Email Marketing Costs: How to Compare Prices, Plan Limits, and Your Real Budget

A $13 monthly email plan sounds easy to budget for. Until your contact list grows, your welcome emails count toward the sending limit, and the introductory price expires.

The headline price is a starting point. Your actual email marketing cost depends on how many contacts you store, how often you email them, which features you need, and whether you exceed your plan’s allowances.

For a small business, the best plan is usually the least expensive one that supports the work you actually do. Paying for advanced tools you never use wastes money. Choosing a plan that cannot handle your regular campaigns creates a different problem: unexpected charges or interrupted sending.

This guide explains a four-plan pricing example, including its contact limits, trial terms, and optional SMS charges. Use it to understand the questions worth asking before you commit, rather than treating an advertised starting price as your final quote.

Start With Contact Count, Not the Monthly Price

The pricing structure uses contact tiers, with selectable options ranging from 0 to 500 contacts through more than 1 million. Moving into a higher tier can change the price, even when you keep the same plan.

The displayed starting configurations are:

PlanDisplayed monthly priceIncluded contactsMonthly email allowanceFree$0250500Essentials$13 for 12 months5005,000Standard$20 for 12 months5006,000Premium$350 for 12 months10,000150,000

The Free plan also has a daily limit of 250 emails. Paid-plan prices are promotional figures, and regular pricing may apply afterward. The source does not supply every ongoing price for every contact tier.

That last detail matters. A business with 2,000 contacts cannot use the 500-contact starting price as a reliable budget without checking its selected tier.

Before comparing subscriptions, check what the provider counts as a billable contact. Confirm how unsubscribed, inactive, archived, or duplicated records are treated. Those definitions can affect your bill, and they are not specified in this pricing summary.

“Unlimited contacts” still needs clarification

Premium is described as supporting unlimited contacts in its plan summary, while the displayed configuration includes 10,000 contacts. Larger lists are directed toward custom pricing.

Treat “unlimited” as a statement that needs clarification, not a promise that every contact is included in the advertised $350 price. Ask for the price and sending allowance for your actual list size.

The page also identifies a high-volume option for audiences exceeding 200,000 contacts. Large organizations can discuss custom pricing, annual plans, and demonstrations with sales.

Calculate Sends Before Choosing a Plan

A contact allowance and an email allowance are different limits. Having room for 500 contacts does not mean you can send unlimited messages to those people.

At the displayed configurations, Essentials allows 10 times the contact allowance in monthly sends. Standard allows 12 times, and Premium allows 15 times.

A useful starting calculation is:

Expected monthly sends = campaign recipients across all campaigns + automated email sends

Suppose a local repair business has 450 subscribers and sends four newsletters in a month. That produces 1,800 sends. If welcome emails and follow-up sequences generate another 600 sends, the monthly total reaches 2,400.

That fits within the displayed Essentials allowance of 5,000. It does not fit within Free, even before considering Free’s smaller contact limit.

Now imagine a business with 500 contacts sending 10 full-list campaigns. That uses all 5,000 Essentials sends. Any automated messages would push it beyond the allowance.

Build in some breathing room for seasonal promotions and list growth. A budget based on your quietest month will not tell you much about your busiest one.

Daily limits can interrupt an otherwise affordable campaign

Free permits 500 emails per month, but no more than 250 per day. A business emailing all 250 contacts twice in one day would stay within the monthly allowance while exceeding the daily cap.

Sending is paused when Free-plan contact or sending limits are exceeded.

Paid plans handle excess usage differently. Contact and email-send overages may create additional charges, and campaigns are not paused after limits are exceeded if overage charges are paid on time. That can protect campaign continuity, but it makes checking usage and overage rates part of routine budget management.

Compare Features Against Your Actual Workflow

It is tempting to compare plans by counting features. A better test is whether a feature solves a problem you have.

Email scheduling may be essential if you prepare campaigns outside business hours. Advanced segmentation may be unnecessary if you send one monthly newsletter to a small, relatively uniform audience.

All paid plans in this example include professionally designed templates, scheduling, removal of platform branding, more than 300 integrations, and 24/7 email and chat support.

The differences become clearer when you look at day-to-day work.

Free: useful for limited, manual sending

Free includes one user, one audience, and limited templates. Email support is available for the first 30 days.

It does not include scheduling, automation, AI tools, optimization features, or removal of platform branding.

For someone testing a basic newsletter, those restrictions may be acceptable. For a business that needs scheduled campaigns or automated welcome messages, they are practical obstacles. Free costs no subscription fee, but its limitations can require more manual work.

Essentials: basic campaigns with limited automation

Essentials supports up to three users and three audiences. It includes popup forms, prebuilt templates, scheduling, and up to four automation flow steps.

It does not include generative AI features, custom reports, dynamic content, or branded templates.

That makes it a reasonable option to evaluate for straightforward email marketing. The distinction between prebuilt and branded templates is worth checking: access to ready-made designs does not automatically mean access to the separate branded-template feature.

