Shopify email marketing cost: how much a small store pays

The short answer: Shopify email marketing cost starts at $0. Shopify Messaging includes 10,000 free emails a month on paid Shopify plans, then charges $1 per 1,000. Dedicated apps charge by contacts or by emails sent: at 500 contacts most published prices run from free to $20 a month, and at 10,000 contacts from a few dollars to $162.

The price on a pricing page is only part of the bill. What you pay depends on how the app counts (emails sent, contacts or active profiles), how often you send, and who writes the emails. Below are published prices for six options at four list sizes, the extra costs that catch stores out, and a simple way to work out your own number.

How much does Shopify email marketing cost?

There are three ways to pay for email marketing on a Shopify store:

• Shopify's own app, Shopify Messaging: free up to 10,000 emails a month, then pay per email. You write and schedule the emails yourself, or approve ones suggested by Shopify's Campaign Autopilot.
• A dedicated email app such as Klaviyo, Omnisend, Mailchimp or Judge.me: a monthly fee set by contacts or emails sent. You get more tools, but you still plan and write the campaigns.
• Done-for-you help: an agency, a freelancer or an AI app that plans and writes the emails for you. You pay for the work as well as the sending.

Most small stores start with the first and move when they run out of time or free sends. The table below shows where each option lands.

Shopify email marketing cost by list size

To compare apps that charge in different ways, we assumed you send 4 campaigns a month to every contact: 2,000 emails a month at 500 contacts, 10,000 at 2,500, 40,000 at 10,000 and 100,000 at 25,000. Automated emails come on top.

Option	500 contacts	2,500 contacts	10,000 contacts	25,000 contacts
Shopify Messaging (by emails sent)	$0	$0	$30 (30,000 emails over the free 10,000)	$90 (90,000 emails over the free 10,000)
Judge.me Email Marketing, Forever Free (by emails sent)	$0	$0	$3.75 (25,000 emails over the free 15,000)	$12.75 (85,000 emails over the free 15,000)
Omnisend (by contacts)	$16 on Standard	$44 on Standard ($59 on Pro)	$132 on Standard	Not published in the sources we checked
Klaviyo (by active profiles)	Paid email plans start at $20	Shown in Klaviyo's calculator	Shown in Klaviyo's calculator	Shown in Klaviyo's calculator
Mailchimp (by contact tier)	Set by contact tier	Set by contact tier	Set by contact tier	Set by contact tier
tinyAlbert (by contacts, unlimited sends)	$10	$45	$162	$366

Sources: Shopify Messaging email pricing, Judge.me Email Marketing listing, Omnisend pricing plus Omnisend's own stated prices for Standard at 2,500 and 10,000 contacts and Pro at 2,500 contacts, Klaviyo pricing, Mailchimp compare plans and tinyAlbert pricing. Prices are before promotional discounts.

What the table tells you:

• Under 10,000 emails a month, Shopify Messaging and Judge.me cost nothing. If you are happy to plan and write your own campaigns, no paid app beats free.
• Per-email apps stay cheap as you grow, as long as you do not send very often. Even at 25,000 contacts and weekly campaigns, Shopify Messaging comes to about $90 a month.
• Per-contact apps cost more, and include different things. Omnisend, Klaviyo, Mailchimp and tinyAlbert charge for list size, and the price buys different things: Omnisend and Klaviyo add SMS and deeper tools, while tinyAlbert writes the campaigns and automations for you.

Klaviyo and Mailchimp do publish their prices, but in a calculator that depends on your exact profile count and, for Mailchimp, your location. Their free plans cover up to 250 profiles or contacts with 500 sends a month. For side-by-side detail, see our Klaviyo comparison and Shopify Email comparison.

Is Shopify email marketing free?

Partly. According to Shopify's pricing rules, stores on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans get 10,000 free emails at the start of every calendar month. Four rules decide what you pay:

1. Emails are counted per recipient. One campaign to 800 subscribers counts as 800 emails.
2. Automations count, except abandoned checkout. Welcome and other automated emails use your free 10,000. Abandoned checkout emails are always free and do not count.
3. After 10,000, you pay per 1,000. $1 per 1,000 emails up to 300,000, then $0.65 per 1,000, and $0.55 per 1,000 after 750,000.
4. Unused emails do not roll over. The allowance resets each month.

