- Three pricing models, and why the label matters more than the number
- What agencies charge, by business size
- A real quote I sat across the table for
- The uncomfortable part nobody puts in the pitch deck
- What drives the price up or down
- Questions to ask before you sign
- When it's cheaper to skip the agency entirely
- What I'd do
- Frequently asked questions
- Sources worth reading
The short version: most email marketing agencies charge £800 to £3,000 a month for small businesses, £3,000 to £10,000 a month for mid-size ecommerce brands, and either a flat retainer, an hourly rate of £75 to £200, or a percentage of email-attributed revenue (usually 5 to 15 percent) for bigger accounts. Setup fees for flow builds, migrations, and design usually sit between £500 and £5,000 on top. The price tells you almost nothing about the quality until you ask what's in the box.
Three pricing models, and why the label matters more than the number
Agencies quote in one of three ways, and each one shapes how they behave once you've signed the contract.
- Flat monthly retainer. You pay a fixed fee, usually £800 to £5,000 a month, for a set scope: a number of campaigns, flow maintenance, list segmentation, reporting. Predictable, but the agency has no direct financial reason to push harder once the invoice is paid.
- Hourly or project rate. £75 to £200 an hour in the UK, sometimes £250 for senior strategists at bigger agencies. Good for one-off jobs like a Klaviyo migration or a full flow rebuild, less good for ongoing work because hours have a habit of expanding.
- Percentage of revenue. Common with ecommerce-focused shops, usually 5 to 15 percent of revenue the agency's tools attribute to email. This aligns incentives on paper, but it also means the agency gets paid more the more often they email your list, which is not the same thing as getting paid more for emailing it well.
What agencies charge, by business size
Numbers vary by region and agency reputation, but here's what I've seen quoted repeatedly across UK and US agencies in the past two years.
Small business or solo brand (under £500k revenue)
£800 to £2,000 a month. This usually buys two to four campaigns a month, basic list cleaning, one or two automated flows (welcome sequence, abandoned cart), and a monthly report you'll probably skim rather than read. Some freelancers and micro-agencies will do this for £400 to £600, but at that price you're often getting a template swapped with your logo, not real strategy.
Growing ecommerce brand (£500k to £5m revenue)
£2,000 to £6,000 a month, or 5 to 10 percent of email revenue. This tier usually includes proper segmentation, A/B testing on subject lines and send times, a full flow library (welcome, browse abandonment, cart abandonment, post-purchase, win-back, replenishment), and a dedicated account manager who knows your product.
Mid-market and enterprise (£5m plus)
£6,000 to £15,000+ a month, frequently structured as a percentage of attributed revenue plus a retainer floor. At this level you're paying for a strategist, a copywriter, a designer, and a data analyst, effectively a small in-house team rented by the month.
Setup and onboarding fees
Separate from the monthly fee. Expect £500 to £1,500 for a basic setup (list import, template design, one or two flows), £2,000 to £5,000 for a full migration between platforms (say, Mailchimp to Klaviyo) with custom design and full flow builds. Agencies rarely volunteer this number upfront. Ask for it in writing before you sign anything.
A real quote I sat across the table for
A couple of years ago, while I was rebuilding my own client roster after five rough years in business, I sat in on pricing calls for a skincare brand doing around £40,000 a month in revenue. Three agencies quoted for the same scope: full flow rebuild, four campaigns a month, monthly reporting.
Agency one quoted £950 a month flat. Agency two quoted £2,400 a month flat. Agency three quoted 8 percent of email-attributed revenue, which at the brand's current numbers would have landed around £1,800 a month but could climb fast if the strategy worked.
The £950 quote looked like the obvious winner on paper. It wasn't. When we asked what was included, agency one offered two campaigns a month with templated design and no A/B testing. Agency two included full copywriting, design, testing, and a monthly strategy call. The client went with agency two and their email revenue share grew from 12 percent of total revenue to 21 percent within five months. The cheap quote would have cost more in lost revenue than it saved in fees.
The uncomfortable part nobody puts in the pitch deck
Here's the bit most agency sales pages skip. A flat retainer with no clear deliverables is an invitation for an agency to do the bare minimum. I've seen clients pay £1,500 a month for "ongoing email marketing" and get two campaigns sent by a junior account manager spending maybe three hours a month on their account, an effective rate of £500 an hour for work that took no strategic thought at all. The agency isn't lying to you. They're just not volunteering how thin the actual labour is behind the invoice.
