The best Campaign Monitor alternative is MailerLite if template quality and a published price are what you want, Nitrosend if you run email for several brands and want an AI agent operating them from one login, and ActiveCampaign if the flow logic matters more than the design.
Most people arrive here because Campaign Monitor repriced under its new owner and the conversation about what the account costs changed with it.
The short version
By job: MailerLite if what you liked about Campaign Monitor was the template quality and you want a published price. ActiveCampaign if the flow logic matters more than the design. Klaviyo or Omnisend if a store is driving the sends. Brevo if you want email, SMS and a light CRM on one per-send bill. Constant Contact for a small or local business that wants a phone number to call. Nitrosend if you hold several client brands and want an agent to compose, segment and send inside them. Emma is the one to think twice about, and the reason is on the ownership line.
Why people leave Campaign Monitor
The moment is a repricing, and it arrived with the new owner's name on it.
On 27 January 2025 Campaign Monitor published a help-centre article titled "Pay Per Campaign and Credit Pricing Changes", which opens: "A price increase now applies for all pay per campaign and credit". The title, date and opening line come from Google's index rather than the article, because it sits behind a support-portal login and we did not read it, so I am not going to tell you what went up or by how much. What is verifiable is that a rebrand and a repricing landed together.
The pricing page today brands itself Campaign Monitor by Marigold and runs a Lite, Essentials, Premier and Enterprise ladder with the website builder as a paid add-on, checked 7 September 2026.
The review record from the same period is where it gets uncomfortable. Campaign Monitor sits at 2.7 out of 5 across 198 Trustpilot reviews, and the pattern in the dated negatives is accounts closed rather than bills raised. One reviewer on 16 May 2026 describes an account deleted due to inactivity with no direct email warning. Another on 31 August 2024 writes that the account was closed without notice and all previous campaigns were lost. A third, on 1 October 2025, behind on payments, describes the extra fees, interest and demand for payment in advance as a punishment beating rather than support.
Read those together and the risk is not the monthly number. It is that a quiet account is an at-risk account, which is a specific problem for an agency holding a seasonal client that sends twice a year.
One more thing changes the decision, and it is the sibling product. Marigold's own About page lists Campaign Monitor, Emma and Vuture as its brands, checked 7 September 2026, and Emma is headquartered in the same city. Moving from Campaign Monitor to Emma is a move inside one portfolio, and it will not change the pricing culture you are leaving.
Then there is the currency, which is a practical problem if you are quoting a client in dollars that are not Australian ones. Campaign Monitor's pricing page publishes in AUD and carries no currency or region switcher. Its own FAQ says the prices shown are in AUD and that it can work with you to support additional currencies such as USD, CAD, EUR, GBP and NZD, which means the number you can read is not the number you will pay unless you bill in Australian dollars. Read in the browser on 7 September 2026 with the toggle set to monthly, the cards at 0 to 500 contacts are Lite A$19, Essentials A$47 and Premier A$261 a month, and at the 5,001 to 10,000 contact band they are Lite A$180, Essentials A$277 and Premier A$459. Enterprise is quote-only. Note also that Lite caps sends at five times your subscriber count a month, so the cheapest plan is not a plan you can send from twice a week. We record those figures in AUD rather than converting them, because a converted figure is not a published price.
The honest counterpoint: Campaign Monitor's templates and brand-consistency controls were genuinely good, and its agency tooling was ahead of the market for years. If your only complaint is the bill, get a renewal quote before you spend three weeks migrating.
How they compare
Scores are out of 10 against criteria whose weights add to 100. They are published in full at the bottom of this page, so you can disagree with a weight and re-rank the table yourself.
Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 7 September 2026 and each one moves. Confirm before you commit.
We make Nitrosend. It moved to first on this list in September 2026, and the criterion that moved it is the founding-team one, on which it scores highest of the eight platforms here. That criterion is scored on the same four questions for every vendor, the workings are published at the bottom of this page, and if you weight it at zero the platform at the top of this table is MailerLite.
