Short answer: the email platform is the part with a public price, and it grows with your list. Mailchimp is free under 250 contacts, Klaviyo up to 250 active profiles, and Brevo up to 300 emails a day. For about 500 contacts, their paid plans cost $9.00 to $20.00 a month; at 5,000 contacts, $75.00 to $100.00 on Mailchimp and Klaviyo. Someone still has to write the campaigns: you, a freelancer, an agency or a person on staff. Our email campaigns, two a month, cost $650.00 a month, and your platform bills you separately. Texts are their own cost: a fee per message plus a carrier registration.
Four ways to run your email marketing
Email marketing has two bills. One is the platform that holds the list and sends the emails. The other is the work: deciding what to send, writing it, designing it and checking what happened after. The options below differ in who does that work.
| Option | What you pay | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| You, on an email platform | Free to $20.00 a month for about 500 contacts on the plans below | Templates, sign-up forms, sending and reports. The ideas, the writing and the list are yours to handle. |
| A freelancer | A fee per campaign, per month or per hour, plus the platform | The campaigns the agreement lists, usually from your platform account. |
| An agency | A monthly fee, plus the platform. Ours is $650.00 a month for two campaigns | Planning, writing, design, sending and a report, as the plan counts them. |
| A person on staff | $6,582.50 a month at the median in the Miami area, plus benefits | Someone in-house who can also take on other marketing work. The platform is extra. |
Sources: the pricing pages of the platforms below, read October 20, 2026. BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach. Our price: pricing page.
Freelancers and agencies set their own fees, and we found no study of email marketing fees that names its sample and how it was done. So you won't find an average fee here, only prices we could read on the sellers' own pages.
What email platforms cost to start
We read the pricing pages of four platforms on October 20, 2026. Prices are in US dollars, per month, for the smallest list each paid plan covers.
| Plan and what it includes | A month |
|---|---|
| Mailchimp Free Under 250 contacts | Free |
| Klaviyo Free Up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month | Free |
| Brevo Free Up to 300 emails a day | Free |
| Brevo Starter 5,000 emails a month and 500 contacts. $8.08 a month billed yearly. Removing the Brevo logo is an add-on | $9.00 |
| Constant Contact Lite Billed yearly. Sends up to 10 times your contacts, 1 custom segment | From $10.20 |
| Mailchimp Essentials 500 contacts, sends up to 10 times your contacts, automations of up to 4 steps | $13.00 |
| Mailchimp Standard 500 contacts, sends up to 12 times your contacts, up to 200 automation flows | $20.00 |
| Klaviyo Email 500 active profiles and 5,000 emails a month | $20.00 |
| Constant Contact Standard Billed yearly. Sends up to 12 times your contacts, 3 users, 10 custom segments | From $29.75 |
Sources: the pricing pages of Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo and Constant Contact, US prices read October 20, 2026. Klaviyo's first month had a $19.00 discount on the 500-profile plan that day.
Mailchimp and Constant Contact charge by contacts, with a monthly send limit tied to that number. Klaviyo charges by active profiles. Brevo charges by emails a month, and the number of contacts it allows rises with that number.
Going over the limit costs extra. Mailchimp bills overages when you pass your contact or send limit. Constant Contact keeps sending and charges $2.00 for every 1,000 sends over the allowance. A free plan has fewer features: Klaviyo's includes email support only for the first 60 days.
How the price grows with your list
The entry price only lasts while the list is small. These are the monthly prices on the same pages for bigger lists:
| Your list | Mailchimp Essentials | Mailchimp Standard | Klaviyo Email |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $13.00 | $20.00 | $20.00 |
| 1,500 | $26.50 | $45.00 | $45.00 |
| 2,500 | $45.00 | $60.00 | $60.00 |
| 5,000 | $75.00 | $100.00 | $100.00 |
| 10,000 | $110.00 | $135.00 | $150.00 |
Sources: the pricing pages of Mailchimp (price for each contact range, monthly plans) and Klaviyo (Email, by active profiles), read October 20, 2026.
From 500 to 5,000 contacts, the list grows ten times and the bill five to six times. Mailchimp took 15% off the first 12 months for lists of 10,000 contacts that day: $93.50 instead of $110.00 on Essentials.
Keeping the list costs money every month. Removing addresses that bounce or haven't clicked in months keeps you on a lower tier. Google adds that spam reports from people who didn't want your emails can lower your domain's reputation.
What texting costs
Texts are billed per message, and in the US every business texting from a regular 10-digit number has to be registered with the carriers first. That registration is called A2P 10DLC. Twilio, a texting provider for businesses, publishes these prices:
| Twilio, from a 10-digit number | Price |
|---|---|
| Sending Twilio's fee per text segment | $8.30 per 1,000 |
| Carrier fee Added per text segment: AT&T $3.50, T-Mobile $4.50, Verizon $5.00 per 1,000 | $3.50 to $5.00 per 1,000 |
| Phone number | $1.15 a month |
| Brand registration Low-volume brand, under 6,000 texts a day, with a Tax ID. A Standard brand is $46.00 | $4.50 once |
| Campaign vetting | $15.00 |
| Campaign fee $1.50 for low-volume mixed use, $10.00 for a standard campaign | $1.50 to $10.00 a month |
Sources: Twilio's US SMS pricing ("Pricing current as of October 2026") and its help article on A2P 10DLC fees, read October 20, 2026. The registration rule: Twilio's A2P 10DLC guide. Twilio lists its per-text prices in fractions of a cent; we show them per 1,000 texts.
