SideBySend
Snapshot 3, recorded 14 September 2026. All prices in USD.

Billing rules

Which platforms bill you for unsubscribed contacts

Two vendors can quote the same price for 10,000 contacts and send different invoices for the same list, because they disagree about what counts as a contact. This page records the answer for each tracked vendor, taken from the vendor's own help pages, and says plainly where the answer is not published.

Snapshot 3, rules checked 14 September 2026. Six vendors, three contact statuses each.

The short version

Bill unsubscribes
1
Mailchimp
It depends
2
Brevo, ActiveCampaign
Do not bill them
3
MailerLite, Kit, beehiiv

Unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed, by vendor

Three statuses, because vendors treat them differently. A platform can ignore hard bounces and still charge for the people who opted out.

VendorUnsubscribedBouncedUnconfirmedWhat removes them from the bill
MailchimpPer contactBilledVerNot billedVerNot billedVerArchive them. Archived and deleted contacts drop out of the contact total, and archiving keeps their history and report data.source checked 9 September 2026
MailerLitePer contactNot billedVerNot billedVerNot billedDerNothing to do. The status change is enough, but the saving only lands at the next billing anniversary.source checked 4 October 2026
KitPer contactNot billedVerNot billedVerNot billedVerNothing to do for unsubscribes and bounces. Cold subscribers have to be removed by hand, and the tier has to be changed in billing settings.source checked 9 September 2026
BrevoPer send, capped contactsDependsVerDependsVerNot knownDeleting them is the only way to get the storage back, and Brevo advises against it because a deleted contact loses the blocklist flag that stops a future import mailing them again.source checked 9 September 2026
beehiivPer contactNot billedVerBilledDerNot billedVerUnsubscribing is enough for the billable count. Suppressed addresses have to be found on the suppression list and deleted.source checked 9 September 2026
ActiveCampaignPer contactDependsVerDependsVerDependsVerDelete them, or archive them. Archive storage has a monthly limit roughly equal to the contact limit and archived contacts are kept for about a year.source checked 9 September 2026
Whether a stored contact who cannot receive a campaign still counts toward the number that sets the price. Depends means the answer turns on the account or on which limit binds first, and the vendor rows below say how. Not known means the vendor pages SideBySend reads do not answer it, so nothing is claimed.

The badge on each answer says how it was reached. Ver means a vendor page states it. Der means it follows from a rule the vendor publishes for something else. An answer of Not known carries no badge, because there is nothing to rate.

What each vendor actually says

The rule in plain words, plus the part that catches people out.

  1. Mailchimp

    unsubscribed: BilledVerified

    Mailchimp's contact table publishes a yes or no per status. Subscribed, unsubscribed and non subscribed contacts all count toward the monthly contact limit. Cleaned contacts, which is where hard bounces land, do not. Pending contacts do not count and are deleted after 60 days if they never confirm.

    The catch. Non subscribed contacts are the quiet one. Someone who bought from a connected store without opting into marketing counts as a billable contact, and so does the same person sitting in two audiences, twice. The two audiences count is read off Mailchimp's audience help page on 26 September 2026.

    source checked 9 September 2026

  2. MailerLite

    unsubscribed: Not billedVerified

    The subscriber limit counts unique subscribers with an active status. MailerLite states on both its pricing page and its billing help page that unsubscribed and bounced contacts do not count. Unconfirmed subscribers are not active either, which is where the unconfirmed answer comes from rather than a separate statement.

    The catch. The cumulative count is the trap, not the dead contacts. Anyone who was active at any point during a billing cycle counts for that whole cycle, even after being deleted, so a list cleaned the day before renewal is still billed at the higher tier.

    source checked 4 October 2026

  3. Kit

    unsubscribed: Not billedVerified

    Kit bills confirmed subscribers only, and its help pages list every other status as outside the billing total: unsubscribed, complained, bounced, blocked and unconfirmed. Hard bounces are unsubscribed automatically.

