6 tools compared · Marketing
Best email marketing software in 2026, measured at your list size
An independent comparison of email marketing platforms on cost measured at 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 contacts, read by walking each vendor's own pricing control - covering Brevo, Kit, Loops, MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo.
Data verified
Every email-marketing round-up I've read compares platforms at their advertised entry price, which is the number the vendor most wants you to see and the least useful number to a buyer who might grow a list.
Email platforms all send email competently. What's worth comparing is what they'll bill you at your list size - and almost none will tell you that without work, because the number lives behind a slider set to somebody else's list.
So I walked every control, position by position, on 19 August 2026, and read the price at each step. The spread at 50,000 contacts is nearly three to one, and the platform that's cheapest at 1,000 isn't the cheapest at 50,000.
Compared side by side
| # | Tool | Our pick for | Best for | Starting price | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brevo | Cheapest to hold a large list, because it does not charge for holding one | Businesses with big lists and low send frequency | Free to 300 emails/day; Starter from $9/month | Yes |
| 2 | Kit | Best free tier in the category, by a wide margin | Writers, coaches and course sellers | Free to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33/month at 1,000 | Yes |
| 3 | Loops | Cheapest measured price at 50,000 contacts, and it publishes every band | Software companies sending product and marketing email | Free to 1,000 contacts; $99 at 10,000, $249 at 50,000 | Yes |
| 4 | MailerLite | Cheapest measured cost at 10,000 contacts | Newsletters and small-business marketing | Free to 250 subscribers; Comfort $19/month at 1,000 | Yes |
| 5 | Mailchimp | Best integration ecosystem, and the ceiling nobody mentions | Small businesses already using connected tools | Free plan to 500 contacts; Essentials $27/month at the 501-1,500 band | Yes |
| 6 | Klaviyo | Best for ecommerce, at the steepest price curve here | Shopify and WooCommerce stores | Free to 250 profiles; Email $20/month at 500 profiles | Yes |
How we chose
- Cost is published below at 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 contacts, read on 19 August 2026 by driving each vendor's own pricing control through every position and recording what the page said - not by reading a headline figure or interpolating between bands.
- We record whether pricing counts total contacts, active profiles or monthly sends, because that decides which platform is cheap for your list shape.
- The ranking scores only measured prices and published limits. Automation depth, template quality and deliverability are argued in the entries instead, because we have not tested any of them.
- Deliverability is not scored at all. We run no inbox placement tests, and a score would imply we do.
- Where a vendor's pricing control could not be driven, the product is described below the ranking rather than ranked on figures we could not read.
- Nobody here has used these products, and no list was migrated or sent from.
What each option actually costs at 1,000, 10,000, 50,000 contacts
Read from each vendor's own pricing page on 19 August 2026. Where a vendor's page would not reveal a price at a given volume, the cell says so rather than carrying an estimate.
Monthly prices on monthly billing, in USD, for each platform's cheapest paid plan, all read on 19 August 2026 by walking the vendor's own control - MailerLite's 101-position slider, Klaviyo's 50 profile bands, Mailchimp's 20-band selector, Kit's ARIA slider and Loops' subscriber slider. None of these numbers is interpolated. Four things need saying with the table. Mailchimp prices by band, so 1,000 contacts is billed at its 501-1,500 band, and the figure is the list price it charges after the introductory year rather than the promotional rate beside it; that band read $27 on every one of this run's readings, which resolves the $26.50-or-$27 ambiguity we recorded last time. Mailchimp Essentials also refuses to price above 50,000 contacts at all - it shows a contact-limit notice instead. Kit has no 50,000 band: its ladder steps from 45,000 to 55,000, so a 50,000-subscriber list buys the 55,000 band at $316. Loops is free to 1,000 contacts but caps the free plan at 4,000 sends a month, which an actively emailed list of that size will pass. And Brevo has no contact-based cells because it does not price on contacts at all - its Starter plan is $9 a month from 5,000 emails, whatever the list size.
