Email marketing pricing pages all look alike: a slider, three or four tiers, a monthly figure that climbs as you drag the slider right. What the slider is counting is the part that decides your bill, and it differs by platform. Some count subscribers, some count contacts stored, and some count emails sent. Each model rewards a different kind of sender and punishes another. A newsletter that mails a large list once a week has a different cheapest option from a store that mails a small list every day. This note explains the three models using the published pricing pages of Kit, GetResponse and Brevo as of October 2026, then shows how to estimate your own twelve-month cost in a few minutes.
Model one: pay per subscriber
Kit, formerly ConvertKit, prices by the number of email subscribers. Per its pricing page as of October 2026, the Newsletter plan is free for up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts and a single user. The Creator plan is listed at $33 per month at the base tier, or $390 per year, with two users and unlimited automations. The Creator Pro plan is listed at $66 per month, with a promotion shown at $50 per month on the page, and unlimited users. Above the base tier, both paid plans scale per 1,000 subscribers. The page also defines the unit: subscribers are only counted if they are unique and active, which means a cold or unsubscribed address should not count toward the tier.
The subscriber model is simple to forecast because you can see your list size at any moment. Its weak point is that the bill rises as the list grows even if sending volume stays flat, and it rises in steps rather than smoothly, so crossing a tier boundary by a handful of addresses can change the monthly figure. The practical response is list hygiene: an unengaged segment you never mail is still a subscriber on this model unless the platform excludes inactive addresses, which Kit's page says it does. Our Kit review covers how that counting works in practice.
Model two: pay per contact stored
GetResponse prices by contact list size. Per its pricing page as of October 2026, at 1,000 contacts the Starter plan is EUR 16 per month, Marketer is EUR 54 and Creator is EUR 62, with Enterprise on custom pricing. The page states that prices scale with list size from 500 up to 100,000 contacts, that annual billing saves an additional 18 percent, and that all plans include unlimited monthly email sends. User seats are listed at 3 on Starter and 5 on Marketer and Creator. A 14-day free trial is offered without a credit card.
On paper this is the same unit as Kit's, but 'contact' and 'subscriber' are not always the same thing. A contact model may count every address in the database, including those who have not confirmed, those on a suppression list, and those imported for a one-off campaign, depending on the platform's rules. Read the definition on the page or in the help centre before importing a large file. The unlimited sends are the real difference from model three below: on a contact model, mailing twice a week costs the same as mailing twice a month. The GetResponse review sets out the plan ladder in detail.
Model three: pay per email sent
Brevo counts emails sent rather than addresses stored. Per its pricing page as of October 2026, the Free plan allows up to 300 emails per day once the account is approved for sending, the Starter plan begins at 5,000 emails per month, the Standard plan offers volumes up to 1 million emails per month, and the Professional plan begins at 150,000 emails per month with volumes up to 10 million. The page describes the Starter unit as price based on number of emails with no daily sending limit and no expiration date on the allowance, and notes that the free plan's daily cap is removed on upgrade. Prices move with the volume slider, so the base figure for your volume is on the page rather than quoted here.
The per-send model favours senders with large lists and low frequency, because storing 50,000 contacts costs nothing extra; only mailing them does. It is less kind to senders who mail daily. A 2,000-address list mailed every weekday is roughly 43,000 emails a month, which is nearly nine times the Starter entry volume on Brevo's page, while the same list on a subscriber or contact model sits comfortably in the lowest tier. The Brevo review works through this trade-off for a few common list sizes.
The hidden multiplier: sending frequency
The quickest way to see which model suits you is to multiply list size by sends per month. That product is your monthly email volume. On a per-send platform, it is the number you are buying. On a per-subscriber or per-contact platform, it is irrelevant to the bill. A 20,000-subscriber newsletter sent four times a month is 80,000 emails; a 3,000-contact shop list sent twenty times a month is 60,000 emails. The first is a large list with low frequency and tends to be cheaper on a per-send model. The second is a small list with high frequency and tends to be cheaper on a list-size model. The models are not better or worse; they simply price different behaviours.
Frequency also changes over time. A list that is mailed weekly today may be mailed daily after a product launch or during a holiday season. On a per-send model that is a temporary jump in cost; on a list-size model it is free. Conversely, a list that grows quickly raises the bill every month on a list-size model and only raises it on a per-send model if you keep mailing everyone. Plan for the sending pattern you expect over a year, not for this month.
Seats, currencies and billing periods
Three smaller numbers change the comparison. First, seats: Kit includes one user on its free plan, two on Creator and unlimited on Creator Pro; GetResponse includes three on Starter and five on the mid tiers, per the pages cited. If several people need access, a cheaper plan with fewer seats may cost more once extra users are added. Second, currency: GetResponse publishes its prices in euros, so a dollar comparison depends on the exchange rate on the day. Third, billing period: GetResponse quotes an 18 percent saving on annual billing and Kit shows roughly 17 percent, so the gap between monthly and annual is as large as the gap between some adjacent tiers. Compare twelve-month totals in one currency.
How to estimate your own bill in ten minutes
Write down four figures: current list size, expected list size in twelve months, sends per month now, and sends per month at your busiest. Then open each platform's slider and read the price at both list sizes for the list-based models, and at both monthly volumes for the send-based model. Take the annual price where it is offered, convert to one currency, and add any extra seats. You will end up with a low and a high estimate for each platform. The cheapest platform at today's numbers is often not the cheapest at next year's, and the exercise makes that visible before you migrate rather than after. The cost comparisons in this site's email marketing guide are built with this method.
Bottom line
Kit charges per active subscriber, GetResponse per contact with unlimited sends, and Brevo per email sent with no charge for storage, per their pricing pages as of October 2026. Large lists with low frequency lean toward the per-send model; small lists with high frequency lean toward list-size pricing; growing lists should be costed at next year's size, not today's. Multiply list by frequency, compare twelve-month totals in one currency, add seats, and the right model usually becomes obvious. Where a page does not define its unit, ask the vendor before importing anything.
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