Disclosure: this post contains links to paid products and affiliate programs. I may receive compensation if you sign up or buy through them. Pricing shown is verified against the vendor's public pricing page.
Most "best email marketing tool" posts stop at the starting price. That's useless, because email tools bill in two completely different ways:
- Per contact — you pay for list size, even contacts that never open.
- Per send — you pay for emails actually delivered. Contacts are free.
I maintain a small pricing database for these tools, so I ran the numbers at a realistic SMB volume: 5,000 contacts, 4 campaigns/month (20,000 sends).
What 5k contacts actually costs (2026 pricing pages)
| Tool | Model | Approx. monthly cost at 5k contacts |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp (Standard) | per contact | ~$100/mo |
| Mailchimp (Essentials) | per contact | ~$75/mo |
| GetResponse | per contact | ~$54/mo |
| Moosend | per contact | ~$48/mo |
| Brevo (Starter) | per send | ~$25/mo (contacts unlimited) |
Same list, same sending volume — roughly a 4x spread between the most and least expensive mainstream option.
When per-send wins (and when it doesn't)
Per-send pricing wins when:
- Your list is big but engagement is concentrated in a segment.
- You email 1–4 times a month, not daily.
- You're storing lots of "cold" contacts you may re-engage later.
Per-contact wins when:
- You email the whole list very frequently.
- Your list is small (< 2,500) and you're inside a free tier anyway.
The trap: teams keep a 5k–20k contact list on a per-contact plan while emailing a 20% engaged segment. They're paying for 80% of contacts that generate nothing.
The free tier is the other honest difference
For side projects and early SaaS, the free tier matters more than the paid tier. Brevo's free plan is 300 emails/day with unlimited contacts — enough to run a waitlist or an early-product newsletter without touching a credit card: try Brevo free.
Mailchimp's free plan caps at 500 contacts, which you outgrow in weeks.
Full comparison data
I keep the numbers updated against the vendors' pricing pages:
The calculator is the point of this post: don't trust any table (including mine) at your volume. Run your own contact count and send frequency — the winner flips depending on where you are.
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