Automation wording also deserves attention. A four-step flow is a limit on workflow depth. It should not be compared directly with another plan’s number of available flows.

Standard: more tools for content and analysis

Standard supports up to five users and five audiences, plus up to 200 automation flows.

It adds AI writing and design tools, audience and conversion insights, predictive customer-behavior features, and reporting and analytics. Custom reports, dynamic content, branded templates, and custom-coded templates are included, along with one personalized onboarding session.

For a small business, these tools may help with content creation and more targeted campaigns. Still, AI-generated copy needs review for accuracy, tone, and claims before sending.

Dynamic content can be useful when different recipients should see different information within the same campaign. For example, a business might tailor a section to customer interests, provided it has suitable audience data and the feature supports that setup.

The value comes from using the capability, not simply having it available.

Premium: larger-team controls and more support

Premium includes unlimited users and audiences in the comparison, role-based access with five roles, and up to 200 automation flows.

It also includes advanced segmentation, predictive segmentation, multivariate and A/B testing, custom reports, dynamic content, branded templates, and custom-coded templates.

Support expands to priority phone support, migration tools, a dedicated onboarding specialist, and four onboarding sessions.

These capabilities are more relevant when several people manage campaigns or when a migration needs hands-on assistance. Testing tools also require enough campaign data to produce useful conclusions. A very small list may struggle to justify a higher-priced plan on testing capabilities alone.

Separate Introductory Prices From Ongoing Costs

Promotions make the first year easier to price than later years.

At the displayed starting rates, 12 months of Essentials totals $156, Standard totals $240, and Premium totals $4,200. Those calculations assume the quoted monthly rate applies throughout the period and exclude overages, add-ons, taxes, and any tier changes.

They are not verified renewal budgets.

The page advertises a separate 15% discount for the first 12 months for businesses with 10,000 or more contacts. Do not assume that discount combines with every other offer. Check eligibility and promotional terms.

Nonprofits and charities can request a 15% discount by creating an account and contacting billing with account information and a link to the organization’s website.

For budgeting, record both the introductory price and the standard renewal price. If the renewal figure is missing, ask for it before subscribing.

Use the Trial to Test Limits, Not Just Templates

Essentials and Standard offer a 14-day free trial. Users can send up to 100 emails without payment details; adding a payment method unlocks the remaining trial sends within the stated limits.

A trial is most useful when you test a real workflow. Import a suitable sample of contacts, prepare a campaign, check mobile formatting, and try the automation you expect to use. Confirm that reporting answers your business questions.

Users can upgrade or downgrade during the trial. Upgrading to Premium triggers a charge for the plan-price difference for the remaining trial days, so it should not be treated as a cost-free experiment.

Canceling during the trial avoids service charges. When the trial ends, the selected plan’s then-current monthly or annual fee is charged, with billing reminders sent before the end date.

Check the selected billing frequency and set your own reminder too.

Infrequent senders should examine email credits

A pay-as-you-go option lets businesses purchase email credits instead of paying a recurring subscription.

That may suit occasional announcements or irregular campaigns. Compare the credit cost and applicable terms with a subscription at your expected annual sending volume. Infrequent sending alone does not establish which option is cheaper.

Keep SMS Costs Separate

SMS and MMS are optional add-ons for eligible paid plans in selected markets. SMS is not included in Free.

Access requires accepting terms, submitting an application, and receiving approval. Do not schedule a launch around SMS until approval is confirmed.

Credits are purchased in blocks and automatically repurchased each month on the account’s billing date. Unused monthly credits expire rather than rolling over. Extra credits can be purchased as needed, including a one-time purchase during a billing cycle.

This changes the budgeting question. You need to estimate both how many credits you will buy and how many you will actually use. A large block may be poor value if a quiet month leaves much of it unused.

Build a Comparison Worksheet You Can Trust

A useful worksheet captures the assumptions behind each price. Before choosing a plan:

1. Record your current contact count, expected growth, and the provider’s billable-contact rules.
2. Estimate campaign sends and automation sends, including a realistic busy month.
3. List required users, audiences, integrations, and features.
4. Record billing frequency, promotional terms, renewal pricing, and overage charges.
5. Add SMS or other optional costs, then confirm trial and plan-change terms.

Plans can be changed through the account billing page. Major credit cards and PayPal are accepted, with direct debit available in some countries and support for multiple currencies. Check the options that apply to your account.

Keep the wider marketing budget separate. This pricing information covers an email platform, not a complete software stack. CRM, design, social scheduling, booking, and call tracking may require their own subscriptions.

Choose the Plan That Fits Your Next Few Months

Start with the campaigns you intend to send, the contacts you expect to reach, and the people who need account access. Then identify the lowest-cost plan that meets those requirements with a reasonable usage buffer.

Before committing, confirm the renewal price, your selected contact tier, and the cost of exceeding limits. Those details tell you far more about affordability than a large feature list.

The goal is a predictable bill and an email setup you can use consistently. A modest plan that handles your work well is a better purchase than an expensive one whose tools remain untouched.