Pricing compared
The entry price is the least interesting figure on any of these pricing pages. What matters is the meter: contacts stored, emails sent, profiles active or records in a database. Two tools with the same headline price can differ by a factor of ten on the same list.
Figures below are the vendors' own published prices, checked 20 August 2026. Annual billing where the vendor prices that way.
Read the fourth column first. It is the one that decides your bill in year two.
| Tool | Free tier | Entry price | The price scales with | Documented step-ups |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChattyPage | Yes500 credits at signup | €9/mo | Credits consumed per action, not contacts | Plus €29/mo, Pro €89/mo. Extra credits €0.002 each. A quiet month does not raise the bill. |
| Klaviyo | Yes250 profiles, 500 emails/mo | $20/mo | Active profiles, excluding suppressed contacts | Roughly $30 at 1,000 profiles, $100 at 5,000 and $400 at 25,000. SMS credits billed on top. |
| Brevo | Yes300 emails/day, unlimited contacts | $9/mo | Emails sent per month, not contacts stored | Starter begins at 5,000 emails a month. Storing a large dormant list stays free, which no contact-priced tool can match. |
| ActiveCampaign | 14 day trial | $15/mo | Contacts, on every tier | Plus $49, Pro $79, Enterprise $145 at 1,000 contacts. At 10,000 contacts Plus is about $239/mo and Pro about $419/mo. |
| HubSpot Marketing Hub | YesLimited free tools | $20/seat/mo | Seats first, then contact brackets | Professional $890/mo at 2,000 contacts with a mandatory $3,000 first year onboarding fee. Enterprise $3,600/mo with a $7,000 fee. Crossing 2,000 contacts moves you to the 5,000 bracket, about $250/mo more. |
| Omnisend | Yes500 emails/mo | $16/mo | Contacts, with send limits per tier | Entry price is for 500 contacts. Consistently cheaper than Klaviyo at small list sizes. |
| Mailchimp | Yes | $13/mo | Total contacts, including unsubscribed and inactive | The only tool here that bills you for people who will never open anything again. Clean the list before comparing quotes. |
| GetResponse | Yes | $19/mo | Subscribers | Email Marketing tier starts at 1,000 subscribers. Webinar attendee caps rise with the tier, not with the subscriber count. |
| Customer.io | Trial only | $100/mo | Profiles and message volume | Essentials covers up to 5,000 profiles. Budget engineering time as well, because nothing sends before the events are wired up. |
| Adobe Marketo Engage | No | Quote only | Database size, including dormant records | Four packages, none publicly priced. Third party estimates run from roughly $895 to $3,195 a month. Treat them as orientation, not as a quote. |
Read before you sign
None of these are hidden exactly. They are just somewhere else, in a footnote, a contract or a sales call.
HubSpot Professional carries a mandatory $3,000 onboarding fee in the first year, and Enterprise $7,000. On a $890 a month plan that is a 28 percent surcharge on year one that never appears next to the monthly figure.
Contact-priced tools move you up a bracket the moment you pass a threshold. One good lead magnet takes a HubSpot Professional account from 2,000 to the 5,000 bracket, about $250 a month more, with no decision made by anyone.
Mailchimp bills on total contacts including unsubscribed and inactive ones. Klaviyo bills on active profiles and excludes suppressed contacts. On a five year old list that difference alone can be half the invoice.
SMS is almost always metered on top of the subscription, at roughly a cent a message in the United States. A 20,000 recipient SMS campaign is a line item, not a feature you already paid for.
Every sending platform assumes the emails, pages and offers already exist. If they do not, the real cost of the stack includes a freelancer or an agency, which is usually larger than every subscription on this page combined.
Compare tools on the total cost of getting one campaign live, not on the monthly subscription. That number includes the software, the setup and whoever makes the assets.
Work through the buyer's guideOur buyer's guide asks the five things that actually narrow the list, starting with the one most people answer last: what do you already have to send?