Email Marketing Cost Calculator

Email marketing platform pricing is driven almost entirely by your subscriber (contact) count, not by how many emails you send. Platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, and Brevo put you in a pricing band based on list size, then let you send a generous or unlimited number of campaigns within that band.

How the tiers work

• Free tier: usually caps out around 500 contacts, with limited sends and platform branding on your emails. Fine for a brand-new newsletter, but you outgrow it quickly.
• Standard tier: the workhorse plan for most small senders. Price steps up as your list crosses thresholds (500, 2,500, 10,000, 50,000 subscribers) and adds automation, segmentation, and A/B testing.
• Premium tier: better deliverability, advanced automation, and priority support, at roughly double the Standard price for the same list size.

The two numbers that actually matter

Cost per subscriber per month = Monthly cost / Subscribers

Cost per email sent = Monthly cost / (Subscribers × Emails per month)

Cost per subscriber tells you whether your list is priced efficiently (a healthy figure is a fraction of a cent to a few cents per contact per month). Cost per email sent is the number to weigh against the revenue each campaign brings in. If a send earns more than it costs, scaling up pays off.

Worked example

A 5,000-subscriber list on a Standard plan runs about $60/month. At 8 emails per month that is 40,000 sends, so:

• Cost per subscriber = $60 / 5,000 = $0.012/month
• Cost per email sent = $60 / 40,000 = $0.0015

Watch the thresholds. Pricing jumps at each subscriber band, so a list of 2,501 can cost noticeably more than one of 2,499. Prune inactive subscribers before you cross a threshold. Dead contacts cost money every month and drag down your open rates, which hurts deliverability for everyone else on your list.