Email & marketing automation pricing, decoded

What does your email list actually cost as it grows?

Every email platform prices around subscriber-count tiers that jump unpredictably — and affiliate commission structures that reward some tools far more than others regardless of which is cheaper for you. We separate the two questions.

Pricing last checked July 2026 — see sources in the table below

Estimate your monthly cost

2,500

Figures reflect each provider's lowest-tier plan that covers your subscriber count on monthly billing, at the "essentials/starter" automation level. Annual billing is usually 20–30% cheaper — check each provider's own pricing page for exact annual rates.

Full plan breakdown

Every figure below is sourced from the provider's own pricing or affiliate terms page. Subscriber-tier pricing changes often — click through to confirm before you commit to a plan.

Provider Plan Price / mo Subscribers Source

Methodology

Email pricing is tiered by subscriber count, not by usage the way AI tools are — so unlike a per-minute or per-character calculator, this one matches your list size to the cheapest plan that covers it. Where a provider offers multiple plan levels (e.g. Starter vs. Pro), we default to the entry-level plan with core automation features, since that's the realistic starting point for most new senders.

Commission figures shown are affiliate terms, not signals of product quality — a tool paying a higher commission is not necessarily the better tool for your list. We show both so you can weigh them separately.

Why trust these numbers

Every source link points to the provider's own pricing or affiliate program page. We re-check these figures periodically; the "last checked" date at the top reflects the most recent pass.

A note on volatility

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) raised its entry-level price roughly 35% in September 2025 — a reminder that recurring-commission categories aren't immune to sudden repricing the way usage-based AI tools are. We treat every figure here as provisional until the next check.

ActiveCampaign's Starter tier pricing across 1,000–15,000 contacts was checked directly against their own pricing calculator — the most reliable figures on this page. One caveat: these are annual billing rates, while GetResponse and Kit above are shown at monthly billing — ActiveCampaign's monthly rate runs higher for the same tier. Until we confirm ActiveCampaign's monthly-billing numbers, don't read the bar heights as a strict apples-to-apples comparison at the same billing cadence.

Affiliate disclosure

SendCostLab participates in the affiliate programs of some of the tools listed on this site. If you sign up for a paid plan through one of our links, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. This does not influence the pricing figures shown above, which are pulled directly from each provider's published terms.

We link to a provider's official pricing or affiliate page whenever one is available; where we don't yet have an active affiliate relationship with a provider, the link goes directly to their site with no commission involved.

Privacy policy

This site does not require an account or personal information to use the calculator — all calculations run in your browser and are not stored or transmitted anywhere.

Outbound links to providers' pricing pages may use tracked affiliate links, which set a cookie on the destination site (not on this one) to attribute any resulting signup. We do not control those cookies; refer to each provider's own privacy policy for details on their tracking practices.

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