Email marketing · Data index
Email platform pricing and metering index
By the Stackmerit team
Last updated
This index tracks how ten email platforms meter you: what you are billed on, what the free plan really allows, how the send cap is calculated, and the limit that bites first. The single most useful finding is that two of them, Mailchimp and GetResponse, bill you for contacts who have already unsubscribed.
The index
Ten platforms, eight columns. Prices are the least durable column and are dated accordingly. Figures verified 28 August 2026, refreshed monthly.
| Platform | Billed on | Unsubscribes and bounces billed? | Free plan: binding limit | Free plan: contact cap | Entry paid price | Entry send cap, and how it is set | Transactional email | Limit that bites first |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Emails sent per month, not contacts. Each paid tier also caps how many contacts you can store. | No effect on the bill. Brevo charges per email sent, not per contact, so unsubscribed or bounced contacts add nothing; you simply stop emailing them. | 300 emails per day. That is about 9,000 a month (derived), but only if you spread sends evenly; one large campaign cannot go out in a day. | Up to 100,000 contacts. Storage is not the free-plan constraint; sending is. | Starter from $9 a month, for 5,000 emails a month. Contacts are capped at 500 on the entry tier. | 5,000 emails a month on the Starter tier. The plan itself is defined by monthly email volume, so the send cap is the price tier. | Included on every plan, the free plan included, over SMTP and API. It shares the account's email volume. | The 300-emails-per-day cap on free. A single large campaign cannot be sent in one day. |
| MailerLite | Active subscribers. | Unsubscribed and bounced subscribers do not count. But a subscriber deleted mid-cycle keeps counting until the billing cycle ends: the count is cumulative across the cycle. | 2,500 emails a month, alongside a 250-subscriber cap. | 250 subscribers. | Comfort from $12 a month, priced by subscriber tier. | 10x the ceiling of your subscriber tier per month, based on the tier ceiling not your actual count. A 1,000-subscriber tier gets 10,000 sends a month. The Power plan, from $25 a month, removes the cap. | Not included. Routed to MailerSend, a separate product with its own login and billing. | On free, the 2,500-emails-a-month cap. On Comfort, the 10x-tier-ceiling monthly send cap. |
| ActiveCampaign | Contacts. | Depends on when the account was created. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025: only active contacts count toward the contact limit. Accounts created on or after 3 November 2025: all contacts count, regardless of list status, including unsubscribed and bounced. | No free plan; a 14-day free trial only. | No free plan. | Starter from $15 a month, billed annually, for 1,000 contacts. | Starter's monthly email send limit is 10x your contact limit (Plus 10x, Professional 12x, Enterprise 15x) for plans purchased on or after 3 June 2024. It applies to campaigns, not to 1:1 or transactional email; overage fees apply above it. | A separate product, Transactional Email, powered by Postmark. Billed apart from the marketing plan and outside the campaign send limit. | The contact limit. Once contacts exceed your tier you cannot send campaigns until you upgrade. |
| GetResponse | Contacts (list size). | Counted. The monthly contact total includes stored, added, unsubscribed, deleted, rejected, unconfirmed and inactive contacts for that month. | No permanent free plan. GetResponse now offers only a 14-day trial of premium features; after it, premium tools lock. The old 500-contact free plan has been retired. | No free plan; a 14-day trial only. | Starter from $19 a month for up to 1,000 contacts, with unlimited emails. Annual billing is discounted (the exact annual rate renders client-side). | Unlimited emails. GetResponse does not cap sends; it bills on list size. | A separate paid add-on, available on MAX accounts only, priced by monthly send volume. | The list-size tier, inflated because unsubscribed and deleted contacts still count for the month they leave. |
| Mailchimp | Contacts. | Counted. Subscribed, non-subscribed and unsubscribed contacts all count toward your plan limit until you archive or delete them, and duplicates across audiences count separately. | 500 sends a month, with a 250-per-day cap, on 250 contacts. | 250 contacts. | Essentials starts at 500 contacts, but the USD price cannot be read off the vendor page: Mailchimp geo-localizes pricing, and a headless browser from outside the US renders local currency, not USD.Not rendered server-side | Essentials: 10x your contact limit per month, so 500 contacts gives 5,000 sends. Standard: 12x. | A separate product, Mailchimp Transactional (formerly Mandrill). A paid add-on that requires a Standard or higher plan; Essentials is not eligible. | The contact limit, inflated because unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts keep counting until you archive them. |
