Low-Cost Email Marketing for Consultancies

Overview

The price of paying monthly rather than yearly, which is the real cost of avoiding a commitment, is set out in the no-contract guide.

Contact-based pricing looks simple and is not. Two platforms charge the same headline rate for a list of 500 and a list of 10,000, one charges by email volume rather than by contacts at all, another gives away more than three times the free allowance anyone else does, and one has no permanent free plan at all. A consultancy choosing on the entry price alone will usually choose the wrong platform for the second year, which is the central problem with low cost email marketing software for consultancies.

This guide costs the same eight platforms at three list sizes a consultancy actually reaches. Five hundred contacts is a practice that has been running for a year or has a single well-defined client list. Two thousand five hundred is a practice with a newsletter and a service line or two. Ten thousand is a practice where the list has become an asset in its own right.

Every price was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 22 October 2026. Where a per-contact rate sits behind a calculator and the vendor does not publish it as readable text, that is stated plainly rather than estimated. Where a vendor prices in euros, the figure is shown in euros because converting it would produce a number the vendor does not publish.

The companion guide to this page answers the tier question rather than the cost question, and covers which features vendors hold back for enterprise plans. If the difficulty is running several client accounts in one tool, the multi-client account comparison is the closer match.

What each platform actually costs at each list size

The Brevo figures deserve their working shown, because the platform does not price in contacts at all. Brevo ties its contact allowance to the monthly email volume tier, and charges that volume as an add-on above the 5,000 emails included in the base plan. Starter is $9 a month and allows 500 contacts at 5,000 emails, 1,500 contacts at 10,000 emails and 2,500 contacts at 15,000 emails. The email credit for 10,001 to 15,000 emails is $16 a month, so Starter with 2,500 contacts is $25. From 20,000 emails upward the contact limit jumps to 500,000, and the credit for 20,001 to 30,000 emails is $30 a month, so Starter with 10,000 contacts is $39.

Cost per 1,000 contacts, which is the number to compare

Normalising by contact count changes the ranking, because price per contact falls steeply as the list grows and the platforms fall at different rates.

Two conclusions follow. The first is that Brevo is the cheapest paid route at every list size in this comparison, and by 10,000 contacts it is less than half the cost per contact of the cheapest AWeber tier. The second is that the platforms with the steepest curve are the ones that price purely by contact count, so a consultancy that expects to grow should weight the 10,000-contact column more heavily than the 500-contact column when choosing.

The AWeber ladder is worth reading as a shape rather than as three numbers. Lite runs from $15 at 500 subscribers to $35 at 2,500 and $100 at 10,000, which is $30, $14 and $10 per 1,000 contacts. The discount for scale is real but gradual, and Plus is consistently about double Lite at low volumes and only 35% more at 10,000. For a consultancy that wants unlimited lists, unlimited landing pages, unlimited automations and unlimited users, Plus at $30 a month for 500 subscribers becomes the better value as soon as more than one writer is involved. The Brevo alternatives for consultancies page takes the same three list sizes and adds the seat cost each platform charges to reach a three-person team.

Emails per contact, which is the allowance nobody advertises

A contact limit is only half of what a consultancy is buying. The other half is how many times a month those contacts can be emailed, and the platforms express this in four different ways.

EmailOctopus is the clearest illustration of why this matters. Its free plan allows 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, which is 20 sends per contact at 500 contacts but only 4 per contact at 2,500. A consultancy sending a weekly newsletter to 2,500 people would need roughly 10,000 sends a month, which its free plan covers exactly, and a consultancy sending twice a week would not.

Brevo has the same characteristic in reverse. Its contact limits are generous precisely because it is selling email volume, so 10,000 contacts on Starter comes with only the 20,001 to 30,000 email tier, which is about two to three sends per contact a month. A consultancy that emails its list weekly at 10,000 contacts needs 40,000 sends, which moves it up the Brevo volume ladder and raises the price. The contact figure alone is misleading without the sending figure beside it.

