Email marketing platforms for small business: six priced at 500 to 5,000 contacts

• Six platforms, three list sizes: 500, 1,000 and 5,000 contacts. We print only prices read on each vendor’s own page, never a review site’s. Constant Contact is missing for that reason: its pricing page would not load for us on 17 October 2026 (FAQ).
• Shopify Messaging is priced separately, because only a Shopify store can use it.
• Four campaigns a month to the whole list, billed monthly, in US dollars. Each cell is the cheapest plan that holds that many contacts and sends that much. Mailing once a month instead changes no cell: at these list sizes the number of contacts, not the number of emails, decides the tier you need.
• Every price is the vendor’s own, linked from each platform’s name and listed under Sources. Two cells say they come from the vendor’s price calculator, where a reader sees them too. Rasket’s are computed from the same price list its pricing page and checkout use.

Two rows need a sentence. Brevo prices on emails sent, but its 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000-email tiers also cap the contacts you can store, so 1,000 contacts needs the 10,000-email tier. Rasket’s $20 Pro plan includes 50,000 emails and 4,500 contacts, far more email than a small list needs, and adds $8.80 for each 1,000 contacts, or part of 1,000, past that. Mailchimp’s 1,000 cell is its 1,500-contact price, the smallest it lists above 500.

An automation is an email that sends itself when something happens, such as a new member joining. Entry plans cap automations: Brevo’s own pages give its free plan automation for up to 2,000 contacts and list sign-up follow-up emails on Starter, with unlimited workflows from Standard; Mailchimp Essentials allows 4 flow steps; ActiveCampaign Starter 5 actions. This table is the cheapest plan without those caps; MailerLite Comfort stays in it, because its cap of 50 automations is more than a small list needs:

• At 500 and 1,000 contacts, MailerLite is the cheapest without a cap that a small list would hit ($12 and $19), and Brevo Starter is cheaper still ($9 and $17) if a sign-up follow-up email is enough. Rasket is $20 at both, tied with Mailchimp Standard and Klaviyo at 500.
• At 5,000 contacts, Rasket is the cheapest of the six in both tables at $28.80. Next come Brevo Starter at $32 in the first table and MailerLite at $49 in the second. We did not price larger lists.
• ActiveCampaign Plus is the most expensive at every size ($59, $59 and $179); over Starter it adds unlimited automation actions and landing pages, and its sales pipelines are a separate add-on.

No free email marketing platform here is free in the same way. The cap that bites first decides whether one newsletter can reach everyone on the same day.

For the studio’s 600 members, no free plan sends one newsletter to everyone in a day. Brevo comes closest, at 300 a day. Rasket’s Free plan holds the list, but its daily cap makes it a plan for test sends and very small lists.

Rasket’s Free plan also asks for a card before its full allowance switches on; until then it sends test mail to your own address. The FAQ below says why.

Usually, yes, to start. Shopify Messaging (it used to be called Shopify Email) comes with every Shopify plan from Basic up. Its first 10,000 emails each month are free, then it costs $1 per 1,000, and abandoned-checkout emails are always free and do not count toward the 10,000. At the same four campaigns a month:

For the shop, four offers to 1,000 subscribers are 4,000 emails, inside the free allowance, and the abandoned-checkout email costs nothing (Shopify’s other flows count toward the 10,000). Even at 5,000 subscribers it costs less than any platform in the tables above. Price another platform when you want something Shopify Messaging does not do, and before you do, count contacts the way each one bills them:

• Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward its limit (its help), so syncing all 2,000 customers prices the shop at 2,000.
• Klaviyo bills active profiles, the people who may receive marketing email.
• Rasket bills contacts subscribed to at least one of your topics (its word for lists), leaving out the unsubscribed and anyone on your suppression list.

So import or sync only the 1,000 who agreed, and the 1,000 column above is your price. Order confirmations and shipping updates are a separate matter: Shopify sends those itself (its notifications), so they need neither a developer nor a marketing platform.

An abandoned-cart or abandoned-checkout email needs one thing from your shop: a signal that someone added to a cart or started a checkout and left. A store integration sends that signal for you; without one, a developer has to send it from your site. So for a shop, the cart column matters more than the price.

The studio’s pass reminder needs each member’s expiry date on their contact. In each trial, check whether an automation can start from a date field; if none can, the booking system has to send the reminder.

Brevo, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign and Rasket (templates) each describe a drag-and-drop editor on their own pages. Whether one feels easy is personal, so build the same newsletter in two trials before you pay.

If your website or booking system also sends receipts and reminders, those are transactional emails. Keeping them in the same account as the newsletter means one record of who opted out of marketing; on Rasket an unsubscribe stops campaigns only, so receipts still arrive. Email marketing software for developers covers that side.

Every platform asks you to add a few DNS records at the company you bought your domain from, your registrar, such as GoDaddy or Namecheap. If you do not know which that is, search your inbox for the receipt for your domain. Then, for each record the platform shows:

1. Sign in at the registrar and open the domain’s DNS settings, often called DNS, Manage DNS or DNS records.
2. Choose Add record and pick the type the platform names, such as TXT or CNAME.
3. In Name (some panels say Host), type only the part before your domain, such as _dmarc. Most panels add the domain themselves.
4. In Value (or Content, or Points to), paste the platform’s value, and save.

