Best Email Marketing Software for SaaS (2026)

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This is an editorial research buyer’s guide based on official documentation, pricing pages and the sources listed below — how we review. Prices and plans change often; confirm on the vendor’s site.

Email for a SaaS company is not just newsletters. You need onboarding sequences triggered by what users do in the product, transactional emails such as password resets and receipts, product-update announcements, and win-back campaigns for churned accounts. The tool you choose has to accept events from your app, segment by product data and price sensibly as your user list grows. That last part is where most of the surprises come from.

This roundup compares six options for SaaS teams: Loops and Customer.io, which are built around product events, Brevo and Mailchimp, which are broad marketing platforms, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), a creator-focused platform, and HubSpot Marketing Hub, for teams already on HubSpot. It belongs to the same set of decisions as our guide to project management software and the wider stack for software teams.

This is an editorial research article based on each vendor’s pricing pages, pricing data and developer documentation, checked on October 17, 2026. We did not run our own deliverability or performance tests. One limitation is worth stating up front: Kit’s website returned a bot-check page to our research tools, so we could not verify Kit’s current prices and do not quote them.

Quick picks

Loops — best for early-stage SaaS that wants marketing and transactional email in one tool, priced only by subscribed contacts.
Customer.io — best for product-led teams that need event-driven, multi-channel messaging (email, push, in-app, SMS) and deep data integrations.
Brevo — best for budget-conscious teams that send moderate volumes and want email, SMS and transactional email from one vendor.
Mailchimp — best for teams that want a familiar campaign tool with templates and e-commerce features, and can live with contact-tier pricing.
Kit — best for founder-led newsletters and creator-style audience building, rather than in-app lifecycle messaging.
HubSpot Marketing Hub — best for B2B teams that want email, forms and the CRM on one platform.

How we chose

We did not lab-test these tools. We assessed them on published information against what SaaS teams usually need:

Product data in, emails out: event tracking, APIs and SDKs, and whether transactional email is included or a separate product.
Pricing basis: contacts, profiles, email volume or seats, and how each grows with your user base.
Automation depth: multi-step workflows, branching and segmentation on custom data.
Team and admin: seat limits and whether extra users cost money.
Startup programs and free tiers, with their limits.

The picks

Loops

Loops is an email platform aimed squarely at SaaS. It handles marketing campaigns, automated sequences and transactional email. Its documentation covers events, an API and SDKs for sending product data from your app.

Best for: startups that want one simple tool for onboarding sequences, announcements and transactional email.

Notable limits: it is email-only. If you need push, in-app or SMS, look at Customer.io. The free plan allows 4,000 total sends (marketing and transactional combined) per rolling 30 days to your first 1,000 contacts, includes a Loops footer and sends up to 10 emails per second.

Pricing basis: subscribed contacts only. Loops says it does not charge for seats or for sends on paid plans, and unsubscribed contacts don’t count. Growth starts at $49 per month for up to 5,000 subscribed contacts, and the price rises with your contact count up to 1.5 million. Enterprise pricing covers more than that. Loops pricing

Customer.io

Customer.io is a customer engagement platform built around people and object profiles fed by your product data. It offers a visual workflow builder, email, push, in-app and SMS messaging, data pipelines and an AI agent. User seats are unlimited on every plan.

Best for: product-led SaaS with engineering support that wants behavior-triggered journeys across several channels.

Notable limits: the entry price is higher than the other tools here. Premium starts at $1,000 per month on an annual term. Premium data integrations sit on that tier, and HIPAA compliance is a custom-priced add-on to it.

Pricing basis: profiles and email volume. Essentials starts at $100 per month, billed monthly, for 5,000 profiles (people plus objects) and 1 million emails per month. Extra profiles cost $0.009 each and extra emails $0.12 per 1,000. Customer.io’s startup program gives eligible companies (under $10 million raised in total and new to Customer.io) up to 12 months free with up to 30,000 profiles. See Customer.io plans

Brevo

Brevo is a broad marketing platform covering email, SMS, WhatsApp, push, transactional email and a sales CRM. Its Starter plan includes transactional messages. Standard adds marketing automation, A/B testing, web and event tracking, and removes Brevo’s logo. It also advertises an MCP integration for managing campaigns from AI assistants.

Best for: cost-sensitive teams with moderate send volumes that want marketing and transactional email from one vendor.

