Your list can grow. Your bill doesn't have to.
When you pay for the emails you send rather than the contacts you store, a bigger list only costs more if you decide to send more. Send each campaign to the people who engage, and your list can grow several times over on the same plan.
Why list growth raises most email bills
On a per-contact plan, every new signup moves you closer to the next price tier. Growth is the goal of a newsletter or a store, yet the bill rises with it, before those new contacts have bought anything or even opened a first email.
When you are priced by emails sent, growth and cost come apart. The size of your list stops setting the price. How much you choose to send does.
A worked example
Take a newsletter that sends two campaigns a month to its engaged subscribers. For this example, say about 40% of the list engages. Here is what happens as the list grows:
| Contacts | Engaged (40%) | Emails a month | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | 4,000 | 8,000 | Starter, $29 |
| 25,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 | Starter, $29 |
| 60,000 | 24,000 | 48,000 | Starter, $29 |
The list grew six times over and the bill stayed at $29, because Starter includes 50,000 emails a month and contacts are never counted.
The honest other side: if the same newsletter emailed all 60,000 contacts twice a month, that is 120,000 emails, which needs Pro at $99 (200,000 emails a month). Sending more costs more. Storing more does not.
How to keep sending to the people who engage
- Decide what engaged means for you. Email Digit scores engagement from clicks, replies and purchases, weighted toward recent activity. Opens are shown but never counted, because privacy features in mail apps make them unreliable.
- Send most campaigns to that segment. Build a segment of your engaged contacts and make it the default audience. Before you send, the audience step shows exactly how many people will receive it, with suppressed and excluded contacts listed separately.
- Reach everyone else less often. A quieter contact is not a lost one. Email them occasionally with your best content rather than every campaign.
What you do not have to do
You do not have to delete contacts to stay under a tier. On a per-send plan, a contact you are not emailing costs nothing to keep, so you can hold on to the people who signed up and decide later when to reach them.
If you want to understand how pricing by emails sent compares with pricing by contacts for your own numbers, read Pay for emails you send, not contacts you keep. Current plans and limits are always on the pricing page.