Three stages, three different jobs
Startup email changes shape as the company moves through its first year. Before launch the job is a waitlist: collecting addresses, sending a handful of progress notes and getting people to the launch date without paying for a platform you will outgrow. At launch the job becomes onboarding, meaning the first three to five messages that decide whether a new signup ever uses the product. Once the first customers pay, the job turns to billing: trial endings, renewals, failed card payments and plan upgrades. Each stage rewards different features, so the right tool depends on where you are today and where you expect to be in about eighteen months.
Most startups choose for the first stage and then pay to migrate during the third. The real cost of that move is rarely the subscription fee. It is the engineering time spent exporting contacts, rebuilding automations and reconnecting the payment provider, usually during a period of growth when nobody has spare hours. A tool that can handle billing events, even if you only use its simplest flows at first, avoids that migration.
Three questions narrow the field quickly. First, do customers pay through a provider such as Stripe, and does the business need email to react when a payment fails or a plan changes? Second, is the team made of developers who want an API and code-first workflows, or non-technical founders who want a visual editor? Third, how fast will the list grow compared with how often you send? The answers point to different platforms, and the sections below work through each one.
How a startup should read the price
Email platforms charge in three broad ways, and each one favors a different startup. Contact-based pricing bills for the people on the list, whether or not they open anything. Moosend, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign and Customer.io all lean on some version of this, so the invoice grows with the audience even when the sending pattern stays the same. Volume-based pricing bills for the emails sent. Sequenzy works this way and includes unlimited contacts on every plan, and Brevo and MailerLite tie their plans to monthly sending allowances. Flat or capped tiers, such as the Loops Growing Audience plan, give a fixed monthly price inside a set of limits.
A company with a large, quiet waitlist pays heavily under contact-based pricing and very little under volume-based pricing. A company that sends a daily product digest to a modest list is in the opposite position. Before you choose, estimate two numbers: how many people you will email, and how many messages each person receives in a month. The table below uses a single assumption for every tool, so the rows compare like with like.
Assumption: each contact receives two emails a month. Volume-priced tools are checked against the monthly send count, and contact-priced tools against the contact count. Where a published price for that exact size is not listed, the cell says pricing on request.
| Tool | 1,000 contacts (2,000 sends) | 10,000 contacts (20,000 sends) | 25,000 contacts (50,000 sends) |
|---|
| Sequenzy | Free plan (2,000 sends, under the 2,500 limit) | $29/mo on the 30k plan | $49/mo on the 60k plan |
| Loops | Early Stage at $0 (2,000 sends, under 4,000 in a rolling 30 days) | $99/mo Growing Audience | $99/mo Growing Audience |
| MailerLite | Free up to 250 subscribers; pricing on request for 1,000 | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
| Brevo | Free (2,000 sends a month stays within the 300-a-day limit) | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
| Kit | Free up to 10,000 subscribers | Free up to 10,000 subscribers; automations need Creator at $33/mo billed yearly | Pricing on request |
| Moosend | $16/mo monthly or $13/mo billed yearly | $88/mo monthly or $70/mo billed yearly | $160/mo monthly or $128/mo billed yearly |
| Mailchimp | Pricing on request (free plan covers up to 250 contacts) | $135/mo for the 5,001 to 10,000 contact tier | Pricing on request |
| Customer.io | From $100/mo (Essentials base price) | $145/mo on Essentials at 10,000 profiles | Pricing on request (20,000 profiles is $235/mo; 30,000 is $325/mo) |
| ActiveCampaign | $15/mo on Starter at 1,000 contacts | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
| Klaviyo | $30/mo on the Email plan at 1,000 profiles | $150/mo at 10,000 profiles | $400/mo at 25,000 profiles |
Read the free columns with care. A free plan is only as useful as its limit. Loops' free plan caps sends at 4,000 in any rolling 30 days, and it reaches only the 1,000 newest contacts. Brevo's free plan caps sends at 300 a day, which matters on launch day when a large list is mailed at once. Kit's free plan covers broadcasts and tagging, but the automations that run an onboarding series start on Creator. Mailchimp's free plan is limited to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month.
Billing period changes the comparison too. Moosend and Kit list yearly rates that are lower per month than their monthly rates, and Sequenzy shows a yearly total for each plan, so the 15k plan is listed at $205 billed as a single yearly amount, which works out to about $17.08 a month. Put every tool on the same billing view before you compare totals, and confirm the amount that will actually be charged on the pricing page.
