Best value email marketing platforms for small businesses
By David Nge | Last Updated: October 07, 2025
My work is supported by affiliate commissions. Learn More
By David Nge | Last Updated: October 07, 2025
My work is supported by affiliate commissions. Learn More
In this guide, I'll walk you through the actual monthly prices of some of the most popular email marketing platforms across different list sizes so you can see where each tool offers the best value at each price point.
If you’re just getting started or looking to scale your email effort without overspending, this breakdown will help you find the right fit without paying for features you won’t use.
Let's dive right in.
The prices shown below represent the monthly costs.
| Subscribers | Mailchimp | HubSpot | Flodesk | Klaviyo | Kit.com | Campaign Monitor | Constant Contact | MailerLite | GetResponse | Brevo | Bento |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | Free | Free | $38* | $20 | Free | Free | $120 | Free | Free | Free / 300 daily emails | $30 |
| 1000 | $26 | $15 | $38* | $30 | Free | $44 | $30 | Free | $19 | $35 / 10,000 emails | $30 |
| 2500 | $45 | $115 | $38* | $60 | Free | $44 | $50 | $25 | $29 | $69 / 20,000 emails | $30 |
| 5000 | $75 | $205 | $38* | $100 | Free | $70 | $80 | $39 | $54 | $69 / 20,000 emails | $50 |
| 10000 | $110 | $405 | $38* | $150 | $139 | $109 | $120 | $73 | $79 | $69 / 20,000 emails | $100 |
If you’re just starting out, most email marketing platforms offer a free plan. So it comes down to user experience and specific feature sets (i.e, automation and landing page designs).
Kit (previously ConvertKit) — The free plan lets you manage up to 10,000 subscribers, making it the most generous among all email marketing platforms. You can set up exactly one email automation flow, great for a simple welcome or onboarding sequence.
You can also to sell digital products on the free plan.
Hubspot — The free plan includes additional marketing tools like CRM, landing page/forms, and lets you accepts payments from customers.
Brevo — Supports SMS and WhatsApp messaging on the free plan.
Flodesk — Why get Flodesk (paid plan only), when other platforms offer free plans? They are running a flat-rate offer of $38/month for unlimited emails and subscribers - an incredible value if you're grandfathered into it. This offer is expected to end around November 2025.
At this stage, the decision largely depends on how you plan to use automation.
If your setup is simple—a monthly newsletter, a welcome series, or the occasional promotion, then Kit should suffice (free up to 10,000 subscribers).
As for others:
Once your audience reaches five digits, the gap between these email marketing platforms becomes more noticeable:
At this size, ecommerce brands should shift focus from ESP cost to revenue per subscriber.
Klaviyo’s $150 plan isn’t cheap, but modest improvements in abandoned-cart, browse, and post-purchase flows typically pay for the difference versus cheaper tools.
If your cadence is light—say, two campaigns a month plus a few automations—Brevo’s $69 for 20,000 emails might be a bargain. But if you move to weekly sends, then the math changes quickly; you can easily estimate the cost changes with Brevo's calculator.
From here on out, it's useful to think in terms of effective cost per 1,000 contacts based on your actual sending habits. Using the 10k tier as a proxy:
Flodesk continues to deliver great value for creators and community-led brands with simple automations.
MailerLite and GetResponse are both balanced options for small businesses that want advanced targeting without incurring high costs. Both handle multi-step, branched automations and include native landing pages and forms.
For eCommerce, Klaviyo can help you scale as your catalog and data grow. Their product-level segments, expected date of next order, and channel mix (email + SMS) typically yield great ROI.
For high-volume emails, deliverability, reliability, reporting, and attribution should be your priorities over cost.
eCommerce businesses typically stick with Klaviyo, which excels in revenue-focused automations, predictive audiences, and product-level personalization. Its higher cost usually pays off through better ROI if you’re consistent with flows and testing.
For content or service businesses, GetResponse and MailerLite remain solid choices. They offer advanced automation and API flexibility without the complexity (or cost) of enterprise tools.
For other companies, Bento offers modern automation with fair, scalable pricing ($0.01 per subscriber), which is more approachable than certain enterprise plans at six-figure list sizes.
If your organization relies heavily on a CRM that manages deals, tickets, and attribution, HubSpot becomes justifiable even as it gets expensive. It helps your team operate in better alignment and ultimately saves money by reducing inefficiencies across departments.
Be clear about how you’ll use email over the medium term.
If you send a monthly update and a simple welcome sequence, choose an easy design-first tool with stable pricing.
If eCommerce drives your revenue, prioritize deep data and automation.
If your work revolves around sales pipelines and reports, pick something that integrates tightly with your CRM.