The app itself is free to install, and Shopify's Campaign Autopilot, which recommends email and ad actions, has no fee of its own: you pay for the emails and ads it sends. For a full walk-through of what is included, read does Shopify have email marketing?

How fast do you use 10,000 free emails?

Divide 10,000 by your list size to see how many campaigns a month you can send free (before automations):

List size	Free campaigns a month	Cost at 1 campaign a week (4 a month)	Cost at 2 campaigns a week (8 a month)
1,000	10	$0 (4,000 emails)	$0 (8,000 emails)
2,500	4	$0 (10,000 emails)	$10 (20,000 emails)
5,000	2	$10 (20,000 emails)	$30 (40,000 emails)
10,000	1	$30 (40,000 emails)	$70 (80,000 emails)

Even at the higher numbers, Shopify Messaging is one of the cheapest ways to send. The real cost is the time it takes to plan, write and design each of those campaigns.

The extra costs that catch stores out

SMS and other channels

Text messages are billed separately from email almost everywhere. Shopify Messaging charges per SMS message by recipient country, plus $2.15 a month for each toll-free number used in the United States and Canada. Omnisend lists SMS from $0.007 per message on its Pro plan, and Klaviyo's free plan includes $5 of mobile messages a month. If you only need email, these never appear on your bill.

Sending from your own domain and removing branding

Some free plans carry the provider's branding or limit how you send. Judge.me's free plan, for example, moves to the $15-a-month Awesome plan (plus usage) for a custom domain and to remove Judge.me branding, and Omnisend's free plan shows Omnisend branding.

Send caps on contact plans

Contact-priced plans often cap monthly sends. Omnisend's Standard plan includes 6,000 emails a month at 500 contacts, and Mailchimp caps sends at 10, 12 or 15 times your contacts depending on the plan. If you plan to email more than weekly, check the cap before you compare prices.

Templates and design

Most apps include templates. Some sell premium designs separately: Seguno's free tier, for example, lists designer templates for purchase. Budget for design only if you want something the included templates cannot do.

The cost nobody lists: writing and planning

Most of the apps above give you an editor and templates and leave the calendar, the copy and the subject lines to you. Shopify's Campaign Autopilot suggests emails as separate tactics, which you can approve first, and tinyAlbert writes the campaigns and automations up front. That work is a real cost too, paid either in your own hours or in fees to someone else. Agencies and freelancers set their own fees by scope, so ask for a written quote. Done-for-you apps publish theirs: Wiz's AI Agency plan is $99.99 a month up to 2,000 active contacts, LTV.ai sets a $499 monthly minimum, and Sequenzy's done-for-you plan is $499 a month with a 3-month minimum. Our agency vs AI comparison lays these out side by side.

What is the cheapest email marketing for a Shopify store?

It depends on what you count as the cost.

• Cheapest to send: Shopify Messaging and Judge.me Email Marketing are free for most small stores. Shopify gives 10,000 emails a month and free abandoned checkout emails; Judge.me gives 15,000 a month, then $0.15 per 1,000.
• Cheapest free plan by contacts: Klaviyo, Omnisend and Mailchimp are free up to 250 profiles or contacts and 500 sends a month. Most stores outgrow that within months.
• Cheapest done for you: at 500 and 2,500 contacts, tinyAlbert's $10 and $45 a month are the lowest published prices among the paid done-for-you options we checked, with unlimited sends. Shopify's Campaign Autopilot is free, but it recommends separate tactics as it goes rather than writing your year of campaigns up front.

For a store-by-store view of these apps, including what each is best at, read our list of the best email marketing apps for Shopify.

