Best Email Platforms for SaaS Solopreneurs in 2026
One person running a SaaS product needs email that removes recurring work and still makes onboarding and billing failures visible. Prices below were read from each vendor pricing page on 7 October 2026.
For most solo SaaS founders, the best starting pick is Loops. It keeps onboarding sequences, product updates and transactional messages tied to the account in one workspace. The free Early Stage plan includes all features for up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30-day period, and the Growing Audience plan costs $99 per month and adds unlimited sends to subscribers plus transactional sends to users outside your audience. The reason is structural. One person can hold one platform in their head. Every extra tool adds another login, another suppression list and another place where a message can fail without anyone noticing.
This guide is for the founder who is alone, or almost alone, and who has to decide which email jobs belong together. It covers the platforms that most often appear on a solo shortlist, from event-driven lifecycle tools such as Customer.io to newsletter platforms with free tiers, and from API-first senders such as Resend and Postmark to the broader marketing suites. It does not rank them with scores. It explains which job each one does well, where it limits a one-person operation, and what it costs at realistic list sizes.
If you are still deciding whether to split your stack at all, read the sections on critical messages and the choice table first. Most of the expensive mistakes in solo email come from putting receipts and newsletters through the same path, not from picking the wrong logo.
Short list: the four picks
1. Loops: one workspace for onboarding, product updates and transactional sends, free to start and $99 per month on the Growing Audience plan.
2. Customer.io: behaviour-triggered journeys when lifecycle depends on what users do inside the product, from $145 per month at 10,000 profiles.
3. Resend: developer-owned transactional mail with a free tier of 3,000 emails per month, and a marketing layer that starts free for 1,000 contacts.
4. Kit: a creator-style newsletter and digital product stack, free up to 10,000 subscribers.
Customerly, Mailchimp, MailerLite, Brevo, ActiveCampaign, beehiiv, Postmark and SendGrid are also covered below, each for a specific kind of solo operation.
What one founder actually needs from email
A solo SaaS business usually sends five kinds of mail, and they behave differently. Transactional messages are triggered by an action: a receipt, a password reset, a login link, an invoice or a product alert. They must arrive, they are rarely promotional, and a customer will notice immediately if they stop. Onboarding is a sequence that starts at signup and should stop as soon as the user reaches the activation point. A sequence that keeps going after activation is a common and avoidable annoyance. Billing messages cover trial endings, plan changes, cancellations and failed payments. They are time-sensitive and need a clear next step, usually a link to a page where the customer can pay or update a card. Product updates and newsletters are the marketing layer. They can be sent to a broad audience on a schedule, and they are the part most affected by unsubscribes. Measurement is the last job: a founder needs to know what was delivered, to whom, and whether the sequence did what it was meant to do.
The strongest argument for a single platform is that these jobs share contact data. The strongest argument against it is that they should not share suppression rules. A person who unsubscribes from a monthly newsletter should not lose the receipt for an annual renewal, and a person who has bounced once should not be blocked from password resets. Good platforms let you keep those streams apart. Weak ones make you choose between one list and two separate tools.
Plan the job list before you plan the tools. Write down each message, the event that triggers it, the stop rule, and what happens if it fails. Only then compare platforms. A founder who has this list can read any vendor page and see quickly whether it solves the jobs that matter this quarter.
How this guide was built
Each platform was read from its own pricing page and, where the vendor links them, its documentation, on 7 October 2026. Prices are given as the vendor lists them, with the plan name and the billing basis. Where a vendor does not publish a price for a given list size, the table says so and the text does not estimate. Picks are reasoned from the stated limits of each plan and from the jobs described above, not from a score. If you find a price or limit that has changed, the process for reporting a correction is on the how we evaluate page.
Prices are monthly unless the text says otherwise. Annual prices are shown as a monthly equivalent billed once a year, because that is how most vendors display them. Free tiers are described by their stated limits, which change often, so a founder should read the limit that matters most to them, usually the send cap or the subscriber cap, before building a flow around it.
