Email marketing cost per month: what four tools charge

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By Jason Feng, Founder & Researcher. See how this review was researched.

Quick answer

Entry prices for the four tools most small stores compare run from $0 to $99 a month: Omnisend Standard starts at $11.20, GetResponse Starter at $19, Kit’s Creator Pro at $99 on annual billing, and both Omnisend and Kit keep a free tier. Choose GetResponse if you want a published ladder you can budget against without a sales call.

Table of contents

Entry prices for the four tools most small stores compare run from $0 to $99 a month: Omnisend Standard starts at $11.20, GetResponse Starter at $19, Kit’s Creator Pro at $99 on annual billing, and both Omnisend and Kit keep a free tier. Klaviyo also has a $0 plan capped at 250 active profiles, though none of its paid tier prices resolved when we captured its pricing page.

Those numbers are starting points, not quotes. Every one of these vendors prices by contact count, so the figure on the pricing page describes the smallest list the plan allows. A store with 800 contacts pays more than the headline at all four, and the amount it pays depends on a billing rule that differs by vendor. Getting the rule right matters more than getting the entry price right, because the rule is what your bill follows for the next three years.

This is a research-based review. Every figure comes from the vendors’ own published pricing pages, which we link and date in Sources. All pages were captured on 2026-10-21 through a US exit IP (`199.237.109.149`) with `Accept-Language: en-US`, since these vendors serve different currencies and plan names by region. Two of the four pages resisted automated capture in part: Kit returns a 403 to non-browser requests, and Klaviyo renders its plan prices client-side. Where a number could not be tied to a specific plan, this article marks it rather than estimating it.

Email marketing cost per month: what four tools charge
Email marketing cost per month: what four tools charge

Email platforms do not sell sends. They sell the right to hold a list and mail it, and the list is the meter.

The reason is deliverability economics. A sender’s reputation is built per IP and per domain, and mailbox providers judge a sender partly on how many recipients ignore or report its mail. Platforms therefore price on list size, because list size is the risk they carry. A 50,000-contact list that mails once a month costs the platform roughly the same infrastructure as one that mails four times, but it exposes the platform to far more complaint volume if the list is stale.

That is why almost every published price is a floor with a multiplier attached. Omnisend’s page lists $11.20 as a starting price for Standard and $41.30 for Pro, and both move with subscriber count. GetResponse lists $19, $59, and $69 for Starter, Marketer, and Creator, and each of those is described as a starting figure for the smallest list the plan supports. Kit publishes $0 and $99, with the ladder between them unconfirmed. Klaviyo meters active profiles plus sends, SMS, and Composer usage.

So the practical question is never “which tool is cheapest.” It is “which tool charges least for the list I have, at the frequency I mail it.” Those two questions produce different answers, and the second one needs the billing rule from each vendor’s page.

The definitions diverge, and the divergence is worth real money.

Omnisend states its rule in one sentence: “You’re billed for subscribers and non-subscribers who received automated messages. Unsubscribed contacts aren’t billed.” A non-subscriber who got an automated message counts. Someone who unsubscribed does not.

Klaviyo counts active profiles, with a Free plan capped at 250. Active is a narrower word than total, so a list full of addresses that have not opened in a year may cost less than its raw size suggests. The tradeoff is that Klaviyo also meters usage, so send volume, SMS, and Composer each carry their own allowance.

Kit’s page was blocked to automated requests, so its counting rule is `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Kit’s pricing page returns 403 to non-browser requests and the contact-counting definition was not captured]`. What the page did confirm is a $0 plan and a Creator Pro plan at $99 per month on annual billing. The tier ladder between those two points is `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Kit’s per-subscriber tier prices did not appear in the captured page]`.

GetResponse publishes three plan names with a starting price each, and its subscriber tiers above the entry point are `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: GetResponse’s per-subscriber tier multipliers were not captured beyond the published starting prices]`.