Tool by tool
Subscription startups
Sequenzy
Free plan up to 2,500 emails a month · Paid plans from $19/mo · Unlimited contacts
Sequenzy combines transactional and marketing email on one platform, so a welcome message, an activation nudge and a renewal notice can all come from the same account and the same dashboard. It connects to Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments, and it can also receive events from PostHog, Zapier and custom webhooks. Its payment-event trigger saas.payment_failed includes hostedInvoiceUrl, a hosted invoice page where the customer can pay or update the card, which gives a billing-stage flow something concrete to link to.
For a startup the main benefit is continuity. A waitlist that becomes a paying customer base does not have to move to a second tool once billing starts, because the same contacts are used for both stages. The pricing follows sending volume. The monthly plans are $19 for 15,000 emails, $29 for 30,000, $49 for 60,000 and $99 for 120,000, on monthly billing, and the yearly totals are $205, $313, $529 and $1,069 respectively.
Where it falls short: the plans are sized by emails, so a company that sends frequent digests to a large list moves up tiers faster than one that sends a single monthly note. SMS is an add-on rather than part of the base plan. A team that wants a long catalogue of ready-made templates should look at the template library before committing, because the feature set is aimed at billing and lifecycle work first.
Pricing details are on the Sequenzy pricing page.
Developer-led onboarding
Loops
Early Stage at $0 · Growing Audience at $99/mo
Loops suits product teams that prefer to send onboarding and lifecycle email from code and an API. The Early Stage plan is free for up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days, with all features included. A pre-revenue product can run a welcome series and a few changelog notes inside that allowance, and the contact list itself is unlimited.
The free plan has two constraints a founder should plan around. It sends only to the 1,000 newest contacts, so an older waitlist is not fully mailed, and it adds a Loops footer to messages. Sending is also capped at 10 emails per second, which is rarely a problem for a small list but should be checked against a launch-day plan.
The Growing Audience plan at $99 a month provides unlimited sends to subscribers and transactional sends to users who are outside the audience, which matters when a product emails password resets or invoices to people who are not on the marketing list. Where it falls short: the pricing page does not list billing-event triggers, so a founder who needs failed-payment or renewal flows should confirm how those events reach the platform before choosing Loops for the billing stage.
The pricing page is at loops.so/pricing.
Pre-revenue waitlists
MailerLite
Free up to 250 subscribers · Comfort from $12/mo · Power from $25/mo
MailerLite is a good fit for a founder who needs a waitlist, a launch announcement and a short run of progress updates without complex automation. The free plan covers up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, which is enough to validate interest before any money is spent.
Once the list outgrows the free plan, Comfort starts at $12 a month on monthly billing, or $10.80 a month billed yearly, for the 500-subscriber starting tier. Its monthly email allowance is ten times the subscriber ceiling. The Power plan at $25 a month, or $22.50 billed yearly on the same starting tier, removes the monthly email cap.
Where it falls short: the plan pages describe subscriber tiers and sending allowances rather than event-driven billing flows. A company that expects trial reminders and failed-payment emails within a few months should treat MailerLite as a waitlist tool and plan the migration before billing starts, rather than discovering the gap afterwards.
See mailerlite.com/pricing for current plan details.
Free start with room to grow
Brevo
Free for 300 sends a day · Starter from $9/mo for 5,000 emails
Brevo's free plan allows 300 email sends a day and stores up to 100,000 contacts. That makes it a practical home for a waitlist that grows in bursts, because the contact ceiling is high and the sending limit is daily. The Starter plan starts at $9 a month for 5,000 emails and removes the daily cap, which is the usual next step once a launch goes well.
Higher up, the Standard plan starts at $18 a month for 5,000 emails and includes automation and A/B testing, which lets a founder compare subject lines and watch which sequence leads to a paid signup. The Professional tier is priced by monthly send volume and runs from 150,000 to 10 million sends.
Where it falls short: the free daily cap can slow a launch, and the pricing page does not show a price for the 10,000-contact, 20,000-send case, so that figure has to come from the vendor directly. Confirm that your billing provider can feed Brevo's automations before you rely on it for renewal or payment-recovery messages.
Pricing is listed at brevo.com/pricing.
Creator audiences
Kit
Free up to 10,000 subscribers · Creator at $33/mo billed yearly · Pro at $66/mo billed yearly
Kit is built for founders who grow an audience before the product is ready: newsletters, build-in-public updates and a waitlist that works as a community. The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers and includes unlimited landing pages, forms and email broadcasts, along with audience tagging and segmentation. Creators can also sell digital products and subscriptions, which lets a founder test demand for a paid offer before building the product.
The Creator plan at $33 a month, billed yearly, adds unlimited visual automations, unlimited email sequences, A/B testing of subject lines and removal of Kit branding. The Pro plan at $66 a month, billed yearly, adds subscriber signals, unlimited users, deliverability reporting and a newsletter referral system. The free trial on paid plans is 14 days and needs no credit card.