Table 1: comparison at a glance
| Platform | Best for | Starting price (plan, billing) | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loops | Solo product email and onboarding | Free Early Stage plan; Growing Audience $99/month | Free plan limited to 4,000 sends per rolling 30 days, to the 1,000 newest contacts |
| Customer.io | Event-driven lifecycle journeys | Essentials $100/month; Essentials 10k profiles $145/month, billed monthly | Event schema work takes focused time; cost rises with profiles |
| Resend | Developer-owned transactional mail with a marketing layer | Free 3,000 emails/month; Marketing Free $0 for 1,000 contacts | Marketing layer is lighter; free tier allows only 3 segments |
| Kit | Creator newsletters and digital products | Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33/month billed annually | Visual Automations and sequences start on Creator; not built for product events |
| beehiiv | A SaaS newsletter that becomes a channel | Free up to 2,500 subscribers; Lite $49/month | Built for publishing; billing and account messages belong elsewhere |
| Brevo | One account for campaigns and transactional mail | Free 300 daily sends; Starter $9/month for 5,000 emails | Daily cap on free plan; automation depth varies by plan |
| ActiveCampaign | Nurture with contact and segment structure | Starter $15/month, starting at 1,000 contacts | Builder takes time to learn; no ongoing free plan |
| MailerLite | Budget newsletters and simple automations | Free up to 250 subscribers; Comfort $12/month (500 subscribers) | Not focused on transactional sending; pair with a sender |
| Mailchimp | Familiar newsletter operations | Free up to 250 contacts; Standard $20/month at 500 contacts | Price climbs by contact band; onboarding events need extra integration |
| Postmark | Transactional mail only | Free 100 emails/month; Basic $15/month from 10,000 emails | No newsletters or marketing segmentation |
| SendGrid | API sending plus marketing campaigns | Marketing Campaigns free for 2,000 contacts; Essentials $19.95/month | Configuration decisions fall on one person |
| Customerly | Support-led, reply-driven email | Core $19/month per seat, 10 AI conversations included | Marketing automation is secondary to support |
Loops: one workspace for product email
Loops suits a founder whose email is mostly about the product: a welcome sequence, activation nudges, feature announcements and transactional messages tied to the account. Its advantage for one person is that broadcasts and automations live in the same place, so there is no second sending product to learn. The free Early Stage plan includes all features, with up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30-day period, sent only to the 1,000 newest contacts, and a Loops footer. The Growing Audience plan at $99 per month removes the subscriber limit and includes transactional sends to users outside your audience, which matters when a free user triggers a receipt or an alert.
Where it falls short: depth. Loops is a focused tool, so multi-channel journeys and very detailed segmentation across many data sources are not its strength. A founder who needs those will outgrow it, and the migration is easier to plan early than to rush later.
Price: free Early Stage plan; Growing Audience $99 per month. Loops pricing.
Customer.io: journeys driven by behaviour
Customer.io is built around events. A signup, a trial start, a project created, an invoice that failed: each can start a journey, and the journey branches on what the person does next. For a solo founder whose lifecycle depends on in-app behaviour rather than a calendar, it is the most capable tool in this guide. It fits when the message you need is "send this only if the user has not done that yet", because that rule is what the platform is designed to express.
The Startup Program offers 12 months free to eligible early-stage companies that have raised under $10 million. Eligibility is set by the vendor, so read the program terms before planning around it. Otherwise the Essentials plan starts at $100 per month, and profile-based pricing rises with the size of the database: $145 per month at 10,000 profiles, $235 at 20,000, $325 at 30,000 and $415 at 40,000, all billed monthly. Premium is priced on custom profile volume and adds elevated AI Agent limits and premium support.
Where it falls short: the work sits in event design. A solo founder must decide on event names, required attributes and profile identifiers before the first journey is built, and the cost grows with the number of profiles, not with the number of sends.
Price: Essentials from $100 per month; profile bands from $145 per month at 10,000 profiles, billed monthly. Customer.io pricing.
Resend: developer-owned transactional mail
Resend is API-first. A founder who is comfortable with code can send transactional mail straight from the application and add marketing sends to the same account, with templates kept close to the code that triggers them. The free plan covers 3,000 emails per month and 100 emails per day across three domains, which is enough for a new product's receipts and login messages. The marketing side starts with a free tier for 1,000 contacts, including unlimited broadcast sending, 10,000 automation runs and three segments. Pro marketing is $40 per month at 5,000 contacts, $80 at 10,000 and $180 at 25,000.
Where it falls short: the marketing layer is lighter than a dedicated lifecycle platform. Visual journey design, complex branching and non-developer editing are thinner, and a founder who does not write code will find the templates and flows less approachable than in the tools above.
Price: free plan for 3,000 emails per month; Marketing Free for 1,000 contacts; Pro marketing from $40 per month at 5,000 contacts. Resend pricing.
