At list prices checked on 29 September 2026, an email plan with AI writing costs about $17-$45 a month for 1,000 contacts, $25-$60 for 2,500 and $32-$100 for 5,000. Brevo and MailerLite are cheapest; Mailchimp Standard and Klaviyo cost most. How each tool counts your list can push you up a tier.
Two things matter as much as the headline price. First, "AI" means very different things on different plans: a button that suggests subject lines is not the same as Klaviyo's Composer agent, which can audit your account and build campaigns. Second, if you already pay for ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot, you can draft newsletters there for nothing extra, so the email tool's own AI may be worth little to you. Price the sending, then decide how much the built-in AI is worth on top.
Monthly prices at 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000 contacts
These are list prices in USD on monthly billing, taken from each vendor's own pricing page or calculator. Vendors adjust prices and offers by market and change them often, so confirm on the pricing page before you commit.
| Plan | AI writing included? | 1,000 contacts | 2,500 contacts | 5,000 contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp Essentials | No generative AI | $26.50 | $45 | $75 |
| Mailchimp Standard | Yes | $45 | $60 | $100 |
| Klaviyo Email | Yes, plus Composer | $30 | $60 | $100 |
| MailerLite Comfort | Yes (AI writing assistant) | $19 | $33 | $49 |
| MailerLite Power | Yes | $39 | $49 | $69 |
| Brevo Starter | Yes (AI content generator) | $17 | $25 | $32 |
| Brevo Standard | Yes, plus AI send-time optimisation | $35 | $49 | $69 |
A few notes make the table fair. Mailchimp prices by contact bands, so 1,000 contacts pays the 501-1,500 rate and 5,000 pays the 2,501-5,000 rate. Brevo prices by monthly email volume, and each volume tier includes a contact allowance: 10,000 emails a month includes 1,500 contacts, 15,000 includes 2,500, and from 20,000 emails the allowance jumps to 500,000 contacts. So a 5,000-contact list needs Brevo's 20,000-email tier even if you send less. MailerLite and Brevo both take 10% off for yearly billing; MailerLite Comfort at 2,500 subscribers drops from $33 to $29.70 a month that way.
Klaviyo also sells a Marketing plan that bundles email with social marketing and its Customer Hub features, at $88 for 1,000 active profiles, $118 for 2,500 and $158 for 5,000. For most small businesses the Email plan is the fair comparison. If you're still deciding which tool suits you before thinking about cost, the best AI email marketing tools for small businesses compares them on features.
What the AI actually does on each plan
The table below summarises what each vendor lists on the plans in the price table. Features change monthly, so treat it as a starting point for your own trial.
| Tool and plan | AI features listed | Extra cost or limits |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp Standard and Premium | Generative AI features; predictive segmentation; Intuit Assist in beta for some users | Listed as a no-extra-cost add-on; not included on Essentials or Free |
| Klaviyo Email and Marketing | Generative AI for content, images and segments; Composer, its AI marketing agent | Free Composer capacity each cycle; a $20 Composer plan gives four times the capacity; overages bought in $10 blocks |
| MailerLite Comfort and Power | AI writing assistant; smart sending; AI landing page builder | Free plan gets a limited subject-line generator and a single use of the AI landing page builder |
| Brevo Starter | AI content generator for subject lines and copy, including tone changes | Send-time optimisation starts on Standard; Aura AI segmentation and data analyst on Professional (from $499) |
Klaviyo's Composer is the most ambitious of these, and its pricing works differently from the rest. Klaviyo's help pages describe usage as dynamic, with estimated costs per action: analysing data runs about $0.35-$0.90 an action, and creating a campaign anywhere from $0.10 to $10.00 depending on its size and complexity. Support questions are free, and you get alerts at 75%, 90% and 100% of your capacity. On the Free plan Klaviyo states the allowance as $5 of Composer usage a month; at those estimates, that covers roughly five to fourteen data analyses, or anything from half of one large campaign to fifty small ones. Klaviyo positions Composer's work as something you review before it goes live, so keep that review step, and try it on your own account before paying for more capacity.
