Does Email Marketing Cost Money to Run? Here's the Actual Breakdown

Straight answer: yes, email marketing costs money to run, and the amount jumps the second your list grows past a few hundred people. The software is the cheapest part of it. The real cost is the time you spend writing, designing, cleaning your list, and fixing deliverability problems, and most people budget for none of that.

If you want to go deeper on this: How to Use AI to Turn One Piece of Content Into Ten (My Actual Process.

The short version, with actual numbers

If you're picturing email marketing as "free tool plus a bit of typing," I need to correct that before you build a budget around it. Here's roughly what it costs at different list sizes, using real platform pricing I've seen clients pay in the past year:

• Under 500 contacts: mostly free. Mailchimp, Brevo, and Kit (formerly ConvertKit) all offer free tiers here, though sending limits are tight.
• 1,000 to 2,500 contacts: expect £15 to £40 a month on Mailchimp or Klaviyo, or as little as £9 a month on Brevo, which prices by email volume rather than list size.
• 5,000 contacts: £50 to £100 a month is typical, depending on how many automations and segments you're running.
• 10,000 to 25,000 contacts: £150 to £400 a month, and this is where a lot of small businesses first feel the pinch, because they signed up when their list was 800 people.
• 50,000-plus contacts on a platform like Klaviyo: £500 to £1,200 a month is normal, and that's before you add SMS.

That's the software. It's the smallest line in the actual budget, and almost nobody mentions the rest.

What people forget to cost in

Here's where I get blunt, because this is the bit that trips up nearly every small business owner I've worked with. The tool subscription is maybe 20% of what email marketing costs you. The other 80% is:

• List cleaning. Tools like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce charge roughly £0.006 to £0.01 per email verified. Clean a 10,000-person list twice a year and you're paying £120 to £200 annually just to stop emailing dead addresses that hurt your sender reputation.
• Design and copy. If you hire this out, a freelance email designer or copywriter typically charges £150 to £400 per campaign, or £800 to £2,500 a month for a retained weekly send.
• Deliverability fixes. A dedicated IP address, domain authentication setup, and warming a new sending domain can eat two to four hours of technical time. If you pay someone to do that, budget £300 to £600 as a one-off.
• Landing pages and opt-in forms. Your email list has to come from somewhere, and building a proper opt-in page costs money too. I've written before about what landing pages cost to build at every price tier, and it's rarely the £0 people assume.
• Your own time. This is the one everyone skips. If it takes you three hours a week to write, format, and schedule a newsletter, and your time is worth even £40 an hour, that's £480 a month you're not writing down anywhere.

A real example, because the numbers only mean something with context

A client of mine, a small events company with about 3,200 people on her list, was paying £29 a month for her email platform and telling everyone email marketing was "basically free." When we sat down and totalled it, she was also paying a freelancer £250 a month for two newsletters, £15 a month for a verification tool she used quarterly, and spending roughly four hours a month herself on subject lines and list segmentation. Her real monthly spend was closer to £340, not £29. The platform bill was the tip of it.

That's not a criticism of her. It's just what happens when the invoice you see is only the software, and everything else gets absorbed into "things I just do."

The uncomfortable bit nobody wants to say out loud

Here's the truth that most cost breakdowns dance around: the free or cheap tiers of email platforms often cost you more in the long run than the paid ones, because they come with worse deliverability, fewer segmentation options, and no dedicated support when your open rates tank overnight for no obvious reason. I've seen businesses stay on a £0 or £13-a-month plan for two years, then wonder why 40% of their emails were landing in spam. Moving to a platform with proper authentication and warm-up support fixed it, but it cost more monthly to do so. Cheap software that doesn't get delivered isn't cheap. It's a slow, invisible tax on every campaign you send, and it's the single biggest hidden cost in this whole topic.

Does the spend pay off?

This is the question that matters more than the raw pricing table. Email marketing has one of the best returns of any channel when it's done with intent, but the payoff depends entirely on timing and relevance, not just having a list. I've written separately about when email marketing is most effective, and the short version is that a badly timed, generic monthly newsletter to a cold list will cost you money without returning much at all, while a well-segmented welcome sequence sent at the right moment can convert at 15 to 20%, several times higher than a blast to everyone.

If you're running an ecommerce store, the number that tells you whether the spend is working isn't opens or even clicks, it's the conversion rate off the back of the email. I've broken down what conversion rate really means for a Shopify store, and the same logic applies to email: a 40% open rate on a campaign that converts nobody is a vanity metric, not a return on spend.

A step-by-step way to budget for it

If you want a realistic number rather than a guess, do this:

• Step 1: Check your current or projected list size and look up the exact pricing tier on whichever platform you're using or considering. Don't round down.
• Step 2: Add £15 to £30 a month for list hygiene tools if your list is over 2,000 contacts, because bounce rates creep up over time regardless of how careful you are.
• Step 3: Price out design and copy honestly. If you're doing it yourself, multiply your hourly rate by the hours it takes, not the hours you'd like it to take.
• Step 4: Add one-off setup costs for domain authentication if you're new to sending, roughly £300 to £600 if you're paying someone to do it right the first time.
• Step 5: Add the cost of building your opt-in mechanism, whether that's a landing page, a pop-up tool, or a lead magnet you had designed.
• Step 6: Total it, then divide by how many sales or bookings the list realistically generates in a month, so you know your actual cost per conversion rather than cost per email.

Most businesses I work with, once they run this, land somewhere between £150 and £600 a month total for a list under 10,000 people, once every real cost is counted, not just the software line.

Where your list even comes from matters for cost too

One more thing that quietly affects the price: how you built the list in the first place. Buying lists, scraping addresses, or emailing anyone who ever handed you a business card at a conference will get your domain flagged fast, and fixing a flagged domain costs far more than the list ever saved you in shortcuts. I've gone into this in detail in a piece on what email distribution lists are and how to use them without getting your domain flagged, and it's worth reading before you send a single campaign, because a flagged domain doesn't just cost money to fix, it can take weeks to recover the sending reputation.

So, is it worth the money

Yes, almost always, but only if you count the whole bill before you start rather than halfway through year two. Email marketing at a small business scale, once every cost is included, usually sits somewhere between £2 and £8 a month per hundred subscribers when you total software, cleaning, and content. Against that, a single well-timed campaign to an engaged list can produce more revenue in one send than a month of social media posting. The maths works. The mistake is assuming the maths starts and ends with the subscription price.

For contributors covering this area, read guest post guidelines for email marketers.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a truly free way to do email marketing?

Yes, up to a point. Most platforms including Mailchimp, Kit, and Brevo offer free tiers for lists under 500 to 2,500 contacts depending on the platform, but sending limits, template options, and support are restricted, and you'll outgrow it faster than you expect.

How much should a small business budget monthly for email marketing?

For a list under 5,000 contacts, budget £50 to £300 a month once you include the platform, list cleaning, and either your own time or a freelancer's fee for writing and design.

Why does email marketing get more expensive as my list grows?

Most platforms price by contact count or email volume, so every price band you cross (500, 2,500, 10,000 contacts) triggers a new pricing tier, and it can jump significantly, sometimes doubling, right at those thresholds.

Is a cheap email platform cheaper in the long run?

Not always. Cheaper tiers often have weaker deliverability and fewer authentication features, which can mean more of your emails land in spam, costing you sales you never see reflected in the invoice.

Where to check the details

• the UK Information Commissioner's guidance on direct marketing