| Platform | 1,000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | Priced on | Annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loops | Free | $99 | $249 | Subscribed contacts, sending not charged separately | Free plan caps sends at 4,000/month |
| MailerLite | $19 | $89 | $319 | Subscribers, Comfort | $17.10/month equivalent on yearly billing at 1,000 |
| Mailchimp | $27 | $110 | $385 | Contacts, Essentials, list price | Essentials $13/month at 0-500; refuses counts above 50,000 |
| Klaviyo | $30 | $150 | $720 | Active profiles, Email | $20/month at 500 profiles |
| Kit | $33 | $116 | $316 | Subscribers, Creator | Free to 10,000 on Newsletter; $316 is the 55,000 band |
| Brevo | n/a | n/a | n/a | Monthly sends, contacts unlimited | Starter $9/month from 5,000 emails, regardless of list size |
- Cheapest at 1,000 Loops, free to 1,000 contacts; then MailerLite at $19 against Mailchimp at $27
- Cheapest at 10,000 MailerLite at $89, then Loops at $99 and Mailchimp at $110 - and Klaviyo at $150
- Cheapest at 50,000 Loops at $249, then Kit at $316 and MailerLite at $319 - and Klaviyo at $720
How the ranking was scored
Each option is scored 0 to 10 on the dimensions below, weighted as shown, and the total is calculated from those numbers rather than asserted. Weights sum to 100.
| Option | Cost at 10k 35% | Free tier 25% | Ladder published 20% | Cost at 50k 20% | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 9.8 | 6 | 7 | 9.9 | 8.3 |
| Kit | 7.1 | 10 | 10 | 6.1 | 8.2 |
| Loops | 7.5 | 7 | 10 | 6.9 | 7.8 |
| MailerLite | 7.8 | 4 | 10 | 6 | 6.9 |
| Mailchimp | 7.3 | 5 | 10 | 5.2 | 6.8 |
| Klaviyo | 6.3 | 4 | 10 | 1 | 5.4 |
Four dimensions, all of them arithmetic on the measured table above or on a published limit. "Cost at 10k" is 10 minus the 10,000-contact price divided by 40; "Cost at 50k" is 10 minus the 50,000-contact price divided by 80, both floored at zero. Brevo is scored on its $9 Starter plan in both, because it prices on sends rather than contacts and that plan covers any list size - which is exactly why it tops a cost table and why its entry explains when that is the wrong reading. Free tier scores the published limit: Kit's free plan to 10,000 subscribers takes 10, Loops' 1,000 contacts and 4,000 monthly sends 7, Brevo's 300 emails a day 6, Mailchimp's 500 contacts 5, MailerLite's and Klaviyo's 250 take 4. Ladder published is 10 where we could walk the vendor's control end to end and 7 for Brevo, whose per-volume tiers are published but not as a contact ladder. What is gone from the previous version is most of its weight: automation at 20%, deliverability at 15% and usability at 10% were judgements with nothing measurable behind them, and scoring a platform 9 out of 10 on deliverability while the criteria admitted we run no inbox tests was the clearest example on this site of a number implying work nobody did. Those arguments now live in the entries. Two consequences worth stating. Brevo leads because it does not charge by contacts, which is a fact about its pricing model rather than a verdict on its product - read its entry before buying on that basis. And MailerLite, which led the previous version, is fourth here: it is still the cheapest at 10,000 contacts, and it loses the top on a 250-subscriber free tier and a $319 price at 50,000.