Kit: newsletters that turn into products
Kit grew from creator publishing, and it fits a founder whose email is an audience project. Think of a build-in-public newsletter, a free tool or course that feeds a list, and occasionally a paid product. The free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with landing pages, forms, unlimited email broadcasts, audience tagging and segmentation, and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. Visual Automations and email sequences start on the Creator plan at $33 per month billed annually. Pro, at $66 per month billed annually, adds Subscriber Signals, unlimited users, deliverability reporting and a newsletter referral system.
Where it falls short: Kit is not built for product events. Failed payments, trial endings and account changes are not what it models, and manual tagging becomes clumsy when the number of lifecycle states grows. Keep those messages in a product-triggered system.
Price: Free up to 10,000 subscribers; Creator $33 per month billed annually; Pro $66 per month billed annually. Kit pricing.
beehiiv: a publication that doubles as a channel
beehiiv is a publishing product first. For a SaaS founder who wants a newsletter that becomes a discovery channel, it bundles the publication, paid subscriptions, audience polls and automations in one place. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends and one publication, which is a practical way to start a list before a product exists. Lite is $49 per month for up to 100,000 subscribers, and Pro is $95 per month for up to 250,000 subscribers. Yearly billing saves up to 20 percent. At 5,000 subscribers, Lite is $109 per month or $95 billed yearly, and Pro is $199 per month or $169 billed yearly.
Where it falls short: it should not carry billing or account messages. A founder who sends receipts or payment notices through a publishing tool has mixed the critical path with the marketing path, which is the mistake this guide warns about.
Price: free up to 2,500 subscribers; Lite $49 per month; Pro $95 per month, with subscriber-tier prices above. beehiiv pricing.
Brevo: campaigns and transactional mail in one account
Brevo gives a solo founder marketing and transactional mail in one account with a generous free entry. The free plan includes 300 daily sends and storage for up to 100,000 contacts. Paid plans are priced by monthly email volume. Starter starts at $9 per month for 5,000 emails, and Standard starts at $18 per month for the same volume and adds automation, A/B testing and advanced reports. A founder who wants one vendor for both streams can start here without a second contract.
Where it falls short: the daily cap on the free plan can delay a burst of signups, which matters for onboarding on launch day. Automation depth and operational visibility also differ by plan, so read which features the plan you choose includes before building a flow around them.
Price: free with 300 daily sends; Starter $9 per month and Standard $18 per month, both starting at 5,000 emails per month. Brevo pricing.
ActiveCampaign: nurture with contact structure
ActiveCampaign is a sensible choice when the founder already thinks in contacts, deals and nurture stages, and wants a CRM-like structure around the email. Starter is $15 per month, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145. Each price is a starting price at 1,000 email contacts and is shown the same whether billed monthly or annually. Segmentation rises with the plan: standard segmentation and landing pages on Plus, advanced segmentation on Pro, and premium segmentation with a dedicated account team on Enterprise.
Where it falls short: the builder rewards time spent learning it. For one person, the hours spent on setup and maintenance can exceed the difference in subscription price. There is no ongoing free plan, only a trial, so the decision is made early.
Price: Starter $15 per month from 1,000 contacts; Plus $49; Pro $79; Enterprise $145. ActiveCampaign pricing.
MailerLite: budget newsletters and simple automation
MailerLite suits a newsletter-first founder who wants a low entry price. The free plan covers up to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails per month. Comfort starts at $12 per month for the 500-subscriber tier, or $10.80 billed annually, and its monthly email allowance is ten times the subscriber ceiling. Power is $25 per month, or $22.50 billed annually, with unlimited monthly emails for the same tier. For a founder whose main job is a weekly update to a few thousand readers, that is a predictable cost.
Where it falls short: transactional architecture is not its centre. Plan a separate sender for receipts, login links and invoices, and make sure the automation you need is included in the plan you pick, because feature access differs by tier.
Price: free up to 250 subscribers; Comfort $12 per month (500 subscribers) or $10.80 billed annually; Power $25 per month or $22.50 billed annually. MailerLite pricing.
Mailchimp: familiar operations for a pre-launch list
Mailchimp is familiar to most marketers, and its free plan suits a pre-launch list: up to 250 contacts, one audience and up to 500 sends per month, with a 250-per-day cap. The paid entry for 500 contacts is Standard at $20 per month, which covers up to 6,000 emails at that selector. The cost climbs by contact band: $100 per month for the 2,501 to 5,000 band, with up to 60,000 emails, and $135 per month for 5,001 to 10,000 contacts, with up to 120,000 emails.