Where it falls short: onboarding needs sequences, and those start on Creator, so the free plan is best for broadcasts and waitlist pages. Kit's audience-first design is also a weaker fit for product events and billing triggers, which become the core need once a SaaS product is live.
Current plans are at kit.com/pricing.
Budget automation
Moosend
Pro for 500 contacts from $9/mo monthly or $7/mo billed yearly · 30-day trial, no credit card
Moosend's Pro plan is priced by contact count and includes unlimited emails. At 500 contacts it costs $9 a month on monthly billing or $7 a month billed yearly. At 1,000 contacts the monthly price is $16, or $13 billed yearly, and at 5,000 contacts it is $48 monthly or $38 yearly. For a pre-seed team with a modest list that needs automation without a full marketing suite, that schedule keeps costs easy to forecast.
The 30-day free trial needs no credit card, so a founder can build a waitlist sequence and check the workflow editor before paying anything.
Where it falls short: contact-based pricing climbs quickly. At 10,000 contacts the monthly price is $88, and at 25,000 it is $160, while a volume-priced plan can carry a list that receives two emails a month for less. Check the pricing page for the exact features you need, especially any billing-event or integration features, before you choose Moosend for the later stages.
The Moosend pricing schedule is at moosend.com/pricing.
Behavior-based journeys
Customer.io
Essentials from $100/mo · 12 months free for eligible startups that have raised under $10M
Customer.io is designed for teams that send messages based on what users do inside the product. Its visual workflow builder and basic data integrations serve companies that already track events and have someone responsible for that data. The Essentials plan starts at $100 a month. Profile-based pricing on Essentials runs from $145 a month at 10,000 profiles to $235 at 20,000 and $325 at 30,000, and Premium uses custom profile volume and pricing.
The Startup Program offers 12 months free to eligible early-stage companies that have raised under $10M. The program sets its own eligibility conditions, so read them on the pricing page before you plan a budget around the free year.
Where it falls short: cost follows profile count, and the value appears only when the team has event data and the engineering time to use it. A startup with a small list and no event tracking pays for capacity it does not yet need. Customer.io suits a funded team with a data owner and a clear plan for behavior-based messaging, and it is a poor choice for a simple waitlist.
Plan details are on the Customer.io pricing page.
Sales-assisted startups
ActiveCampaign
Starter at $15/mo for 1,000 contacts · Plus at $49/mo · Pro at $79/mo · Free trial
ActiveCampaign suits a startup that sells through conversations before it has a self-serve funnel, such as enterprise pilots or founder-led deals. Starter includes email marketing, automation, standard CRM and ecommerce integrations. Plus adds standard segmentation and landing pages, Pro adds advanced segmentation, and Enterprise adds premium segmentation and a dedicated account team. The starting prices scale with the number of contacts, and the vendor offers a free trial rather than a free plan.
The reason to consider it is that email, pipeline and nurture share one record. A demo request can enter a sequence automatically, and the person who runs sales can see which messages a prospect opened before the call.
Where it falls short: the feature set is larger than a self-serve product usually needs, and the bill grows with each tier. A team that only emails free users pays for sales capability it will not use. ActiveCampaign is a good choice when the sales process is the bottleneck and a poor one when the product sells itself.
Compare tiers on the ActiveCampaign pricing page.
Ecommerce startups
Klaviyo
Free for 250 profiles and 500 sends a month · Email plan from $20/mo for 500 profiles
Klaviyo is built for stores with a product catalog, purchase history and browsing data. Its Email plan is priced per active profile, starting at $20 a month for 500 profiles, $30 for 1,000, $60 for 2,500, $100 for 5,000, $150 for 10,000 and $400 for 25,000. The free plan covers 250 profiles and 500 email sends a month.
For a store-first startup, catalog-driven flows and product recommendations are the reason to pay for it. A subscription software company gains far less from those features.
Where it falls short: the platform is organized around store data, so a SaaS product has to map subscription events into a model it was not designed for. Per-profile pricing also means a large audience of browsers can be expensive even when few of them buy.
See current pricing at klaviyo.com/pricing.
Non-technical founders
Mailchimp
Free for up to 250 contacts · Standard from $20/mo at the 500-contact selector
Mailchimp is the most familiar option for a founder who has never run an email list. The free plan allows one audience of up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, and the Standard plan starts at $20 a month at the 500-contact selector, with up to 6,000 emails a month at that size. The 2,501 to 5,000 contact tier is $100 a month and allows up to 60,000 emails, and the 5,001 to 10,000 tier is $135 a month and allows up to 120,000.