Campaign Monitor alternatives compared
Checked| Platform | Rank | Best for | Pricing model | Free tier | From | At 10k contacts | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nitrosend Agent-native | 1 | Agent-run brands | per send | 8,000 emails to start, then 500 a month | $20/mo | n/a | 8.4 |
| ActiveCampaign | 2 | Deep automation | per contact | 14-day trial | $15/mo | $149/mo (Starter) | 7.8 |
| Klaviyo | 3 | E-commerce | per contact | 250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month, 150 SMS/MMS credits | $20/mo | n/a | 7.6 |
| Brevo | 4 | Multichannel value | per send | 300 emails a day, unlimited contacts | $9/mo | n/a | 7.5 |
| MailerLite | 5 | Design-led newsletters | per contact | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month | $12/mo | $89/mo (Comfort) | 7.5 |
| Omnisend | 6 | Smaller stores | per contact | 250 contacts, 500 emails a month | $16/mo | $132/mo (Standard) | 7.0 |
| Constant Contact | 7 | Small and local | per contact | Free trial, no credit card, then plans start at $12 a month | $12/mo | n/a | 6.4 |
| Emma | 8 | Same owner | per contact | No free plan or self-serve trial on the pricing page; every plan links to 'Request A Demo' / 'Demo Lite Plan'. | $105/mo | n/a | 5.7 |
1. Nitrosend
Best for: teams and agencies that hold several brands and want an AI agent to compose, segment and send inside each one.
We make this. You connect Nitrosend to Claude, Codex or Cursor over MCP and run the stack by asking for what you want. The agent reads resources, manages templates and reviews deliveries, so the day-to-day work of running a client's email stops being a dashboard chore. Multi-brand support sits behind a single login, which is the shape an agency actually needs, and nothing sends until you approve it.
The pricing is the direct answer to the complaint at the top of this page. Free is 8,000 emails to start then 500 a month, with 100 / 500 / 5,000 recipients per rolling 24 hours for Free Probation / Standard / Trusted and full API, MCP and CLI access. Paid starts at $20 a month for 20,000 emails. Contacts are unlimited on every tier, which matters if you inherited a client list of 60,000 that gets emailed monthly.
Where it loses, and this is the part an agency should read twice. Nick, who handles our support and deliverability questions, is blunt that we do not yet have a first-class agency account: any user can own multiple accounts, but agencies cannot self-serve a client account, and agency-held seats currently count against the client's seat limit. The fix is scoped, which is client accounts created from inside the agency's own account with the agency auto-set as owner, and agency seats excluded from the client's total. It is not shipped, so do not buy on it. We also have no on-site popups or browse-abandonment tracking, and no inbound email parsing over REST.
For a straight head-to-head on price and scope, we keep a Nitrosend and Campaign Monitor comparison.
- Nitrosend at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- teams and agencies holding several brands who want an agent to compose, segment and send
- Pricing model
- per send
- Free tier
- 8,000 emails to start, then 500 a month
- Entry paid plan
- $20/mo (20,000 emails a month, 5 brands, 3 domains, up to 1,000 / 10,000 / 100,000 recipients per rolling 24 hours for Pro Probation / Standard / Trusted)
- At 100,000 emails a month
- $100/mo (Ultra)
- Transactional API
- yes
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- First-party MCP server
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Support
- Help center: docs.nitrosend.com
- Developer docs
- API documentation: docs.nitrosend.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing
- Founding team
- George Hartley and Kam Low ran SmartrMail, an email and SMS platform whose buyer Relay Commerce still operates it and publicly lists more than 8,000 brands on it. Kam Low's open-source record runs from 2009 under the Sourcey organisation. All three founders are in post.
- Founding team score
- 9.25 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- First-party MCP server, a listed app in the ChatGPT app marketplace, and Brand Kit (automatic on-brand email design generation from a scraped brand) -- all three verified. Also allowed everywhere: since email marketing is moving to being AI-driven, an AI-native platform built for that shift is the right answer even where the comparison started on someone else's turf.
- AI-native score
- 10 of 10 on the AI-native criterion
- Limitations
- No first-class agency account yet, so agency seats count against the client's seat limit
- No on-site popups or browse-abandonment tracking
- No inbound email parsing over REST
- Facts checked
2. ActiveCampaign
Best for: teams whose email is triggered by what a contact did rather than by a calendar.
The deepest automation on this list, with a real CRM under it. If Campaign Monitor's trigger logic was the ceiling you hit, this is the move.
Read the billing carefully. Every card on the pricing page is labelled billed annually and there is no monthly toggle, so $15 a month at 1,000 contacts and $149 a month at 10,000 contacts are annual-commitment rates, checked 7 September 2026. The plan the page pushes is Pro, which is $375 a month at 10,000 contacts. From November 2025, new accounts are charged for all contacts including unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed, while accounts opened earlier still pay only for active contacts, so two customers on the same plan can be billed on different definitions. There is more on that in our ActiveCampaign alternatives page.