Notable limits: paid plans are priced by monthly email volume, and each volume tier caps your marketing contacts. Brevo’s machine-readable pricing reference shows, for example, a 500-contact cap at the 5,000-email tier and 1,500 at 10,000 emails. Brevo’s pricing reference lists extra users at $12 per month each, and Professional starts at $499 per month ($449.08 per month billed yearly) for 150,000 emails.

Pricing basis: email volume with contact caps. The free plan sends up to 300 emails per day. Starter starts at $9 per month ($97 per year on annual billing, which is 10% off) and Standard at $18 per month ($194 per year), each for 5,000 emails per month. Brevo’s pricing reference was generated on September 29, 2026 from its pricing API. Brevo pricing

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a long-standing campaign tool with templates, marketing automation flows, segmentation, SMS and e-commerce integrations. Its Intuit Assist AI features are in beta on some plans. Higher plans add predictive segments, more seats and enterprise SSO.

Best for: teams that send regular newsletters and promotional campaigns and value a mature template and integrations ecosystem.

Notable limits: transactional email (formerly Mandrill) is billed separately from marketing plans. Mailchimp bills overages automatically if you go over your contact or send limit. The free plan is small: 250 contacts, 500 sends per month (maximum 250 a day), 1 seat and 1 audience.

Pricing basis: contacts, with send limits as a multiple of contacts. Essentials starts at $13 per month and Standard at $20 per month for up to 500 contacts, with monthly sends of 10x and 12x your contact limit and 3 and 5 seats respectively. Premium lists at $350 per month, with 15x sends and unlimited seats; on October 17, 2026 the page also showed a promotional $297.50 per month for the first 12 months. Businesses with 10,000+ contacts can get 15% off the first 12 months. Mailchimp pricing

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Kit, which renamed itself from ConvertKit (its GitHub organization is listed as “Kit (formerly ConvertKit)”), is built for creators and describes itself as being “for creators who mean business”. Its API lets you send broadcasts, manage the list with tags and custom fields, and import purchase data from e-commerce platforms. Its developer documentation also describes API V4 with OAuth, webhooks, a Kit App Store for third-party apps and an MCP integration for AI agents. It notes that API access depends on the account’s plan being eligible.

Best for: founder newsletters, developer-advocacy lists and content-led growth, where the email list is an audience rather than a product user base.

Notable limits: in our assessment, Kit’s creator focus makes it a weaker fit for in-app, event-heavy lifecycle messaging than Loops or Customer.io. Confirm whether you need transactional email and product-event triggers before choosing it.

Pricing basis: not verified. We could not load Kit’s pricing page or help center on the verification date, so we don’t quote plans or figures here. Check Kit’s pricing page directly before deciding. Kit pricing

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Marketing Hub adds email, forms, landing pages and automation on top of HubSpot’s CRM. The free tools include up to 2,000 marketing email sends per month with HubSpot branding.

Best for: B2B SaaS teams already using HubSpot CRM that want sales and marketing working from the same records. Our HubSpot CRM review covers the free tier and seat model.

Notable limits: the jump from Starter to Professional is large, and Professional requires a one-time $3,000 onboarding fee. HubSpot’s pricing page does not state the cost of extra marketing contacts.

Pricing basis: seats plus marketing contacts. Starter lists at $20 per seat per month (with a limited-time offer for new customers of $7 on upfront annual payment or $10 on monthly billing) and includes 1,000 marketing contacts. Professional starts at $800 per month (the page shows it alongside $890) with 3 Core Seats and 2,000 marketing contacts. Enterprise starts at $3,600 per month with 5 seats and 10,000 contacts. HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing

Comparison table

Tool	Built for	Pricing basis	Transactional email	Free tier
Loops	SaaS lifecycle and product email	Subscribed contacts	Included	4,000 sends/30 days to first 1,000 contacts
Customer.io	Event-driven, multi-channel messaging	Profiles plus email volume	Included	No free plan listed (startup program)
Brevo	All-round marketing and messaging	Monthly email volume with contact caps	Included on all plans, including Free	300 emails/day
Mailchimp	Campaigns, newsletters, e-commerce	Contacts (sends = multiple of contacts)	Separate paid product	250 contacts, 500 sends/month
Kit	Creators and newsletters	Not verified	Not verified	Not verified
HubSpot Marketing Hub	CRM-connected B2B marketing	Seats plus marketing contacts	Not covered here	2,000 sends/month, with branding