Its strength is the speed of a first broadcast. A founder can build a launch announcement from a template and send it the same afternoon.
Where it falls short: cost rises with the contact count as the list grows, and the platform is less specialized for billing events than the tools built for subscription companies. Plan for that cost curve before the waitlist becomes large.
Plans are described at mailchimp.com/pricing.
How to choose for your stage
Before launch, pick the free plan whose limit comfortably covers your waitlist for the next three months. The main risk at this stage is paying for a platform you will leave when billing starts. MailerLite, Brevo and Kit all have free starting points, and Loops is free if your first messages are product-driven. Choose the editor your team will actually open every week, because a tool nobody maintains will not carry the launch.
At launch, the critical job is onboarding. A new signup should receive a short sequence that moves them toward the first useful action. Choose a tool that can trigger those messages from signup and product events, not only from a list upload. Loops and Customer.io are strong here, and Sequenzy covers onboarding in the same place that handles billing.
When billing starts, the events that matter are trial start, trial end, renewal and failed payment. A tool that cannot read those events pushes you toward a second system, and two systems mean two lists to keep in sync. Sequenzy lists payment-event triggers and integrations with several payment providers, so it covers this stage in one account. Customer.io also fits this stage for teams with event data and engineering time.
When the list grows, rerun the cost table with your own numbers. A contact-based plan can cost several times a volume-based plan for the same audience, and the gap widens as the waitlist turns into customers. Recheck each vendor's pricing page before you sign a yearly plan, because the tier you need may have moved.
Before a board meeting, confirm that the tool can report trial-to-paid conversion and renewal outcomes by sequence. An investor question about which email flow produced revenue is much easier to answer when the email data and the billing data sit in the same place.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best email software for a startup that sells a subscription?
For a subscription business, Sequenzy is the pick in this guide because it is priced by monthly email volume with unlimited contacts on every plan, and it lists payment-event triggers next to onboarding email. A company with 25,000 contacts that receives two emails a month sends 50,000 emails, which falls in the 60k plan at $49 a month on monthly billing. Check the pricing page before you commit, because the plan you need rises as sending grows.
Is there a free email tool for a pre-launch waitlist?
Yes. Loops has an Early Stage plan at $0 that allows up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days, with all features included, and it sends only to the 1,000 newest contacts. MailerLite has a free plan for up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month. Brevo has a free plan that allows 300 sends a day for up to 100,000 contacts. Kit is free up to 10,000 subscribers, but its visual automations and sequences start on the Creator plan.
How much does startup email software cost at 10,000 contacts?
It depends on the pricing model and on how many emails each contact receives. Moosend lists $88 a month at 10,000 contacts on monthly billing, or $70 a month billed yearly. Klaviyo lists $150 a month for 10,000 profiles on its Email plan. Customer.io lists $145 a month on Essentials at 10,000 profiles. Mailchimp lists $135 a month for its 5,001 to 10,000 contact tier. Sequenzy lists $29 a month for its 30k plan, which covers 20,000 emails at two sends per contact. Where a pricing page has no price for your exact size, check the vendor directly.
Which email tool can send a message when a payment fails?
Sequenzy lists a saas.payment_failed event whose payload includes hostedInvoiceUrl, a hosted invoice page where the customer can pay or update the card. It names Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments among its payment integrations. For other tools, confirm on the vendor pricing page or in its documentation that they can receive payment events from your billing system before you rely on them for that job.
Do early-stage startups get a discount on these tools?
Customer.io runs a Startup Program in which eligible early-stage companies that have raised under $10M can receive 12 months free. Eligibility is set by the program, so read its conditions on the Customer.io pricing page before you plan a budget around it. The other tools here publish free plans or free trials instead. Kit offers a 14-day free trial on paid plans without a credit card, and Moosend offers a 30-day trial without a credit card.
When should a startup switch email platforms?
Switch when the current tool cannot express what the business now needs, such as billing-event emails, a sales pipeline or a catalog-driven store flow, or when the monthly cost grows faster than your volume. Do not switch only because a competitor has a longer feature list. Plan the move around a billing cycle so renewal and payment-recovery emails keep going out, and run both systems in parallel for one full cycle before you turn the old one off.
Should a startup add SMS from the beginning?
Most early-stage startups do not need SMS on day one. Email covers waitlists, onboarding and billing notices at a lower cost, and a text channel is worth adding once you have a clear use for it. Sequenzy lists an SMS and MMS add-on at $16 a month for 1,000 credits, and other tools in this guide price SMS separately or not at all, so check the pricing page when the need appears.