At those prices, 1,000 short texts cost $11.80 to $13.30. For a small sender, the first month adds $22.15 by our calculation: $4.50 for the brand, $15.00 for vetting, $1.50 for the campaign and $1.15 for the number. Email platforms resell texting their own way. Klaviyo lists $0.01 plus carrier fees per text from a toll-free number. Constant Contact sells texting from $10.00 a month for up to 500 messages, and its Premium plan includes 500 a month.
A single text holds 160 characters. One emoji, a curly quotation mark or a letter like "á", "í" or "ó" switches the text to an encoding that holds 70, according to Twilio's character tables. Split into segments, it holds 67 each. A 150-character reminder is one segment in English; the same length in Spanish with "está" in it takes three.
Texts also need a clear yes from each person before you send marketing to them. That's a legal question for your lawyer, not your platform. Our page on email and SMS marketing in Miami sums up what Florida and federal rules say.
What a person on staff costs
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no occupation for email marketing. The nearest is market research analysts and marketing specialists, whose definition says they "plan a marketing or advertising campaign" and "analyze web metrics". Email is one of the jobs such a hire can take on.
| Yearly pay, May 2025 | Miami area | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Median | $78,990.00 | $78,760.00 |
| 25% earn less than | $56,830.00 | $58,350.00 |
| 25% earn more than | $99,560.00 | $108,310.00 |
| 10% earn more than | $128,120.00 | $155,480.00 |
Source: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, market research analysts and marketing specialists (13-1161), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area and the US. Wages only. Definition from the BLS occupation profile.
At the Miami median, $78,990.00 a year is $6,582.50 a month, or $37.98 an hour. Benefits come on top: in June 2026, private employers paid $17.03 an hour in benefits for each $36.97 in wages for full-time workers, according to the BLS survey of employer costs. That puts the median hire close to $115,000.00 a year by our calculation, before the platform.
What moves the price
- List size. Every platform above charges more as the list grows. On Mailchimp and Constant Contact, an old address costs as much as a good one, so clean the list.
- Emails a month. Send limits are tied to the list: up to 10 or 12 times your contacts on Mailchimp's plans and up to 24 times on Constant Contact Premium. A weekly newsletter plus automations can pass a limit sooner than you think.
- Design and writing. A template and one version cost little time. A campaign written for new and returning customers, or in English and Spanish, is two or four versions with their own subject lines.
- Automations. A welcome series, an abandoned cart email or a win-back email keep working once they're set up. They take time to build, and they need a plan that allows them. Mailchimp Essentials allows automations of up to 4 steps; Standard allows up to 200 flows.
- Segments. Sending by type of customer or language takes more setup and sometimes a higher plan: Constant Contact Lite includes 1 custom segment, Standard 10.
- Delivery. Google asks everyone who sends to Gmail for SPF or DKIM and a spam rate under 0.30%. Above 5,000 messages a day to Gmail, it asks for SPF, DKIM and DMARC, plus one-click unsubscribe. Yahoo asks bulk senders to honor unsubscribes within 2 days. Setting up those records on your domain is a one-time job someone has to do. Sources: Google's sender guidelines and Yahoo's sender best practices.
- The law. The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide says the law covers all commercial email, not only bulk email, and makes no exception for business-to-business email. The same guide puts the penalty at up to $53,088.00 for each email in violation.
What our email campaigns cost
On our pricing page this service is "Email campaigns (2 a month)": $650.00 a month, month to month.
- Each month: two campaigns, each written for up to 4 segments by language and type of customer, in English, Spanish or both at the same price.
- Your platform: we send from your own account, such as Mailchimp, Klaviyo or HubSpot, so the list and its history stay yours. Its subscription isn't included.
- After each send: a short report. Every quarter, we clean the list. We never use bought or rented lists.
- With other plans: it's included in the Pro content plan, and with an active PPC plan it costs $150.00 less a month.
- Texts: follow-up and reminders to new leads are part of our automation service, with the price on the call, and text campaigns get their own quote. We register your number in your name, and you pay the message fees to the texting provider after a written estimate.
Prices don't include sales tax; where Florida applies it, it goes on the invoice. More detail: email and SMS marketing and pricing. If you also want posts on Facebook and Instagram, our article on what social media management costs covers that budget.
Frequently asked questions
How much does email marketing cost for a small business?
The platform is free under 250 contacts and costs $9.00 to $20.00 a month for about 500. At 5,000 contacts, it's $75.00 to $100.00 on Mailchimp or Klaviyo. The writing is the larger cost if you pay for it. Our two campaigns a month cost $650.00, and the platform bills you separately.
How much does an email marketing agency charge?
Agencies set their own fees, so ask what a month includes: how many campaigns, how many versions, who designs them and whether you get a report. Ours is $650.00 a month, month to month, for two campaigns in up to 4 segments, in English, Spanish or both.
Is there a free email marketing platform?
Yes, for small lists. Mailchimp is free under 250 contacts, Klaviyo's free plan covers 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, and Brevo's sends up to 300 emails a day. Free plans have fewer features and less support, and they stop being free once the list grows.
How much does SMS marketing cost?
On Twilio, 1,000 short texts from a 10-digit number cost $11.80 to $13.30 with carrier fees. Registering that number with the carriers adds $4.50 once for a small brand, $15.00 to vet the campaign and $1.50 to $10.00 a month. A Spanish text with accents can take more segments.
Is the email platform included in an agency's fee?
Ask, because agencies handle it differently. With us it never is: the platform stays in your name and bills you directly, so the list and its history stay with you if you leave. Mailchimp, Klaviyo and Brevo all list their plan prices, so you can see that cost before you sign.
Before you sign up or hire anyone
Get these answers in writing:
- Whose account holds the list?
- What does the plan cost at twice the list you have today?
- Which automations are included?
- Who sets up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain?
If your business is in Miami, see email and SMS marketing in Miami for how we handle consent and the STOP reply.