How to work out your own email marketing cost

1. Count your contacts. Open Customers in your Shopify admin and count the customers subscribed to email marketing.
2. Decide how often you will send. Write down the number of campaigns you will realistically send each month, including sale periods.
3. Add your automations. Estimate welcome, post-purchase and win-back emails from your monthly sign-ups and orders. Abandoned checkout emails are free on Shopify Messaging.
4. Multiply and compare. Contacts times campaigns, plus automations, gives your monthly emails. Check that number against Shopify's 10,000 free allowance and each app's send cap.
5. Put a price on the writing. Estimate the hours a month you would spend planning and writing, or the quote you would pay someone to do it.

To run steps 1 to 4 for tinyAlbert, find your tier on the pricing page. For the wider picture of running email on Shopify, from list growth to automations, see the Shopify email marketing guide.

How to keep your email marketing cost down

• Set a spending alert in Shopify. Shopify Messaging lets you set a monthly spending threshold, and emails you when your combined email, SMS and WhatsApp costs reach it.
• Let abandoned checkout run on Shopify's free allowance. Shopify never charges for abandoned checkout emails, so a store that only needs cart reminders pays nothing for them.
• Send to segments, not always to everyone. On per-email pricing, a campaign to your 1,000 most engaged customers costs a tenth of one to 10,000. Keep full-list sends for your biggest moments.
• Clean your list. On contact-priced apps you pay for every contact you keep. Klaviyo already leaves unsubscribed and suppressed profiles out of its active profile count; with other apps, remove addresses that bounce or have not opened in a long time.
• Do not pay twice for the same email. If you add a second app, pause the matching automation in the first. Two welcome series mean double the sends and confused customers.
• Use the free trial on your real store. Most paid apps offer one: 7 days for tinyAlbert and Wiz, 10 days for Seguno. Test with your real list size before you commit.

What tinyAlbert costs, and what that includes

tinyAlbert is priced by contacts with unlimited sends, after a 7-day free trial. There is no free plan.

Contacts	Price per month
Up to 100	$3
251 to 500	$10
1,001 to 1,500	$27
2,001 to 2,500	$45
4,501 to 5,000	$90
9,001 to 10,000	$162
20,001 to 25,000	$366

For that price, tinyAlbert writes a calendar of campaigns for your store's category and retail moments, six automations (including abandoned cart, welcome and win-back) and four signup forms, in the tone, layout and language you pick when you install. Sending is authenticated with DKIM, SPF and DMARC from day one. Nothing sends until you switch it on. Every tier is on the pricing page.

Be clear about the trade-off. If you send under 10,000 emails a month and enjoy writing your own campaigns, Shopify Messaging costs less. tinyAlbert makes sense when your time is the scarce resource. You can try it free for 7 days and see what it writes for your store before you pay.

Frequently asked questions

Is Shopify email marketing free?

Up to a point. Shopify Messaging is free to install and includes 10,000 free emails a month on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans. Abandoned checkout emails are always free and do not count. After 10,000 emails you pay $1 per 1,000, and unused free emails do not carry over to the next month.

How much does Shopify Messaging cost after 10,000 emails?

Shopify charges $1 per 1,000 extra emails up to 300,000, then $0.65 per 1,000, and $0.55 per 1,000 after 750,000. Emails are counted per recipient, so one campaign to 5,000 people is 5,000 emails. Costs appear on your Shopify bill, and you can set a monthly spending threshold to get an alert.

What is the cheapest email marketing for a Shopify store?

To send, Shopify Messaging (10,000 free emails a month) and Judge.me Email Marketing (15,000 free, then $0.15 per 1,000) cost nothing for most small stores. If you want the emails written for you, tinyAlbert costs $10 a month at 500 contacts and $45 at 2,500, with unlimited sends after a 7-day free trial.

Does Shopify charge for SMS marketing?

Yes. SMS is not part of the 10,000 free emails. Shopify Messaging charges per SMS message, with the rate set by the recipient's country, and adds $2.15 a month for each toll-free number used in the United States and Canada. You can send up to 25 test messages a week free.

How much should a small Shopify store budget for email marketing?

For sending alone, many stores under 2,500 contacts pay nothing on Shopify Messaging or Judge.me. Paid apps run from about $10 to $59 a month at 500 to 2,500 contacts. Then add the cost of writing: your own time, a freelancer or agency quote, or an app that writes the campaigns for you.