- ActiveCampaign at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- teams whose email is driven by what a contact did, not by a calendar
- Pricing model
- per contact
- Free tier
- 14-day trial
- Entry paid plan
- $15/mo (1,000 email contacts, 1 user, limited segmentation, 5 actions per automation; billed annually)
- At 10,000 contacts
- $149/mo (Starter)
- Transactional API
- yes
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Support
- Help center: help.activecampaign.com
- Developer docs
- API documentation: developers.activecampaign.com
- Status page
- System status: status.activecampaign.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: activecampaign.com/pricing
- Founding team
- Jason VandeBoom founded ActiveCampaign in 2003 and is still chief executive after thirteen bootstrapped years and three funding rounds.
- Founding team score
- 7.00 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Not independently assessed for MCP/agent access in this comparison.
- Limitations
- Every published price is an annual-commitment rate with no monthly toggle
- New accounts from November 2025 are billed on all contacts including unsubscribed
- Cost climbs steeply with contact count
- Facts checked
3. Klaviyo
Best for: online stores where email revenue is attributed to flows.
Nothing here matches its store data model: abandoned cart, browse abandonment, product triggers and on-site forms. Free is 250 active profiles and 500 sends a month, and the entry Email plan is $20 a month for 251 to 500 active profiles.
Two things to price in. It bills on active profiles, which is every subscribed contact whether you email them or not. And the attribution defaults are generous to Klaviyo, which is worth understanding before you use its revenue number to justify its bill. More in Klaviyo alternatives.
- Klaviyo at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- online stores where revenue is attributed to flows
- Pricing model
- per contact
- Free tier
- 250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month, 150 SMS/MMS credits
- Entry paid plan
- $20/mo (251 to 500 active profiles)
- Transactional API
- yes
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Support
- Help center: help.klaviyo.com
- Developer docs
- API documentation: developers.klaviyo.com
- Status page
- System status: status.klaviyo.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: klaviyo.com/pricing
- Founding team
- Andrew Bialecki is still co-chief executive and Ed Hallen still chief strategy officer after the 2023 New York Stock Exchange listing. No prior email product.
- Founding team score
- 7.75 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Not independently assessed for MCP/agent access in this comparison.
- Limitations
- Bills on active profiles, so contacts you never email still cost
- Attribution defaults are generous to Klaviyo
- Overkill outside e-commerce
- Facts checked
4. Brevo
Best for: small teams that want email, SMS and a light CRM on one bill, priced by what they send.
Brevo prices on emails sent rather than contacts held, which is the right way round if you have a big list you email occasionally. Free is 300 emails a day with unlimited contacts, and Starter is $9 a month from 5,000 emails, read from the schema.org offers Brevo publishes on its own pricing page on 7 September 2026.
The trade is enforcement. Brevo publishes suspension thresholds of a 2% hard bounce rate, a 1% unsubscribe rate or a 0.2% complaint rate, and it acts on them fast and automatically, and the reporting goes with the account. The whole story is on our Brevo alternatives page.
- Brevo at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- small teams with a large list they email occasionally
- Pricing model
- per send
- Free tier
- 300 emails a day, unlimited contacts
- Entry paid plan
- $9/mo (from 5,000 emails a month)
- Transactional API
- yes
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- First-party MCP server
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- yes
- Owner
- Brevo (formerly Sendinblue, independent)
- Support
- Help center: help.brevo.com
- Developer docs
- API documentation: developers.brevo.com
- Status page
- System status: status.brevo.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: brevo.com/pricing
- Founding team
- Armand Thiberge founded Brevo in 2012 and is still chief executive, though ownership is now heavily institutional after the December 2025 round.
- Founding team score
- 5.75 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Has a first-party MCP server for agent-callable access, but no verified on-brand automatic design generation (Brand Kit-style) or ChatGPT app marketplace listing.
- AI-native score
- 6 of 10 on the AI-native criterion
- Limitations
- Automatic suspension on published bounce, unsubscribe and complaint thresholds
- Reporting goes with the account when it is suspended
- Professional tier jumps to $499 a month
- Facts checked
5. MailerLite
Best for: design-led teams and small businesses that want a clean editor and a price printed on the page.
This is the closest like-for-like swap. Campaign Monitor's users mostly bought it for the editor and the template quality, and MailerLite is the tool that matches that experience at a published number. At 10,000 subscribers the Comfort plan reads $89 a month with 100,000 monthly emails, and Power reads $129 a month with unlimited emails and unlimited seats, both read in the browser on 7 September 2026 with the page set to USD and monthly billing.
