What is per-contact pricing in email marketing?

The monthly price is set by how many contacts (or subscribers, or profiles) you store, in tiers. When your list crosses a tier, you move to a dearer one, whether or not you send more. Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign and GetResponse all work this way.

Is per-email pricing cheaper than per-contact pricing?

It is when you send rarely. Brevo's Standard plan costs $249 a month for 200,000 emails, which covers 4 sends to 50,000 contacts; 8 sends to the same list need the 400,000-email tier at $429. A per-contact plan costs the same however often you send, up to its monthly send cap.

Do unsubscribed contacts count toward my plan?

It depends on the tool. Mailchimp counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward the plan limit, and ActiveCampaign counts all contacts for accounts created on or after 3 November 2025. Kit counts only unique active subscribers and Klaviyo bills active profiles, the ones you can market to.

What is the cheapest email marketing tool for 50,000 contacts?

Of the SaaS plans with full automation we checked on 8 November 2026, Brevo Standard is cheapest at $249 a month for 4 sends, and MailerLite Comfort at $319 is the cheapest per-contact plan. NetSendo Cloud costs $59 (Silver) or $156 (Gold) including Amazon SES sending. Free self-hosted tools cost only the server, sending and your time.

NetSendo Silver is a free licence for running NetSendo for your own business, with unlimited contacts, but you pay for the server and sending. Gold costs $97 a month ($970 a year). NetSendo Cloud, where we host it for you, costs $39 a month with Silver or $136 with Gold, whatever the list size.

Email marketing pricing compared: per contact, per email or flat

Q: What costs extra on top of the plan price?

Most often SMS credits, extra user seats, a sales pipeline CRM, transactional email and extra landing pages, plus overage when you exceed a send cap. Which of these apply differs by tool; the hidden-costs table in this guide lists them with sources.

How do email marketing tools charge?

There are three pricing models. Per contact: you pay by the size of your list, in tiers. Per email: you pay by how many emails you send a month, and storing contacts is free up to a limit. Flat: the software has one price whatever the list size, and you pay separately for sending; this is how self-hosted tools and NetSendo work.

We sorted the 12 tools in our comparison of email marketing software by model:

Pricing model	Tools	What the bill follows
Per contact (subscriber, profile)	Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse	Number of contacts, in tiers
Per email	Brevo, Keila Cloud	Emails sent per month, in tiers
Flat price	NetSendo (Silver free, Gold $97/month)	Nothing in the software; sending is paid to your provider
Free or one-time software	listmonk, Mautic, Keila (self-hosted), Sendy ($69 once)	Your server and your sending provider

Pricing models as published on each vendor's pricing page, 8 November 2026.

The model matters more than the starting price. A per-contact tool that is cheap at 2,000 contacts can be the most expensive option at 50,000, and a per-email tool that looks expensive per month can be the cheapest one for a big list you mail once a month.

What does each model cost as your list grows?

At 4 campaigns a month to the whole list, the cheapest plan with full automation costs:

Tool	Model	Plan	10,000 contacts	50,000 contacts	100,000 contacts
NetSendo Cloud Silver	Flat + sending	Silver	$43	$59	$79
NetSendo Cloud Gold	Flat + sending	Gold	$140	$156	$176
Brevo	Per email	Standard	$89	$249	$429
MailerLite	Per contact	Comfort	$89	$319	$439
GetResponse	Per contact	Marketer	$114	$359	$599
Kit	Per contact	Creator	$139	$379	$679
Mailchimp	Per contact	Standard	$135	$450	$800
ActiveCampaign	Per contact	Plus	$189*	$609*	not published
Klaviyo	Per contact	Email	$150	$720	$1,380

USD a month, excluding tax and promotions, read on each vendor's pricing page on 8 November 2026. * Billed yearly; ActiveCampaign shows no monthly-billed prices and asks you to talk to sales above 50,000 contacts. NetSendo prices include sending through Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. Sources for every number: the comparison.