Where it falls short: product-event onboarding usually means extra integration work, and contact-based pricing makes a growing free list expensive quickly. A founder whose list will exceed 250 contacts within a few months should model the next band before committing.
Price: free up to 250 contacts; Standard $20 per month at 500 contacts; $100 per month for the 2,501 to 5,000 contact band. Mailchimp pricing.
Postmark: transactional mail, kept separate
Postmark is a transactional sender, not a marketing platform. It fits receipts, login links, invoice emails and product alerts, and its message streams keep critical mail apart from anything promotional. That separation is the main reason a solo founder would choose it: a bounce or complaint on a newsletter does not automatically affect a password reset. The free plan covers 100 emails per month. Paid plans start at 10,000 emails per month, with Basic at $15, Pro at $16.50 and Platform at $18 per month. At the 50,000-email reference point Basic is $55 per month.
Where it falls short: there are no newsletters and no marketing segmentation. It is a companion, not a lifecycle platform, so pair it with a tool from this guide that handles onboarding and newsletters.
Price: free 100 emails per month; Basic $15 per month from 10,000 emails. Postmark pricing.
SendGrid: an API with campaigns attached
SendGrid, part of Twilio, covers an Email API and Marketing Campaigns. For a founder whose product sends a lot of mail through code, the API and its delivery events are the draw. Marketing Campaigns has a free plan for up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails per month. Essentials is $19.95 per month for 50,000 to 100,000 emails in the plan selector, and Pro is $89.95 per month for 100,000 to 2,500,000 emails. The Email API includes a free trial of 100 emails per day for 60 days.
Where it falls short: more configuration means more decisions for one person. Domains, templates, suppression handling and webhook logic all fall to the founder, and a mistake in any of them can stop mail without an obvious warning.
Price: free Marketing Campaigns plan for 2,000 contacts; Email API trial 100 emails per day for 60 days; Essentials $19.95 per month. SendGrid pricing.
Customerly: reply-driven email with support at the centre
Customerly is built around support conversations with AI assistance. It suits a founder whose email is mostly reply-driven: a help desk, onboarding questions and answers to customers who write in. Core is $19 per month per seat with 10 AI conversations included, Growth is $69 per month with 20, and Ultimate is $99 per month with 50, for high-volume teams. Each plan offers a free trial, and no ongoing free plan is listed.
Where it falls short: its marketing automation is secondary to support. A founder who wants a full nurture calendar or billing-state logic will look elsewhere. Read the plan limits on exports and automation before committing, because they differ between seats and AI allowances.
Price: Core $19 per month per seat; Growth $69; Ultimate $99. Customerly pricing.
Table 2: monthly cost at reference list sizes
| Platform and plan | List size | Monthly price | Billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loops, Early Stage (free) | Up to 1,000 newest contacts; 4,000 sends per rolling 30 days | $0 | Free plan |
| Loops, Growing Audience | Paid audience tier | $99 | Monthly listed price |
| Resend, Marketing Free | 1,000 contacts | $0 | Free plan |
| Resend, Pro marketing | 5,000 contacts | $40 | Monthly |
| Resend, Pro marketing | 10,000 contacts | $80 | Monthly |
| Resend, Pro marketing | 25,000 contacts | $180 | Monthly |
| Resend, Pro marketing | 50,000 contacts | $250 | Monthly |
| Customer.io, Essentials profile band | 10,000 profiles | $145 | Billed monthly |
| Customer.io, Essentials profile band | 20,000 profiles | $235 | Billed monthly |
| Customer.io, Essentials profile band | 50,000+ profiles | $505+ | Billed monthly |
| Kit, Free | Up to 10,000 subscribers | $0 | Free plan |
| Kit, Creator | Paid plan, visual automations included | $33 | Billed annually |
| beehiiv, Lite | 5,000 subscribers | $109 ($95 yearly) | Monthly or yearly |
| beehiiv, Lite | 10,000 subscribers | $139 ($119 yearly) | Monthly or yearly |
| beehiiv, Pro | 5,000 subscribers | $199 ($169 yearly) | Monthly or yearly |
| beehiiv, Pro | 10,000 subscribers | $239 ($199 yearly) | Monthly or yearly |
| ActiveCampaign, Starter | 1,000 contacts | $15 | Monthly or annual, same rate |
| MailerLite, Comfort | 500-subscriber tier | $12 ($10.80 yearly) | Monthly or yearly |
| Mailchimp, Standard | 500 contacts | $20 | Monthly |
| Mailchimp, contact band | 2,501 to 5,000 contacts | $100 | Monthly |
| Brevo, Starter | 5,000 emails per month | $9 | Monthly |
| Postmark, Basic | 10,000 transactional emails per month | $15 | Monthly |
| SendGrid, Marketing Campaigns | Up to 2,000 contacts, 6,000 emails | $0 | Free plan |
| Customerly, Core | One seat, 10 AI conversations | $19 per seat | Monthly listed price |
Reading the cost table
Table 2 uses reference sizes, not a forecast. Most solo products pass through three stages: a pre-launch list of a few hundred people, a first year with a few thousand contacts, and a growth phase where the list approaches ten thousand. Pricing tiers are set at very different points, so the same company can be cheap on one platform and expensive on another at the same size.
