Verified figures only · September 2026
Email Automation Pricing, Verified
Every figure below comes from an official vendor pricing page. No estimates, no invented tiers, no "starting at" wishful thinking.
Automation pricing resists comparison because vendors charge on different axes: emails sent, contacts stored, or profiles tracked. This page lists only figures we can verify on official pages, links each claim to its source, and explains which axis fits which growth shape. Last reviewed September 2026 — the linked official page is always the authority before you purchase. Deep dives live in our ten vendor guides.
Pricing snapshot
| Platform | Free tier | Paid entry | Pricing model | Official source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 300 emails per day | Starter $9; Standard $18; Pro $499 per month | Tiered by volume and features | brevo.com/pricing |
| Loops | 1,000 contacts; 4,000 sends per 30 days | Paid tiers, contact-based | Paid plans include unlimited sends, priced by contacts | loops.so/pricing |
| Resend | 3,000 monthly messages, capped at 100 each day | Pro is $20 and includes 50,000 | API volume; extra messages are $0.90 per 1,000 past 50,000, and the slider reads Pro $35 at 100,000 (October 7, 2026) | resend.com/pricing |
| Resend marketing | 1,000 contacts at no charge | $40 covers 5,000 contacts | Contact tier with unlimited sends | resend.com/pricing |
| Customer.io | Startup program; trial-led | Essentials from 5,000 profiles, 1M emails | Profile-based; $0.009 per profile, $0.12 per 1,000 emails overage | customer.io/pricing |
| ActiveCampaign | Trial-led; no free tier | Quote-based: Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise | Contact-based; sends at 10x, 12x or 15x contact limit | activecampaign.com/pricing |
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts; 500 sends per month | Essentials from $13; Standard from $20; Premium from $350 | Contact tiers; sends at 10x, 12x or 15x contacts | mailchimp.com/pricing |
| Klaviyo | 250 profiles; 500 emails per month | Email from $20; Email plus SMS from $35 | Profile bands; SMS on separate credits | klaviyo.com/pricing |
| Drip | 14-day trial; no free plan | $39 per month for 2,500 people | Single tier by list size; unlimited sends | drip.com/pricing |
| MailerLite | 250 subscribers; 2,500 emails | Comfort from $12; Power from $25 | Subscriber tiers; Comfort capped at 10x sends | mailerlite.com/pricing |
| Kit | Newsletter free to 10,000 subscribers | Creator from $39; Creator Pro from $79 | Subscriber-based; automations on paid tiers | kit.com/pricing |
What we do not publish: prices for Userlist, Encharge, Postmark, or SendGrid, because we will not invent figures. Check each vendor's official pricing page for current numbers. Full analysis lives in our ten vendor guides.
Method · how these figures were verified
How the snapshot is built
"Verified" has a narrow definition here: the figure appeared on the vendor's own pricing page when we checked it in September 2026, and the link in the row takes you to that page. Nothing is inferred from third-party roundups, archived plan names, or sales-call anecdotes. Where a vendor quotes pricing only through a form — ActiveCampaign's tier grid, for example — we publish the structure and the send multipliers we can confirm, and mark the dollar figures as quote-based rather than guessing a number.
- Open the official pricing page and read the entry tier, not the enterprise banner.
- Record the billing axis — per email, per contact, per profile, per subscriber — alongside the number, because the axis determines what your growth costs.
- Capture free-tier limits separately: send caps, contact caps, and feature locks such as automations gated behind paid plans.
- Link the source in the same row so any reader can re-check the claim in one click, including after we go stale.
- Stamp the check month and re-verify on the cadence published in our verification policy: headline prices quarterly and on announcements, scaling grids as approximate.
Figures we cannot confirm stay out. That is why four otherwise popular automation vendors are missing from the table above — an incomplete snapshot with honest gaps beats a complete one with invented cells.
Which pricing model fits your growth
Per-contact pricing punishes top-of-funnel growth: every free-trial signup raises the bill before converting. Volume-based pricing tracks actual sending, which suits SaaS funnels with large free tiers. Contact-based tiers with unlimited sends, like Loops paid plans, suit teams whose cadence is steady and whose list size is the honest cost driver. Map your own curve — list size times emails per lifecycle stage — before choosing an axis.
