Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Every email platform advertises a starting price for a list you will outgrow in months. We priced the tier that matters, 5,000 contacts, and the spread runs $75 to $100 a month for very different products.
Email platforms publish their prices the way gyms do: the number on the poster is for a membership almost nobody keeps. Omnisend “from $16,” Mailchimp “from $13,” Klaviyo “free to start” are all real prices for lists of a few hundred contacts, and a store doing steady business passes that size within months. So we priced the tier a real store actually lives at: 5,000 contacts.
| Platform and plan | Monthly at 5,000 contacts | Advertised starting price | Send limit at this tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp Essentials | $75 | $13/mo (500 contacts) | 10x contacts |
| Omnisend Standard | $81 | $16/mo (500 contacts) | 12x contacts (60,000) |
| Omnisend Pro | $90 | $59/mo (2,500 contacts) | unlimited |
| Mailchimp Standard | $100 | $20/mo (500 contacts) | 12x contacts |
| Klaviyo Email | $100 | free tier (250 profiles) | 10x contacts |
Two readings of that table. First, the spread is small: $25 a month separates the cheapest and most expensive serious option, which is why platform choice should be made on features and integration depth, not on this line item. Second, every “from” price undersells the real bill by a factor of four to six, so budget on the tier, never on the poster.
Klaviyo’s $100 buys the deepest ecommerce data model of the three: full purchase-history profiles, predictive analytics and the segment engine agencies default to. The same feature set applies at every tier, so you are paying for capacity, not unlocks. SMS is separate and starts at $15/month, taking a combined plan to $115.
Omnisend’s $81 is the quiet value position. Standard covers the automation flows a store actually runs (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase) with a 60,000-email monthly ceiling that a 5,000-contact list rarely hits. Pro at $90 removes the send cap; since May 2026, new subscribers also need Pro for SMS.
Mailchimp’s $75 is cheaper for a reason: Essentials leaves out the multi-step automation that makes email a revenue channel rather than a newsletter tool. The plan you would really run, Standard, costs $100, exactly Klaviyo money without the ecommerce-native data model. Mailchimp also counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts alike toward billing, which quietly inflates the tier you land in.
Multiply by twelve and the stack costs $900 to $1,200 a year at this list size, which for many small stores is more than the platform subscription itself. Two habits keep it honest. First, budget on your list size a year from now, not today; contact-based pricing means the bill tracks your growth, not your sends. Second, clean the list annually: every platform here bills stored contacts, so five hundred dead addresses at the margin of a tier boundary are pure waste. It is the rare line in an ecommerce budget you can cut with zero revenue risk.
$100 per month for the Email plan at the 5,000-profile tier, per Klaviyo's on-page pricing calculator as of July 2026. Adding SMS starts at $15 per month on top, making the combined plan $115. Klaviyo bills on all active profiles stored, not just the ones you send to.
The 4,501-5,000 contact tier is priced at $81 per month on Standard (with email sends capped at 12 times your contact count) and $90 per month on Pro (unlimited emails), per the tier table on Omnisend's pricing page in July 2026.
On list price, yes: Mailchimp Essentials is $75 per month at 5,000 contacts versus Klaviyo's $100. But Essentials lacks the multi-step automation that ecommerce stores usually buy these tools for; Mailchimp Standard, which has it, is $100, the same as Klaviyo. Comparing entry tiers to Klaviyo's single tier flatters Mailchimp.
Because these platforms bill on stored contacts, and lists only grow. Unsubscribed and inactive profiles can still count against your tier depending on platform and settings, so an annual list cleaning is one of the few genuinely free cost cuts in ecommerce.