Three vendors, three definitions, and one shared pattern: the count that matters is the count the vendor chose, not the number in your CRM export.

Read the four entry points as different products rather than as four prices for one thing.

Omnisend Standard at $11.20 targets what the page calls “growing and medium-sized businesses focused on email marketing.” Pro at $41.30 targets “high-volume senders aimed at adding extra power with SMS.” The free tier covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, which is the most generous free allowance of the four on contact count and the tightest on volume.

GetResponse Starter at $19, Marketer at $59, Creator at $69, or $15.58, $48.38, and $56.58 per month billed annually. That annual column is the useful one for budgeting, because the gap between monthly and annual is roughly 18% at every tier. GetResponse’s ladder is the most legible of the four: three named plans, both billing cycles published, no quote required.

Kit sells two confirmed points, $0 and $99. Creator Pro at $99 per month is the highest entry price here by a wide margin, and it buys a product built around creator audiences and landing pages rather than around a large store list. A store with 300 contacts and no content operation is paying for a lot of surface area it will not use.

Klaviyo’s Free plan is real at $0.00 with 250 active profiles. Its paid tiers are `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Klaviyo renders plan prices client-side and only the $0.00 Free tier resolved to a plan in the 2026-10-21 capture]`. Two price fields, `20.00` and `35.00`, appeared inside the page HTML with no plan association, which is not enough to build a budget on.

If you are comparing the two most-similar vendors directly, our Klaviyo vs Omnisend pricing comparison works through the free-tier gap and the SMS rate line by line.

The table below compares published entry prices, not the price you will pay at your list size. Annual figures are the per-month equivalent when billed yearly.

Tool and plan Monthly Annual (per month) Hidden cost to watch
Omnisend Free $0 $0 500 emails/month and 250 contacts both cap it
Omnisend Standard $11.20 starting `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: annual pricing did not appear in the captured Omnisend data]` 30% first-period discount lapses at renewal
Omnisend Pro $41.30 starting `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: annual pricing did not appear in the captured Omnisend data]` SMS billed at $0.007 per message
GetResponse Starter $19 $15.58 Plan ceiling pushes you to Marketer as features grow
GetResponse Marketer $59 $48.38 Higher tier needed for automation depth
GetResponse Creator $69 $56.58 Highest tier before custom pricing
Kit Free $0 $0 Tier ladder `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: not captured]`
Kit Creator Pro `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: monthly billing price not captured]` $99 Highest entry price of the four
Klaviyo Free $0 $0 250 active profiles plus send allowance
Klaviyo paid `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: tier prices did not resolve in capture]` `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: no annual terms captured]` Active profiles plus sends, SMS, and Composer

Two lines do the most damage to a first-year budget. Omnisend’s 30% first-period discount, shown on the page as “$48.00 → $33.60 today” and “$177.00 → $123.90 today,” applies to one billing period. Budget the undiscounted number: the step up at renewal is 42.9% of what you paid in period one. And Kit’s $99 is a monthly figure on annual billing, so a store that wants to pay monthly should expect the number to be higher, though the monthly rate is `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Kit’s monthly billing price did not appear in the captured page]`.

The first hidden cost is the discount cliff. Omnisend’s promotional pricing is loud on the page and silent about what follows. A store that models a year from the discounted figure is off by 30% of one period on the subscription line alone.

The second is SMS. Omnisend publishes $0.007 per message, which is easy to multiply: 10,000 messages is $70, 20,000 is $140. Klaviyo publishes a $5 monthly credit for mobile messages but no per-message rate in the captured data, so `[DATA NOT VERIFIED: Klaviyo’s per-SMS rate is not published on the captured pricing page]`. A store planning an SMS program should get that rate in writing before signing, because it can exceed the subscription at moderate volume.

The third is the support threshold. Omnisend assigns a dedicated account expert only at $400 per month in paid spend or above. Below that you are on self-serve support, which is fine for a 600-contact store and less fine during a platform migration.

