The Hidden Tax on Your Growth: Why Your Email Platform Is Costing You a Fortune
Tired of your email marketing bill skyrocketing with every new subscriber? Discover the flaw in per-contact pricing and how to save thousands.
If you're running an online business, you know that building an email list is non-negotiable. It's the most direct line you have to your audience, a digital asset you truly own. But as your list grows, have you noticed a silent, creeping expense that grows with it, regardless of your email activity? I'm talking about your email marketing platform's bill.
For years, we used ActiveCampaign, a giant in the email marketing space. It was easy to start, integrated with everything, and seemed affordable. At first. The problem is, many popular email platforms, ActiveCampaign included, use a per-contact pricing model. This means you're charged based on the number of subscribers you have, not necessarily the value you're getting.
This model creates a painful paradox. You work hard to grow your list—the very thing you're supposed to do—and your reward is a bigger bill. Every single month.
The Math That Should Scare You
Let's put some real numbers to this. As our business grew, so did our subscriber list. We weren't even aggressive email marketers, but our list size pushed us into higher and higher pricing tiers. We reached a point where we were looking at a bill of over $5,000 per year.
Consider a scenario with 25,000 contacts. On a typical ActiveCampaign plan (priced yearly), you're looking at around $4,700 annually. Worse, it caps the number of emails you can send. If you want to email your list more than 10 times a month, you're forced into an even more expensive, custom-priced tier.
You're penalized for growing your list and for actively communicating with it. It's a business model that works beautifully for the platform but can slowly drain the profitability of your own business. You become hesitant to clean your list for fear of losing contacts, yet you pay for every single one, active or not.
We were trapped. The idea of migrating our complex system, with all its integrations, was so daunting that we just kept paying the ever-increasing invoice. Until we realized there was a better way—a way to reclaim control and slash our costs by over 90%.