Choose by situation
| If you are… | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 50,000 contacts emailed once a month | Brevo | Send-based pricing means a large dormant list costs almost nothing to hold. |
| 50,000 contacts emailed every week | Loops, then Kit or MailerLite | Contact-based pricing wins when the list is active, and Loops is $249 against Kit's $316 and MailerLite's $319. |
| A creator selling digital products | Kit | Commerce and sequences built for this model, and free to 10,000 subscribers. |
| An ecommerce store on Shopify | Klaviyo | Revenue attribution per flow, which no general email tool matches. Price it at your list size first. |
| A software company sending product and marketing email | Loops | One platform for both, driven by your own events, with no separate send charge. |
| A small business sending a regular newsletter | MailerLite | Cheapest measured cost at 10,000 contacts, with a clean builder. |
| A business whose stack integrates with one tool only | Mailchimp | Widest plugin support, and worth paying for if it removes custom integration work. |
| You need transactional and marketing email from one vendor | Brevo or Loops | Both include transactional sending, avoiding a second provider and a second bill. |
| Your list will pass 50,000 contacts | Not Mailchimp Essentials | It refuses to price above 50,000 contacts, showing a contact-limit notice instead. |
Also considered, and why they are not here
| Product | Why it is not in the list |
|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | A serious omission from this ranking and an honest one. Its published entry prices at 1,000 contacts, billed annually, are Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month, read on 19 August 2026. Its contact selector is a custom control we could not drive from here, so its cost at 10,000 and 50,000 contacts is unknown to us - and on a page whose ranking is measured cost, guessing it would be worse than saying so. |
| Omnisend | Strong for ecommerce, and it bills for non-subscribers who receive automations. Its slider moves but its band labels and promotional discounts could not be read cleanly this round, so it is not ranked on figures we do not trust. |
| beehiiv | Newsletter monetisation rather than general email marketing. Covered in its own profile. |
| Substack | Takes 10% of subscription revenue and offers almost no automation. |
| HubSpot | Capable, but Marketing Hub Professional at $800 a month plus a required $3,000 onboarding fee is a CRM purchase rather than an email one. |
| Postmark and Resend | Transactional-only. Better than all of these at that job and not comparable on marketing features. |
| EmailOctopus and Sender | The cheap end of this market, not priced this round. Named so the gap is visible. |
Screenshots below were captured by us at 1440px and are unedited. Pricing pages are captured from a US vantage point, so the currency shown matches the USD figures recorded here. Interfaces change, so each shows the product as it looked on the date given.
Brevo Cheapest to hold a large list, because it does not charge for holding one
- Best for
- Businesses with big lists and low send frequency
- Starting price
- Free to 300 emails/day; Starter from $9/month
- Free plan
- Yes
Brevo prices on sends rather than contacts, which inverts the economics for anyone holding a large list they email monthly: Starter is $9 a month from 5,000 emails whatever your list size, where every rival here would charge $249 to $720 to hold 50,000 contacts. It also bundles SMS, a basic CRM and transactional email, which removes a separate provider and a separate bill.
Watch out: It tops this table because the table measures cost per contact, and that is the wrong measure if you email often - a 50,000-contact list emailed weekly is 200,000 sends a month and lands you well above Starter. The interface is less refined and template quality is behind the leaders. Deliverability on shared IPs varies more than on the premium platforms, which we have not tested.
Kit Best free tier in the category, by a wide margin
- Best for
- Writers, coaches and course sellers
- Starting price
- Free to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33/month at 1,000
- Free plan
- Yes
Free to 10,000 subscribers on Newsletter is not a trial or a teaser - it is a working platform for a list most businesses would pay $110 a month to hold elsewhere. Beyond that, Kit is built around the creator model: tag-based subscribers, easy sequences, paid subscriptions and a recommendation network that genuinely grows lists.
Watch out: Deliberately plain templates, weak for ecommerce or complex B2B segmentation, and automation is simple by design. Its ladder has no 50,000 band - it steps from 45,000 to 55,000 - so a 50,000-subscriber list pays the 55,000 price of $316.
Loops Cheapest measured price at 50,000 contacts, and it publishes every band
- Best for
- Software companies sending product and marketing email
- Starting price
- Free to 1,000 contacts; $99 at 10,000, $249 at 50,000
- Free plan
- Yes
Loops charges for contacts and explicitly not for sending, and publishes its whole ladder on one slider to 1.5 million contacts - so you can price your list at any size before signing up, which is more than most of this market allows. At 50,000 contacts $249 a month is the cheapest measured figure here, below Kit's $316 and MailerLite's $319 and a third of Klaviyo's $720. Marketing and transactional email come from the same product, driven by events from your own application.
Watch out: The free plan's real limit is 4,000 sends a month rather than its 1,000 contacts, which an actively emailed list of that size will pass. No per-flow revenue attribution, so a store should read Klaviyo instead, and segmentation is simpler than the established platforms'. The company publishes no location, founding date or funding.
MailerLite Cheapest measured cost at 10,000 contacts
- Best for
- Newsletters and small-business marketing
- Starting price
- Free to 250 subscribers; Comfort $19/month at 1,000
- Free plan
- Yes
$89 a month at 10,000 subscribers is the lowest figure we measured at that size, and it comes with a clean automation builder, landing pages and a builder most people find easier than Mailchimp's. For a business whose email need is "send a good newsletter and a few automated sequences", this remains the default answer.
