In December 2025 Flodesk retired the one thing that made Flodesk. New members can no longer buy unlimited email sends for a single flat monthly fee.

The old promise was unusually kind. One price, unlimited subscribers, unlimited sends, and an invoice that never moved as your list grew. That ended for new signups on December 2, 2025. From then on, pricing scales with your active subscriber count, the same way almost every other email tool charges.

If you're solo, that change bites harder than it does inside a marketing team. Your list grows slowly and unevenly. Charging per subscriber taxes you for the exact thing you're trying to do.

Below are six alternatives with published 2026 prices, what each vendor actually charges at 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers, notes on which free plans really send email, and one cost that never makes it into comparison tables. If you'd rather have the marketing run than manage the stack, ad-vertly gives your marketing agent the tools to work the whole loop.

What changed at Flodesk in December 2025

The pricing page is blunt about it. Lite starts at $25 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers, or $19 a month on annual billing. Pro starts at $28 monthly, or $25 annually. Everything starts at $54 monthly, or $49 annually.

Those entry numbers look fine. The scaling is where it gets uncomfortable. Lite is capped at 25,000 subscribers with one seat and a single workflow, which Flodesk currently labels a limited time bonus. Run a welcome series and an abandoned cart sequence at the same time and you're on Pro.

Pro at 5,000 subscribers is $59 monthly or $54 annually. At 10,000 it's $79 monthly or $72 annually. At 25,000 it's $169 monthly or $155 annually.

The April 2026 pricing audit published by Email Software Insights tracked a business that grew from 2,500 to 10,000 subscribers over twelve months and paid $35 a month throughout under the old flat rate. On the new Pro tiers that same growth path crosses $54 and then $72. At the top end it costs more than double what it used to.

There's one genuine mercy. Only active subscribers count toward your tier. Unsubscribed, bounced, and cleaned contacts don't. If you prune your list properly the curve slows, though it never reverses.

The free plan is the detail most comparison posts get wrong. It builds forms, landing pages, and link in bio pages, and it sends no email at all. To mail your list you need the trial or a paid plan, and Flodesk's own pricing page says so plainly.

Kit (ConvertKit): the closest thing to the old flat deal

Kit, formerly ConvertKit, still runs a free Newsletter plan for up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages, and forms. It includes no automations and it keeps Kit branding on your emails, but there's no time limit on it.

Put a number on that. A founder with a 6,000 person list runs a whole newsletter on Kit for $0. The same list on Flodesk Lite is $66 a month on annual billing, which is roughly $800 a year for the same subscribers.

Once you need automated sequences the math changes. Kit Creator runs about $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers, $75 at 5,000, and around $100 at 10,000 on annual billing, which lands near Flodesk Pro rather than under it.

What you get for that is a tagging system built for creators, engagement scoring on Creator Pro, and commerce tools that let you sell a paid newsletter or a course without bolting on separate checkout software. Well over 300 creator integrations connect natively, where Flodesk routes you through Zapier. We compared the creator-focused field in more detail in our guide to ConvertKit alternatives for solo founders.

Brevo: the cheapest way to start before you have revenue

Brevo charges for email volume, not contacts, and that's the structural advantage. The free plan allows unlimited contacts and 300 emails a day. Paid plans start around $9 a month.

At 5,000 contacts sending four campaigns a month, the annual cost lands near $16 a month. At 10,000 it sits around $25. Compare those with Flodesk Lite at $48 and $66, and the gap isn't subtle.

You also get a CRM, SMS, and transactional email in the same account, plus automation on the free plan. For a founder who wants one login instead of four, that matters more than template polish. We dug into the deliverability side of that trade-off in our breakdown of Brevo pricing and deliverability.

The trade-off is real. The template builder is functional rather than beautiful, and the design-first reason you chose Flodesk won't survive the move.

Sender: still behaves like the old flat-rate era

Sender is the closest thing on this list to the deal you lost. The free plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month with no expiry, and unlimited automation workflows are included on every plan, including the free one.

That last part is the real difference. Flodesk gives Lite one workflow and limits branching to a single yes or no per condition. Sender's builder handles multi-step sequences with if and else branches on the same canvas, and it doesn't meter workflows by plan.

Pricing starts at $7 a month on Standard, with SMS included as a native channel rather than an integration you rent. At 5,000 subscribers the annual cost is about $23. At 10,000 it's roughly $40, against Flodesk at $48 and $66.

What you give up is design. Sender's templates are clean and forgettable. If Flodesk's templates are the reason you signed up, this isn't the swap for you.

