Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 emails is the cheapest sending option in 2026, and Mailchimp Standard at a 100K contact list mailed once a month is the most expensive at roughly $8.00 per 1,000 (vendor pricing pages, retrieved 2026-06-11). Most managed platforms cluster between $0.20 and $2.50 per 1,000 at a 100,000-emails-per-month send volume. Headline plan prices hide these numbers because vendors quote monthly tiers, contact counts, or bundles instead of the per-send rate that actually drives a budget. This guide normalises every major sending option to the same 100K/month volume so the numbers line up.
How Email Cost Per 1,000 Actually Works
Email vendors use two pricing models, and they are not directly comparable. Per-send pricing (Amazon SES at $0.10/1,000, Mailgun, Postmark, Brevo Business, SendGrid Email API) charges by the email. Per-contact pricing (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit) charges by the address stored on your list, regardless of whether you mail it (vendor pricing pages, retrieved 2026-06-11). Most marketing-first ESPs use the per-contact model; most infrastructure-first ESPs use per-send.
For per-send platforms, "cost per 1,000 emails" is the native pricing unit and you can read it straight off the page. For per-contact platforms, you have to back-calculate: take the monthly fee at your contact tier, divide by the number of emails you actually send in a month, then multiply by 1,000. The same Mailchimp plan can look reasonable at four sends per month and outrageous at one. We normalise everything to a 100,000-emails-per-month send volume below.
The other thing the per-1,000 number hides: who handles the operational layer. Raw Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 is genuinely that cheap, but SES on its own is an SMTP/API endpoint, not a marketing platform. There's no subscriber list, no campaign editor, no bounce dashboard. The fair comparison is SES plus whatever management layer you use, which is where the BYO-SES architecture explored later in this post lives.
Cost Per 1,000 Emails - 2026 Comparison Table
At 100,000 emails per month, the cheapest legitimate option is Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 (AWS, 2026), and the most expensive option for a list-of-100K sender is Mailchimp Standard at roughly $8 per 1,000 if you send your list once a month. Most managed platforms cluster between $0.20 and $1.50 per 1,000. The table below lists each major provider's effective rate at the 100K-emails-per-month normalisation volume.
| Platform | Pricing model | Plan at 100K/mo | Effective $/1,000 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon SES (raw) | Per-send | $10/mo ($0.10 × 100) | $0.10 | Sending API only - no list, no editor, no campaign UI |
| Mailblast + your SES | Per-send + flat platform fee | $20/mo Mailblast (10K contacts) + $10/mo SES = $30/mo | $0.30 | BYO-SES; drag-and-drop editor, automation, suppression, analytics included |
| Brevo Business (20K tier, billed up) | Per-send tiers | ~$65/mo for 20K → multiple top-ups to reach 100K, or ~$129/mo at the 100K tier | $0.65 - $1.30 | Pricing scales by send volume; automation, A/B, landing pages included |
| Mailgun Scale | Per-send (bundled) | $90/mo for 100K included | $0.90 | Overages $1.10/1,000 above bundle; dedicated IP extra |
| SendGrid Email API Pro | Per-send (bundled) | ~$90/mo for 100K (Pro tier) | ~$0.90 | Transactional-focused; marketing automation extra |
| Postmark Pro | Per-send (overage) | $16.50 base + 90K × $1.30/1,000 = ~$133.50/mo | $1.34 | Transactional-first; not built for marketing campaigns |
| Mailchimp Standard (100K contacts, sent once) | Per-contact | ~$800/mo for 100K contacts | $8.00 | Drops to ~$2.67/1,000 at 3 sends/month; you pay for inactive contacts |
The chart below shows the same numbers as a single horizontal-bar visualisation, normalised to 100K emails/month. Mailblast paired with your own SES sits second-cheapest behind raw SES; per-contact platforms occupy the right end of the chart.
Why Amazon SES Is the Cheapest Baseline
Amazon SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails with no monthly base fee outside the first-year free tier of 3,000 message charges per month for new AWS accounts (AWS, 2026). There is no contact-count multiplier, no per-send minimum, and no tier ladder; you pay the same rate at 1,000 emails and 100 million emails. That makes SES the structural floor for email infrastructure economics.
The catch is that SES is an SMTP and API endpoint, not a marketing platform. There is no subscriber list, no consent management, no campaign editor, no built-in unsubscribe handling, no per-link click analytics, and no automation. AWS treats those concerns as "your application's problem." Senders who try to run a marketing program directly against the SES API end up reinventing the same five components every other ESP already ships - usually badly.
The BYO-SES architecture that Mailblast uses is the honest way to keep the $0.10/1,000 SES rate while getting a real platform on top. Your AWS account holds the sending identity, DKIM keys, and quota; Mailblast holds the subscriber list, campaign editor, suppression list, and analytics. Total cost = (your SES bill) + (Mailblast subscription). Compare that to a wrapped-SES platform where the vendor pays AWS once and resells you the capacity at a 5-10x markup. See our deeper breakdown in Amazon SES pricing explained and the AWS SES cost calculator for worked totals at common volumes.
When Per-Contact Pricing Actually Wins
Per-contact pricing only beats per-send pricing in two specific situations. First, very small lists where a free tier covers the contact count entirely - Mailchimp's Free plan covers 500 contacts, Brevo's covers 100K contacts but caps at 300 emails/day, and Mailblast's covers 1,000 contacts with 10,000 emails/month included. Second, lists where you mail every contact multiple times per month and the bundled send allowance exceeds what you'd pay per-send.