The fourth is the plan ceiling rather than the price. GetResponse’s Starter tier at $19 will not carry the automation a store needs at 5,000 contacts, so the real entry point for a growing store is Marketer at $59, not $19. The same logic applies to Omnisend’s Standard versus Pro split, where SMS sits on the Pro side.

The fifth is the one nobody prices: the migration. Moving a list of any size means re-permissioning, rebuilding automations, and re-warming a sending domain. None of that appears on a pricing page, and all of it costs more than the difference between a $19 and a $41 plan. For that reason, the total store budget view in our cost to run an online store per month is a better frame than a bare plan comparison.

What is the cheapest way to run email for under 500 contacts?

Omnisend Free covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month at $0, and Klaviyo Free covers 250 active profiles at $0. Neither reaches 500 contacts. GetResponse Starter at $19 or $15.58 billed annually is the cheapest published paid entry that comfortably covers a 500-contact list, subject to its own subscriber tiers.

Is annual billing always cheaper?

At GetResponse it is, by roughly 18% at all three tiers: $19 becomes $15.58, $59 becomes $48.38, $69 becomes $56.58. At Omnisend and Klaviyo the annual terms did not appear in our capture, and Kit’s $99 figure is already an annual-billing price. Do not assume a discount exists where the page does not print one.

Why do these plans price by contacts instead of by emails sent?

Because list size is the risk the platform carries. Deliverability depends on how recipients respond, and a large stale list creates complaint exposure whether or not you mail it often. Pricing on contacts lets the vendor charge for that exposure, and it is also why the cheaper plans cap monthly sends separately.

Does Klaviyo cost more than Omnisend?

Not provable from published pages right now. Klaviyo’s tier prices did not resolve in our 2026-10-21 capture, so the only confirmed Klaviyo price is $0 for 250 active profiles. Omnisend publishes $11.20 and $41.30 as starting prices. A real comparison needs a Klaviyo quote at your profile count.

What happens to my bill when I pass the free tier’s limit?

At Omnisend, the free plan stops at 250 contacts or 500 emails a month, and the next step is Standard at $11.20 as a starting price. At Klaviyo, passing 250 active profiles moves you to a paid tier whose price was not captured. In both cases the jump is to a metered plan whose price depends on your count.

Choose GetResponse if you want a published ladder you can budget against without a sales call. Three plans, both billing cycles printed, and an 18% annual discount that is consistent across tiers. A store between 500 and 5,000 contacts can price a year from the page and be roughly right.

Choose Omnisend if your list is small and your send volume is low, because its free tier’s 250 contacts and 500 emails cover a real store, and $11.20 is the lowest paid entry of the four. Budget the undiscounted figure from month two, and price SMS at $0.007 before you commit to a text program.

Choose Kit only if you are selling content or courses and the creator tooling is the reason you are there. At $99 a month on annual billing it is the most expensive entry point here, and a 400-contact product store gets nothing from the parts that make it worth $99.

Skip all four if you are under 250 contacts and mail twice a month. Two of them are free at that size, and the third costs $11.20. Paying more buys automation you have not built yet. Skip Klaviyo specifically until you have a quote in hand, because the tier prices are the one thing this comparison could not confirm, and our Klaviyo pricing breakdown explains why the active-profile definition changes the total. If Kit and GetResponse are the two on your shortlist, the Kit vs GetResponse pricing comparison runs their ladders against each other, including the commission structures that sit behind both.

This site earns a commission from some of the vendors compared here. The figures above come from the vendors’ own pricing pages, and no vendor reviewed this article before publication.

  • https://www.getresponse.com/pricing (accessed 2026-10-21)
  • https://www.omnisend.com/pricing/ (accessed 2026-10-21)
  • https://kit.com/pricing (accessed 2026-10-21)
  • https://www.klaviyo.com/pricing (accessed 2026-10-21)

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By Jason Feng, Founder & Researcher. See how this review was researched.

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