For practical ideas on using any of these features well, what AI can do for your email marketing goes through ten uses with examples.
How each tool counts your list, and why it can move your tier
This is where small-list owners most often overpay. The four tools count differently:
- Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts towards your plan. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts don't count. If you exceed your tier, Mailchimp bills the overage; on the Free plan, sending is paused instead.
- Klaviyo bills on active profiles, meaning contacts who can receive marketing. Crossing your limit upgrades you straight away; downgrades wait for the next billing cycle, and you must already be under the smaller plan's limit.
- MailerLite counts unique subscribers with Active status; unsubscribed and bounced addresses don't count. But it counts cumulatively within a billing cycle, so an address that was active at any point in the cycle counts even if you delete it later. Exceed your limit and the plan upgrades automatically, charged pro rata.
- Brevo charges for email volume, with a contact allowance attached to each volume tier, as described above.
An illustrative case shows how much this matters. A photography studio kept 5,200 contacts in Mailchimp: past clients, enquiries and people who had downloaded a pricing guide. Of those, 1,900 had unsubscribed or never subscribed. Mailchimp was billing the studio at the 5,001-10,000 band, $135 a month on Standard. Archiving the 1,900 took twenty minutes and dropped the count to 3,300, inside the 2,501-5,000 band at $100. That's $35 a month, or $420 a year, for one tidy-up. The same list in MailerLite would never have been billed for the unsubscribes in the first place.
Worked example: a café with 2,400 loyalty sign-ups
A café collects email addresses through a loyalty card sign-up and has 2,400 contacts. It sends a weekly email (four or five a month) with the week's specials and events, so about 12,000 emails a month. It has no online shop. Here is what each option costs, on monthly and yearly billing where offered:
| Option | Monthly billing | Per year, monthly billing | Per year, annual billing | Fits the café's sending? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo Starter, 15,000 emails | $25 | $300 | $270 | Yes: 2,500 contacts, 15,000 emails |
| MailerLite Comfort | $33 | $396 | $356 | Yes: 25,000 emails a month |
| Mailchimp Standard | $60 | $720 | Not compared | Yes: 30,000 sends at this band |
| Klaviyo Email | $60 | $720 | Not compared | Yes: 25,000 emails a month |
The gap between the cheapest and the dearest is about $420 a year on monthly billing. For a café, that's real money, but it isn't the whole decision. The owners wanted two things: a simple editor that part-time staff could use, and something that could write a first draft of the weekly email from a list of specials. Both MailerLite and Brevo did that in a trial. Mailchimp Standard's predictive segments and Klaviyo's Composer are genuinely useful for businesses with purchase data flowing in from an online shop, which the café doesn't have.
Then they ran the growth sum. The café adds roughly 100 sign-ups a month, so it will pass 2,500 contacts within weeks. Crossing that line moves Brevo Starter from $25 to $32 (the 20,000-email tier), MailerLite Comfort from $33 to $49, Klaviyo Email from $60 to $70 at 3,000 profiles, and Mailchimp Standard from $60 to $100. Brevo's jump is the smallest because its big contact allowance starts at 20,000 emails, and the café's weekly sending fits that tier comfortably. The café chose Brevo Starter on monthly billing for six months, planning to switch to yearly billing once the routine had settled.
A 1,000-contact yoga studio and a 5,000-contact photography studio
Two other shapes of list show how the answer changes.
A yoga studio with 950 contacts sends a monthly newsletter and the occasional workshop announcement, perhaps 2,000 emails a month. The cheapest paid options are Brevo Starter at $17 (the 10,000-email tier, needed for the 1,500-contact allowance) and MailerLite Comfort at $19. Brevo's free plan is technically possible, but its cap of 300 emails a day means a newsletter to 950 people would go out over four days, which is awkward for anything time-sensitive such as a workshop with limited places.