Line chart of the monthly price at 10,000, 50,000 and 100,000 contacts: Klaviyo rises from $150 to $1,380, Mailchimp from $135 to $800, Kit from $139 to $679, GetResponse from $114 to $599, MailerLite from $89 to $439, Brevo from $89 to $429, while NetSendo Cloud stays between $43 and $176

The per-contact and per-email lines climb with the list; the flat price only adds the cost of sending.

Two numbers sum it up. From 10,000 to 100,000 contacts the list grows 10 times, and the SaaS prices grow 4.8 times (Brevo) to 9.2 times (Klaviyo). NetSendo Cloud Silver grows 1.8 times, from $43 to $79, and all of that is the Amazon SES bill.

What counts as a contact on per-contact plans?

Not every tool counts the same people, and this changes your tier more than most buyers expect:

Mailchimp counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward the plan limit (Mailchimp help). Cleaning out old contacts is the only way to drop a tier.
ActiveCampaign counts all contacts, whatever their list status, for accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 (pricing).
Kit counts only unique, active subscribers (pricing).
Klaviyo bills active profiles, the ones you can market to (pricing).

Going over the limit also works differently. MailerLite and Kit move you to the next tier automatically, Klaviyo moves the account up as profiles grow, and Mailchimp bills overage when you exceed the contact or send limit.

Do per-contact plans limit how much you send?

Most do, with a monthly send cap tied to the list size. At 4 campaigns a month you stay within every cap we checked, but a weekly newsletter plus automations can hit some of them:

Tool and plan	Monthly send cap	Over the cap
Mailchimp Standard	12 × contacts	overage billed
MailerLite Comfort	10 × the tier's subscriber limit	next tier
Klaviyo Email	10 × active profiles	upgrade the plan
ActiveCampaign Plus	10 × contacts	$0.005 per email
Kit Creator	no sending limit	—
GetResponse Marketer	unlimited sends	—

From each vendor's pricing page, 8 November 2026.

When is per-email pricing cheaper?

When you mail a large list rarely. Brevo's Standard plan stores up to 500,000 contacts and charges by the emails you send: 200,000 emails a month (4 sends to 50,000 contacts) cost $249, and 400,000 emails cost $429 (Brevo pricing). So the same 50,000-contact list costs $249 with 4 sends a month and $429 with 8.

Keila Cloud also charges by emails, with unlimited contacts on every plan. One send a month to 50,000 contacts fits its L plan at $72.76; 4 sends need the 250,000-email XXL plan at $299 (Keila pricing).

Per-email pricing punishes frequency, per-contact pricing punishes list size. If you plan to send more often as you grow, check both directions before you sign.

How does flat and self-hosted pricing work?

With a flat price the software costs the same at 1,000 or 500,000 contacts, and the variable cost moves to your sending provider. Amazon SES lists $0.10 per 1,000 emails, so 4 sends to 50,000 contacts cost about $20 a month (Amazon SES pricing).

The self-hosted options differ in what you pay for the software:

NetSendo: Silver is a free licence with unlimited contacts; Gold costs $97 a month ($970 a year) for unlimited AI campaigns, A/B tests, automated webinars and priority support. NetSendo Cloud runs it for you on EU servers for $39 (Silver) or $136 (Gold) a month (pricing).
listmonk: free under AGPL-3.0, with no official hosted plan (listmonk).
Mautic: free under GPL-3.0; the project itself offers no hosting and links a partner's managed plans from €247.50 a month (managed Mautic).
Sendy: $69 once per domain; the upgrade to version 7 costs $34 for older licences and the AI Assistant is a $49 add-on (Sendy).

The price of self-hosting is a server and your time: updates, backups and deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, bounces). Our cost guide for 10k, 50k and 100k contacts puts numbers on the server and the hours.

What costs extra on top of the plan price?