Pricing (as of October 2026)

Tool	Entry paid price	What the entry price covers	Caveats
Loops	$49/month (Growth)	Up to 5,000 subscribed contacts, unlimited sends, no seat fees	Price rises with subscribed contacts; Enterprise custom above 1.5M
Customer.io	$100/month (Essentials, billed monthly)	5,000 profiles, 1M emails/month, unlimited seats	$0.009 per extra profile; $0.12 per extra 1,000 emails; Premium from $1,000/month billed yearly
Brevo	$9/month (Starter); $18/month (Standard)	5,000 emails/month; 500-contact cap at that tier	10% off on annual billing; extra seats $12/month; Professional from $499/month
Mailchimp	$13/month (Essentials); $20/month (Standard)	Up to 500 contacts; 10x/12x monthly sends	Automatic overage billing; transactional email extra; Premium from $350/month
Kit	Not verified	Not verified	Kit’s pricing pages could not be loaded on October 17, 2026
HubSpot Marketing Hub	$20/seat/month list (Starter); $7 limited-time promo	1,000 marketing contacts, 500 credits	Professional $800/month + $3,000 onboarding; promo renewal price not stated

Prices are in USD. Brevo and others also publish prices in other currencies.

How contact-based pricing catches SaaS teams out

Who counts as a contact differs. Loops counts only subscribed contacts. Customer.io counts profiles, including objects such as companies or accounts. Mailchimp counts contacts in your audiences. Brevo’s paid tiers cap contacts by email-volume tier. Syncing every signup, including inactive free users, can push you into a higher tier.
Transactional email may be separate. Loops, Customer.io and Brevo include it. Mailchimp bills transactional email separately. If password resets and receipts must go out from the same tool, check this first.
Overages are often automatic. Mailchimp says it bills overages automatically when you exceed limits, and that during a free trial it may move you to a more economical contact tier. Prune unengaged contacts regularly.
Promotional and startup prices end. Startup programs and first-year discounts (Customer.io, HubSpot, Mailchimp’s 15% offer) expire, so budget for list price.

Prices verified against each vendor’s official pricing page (listed under Sources). Plans, promotions and renewal prices change often — confirm on the vendor’s page before you buy.

How to choose

If you mainly need onboarding and product emails: start with Loops for simplicity, or Customer.io if you need multiple channels and complex branching. Both are designed for events sent from your backend.
If cost per email matters most at moderate volume: Brevo’s volume-based tiers can work out cheaper. Check the contact cap at your volume tier.
If you run a newsletter-style audience: Kit and Mailchimp are built around campaigns and subscriber growth. Verify Kit’s current pricing directly.
If your CRM is the source of truth: HubSpot Marketing Hub avoids a sync when sales runs on HubSpot. If you are still choosing a CRM, our CRM roundup for startups compares the options.
If you need to glue tools together: most of these tools have APIs and native integrations. For the rest, our Zapier, Make and n8n comparison explains how automation platforms fit in.
If support and marketing email overlap: support replies usually belong in a help desk, not a marketing tool. Our help desk software roundup covers that side.

Bottom line

For most SaaS teams, a product-event-driven tool is the better default. In our assessment, Loops suits early-stage teams that want marketing and transactional email in one simple, contact-priced product, and Customer.io suits teams that need multi-channel journeys and can justify a higher entry price. Brevo and Mailchimp are reasonable choices when campaigns and newsletters matter more than in-app triggers, but read the contact and send rules closely. Kit is strongest for creator-style audiences, and HubSpot Marketing Hub makes sense when HubSpot already runs your CRM. Whichever you choose, model your bill at two or three times your current contact count before committing to an annual plan.

FAQ

Can one tool handle both marketing and transactional email?

Yes. Loops, Customer.io and Brevo include transactional sending. Mailchimp sells transactional email as a separate product. Using one tool simplifies templates and unsubscribe handling, but some teams keep transactional email on a dedicated provider for isolation.

Should I sync every signup to my email tool?

Not by default. Under contact- or profile-based pricing, inactive free users cost money. Many teams sync only users who have opted in or are active, and send transactional email via API without storing the user as a marketing contact. Check how your tool counts contacts first.

Is ConvertKit the same as Kit?

Yes. ConvertKit now operates as Kit, and its developer documentation and GitHub organization use the Kit name.

Best Email Marketing Software for SaaS: Kit, Mailchimp, Brevo, Loops