The crossover happens around 5,000 contacts for most senders. Below that, free tiers and entry plans on per-contact platforms cost so little that the model barely matters. Above that, the math shifts hard. A per-contact platform billing 50K addresses costs the same whether you mail twice or twenty times in a month, but if you mail twice, you're paying ten times the per-1,000 rate you'd see at five times the cadence. Most senders mail less frequently than they think.
The honest test: take your current monthly active subscriber count, multiply by your average sends per month, and divide your monthly platform fee by that. If you get a number above $1.50 per 1,000, a per-send platform paired with your own SES will almost certainly save you money. See Mailchimp pricing explained and Brevo pricing explained for tier-by-tier breakdowns of each model.
Hidden Costs to Factor In
The headline per-1,000 rate is rarely what you actually pay. A dedicated IP alone adds $24.95/month on Amazon SES, $59/month on Mailgun Scale, or roughly $145/month on Brevo (vendor pricing pages, retrieved 2026-06-11). Stack a dedicated IP, premium support, an automation module, and contact overage on a $1/1,000 headline plan and the real rate lands closer to $3-$5 per 1,000. Five line items account for most of the gap.
- Dedicated IPs. Mailgun charges around $59/month per dedicated IP on the Scale plan; SendGrid bundles one into the Pro plan but charges for additional IPs; Brevo lists dedicated IPs at roughly $145/month. On AWS SES, a dedicated IP is $24.95/month - the cheapest in the market by a wide margin (AWS, 2026).
- Premium support tiers. Many "self-serve" plans send you to community forums for support. Phone or priority email support typically gates behind a higher tier or adds $50-$200/month.
- Marketing automation modules. Brevo gates automation behind the Business plan, Mailchimp gates advanced automation behind Standard or Premium, and several transactional-first vendors charge extra for any campaign-style tooling. Mailblast includes automation on every paid plan, though not on its free tier.
- Contact storage overage. Per-contact platforms charge tier upgrades the moment you cross a threshold (10K, 25K, 50K). The jump from one tier to the next can be 30-50% of plan cost.
- API rate limits and overage charges. Bundled plans (Mailgun, Postmark) charge $1-$2 per 1,000 for emails over your bundle, often at a higher rate than the bundled cost.
Mailblast + SES at 100K Emails/Month
A concrete worked example. Sending 100,000 emails per month means at least 10,000 contacts under Mailblast's 10-emails-per-contact allowance, which sits at $20/month on the Launch ladder; Amazon SES at $0.10/1,000 adds $10/month. Total: $30/month, or $0.30 per 1,000 emails sent. That number includes the BeeFree drag-and-drop editor, automation, list management, suppression, double opt-in, per-recipient analytics, and no platform branding on the emails your subscribers actually receive (Mailblast product facts, 2026).
Compare that to the same volume on Mailchimp. A list of 100,000 contacts on the Standard plan is roughly $800/month (Mailchimp pricing page, retrieved 2026-06-11). If you send that list one campaign per month, your effective rate is $8.00 per 1,000. If you send four campaigns per month (400,000 sends), it falls to $2.00 per 1,000. Mailblast plus SES sending to that same 100,000-contact list four times a month costs $70 (Mailblast's 100K-contact rung) + $40 (SES) = $110/month, or $0.275 per 1,000 - still under $0.30.
The architectural difference matters more than the price. With Mailblast you're paying a platform fee for the management layer and the actual cost of sending stays with AWS. With a wrapped-SES ESP, the vendor's margin on the underlying SES capacity is baked into every email you send forever. That margin is what makes the $0.10/1,000 SES baseline disappear from the bill.
FAQ
What is the average email marketing cost per 1,000 emails in 2026?
At a 100,000 emails/month volume, per-1,000 costs range from $0.10 (raw Amazon SES) to roughly $7-$8 (Mailchimp Standard when sending to a 100K contact list once monthly). The practical floor for a managed platform with a drag-and-drop editor sits around $0.20-$0.30 per 1,000 when you pair Amazon SES with a thin management layer like Mailblast.
Which email service has the lowest cost per 1,000 emails?
Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 emails is the cheapest legitimate sending option in 2026 (AWS, 2026). It has no monthly base fee outside the 12-month free tier. The trade-off: raw SES is a sending API, not a marketing platform - you still need list management, suppression, analytics, and a campaign editor layered on top.
Why is Mailchimp so much more expensive per 1,000 emails?
Mailchimp prices by contact count, not send volume. A 100,000-contact Standard plan is roughly $800/month, so if you send to that list once a month (100K emails) the effective rate is around $8 per 1,000. Send twice and it halves to $4. The per-1,000 number only stays low for senders who mail their full list multiple times each month.
Is pay-per-send always cheaper than per-contact pricing?
For most senders with lists above 5,000 contacts, yes. Per-send platforms (SES, Mailgun, Postmark, Brevo Business) charge nothing for inactive contacts, while per-contact platforms (Mailchimp, ConvertKit) bill you for every address whether or not they open. The exception is small lists with very high send frequency, where free tiers and bundled allotments tip the math the other way.
What hidden costs raise the real per-1,000 price?
Dedicated IPs (typically $30-$150/month extra), premium support tiers, advanced automation modules, contact storage overage, transactional add-ons, and SMS credits are the usual culprits. A platform with a $1/1,000 headline rate often ends up at $3-$5/1,000 once you add the modules a real sending program needs.
Disclosure: Mailblast is a hosted email marketing platform that runs on your own Amazon SES account. Total cost is the Mailblast subscription plus whatever AWS charges your SES account directly; we never mark up SES capacity.