How we compare email marketing software
We list 13 email marketing platforms available to Australian businesses, and every one publishes a rate card. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page.
The calculator takes your subscriber count and your emails per month, plus whether you need automation, and costs each platform on its own meter: contacts for most, sends for Brevo. It picks the cheapest published plan whose caps cover you and skips a plan without automation when you have said you need it. Commission does not change the order.
Contacts or sends: the two meters email marketing software bills on
A "from" price tells you little until you know what it is a price per. Most meter on stored contacts: you pay for the size of your database, and sending is capped by fair use rather than priced. Brevo meters on sends. HubSpot is a third shape, per seat with contacts in blocks.
| Provider | Pricing model | Contact billing |
|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | Per contact | All contacts (active + inactive) |
| AWeber | Per subscriber | Active subscribers (unsubscribes excluded) |
| Brevo | Per email volume | Unlimited contacts (billed by sends) |
| Campaign Monitor | Per subscriber | All subscribed contacts |
| Drip | Per subscriber | Active subscribers |
| HubSpot | Per seat | Per seat, plus marketing contacts in blocks of 1,000 |
| Kit | Per subscriber | Active subscribers |
| Klaviyo | Per active profile | Active profiles only (excludes suppressed) |
| Mailchimp | Per contact | All contacts including unsubscribed |
| MailerLite | Per subscriber | Active subscribers |
| Omnisend | Per subscriber | All contacts including non-subscribers |
| Spreeflo | Per marketing contact | Peak marketing contacts in the month (non-marketing contacts and form responses unlimited and uncounted) |
| Transpond | Per active contact | Active contacts (fair use: 12x contacts /mo in sends) |
The two meters invert. A retailer with a large list that mails once a month is buying storage, and a contact meter charges for every dormant record between sends. A consultancy with a small list that mails several times a week is buying volume, and a send meter climbs with every campaign. Work out which describes you first. "Unlimited sending" on a contact meter is usually a fair use ceiling in the terms; Transpond states its multiple openly above.
Which contacts your email marketing software counts, including the ones you cannot email
Vendors do not agree on what a contact is. Some count every record, including people who have unsubscribed. Others count only active subscribers. The Contact billing column above shows which is which.
For an Australian sender this is more than an accounting quirk. The Spam Act requires you to stop mailing anyone who has unsubscribed, so on an all-contacts meter you are paying to store the exact people the law forbids you to email.
Deleting them is the wrong response. A deleted record is no longer proof that the person opted out, so a later import from a spreadsheet or a point-of-sale export can quietly re-add them. Suppress rather than delete, and treat the storage cost as the price of keeping your consent record intact. If that cost is material at your list size, the fix is a platform on the other meter, not a tidier database.
Klaviyo and Mailchimp: where these two email marketing software platforms diverge
The usual answer, that one is for e-commerce and one is for everyone, is too coarse to decide anything.
| Provider | Entry price /mo | Automation |
|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo | $28/mo (Email) | Advanced (flows, triggers, predictive on every paid plan) |
| Mailchimp | $18/mo (Essentials) | Basic (Essentials), Advanced (Standard+) |
They meter the same list differently: Klaviyo bills Active profiles only (excludes suppressed) and Mailchimp bills All contacts including unsubscribed, so on a list with years of churn the two are counting different numbers before either rate card is applied. Automation is gated differently too: if abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows are the reason you are buying, compare the plan that carries them. Both ladders climb in steps at different places, so the entry figure is the least useful number here: put your real list size into the table instead.
The Spam Act, SMS and email marketing software built for other markets
Australian rules are stricter than the American ones most of these platforms were designed around. The Spam Act 2003 requires consent before you send commercial electronic messages, clear identification of the sender, and a working unsubscribe honoured within five working days. ACMA enforces this. The practical requirement is that you can produce, for any address on your list, a record of when and how they opted in.
Every platform here ships consent and unsubscribe tooling, so compliance is not a differentiator. Where the offshore origin shows up is whether the platform can send a text to an Australian mobile, and whether support is awake during your working day.
| Provider | AU SMS marketing | Support |
|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | Yes (AU supported) | 24/7 chat |
| AWeber | No (3rd-party integrations only) | 24/7 phone |
| Brevo | Yes (AU supported) | Business hours |
| Campaign Monitor | No | AU business hours |
| Drip | Add-on (verify AU support) | Business hours |
| HubSpot | No | 24/7 chat |
| Kit | No | Business hours |
| Klaviyo | Yes (AU supported) | Business hours |
| Mailchimp | Yes (AU SMS, paid add-on) | Business hours |
| MailerLite | No (via integrations only) | Business hours |
| Omnisend | Yes (AU supported) | Business hours |
| Spreeflo | No | Email and knowledge base (priority chat and email on Professional) |
| Transpond | No (SMS add-on is UK customers only) | Email + knowledge base |
On sender authentication: the major mailbox providers now expect SPF, DKIM and a DMARC record on your own sending domain. Setting that up is your job whichever platform you pick, and skipping it costs you inbox delivery no rate card will show.
What a free email marketing software plan actually caps
Most free tiers here are capped on two axes at once, and reading only one is how a business ends up on a paid plan a fortnight after signing up. On some of them a list at the contact cap, mailed weekly, exhausts the send allowance in the first campaign or two. Brevo's free tier has a daily send ceiling instead, which suits a steady drip of sends and suits a single monthly blast badly. Some free tiers cap features, and a free plan with no automation is a broadcast tool.
| Provider | Free plan |
|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | No (14-day trial) |
| AWeber | No (14-day trial) |
| Brevo | Yes (300 emails /day, unlimited contacts) |
| Campaign Monitor | No (free trial) |
| Drip | No (14-day trial) |
| HubSpot | Yes (free marketing tools, up to 2 users) |
| Kit | Yes (10K subscribers, 1 automation, no A/B) |
| Klaviyo | Yes (250 profiles, 500 emails /mo) |
| Mailchimp | Yes (250 contacts, 500 sends /mo) |
| MailerLite | Yes (250 contacts, 2,500 emails /mo) |
| Omnisend | Yes (250 contacts, 500 emails, 60 SMS /mo) |
| Spreeflo | No (forms only) |
| Transpond | Yes (250 contacts, 3,000 sends /mo, no automation) |
Treat a free tier as a way to test deliverability and the editor, not as a plan you will still be on next year. What matters is what the rung above it costs at your list size, which is what the table above calculates.
Moving a list between email marketing software without breaking consent
No platform here requires a contract, so switching is an operational cost rather than a legal one, which makes the risk easy to underestimate.
Your suppression list has to move with your subscribers, and it is a separate export. Leave the unsubscribed and bounced records behind and the new platform has no idea those people opted out, so the first campaign mails them. That is a Spam Act problem, not housekeeping. Your consent records have to move too: opt-in date and source are ordinary export fields, and they are the evidence you would need if a complaint were made.
Sender reputation does not transfer, so re-authenticate your domain before the first send and warm up on your most engaged segment. Expect the meter to change what you pay: moving from a platform that bills all contacts to one that bills active subscribers drops your billable count without your list changing. Cost the destination on its own definition of a contact. The export is the easy part; templates and flows do not port, and rebuilding them is usually the real cost of switching.