    The catch. Cold subscribers still count. Anyone who has not opened or clicked in 90 days keeps the confirmed status, so the cheapest list in this dataset to keep clean is also the one where inactivity is invisible on the invoice until it is removed.

    source checked 9 September 2026

  4. Brevo

    unsubscribed: DependsVerified

    Brevo bills send volume, so a blocklisted contact costs nothing to send to and Brevo says as much. It also says blocklisted contacts are still added to the total number of contacts, and since October 2025 that total is capped by the send band. So they do not cost sends and they do consume the cap.

    The catch. The two answers only collide at the bottom of the ladder, where the caps are 500, 1,500 and 2,500 contacts. A 480 contact list carrying 60 unsubscribes is over the 500 cap and gets moved up a band automatically. Above the 20,000 send band the cap is 500,000 and the question stops mattering. What Brevo does with unconfirmed double opt in contacts is not stated on the pages SideBySend reads, so that cell is left empty.

    source checked 9 September 2026

  5. beehiiv

    unsubscribed: Not billedVerified

    beehiiv defines an active subscriber as one who has not unsubscribed and has not been marked inactive, and the tier follows the active count. Paused, pending and inactive subscriptions are all outside it.

    The catch. Suppression is not the same as unsubscribing. beehiiv's own advice for working out who can actually receive a send is to take the active count and subtract the suppression list, which means suppressed addresses sit inside the number that sets the bill. The bounced answer is derived from that instruction rather than from a billing statement, so it is marked derived.

    source checked 9 September 2026

  6. ActiveCampaign

    unsubscribed: DependsVerified

    One question, two answers, split by a date. Accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 are billed for every contact whatever its list status. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025 are billed for active contacts only. ActiveCampaign publishes both answers in the same help article.

    The catch. Nothing on the pricing page shows which rule an account is on, and the change was never announced. Two accounts holding the same list can sit two tiers apart on the strength of their signup dates.

    source checked 9 September 2026

What the difference costs

The gap only matters when dead weight pushes a list across a tier stop, and that is exactly what it does on a contact billed plan.

Prices are compiled from public vendor pages and can lag behind a change. Cells marked Der are calculated from published rules and cells marked Est are rough figures. Neither is an invoice or a quote, so confirm with the vendor before you spend.

Account contentsPlanMonthlyConfidenceNote
9,000 contacts you can emailPlus$239VerifiedBilled in the 10,000 contact tier. This is what a pre November 2025 ActiveCampaign account pays.
The same list plus 2,500 unsubscribes and bouncesPlus$489Verified11,500 contacts by the newer rule, which lands in the 25,000 tier. Same mailable list, same platform, different signup date.
ActiveCampaign Plus, monthly billing. Both rows describe a list of 9,000 people who can actually be emailed.

That gap is $250 a month, decided by nothing except when the account was opened. ActiveCampaign is the sharpest case because the rule changed mid stream, but the same arithmetic runs quietly on every contact billed plan.

Mailchimp charges $75 a month for 5,000 contacts on Essentials. A list carrying 15 percent unsubscribed dead weight, which is 750 people, is spending about $11 a month on contacts it is not allowed to email. Archiving them is free and takes minutes, which is what makes it worth knowing.

On the vendors that do not bill unsubscribes, the money is still not always safe. MailerLite counts anyone who was active at any point in the billing cycle, so a list cleaned the day before renewal is billed at the old tier anyway. Kit keeps charging for cold subscribers because they are still confirmed. beehiiv drops unsubscribes from the billable count but keeps suppressed addresses inside it.

Where this dataset stops

One answer is missing from the table above: Brevo, unconfirmed contacts. Nothing is guessed there. 2 answers are marked derived rather than verified, because they follow from a rule the vendor publishes for a different purpose. The clearest is beehiiv, where the instruction for working out who can receive a send is what shows that suppressed addresses sit inside the billable count.

None of this covers regional terms, negotiated contracts or grandfathered accounts, and it is not legal or billing advice. Vendor links on this page are sources rather than partner links, as the disclosure explains. Check the contact count your own invoice is built on before acting on any of it.

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