Once you define your main use case, the choices also offers these capabilities at reasonable prices.
Flodesk delivers beautiful emails, an intuitive editor, and flat pricing.
It’s great for simple automations like welcome and nurture sequences.
Upgrade when you need more advanced logic, segmentation, or eCommerce features.
MailerLite is the popular next step. It adds flexible automations, landing pages, and websites without steep costs. If you move toward funnels or webinars,
GetResponse also offers these capabilities at reasonable prices.
Choose Klaviyo when email starts driving sales for your business.
Its triggers, data model, and segmentation are built for merchants focused on lifecycle revenue.
Brevo works better for large lists with light sending or if you need marketing, transactional, and SMS tools under one roof.
Since Brevo charges by email volume, it can be cheaper for low-send businesses. Re-calculate as your email cadence changes; Klaviyo often wins once you send weekly and automate heavily.
You’ll want clean integrations with forms and bookings, simple pipelines, and easy updates.
MailerLite and Mailchimp are reliable and cost-effective.
When you truly need CRM features, for example, tracking deals, reports, and lifecycle stages, then HubSpot is worth the higher price. Until then, lighter tools save you money without losing function.
Kit is built for creators who think in tags and sequences. Its generous free plan (10,000 subscribers) makes it an easy choice for most.
As you grow, you can move to Bento for smarter automations and event logic at a reasonable price, or to GetResponse if you run funnels and webinars.
Flodesk offers true price stability with its flat rate. MailerLite is a good alternative if you want steady, transparent pricing but need more features. Brevo can be cheaper if your send frequency is low, run the math on total monthly volume, not list size.
Switch when pricing no longer aligns with your sending pattern, your automation needs outgrow the tool, or your business model changes.
If you’re paying top-tier HubSpot or Klaviyo rates for a basic newsletter, you’re wasting money.
If your automations feel limited or segmentation can’t reflect real behavior, move up to MailerLite, GetResponse, or Klaviyo.
MailerLite is the safest all-around pick for most small businesses.
It’s easy to ship campaigns, the visual automations cover what you’ll actually use, and the price curve stays friendly as you grow (free at 1,000 in your sheet; $73 at 10,000).
If your use case is large but simple, Flodesk can be even better purely on economics because the flat $38 (while it lasts) for unlimited emails and subscribers.
If you’re an ecommerce store where lifecycle revenue (browse/cart/post-purchase flows) matters, Klaviyo is the best “small business” choice because it tends to drive positive ROI with its SMS+email service.
Kit offers the best free plan hands down. You get 10,000 subscribers, one email automation, along with the ability to sell digital products.
The free plan benefits on the rest — Mailchimp, HubSpot, GetResponse, Brevo, Campaign Monitor — quickly diminish once you get past 1,000 subscribers.
If you want predictable, permanently low cost as you scale, Flodesk wins on price alone: $38 flat.
The trade-off is simpler automations; if you later need complex automation, you’ll outgrow it.
If you want the best value-to-capability ratio, MailerLite is the pragmatic low-cost choice because you get solid automations, landing pages, and sites while still paying far less than “big suite” tools at each tier.
If your list is large but you send infrequently, Brevo’s email-volume pricing can be the true cheapest in practice: for a 10k list sending two campaigns a month (~20,000 emails).
Brevo is the best for budget-conscious email + SMS.
Because it prices by monthly email volume (e.g., $69 for 20,000 emails , it’s especially cost-effective if your cadence is modest; you can layer SMS without committing to a pricier ecommerce-first suite.
Klaviyo also offers SMS with deeper ecommerce logic, but 10,000 subscribers puts it at $150 for email alone, worth it for merchants who use the flows.
For small businesses that want to test SMS alongside email without incurring high costs, start with Brevo and re-run the math if your email frequency rises.
If you truly want email, deals, contacts, and reporting in one system your team will live in daily, HubSpot is the right pick. But it is expensive as you grow.
It’s relatively inexpensive to start but reaches $405 by 10,000 subs. Choose it when unified CRM + marketing is non-negotiable.
If you just need “CRM-lite,” Mailchimp’s audience tools and basic contact profiles or GetResponse’s built-in funnels may be enough, but they won’t replace a real pipeline.
Many small businesses pair MailerLite (for excellent email value) with a lightweight dedicated CRM when they outgrow spreadsheets, which often beats paying HubSpot prices if you don’t need a full CRM.
David Nge is the founder and writer behind MakingThatWebsite.com. Since launching in 2021, he’s been on a mission to help non-techies—especially small business owners—build better websites using easy-to-learn tools and smart, time-saving strategies. He specializes in website builders, SEO, and practical AI tutorials for small business owners.
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