Updated October 5, 2026 · Prices read from vendor pricing pages: ActiveCampaign September 30, 2026, GetResponse October 1, 2026 (re-verified October 3), MailerLite September 21, 2026 (nightly re-checks through October 3), Klaviyo September 24, 2026 (re-checked October 1), Omnisend October 4, 2026, Kit October 2, 2026, Mailchimp October 1, 2026, Brevo September 30, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure

What Email Marketing Costs at 1,000 Subscribers

Q: What happens when I cross 1,000 subscribers?

The first band step is the steepest of the whole ladder on every vendor we read. MailerLite jumps from $19 to $33 a month at subscriber 1,001 — $168 a year more, a 74% increase for one name. GetResponse moves Starter from $19 to $29 — $120 a year more, a 53% increase. Omnisend moves Standard from $20 to $25 — $60 a year more, 25%. Klaviyo's finer ladder (49 published rungs) steps in smaller increments, Kit stays free to 10,000, and ActiveCampaign publishes no price above 1,000 contacts at all.

Q: Is 1,000 subscribers still free anywhere?

On contact-based pricing, only Kit, whose free plan carries a 1,000-subscriber list all the way to 10,000 with unlimited sends on one seat. Brevo can also carry a 1,000-contact list on its free plan if sending stays under 300 emails a day, because it bills monthly email volume rather than contacts. Every other free ceiling in the category sits at or below 500 — MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo cut their free plans at 250 accounts, and GetResponse's first paid band starts at 1,000.

Q: Is annual billing worth it at 1,000 subscribers?

Yes, and the discounts differ more than the sticker prices. GetResponse's 12-month prepay costs $186.96 against $228 — an 18% saving, the deepest we verified at this size. MailerLite's yearly rate is $205.20 ($17.10 a month, 10% off the same $228). ActiveCampaign's printed $15 already assumes yearly billing — $180 a year; its monthly rate is $18, a 20% premium for flexibility. Klaviyo and Omnisend publish no annual rate at any size, so $360 and $240 are arithmetic, not an option you can choose.

Q: Why don't Mailchimp and Brevo publish a 1,000-subscriber price?

Two different mechanisms, one result. Mailchimp's US page renders one contact band at a time inside a plan selector, and its published figures stop at the 0–500 band, so no 1,000-contact price exists in the page source. Brevo bills monthly email volume rather than contacts, and its contact-by-volume matrix lives only inside an on-page calculator. We leave both blank rather than estimate.

TL;DR: At 1,000 subscribers, the published bills span $0 to $30 a month — and this is the only size at which every contact-band vendor we cover can actually quote a number. Kit's free plan carries the whole list for nothing. ActiveCampaign Starter bills $15 (its yearly rate; $18 monthly), GetResponse Starter and MailerLite Comfort both bill $19, Omnisend Standard $20, Klaviyo $30 ($360 a year, no annual rate published). Mailchimp and Brevo print nothing usable at this size. And the step past 1,000 is the steepest of the entire ladder: MailerLite jumps $19 → $33 at subscriber 1,001 — $168 a year for one name, a 74% increase.

Why 1,000 is the number to price

One thousand subscribers is the first size where the whole market actually shows its hand. GetResponse's first paid band starts exactly here. ActiveCampaign's entire published price list — four numbers — exists only at 1,000 contacts billed yearly. MailerLite, Omnisend and Klaviyo all cover the size with fully printed rungs — our Omnisend pricing breakdown walks through what its Standard and Pro plans cost at every band. At 2,500 or 10,000, at least one of those vendors goes dark; at 1,000, five of the six contact-band vendors quote a figure straight from their pages. It is also the size where a growing newsletter first outlives the free ceilings: MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo cut their free plans at 250 accounts, so a 1,000-subscriber list is paying somewhere — the only question is how much.

So we priced one list — 1,000 subscribers, monthly billing unless stated — at every platform we cover, from each vendor's own page, and then priced the same list at 1,001 to see what crossing the line costs. Where a vendor doesn't publish the figure, we say so: no interpolations, no calculator scraping, no estimated cells.

