Email Marketing Budget Calculator

Email budget has two parts. The platform fee is the line item everyone notices. Creative cost is the line item everyone underestimates. A Klaviyo account at 50K subscribers is around $550 a month. Designing, writing, and QA-ing 12 sends a month at a reasonable standard runs about $1,800 if you are paying a freelancer or small agency, and more if you want custom photography or video. Leave the creative line out of your plan and your program will either look like a 2015 Mailchimp template or consume more of your time than it should.

Klaviyo wins for most ecommerce brands once you pass 1,500 contacts because of segmentation and flow depth. Omnisend is cheaper tier-for-tier and fine for smaller catalogs. Mailchimp is easier to get started with but becomes expensive fast past 10K contacts and lacks the ecommerce-native flows the others have. Pick based on the revenue you expect email to drive, not the monthly fee alone. A $200 higher platform bill that unlocks $20K more in monthly revenue is the best trade in DTC.

Budget monthly, revisit quarterly. Your list grows. Your send cadence evolves. Creative costs go up when you start doing more video and photo-driven campaigns, which is usually when revenue starts climbing too.