# We are second on email price. On purpose

> There is a tool that beats us on the price of a single email, at every tier. We are not going to match it, and this is the reasoning written down.

Source: https://hiipe.io/blog/we-are-second-on-email-price
Published: 2026-09-15

There is a tool that beats us on the price of a single email at every tier we have measured. Not by a rounding error. Structurally, because that is their whole business and they are good at it. I am writing this down so that nobody on our side has to be vague about it in a sales call again.

**Key takeaways**

- We lose the cost-per-email comparison, and we are not going to try to win it.
- The axis is won by infrastructure scale, which is a different business from ours.
- The comparison we ask for is the annual total at your real list size and send frequency.

## Why write this at all

Because the alternative is worse. When a company refuses to name the axis it
loses, three things happen. The sales conversation gets slower, because every
prospect discovers it themselves and wonders what else is hidden. The marketing
gets vaguer, because you have to write around a hole. And the people who
eventually find out trust nothing else you said.

There is also a narrower reason, which is that I want a page I can send. When
someone asks "aren't you more expensive than X per email", the honest answer is
yes, and it takes four paragraphs to explain why that is the wrong unit. Those
four paragraphs should exist once, at a URL, written calmly, rather than
improvised badly at four in the afternoon.

## The axis we lose

Cost per email sent. At small volumes, at large volumes, on every tier we have
looked at. If your requirement is "deliver a million emails a month as cheaply as
possible", we are not the answer and you should not buy us.

The reason is not that they are clever and we are not. It is that sending
infrastructure is a scale business. Companies that specialise in it own or lease
the sending capacity, amortise it across everyone, and sell the marginal message.
[Independent guides to email marketing
cost](https://www.emailvendorselection.com/email-marketing-cost-pricing-guide/)
lay out the same picture: as volume rises, the per-message price of a
transactional sender collapses towards its own marginal cost. You do not beat
that by wanting to.

We could price below cost to match it for a quarter, and then we would either
raise it or run out of money. Both of those are worse for you than this
paragraph.

## What we ask to be compared on instead

Not a better version of the same table. A different unit.

| Pricing model | What it charges for | Best for | Where it hurts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per email sent | Each delivered message | High volume, transactional | Nothing keeps your audience between sends |
| Per stored contact | Everyone in the database | Small lists, mailed often | A dormant archive costs the same as an active one |
| Per active profile | People who engaged recently | Shops with repeat purchase | A seasonal audience keeps re-entering the meter |
| Per seat | Users of the software | Teams doing manual work | The audience size is irrelevant to the price |
| Per send, contacts unlimited | The messages you choose to put out | Large, seasonal, mostly quiet audiences | Frequent full-list sends are the expensive case |

Take the bottom row. It is ours, and its weakness is stated in the same line as
its strength, which is the only way a table like this is worth anything.

The comparison we would like is the twelve month total, at your list size and
your real send frequency, with the cost of keeping the contacts you did not
message included. For an events business that number usually reorders the
ranking. For a shop that mails weekly it usually does not, and then you should
buy the cheaper sender.

## The rule this comes from

We have an internal rule, older than this page: say where a competitor beats you,
then move the axis. Most companies do the second half and skip the first, which
is why comparison pages read like brochures and nobody believes them.

The half that costs something is the first half. It is also the half that makes
the second half land, because a reader who has just seen you concede a real point
gives you thirty seconds of genuine attention for the next one.

So, the second half, once, briefly. HIIPE charges for sends and keeps contacts
unlimited on every plan, including the free one, because the audience is the
thing we think you should never be billed for holding. [The
plans](/pricing) are three lines long for that reason.

## What I would do if I were reading this

I would not take my word for any of it. I would take my own last twelve months,
count how many distinct people I messaged and how many I stored, and run both
models on those two numbers. It takes ten minutes and it will tell you more than
this page can.

If storage and activity are the same number in your business, the cheap sender
wins and you should go and buy it. If they are not, the interesting question is
no longer the price of an email, it is [what a 10,000 contact list really
costs](/blog/what-a-10000-contact-list-really-costs) and [what a fan CRM is
supposed to store](/blog/what-is-a-fan-crm).

**Read next** : [What a 10,000 contact list really costs](/blog/what-a-10000-contact-list-really-costs) · [What a fan CRM is, and what it is not](/blog/what-is-a-fan-crm)
## Citable facts

- Independent guides to email marketing cost describe the same structure across the category: as volume rises, the per-message price of a dedicated sender collapses towards its own marginal cost. That axis is won by infrastructure scale, not by pricing intent.
  Source: Email Vendor Selection, email marketing cost and pricing guide
- HIIPE does not compete on cost per email and does not claim to. Contacts are unlimited on every plan, including the free one, and the meter is the send.
  Source: HIIPE pricing, published
- Per-contact pricing bills the archive; per-send pricing bills the activity. For an audience written to a few times a year, the two models diverge by exactly the size of the list that is never messaged.
  Source: HIIPE, pricing model, September 2026

## FAQ

### Which tool is cheaper per email than HIIPE?
Several, and the cheapest of them is a dedicated sending infrastructure business. We name it on the one page where we compare ourselves to it directly, because naming a competitor anywhere else is a habit we decided not to have.

### Why not just lower the price per email?
Because the people who win that axis win it structurally, on volume and on infrastructure they own. Matching them would mean pricing below cost on the part of the product we do not consider the product.

### So what should I compare instead?
The total for a year, at your real list size and your real send frequency, including what you pay to keep contacts you did not message. That is the number that differs, and it is the one nobody puts in a table.

### Does that mean HIIPE is expensive?
It means we are expensive on one line and cheap on another. If sending is all you need, buy sending. If you need to keep an audience between two events without paying for the privilege of remembering it, the arithmetic goes the other way.

### How do I compare two pricing models fairly?
Put both on your own twelve months, not on a list size. Take your monthly contact count and your monthly distinct recipients, price each model against those two series, and add the cost of the sends you did not make because they felt expensive. That last one is real and never appears in a calculator.

### What is a fair price for email marketing?
There is no fair price, there is a matched meter. A shop that mails weekly is well served by per-contact billing. A festival that mails twice a year is not, at any price, because it is paying for ten months of storage to buy two months of use.

### Why do vendors avoid publishing totals?
Because a total requires assumptions about you, and any assumption they publish will be wrong for most readers. It is a defensible position, and it is also why every comparison you read is built on a configuration somebody chose to make their side look good.