| Kit | Confirmed subscribers. Kit is subscriber-centric, not list-centric. | Not counted. Unsubscribed, bounced, complained and unconfirmed subscribers are excluded from the billable total; their profiles stay for your records. | Feature-gated, not volume-gated. The free Newsletter plan allows unlimited sends and up to 10,000 subscribers, but limits you to 1 basic visual automation and 1 email sequence; unlimited automations and sequences need a paid plan. | 10,000 subscribers. | Creator from $33 a month for 1,000 subscribers ($390 a year). The free Newsletter plan runs to 10,000 subscribers; Creator Pro is $66 a month. | Unlimited email sends. Kit bills on subscribers, not sends. | Not offered as a product. Kit sends order confirmations for its own commerce, but has no standalone transactional email service.Not published | On free, the automation and sequence limits (1 basic automation, 1 sequence), not a subscriber or send ceiling (free runs to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends). |
| Klaviyo | Two meters at once: billable (active, marketable) profiles and monthly email sends. | Not counted. Suppressed, unsubscribed and bounced profiles are excluded from the billable profile count once processed. | 500 email sends a month, alongside a 250 active-profile cap. | 250 active profiles. | Klaviyo's paid Email plan entry price cannot be read off the vendor page even in a browser: the pricing page renders only the free plan as a static price and generates paid prices through a custom widget that exposed no readable price or slider to a headless browser.Not rendered server-side | Email plans include a monthly send allowance tied to your active-profile tier; sending beyond it incurs overage charges. The exact allowance renders client-side on the pricing page. | Not offered as a separate transactional product. Klaviyo is marketing automation; it does not sell a standalone transactional email service.Not published | Whichever hits first, the active-profile tier or the monthly send allowance. Both meters bill. |
| Omnisend | Billable contacts, defined as subscribers plus non-subscribers. | Non-subscribers count toward billable contacts. Unsubscribed contacts are not mailed; the vendor defines the billable base as subscribers plus non-subscribers and does not spell out unsubscribed treatment further. | 500 emails a month, to a maximum of 250 contacts. | 250 contacts. | Standard from $16 a month. | Contacts x 12 per billing cycle on Standard, so 3,000 contacts gives 36,000 emails a month. Pro is unlimited. | Not offered as a separate transactional product. On Standard, exceeding the send limit halts campaigns and automations until the cycle renews.Not published | The Standard 12x-contacts monthly send cap. Beyond it, automations stop firing until the cycle renews. |
| Constant Contact | Contacts. Your price is set by your contact-list size, and every plan also carries a monthly email send allowance. | Not clearly published. Billing is contact-based, but Constant Contact's own pricing page does not spell out whether unsubscribed contacts count toward the tier.Not published | No free plan; a free trial only (no credit card required). | No free plan. | Lite from $12 a month (Standard $35, Premium $80). The price scales with your contact-list size. | 10x your contacts on Lite, 12x on Standard, 24x on Premium, per month. Emails beyond the allowance cost $0.002 each in overage. | Not offered as a separate transactional email product; the pricing page lists only marketing plans.Not published | The monthly send allowance (10x contacts on Lite), then a $0.002-per-email overage above it. |
| Beehiiv | Active subscribers. | Billed on active subscribers, so unsubscribed and inactive subscribers do not count toward the tier. | 2,500 active subscribers. Sends are unlimited on every plan, including free. | 2,500 active subscribers, on the free Launch plan. | Scale, from $43 a month on annual billing ($49 billed monthly), tiered by subscriber count. | Unlimited email sends on every plan. | Not offered. Beehiiv is a newsletter platform with no transactional email product.Not published | The active-subscriber tier. Free stops at 2,500 subscribers, and paid tiers step up by subscriber count. |
Every cell is traceable. In the underlying dataset each figure carries its source URL, the date it was verified, and a confidence marker: read from the vendor page, read from the vendor FAQ, not rendered server-side, or not published. The sources are listed in full below.
