Pricing-model · Subscriber-, contact-, and audience-tiered pricing
Subscriber- and contact-tiered SaaS pricing — when your audience size is the bill
The platform that's cheapest at your current size is rarely the one that's cheapest at 2x your size — pick on the ladder, not the entry tier.
32 tools use this billing model. Every row in the table below links to the full per-tier pricing page for that vendor, with hidden fees, recommended tier by team size, and tier-jump pain spelled out.
About subscriber-, contact-, and audience-tiered pricing
Subscriber- and contact-tiered pricing is the dominant model in marketing automation, email, product analytics, and customer engagement. The bill is set by the size of your list (contacts, subscribers, marketing contacts, monthly tracked users, monthly active users, or monthly active reachables) and steps up at vendor-specific thresholds — typically 500, 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000. The pages below collect every tool we track that prices on audience size, with the contact-ladder for each vendor side by side. The buying decision is rarely about which platform is cheapest at your current size — it's about which platform's ladder you can afford to climb as your list grows. Most teams switch at the 25K-to-50K jump because their initial vendor's price triples there.
32 tools with subscriber-, contact-, and audience-tiered pricing
Entry-tier price below is the cheapest paid tier each vendor publishes for this billing model. Custom-quote tiers aren't included; click any tool to see the full per-tier breakdown.
Best for
- Marketing teams choosing first paid email or automation platform
- Ecommerce teams sizing Klaviyo vs Mailchimp at 50K+ contacts
- Product teams choosing Amplitude / Mixpanel / PostHog at growing MTU
What to evaluate
- Contact / subscriber ladder at your current AND next list size
- What the next ladder step adds (features vs just capacity)
- Per-tier feature gating (automations, SSO, audit)
- Marketing-contact reclassification policy
Frequently asked questions
Why do contact-tiered bills explode at 25K-50K?
Most contact-tiered vendors design their ladder for SMB acquisition with cheap entry tiers and a deliberate step-function at the 25K-50K range to capture growing customers. HubSpot Marketing Hub, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign all have a visible bill-doubling near the 25K mark; some teams cross it twice (once on the seat plan, once on the contact ladder) within a single fiscal year. Modelling the ladder out 12-18 months before you commit is the most effective cost-control lever in this category.
Can I reclassify contacts to lower the bill?
Sometimes. HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Mailchimp allow you to mark contacts as 'non-marketing' (won't receive marketing email) which drops them out of the billable pool. The catch: any contact who's ever received a marketing email in the last 90-180 days is locked as billable. The reclassification lever works best as a preventive policy (only mark contacts marketable when you have an active campaign for them) rather than a remediation after the bill explodes.
Are subscriber-tiered platforms ever cheaper than per-seat ones?
Yes, when seat count is high and contact count is low — a B2B sales-led team with 50 reps and 5K target accounts pays less on a subscriber-tiered tool than on a per-seat-only tool. The flip happens around the 10K-15K contact mark; above that, subscriber-tiered platforms get expensive fast. The per-tool pricing pages below show both math for every tool that publishes both bills.