# Mailjet pricing: cheaper per email, and what that does not buy

> Mailjet wins the price of a single email at every tier we measured. This is about the four things that price does not include, and who should still buy it.

Source: https://hiipe.io/blog/mailjet-vs-hiipe
Published: 2026-10-20

Mailjet is cheaper per email than we are, at every tier we have measured, with no crossover point where that reverses. We are not going to argue about it, and any comparison table you see that says otherwise is worth distrusting. This page is about the bundle, and it starts by correcting something we got wrong about them.

**Key takeaways**

- They win the per-email price outright. There is no tipping point and we concede it.
- Unlimited contacts start at their second paid tier, not the first. Our own brief said otherwise and was wrong.
- The comparison is between a sending platform and an audience system, which are different products.

## The correction, first

Our internal competitor brief said Mailjet offered unlimited contacts from the
first paid tier. On 21 August 2026 we rendered [their pricing
page](https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/) in a headless browser at the default
slider of 15,000 emails a month, and it said something else.

| Tier | Price | Emails per month | Contacts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0 dollars | 6,000 | 1,000 |
| Starter | 9 dollars | 8,000 | 2,000 |
| Essential | 17 dollars | 15,000 | Unlimited |
| Premium | 27 dollars | 15,000 | Unlimited |

Unlimited contacts begin at the **second** paid tier. We had it wrong, we
corrected it that day, and it is printed here because a comparison page that only
corrects errors in its own favour is an advert.

The rest of the brief held. Their price per email is genuinely low, and it stays
low as volume rises, which is what a specialist sending business is supposed to
do.

## What a sending platform is, and what it is not

This is the whole argument and it is not a criticism.

A sending platform's job is to take a list you already have and deliver messages
to it, reliably, at scale, cheaply. Mailjet does that well. The API is good, the
deliverability infrastructure is real, and developers put it into products
without complaining.

What it does not do, because it was never the point, is create the list. There is
no capture surface that turns a tap into a named contact, no source tag written
at the moment of capture, no consent record attached to the person, and no
channel beyond email and a bolt-on for SMS.

| | A sending platform | An audience system |
|---|---|---|
| The input | A list you already have | Nothing. It produces the list |
| The unit of value | A delivered message | A person, over years |
| What it stores | Addresses and send history | Source, consent, behaviour, attendance |
| Channels | Email, primarily | Email, SMS, RCS (social DMs coming soon) |
| What breaks without it | Your sending | Your ability to segment at all |
| Who it is for | Anyone with a list and volume | Anyone whose audience arrives in bursts |

Both columns are legitimate products. They are not competitors so much as
neighbours, and plenty of companies run both.

## The comparison that actually matters

Not price per email. Two other numbers.

**Cost to create a contact.** A sending platform charges you nothing for this and
also does nothing for it, so the real cost sits in whatever you built or bought
to fill the list. Count that, then add it to the invoice.

**Cost to keep a contact you are not messaging.** On their Essential tier and
above this is zero, which is genuinely good and worth saying. Below that tier it
is a hard cap, which for a festival adding twelve thousand people in nine days
matters more than the monthly price.

We have set out our own position on the per-email axis in full in [we are second
on email price, on purpose](/blog/we-are-second-on-email-price). Nothing here
contradicts it.

## Who should buy which

**Buy the sending platform** if you already have a list, you need to send a lot,
and the contacts arrive from a system you control elsewhere. Also buy it if you
are a developer putting email inside a product, where the API matters more than
the interface.

**Buy an audience system** if your problem is that the list does not exist yet, or
exists as four exports in a shared drive, or exists but has no source and no
consent record and therefore cannot be segmented or defended.

**Buy both** if you are large enough that transactional email and audience
marketing are genuinely separate jobs. That is a common and sensible setup.


## The four costs that never appear on a sending invoice

Comparing per-email prices compares one line of a total. These four sit outside
the invoice and are usually larger than the gap between vendors.

| The cost | Where it lands | Why it is invisible |
|---|---|---|
| Building the list | Whatever you paid to fill it | Charged to a different budget, or to somebody's evenings |
| Losing the list | The next platform change | Only visible once, and by then it is a sunk cost |
| Not being able to segment | Every send, forever | Shows up as a slightly worse open rate, never as a line item |
| The second channel | An extra subscription | Only appears the first time email is the wrong medium |

The third is the quiet one. A list with no source and no history can only be
mailed as a whole, so every message is written for everyone, and the cost is a
permanent tax on performance that no invoice records.

