Listmonk vs Mailchimp vs Brevo: Email Marketing Software for a Small Business
Email marketing tools are priced two different ways, and which one is cheaper for you depends entirely on your list shape: contact-count-based pricing (Mailchimp) punishes a large list even if you rarely email it, send-volume-based pricing (Brevo) punishes a small list you email constantly, and self-hosting (Listmonk) removes the platform fee entirely but shifts deliverability and infrastructure work onto you.
Quick take
- Comfortable self-hosting and already run other infrastructure (a VPS, Docker, a reverse proxy): Listmonk
- Want zero setup, the largest template/integration ecosystem, and a list under a few thousand contacts: Mailchimp
- Have a smaller list you email frequently and want to pay by volume sent rather than list size: Brevo
The three options
Listmonk is a free, open-source (AGPLv3-licensed) newsletter and mailing-list manager that runs as a single Go binary — no per-contact or per-send fee from the software itself, ever. It’s built for scale (the project’s own benchmarks cite handling millions of subscribers with SQL-based segmentation) and includes campaign analytics, bounce tracking, a Markdown/HTML/drag-and-drop template editor, and API/webhook support. The catch: Listmonk only handles list management and campaign composition — it doesn’t send email itself. You still need a transactional email relay (Amazon SES, Postmark, SendGrid, or your own SMTP server) to actually deliver messages, and that relay’s cost scales with volume separately from Listmonk. You’re also responsible for your own sending-domain reputation and deliverability — no vendor is doing that work for you. Listmonk is the right call if you already self-host other infrastructure and want to avoid a recurring SaaS fee entirely, and you’re comfortable owning deliverability as an ongoing concern rather than a solved problem.
Mailchimp is the best-known hosted option, priced by contact count rather than emails sent. Its Free tier covers up to 500 contacts (older sources cite 250 — Mailchimp’s free-tier limit has moved over time, worth reconfirming at signup) with basic templates and one audience. Paid tiers scale by both contacts and features: Essentials starts around $13/month, Standard around $20/month, and Premium around $350/month, with all three prices rising steeply as your contact count grows — at 10,000 contacts, Essentials alone runs roughly $110/month. Mailchimp’s advantage is breadth: the largest template library, the most third-party integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce, and most CRMs connect natively), and AI-assisted content tools on higher tiers. The trade-off is that contact-based pricing penalizes a list that’s grown large but isn’t emailed often — you pay for every contact stored, whether or not you’re actively sending to them, unless you manually archive unsubscribed/inactive contacts.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) flips the pricing model: it charges by emails sent per month, not contacts stored, which can make it meaningfully cheaper for a business with a large-but-infrequently-emailed list. Its Free tier allows 300 emails/day (roughly 9,000/month) with unlimited contacts. Paid tiers start with Starter around $9/month for 5,000 emails/month (note: the Brevo logo stays on outgoing emails unless you pay roughly $9/month more to remove it, so a genuinely branded Starter plan is closer to $18/month), and a Business/Standard tier from around $18/month adds A/B testing, advanced automation, and landing pages. A Professional tier runs around $499/month, with custom Enterprise pricing above that. Brevo is worth it specifically when your list is large relative to how often you actually email it — a scenario where Mailchimp’s per-contact pricing gets expensive fast.
Pricing model and cost compared (2026)
| Listmonk | Mailchimp | Brevo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing basis | Free software; pay only for a separate SMTP relay | Per contact stored | Per email sent/month |
| Free tier | Fully free (self-hosted) | Up to 500 contacts | 300 emails/day, unlimited contacts |
| Entry paid cost | Relay cost only (e.g. SES: fractions of a cent/email) | ~$13/mo (Essentials) | ~$9-18/mo (Starter, branded) |
| Setup effort | High (server, relay, deliverability) | None | None |
| Best for | Large list, self-hosting comfort, no recurring platform fee | Small-to-mid list, biggest integration ecosystem | Large list emailed infrequently |
Which one fits your setup
If you already self-host other services — a VPS from Hetzner, DigitalOcean, or Vultr running behind Caddy or Nginx Proxy Manager — Listmonk removes the recurring platform fee entirely and pairs naturally with that existing setup; just budget separately for a transactional email relay and expect to own deliverability yourself rather than treating it as solved. If you want zero setup and the widest integration ecosystem (especially with an e-commerce platform or CRM you’re already running, like Shopify vs WooCommerce vs BigCommerce or Twenty, EspoCRM, or HubSpot), Mailchimp is still the default choice for a list under a few thousand contacts, where its per-contact pricing hasn’t yet gotten expensive. If your list has grown large but you only send a handful of campaigns a month, Brevo’s per-send pricing model will likely cost less than Mailchimp’s per-contact model at the same list size — worth running the numbers for your specific list size and send frequency before committing to either.
Which one should you actually pick?
- Already self-hosting infrastructure, want to avoid a recurring SaaS fee: Listmonk + a transactional relay (SES/Postmark).
- Smaller list, want zero setup and the widest ecosystem of integrations: Mailchimp.
- Larger list, infrequent sends, want to pay by volume instead of list size: Brevo.
Email marketing referral placeholder — swap for a real Mailchimp/Brevo affiliate/partner link once a program is confirmed, per CMT-54’s monetization decision; Listmonk has no vendor-level program since it’s free open-source software (a transactional-relay affiliate program, e.g. Postmark, would be the actual monetizable angle there).
Bottom line
The right tool depends on your list’s shape, not a feature checklist: Listmonk removes the platform fee entirely but requires self-hosting comfort and ownership of deliverability, Mailchimp is the easiest and most integration-rich choice while your contact count stays modest, and Brevo’s send-based pricing wins once your list is large but infrequently emailed.
Sources
- Listmonk — official — fetched directly, confirms free/open-source/AGPLv3/self-hosted
- Mailchimp pricing — official fetch returned a German/EUR-localized page; USD figures corroborated across multiple independent 2026 trackers
- Brevo pricing — official page is JS-rendered and returned only the page title to automated fetch; figures are third-party-corroborated only across several 2026 pricing-review sites