Which platforms bill you for people who already left
Two platforms here bill you for contacts who have already unsubscribed. Mailchimp counts subscribed, non-subscribed and unsubscribed contacts toward your plan limit until you archive or delete them, and duplicates across audiences count twice. GetResponse goes further: its monthly contact total includes unsubscribed, deleted, rejected and inactive contacts for the month they leave.MailerLite, Kit and Klaviyo do the opposite and drop unsubscribed contacts from the billable count automatically. Brevo sidesteps the question by billing on emails sent, not contacts stored.
The free plans with a daily cap hiding inside a monthly one
A free plan quoted as a monthly number can hide a daily wall. Brevo's free plan is 300 emails a day, which reads as roughly 9,000 a month, but only if you spread sends evenly; a 9,000-recipient campaign stalls on send day. Mailchimp's free plan pairs a 500-emails-a-month figure with a 250-a-day cap. If your sending is one big monthly campaign, the daily number is the one that stops you.
Who makes you buy a second product to send a receipt
Sending a receipt or a password reset is a separate purchase on most of these platforms. MailerLite routes transactional email to MailerSend, Mailchimp sells Mailchimp Transactional (formerly Mandrill) as a Standard-plan-and-up add-on, ActiveCampaign runs it through a separate Postmark-powered product, and GetResponse gates it behind a MAX-only paid add-on. Brevo is the exception: transactional email is included on every plan, the free one included. For anyone running a store, that single row can decide the platform.
The send cap is usually set off your tier ceiling, not your usage
When a platform caps your monthly sends, the cap is usually a multiple of your plan tier, not your actual list. MailerLite's Comfort cap is 10x the ceiling of your subscriber tier, so a tier that tops out at 1,000 subscribers gets 10,000 sends a month whether you have 1,000 on the list or 300. Mailchimp Essentials is 10x contacts and Standard is 12x. Klaviyo runs about 10x active profiles, Omnisend is 12x contacts, and Constant Contact is 10x to 24x before charging $0.002 an email in overage. The multiplier is rarely on the pricing page.
Three vendors will not show you their entry price
Three of the ten will not show you their entry price without loading their app. Mailchimp, Kit and Constant Contact render the number client-side, and Mailchimp also serves different prices by region, so a plain read of the pricing page returns the plan structure with the dollar figure missing. That is itself a fact about the vendor, and it is why this index marks those cells as not rendered rather than guessing a number.
How we sourced this
Every figure here is read from the vendor's own pricing page or, where the pricing page renders prices client-side, from the vendor's FAQ and help centre, which render server-side and are often more precise. No aggregator, review-site or round-up figure is used anywhere. Each cell in the underlying dataset carries its source URL, the date it was verified, and a confidence marker: read from the vendor page, read from the vendor FAQ, not rendered server-side, or not published. Where a vendor renders a price client-side we say so rather than substitute a number we cannot stand behind. The index was verified on 28 August 2026 and is refreshed monthly; a build check fails if any figure passes 45 days without re-verification.
Sources by platform
The distinct vendor pages each platform's figures were read from.
- Brevo: help.brevo.com, help.brevo.com, brevo.com
- MailerLite: mailerlite.com, mailerlite.com
- ActiveCampaign: help.activecampaign.com, help.activecampaign.com, activecampaign.com, help.activecampaign.com, activecampaign.com
- GetResponse: getresponse.com, getresponse.com, getresponse.com, getresponse.com
- Mailchimp: mailchimp.com, mailchimp.com, mailchimp.com
- Kit: help.kit.com, help.kit.com, help.kit.com, kit.com, kit.com
- Klaviyo: help.klaviyo.com, help.klaviyo.com, klaviyo.com
- Omnisend: support.omnisend.com
- Constant Contact: constantcontact.com
- Beehiiv: beehiiv.com, beehiiv.com
Visit a platform
Affiliate link (Brevo, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse). We may earn a commission from these, at no extra cost to you, and it doesn't change what we recommend. The unmarked links go to each platform's own site and pay us nothing.