The cheapest way to send a newsletter in 2026

The cheapest way to send a newsletter depends on what you're trying to save: money or time. Raw self-hosting wins on cash (a few dollars a month for a server) but costs you the hours of running mail infrastructure. Per-subscriber marketing suites are easy to start but get expensive as the list grows, because you pay for the size of the list, not for what you send. The cheapest managed middle is subscriber-tier hosting with unlimited sending, from about €8 a month, where the price stays low and flat and you never touch a server. Here's the full picture.

Self-hosting: cheapest on paper

If you only count the invoice, self-hosting wins. Put Listmonk on a small VPS, wire it to an SMTP relay, and your server bill is a few dollars a month. Nothing else here beats that number.

The number is also a trap. The server is the cheap part. The expensive part is everything the server doesn't do for you: warming IPs, setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC, handling bounces and complaints, keeping the box patched, and untangling why Gmail started sending you to spam on a Sunday. None of that shows up on the invoice, and all of it shows up in your week. Self-hosting is cheapest in cash and most expensive in time, which is fine if your time is free and you enjoy the work. For most people it isn't and they don't.

Sending APIs and SMTP: a cheap pipe with nothing attached

The big sending platforms are cheap per email, especially Amazon SES at around $0.10 per 1,000. Postmark and Mailgun start near $15 a month for 10,000 emails and then run roughly $1.20 to $1.80 per 1,000 after that. At low volume, none of this is much money.

The catch is that a sending API is a pipe, not a newsletter tool. It puts mail on the wire and stops there. You still need something to hold your list, run signup forms, handle unsubscribes, and build campaigns, and you still own the deliverability work. So the real cost is the API plus whatever you bolt on top plus your time. If you're a developer sending from your own app this is a reasonable path, and we compared the main providers in detail here. For a plain newsletter, you're paying cheap for one tenth of the job.

Per-subscriber marketing suites: easy until the list grows

Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit and Beehiiv are the comfortable option. They're polished, they do automations and landing pages, and getting started takes minutes. Their strength is breadth, and if you want a marketing suite rather than a newsletter tool, that breadth is worth paying for.

Paying is the operative word, because they charge by the size of your list. MailerLite is the gentlest, around $14 to $15 a month at 1,000 subscribers and roughly $32 to $39 at 5,000. Mailchimp runs about $20 at 1,000 and climbs to $75 to $100 at 5,000, before add-ons. Kit sits near $39 at 1,000 and around $90 at 5,000. Beehiiv is free up to 2,500 subscribers, then starts near $49 and rises from there.

The pattern is the same everywhere: the price is tied to how many people are on the list, not to whether you actually email them. Grow the list and the bill grows with it, whether you send once a week or once a quarter. That's the trade you're making, and we walk through cheaper alternatives to the suites separately.

Lean and metered tools: cheap if you stay small

EmailOctopus and Buttondown are the budget picks, and they're honestly cheap. EmailOctopus is free up to 2,500 subscribers, with the free tier capped at 10,000 emails a month, then roughly $14 to $30 a month up to 5,000. Buttondown starts around $9 a month for 1,000 subscribers and $29 at 5,000, and keeps a clean, minimal interface.

The word doing the work in "cheap" is small. The free and low tiers come with limits: EmailOctopus meters your monthly sends, and both tools stay deliberately lean, so features you might expect elsewhere aren't there. For a modest list that you email now and then, that can be all you need. For a list you send to often, or one that's growing, the caps and the missing pieces start to bite.

Managed subscriber-tier hosting: cheap, unlimited, and no servers

Here's where the arc lands. If you want the low cost of running your own setup without becoming the person who runs it, managed subscriber-tier hosting is the cheapest option that removes the ops.

That's what Yellaro is. The prices are flat and by list size: €8 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers, €19 for up to 5,000, €39 for up to 15,000, and €79 for up to 50,000. Sending is unlimited on every tier, so emailing your list daily costs the same as emailing it monthly. It's hosted in the EU, and there's a 30-day trial before you pay anything.

Put those numbers next to the table. At 5,000 subscribers, Yellaro is €19 a month with unlimited sending, against roughly $32 to $100 for the marketing suites and a pile of your own hours for the self-hosted and API routes. You get the low, predictable cost of the DIY paths without owning the deliverability, the servers, or the 2am debugging. The reason the price can be flat and the sending unlimited is that we run our own sending relay instead of metering you per email, which is the same reason per-subscriber-flat pricing works at all.

We'll be fair about the edges. If your list is under 2,500 and you don't mind a tool's branding or its sending caps, a free tier is cheaper in raw cash, and that's a real option. Yellaro's claim is narrower and honest: it's the cheapest way to send an unlimited amount of newsletter without running the infrastructure yourself. If you're coming from a self-hosted box, our managed Listmonk option is the same idea. You can see the plans or see how it works.

FAQ

What's the cheapest way to send a newsletter? In raw cash, self-hosting Listmonk on a small VPS at a few dollars a month, but you pay for it in the time spent running deliverability and servers. The cheapest option that doesn't cost you that time is managed subscriber-tier hosting, from about €8 a month with unlimited sending.

Is self-hosting cheaper? On the invoice, yes: a cheap VPS plus an SMTP relay runs a few dollars a month. Off the invoice, no, because you take on IP warmup, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, bounce handling, updates, and every deliverability problem yourself.

Why do Mailchimp and MailerLite get expensive? They price by the number of subscribers on your list, not by how much you send, so the bill climbs as the list grows even if your sending doesn't. Expect roughly $14 to $20 a month at 1,000 subscribers and $32 to $100 at 5,000.

What's the cheapest option with unlimited sending? Subscriber-tier hosting like Yellaro, which starts at €8 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers and never charges per email, so send frequency doesn't change the price. Some free tiers also allow generous sending under about 2,500 subscribers if you can live with their limits.