The short version
Most of the saving comes from changing the pricing model, not the vendor
Nearly every platform below bills on stored contacts, which means you pay for addresses that unsubscribed or hard bounced years ago. The two ways out are volume-based pricing or bringing your own sending provider.
AeroCampaignThat’s us
Flat fee by company segment$49–$250/mo (SMB) · $1,500–$3,000/mo (mid-market)
Best for: Teams who want to stop paying per stored contact and own their sender reputation.
Strength
Sends through your own SendGrid or Amazon SES account at roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no markup. Cleaning, dedupe, and suppression bundled at every tier. Generates campaign copy per behavioural cohort and per contact. Adds an autonomous outbound SDR no email platform offers.
Where it falls short
No drag-and-drop builder, no multi-step journeys, and a much smaller integration surface. Requires a SendGrid key or an AWS account.
Mailchimp
Per contact, tieredFree tier, then roughly $13–$350+/mo by contact count
Best for: Small teams who need a visual builder and a broad integration marketplace.
Strength
The most mature drag-and-drop editor and template gallery in the category, hundreds of native integrations, and solid multi-step customer journeys.
Where it falls short
Bills on stored contacts including unsubscribed and bounced ones, and pools your sending reputation with other tenants on shared IPs.
Constant Contact
Per contact, tieredRoughly $12–$80+/mo by contact count
Best for: Small organisations and nonprofits that value phone support and guided setup.
Strength
Genuinely approachable onboarding, real phone support, and bundled event registration, survey, and social posting tools.
Where it falls short
Weakest segmentation and automation of the major platforms, and the same per-contact billing problem as Mailchimp.
Klaviyo
Per contact, tieredFree to 250 contacts, then scales steeply
Best for: Ecommerce teams on Shopify who need revenue attribution per flow.
Strength
Best-in-class ecommerce data model, strong predictive analytics, and tight Shopify integration.
Where it falls short
Expensive at scale, and heavily oriented toward ecommerce — a poor fit for B2B outbound.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
Per email sentFree to 300 emails/day, then roughly $9–$65+/mo by volume
Best for: Teams who want volume-based pricing without leaving a hosted platform.
Strength
Bills on sends rather than stored contacts, which removes the dead-contact problem, and bundles SMS and chat.
Where it falls short
Still hosted sending on shared infrastructure, so reputation is not yours and delivery carries a markup.
MailerLite
Per contact, tieredFree to 1,000 subscribers, then roughly $10–$100+/mo
Best for: Creators and small businesses who want a clean builder at a low price.
Strength
Simple, well-designed, and considerably cheaper than Mailchimp at equivalent list sizes.
Where it falls short
Limited automation depth and no outbound capability.
Amazon SES on its own
Pay per email~$0.10 per 1,000 emails
Best for: Engineering teams willing to build the marketing layer themselves.
Strength
The cheapest delivery available, with full control of reputation and infrastructure.
Where it falls short
It is infrastructure, not a product. No composer, no lists, no suppression UI, no analytics — you build all of it.
Competitor pricing is list price at time of writing and varies by region, contract, and contact tier. Check each vendor directly before deciding.