Where it loses: the free plan stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 sends a month, and API and MCP sending are paid-plan only, which MailerLite states on its own pricing page. Automation branches stay shallower than ActiveCampaign. Enterprise is quote-only above 200,000 subscribers, so the transparency runs out at the top of the ladder like everyone else's.
- MailerLite at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- design-led teams and small businesses that want a clean editor and a published price
- Pricing model
- per contact
- Free tier
- 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month
- Entry paid plan
- $12/mo (up to 500 subscribers, 5,000 monthly emails, 3 user seats, 24/7 email support)
- At 10,000 contacts
- $89/mo (Comfort)
- Transactional API
- yes
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- no
- First-party MCP server
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Support
- Help center: mailerlite.com/help
- Developer docs
- API documentation: developers.mailerlite.com
- Status page
- System status: status.mailerlite.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: mailerlite.com/pricing
- Founding team
- No founder is named on any first-party source. Vercom S.A., listed in Warsaw, acquired MailerLite in 2022 for 90 million dollars.
- Founding team score
- 2.75 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Has a first-party MCP server for agent-callable access, but no verified on-brand automatic design generation (Brand Kit-style) or ChatGPT app marketplace listing.
- AI-native score
- 6 of 10 on the AI-native criterion
- Limitations
- Free plan stops at 250 subscribers and 2,500 sends a month
- API and MCP sending are paid-plan only
- Automation branches stay shallower than ActiveCampaign
- Facts checked
6. Omnisend
Best for: smaller stores that want Klaviyo's shape without Klaviyo's bill.
Email and SMS in one automation, e-commerce triggers out of the box, and SMS from $0.007 a message. Free covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month.
One thing to set correctly before you compare: the pricing page loads with a pay-three-months-upfront toggle already switched on, which is where the cheaper headline figure comes from. Switched off, billed monthly on 7 September 2026, Standard is $16 a month for 500 contacts and 3,000 emails, and $132 a month at the 9,001 to 10,000 contact band with 120,000 emails. Reporting is thinner than Klaviyo's and the integration list is shorter.
- Omnisend at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- smaller stores that want Klaviyo's shape at a lower entry price
- Pricing model
- per contact
- Free tier
- 250 contacts, 500 emails a month
- Entry paid plan
- $16/mo (500 contacts, 3,000 emails a month, unlimited web push notifications; billed monthly)
- At 10,000 contacts
- $132/mo (Standard)
- Transactional API
- yes
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Support
- Help center: support.omnisend.com
- Developer docs
- API documentation: api-docs.omnisend.com
- Status page
- System status: status.omnisend.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: omnisend.com/pricing
- Founding team
- Rytis Lauris co-founded Omnisend in 2014 and is still chief executive. A second co-founder is named only by Wikipedia and appears nowhere on the company's own site.
- Founding team score
- 5.25 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Not independently assessed for MCP/agent access in this comparison.
- Limitations
- The pricing page loads with a pay-three-months-upfront discount already switched on
- Reporting is thinner than Klaviyo's
- Fewer integrations outside the main platforms
- Facts checked
7. Constant Contact
Best for: a small or local business that wants a phone number to call and does not need an API.
Lite is $12 a month, Standard $35 and Premium $80, or $10.20, $29.75 and $68 prepaid annually, read from the page's own prose on 7 September 2026. Sends over the plan allowance bill at $0.002 each.
Time this one carefully. Constant Contact's own knowledge base article 000049483, updated 29 July 2026, tells customers the new rate will be reflected in the August 2026 invoice and that a current prepay balance may deplete faster because of it. The article does not state the size of the increase and sends it by individual email, so no percentage exists to quote. There is no transactional API at all either, so receipts and password resets have to live somewhere else.
- Constant Contact at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- a small or local business that wants support on the phone and no API
- Pricing model
- per contact
- Free tier
- Free trial, no credit card, then plans start at $12 a month
- Entry paid plan
- $12/mo (email marketing, social posting and the AI content tools)
- Transactional API
- no
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Owner
- Constant Contact
- Support
- Help center: knowledgebase.constantcontact.com
- Developer docs
- API documentation: developer.constantcontact.com
- Status page
- System status: status.constantcontact.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: constantcontact.com/pricing
- Founding team
- Randy Parker founded it in 1995 and it listed on NASDAQ in 2007. It is now owned by Clearlake Capital and no founder is involved.
- Founding team score
- 3.50 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Not independently assessed for MCP/agent access in this comparison.
