What should email marketing actually cost you?
Two numbers decide your bill: how many people are on your list, and how often you email them. Most platforms only charge you for the first one — which is why the invoice grows even in months you barely send.
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Your numbers
Your own invoice beats any figure we could assert about another platform’s pricing.
Why the same list costs wildly different amounts
Email platforms bill on one of two units. Per contact stored means your price is set by the size of your database — every subscriber counts every month, whether you email them or not, and on some plans that includes people who have already unsubscribed. Per email sent means your price is set by what you actually do.
Neither model is inherently cheaper. They cross over at a point that depends entirely on your cadence. A 50,000-person list emailed once a month is 50,000 sends and very cheap under send-based billing, while under per-contact billing it costs the same as if you emailed daily. Reverse it — a 2,000-person list emailed every weekday — and per-contact pricing starts looking reasonable, because you are sending 40,000 emails to a database you are barely paying to store.
The reason this matters in practice is that most lists are lopsided in the first direction. Lists grow through lead magnets, seasonal campaigns, webinars and one-off promotions, and they grow faster than sending frequency does. So the gap between what you pay and what you use tends to widen over time, quietly, without anything on your invoice changing to tell you.
The test worth running on your own account
Open your email platform and find two figures: total contacts, and emails sent last month. Divide the second by the first. If the answer is below about four, you are sending fewer than one email per contact per week, and per-contact billing is charging you for storage you are not using. If it is above ten, your cadence is high enough that per-contact pricing may genuinely be the better deal — and you should not switch on cost grounds.
The other half of the calculation is what else is on the bill. A great many teams pay for a marketing tool, a form builder, a landing-page tool, a transactional provider and a CRM separately. If two or more of those are on your invoice, compare the total rather than the line item, because all five are included here.
What this calculator does not do
It does not quote another platform’s price at you. Competitor pricing varies by plan, region, contract length and grandfathering, and any single figure we asserted would be wrong for a large share of readers. The reference estimate shown when you leave the current-bill field blank uses the same anchors published on our comparison pages, and it is clearly labelled as an estimate. Enter your real invoice for a number that means something.
It also will not tell you to switch when the arithmetic says otherwise. If you are paying less than the figure it returns, it says so.
Questions
How is Bluey priced?
By emails sent, with unlimited contacts from 20,000 sends a month up on every plan. Spark runs from ₹300 / $7 a month for 6,000 emails up to ₹1,500 / $36 for 30,000. Grow starts at ₹2,500 / $30 for 50,000 emails and reaches 1,000,000 for ₹15,000 / $180. Business covers volumes from 180,000 up to 10,000,000 emails a month.
Does the number of contacts affect my bill at all?
Only indirectly — more contacts usually means more emails when you send a campaign, and emails are what you pay for. Storing contacts costs nothing, which is why importing a large store or CRM does not move you up a tier.
What counts as an email sent?
Each individual message delivered to a recipient. A campaign to 10,000 people is 10,000 sends. Automated flow emails count the same way. Marketing and transactional sending are metered separately, so a busy month of receipts does not consume your campaign allowance.
Is the competitor estimate reliable?
It is a reasonable illustration for a mid-tier plan at a given contact count, drawn from the published anchors on our own comparison pages — not a quote. Real pricing varies by plan, region and contract, and grandfathered plans can be far cheaper. Enter your actual bill instead; it is the only figure that is definitely right.
Do you charge for unsubscribed contacts?
No. You cannot email them, so there is nothing to charge for. This is worth checking on your current platform — some plans count unsubscribed contacts toward your billable total, which means paying monthly for people who explicitly asked you to stop.
What if my volume is above the published tiers?
Published plans run to 10,000,000 emails a month. Above that, get in touch and we will price it properly rather than point you at a tier that does not fit.
Keep exploring
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