Ecommerce Email Marketing Software: 12-Month Costs at 1k-50k Contacts

At 50,000 contacts, the six plans in the table below sit $5,652 a year apart. The cheapest, Beehiiv Lite, costs $2,988.00 for 12 months. The dearest, Klaviyo Email, costs $8,640.00. That gap buys more than a year and a half of MailerLite Comfort.

With ecommerce email marketing software, the plan you can afford at 1,000 contacts is rarely the one you can afford at 50,000. Check the price at your target list size before you build your flows.

Verdict: MailerLite Comfort Wins on Cost, Omnisend Standard on Store Messaging

• Verdict: If email is your main channel, MailerLite Comfort is the cheapest plan in the 50,000-contact table that four ecommerce roundups list. It costs $3,445.20 for 12 months (as of October 20, 2026), per MailerLite’s pricing page.
• The flaw, and its fix: Comfort’s 500,000 monthly emails at 50,000 contacts give each contact 10 sends a month, two fewer than Omnisend Standard. If you mail more often, buy MailerLite Power, which lists unlimited monthly emails for $4,201.20, or $756.00 more a year, per MailerLite’s pricing page.
• Strengths: You get the same 500,000 monthly emails as Mailchimp Essentials for $1,174.80 less a year. MailerLite appears in the EmailToolTester, Drip, Email Vendor Selection and ecdigitalstrategy.com roundups.
• Who should skip: If you want email, SMS (Short Message Service, meaning text messages) and push notifications in one platform, skip MailerLite and buy Omnisend Standard. Sender’s roundup calls it the strongest choice for that mix, and it costs $1,510.80 more a year at 50,000 contacts. If you’re at 10,000 contacts, buy Brevo Starter, which costs $464.16 less a year than MailerLite Comfort.

How We Evaluated

The 12-month totals come from MarketingRating’s pricing dataset, read from each vendor’s own pricing page on October 20, 2026. Store fit comes from five roundups, and two of their authors sell a competing tool. You can check any row yourself: open Mailchimp’s pricing page, pick Essentials and set the contact band to “40,001-50,000”.

Store Sync, Abandoned-Cart Flows and SMS Decide Fit Before Price

Your email tool must read your store’s data, or it is only a newsletter tool. Email Vendor Selection names the store integration as the one thing that matters most. A synced store lets you put product listings into emails, segment (split your list into groups) by customer data and trigger automated campaigns. Those campaigns are often called flows: email sequences that send themselves when a shopper acts.

Don’t stay on a personal inbox either, because EmailToolTester warns that free providers like Gmail may block mass sends from their domains. The same review names Omnisend, Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign for abandoned-cart reminders, email personalization and built-in SMS. An abandoned-cart reminder is the automatic email a shopper gets after leaving items unpaid.

Klaviyo Leads on Usage; Omnisend and Klaviyo Lead on Store Features

Klaviyo is the most-used platform among brands that EmailToolTester’s Email Detective extension tracks, with Mailchimp in second place. Those figures come from observed brand usage rather than vendor-reported customer counts.

Sender’s roundup calls Omnisend the strongest choice for combining email, SMS and push notifications (alerts that pop up in the shopper’s browser). It places Klaviyo with established, data-driven brands. Sender sells its own competing tool and says so on the page.

The generalists have a cost case but a weaker store focus. Drip’s table labels Mailchimp, Brevo and MailerLite “No, generalist” while marking Omnisend and Klaviyo as built for ecommerce. Drip sells a rival tool, so weigh that label as one vendor’s view. See our Klaviyo review with free-plan limits and 12-month cost.

MailerLite Comfort Costs $1,174.80 Less Than Mailchimp Essentials at 50,000 Contacts

All figures are 12-month totals as of October 20, 2026, and “per month” is the total divided by 12. The 50,000-contact table runs from most to least expensive. ActiveCampaign Starter is missing at 50,000 contacts because it is “Only available on plans with 25,000 contacts or less”, per ActiveCampaign’s pricing page. ActiveCampaign Plus is the eligible plan at that tier.

Mailchimp’s page also offers 15% off the first 12 months at 10,000+ contacts, per Mailchimp’s pricing page. Omnisend’s offers 30% off when you pay 3 months upfront, per Omnisend’s pricing page. Check which price your checkout shows before you compare.

50,000 contacts

Plan	12 months	Per month	Gap vs MailerLite Comfort
Klaviyo Email	$8,640.00	$720.00	+$5,194.80
ActiveCampaign Plus	$7,308.00	$609.00	+$3,862.80
Omnisend Standard	$4,956.00	$413.00	+$1,510.80
Mailchimp Essentials	$4,620.00	$385.00	+$1,174.80
MailerLite Comfort	$3,445.20	$287.10	$0.00
Beehiiv Lite	$2,988.00	$249.00	−$457.20

Beehiiv Lite is the cheapest row, so check that it syncs your store’s products and customer data before you count the saving.

