Every plan, every breakpoint

How the bill is calculated

Mailchimp bills on the number of contacts stored in an audience, and each plan carries a monthly send allowance tied to that count. Essentials allows 10 times the contact count per month, Standard 12 times, Premium 15 times. Contacts who unsubscribed still sit in the audience and still count until they are archived.

Billing model tag: Per contact. Source: Mailchimp pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes Mailchimp hard to price

• •Mailchimp publishes no flat annual prepay price. Discounts arrive as promotions, most recently 15 percent off for 12 months on lists above 10,000 contacts, so the annual column stays empty rather than guessed.
• •The public table steps from 500 contacts straight to 1,500, so a 1,000 contact list pays the 1,500 tier price, and the 1,000 contact row shows that price.
• •Essentials stops at 50,000 contacts and Standard stops at 100,000, so the top of the table is a plan change and not just a tier change.
• •Passing the contact limit does not stop the account. Mailchimp adds a charge to that month's bill instead, and the fix is to move up a tier or bring the contact total back down, so a real invoice can sit above the tier price in the table.

How the bill is calculated

MailerLite bills on active subscribers using a slider with roughly 29 stops between 500 and 200,000. Comfort allows 10 times the ceiling of the subscriber tier in monthly sends. Power removes the send cap under a fair use policy. Only subscribers with an active status count, so unsubscribed and bounced addresses are not billed. The count is cumulative inside a billing cycle: anyone who was active at any point in the cycle counts until the billing anniversary, even after being deleted, so cleaning a list the day before renewal saves nothing that month.

Billing model tag: Per contact. Source: MailerLite pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes MailerLite hard to price

• •The June 2026 reprice renamed Growing Business to Comfort and Advanced to Power, and raised paid tier prices by roughly 10 to 30 percent depending on subscriber count. MailerLite no longer sells the legacy plans. Its help pages no longer print a date for that, and 13 August 2026 is the date as previously read on 26 September 2026.
• •Snapshot 3 reread the Comfort and Power ladder off the public pricing slider. Earlier estimate rows above 500 subscribers were replaced with the published stops.
• •MailerLite prices with a slider rather than a table, so a contact count that sits between stops is billed at the stop above it.
• •The free plan holds 250 active subscribers and 2,500 emails a month after the June 2026 cut, which is below the smallest breakpoint here, so it does not appear as a cell.
• •Snapshot 1 recorded MailerLite as billing unsubscribed and inactive subscribers. That was wrong and it was corrected in snapshot 2. Only active subscribers count, and the catch is the cumulative count inside a billing cycle rather than the status of a dead contact.
• •Transactional email is a separate product, MailerSend, and is not part of these prices. Tax is added on top.

How the bill is calculated

Kit bills on active unique subscribers and includes unlimited sends on every paid plan, so send volume never changes the bill. Crossing a subscriber threshold moves the account to the next tier automatically. The free plan, which this dataset calls Newsletter and Kit's pricing page now calls Free, runs to 10,000 subscribers, which is by far the most generous free tier in this set, but it has no visual automations or email sequences.

Billing model tag: Per contact. Source: Kit pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes Kit hard to price

• •Kit repriced in September 2025, roughly 35 percent up, and retired the old 15 dollar Creator entry tier. Anything quoting 15 dollars predates that change.
• •The Kit pricing slider prints stops at 1,000, 3,000, 5,000, 8,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000, 25,000, 35,000, 45,000 and 55,000 subscribers, then every 10,000 after that. There is no 50,000 or 100,000 stop, so the 50,000 breakpoint here is billed at the 55,000 stop and the 100,000 breakpoint at the 105,000 stop. The 2,500 breakpoint is billed at the 3,000 stop and 500 at the 1,000 stop.
• •Kit prints a yearly price of exactly 10 times the monthly price, sold as two months free. The annual column is that yearly price divided by 12, to the cent. The Kit page rounds the same figure up to a whole dollar, so it shows 75 dollars a month where this table shows 74.17.
• •Selling through Kit carries a transaction fee on every paid plan, including free, so the subscription price is not the full cost for anyone monetising.

How the bill is calculated

Brevo prices on monthly email volume rather than list size, which makes it the odd one out in this set. Since October 2025 the volume band you pick also caps how many contacts you may store: 5,000 sends allows 500 contacts, 10,000 allows 1,500, 15,000 allows 2,500, and 20,000 and above allows up to 500,000. Crossing the contact cap moves the account up a band automatically, so a large list that sends rarely still pays for volume it does not use. Above Standard the ladder stops being volume shopped: Professional starts at 150,000 sends a month and Enterprise is quoted per account.

Billing model tag: Per send, capped contacts. Source: Brevo pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes Brevo hard to price

