Email Marketing Cost Calculator 2026
Every major email platform prices differently — some by contacts, some by emails sent. That makes the "which is cheapest" question genuinely hard. Put your two numbers in and see all 12 ranked, with the tier math shown.
Ranked cheapest first
| # | Platform | Plan | Monthly | Per 1k subs | How that price is reached |
|---|
What the calculator is actually doing
Three different pricing models are in play, which is why vendor comparison tables are so misleading:
- Priced by contacts (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, MailerLite, Kit, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, Omnisend, Constant Contact, beehiiv). You pay for people on the list whether you email them or not. A stale list is pure burn — pruning unengaged contacts is the single biggest lever on your bill.
- Priced by emails sent (Brevo, Resend, Amazon SES). Unlimited contacts; you pay per send. If you have a big list you mail rarely, this is dramatically cheaper. If you mail a small list daily, it isn't.
- Send limits inside contact plans. Most contact-priced plans cap monthly sends at a multiple of your contact tier (commonly 10×–15×). Exceeding it forces a tier upgrade, so the calculator checks your send volume against each plan's cap and bumps the tier when it's breached.
We pick, for each vendor, the cheapest plan that clears your feature floor, then walk its tier ladder to the first tier that holds both your contacts and your sends. That's the number in the table.
Three things that move your bill more than the vendor choice
Sunset unengaged contacts
On contact-priced plans, a subscriber who hasn't opened in 12 months costs the same as your best customer. Typical lists carry 30–50% dead weight. Dropping a 5,000-contact list to 3,000 usually moves you down two tiers, not one, because tier widths narrow at the bottom.
Annual billing
Most vendors discount 10–20% for annual prepay (Kit, MailerLite and GetResponse are at the higher end). This calculator shows monthly list price, so treat these figures as your ceiling.
Volume vs contact pricing
The crossover is roughly your send ratio: emails-per-month ÷ contacts. Below ~4, volume-priced platforms usually win. Above ~10, contact-priced plans usually win. The calculator computes your actual ratio below.
Data & method
These are modelled public list prices for August 2026, monthly billing, US pricing, built from each vendor's published tier ladder. Vendors change pricing often and run promos. Confirm on the vendor's own page before you buy — every platform name in the table links straight to its pricing page. Found a price that's drifted? Tell us and it gets fixed.
No signup, no tracking, no affiliate redirects. The whole calculation runs in your browser.