1,000 and 10,000 contacts

Brevo prices by send volume, so the dataset assumes four sends per contact each month.

Plan	1,000 contacts, 12 months	10,000 contacts, 12 months
ActiveCampaign Starter	$180.00	$1,788.00
Brevo Starter	$183.00	$497.04
MailerLite Comfort	$205.20	$961.20

At 10,000 contacts, Brevo Starter costs $464.16 less a year than MailerLite Comfort. ActiveCampaign Starter is cheapest at 1,000 contacts, yet by 10,000 contacts it costs more than three times as much as Brevo Starter.

Omnisend Standard Gives 12 Sends per Contact at 50,000; SMS Is Priced Separately

Your send allowance sets how many emails each contact can get a month. The table divides each plan’s monthly allowance by 50,000 contacts, using each vendor’s pricing page.

Plan	Monthly emails at 50,000 contacts	Sends per contact a month	12 months
Omnisend Standard	600,000	12	$4,956.00
Mailchimp Essentials	500,000	10	$4,620.00
MailerLite Comfort	500,000	10	$3,445.20
MailerLite Power	Unlimited	Unlimited	$4,201.20
Beehiiv Lite	Unlimited	Unlimited	$2,988.00

Mailchimp warns that “Overages apply if contact or email send limit is exceeded”, per Mailchimp’s pricing page. Overages are extra charges once you pass the plan’s limit.

SMS sits outside these totals:

1. Omnisend lists SMS “starting at $0.007/SMS”, per its pricing page.
2. Brevo sells SMS credit separately from the Starter plan, per Brevo’s pricing page.
3. Klaviyo’s free plan includes “$5 of mobile messages/month”, per Klaviyo’s pricing page.
4. The ecdigitalstrategy.com guide warns that SMS usage can bump you into a higher Klaviyo tier, where you stay unless you downgrade manually.

For per-text costs, see our SMS marketing platform guide for ecommerce.

Brevo Starter Wins at 10,000 Contacts; MailerLite or Omnisend at 50,000

If you’re near 1,000 contacts, the three plans sit within $25.20 a year of each other, so pick on store fit rather than price.

If you’re near 10,000 contacts and send about weekly, Brevo Starter is the cost pick at $497.04 a year. If you need store-triggered flows, check them before committing, because Drip rates Brevo a generalist.

If you’re heading to 50,000 contacts, pick by channel. Choose MailerLite Comfort for email alone, or Omnisend Standard for email, SMS and push in one platform. Omnisend bills “subscribers and non-subscribers who received automated messages” but not unsubscribed contacts, per its pricing page.

If you need Klaviyo’s segmentation, budget $720 a month at 50,000 contacts. The ecdigitalstrategy.com guide notes Klaviyo bills by active profiles, meaning contacts who may receive marketing, and “costs scale fast as your list grows”. See Shopify email tools at 50k contacts.

Final Selection Checklist: Six Checks Before You Pay

1. Price the plan at the list size you expect in 12 months, not today (MailerLite, Klaviyo).
2. Confirm the plan exists at that size, since ActiveCampaign Starter stops at 25,000 contacts (ActiveCampaign).
3. Divide the monthly send allowance by your contacts to get sends per contact (Mailchimp).
4. Find out who counts as billable; Omnisend excludes unsubscribed contacts (Omnisend).
5. Price SMS separately from the email plan (Brevo).
6. Check that the store integration syncs products and customer data (Email Vendor Selection).

Next Step

Compare the Shopify picks side by side in email marketing platforms for Shopify in 2026.

Next step: read more in Best-of guides on MarketingRating, or check the figures in Email marketing pricing: the true 12-month cost at 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 contacts.

FAQ

Is Klaviyo’s free plan enough to start a store list? Only for a very small list, since it covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month. Full email support lasts only the first 60 days, per Klaviyo’s pricing page.

Does Omnisend’s “up to 35%” saving against Klaviyo hold? Omnisend’s homepage claims up to 35% less “for features comparable to Klaviyo’s”. At 50,000 contacts, Omnisend Standard costs 42.6% less than Klaviyo Email. Those two plans may not match feature for feature, so compare features before you count the full gap.

Does Mailchimp discount larger lists? Mailchimp offers 15% off the first 12 months to businesses with 10,000+ contacts, per its pricing page. Check the renewal price before you sign.