Email Platform Pricing Index 2026: Verified Tiers

Pricing geometry · read the unit first

Per contact, per email, or per profile

Three billing units, three different bills at the same list size. Before comparing entry prices, find out what the meter counts: a platform quoted at $19 and one quoted at $11.20 are not comparable until you know what each of them is actually measuring.

The useful question is not which unit is cheapest but which unit matches your data. A SaaS team sitting on tens of thousands of dormant trial records reads per-contact pricing as a holding cost and per-email pricing as a send cost; a small, tightly engaged list inverts that reading. Geometry also decides how each platform should be negotiated — volume commitments suit per-email meters, list hygiene pays for itself on per-contact meters, and per-profile meters reward messaging only the people you track.

Cost model · month twelve

12-month cost model

Every figure below is printed elsewhere on this page — nothing is modeled from a guess. The shape column is the part that matters at renewal: it says which way the bill moves as the list and send volume grow through the year.

Read the column headings twice. Two rows with similar entry prices can diverge sharply by month twelve because one meters stored records and the other meters sends — which is exactly why headline price comparisons between these platforms are close to meaningless.

Do it yourself · five inputs

Model your own twelve-month cost

The exercise takes twenty minutes and saves a year of surprise billing. Use the vendor's official page in one tab and this index in the other.

1. 1 · Fix the unitWrite down what the platform meters — contact, profile, email, or person — straight from the pricing sentence. If you cannot tell, that is your first question to the vendor.
2. 2 · Take two countsRecord today's list size and your best month-twelve list size, plus the same pair for monthly sends. Model both, not the number you hope for.
3. 3 · Place the tiersMark where each figure on this index would put you at each count: entry tier, next tier, and the one after it. Tier crossings are where budgets break.
4. 4 · Add the stackInclude automation tiers, overage rates, SMS credits, and seat fees where the vendor publishes them — and write down the ones they do not.
5. 5 · Stress itRun the same model with list growth doubled and with a dormant half of the list. The platform that survives both is the one worth a demo.

Bring the sheet to the renewal conversation. A vendor can argue with an opinion; arguing with your own month-twelve table is much harder, and it usually produces a better tier choice than the one quoted first.

Traps · seen repeatedly

Common pricing traps

None of these are scams. They are the ordinary ways a pricing page stays technically honest while leading a careful buyer to the wrong number.

• Comparing entry prices across different meters: Omnisend Standard $11.20 per contact and Mailgun Basic $15 per email are answering different questions.
• Counting contacts you never mail. On Mailchimp, unsubscribed contacts still count toward the tier you pay for.
• Buying the top tier for one feature: Mailchimp Premium $350 and Omnisend Pro $41.30 should each be triggered by a stated need, not by anxiety.
• Ignoring send multipliers on ActiveCampaign — the 10x, 12x, and 15x bands multiply what "included sends" means at your contact count.
• Leaving overages unplanned: Customer.io extras run $0.009 per profile and $0.12 per 1,000 emails, which compounds fast on a growing list.
• Reading free tiers as interchangeable. Brevo's 300 emails a day, Mailgun's 100 emails a day, and Klaviyo's 500 emails a month cap different things.
• Treating a trial as a free tier: SendGrid's 100/day lasts 60 days, Drip runs a 14-day trial, and Constant Contact lists trial only.
• Signing quote-based pricing without the contact bands written down — ActiveCampaign's quote is a range until the bands are attached to it.
• Skipping the daily-versus-monthly distinction: a daily cap and a monthly cap with similar totals behave completely differently on launch day.
• Forgetting the second platform during a cutover. Budget for the overlap window before you promise a single-vendor month.
• Accepting an annual discount against a geometry you already know you will outgrow within the year.
• Letting SMS and add-on credits appear as a separate invoice line nobody models: Klaviyo's paid tiers price SMS credits alongside profiles.
• Comparing a platform's entry tier against another platform's growth tier and calling the first one cheap.

Negotiation · bring these

Questions to ask before you sign

Ask them in writing, and keep the answers beside the quote. Every one of these has changed a recommendation at least once.

• What exactly does the meter count — stored records, active profiles, delivered emails, or people — and what happens to records that stop engaging?
• Which tier am I in at my month-twelve list size and send volume, and what is the exact price at that tier?
• What is charged past the included volume: a metered rate, a hard stop, or a forced upgrade?
• Which features I care about are gated behind a higher tier, and which are add-ons billed separately?
• Are automation, attribution, and support tiers separate from the sending tier, or included?
• What does the annual commitment require, and what happens to my data and pricing if I leave mid-term?
• If contact bands or volume bands move, how much notice do I get, and does my price move with them?
• Which costs are excluded from this quote — SMS, extra seats, dedicated IPs, premium support, onboarding?

Vendors answer all eight without hesitation when the product fits. Hesitation on the meter question specifically — the first one — is the cheapest warning you will ever get.