SaaS Email Platform Pricing at 5k, 10k and 25k People

SaaS email platforms bill on four different meters: stored people (Customer.io, Klaviyo, Loops, Drip), tracked users (Userlist), emails sent (Resend, Postmark, Mailgun, Amazon SES) or a negotiated quote (Braze, Iterable, MoEngage). At 10,000 people the lifecycle tools on this page land between $80 and $249 a month. At 100,000 emails a month the senders land between $16 and $139. Which number you should look at depends on whether your product has a big audience or a big message count.

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from. Volumes of 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 people are our sizing for comparison, not figures from any vendor.

The four meters, and why they matter

Profiles or contacts. Customer.io counts people plus objects as profiles, and its billing docs say a profile that exists at any point in the month counts for that month even if you delete it. Klaviyo counts active profiles. Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign count contacts. Drip counts active people and also lists a send allowance beside the price. In all of these your bill follows list size, so a cleanup before a renewal can move the tier.

Users and accounts. Userlist's page prices Basic at $149 a month for up to 10,000 users and adds $10 for each extra 1,000. Every plan includes a message allowance equal to five times your tracked users with a 500,000 floor, and overage is $1 per 1,000 messages, so a normal lifecycle program rarely hits it.

Emails sent. Resend's transactional tab, Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid and Amazon SES charge for volume. Your audience size does not matter, but they leave the audience, the segments and the journey logic to you or to another tool.

Quotes. Braze, Iterable and MoEngage sit here, along with the higher HubSpot and Salesforce editions. You get a number after a sales conversation, usually with a minimum term.

One product, three bills: a worked example

Take a product with 10,000 users, about 10,000 receipts and password resets a month, and a lifecycle program of onboarding, activation and renewal mail on top. Here is what the published prices give you.

• Loops: $99. The slider reads $99 at 9,998 subscribers and the pricing page says transactional sending is included on paid plans.
• Customer.io: $145. Essentials at 10,000 profiles, with transactional email listed in every plan and 1 million emails a month included.
• Userlist plus Postmark: $164. $149 for up to 10,000 users plus Postmark Basic at $15 for 10,000 receipts, since Userlist describes marketing and lifecycle email and in-app messages rather than a receipts API.
• Resend, both tabs: $100. $80 for marketing Pro at 10,000 contacts plus $20 for transactional Pro, if you subscribe to both as the page prices them.

The gap between $99 and $164 looks large until you add the cost of the person who maintains the second system. Equally, Loops' price depends on how much branching and reporting you need, which is what the Customer.io premium buys. Read Customer.io vs Loops and Loops vs Resend if that is your shortlist.

What the headline number leaves out

Customer.io. Essentials starts at $100 for 5,000 profiles billed monthly and includes 1 million emails. Extra profiles cost $0.009 each and extra emails $0.12 per 1,000. Managed deliverability is not part of Essentials. Premium starts at $1,000 a month billed yearly, and the page offers 12 months free to companies that have raised under $10M.

Loops. The free plan includes a Powered by Loops footer and limits sends to 4,000 per rolling 30 days. Paid plans remove the send cap and include transactional sends to people outside your audience, at no seat fee.

Userlist. Professional is $349 for up to 10,000 users with $12 per extra 1,000, which adds A/B testing, conversion goals and advanced workflow features over Basic.

Encharge. Premium is $159 at 2,000 subscribers, $269 at 5,000, $399 at 10,000 and $649 at 25,000, and email overage is $100 per 100,000 emails. Premium adds HubSpot, Salesforce and transactional email.

Postmark and Mailgun. Both charge overage past the included volume: Postmark Basic is $1.80 per extra 1,000 and Mailgun Basic starts at $1.80 too. A dedicated IP starts at $50 a month per IP on Postmark Pro or higher, and Mailgun lists extra IPs at $59 a month.

Amazon SES. The $0.16 rate is the Essentials plan. Pro is $0.22 per 1,000 plus $105 per account per region per month, and Enterprise is $0.23 plus $500. A standard dedicated IP is $24.95 a month.

Quote-based and sales-led platforms

Braze sells editions called Go, Select, Pro and Enterprise by quote, billed on monthly active users plus usage credits. Iterable's pricing page sends buyers to book a demo. MoEngage lists Growth and Enterprise with a one-year minimum. CleverTap shows a Core readout of $85 a month for the selected active-user band, excluding add-ons and taxes.

HubSpot's Marketing Hub page lists Starter at $7, Professional at $800 and Enterprise at $3,600 a month. The tier that matters for SaaS lifecycle email is Professional, because the feature table limits automation to 1 action on Free and 10 on Starter and removes the limit from Professional up. Salesforce's Account Engagement page lists Growth+ at $1,250 a month with 10,000 contacts included, billed annually, Plus+ at $2,750 and Advanced+ at $4,400.

These are sensible for a sales-assisted motion with a CRM at the centre. For a product-led team with 10,000 users they cost more than the per-person tools in the table above before you add the implementation work.

How to run your own numbers

Start with three counts from your own data: people you would message in a month, emails you expect to send, and the transactional share. Then walk the table in this order.

1. Count the meter, not the list. If you hold 30,000 contacts but only 9,000 were active in the last 90 days, Klaviyo's active profiles and Drip's active people might price you at 10,000, while Mailchimp's contacts and Encharge's subscribers price you at 30,000.
2. Price the next tier up. Customer.io's slider moves from $145 at 10,000 profiles to $235 at 20,000 and $325 at 30,000, while Userlist adds $10 per extra 1,000 users. Find out where your next jump lands before the renewal date, not after.
3. Check the daily and monthly send caps. Resend's free tier stops at 100 a day, Brevo's free plan at 300 a day, Mailchimp Standard allows 12 times your contact count a month.
4. Add the second tool. If the lifecycle platform has no receipts path, add a sender from the lower table.

For migrating once you have chosen, the migration guide covers exports and cutover, and the integrations guide covers the billing and product events that have to follow you across.

Verdict

For a SaaS product with 5,000 to 25,000 people, start your shortlist with Loops at $99 for 10,000 and Customer.io at $145 for 10,000, then add Userlist at $149 if you sell to teams and need user and company segments. Choose the meter that matches your product: a big audience with modest mail favours per-email senders, and an event-heavy product favours Customer.io's 1 million included emails. Skip the quote-based vendors until you need push, SMS and in-app messaging at scale, and price Amazon SES only if you have engineering time to spare.

If you are leaving Mailchimp or Klaviyo, the Mailchimp alternatives and Klaviyo alternatives pages put these same prices next to the cost of the platform you are leaving. For the decision beyond price, see how to choose a SaaS email platform.

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