The bill at 1,000, vendor by vendor

Platform	Monthly bill at 1,000	Annual bill	What the page actually shows
Kit	$0 — free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers	$0	Printed on the page. The first paid step past 10,000 lives in an on-page slider
ActiveCampaign (Starter)	$15 billed yearly; $18 on monthly billing	$180 — the $15 rate already assumes the yearly cycle	The only size ActiveCampaign publishes at all: four plans at 1,000 contacts — Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79, Enterprise $145, all billed yearly
GetResponse (Starter)	$19, unlimited sends	$186.96 prepaid — 82% of twelve monthly payments, an 18% saving	Hidden in its own checkout links — and the page advertises "from $13.30," which is $19 discounted 30%, not the prepay rate
MailerLite (Comfort)	$19, 10,000 emails a month	$205.20 billed yearly ($17.10 a month, 10% off)	Fully printed — the whole ten-band ladder on the page
Omnisend (Standard)	$20, for 501 to 1,000 contacts	No annual rate printed; a three-month prepaid teaser (30% off) sits at the smallest band	Fully printed — a complete Standard/Pro rate table embedded in its pricing page; Pro bills $59 at this same band
Klaviyo (Email)	$30	$360 — arithmetic only; no annual rate is published at any size	Printed, on the rung covering the 1,000-profile mark of its 49-rung ladder
Mailchimp (Standard)	Not published	Annual plans below 10,000 contacts are not offered self-serve	The US page renders one band at a time; its published figures stop at the 0–500 band
Brevo	Not published by contact count	—	Brevo bills monthly email volume, not contacts — its $9 Starter and $18 Standard plans are volume plans, and the contact-by-volume matrix exists only inside an on-page calculator

Three things stand out. First, the tie: on monthly billing GetResponse and MailerLite both print $19 — but their yearly rates split them, because GetResponse discounts 18% against MailerLite's 10% ($186.96 against $205.20, a $18.24 difference for the same sticker price). Second, the premium for data depth: Klaviyo's $30 is double ActiveCampaign's $15 and half again Omnisend's $20 — $360 against $180 over a year for a list this small. Third, the teaser: GetResponse's page advertises "from $13.30," which is the $19 rate discounted 30% — the real monthly bill is 43% above the number the page leads with. How that discount is framed is unpacked in our GetResponse pricing deep-dive, which prices all 21 checkout figures.

Subscriber 1,001: the first step is the steepest

The bill at 1,000 matters less than the bill at 1,001, because contact-band pricing does its heaviest lifting at the bottom of the ladder — percentages shrink as you climb, and every vendor here sizes you by the top of the band you land in:

MailerLite: +$168 a year, +74%. Subscriber 1,001 moves Comfort from $19 to $33 a month — the steepest published first step on any ladder we have read in this category. $14 a month for one name. The full ten-band ladder, and the cumulative counting rule that decides when you actually cross it, is in our MailerLite pricing guide.
GetResponse: +$120 a year, +53%. Its second band covers 1,001 to 2,500, so subscriber 1,001 moves Starter from $19 to $29 a month — and that band then holds all the way to 2,500, which is why the $29 figure appears in our bill at the 2,500-subscriber mark as well.
Omnisend: +$60 a year, +25%. Standard moves from $20 to $25 at the 1,001–1,500 band, then $30, $44 and $50 in finer steps through 3,000 — the opposite shape of MailerLite's two giant steps.
Klaviyo: smaller steps, by design. With 49 published rungs against MailerLite's ten and GetResponse's seven, Klaviyo's moves near this size are a few dollars rather than $10–$14 — the trade-off is that the rungs carry their own gaps higher up, and no annual rate exists at any of them. All 49 rungs are priced in our Klaviyo pricing guide.
Kit: no bill at all. The free plan carries 1,001 subscribers the same way it carries 1,000 — for nothing, all the way to 10,000. If you are shopping at this size, that is the number to beat.
ActiveCampaign: silence above 1,000. Its published ladder stops exactly where this list ends. What the next contacts cost is not printed anywhere official — we note the gap rather than guess it.

The pattern to take away: at 1,000 subscribers you are buying the bottom rung, but you will be billed by the band's top. A list sitting at 990 names is $14 a month away from MailerLite's second band — price the boundary, not your count.

Is annual billing worth it at this size?

At 1,000 subscribers the annual decision is worth more, in relative terms, than at any larger size we have priced. GetResponse's 12-month prepay costs $186.96 against $228 — an 18% saving, the deepest discount we verified at this mark. MailerLite takes 10% off — $205.20 against the same $228. ActiveCampaign inverts the question: its printed $15 is the yearly rate, and paying monthly costs $18 — a 20% premium for the flexibility, $216 against $180 over a year. Klaviyo and Omnisend publish no annual rate at any size, so their $360 and $240 years are twelve monthly payments by arithmetic, and nothing you can opt into. Mailchimp does not offer annual plans below 10,000 contacts self-serve at all. Where the annual gap is widest between two specific vendors, it is in our Klaviyo vs MailerLite comparison — $360 against $205.20 at this mark, a $154.80 difference for the same 1,000-person list.

