Home › Guides › Email marketing at 2,500 subscribers
Updated October 4, 2026 · Prices read from vendor pricing pages: MailerLite September 21, 2026 (nightly re-checks through October 3), Klaviyo September 24, 2026 (re-checked October 1), GetResponse October 1, 2026 (re-verified October 3), Kit October 2, 2026, Omnisend October 4, 2026, Mailchimp October 1, 2026, Brevo September 30, 2026 · Affiliate disclosure
Two thousand five hundred subscribers is where most email lists stop being a newsletter and start being a channel. It is also the smallest round number that sits above every free ceiling in the category except Kit's — MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo all cut their free plans off at 250 accounts, so by 2,500 subscribers a buyer is paying somewhere. The question is how much differently each platform answers that, from its own page. So we priced one list — 2,500 subscribers, monthly billing unless stated — at every platform we cover, and then priced the same list at 2,501 to see what crossing the line costs.
A note on what we did not do: where a vendor doesn't publish the figure, we say so. No calculator scraping of our own, no interpolations between bands, no "estimated" cells dressed up as data.
| Platform | Monthly bill at 2,500 | 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 is not: it lives in an on-page slider |
| GetResponse (Starter) | $29, unlimited sends | $285.36 prepaid (exactly 82% of twelve monthly payments) | Hidden in its own checkout links — 21 prices, none of them on the page itself |
| MailerLite (Comfort) | $33, 25,000 emails a month | $356.40 billed yearly ($29.70 a month, 10% off) | Fully printed — the only vendor in this comparison with the whole ladder on the page |
| Omnisend (Standard) | $44, email allowance above Klaviyo's at this band | 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 |
| Klaviyo (Email) | $60, 25,000 sends a month | $720 — arithmetic only; no annual rate is published at any size | Printed, on the smallest rung that covers the count — and that rung also bills lists down to 1,501 profiles, since no rung exists between 1,500 and 2,500 |
| ActiveCampaign (Starter) | Not published above 1,000 contacts | — | The official page lists four prices, all at 1,000 contacts billed yearly |
| 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 |
Two things stand out. First, the spread: the same 2,500-person list costs $0 on one platform and $720 a year on another, and even among the paid plans the gap is wide — GetResponse's $29 against Klaviyo's $60 is $372 a year on monthly billing, for the same core job of sending email. Second, three of the eight vendors make you work hardest to see the number at exactly the size where most growing lists land. If the free end of the market is where you're shopping from, our read of every free plan we can verify prices the first paid year at 500, 2,500 and 10,000 subscribers.
The bill at 2,500 matters less than the bill at 2,501, because that is where contact-band pricing does its real work. Every vendor here sizes you by the top of the band you land in, and at this mark the ladders bite earlier than they do higher up:
The pattern to take away: the published 2,500 price is the discount. Vendors print the round number because it reads well, and let the bands around it do the billing. If your list is sitting just under a boundary, price the boundary, not your count.
At 2,500 subscribers the annual discount is real money, where it exists. MailerLite takes 10% off every annual bill — $356.40 against $396 for Comfort. GetResponse's 12-month prepay lands at exactly 82% of twelve monthly payments — $285.36, saving $62.64. Klaviyo publishes no annual rate at any size, so its $720 year is twelve monthly payments by arithmetic, and nothing you can opt into. Omnisend prints no annual rate on its page either; the only prepaid figure we verified is a three-month teaser, discounted 30% at the smallest band — an intro price, not a billing cycle. Mailchimp does not offer annual plans below 10,000 contacts self-serve at all. The head-to-head where the annual gap is widest at a shared size is in our Klaviyo vs MailerLite comparison — $33 against $60 at this exact mark, $356.40 against $720 over a year.
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 ActiveCampaign above 1,000 contacts, 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. And the same exercise at the top of the growth curve is in our bill at the 10,000-subscriber mark, where the spread widens to $0–$150 and the steps get steeper.
From $0 to $60 a month among the vendors that publish the figure: Kit's free plan carries 2,500 subscribers at no cost, GetResponse Starter bills $29, MailerLite Comfort $33 ($356.40 billed yearly), Omnisend Standard $44, and Klaviyo $60 ($720 a year, no annual rate published). Over a year the spread is $0 to $720. Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign and Brevo publish no per-band price at 2,500 at all.
The two band vendors that publish this step jump hard: GetResponse has no band between 2,500 and 5,000, so the Starter bill goes from $29 to $54 a month — $300 a year more, an 86% jump. MailerLite's next band is also 5,000: Comfort moves from $33 to $49 — $192 a year more. Omnisend's Pro plan starts billing $70 from the 2,501-contact band, and Kit stays free.
Different mechanisms, same result. Mailchimp's US page renders one contact band at a time and its published figures stop at 0–500 contacts. ActiveCampaign's entire public price list is four numbers for a 1,000-contact list billed yearly. Brevo prices by monthly email volume and keeps the contact-by-volume matrix inside an on-page calculator, so no contact-band figure exists in the page source. We leave all three blank rather than estimate.
Only on Kit, whose free plan runs to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends on one seat. Every other free ceiling in the category sits well below this size — MailerLite, Mailchimp and Klaviyo all stop at 250 accounts, and GetResponse's first paid band starts at 1,000 — so a 2,500-subscriber list is paying on five of the six vendors we price by contacts.
Where it is published, yes: MailerLite's yearly rate saves 10% ($356.40 against $396), and GetResponse's 12-month prepay costs exactly 82% of twelve monthly payments ($285.36, saving $62.64). Klaviyo offers no annual rate at any size, and Omnisend's only prepaid figure is a three-month 30% teaser at the smallest band — an intro price, not a billing cycle.