Moosend and Mailchimp give you automation or a name you recognise

Moosend starts at $9 a month for 500 contacts and includes a visual workflow editor with behavior-based triggers, a built-in SMTP server, and live chat support. That support line matters, because Flodesk answers by email only, Monday to Friday, 7am to 7pm Central Time.

There's no free tier at Moosend, only a trial, and it lacks the polish of the bigger names. If a zero cost start is the goal, use Brevo or Kit instead.

Mailchimp is the option you already know. Standard runs $29 a month at 1,000 contacts, around $80 at 5,000, about $135 at 10,000, and roughly $300 at 25,000 on annual billing. It scales steeply, and it charges for every contact on the list, including people who unsubscribed. Our Mailchimp alternatives guide covers the cheaper routes in more depth.

MailerLite: if the design is what you actually came for

MailerLite is the natural landing spot for anyone leaving Flodesk over the editor. It's cheaper at the low end, and the drag and drop builder gets closer to Flodesk's feel than anything else here.

Don't assume it's stable. MailerLite renamed its plans and raised prices in June 2026, moved existing accounts onto the new tiers at renewal, and cut its free plan to 250 subscribers. Switching for stability means switching to a company that has moved prices twice in a year. We tracked those changes in our MailerLite alternatives breakdown.

What each one really costs at 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers

Headline prices mislead, so here are annual billing figures at two list sizes, drawn from the same April 2026 audit and assuming four campaigns a month to the full list. Brevo is the exception, since it bills by send volume rather than contact count.

At 5,000 subscribers: Flodesk Pro $54, ActiveCampaign about $71, GetResponse about $79, Kit $75, Klaviyo about $100, Mailchimp about $80, Sender about $23, Brevo about $16.

At 10,000 subscribers: Flodesk Pro $72, ActiveCampaign about $139, GetResponse about $109, Kit about $100, Klaviyo about $150, Mailchimp about $135, Sender about $40, Brevo about $25.

The pattern holds at every size below 25,000. Flodesk is no longer the cheap option anywhere, and it only looks competitive against tools that charge far more for reasons that have nothing to do with sending email.

The cost that never makes it into comparison tables

Flodesk has native integrations with around 15 platforms. It has no native WooCommerce integration and no native connection to most CRMs. The standard workaround is Zapier, and Zapier is a subscription.

Zapier's free plan gives you 100 tasks a month. Starter is $19.99 for 750 tasks, and Professional is $49 for 2,000. A store running a welcome sequence, an abandoned cart flow, and a post-purchase sequence burns 100 tasks in days, so $49 is the practical floor.

That means the realistic monthly bill for an automated setup at 5,000 contacts is often $54 for Flodesk Pro plus $49 for Zapier, which is $103 against a headline of $54. Ask what the integration costs before you compare two platforms on price.

How to pick, and what not to forget when you switch

If you're testing an offer and don't want to pay to do it, start with Brevo, or Kit when the newsletter itself is the product.

If you need automation depth on a small budget, Sender and Moosend both offer workflow builders at this price that Flodesk doesn't match.

If you sell products from a catalog and want email tied to revenue, look at Klaviyo, because the purchase data layer is the entire reason to pay its prices. Our Klaviyo alternatives comparison covers what you'd use instead if you don't.

If you picked Flodesk for the templates and nothing else, MailerLite is fine, as long as you don't expect the price to stay put.

Once you've chosen, the export itself is straightforward. Export subscribers as a CSV from Flodesk and import them into the new tool. Tags and segments usually transfer. Templates don't, because the formats are proprietary, so plan to rebuild your two or three most used emails once.

Then verify your sending domain. Recreate the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for the new platform, send a first campaign to a small segment, and watch inbox placement before you mail the whole list. Sender reputation you built on Flodesk's IPs doesn't travel with you, so give the new setup a short warm-up window. Our guide to email signup forms covers the list-building side once you're settled.

The invoice is the small problem

Swapping one email tool for another fixes a line item. It doesn't fix the reason you were reading pricing pages at 11pm. The real cost is the hours spent choosing, migrating, rebuilding templates, and reconnecting automations every time a vendor changes its model.

That pattern is worth naming, because it isn't an email problem. It shows up in ads, in SEO, in reporting, and in every tool that raises prices once you depend on it. Chasing cheaper alternatives one subscription at a time is a treadmill. We wrote about the tool-count version of this in marketing automation for solo founders, and the fix is the same at every scale.

That's the case for handing the loop to an agent instead of absorbing it yourself, and it applies whether you're a solo founder, a two person team, or a small agency running marketing for clients. ad-vertly keeps the tools you already pay for and changes who operates them.

Pick the email platform that fits your list today. Then decide whether you want to be the person who operates it forever, or the person who reviews what it did.