A photography studio with 5,000 contacts, mostly past wedding clients, emails four times a year. Its sending is tiny, but its list is not, and every tool bills for list size. MailerLite Comfort costs $49 a month, Brevo Starter $32 (the 20,000-email tier), Mailchimp Essentials $75 and Standard $100. Here, the better saving is often the list itself: past clients who haven't opened an email in two years are unlikely to book again. Removing 2,600 long-dormant contacts after a final "stay in touch?" email would bring the list to 2,400, where MailerLite Comfort costs $33 and Brevo Starter $25.
Costs that don't show up on the pricing page
- Introductory offers. Klaviyo was offering $19 off the first month of its $20 plan, and Mailchimp's pricing page can show an introductory discount on the first months depending on where you view it. Budget on the regular price.
- Automatic upgrades. Klaviyo and MailerLite upgrade you when you cross a limit. A one-off import of an old contact list can lift your bill for the whole cycle, and at MailerLite, deleting the addresses afterwards doesn't undo it until the next cycle.
- AI usage beyond the allowance. Klaviyo's Composer runs on capacity; heavy use means the $20 Composer plan or $10 overage blocks.
- Text messages. SMS is charged separately on every platform. Klaviyo's free plan includes $5 of mobile messages a month; beyond that you pay by message.
- Seats. MailerLite Comfort includes three user seats and Brevo Standard one marketing seat; extra people may mean a higher plan.
- Your time. Setting up domain authentication, templates and sign-up forms takes a few hours at the start on any tool. Writing each email is the biggest ongoing cost, which is where AI drafting actually saves money.
For a general method of reading AI software prices, including credits and usage fees like Composer's, see how to read AI software pricing, and for the monthly-versus-yearly decision, annual or monthly billing for AI tools.
Do you need the email tool's AI at all?
If you already pay for a general assistant, you can draft the whole newsletter there and paste it into any plan, including the cheapest. The café tried this with its weekly email, using a prompt like this:
Write this week's email for our café's loyalty list (about 2,400
people, mostly regulars). Warm, short, no exclamation marks in the
subject line. Under 150 words.
This week:
- Special: pumpkin and sage soup with sourdough, $9.50
- New: oat milk flat white at no extra charge from Monday
- Event: acoustic evening Thursday 7pm, free entry, booking advised
- Closed Sunday 12th for a private event
Give me three subject line options and the email body.An illustrative extract of what came back:
Subject options:
1. Soup season starts here
2. This week at the café: soup, oat milk and music
3. A quieter Sunday and a lively Thursday
Body: Autumn has arrived, and so has our pumpkin and sage soup,
served with fresh sourdough for $9.50. From Monday, oat milk is
free in every flat white - and all our coffees. Join us Thursday
at 7pm for an acoustic evening; entry is free, so book early.
Please note we're closed on Sunday 12th.Mostly usable, with one error that matters: the café said oat milk was free in the flat white, and the draft extended it to "all our coffees", a promise staff would then have to honour. The fix took ten seconds, but only because the owner read the draft against her list. The tutorial on writing a customer newsletter with AI in 30 minutes covers the full routine, and the newsletter QA checklist is the step to add before sending, whoever drafted it.
Where built-in AI earns its keep is in features a general assistant can't reach: send-time optimisation from your own open data, segments predicted from purchase history, or an agent like Composer that can see your account. If none of those apply to you, the cheapest plan that fits your list is the rational choice.
What switching tools later actually costs
A small list isn't locked in, which is worth remembering when the price difference tempts you to agonise. Moving 2,500 contacts between these four tools is mostly a day's work, but some things don't travel, and it's better to know them before you start.
- What moves easily: the contact list, exported as a CSV with names, emails, tags and sign-up dates. Keep the consent information (when and how each person signed up), because you'll need it if anyone asks.
- What you rebuild: templates, sign-up forms, automations such as a welcome sequence, and the domain authentication records your IT person or website host added. Budget two to four hours for a simple set-up.