Some arithmetic helps. Resend Pro marketing at 10,000 contacts is $80 per month, which is $960 a year. Customer.io at 10,000 profiles is $145 per month, which is $1,740 a year billed monthly. Loops on the Growing Audience plan is $99 per month, or $1,188 a year. Those three numbers look close at first, but they buy different things: a marketing layer for Resend, event-driven journeys for Customer.io, and a single product email workspace for Loops. The right comparison is the cost of the job, not the cost of the list.
Where the table says "not listed" or gives no size, the vendor does not publish a price for that point on the pricing data used here, and the guide does not estimate it. For those cases, ask the vendor for a quote before you plan a budget.
Table 3: decision guide
| If you need | Start with | Because |
|---|---|---|
| Product email that follows account activity, with little setup | Loops | Product-focused workspace; free to start and $99 per month for paid audience tier |
| Messages that branch on in-app events | Customer.io | Event-driven journeys and profile-based pricing built for that work |
| Transactional mail sent from application code | Resend or Postmark | API-first sending; Postmark keeps message streams isolated from marketing |
| A newsletter that grows into a product channel | beehiiv or Kit | Publication tools and free tiers up to 2,500 or 10,000 subscribers |
| Nurture with contact and segment structure | ActiveCampaign | Segmentation tiers and CRM-like contact handling |
| The lowest entry price for newsletters | MailerLite or Brevo | Low entry tiers and a free plan for a small list |
| Support-led replies with AI assistance | Customerly | Per-seat plans with included AI conversations |
| A familiar newsletter interface for a pre-launch list | Mailchimp free plan | Free for up to 250 contacts; plan for the next band early |
How to choose for your operation
Start with the failure you most fear. For a solo founder that is rarely a missing feature. It is a silent failure: a password reset that never arrives, an onboarding message that keeps going after the user has activated, or a failed-payment notice sent through a newsletter list that someone unsubscribed from months ago. Choose the platform that makes those failures visible to you.
Next, count your jobs, not your features. Write each message as a job with a trigger and a stop rule. Five or six jobs usually fit comfortably in one lifecycle tool plus one transactional sender. Ten jobs across four vendors is a sign that the stack has grown past what one person can monitor.
Then test the free limits against your peak week, not your average. A launch can produce a day of signups that exceeds a daily send cap, and an onboarding sequence that is delayed by a day can look like a broken product to a new customer. Model the worst day in the plan's own terms: subscribers, sends, daily caps and contacts.
Last, decide who will own each system. If you cannot describe in one sentence what the platform does and what you do when it fails, it is too complex for one person. The Customer.io and Resend options reward a founder who is willing to design events or write code. The Loops, Kit and beehiiv options reward a founder who wants a predictable workspace. Both can work. Mixing their strengths in one account usually does not.
If you are comparing platforms built for teams and larger operations, the early-stage SaaS platform guide covers the next step up, with stage-based recommendations.
Setup and migration for a solo founder
Setup is where most solo email projects lose a week. The order matters. Authenticate the sending domain before anything else, because a message sent from an unauthenticated domain can fail quietly. Then separate the streams, define the events, and only then build the first sequence. Migration from an existing tool follows the same order, with one addition: the suppression list moves before any subscriber does.
When moving from one platform to another, export contacts together with their consent source and their suppression status. Never re-import someone who unsubscribed; treat that list as more important than the contact list. Keep templates in a repository you control, record event names in a document, and run the old and new systems in parallel for a short overlap, with the old one sending nothing new. Most migration bugs in small teams are duplicate sends during that overlap.
