Email Marketing Tool Pricing in 2026: What's Actually Changed (and What You're Still Getting Wrong)

Mailchimp used to offer a free plan with 2,000 contacts. As of January 2026, that limit is 250.

Not a typo. Mailchimp has cut its free plan three times in four years — from 2,000 contacts (2022) to 500 (2023) to 250 contacts in January 2026. If you're recommending it to a client as "basically free until you get traction," they'll hit the wall before they hit 300 subscribers.

That's the kind of change that doesn't make the product news cycle, but it shows up in your invoice.

We audited pricing for 55 email marketing tools in March 2026 — from newsletter platforms like beehiiv and Substack to enterprise ESPs like Marketo and Braze. Here's what the market looks like right now, what's genuinely changed, and a free preview table with real numbers.

---

Free Preview: 10 Email Marketing Tools, Real Pricing

All free tier data verified from vendor pricing pages, March 2026.

Tool	Free Tier	Free Contacts / Sends	Key Limit	Starter Price (1K contacts/mo)
Mailchimp	Yes	250 contacts / 500 sends/mo	Was 2,000 in 2022 — downgraded twice since	~$20/mo
MailerLite	Yes	500 subscribers / 12,000 sends/mo	1 user seat on free	~$15/mo
Kit (ConvertKit)	Yes	10,000 subscribers / unlimited sends	1 basic automation only	$33/mo
Brevo	Yes	100,000 contacts stored / ~9,000 sends/mo	300/day daily send cap	$9/mo (volume-based, not contact-based)
Klaviyo	Yes	250 active profiles / 500 sends	150 SMS credits included	~$30/mo
HubSpot Marketing	Yes	1,000 marketing contacts / 2,000 sends	HubSpot branding on emails	$890/mo (Professional)
GetResponse	Yes	500 contacts / unlimited newsletters	Basic features only	$19/mo
beehiiv	Yes	2,500 subscribers / unlimited sends	3 publications max	$43/mo (Scale)
Moosend	No	—	30-day trial	$16/mo
Amazon SES	Yes	3,000 sends/mo (new accounts, 12-mo trial)	Technical setup required	~$0.10/1K emails

What this table doesn't capture: Brevo charges by emails sent per month, not contacts stored. Mailchimp charges by list size. At 10,000 contacts emailing once per month, Brevo at $9/mo versus Mailchimp at $75/mo — that's a $792/year gap for identical functionality.

---

The Pricing Model Problem Nobody Talks About

Most email marketing comparison articles compare sticker prices. That's the wrong number.

The relevant question is: what's your list size, and how often do you send?

Per-contact pricing (Mailchimp, Kit, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign): You pay based on how many subscribers you have. Good if you send frequently. Gets expensive fast if your list is large but engagement is low.

Per-email pricing (Brevo, Mailjet, Amazon SES): You pay based on emails sent. Good if you have a large list but only email occasionally — monthly digests, transactional alerts. Gets expensive if you send daily to 50K contacts.

Flat tiers (beehiiv, Buttondown): Fixed price per subscriber band. Predictable. Usually optimized for newsletters.

Revenue share (Substack): No monthly fee, but Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. Fine at $5K MRR. Painful at $50K.

The tool that's "cheaper" depends entirely on your send frequency and list size. Brevo at $9/month is the right answer for a 15,000-person list you email monthly. It's the wrong answer if you're sending 3 emails per week to that same list.

---

What Changed in the Last 12 Months

A few shifts worth knowing before you make a recommendation:

Kit rebranded from ConvertKit and quietly became the most generous free ESP in the market — 10,000 subscribers free, unlimited sends, with one automation. Most tools cap free plans at 500–1,000 contacts. Kit's free tier now beats what Mailchimp offered in 2022.

Mailchimp's free plan is now effectively useless for anything other than testing. 250 contacts. 500 sends per month. A newsletter list of 251 people needs a paid plan. If you've been pointing early-stage clients toward Mailchimp free as a starting point, that advice has an expiration date.

HubSpot's Professional plan has a mandatory $3,000 onboarding fee that doesn't show up on the pricing page. The listed $890/month is not the actual entry cost. Budget $890/month + $3,000 upfront, or it won't be approved at finance review.

Enterprise platforms still won't publish pricing. Marketo Engage, Oracle Eloqua, Braze, and Iterable all require a sales demo before they'll discuss numbers. Community data puts Marketo at $1,500–$5,000+/month depending on contacts and features. Braze runs $50,000–$300,000+/year depending on MAUs. Neither number is on their pricing page.

---

Where Each Tool Category Actually Fits

The email marketing market is not one market. It's five:

SMB/Creator ESPs (Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit, Brevo, Moosend, GetResponse): For teams under 100K contacts who want drag-and-drop campaigns, basic automation, and reporting without a developer. Price range: $9–$75/month at typical scales.

Newsletter platforms (beehiiv, Substack, Ghost, Buttondown): Optimized for audience-first content businesses. Not ideal if you need deep automation or ecommerce integrations. Substack's revenue share model only makes sense if you're monetizing paid subscriptions.

Ecommerce/marketing automation (Klaviyo, Drip, Omnisend): Built around purchase events, abandoned cart sequences, and product recommendations. Klaviyo's "active profiles" pricing model charges differently from standard ESPs — you pay per buyer contact, not per subscriber.

Transactional email (SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark): For receipts, password resets, and system notifications — not marketing campaigns. Developers run these. Amazon SES is cheapest at scale but requires technical setup; Postmark is more expensive but consistently posts better deliverability benchmarks.

Cold email / sales outreach (Instantly.ai, Lemlist, Woodpecker, Smartlead.ai): A completely different category. These tools rotate sending accounts to stay below spam filters, not track marketing engagement. They don't compete with Mailchimp — they compete with each other on inbox placement rates.

---

The Numbers You Need Before a Vendor Call

If you're walking into an email tool evaluation, these are the questions that should already be answered:

• How many contacts/subscribers do you have right now?
• How many do you expect in 12 months?
• How often do you plan to email them (weekly, monthly, transactional only)?
• Do you need automation, or just send-and-track campaigns?
• Is ecommerce integration or CRM sync required?

The answers to those five questions will tell you which pricing model fits — and that determines which tools are even in the conversation.

---

What the Full Dataset Includes

The complete Email Marketing Tool Pricing Dataset covers 55 tools across all seven categories with normalized data for direct comparison:

• Free tier yes/no, exact contact and send limits
• Starter, Pro, and Enterprise pricing with annual and monthly rates
• Per-contact pricing at 500, 1K, 2.5K, 5K, 10K, and 25K subscriber levels
• Per-email pricing where applicable
• Hidden costs flagged: mandatory onboarding fees, platform fees, dedicated IP costs
• Recent pricing changes noted in data
• Community-sourced estimates for tools that don't publish pricing (Marketo, Eloqua, Braze, Iterable)
• Verified March 2026 from vendor pricing pages and G2 community data

55 tools. 7 categories. Every plan tier. $39.

---

Data verified March 2026 from vendor pricing pages. Enterprise pricing for Marketo, Eloqua, Braze, and Iterable reflects community-sourced estimates — not vendor-published rates. Verify before budgeting.