- Limitations
- A price increase lands on the August 2026 invoice, with the size sent by individual email rather than published
- No transactional API at all
- Automation is basic next to ActiveCampaign
- Facts checked
8. Emma
Best for: organisations that want subaccounts and phone support and are content to buy through a demo.
Emma is on this list for one reason. It is the alternative people most often shortlist when they leave Campaign Monitor, and it has the same owner. Marigold's About page lists Campaign Monitor, Emma and Vuture together, checked 7 September 2026. Moving from one to the other is a move inside one company's portfolio, and it will not change the pricing culture you left over.
On the merits: Emma Lite is $105 a month for one user with no subaccounts, Emma for Teams is $205 a month with 25 users and five or more subaccounts, and Emma Corporate is contact-us. No contact allowance is published on any plan, and the FAQ says more than 10,000 contacts needs a custom quote. There is no free plan and no self-serve trial, and every plan button is a demo request.
- Emma at a glance
- Verified on the vendor's own pages
- Best for
- organisations that want subaccounts and phone support and will buy through a demo
- Pricing model
- per contact
- Free tier
- No free plan or self-serve trial on the pricing page; every plan links to 'Request A Demo' / 'Demo Lite Plan'.
- Entry paid plan
- $105/mo (Emma Lite: 1 user, no subaccounts; drag-and-drop editor, audience segmentation, AI assistant, automation builder, landing pages, signup forms, A/B testing, API access, email and phone support. Contact allowance not stated on the page (FAQ: more than 10,000 contacts needs a custom quote).)
- Marketing campaigns
- yes
- Automation flows
- yes
- SMS
- yes
- Inbound email parsing
- no
- Owner
- Marigold (meetmarigold.com; About page lists Campaign Monitor, Emma and Vuture as its products). Source: https://meetmarigold.com/company/about
- Developer docs
- API documentation: api.myemma.com
- Status page
- System status: status.myemma.com
- Pricing page
- Current pricing: myemma.com/product/pricing
- Founding team
- Clint Smith and Will Weaver founded Emma in 2003. Smith left when it sold in October 2017 and Marigold owns it now. No named engineering leader is associated with the product.
- Founding team score
- 2.00 of 10 on the founding-team criterion
- AI-native capability
- Not independently assessed for MCP/agent access in this comparison.
- Limitations
- Owned by Marigold, the same company that owns Campaign Monitor
- No free plan and no self-serve trial, every plan is a demo request
- No contact allowance published on any plan
- Facts checked
Which Campaign Monitor alternative is best for an agency running client email?
MailerLite if the clients are newsletter-shaped and you want one predictable invoice per account. Nitrosend if you want an agent to do the composing and sending inside multiple brands under a single login, with unlimited contacts so a dormant client list is not a monthly tax. Be aware that our agency seats still count against a client's seat limit, because a first-class agency account is not shipped yet. Avoid moving sideways to Emma, because it is owned by the same company as Campaign Monitor and priced the same way, which is to say through a sales call.
Is there a free Campaign Monitor alternative?
Several, at small scale. Brevo is free to 300 emails a day with unlimited contacts. MailerLite is free to 250 subscribers and 2,500 sends a month. Klaviyo is free to 250 active profiles and 500 sends. Omnisend is free to 250 contacts and 500 emails. Nitrosend gives 8,000 emails to start then 500 a month, with 100 / 500 / 5,000 recipients per rolling 24 hours for Free Probation / Standard / Trusted and full API, MCP and CLI access on the free plan. Campaign Monitor itself has no free plan, only free building and testing before you pay to send.
What happens to my templates when I leave?
Templates do not port. Every platform stores its own markup and its own merge syntax, so a Campaign Monitor template is a design reference, not a file you import. Export the HTML for the two or three templates that earn money, rebuild those first in the new editor, and leave the rest. Contacts and engagement history do port, and those are what you should fight to get out cleanly, because engagement history is what lets you warm a new sender on people who actually open things.
How to move off Campaign Monitor without losing deliverability
- Export contacts and engagement history together, not just the addresses. Open dates and click history decide who goes in your first sends.
- Verify what you exported. A list does not become clean by changing platforms, and the email blacklist checker will tell you what you are carrying.
- Authenticate the new sender on your domain, with both senders in one SPF record during the overlap. The email authentication page covers the records, including why
p=quarantineis the sensible DMARC step before enforcement. - Warm up rather than switching in one send. How to warm up an email domain has the ramp.
- Send to your most engaged segment first and widen only once bounce and complaint rates hold. Run an inbox test before the first big campaign.