Two records are exceptions, because a domain may have only one of each. SPF, the list of servers allowed to send as your domain, is a TXT record that starts v=spf1. If the platform asks for an SPF entry and your domain already has an SPF record, for example from your inbox provider, add the platform’s include: to that record instead of creating a second: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all becomes v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf.platform.example ~all, with the platform’s own name in place of spf.platform.example. Two SPF records stop SPF working for all your mail, and so does a record that makes inboxes look up more than 10 names; each include: is at least one, and a free SPF checker counts them (RFC 7208). The other is DMARC, below. Plan an afternoon of work and a day of waiting before the first campaign; email domain verification explains the wait and how to check a record.

On Rasket that is Domains, then Audience to import the spreadsheet as a CSV file, then Campaigns. No code is needed for any of it. A developer is needed for three things: placing a sign-up form on a site whose builder will not take a pasted snippet (sign-up forms), sending receipts from your own site, and starting an automation from something your site does, such as a pass about to expire, which your site has to report as an event.

• Bring the unsubscribes as well as the subscribers. Leave them behind and your first campaign mails people who said no.
• Import only people who agreed to hear from you. Members who gave an email for bookings did not necessarily agree to a newsletter; the rules differ by country, and marketing email rules covers the US law.
• Ramp up the new platform. Your domain’s reputation comes with you, but the new platform’s sending servers are new to inboxes, so send the first campaigns to the people who clicked or bought in the last 30 days, then widen.

On Rasket, the Mailchimp import takes a Mailchimp API key and brings contacts, unsubscribes, tags, segments, templates and a welcome series (as a paused automation), and sends nothing. Sign-up forms and landing pages stay behind.

• Check three passes on a test email. DKIM is a signature that proves a message came from your domain unchanged, and DMARC tells inboxes what to do when neither passes for the domain in your From address. Send a test to a Gmail address, open it, choose ⋮ → Show original, and look at the summary at the top: SPF, DKIM and DMARC should each read PASS, and the DKIM line should say “with domain” followed by your domain, not the platform’s (more on each).
• Publish a DMARC record before the first campaign. Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft expect one from bulk senders (their requirements). First look for an existing TXT record named _dmarc; if there is one, keep it, because a second breaks both. If there is none, add one with the value v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:you@yourdomain.com. p=none means “only watch”: it blocks no forged mail yet. rua is where the daily reports go, as XML files meant for a report reader rather than for you; moving past p=none is the next step. On Rasket, the domain page builds this record for you to copy.
• Treat a test-inbox check as a smoke test. Fresh test accounts have no history with you, while real inboxes filter on each reader’s past behaviour, so a test can catch an outright block but not predict where your campaign lands. The strongest signal you can watch is your spam complaint rate, the share of readers who press “spam”: Gmail wants it under 0.1% and never at 0.3%. Google’s free Postmaster Tools shows it on days you send enough mail to Gmail; Google does not publish the threshold (how to read it).
• Use a marketing subdomain from about 1,000 campaign emails a month. A subdomain is an address like news.yourshop.com, which keeps campaigns’ reputation partly apart from your receipts. No mailbox provider publishes a cut-off; ours is a judgement, because below it a subdomain gets too little steady mail to build a record of its own (the reasoning). The studio’s one newsletter to 600 members is 600 a month, so it can skip one; the shop’s four offers to 1,000 are 4,000, over the line. A shop on Shopify Messaging sets its sender address in Shopify’s email settings.

• Price under 1,000 contacts: Brevo Starter, and MailerLite Comfort for more automations.
• A Shopify store: Shopify Messaging costs less at every size priced here, and its abandoned-checkout email is free. Rasket's Shopify app is not in the Shopify App Store yet; Klaviyo works with Shopify today. See Rasket for Shopify for what ours does.
• No website of your own: MailerLite’s Free plan includes a website and a landing page. Rasket’s forms need a site you already have.
• Text messages or a phone line: Klaviyo and Brevo send texts, and Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign sell them as an add-on; Mailchimp Premium and Brevo Professional have phone support. Rasket sends email only, and its support is by email and booked video call.
• A long track record: Rasket is the newest here, with fewer tutorials and agencies that know it.

• Under 250 people: a free plan.
• A few hundred to 1,000, like the studio: Brevo Starter if a welcome email when someone signs up is the only automation you need; MailerLite Comfort for up to 50 automations, after checking in its trial that one can start from a pass’s expiry date.
• A Shopify shop, like the one above: Shopify Messaging, until you need something it does not do; then Klaviyo, whose free plan works with Shopify.
• Automation plus a sales pipeline: ActiveCampaign, with its Pipelines add-on.
• Rasket, if one of these is true: your own site or app already sends receipts or reminders and you have a developer, so both kinds of email share one account and one unsubscribe list; or your list is near 5,000 contacts, where it is the cheapest of the six. Under 1,000 contacts with nobody who codes, it is not the cheapest choice.

Then shortlist two, import ten people who agreed to hear from you, and send the same campaign from both trials.