Watch out: It led the previous version of this guide and is fourth here, because the free tier stops at 250 subscribers and $319 at 50,000 is beaten by both Loops and Kit. Account approval is manual and can reject affiliate-heavy or list-purchased use cases. Reporting is thinner than the larger platforms'.
Mailchimp Best integration ecosystem, and the ceiling nobody mentions
- Best for
- Small businesses already using connected tools
- Starting price
- Free plan to 500 contacts; Essentials $27/month at the 501-1,500 band
- Free plan
- Yes
Almost every website, store and CRM plugin supports Mailchimp first. If your stack is a collection of small tools that need to talk to your list without custom work, that compatibility has real value and it is the reason to pay more per contact than MailerLite charges.
Watch out: Essentials refuses to price above 50,000 contacts at all - it shows a contact-limit notice - so a growing list means a plan change rather than a price change. It is also the second most expensive here at 50,000 contacts at $385, its free plan brands every send, and the advertised figure is a 12-month promotional rate rather than the list price we record.
Klaviyo Best for ecommerce, at the steepest price curve here
- Best for
- Shopify and WooCommerce stores
- Starting price
- Free to 250 profiles; Email $20/month at 500 profiles
- Free plan
- Yes
Klaviyo reads store data properly - products, orders, browse behaviour - and attributes revenue to individual flows. For a store, that attribution is the difference between guessing and knowing which automation pays for the subscription, and no general email tool here matches it.
Watch out: The price curve is the steepest in this comparison: $30 at 1,000 profiles, $150 at 10,000 and $720 at 50,000, which is nearly three times the cheapest measured option at that size. SMS is billed separately. Note also that its own slider prices paid entry at $20 for 500 profiles, not the $45 its headline suggests.
Compare on your list size, not the entry price
Every platform here advertises a low starting figure that applies to a list smaller than yours. The only comparison that means anything is the one at your actual contact count, and the spread is large enough to matter: at 50,000 contacts the cheapest measured option is $249 and the dearest is $720.
The table above is that comparison, and it took driving five different controls to build - MailerLite’s 101-position slider, Klaviyo’s 50 profile bands, Mailchimp’s 20-band selector, Kit’s ARIA slider and Loops’ subscriber slider. That is the work a pricing page makes you do to answer one question, and it is why the figures below are the point of this page.
The order changes with your list size
| Contacts | Cheapest | Second | Dearest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | Loops, free | MailerLite $19 | Kit $33 |
| 10,000 | Kit, free on Newsletter | MailerLite $89 | Klaviyo $150 |
| 50,000 | Loops $249 | Kit $316 | Klaviyo $720 |
Three things fall out of it. Kit is free to 10,000 subscribers, which beats every paid plan at that size if its creator-shaped feature set fits your work. Loops is cheapest at 50,000 and publishes its whole ladder, which most of this market does not. And Klaviyo’s curve is the steepest - it is competitive at 1,000 profiles and nearly three times the cheapest option at 50,000, which is the trade you accept for per-flow revenue attribution.
Contacts, sends, or active profiles
The unit each platform bills is the single biggest determinant of your bill, and the three models suit completely different list shapes:
- Contacts - MailerLite, Mailchimp, Kit, Loops. You pay to hold the list. Sending more costs nothing extra, so this suits an active list emailed often.
- Sends - Brevo. You pay to email the list. Holding 50,000 dormant contacts costs almost nothing, and emailing them weekly costs a great deal.
- Active profiles - Klaviyo. Similar to contacts, but the definition is worth reading: profiles that received a message count, so automations can pull people into the billable set.
A worked example, because it is where the money is. 50,000 contacts, emailed once a month is 50,000 sends: Brevo territory, and $249 to $720 a month everywhere else. 50,000 contacts, emailed twice a week is roughly 430,000 sends a month: now Brevo is on a much larger plan and the contact-priced platforms have not moved at all. Run both numbers before you compare anything else.
Two ceilings nobody advertises
Both were found by walking the ladders rather than reading the pages:
- Mailchimp Essentials stops at 50,000 contacts. Select a higher band and it replaces the price with a contact-limit notice. If your list is heading that way, that is a plan migration, not a price increase.
- Kit has no 50,000 band. Its ladder steps from 45,000 to 55,000, so a 50,000-subscriber list pays the 55,000 price. Between those two points you are buying up to 5,000 subscribers you do not have.