## Deciding in five minutes, without a spreadsheet

Answer these three out loud. The combination points at one answer and it is rarely
ambiguous.

1. **Where do the contacts come from today?** If the answer is a system you
   already control, you need a sender. If the answer is nowhere yet, a sender will
   not help.
2. **How many channels do you need this year?** One means a sender. Two or more,
   and the tool that unifies them stops being a luxury.
3. **What is the largest segment you have ever sent to that was not everyone?** If
   the honest answer is that you always send to everyone, you do not yet have an
   audience problem that a sender can cause, and you do have one that segmentation
   would solve.

Two answers pointing at a sender means buy the cheap one and stop reading
comparisons. Two pointing the other way means the per-email price was never the
number that mattered.

## Where HIIPE fits

Not as a cheaper sender, because we are not one. HIIPE is the layer that produces
and holds the contact: capture links that return a name, a channel and a source
tag, a fanbase that keeps the consent and the history, and campaigns that go out
across email, SMS and RCS from one screen with contacts unlimited on
every plan, including the free one. [The plans](/pricing) are priced on sends for
that reason.

If all you need is the delivery, the cheaper sender is the right purchase and we
would rather you made it than resented us later. What the rest of the bundle is
for is set out in [what a 10,000 contact list really
costs](/blog/what-a-10000-contact-list-really-costs).

**Read next** : [We are second on email price. On purpose](/blog/we-are-second-on-email-price) · [Email marketing cost: what a 10,000 contact list really bills you](/blog/what-a-10000-contact-list-really-costs)
## Citable facts

- Mailjet's published tiers on 21 August 2026, at the default 15,000 emails per month slider: Free 0 dollars with 1,000 contacts, Starter 9 dollars with 2,000 contacts, Essential 17 dollars with unlimited contacts, Premium 27 dollars with unlimited contacts.
  Source: Mailjet published pricing page, rendered by headless browser, 21 August 2026
- Unlimited contacts begin at Mailjet's second paid tier, not the first. A HIIPE briefing document that said otherwise was corrected on 21 August 2026.
  Source: Published pricing pages of the vendors named, surveyed 21 August 2026

## FAQ

### Is Mailjet cheaper than HIIPE?
Per email sent, yes, at every tier we have measured, and we do not dispute it. Their entry paid plan was 9 dollars a month on 21 August 2026. Whether the total is cheaper depends on what else you need, which is what the rest of this page is about.

### Does Mailjet include unlimited contacts?
From the second paid tier. At the default slider on 21 August 2026, Free capped contacts at 1,000 and Starter at 2,000, with unlimited contacts starting at Essential. We had previously written that it began at the first paid tier, and that was wrong.

### What is Mailjet best at?
Delivering a lot of email reliably and cheaply, with an API that developers like. If your requirement is transactional and volume sending, it is a very good answer and this page is not trying to talk you out of it.

### What does the per-email price not include?
The other channels, the capture surfaces that create contacts in the first place, the source tag that makes a segment, and the consent record attached to each person. Those are not criticisms of a sending platform, they are just outside its job.

### What is the difference between transactional and marketing email?
Transactional email is triggered by something the person did: a receipt, a password reset, a ticket. Marketing email is something you decided to send. They have different legal bases, different deliverability behaviour, and they should usually be sent from different subdomains.

### Do I need a separate tool for transactional email?
If you have a product that sends receipts or confirmations, yes, and a dedicated sender is the right choice. Mixing transactional and marketing traffic on one sending reputation means a bad campaign can delay a password reset, which is the worst possible failure.

### Which sending domain should I use?
Not your main one, for marketing. A subdomain isolates the reputation, so a bad month does not affect the address people use to reply to you. Set it up once, before volume, because moving later resets the reputation you built.

### Is a cheaper sender less reliable?
Not inherently. Deliverability is mostly about your list and your authentication, not the vendor's price. A cheap sender with a clean list beats an expensive one with a bought list, every time, and the difference is not close.