose depends on which of those you will use. A free trial is offered. Before you buy, build one real sales-to-customer journey and ask the sales owner to debug it.
Price: Starter $15 a month, Plus $49, Pro $79, Enterprise $145, each starting at 1,000 contacts and billed monthly. See ActiveCampaign's pricing page.
Customer.io: event-driven messages for SaaS products
Customer.io is built for product teams whose messages should respond to what users do in the app. Signup, activation, trial start, payment and cancellation become events that trigger journeys. Its advantage is not the number of templates; it is the ability to tie a message to the current product state rather than to a list someone updated by hand.
It demands discipline. Event names must be stable, identities must merge correctly and suppression rules must be right before the first campaign goes out. The Essentials plan is listed at $100 a month, and profile-based bands start at $145 a month for 10,000 profiles billed monthly. Customer.io's Startup Program lists 12 months free for eligible early-stage companies that have raised under $10 million, so check the eligibility criteria on the pricing page. Premium is priced on request.
Price: Essentials $100 a month; 10,000 profiles at $145 a month billed monthly; higher profile bands listed up to $505 a month for 50,000 profiles or more; Premium priced on request. See Customer.io's pricing page.
Drip: people-based pricing for ecommerce and creators
Drip uses people bands with unlimited email sends on its listed tiers, which can be simpler to forecast than per-message billing. Its workflows, dynamic segments and onsite campaigns suit stores and creators who want a flexible automation builder without a heavy data project. The plan at 1 to 2,500 people is listed at $39 a month, and the 2,501 to 3,000 band at $49 a month. There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, but no ongoing free plan is listed.
The main caution is workflow allowance. Listed tiers mention up to 50 workflows, so check how many automations you will run and how that changes as the list grows. Confirm the support level on the tier you pick, because the higher bands add chat and email support.
Price: $39 a month for 1 to 2,500 people; $49 a month for 2,501 to 3,000 people; $154 a month for 9,001 to 10,000 people; $369 a month for 22,501 to 25,000 people. See Drip's pricing page.
Loops: focused email for lean SaaS teams
Loops is a small-team product email tool. Its free plan lets you use unlimited contacts, but sends are capped at 4,000 in any rolling 30 days, to the 1,000 newest contacts, and the emails carry a Loops footer. That makes it a good test environment for a product onboarding sequence. The Growing Audience plan is listed at $99 a month for unlimited sends to subscribers, and transactional sends to users outside your audience are included on paid plans.
The limit is depth. Loops suits a focused workflow, and a team with several branching journeys should test whether the logic it needs is available before it scales. Its free-plan send cap also means a list larger than 1,000 contacts cannot be fully reached on the free tier.
Price: Free for up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts; Growing Audience $99 a month. See Loops' pricing page.
Where transactional senders fit
Not every email belongs in a marketing platform. Password resets, receipts and shipping notices are usually better handled by a transactional sender with its own domain and delivery monitoring. Resend's free plan covers 3,000 emails a month, and its Pro plan is listed at $20 a month for 50,000 emails. Postmark's free plan covers 100 emails a month, with Basic at $15 a month starting at 10,000 emails. Twilio SendGrid lists a free marketing plan for up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, with Basic at $15 a month for up to 100,000 contacts and 300,000 emails. Separate the streams in your plan, even if a single vendor offers both, because marketing consent and transactional delivery have different rules.
Decision table: which tool to start with
Use this table to narrow the field before you run a pilot. It is a starting rule, not a verdict; the right choice depends on your data and team.
| If your main job is | Start with | Because | Check before you buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| A newsletter with occasional campaigns | MailerLite | Free up to 250 subscribers; Comfort includes 5,000 emails a month at the 500-subscriber tier | Subscriber-tier pricing as the list grows |
| Campaigns with a familiar editor and many integrations | Mailchimp | Broad ecosystem and a low entry price at 500 contacts | The jump to the $100 band at 2,501 contacts |
| Sending by volume on a small list | Brevo | Starter from $9 a month for 5,000 emails with no daily limit | Whether automation is on the plan you pick |
| Selling a digital product to a growing audience | Kit | Free up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts | Automations start on Creator at $33 a month, billed annually |
| A store with purchase and catalog data | Klaviyo | Purchase-aware segments and flows; $20 a month at 500 profiles | Profile growth and SMS, which is priced on request |
| A small store using email and SMS | Omnisend | Store journeys and SMS in one tool; $11.20 a month at 500 contacts | SMS cost by country and volume |
| Marketing tied to sales handoff | ActiveCampaign | Shared context between automation and sales; Starter $15 a month | Contact tiers and setup time |
| Messages driven by product events | Customer.io | Journeys respond to app state; Essentials $100 a month | Event naming and identity merging |
| A lean SaaS product sequence | Loops | Free tier to test the workflow; Growing Audience $99 a month | Send caps and branching depth |
How to choose: a practical method
Start by writing down the three messages that matter most. For a publisher, that might be a welcome sequence, a weekly issue and a re-engagement email. For a store, it might be an abandoned-cart reminder, a post-purchase note and a win-back message. For a SaaS team, it might be an activation nudge, a trial-ending reminder and a payment-failure notice. Each of those messages has a trigger, a data source and an owner. The tool that handles those three cleanly, at your expected list size, is usually the right choice.