Who should not switch

Kit users anywhere under 10,000 subscribers. At 1,000 the gap between Kit and the cheapest paid alternative is the entire bill: $15 a month on ActiveCampaign's yearly rate, $17.10 on MailerLite's. If Kit's creator-focused feature set fits, leaving means buying a bill you do not currently have. The time to compare is when you are about to cross 10,000 — not before.
Store owners on Klaviyo. Klaviyo bills the most at this size — $180 a year more than ActiveCampaign — but its flows, segmentation and revenue attribution are wired into the store's data. If email drives a measurable share of revenue, price the switch in lost attribution, not just the $180.
Light senders on Brevo. Brevo's free plan allows 300 emails a day regardless of contact count, so a 1,000-contact list that sends a few small campaigns a week may owe nothing at all. Moving to a contact-band vendor converts that into a $15–$30 monthly bill. The pairing is priced in our Brevo vs MailerLite comparison.
Lists still under 250 accounts. At that size MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo are all still free — the $0–$30 spread on this page applies to you only when the free ceilings are behind you. What the first paid year looks like is mapped in our read of every free plan we can verify.
Anyone mid-cycle on a cumulative counter. MailerLite counts any address active during the cycle until the billing anniversary, deleted or not, and GetResponse's checkout pricing is only visible inside its own funnel. Before switching, price your next band on the new platform — at this size, the band above 1,000 is where the money is.

How we keep these numbers honest

Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page, checkout links or plan documentation, with the reading date attached. Where a band price is not published, the cell stays empty — for Mailchimp's contact ladder and for Brevo's contact-by-volume matrix. If you would rather price your own list size, the cost calculator shows the published bill at every band from 500 to 30,000 subscribers and leaves the gaps blank. The same exercise at larger marks is in our bill at 2,500 subscribers and our bill at 10,000, where the spread widens to $0–$150 and GetResponse's missing band adds $1,140 a year for subscriber 10,001.

Frequently asked questions

How much does email marketing cost at 1,000 subscribers?

From $0 to $30 a month among the vendors that publish the figure: Kit's free plan carries 1,000 subscribers at no cost, ActiveCampaign Starter bills $15 (yearly rate; $18 monthly), GetResponse Starter and MailerLite Comfort both bill $19, Omnisend Standard $20, and Klaviyo's Email plan $30 ($360 a year, no annual rate published). Mailchimp and Brevo publish no usable per-contact figure at this size.

What happens when I cross 1,000 subscribers?

The first band step is the steepest of the whole ladder: MailerLite jumps from $19 to $33 a month — $168 a year more, a 74% increase. GetResponse moves from $19 to $29 — $120 a year more, 53%. Omnisend moves from $20 to $25 — $60 a year more, 25%. Klaviyo's finer 49-rung ladder steps in smaller increments, Kit stays free to 10,000, and ActiveCampaign publishes no price above 1,000 contacts at all.

Is 1,000 subscribers still free anywhere?

On contact-based pricing, only on Kit, whose free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends on one seat. Brevo can also carry a 1,000-contact list free if sending stays under 300 emails a day, because it bills volume rather than contacts. Every other free ceiling sits at or below 500 — MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo stop at 250 accounts, and GetResponse's first paid band starts at 1,000.

Is annual billing worth it at 1,000 subscribers?

Yes, and the discounts differ more than the sticker prices: GetResponse's prepay saves 18% ($186.96 against $228), MailerLite's yearly rate saves 10% ($205.20), and ActiveCampaign's printed $15 already assumes the yearly cycle — monthly billing costs $18, a 20% premium. Klaviyo and Omnisend publish no annual rate at any size.

Why don't Mailchimp and Brevo show a 1,000-subscriber price?

Different mechanisms, same result. Mailchimp's US page renders one contact band at a time and its published figures stop at 0–500 contacts, so no 1,000-contact price exists in the page source. Brevo bills monthly email volume rather than contacts, and its contact-by-volume matrix lives inside an on-page calculator. We leave both blank rather than estimate.

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