Email Marketing Pricing 2026: What Tools Really Cost

In short: What a newsletter tool costs is decided by the billing basis, not by the price list. Three models are in circulation: per contact (Mailchimp, GetResponse, MailerLite, KlickTipp), per email sent (Brevo) and as a package price (Systeme.io). With Mailchimp, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts keep counting towards your bill — only archiving takes them out.

Pricing pages for email tools are remarkably hard to compare. One quotes a monthly price for 1,000 contacts, the next for 20,000 emails, the third advertises "free forever" and means 250 addresses. Put those numbers side by side and you are comparing three different things. So this article does not start with prices. It starts with the question of what you are actually being billed for.

The three billing models

Almost every tool on the market falls into one of these three boxes. Which one it is affects your bill more than any discount code.

Model	You are billed by	It gets expensive when …	Examples
Per contact	Number of stored addresses	… the list grows faster than the revenue	Mailchimp, GetResponse, MailerLite, KlickTipp
Per send	Number of emails sent	… you mail the whole list often	Brevo
Package price	Feature set, contacts as a ceiling	… you hit one of the package limits	Systeme.io

The practical consequence: under a contact model you pay the same for every address whether you write to it once a year or three times a week. Under a send model an address sitting quietly in your database costs nothing — but every additional campaign does.

The trap: paying for contacts who never see your email

This is where most bills grow unnoticed. Mailchimp's own help pages are unambiguous about which contact statuses count towards the monthly contact limit: subscribed – yes. Unsubscribed – yes. Non-subscribed – yes. Only cleaned and archived contacts are excluded.

In practice: an account with 2,000 active subscribers and 800 unsubscribes is billed for 2,800 contacts — including 800 addresses you are no longer allowed to mail. No provider archives them for you; it is a manual chore you have to put in your calendar.

Dead weight costs you twice. It shows up on the invoice, and it drags down your deliverability, because mailbox providers infer from recipient behaviour whether your mail is wanted. What that does to your numbers is covered in our guide to email deliverability.

What the free plans actually give you in August 2026

2026 is the year the free tiers shrank. Two of the best-known providers halved their free limits, and both changes apply to existing accounts as well.

Provider	Included for free	Where the ceiling is
Systeme.io	2,000 contacts, unlimited emails	3 funnels, 1 course, 1 blog
Brevo	300 emails per day, up to 100,000 stored contacts	daily cap, does not roll over
GetResponse	500 contacts, 2,500 newsletters per month	1 landing page, 1,000 visitors/month
MailerLite	250 subscribers, 2,500 emails per month	halved on 16 June 2026 (was 500 / 12,000)
Mailchimp	250 contacts, 500 emails per month	plus a 250 sends per day limit
KlickTipp	—	no free plan, entry at €30 per month

Sources: provider help and pricing pages, retrieved 19 August 2026. MailerLite documents the 16 June 2026 cut itself ("Subscriber limit was reduced from 500 to 250 active subscribers"); Mailchimp states 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends in its pricing help article. Prices change — check with the provider before you commit.

For a standing start the order is clearer than it was a year ago: Systeme.io^* gives away by far the most with 2,000 contacts and unlimited sending, GetResponse^* has the most generous free tier among the classic newsletter tools, and MailerLite^* remains one of the cheapest ways into a paid plan despite the cut.

Which model fits you

One number answers this: how often do you write to a single contact per month?

Rarely, but to many (a large list, one newsletter a quarter): the contact model punishes you. You pay twelve months for addresses you mail four times a year. A send-based model like Brevo's only charges for what goes out.
Often, to a manageable list (a weekly newsletter plus running automations): here the contact model with unlimited sending wins. KlickTipp^* bills exactly that way — a fixed price by recipient count, sending volume irrelevant — and counts a person with several addresses only once.
You need the whole selling path, not just email: then comparing email prices alone is misleading, because otherwise you end up paying for two subscriptions. Why a separate landing page tool often costs more than the upgrade to an all-in-one system is in our landing page builder comparison.

For actual monthly prices at your list size, our cost calculator puts the tools side by side — which beats collecting five pricing pages by hand.

The costs that appear in no pricing table

Add-ons. The plan price rarely covers everything. At KlickTipp, landing pages beyond the allowance included in your package cost €6 per page per month, and setting up the Enterprise plan starts at a one-off €699. Items like these sit below the pricing table, not in it.

Crossing a limit. Every model has a point where it turns unpleasant: the next contact tier, the exhausted daily volume, the landing page visitors. The question to ask before signing up is not "what does it cost now?" but "what happens when I hit the limit — a surcharge, a block, or an automatic upgrade?".

Annual commitment. Prepayment discounts typically run between 10 and 20 percent. That is a good price for planning certainty and a bad one for a tool you have not used yet. Pay monthly for the first quarter, commit after.

Switching. Contacts can be exported; automations, forms and templates cannot. The real price of changing providers is rebuilding them — which is why an exportable list is the bare minimum to check before you sign up.

The bottom line

Do not compare monthly prices, compare billing bases. If you send rarely, a contact model charges you for standing still; if you send often, a sending flat rate serves you better. And before you switch plans at all: clean the list. With Mailchimp, archiving unsubscribed contacts alone lowers the bill immediately — and improves where the rest of your mail lands. Which tool fits your project on the merits is covered in our tool comparison; what an automated email funnel makes of it is in the matching guide.

Common questions

What does email marketing really cost per month?

For small lists up to around 1,000 addresses, paid plans start in the low double digits per month: MailerLite from 12 US dollars, GetResponse from €16 monthly at the first contact tier, KlickTipp from €30 for up to 2,500 recipients. Below that it is free, but with tight limits. The amount almost always rises with your contact count rather than your usage — which makes list hygiene the most effective cost lever you have.

Do unsubscribed contacts still count towards Mailchimp billing?

Yes. Mailchimp's help lists subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts alike as counting towards the monthly contact limit. Only cleaned and archived contacts are excluded. If you never archive unsubscribes, you pay permanently for recipients you are not legally allowed to email anyway.

Which free plan is the most generous in 2026?

By contact count, Systeme.io with 2,000 contacts and unlimited sending, though capped at three funnels. Among pure newsletter tools, GetResponse leads with 500 contacts and 2,500 messages a month. Mailchimp and MailerLite each allow 250 addresses on their free plans.

Is per-email billing cheaper than per-contact billing?

Only at low sending frequency. Run both models against your realistic number of campaigns per month: for one newsletter a quarter to a large list, the send model wins clearly; at weekly sending plus automations, the comparison tips towards a flat rate by recipient count.

Why is my bill rising when I am not sending more?

Because a contact model bills the addresses you store, not the mail you send. Every new signup, every imported contact and every unarchived unsubscribe pushes you closer to the next pricing tier, regardless of how many emails actually go out.

Is paying annually worth it?

It usually saves 10 to 20 percent, but ties you to a tool whose limits you do not yet know in month one. The sensible order is: start monthly, check after a quarter whether the automations and deliverability hold up, and only then switch to annual billing.