Table 4: setup and migration checklist
| Step | What to do | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Authenticate the sending domain | Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for the sending domain before the first send | A test message passes authentication |
| 2. Separate the streams | Send transactional mail from its own sender or stream, and marketing from another | An unsubscribe from the newsletter does not block a receipt |
| 3. Map the events | List the 8 to 12 events that drive mail: signup, activation, trial end, plan change, payment failed, cancellation | Each event has a name, a payload and an owner |
| 4. Write the stop rules | Onboarding ends at activation; billing reminders stop on successful payment | A test user leaves the sequence automatically |
| 5. Move the lists | Export consented contacts with their consent source; carry over every suppression entry | Suppressed addresses stay suppressed in the new system |
| 6. Run a short overlap | Keep the old system running for existing flows only, then switch fully | No duplicate sends are seen for a full billing cycle |
Verdict
For a solo SaaS founder, Loops is the best place to start: a free Early Stage plan, a $99 per month Growing Audience plan, and one workspace for onboarding, product updates and transactional sends. Customer.io is the better choice when lifecycle depends on what users do inside the product, and its profile-based pricing reflects that. Resend and Postmark suit a founder who wants transactional mail owned from the code, with Postmark keeping that stream cleanly apart from marketing. Kit and beehiiv suit a newsletter that is also a business asset, while ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Brevo, Mailchimp, SendGrid and Customerly each serve a narrower operation well.
Keep the stack small, ideally two tools: one lifecycle or newsletter platform and one transactional sender. Do not collapse critical messages into a marketing path to save a few dollars, because a silent failure on a receipt or a payment notice costs customers without any alert. Read the plan limits for your peak week, count your hours as well as your dollars, and write the stop rules before you build the first flow.
Frequently asked questions
Which platform should a solo SaaS founder start with?
For most solo founders the starting point is Loops, because it keeps product email, onboarding and transactional sends in one workspace. The free Early Stage plan allows up to 4,000 sends in any rolling 30-day period, which is enough to prove the first lifecycle flows. Move to the Growing Audience plan at $99 per month when the list or the send volume outgrows the free limits, or when you need transactional sends to users outside your audience.
Do I need two tools, one for marketing and one for transactional mail?
In most cases, yes. Receipts, login links, invoices and payment notices should not depend on the same suppression list as a newsletter. A single platform can work if it keeps separate sending streams and separate unsubscribe handling, but a solo founder should confirm that before relying on it. The usual compact setup is one lifecycle or newsletter tool plus one transactional sender such as Postmark or Resend.
When does Customer.io make more sense than Loops?
Customer.io makes more sense when the timing of messages depends on events: a user who created a project but never invited a teammate, a trial that ends without a plan change, or an invoice that failed. Its journeys branch on those events and its profile-based pricing reflects that work. If your lifecycle is mostly a calendar of onboarding emails and product announcements, Loops is simpler and cheaper to run alone.
Can I start on a free plan without losing important mail?
Yes, if the free plan covers your current volume. Loops Early Stage includes all features with up to 4,000 sends in a rolling 30 days, but only to the 1,000 newest contacts. Resend includes 3,000 emails per month. Brevo includes 300 daily sends. Kit includes up to 10,000 subscribers but leaves Visual Automations and email sequences to the Creator plan. The risk is a daily or monthly cap that delays a burst of signups, so model peak days, not averages.
How should failed-payment and trial-ending messages be handled?
Keep them on the transactional path, separate from newsletters, and send them from a stream that is not suppressed by marketing unsubscribes. Each message should link to a page where the customer can pay or update the card, and the stop rule should be explicit: a successful payment ends the sequence. Do not promise a recovery rate to customers or to yourself until you have measured your own results.
What does a solo founder really pay beyond the subscription?
The hidden costs are integration work, template maintenance, list hygiene, domain authentication, and the time spent diagnosing a failed send. A plan that costs $19 per month but takes ten hours of monthly maintenance costs more than a $99 plan that runs itself. Count hours at a rate you would pay someone else, then compare totals.
Can I move from one platform to another later?
Yes, but plan for it from the first day. Export subscribers with their consent source and suppression status, keep templates in your own repository where possible, and record event names in a document you control. Migrations fail most often because unsubscribed people were re-imported or because two systems sent the same onboarding message during the overlap.