How does True Cost of Email verify prices?

Every figure is read from the vendor's own pricing page or plan documentation. Five platforms (Brevo, MailerLite, Mailchimp, Kit, ActiveCampaign) are re-fetched automatically every night since September 21, 2026, and any flagged difference gets a manual pass against the official numbers before a table changes. Vendors outside the nightly set are re-verified on a rolling basis, and every check is logged with its date.

When did a price on this site last change?

On September 24, 2026, Mailchimp's three EU billing tiers were found to have drifted up by cents — Essentials from €11.41 to €11.43, Standard from €17.55 to €17.59, Premium from €307.11 to €307.80, with promotional rates moving in step. The affected guide was corrected the same day and the check was logged.

Do you estimate prices a vendor doesn't publish?

No. Where a vendor hides its per-band ladder behind a slider, a quote flow or a checkout-only step, the cell is left empty and the page says why. Only official, on-the-record numbers are printed — an empty cell is considered more useful than an estimate.

Why do some checks in the log say 'no change'?

Deliberately. Knowing a table was confirmed recently is as useful as knowing it was corrected: a no-change entry dated this week tells you the numbers were re-read from the official page and matched exactly.

Our price checks, on the record

Last updated: September 27, 2026

Every price on this site is read from the vendor's own pricing page or plan documentation, and then re-checked. Five platforms are re-fetched automatically every night; a tripped flag always gets a manual pass against the official numbers before any table here changes. The log below records what each recent check actually found — including the checks where nothing moved, because knowing a table was confirmed last week is as useful as knowing it was corrected.

The nightly sweep

Since September 21, 2026, the pricing pages of five platforms — Brevo, MailerLite, Mailchimp, Kit and ActiveCampaign — have been re-fetched once a night and compared against the previous capture. A difference in the capture does not mean a price moved: promo tiles, currency selectors and banner copy rotate constantly, and Brevo's page trips the check on most nights for exactly that reason. So the sweep is a prompt to look, not a verdict. When a flag goes up, a person opens the official page, reads the plan figures against ours, and only then does a table on this site change.

Vendors covered in individual guides but not in the nightly set — Klaviyo, GetResponse — are verified when the guide is written and re-verified on a rolling basis afterwards, with each pass logged below.

Rules we don't bend

Official pages only. If a number can't be confirmed on the vendor's own pricing page, checkout or plan documentation, it doesn't appear here. We would rather print an empty cell than an estimate.
Ladders, not stickers. Email tools price by contact tier, so the headline price is the smallest band. We record the rungs where vendors publish them, and we say plainly when a vendor hides its ladder behind a slider or a quote flow.
"No annual rate" is a fact, not a gap. When a vendor publishes monthly prices only, we say so and mark the annual figure as arithmetic, not an offer.
Currencies stay put. A euro price is recorded in euros; regional prices are never converted, because the vendor's own regional spread is part of the story.
Promotions are named by structure. "50% off" can mean one month (a code that rotates) or twelve (a step that waits until month thirteen). Those are different years of billing, so we spell out which one applies.
Dates mean something. A page's "last updated" moves only when its content does. We never re-date a page to look fresh.

Recent finds from this process: Mailchimp's three EU tiers drifting up by cents in one week (caught and corrected the same day), MailerLite's first-month-only promo code — a different animal from Mailchimp's twelve-month half price — and Klaviyo publishing no annual rate anywhere on its page.

The check log

Each row is a check we actually ran, dated as recorded in our verification log. Corrections from earlier in September 2026 are reflected in the dated tables on the guide pages themselves.

Vendor	Checked	What we found
Mailchimp	Sep 24, 2026 EU billing page	UPDATED Three tiers drifted up by cents: Essentials €11.41 → €11.43, Standard €17.55 → €17.59, Premium €307.11 → €307.80, promotional rates moving in step. The affected guide was corrected the same day.
Klaviyo	Sep 24, 2026 first full read	FULL LADDER All 49 published rungs read from the official pricing engine: $20/month at 500 active profiles through $1,955 at 150,000, including the $25 step at 10,500. No annual pricing is published to check.
Brevo	Sep 24, 2026	NO CHANGE Monthly $0 / $9 / $18 / $499 and annual $96.96 / $194.04 / $5,388.96 re-confirmed against the page's own structured data. The nightly flag that week traced to rotating promo tiles, not plan prices.
MailerLite	Sep 24, 2026	NO CHANGE The full ten-band Comfort ladder, $12/month at 500 subscribers to $229 at 30,000, reproduced exactly; the promo banner changed to a first-month-only code.
Kit	Sep 23, 2026	NO CHANGE A rendered-browser pass shows the same figures the static page shows ($0 free to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33, Pro $66 at the 1,000-subscriber view). Larger bands remain behind the on-page slider.
GetResponse	Sep 23, 2026	NO CHANGE $19/month at 1,000 subscribers with unlimited sends re-confirmed. No per-band ladder is published anywhere on the page.
ActiveCampaign	Sep 23, 2026	NO CHANGE The public page still publishes no rate table at all. The $15 Starter figure (1,000 contacts, billed annually) traces to the September 20 official capture and stands.
Mailchimp	Sep 22, 2026 US page	NO CHANGE Standard confirmed at $20/month list on the smallest band with the $10-for-12-months offer; free plan still capped at 250 contacts.
All vendors	Sep 20, 2026 baseline	BASELINE First full pricing pass across the eight vendors we cover, official pages only.

Nightly sweep coverage opened on September 21, 2026; the log grows as checks run. Where a guide's numbers were verified matters too — every guide carries the month its figures were checked.

Spotted a number that disagrees?

Vendors reprice without notice, and the checkout page is the only source that counts. If what you're being charged doesn't match a table here, that discrepancy is exactly the kind of report that keeps this site honest — every reported mismatch gets a manual re-verification, and confirmed corrections are logged above.

More on how the site works: about & verification rules · how the site earns money · the cost calculator these numbers feed

True Cost of Email is reader-supported: links to vendors may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Commissions never affect which numbers we print.