Next, price the list in twelve months, not today. Use the contact-count table above and add a stress case, such as a list import or a campaign that doubles your sends for a month. Note whether the vendor bills on contacts, profiles, sends or people, because that determines which growth paths are expensive. Finally, test exit. Ask how you export contacts, consent history, templates and automation logs, and do one sample export before you sign an annual plan.
If two tools pass the same test, let total cost and exit options break the tie. Cheaper at your next milestone usually wins, unless the more expensive tool removes manual work that your team would otherwise do by hand, such as the event plumbing for billing or product signals.
Migration checklist before you switch
Switching email platforms is mostly a data problem. Use this checklist to avoid losing consent records or sending duplicates during the move.
| Step | What to do | Evidence to keep |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Export contacts | Export subscribers with email, status, consent source and date, and tags or segments | Export file and row count |
| 2. Check consent | Confirm each contact's opt-in record; remove contacts without a clear source | Consent field summary |
| 3. Map fields | Match custom fields, tags and event names to the new tool's structure | Field mapping sheet |
| 4. Rebuild templates | Recreate the core templates and test them on the new sender's domain | Rendered test emails |
| 5. Set authentication | Configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC for the sending domain before the first send | Provider setup record |
| 6. Migrate suppression | Import unsubscribes, bounces and complaints so suppressed contacts stay suppressed | Suppression count before and after |
| 7. Run a pilot | Send one campaign and one automation to a small internal group first | Delivery and click report |
| 8. Cut over | Pause the old account's automations once the new ones are verified, and keep it for a set period | Dated cut-over note |
Pricing traps to avoid
Three patterns cause most budget surprises. The first is contact counting: a list with many inactive people costs the same as an engaged one on contact-billed plans, so clean the list before you choose. The second is feature gating: a headline price may not include the automation, A/B testing or reporting you planned to use, so price the feature set, not the tier name. The third is add-ons. SMS, extra seats, transactional sending and onboarding fees are often billed separately, and the pricing pages list them as separate lines. Put every line into a single forecast before you approve a plan.
Keep a dated copy of the pricing page you used. Plans change, and a written record of the figures you based the decision on is useful if the bill changes later.
Frequently asked questions
Which marketing email tool is cheapest for a list of 500 people?
The lowest paid figures listed at 500 contacts are Omnisend Standard at $11.20 a month, MailerLite Comfort at $12 a month billed monthly or $10.80 billed annually, Mailchimp Essentials at $13 a month, and Mailchimp Standard and Klaviyo's Email plan at $20 a month. If the list is 250 people or fewer, MailerLite's free plan and Mailchimp's free plan are the ones to test first.
Is there a free plan that is enough to start?
It depends on the workflow. MailerLite's free plan covers up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, Mailchimp's covers 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, and Kit's covers up to 10,000 subscribers but keeps automations on paid plans. Loops' free plan includes unlimited contacts with a cap of 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days. Choose the free plan whose limit matches the first campaign you plan to run.
Why does my bill jump when the list grows?
Most subscriber-, profile- and people-based plans price in bands. A list that moves from 2,500 to 2,600 contacts can cross into a higher band, which is why Mailchimp's listed price moves from the $100 band to the $135 band at 5,001 contacts. Plan for the next band before the list reaches it, and compare the cost at your expected size rather than the entry figure.
Do I need a separate sender for transactional email?
Often yes. Receipts, password resets and shipping notices should come from a sender with its own delivery monitoring, separate from marketing consent rules. Some marketing platforms include transactional sending, such as Brevo and Loops on paid plans, but check the limits. Dedicated senders such as Resend, Postmark and Twilio SendGrid are priced separately, with free tiers of 3,000, 100 and 2,000 contacts a month respectively.
How do I move my list without losing consent records?
Export each contact with its opt-in source and date, remove anyone without a clear record, import unsubscribes and bounces as suppressions, and then test a small send before switching. Keep the export and the suppression counts as your evidence. The migration checklist above lists each step.
Are the prices on this page final?
No. The prices shown were checked on October 7, 2026 from each vendor's pricing page and can change without notice. Confirm the plan, billing view, contact band and add-ons on the official page before you buy, and record the date you checked.