The plan price rarely includes everything a growing business uses. These are the extras we found on the compared plans:

Extra	Where it costs more	Included at
SMS	Mailchimp (credits add-on), Klaviyo (per message), ActiveCampaign (add-on), Brevo (credits by country), GetResponse (Enterprise only on US pricing)	NetSendo, Mautic (you pay your SMS gateway, e.g. Twilio)
Sales pipeline CRM	ActiveCampaign (Pipelines add-on), Brevo (free: 1 pipeline, 50 open deals; unlimited $31/month)	NetSendo
Transactional email	Mailchimp (add-on), MailerLite (separate MailerSend plan), ActiveCampaign (add-on), GetResponse (Enterprise only)	Brevo, NetSendo, listmonk, Mautic, Keila
User seats	Brevo Standard 1 seat, extra $12/month each (up to 3); ActiveCampaign Plus 1 user	Mailchimp Standard 5, GetResponse Marketer 5, MailerLite Comfort 3, Kit Creator 2; NetSendo Silver owner + 1, Gold unlimited
Landing pages	Brevo (1 included, 2–6 for $24/month), ActiveCampaign (from Plus)	Mailchimp, Kit, Klaviyo, GetResponse, Mautic, MailerLite (up to 10 on Comfort)
Webinars	GetResponse (from Creator, up to 100 attendees)	NetSendo (live webinars on every plan)
Monthly billing	ActiveCampaign publishes only yearly-billed prices	the other tools publish monthly prices

From the vendors' pricing pages and help centres, 8 November 2026; every item links to its source on the comparison page.

Add the extras you will really use to the plan price before you compare. An email-only newsletter needs none of them; a shop that sends SMS reminders, works deals in a pipeline and sends order emails may need three.

Which pricing model fits your business?

Starting out, under about 1,000 contacts. A SaaS free plan is the simplest start. The limits differ a lot: Mailchimp Free stops at 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, MailerLite Free at 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails, GetResponse Free at 500 contacts, while Kit Free allows up to 10,000 subscribers but without visual automations.
A large list you mail once or twice a month. Per-email pricing (Brevo, Keila Cloud) usually beats per-contact plans.
A growing list with weekly sends, automations and SMS or a CRM. This is where per-contact prices and add-ons add up fastest. A flat-priced tool such as NetSendo keeps the software price fixed, in our cloud or on your server.
An online shop that lives on store data. Klaviyo's WooCommerce integration syncs store events such as placed orders, started checkouts and viewed products in real time, and its flows and segments are built around them (Klaviyo help). That depth is what its higher price buys. Our Klaviyo alternative guide covers what moves to a self-hosted tool and what does not.
A plain newsletter run by a developer. listmonk (free) or Sendy ($69 once) on Amazon SES is the cheapest in cash terms, if you accept that listmonk has no multi-step automation and Sendy only autoresponders.

When is a per-contact SaaS tool the better choice?

When you never want to deal with a sending provider, DNS records or a server, a SaaS tool takes all of that off your hands, and at small lists the price gap is small. It is also the better choice when you need something your alternative lacks. NetSendo, for example, has no WhatsApp channel and no general landing page builder, while Klaviyo, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign sell WhatsApp as an add-on and most SaaS tools include landing pages.

If you are leaving a specific tool, our guides on the self-hosted Mailchimp alternative, the ActiveCampaign alternative and the best self-hosted email marketing software go through the features and the migration.

How we compared

For each tool we took the cheapest plan whose automation has no cap on the number of steps and supports branching, and read its price at 10,000, 50,000 and 100,000 contacts on the vendor's own pricing page on 8 November 2026: in USD a month, excluding tax, without promotions. GetResponse's live page shows EUR or PLN depending on where you are, so its USD prices come from the archived copy of its US pricing page of 3 November 2026.

NetSendo is our product. The full dataset, with the source of every value, is on the comparison page and free to reuse as JSON and Markdown. If a vendor changes its prices, write to contact@netsendo.com and we will update it.

Summary

Per-contact pricing grows with your list, per-email pricing grows with how often you send, and a flat price grows only with the cost of sending. At 50,000 contacts and 4 sends a month the SaaS plans we checked cost $249–$720 a month; NetSendo Cloud costs $59 or $156 including sending. Before you choose, add the extras you will use (SMS, CRM, seats, transactional email) and check what each tool counts as a contact. See NetSendo's pricing or compare every tool side by side on the comparison page.