Sixteen platforms,
compared honestly.

You are billed on list size, so growth costs you money before it makes you any. Worse, contacts who unsubscribed still count toward your tier until you go and remove them by hand.

Per-subscriber pricing means a list that doubles doubles your bill, whether or not you send any more email. Prices rose roughly 35% in 2026.

It is a newsletter platform, not a sending platform. There is no transactional API for your application, and the subscriber-based pricing climbs as your list does.

High-watermark billing means one import spike bills you at the peak for the whole month, and profile-based pricing scales with your database rather than with what you send.

Profile-based pricing that climbs steeply, and the value is tied to ecommerce attribution. If you are not running a store, you are paying for machinery you do not use.

Still per-subscriber pricing, so the shape of the bill is the same as everyone else’s — it just starts lower. And there is no transactional API for your application.

Automation and the features most people actually came for sit on the higher tiers, and at real volume the per-send price is many times what the same email costs through SES. The pricing is friendlier than its rivals, but it is still someone else deciding it.

It is priced per contact on a tool you are explicitly meant to grow into. A list going from 1,000 to 50,000 takes the Plus plan from roughly $59 to $759 a month for the same software doing the same job.

Marketing contacts are sold in fixed blocks on top of the platform fee, so the bill climbs in steps you do not choose and cannot smooth. Professional also carries a one-time onboarding fee of $3,000 before you send anything.

It is still per contact, so a list that grows raises the bill whether or not you send more email. Unlimited sends is a real benefit at high frequency and no benefit at all if your list is large and quiet.

SES is a sending API, not a product. There is no contact database, no visual builder, no automations, no engagement grading and no dashboard your clients could ever use. Getting out of the sandbox is its own ordeal.

You pay per email forever, and you pay extra for each additional domain — which is precisely the cost that multiplies for an agency running many clients.

The free tier was discontinued in May 2025, so small projects now start at a subscription. Marketing Campaigns, contact storage and overages are billed on top of the API tier.

Premium pricing per email, per server — at real volume it is among the most expensive options available, and there is no marketing side to the product at all.

Per-email pricing with a subscription floor, and the useful deliverability tooling sits on higher tiers. Costs climb with volume in the usual way.

Three and a half times the SES price per email, and it is a sending pipe only — no contacts, no builder, no automations, no engagement data. It is new, so the tooling around it is still thin.

No visual builder, no automation engine, and the source is obfuscated so you cannot audit or extend what you bought. It is PHP on a server you now have to patch and keep online.

The builder is the standing complaint, and it slows down at scale. Free software still costs you the server, the upgrades and the hours; the license price is the smallest line in the total.

Newsletters only — no automation engine and no transactional sending, so you end up running a second vendor alongside it. Non-technical users cannot build campaigns without help.

A smaller feature set and a smaller community than the alternatives, with no transactional API and limited automation. You are also running and upgrading an Elixir app.

PHP on a server you patch, secure and keep online, on an older stack and interface. The multi-client rights that make it useful to an agency cost roughly triple the base license.

It makes you your own provider. You run the MTA, warm the IPs, monitor the blocklists and negotiate with mailbox providers, and deliverability becomes your permanent job. It is also a marketing blank — no visual builder, no campaigns, no lifecycle automation.