• •Brevo has no contact breakpoints, so every row here rests on an assumption about send frequency. SideBySend assumes 4 sends per contact per month, which is a weekly newsletter and nothing else.
• •The first three bands cap stored contacts well below the volume they allow, so a 1,000 contact list has to buy the 10,000 send band even though a weekly send only needs 4,000.
• •Every Brevo cell is recorded as derived. The price belongs to a named send band and was read off the Brevo pricing calculator on 25 September 2026. The contact count is placed on that band by the weekly send assumption, and that step is ours, not Brevo's.
• •The 25 September 2026 read corrected the Starter and Standard cells from 5,000 contacts up, and filled Professional at 50,000 and 100,000. The old figures from 5,000 contacts up were below what the calculator prints. The changelog entry for that date lists every cell.
• •Above 150,000 sends a month the Standard calculator steps to 250,000, 350,000 and 500,000. A weekly send to 50,000 contacts is 200,000 emails, so it has to buy the 250,000 band. A weekly send to 100,000 contacts is 400,000 emails, so it has to buy the 500,000 band.
• •Blocklisted contacts, which is what Brevo calls unsubscribes, complaints and hard bounces, still count toward the stored contact total that picks the band, even though no campaign is ever sent to them.
• •Professional is only sold from 150,000 sends a month upward. The calculator prints it at 499 dollars for 150,000 sends, 599 for 250,000 and 699 for 500,000, and carries on to 10 million sends. Enterprise is quoted per account with no public price at all.
• •The free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts but caps sending at 300 emails a day. A daily cap cannot be placed at a monthly breakpoint, so the free plan is described in words on the Brevo page rather than recorded as cells.
• •Brevo sells Starter, Standard and Professional yearly at 10 percent off, and its calculator prints the yearly price per month for every send band. The annual figure in each cell is that printed price for the band the cell sits on, read on 25 September 2026. It is derived for the same reason the monthly figure is: the band is Brevo's, the placement is ours.
• •Removing Brevo branding from emails is a paid add on, not part of these prices.

How the bill is calculated

beehiiv bills on active subscribers at fixed tier stops of 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 75,000 and 100,000 on Lite, and continues on Pro at 150,000, 200,000 and 250,000. Sends are unlimited, so volume never moves the bill. An active subscriber is one who has not unsubscribed and has not been marked inactive, so paused, pending and inactive subscriptions sit outside the billable count. The subscriber limit applies across every publication in a workspace, not per publication. Above 250,000 subscribers the only option is an Enterprise quote.

Billing model tag: Per contact. Source: beehiiv pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes beehiiv hard to price

• •Unsubscribing someone moves them to inactive and out of the billable count, so dead weight does not climb the ladder on its own. Suppressed addresses are the exception: beehiiv's own guidance is to subtract the suppression list from the active count to see who can actually be mailed, which means an account can pay for addresses that are filtered at send time.
• •Snapshot 1 recorded the beehiiv subscriber count as including inactive subscribers. That was wrong and it was corrected in snapshot 2.
• •New Free, Lite and Pro prices apply to accounts opened from 1 October 2026. An account that joined earlier keeps its Scale or Max price until its first renewal on or after 1 November 2026, and an annual plan keeps its price until the term renews. The legacy Scale and Max prices are kept on this page alongside the new ones.
• •Source note, 12 October 2026: only the headline prices were rechecked on 12 October 2026. The full price slider read is from 8 October 2026.
• •Everything above 250,000 subscribers is an Enterprise quote with no public price. Lite stops at 100,000.
• •The revenue features that make beehiiv attractive, the ad network and paid subscriptions, sit on Lite and above, so the free plan is not a like for like comparison.

How the bill is calculated

ActiveCampaign bills on contacts, with a monthly send allowance of 10 to 15 times the contact limit depending on plan. Going over the send allowance costs half a cent per extra email, and reaching three times the allowance switches sending off until the next month. Accounts opened on or after 3 November 2025 are billed for every contact in the account, including unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed ones. Older accounts are grandfathered onto active contacts only.

Billing model tag: Per contact. Source: ActiveCampaign pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes ActiveCampaign hard to price

• •The pricing page defaults to annual billing and shows the annual figure as a per month number, so the headline 15 dollars is not what a monthly biller pays. Both columns are recorded separately here.
• •The pricing page renders prices from a calculator. The annual figures are read off that page at each contact stop, and the month to month figures are read off the pricing data the page loads for buyers. Both were read on 25 September 2026.
• •The November 2025 all contacts rule means the contact count that sets the bill can be much larger than the mailable list. A 9,000 contact list carrying 2,500 unsubscribes and bounces is billed as 11,500 and lands in the next tier up.
• •Starter caps at 25,000 contacts. Above 50,000 contacts the pricing page asks buyers to talk to sales, so no plan at 100,000 contacts is recorded.
• •SMS credits, extra CRM pipelines and custom reporting are add ons with prices that are not public.
• •The public pricing page labels the third paid plan Pro. SideBySend keeps the Professional label used in ActiveCampaign help docs and earlier snapshots so plan history stays comparable.

How the bill is calculated

Moosend sells one self serve plan, Pro, priced on unique active subscribers across every list in the account, with unlimited email sends at every size. Each price is a subscriber limit, such as 5,000 active subscribers on the 5K plan, so a list between two stops pays for the stop above. The same address on several lists counts once. Pro is sold monthly, biannually at 15 percent off, or yearly at 20 percent off. Instead of a plan, an account can buy pay as you go credits, one email to one recipient each, that do not expire. Moosend+ and Enterprise are quoted plans and are not priced here.

Billing model tag: Per contact. Source: Moosend pricing page, checked 19 October 2026.

What makes Moosend hard to price

• •Moosend has no free plan. New accounts get a 30 day free trial, and after it ends the account needs a Pro plan or credits to keep sending.
• •The pricing dropdown prints 21 stops from 500 to 1,000,000 subscribers. There is no stop at 2,500, so a 2,500 subscriber list is billed at the 3,000 stop and that cell is labeled derived.
• •Moosend prints the biannual and annual prices as whole dollars a month. They are the 15 and 20 percent savings rounded, so twelve times the printed annual figure can differ from the exact discount by a few dollars.
• •If a send goes over the plan's active subscriber limit and the account also holds credits, Moosend charges the whole send against the credits rather than only the overflow. Without credits, the fix is an upgrade, which takes effect at once with a prorated charge. A downgrade waits for the next billing cycle.
• •Transactional email, dedicated IPs, SSO and extra team members are Moosend+ add ons or Enterprise features with quoted prices, and are not in these numbers. Tax is added on top.