The add-ons a consultancy will actually hit

Extra seats. Brevo's Marketing Starter plan allows a minimum of one seat and a maximum of one seat, so a second writer cannot be added at all on the $9 tier. Additional marketing seats on the tiers that allow them are free for the first and $12 a month, or $129.60 a year, for seats two to ten. MailerLite includes two seats on Free, three on Comfort and unlimited seats on Power. AWeber includes three users on Lite and unlimited users on Plus. Mailchimp includes one seat on Free, three on Essentials and five on Standard.

Branding removal. Brevo charges $12 a month, or $129.60 a year, to remove its logo at Starter level and includes the removal on higher tiers. MailerLite includes it from Comfort upward. EmailOctopus includes it on Pro. Kit includes it from Creator upward. AWeber includes it on Plus and not on Lite. For a consultancy sending client-facing reports, adding $12 to a $9 plan more than doubles the monthly cost.

Transaction fees. AWeber charges a 1.0% ecommerce transaction fee on Lite and 0.6% on Plus. That is a percentage of sales rather than a subscription cost, and on a consultancy selling a course or a paid download it can exceed the subscription itself.

Overages. Mailchimp states that overages apply if the contact or email send limit is exceeded and that sending is paused when a limit is exceeded. EmailOctopus moves an account automatically to the plan that matches its new contact size and sends an email when it does. Kit upgrades automatically to the next subscriber tier. MailerLite counts cumulative active subscribers within each billing cycle, so an address that was active at any point in the cycle counts even if it is deleted later, and on a paid account exceeding the subscriber limit raises the limit and charges the card. On MailerLite's free plan the outcome is harder: exceeding 250 active subscribers locks sending for campaigns and automations.

Currency. GetResponse publishes prices in EUR and states that accounts are charged in USD or EUR depending on the account, and that the displayed prices may vary with exchange rates. Brevo publishes prices in seventeen currencies, so the base plan and the email credits can be read in the currency the account is billed in. A consultancy comparing a EUR figure against a USD figure without checking which currency it will be charged in is comparing two different numbers.

No multi-account plans. MailerLite states plainly that it offers no arrangement for organisations seeking multiple accounts and that each account needs its own separate plan and billing. A consultancy running separate lists for three clients is therefore buying three subscriptions on that platform, which changes the arithmetic considerably against a platform that charges only by total contacts.

Our verdict

The lowest-cost route for a consultancy under 2,500 contacts is to use what is free. Kit allows up to 10,000 subscribers at $0 with unlimited email broadcasts and no sending limits, and EmailOctopus allows 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month at $0 with no time limit. Between them they cover the first two list sizes in this guide at no cost, and the only thing a consultancy gives up is automation, integrations and, on Kit, branding.

The lowest-cost paid route is Brevo Starter. At $9 a month or $97 a year it is the cheapest paid base price in the comparison, it reaches 2,500 contacts for $25 a month and 10,000 contacts for $39 a month, and it is the cheapest paid option in this guide at every list size once normalised per contact. The two limits to accept are the single seat on Starter and the email volume ladder, both of which are published and predictable.

For a consultancy with more than one writer, AWeber Plus at $30 a month for 500 subscribers is the better purchase than AWeber Lite at $15, because the extra $15 a month removes the one-list limit, the three-landing-page limit and the three-user limit, and halves the ecommerce transaction fee. MailerLite Power at $25 a month is the equivalent move on that platform, buying unlimited seats and unlimited emails for twice the Comfort rate.

The platform to be most careful with is Mailchimp at the top end. Its free plan stops at 250 contacts and its Premium plan is $350 a month for the first 12 months, with unlimited contacts and unlimited users. Every requirement that triggers that jump is available elsewhere for between $9 and $35 a month, so the entry price of $13 should not be read as an indication of the eventual price.

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