The four billing axes, compared
| Axis | You pay for | Fits when | Watch out for | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per email sent | Messages actually delivered; stored contacts are free | Large free tiers, spiky sending, and long dormancy tails are normal | Hot workflows and chatty transactional mail inflate volume; check overage rates | Resend API |
| Per contact, send-capped | Contacts stored, with sends metered at a multiple of the tier | Cadence is steady and lifecycle volume stays well under the multiplier | Lifecycle-heavy programs hit the 10x ceiling and pay to lift it | Mailchimp (10x–15x); ActiveCampaign; MailerLite Comfort (10x) |
| Per contact, unlimited sends | List size only; cadence is free | Forecasting list growth is easier than forecasting send volume | Cold and unengaged records still bill — cleaning becomes a cost lever | Loops paid tiers; Drip ($39 up to 2,500 people) |
| Per profile or subscriber | Every tracked profile, mailable or not | Behavioral data richness matters more than raw list hygiene | Objects, dormant profiles, and duplicates quietly raise the band | Customer.io ($0.009 per profile); Klaviyo bands; Kit |
The right question is not "which is cheapest" but "which quantity in my business will grow fastest." If the answer is the top of the funnel, per-contact axes tax you before revenue arrives; if it is engagement depth on a stable list, unlimited-sends contact tiers are the calmest forecast; if it is API event volume, meter sending directly. Resend is the clearest volume-priced reference point in this snapshot because its official grid ties cost to email volume.
Practice · modeling a year of spend
How to model twelve-month cost
Work the model at three points: today, plus six months, plus eighteen months — the window where tier steps usually bite. For each vendor on your shortlist, write two numbers per point: bill under its axis, and bill under the alternative axis. A program with 25,000 stored contacts sending 60,000 emails a month looks cheap on a contact tier until you notice half the list never converts; the same program on a pay-per-email axis bills only for the 60,000 sends. Reverse the shape — tiny list, heavy lifecycle cadence — and contact tiers win.
Brevo pricing in detail
Validate on free, buy Starter when daily volume or branding limits pinch, and step to Standard once A/B testing, advanced statistics, and deeper automation matter. Multichannel teams should compare Standard against the cost of separate email, SMS, and CRM tools before judging the sticker price.
Loops pricing in detail
Early-stage SaaS teams can validate messaging on free before stepping into a paid contact tier, and steady-cadence teams find the unlimited-sends structure easy to forecast. Full analysis in our Loops guide.
Resend pricing in detail
The volume mapping is transparent enough to forecast from application event logs, which engineering-led teams appreciate — but watch the automation-run meter (10,000 included, then $0.0015 each) if workflows run hot. Full analysis in our Resend guide.
Customer.io pricing in detail
Count people plus objects — not just mailable users — before estimating, and check the startup program if eligible. Full analysis in our Customer.io guide.
ActiveCampaign pricing in detail
Budget the contact database honestly — every record counts — and price SMS, WhatsApp, and transactional mail as add-ons. Full analysis in our ActiveCampaign guide.
Mailchimp pricing in detail
Remember that unsubscribed contacts count toward limits and duplicates across audiences count twice — the two gotchas that inflate real bills. Full analysis in our Mailchimp guide.
Klaviyo pricing in detail
Suppress non-marketable contacts to hold the band down, and forecast SMS credits separately from email. Full analysis in our Klaviyo guide.
Drip pricing in detail
Price at eighteen-month list projections, since bands step with list size. Full analysis in our Drip guide.
MailerLite pricing in detail
Full analysis in our MailerLite guide.
Kit pricing in detail
List cleaning is a cost discipline here, not just hygiene. Full analysis in our Kit guide.
Questions · before you buy
Pricing questions, answered
Why are some vendors missing from the snapshot?
Because they do not publish figures we can verify. Userlist, Encharge, Postmark, and SendGrid are absent from this table for that reason alone — we will not reconstruct a price from blog posts or old screenshots. Check each vendor's official pricing page directly if they are on your shortlist, and read our verification policy for what "verified" means here.
How current are these numbers?
The set was last reviewed in September 2026 and is re-checked quarterly plus whenever a vendor announces a change. Entry prices and free-tier limits get the strict cadence; scaling grids deeper in each tier are labeled approximate when the vendor does not publish them. The link in every row goes to the live page — at the moment money changes hands, that page is the only number that matters.
Which model is cheapest for a SaaS app with a large free tier?
Usually per-email pricing with unlimited contacts, because dormant trials and free users cost nothing to store. Contact-banded platforms bill for every record whether it ever opens mail, so the free tier of your product silently inflates your marketing bill. Model it explicitly in the twelve-month exercise above before accepting a sticker price that looks smaller.
Do free tiers include automation, or only broadcasts?
It varies, and the difference matters more than the send cap. Kit's free Newsletter plan includes broadcasts but locks automations; Brevo's free tier includes automation within its daily volume. Check the feature lock before judging a free plan by its contact limit — a free tier you cannot run lifecycle on is a trial with worse branding.
Where do the outbound links on this page go?
Straight to the vendor's official pricing or documentation page named in the row — the same page each figure was checked against — so you can confirm the live number before you buy. Rankings elsewhere on the site come from the published scoring axes, and no vendor reviews copy before publication.
What about SMS, add-ons, and overage costs?
Where a vendor meters a second channel separately — Klaviyo's expiring SMS credits, Brevo's multichannel features, Drip's separately billed SMS — the row or detail section says so, and the twelve-month model includes an "add the edges" step for exactly this. Transactional overages (Resend's per-thousand rate, Customer.io's profile and email overages) are quoted only when the vendor publishes them; otherwise the page leaves the figure out.