- Keep the old account open for one billing cycle. You will want a report out of it that you forgot to export.
FAQ
What is the best Campaign Monitor alternative?
There is no single one. For design-led newsletters at a published price it is MailerLite. For deep behavioural automation it is ActiveCampaign. For a store it is Klaviyo, or Omnisend on a tighter budget. For email plus SMS on one per-send bill it is Brevo. For running several client brands from an AI agent it is Nitrosend, which we make.
Who owns Campaign Monitor?
Marigold. Marigold's About page lists Campaign Monitor, Emma and Vuture as its products, checked 7 September 2026. Campaign Monitor was founded in 2004 and is now recorded with a Nashville, Tennessee headquarters. The pricing page brands itself Campaign Monitor by Marigold, and a help-centre article dated 27 January 2025 announced pay-per-campaign and credit pricing changes under that name.
How much does Campaign Monitor cost?
In Australian dollars, because that is the only currency it publishes. Read in the browser on 7 September 2026 with monthly billing selected, the ladder at 0 to 500 contacts is Lite A$19, Essentials A$47 and Premier A$261 a month, and at 5,001 to 10,000 contacts it is Lite A$180, Essentials A$277 and Premier A$459. Enterprise is quote-only and the website builder is a paid add-on. There is no currency switcher on the page, and the FAQ says other currencies are arranged with you rather than published. Lite caps sends at five times your subscriber count a month, so compare Essentials if you send weekly.
Is Emma a real alternative to Campaign Monitor?
It is a real product, but it is not an independent alternative. Marigold owns both. Emma Lite is $105 a month for a single user, no contact allowance is published, and there is no free plan or self-serve trial, so every plan starts with a demo request.
Does Campaign Monitor delete inactive accounts?
We cannot confirm a published policy, and we did not find one. What is on the public record is a pattern in the reviews: Campaign Monitor sits at 2.7 out of 5 across 198 Trustpilot reviews, and dated negatives include an account deleted for inactivity with no direct email warning on 16 May 2026 and an account closed without notice on 31 August 2024. If you hold a client brand that sends twice a year, ask about it in writing before you commit.
Which alternative is cheapest at 10,000 contacts?
It depends on how each vendor counts. MailerLite Comfort is $89 a month at 10,000 subscribers and ActiveCampaign Starter is $149 a month at the same count on an annual commitment, both checked 7 September 2026. Campaign Monitor itself is A$180 a month for Lite at that band, with sends capped at five times your subscriber count, or A$277 for Essentials with unlimited sends. Brevo prices on emails sent rather than contacts, so a large list you rarely email is cheaper there. Nitrosend does not count contacts at all, so 10,000 or 100,000 costs the same and the bill tracks sends.
Can Nitrosend replace Campaign Monitor completely?
For campaigns, flows, segments, templates, contacts and transactional sending, yes, in one account with unlimited contacts. It is not the answer if you need on-site popups and browse-abandonment tracking, which Klaviyo has and we do not, and Nitrosend does not do inbound email parsing over REST or cold outreach.
How this list is ranked
Eight criteria, weighted, adding to 100. Disagree with a weight and re-rank the table yourself.
- Fit for the stated job, 21%. Built for the use case, not adapted to it.
- Price transparency, 17%. Whether a real number appears on the page without a sales call.
- Multi-brand and client management, 13%. What it takes to run ten clients rather than one list.
- Automation depth, 13%. How far the flows go before you hit a wall.
- Design and template control, 9%. The thing Campaign Monitor was actually good at.
- Agent and API surface, 8%. Whether software can operate the account, not just fire a send.
- Migration cost, 4%. Getting contacts, templates and engagement history in.
- Founding team and track record, 15%. Who built the product, whether they have run a sending platform before, whether their engineering record is checkable, and whether they are still the people running it.
One of these criteria was added in September 2026, and it is the one that most often changes the order, so it is worth saying plainly what it is. Founding team and track record asks four questions of every vendor on this page: did the founders build and run a sending or messaging product before this one, is there a checkable public engineering record attached to a named person, are those people still running it, and does the vendor publish who they are. Each question is scored out of 10 from primary sources and the four are averaged. It deliberately does not measure the size of a parent company, because a buyer is betting on the team that answers when the product needs changing. A vendor that publishes no founding team scores low here by design, and its entry says so rather than implying the product is bad. Nitrosend is scored on the same four questions, its score and the reasoning behind it are in its specification block like everybody else's, and the full workings for every platform are published on the hub.