On the flip side, percentage-of-revenue deals have their own quiet problem: an agency paid on email-attributed revenue has every reason to email your list more often, not smarter. More sends usually means more short-term revenue and faster list fatigue, higher unsubscribe rates, and a slow erosion of deliverability that shows up eighteen months later as an inbox placement problem nobody can quite explain. Ask any agency proposing a percentage deal exactly how they define "attributed revenue" and what send-frequency caps they've agreed to. If they can't answer both questions in one sentence, that's your answer.
What drives the price up or down
- List size and complexity. A 5,000-contact list with one product line costs less to manage than a 200,000-contact list segmented across three brands.
- Platform. Klaviyo specialists tend to charge more than generalist agencies working across Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot, partly because Klaviyo work is more technical and partly because it's the platform most ecommerce brands with real budgets are on.
- Copywriting and design in-house vs outsourced. Agencies with in-house copywriters and designers charge more but you avoid the handoff delays of briefing a third party.
- Reporting depth. A one-page monthly PDF costs less to produce than a live dashboard with cohort analysis. Ask which one you're getting before you compare prices.
Questions to ask before you sign
- How many campaigns and flows are included, specifically, not "ongoing support"?
- Who does the actual work, a named senior strategist or a rotating junior team?
- What counts as attributed revenue, and over what click or open window?
- What happens to the flows and templates if we leave, do we keep them?
- What's the setup fee, in writing, before the retainer starts?
If you're already juggling several tools and vendor invoices, it's worth a wider look at what your whole stack costs before adding another retainer; I've written a step-by-step breakdown on how to reduce marketing tech stack costs that applies just as well to agency spend as it does to software subscriptions.
When it's cheaper to skip the agency entirely
If your list is under 2,000 contacts and you're sending fewer than four campaigns a month, a £1,500 monthly retainer is usually overkill. AI writing tools and platform-native automation (Klaviyo's and ActiveCampaign's built-in flow templates, for instance) can get a small business 70 to 80 percent of the way there for the cost of the software subscription alone, often £30 to £150 a month. I cover the real time savings of bringing AI tools into a small operation in my piece on how much time an AI consultant saves a ten-person business, and the same maths applies to email: the question isn't whether AI can write a decent welcome sequence, it's whether anyone on your team has the two hours a month to set it up and check it. If you're weighing whether to bring in outside help at all, whether that's an agency or a specialist consultant, it's worth seeing real numbers first; I've broken down how much an AI consultant costs so you can compare that route against a traditional agency retainer before you commit either way.
For context on how email spend stacks up against other channels, I've also compared rates for influencer marketing costs by follower size and set out what you should pay for influencer marketing, since most small businesses I talk to are splitting a limited budget between the two channels without a clear sense of which one earns its keep.
Want AI doing the heavy lifting in your marketing?
I build the systems that handle the boring 80 percent, so you get your week back. Done properly, with the human kept in.
What I'd do
Get three quotes, ask each agency to itemise deliverables rather than describe them in vague terms, and pick based on named senior staff and clear reporting definitions rather than the lowest number on the page. Pay for setup separately and negotiate a 90-day trial period before committing to a 12-month contract, most agencies will agree to this if asked directly. And whatever model you land on, put a send-frequency cap in the contract. It's the one line that protects your list's long-term health from short-term revenue targets.
Related reading: how much does ranveer allahbadia charge for a podcast.
See also the email marketing guest post page.
Related: ai consultant ecommerce brands where hours go.
Related: working with an ai consultant vs ai agency small business.
If you're ready to send newsletters and automated emails, my roundup of the best email marketing software for small business compares the options.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an email marketing agency cost per month for a small business?
Most small businesses pay £800 to £2,000 a month for two to four campaigns, basic segmentation, and one or two automated flows, plus a separate one-off setup fee of £500 to £1,500.
Do email marketing agencies charge a percentage of revenue?
Some do, usually 5 to 15 percent of email-attributed revenue, most common with ecommerce agencies on Klaviyo. Always ask how "attributed" is defined and whether there's a send-frequency cap, since this model can encourage more frequent emailing over better emailing.
Is it cheaper to hire a freelancer than an agency for email marketing?
Often yes for a straightforward setup, freelancers typically charge £300 to £1,000 a month or £50 to £150 an hour, but you lose the backup team, the design resource, and the accountability that comes with an agency contract.
What's included in a typical email marketing agency retainer?
A standard retainer usually covers a set number of campaigns, maintenance of core automated flows (welcome, cart abandonment, post-purchase), list segmentation, and monthly reporting. Copywriting, design, and A/B testing are sometimes extra, so it's worth confirming exactly what's bundled before comparing quotes across agencies.