What this page no longer claims
The previous version scored automation at 20%, deliverability at 15% and usability at 10% - 45% of the total on judgements with nothing measurable behind them. The deliverability score was the worst of them: it gave one platform 9 out of 10 and another 7 while the criteria on the same page admitted we run no inbox placement tests. A number cannot mean less than that.
All three are gone from the rubric. What is left is arithmetic on measured prices and published limits, and the qualitative arguments moved into the entries where they can be read as judgement rather than as measurement. Deliverability now appears once, as a statement that we do not test it.
That change reordered the page. Brevo leads because it does not bill by contacts; MailerLite, which led before, is fourth on a 250-subscriber free tier and a $319 price at 50,000. Both entries say so.
Cleaning the list is the cheapest optimisation available
On any contact-priced platform, suppressing dead contacts is a direct discount. Using the measured ladders above:
- MailerLite from 50,000 to 40,000 subscribers: $319 to $269, saving $600 a year.
- Mailchimp from 50,000 to 40,000 contacts: $385 to $340, saving $540 a year.
- Klaviyo from 50,000 to 40,000 profiles: a larger saving again, on the steepest curve here.
Suppress anyone who has not opened in six to twelve months, quarterly. It reduces the bill, and it raises engagement rates, which is the input every inbox provider actually weighs.
What we could not measure, and are not pretending to
ActiveCampaign belongs in this comparison and is not ranked in it. Its published prices at 1,000 contacts are Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month billed annually - read on 19 August 2026 - but its contact control is a custom widget we could not drive, so its cost at 10,000 and 50,000 contacts is unknown to us. Omnisend’s slider moves but its band labels and promotional discounts could not be read cleanly, so its figures are not here either.
Both are real gaps in a ranking built on measured cost, and both are better stated than filled with an estimate. Our methodology explains why: a figure we cannot reproduce is worth less than an admission.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheapest for 10,000 contacts?
Measured on 19 August 2026: MailerLite at $89 a month, then Loops at $99, Mailchimp at $110, Kit at $116 and Klaviyo at $150. Kit is free at that size on its Newsletter plan, which beats all of them if its feature set fits. Brevo does not price on contacts at all - its Starter plan is $9 a month from 5,000 emails - so it is cheapest of all if you send infrequently.
Which is cheapest for 50,000 contacts?
Loops at $249, then Kit at $316 - which is its 55,000 band, since it has no 50,000 one - and MailerLite at $319. Mailchimp Essentials is $385 and will not price above 50,000 at all. Klaviyo is $720. Brevo again sidesteps the question by charging for sends rather than contacts.
Does contact-based or send-based pricing suit me better?
Send-based pricing wins if you hold a large list and email it occasionally: 50,000 contacts emailed monthly is 50,000 sends, which is inexpensive on Brevo and $249 to $720 elsewhere. Contact-based pricing wins if you email a list several times a week, because the send count multiplies and the contact count does not. Work out both numbers before comparing.
Why is ActiveCampaign not ranked here?
Because we could not measure it. Its published prices at 1,000 contacts are Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month billed annually, but its contact selector is a custom control we could not drive, so its cost at 10,000 and 50,000 is unknown to us. On a page whose ranking is measured cost, an estimate would be worth less than saying so plainly.
Do free plans hurt deliverability?
Not inherently, but free tiers usually place you on shared sending IPs with the platform's least vetted users, and most add branding to your emails. Deliverability problems almost always trace back to how you acquired the list rather than which tier you are on. We do not score deliverability on this page because we run no inbox placement tests.
How often should I clean my list?
Quarterly is a reasonable default: suppress anyone who has not opened in six to twelve months. On contact-priced platforms this directly reduces your bill - dropping 50,000 contacts to 40,000 saves $50 a month on MailerLite - and it improves engagement rates, which improves inbox placement.
Are these prices the ones I will actually pay?
They are the list prices each vendor's own control showed on 19 August 2026 on monthly billing. Two caveats to carry into a checkout: Mailchimp advertises a 12-month promotional rate beside the list price we record, and most platforms here discount 10% to 15% for annual billing. Neither changes the ranking.
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Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Mailchimp pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- MailerLite pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- Klaviyo pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- Brevo pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- Kit pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- Loops pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- ActiveCampaign pricing - checked 19 August 2026
- Google Workspace Admin Help - Email sender guidelines - checked 10 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.