- What you lose: open and click history, which is what powers features like send-time optimisation and predicted segments. The new tool starts learning from zero, so its AI features will be weaker for the first few months.
- What to check before cancelling: that unsubscribed addresses are exported and imported as unsubscribed, not as fresh contacts. Emailing people who asked you to stop is the one migration mistake that can genuinely damage your sender reputation.
The lost history is the only cost that grows with time, so if you're torn between two tools, switching sooner is cheaper than switching later.
Cutting the monthly bill without losing reach
- Archive or remove unsubscribes where they count. On Mailchimp this alone can drop a band.
- Run a re-engagement email once a year. Ask dormant contacts whether they want to stay; remove those who don't respond after a reminder.
- Match the tier to your real sending. On Brevo, check whether your list or your volume is setting the tier.
- Move to yearly billing only after six stable months. The 10% saving at MailerLite and Brevo is worth having once you're sure.
- Don't pay twice for AI writing. If a general assistant already drafts your emails well, the cheapest plan with a good editor may be all you need.
Email tool pricing: questions owners ask
Is there a free email marketing tool with AI for a small list?
For very small lists, yes. Klaviyo's free plan covers up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, with AI subject lines and $5 of Composer usage. MailerLite's free plan covers 250 subscribers with a limited subject-line generator. Brevo's free plan caps sending at 300 emails a day. Beyond a few hundred contacts, expect to pay.
Do unsubscribed contacts count towards my bill?
It depends on the tool. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts, but not archived, cleaned or deleted ones, so archiving old unsubscribes can drop your tier. MailerLite counts only active subscribers, although anyone active during the billing cycle counts even if deleted later. Klaviyo bills on active profiles.
Is Klaviyo worth it for a business that doesn't sell online?
Usually not on price alone. Its strengths are ecommerce data, product recommendations and its Composer agent working from purchase history. A café, studio or service business without an online shop gets less from those features and pays the same as Mailchimp Standard at 2,500 or 5,000 contacts, and more than MailerLite or Brevo.
Should I pay annually to save money?
Only once you're confident in the tool and your list size. MailerLite and Brevo take 10% off for yearly billing, which on a $33 plan saves about $40 a year. If you might switch tools in the first six months, monthly billing costs a little more but keeps you free to leave.
Further reads
- Free AI Tools vs Paid Plans: What a Small Business Should Pay For — When a free plan is genuinely enough.
- Your Software Raised Its Price for AI: Keep, Downgrade or Switch? — What to do when your email tool raises prices for AI.
- How to Plan a Month of Marketing Content With AI in One Hour — Plan a month of newsletters and posts in one sitting.
- How to Build a Brand Voice Guide That AI Can Follow — Make AI-drafted emails sound like your business.
- Is HubSpot Worth Paying For Just for Its AI Features? — If you're weighing an all-in-one CRM instead.
- How Much Does It Cost to Automate Social Media With AI? — The companion costing for social media tools.
- How Cafés Use AI to Fill Quiet Hours With Targeted Offers — Find your café's quiet hours in the till data, design offers for the people free at those times, and measure whether they brought anyone new in.
- How Much Does AI Marketing Cost a Small Business Each Month? — An itemised monthly budget for AI marketing tools, three worked budgets from lean to busy, and the hidden costs that push the bill up.
- How Long Does AI Marketing Automation Take to Set Up and Pay Off? — Setup times and payback windows by automation type, a four-number payback formula and a delicatessen's first seven months, month by month.
- How to Build an Upsell and Cross-Sell Email Sequence With AI — Find what customers really buy next, plan a short triggered sequence, draft it with AI from a proper brief, and stop it the moment someone buys.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Mailchimp pricing data and help article 'About Mailchimp pricing plans'; Klaviyo pricing page and help article 'How your Composer plan works' (updated 9 September 2026); MailerLite pricing page and 'Plan and billing' help page; Brevo pricing page and plan calculator. All prices checked 29 September 2026.