A bigger list should be good news, not a bigger bill.
Growing a list is supposed to be a good thing. On most platforms, it's a billing event — every new subscriber raises the bill because the platform charges by the contact.
RadarSend works differently. A flat platform fee plus whatever your sending provider actually charges — about $0.16 per 1,000 emails on SES Essentials. No per-email markup. No features locked behind a more expensive tier.
The per-contact model made sense once. It doesn't anymore.
Email platforms used to own the entire stack — the software, the servers, the IP addresses, the deliverability. Charging by the contact made sense because more contacts meant more infrastructure cost.
That's not how it works anymore. Sending infrastructure is a commodity. SES Essentials charges $0.16 per 1,000 emails regardless of whether you send to 5,000 people or 500,000.
But the platforms still charge like they own the pipes. A 50,000-contact list on Mailchimp Standard costs roughly $350/month. The same list on ActiveCampaign Plus is in the same range. On Klaviyo, it's higher.
The gap between what it costs to send and what platforms charge to send is where the growth tax lives.
Platform fee + sending cost. That's the whole bill.
RadarSend separates the platform from the sending. The platform fee covers the software — automation, segmentation, scoring, reporting, site tracking, bot filtering, everything. The sending cost is whatever your provider charges, paid directly to them.
Platform costs are approximate ranges across Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Klaviyo mid-tier plans. RadarSend pricing is annual rate + estimated SES cost for a typical monthly send volume. Check specific competitors for current rates.
The savings are bigger the bigger the list gets — because the platform fee grows slowly while the per-contact platforms scale linearly. At 100,000 contacts, the difference can be $500–$1,000 per month.
Everything the big platforms do — without the tier gates.
Moving to a less expensive platform usually means giving something up. RadarSend doesn't ask for that trade.
Automation.
Visual sequences with send, wait, branch, and conditions. Entry triggers on scores, segment changes, dates, field changes, and API events. Branches fire only on real human activity, not bot clicks.
Segmentation.
Behavioral segments on email activity, site visits, scores, custom fields, events, and subscriptions. Nested AND/OR logic. Self-updating. Available on every plan — not locked behind a premium tier.
Scoring.
Prospect and customer scores, each traceable to specific actions. On ActiveCampaign, scoring requires Plus. On Mailchimp, it requires Premium. On RadarSend, it's included.
Site tracking.
First-party, on your domain. Pages visited, time spent, scroll depth, return visits — tied to named contacts. Anonymous visitors get identified retroactively when they click an email.
A/B testing.
Subject, body, sender, or sending provider. Available on every plan.
API and webhooks.
Full REST API. Signed webhooks. Event ingestion. MCP server for AI assistants.
Two things the big platforms don't do at all.
These aren't on any tier. They're not available at any price.
1. Honest engagement numbers.
ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, and Klaviyo report opens and clicks at face value. Apple Mail pre-opens every email. Corporate security gateways click every link. All of it counts as engagement.
RadarSend classifies every interaction — likely human, maybe human, or machine. Both numbers appear on every report. The difference isn't marginal — on a typical B2B send, more than half the raw engagement is machine.
2. Sending you actually own.
On every major platform, the sending infrastructure is theirs. The reputation builds on their account. If the relationship ends, the reputation stays behind.
RadarSend connects to a provider you own — Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, Mailjet, or Resend. The account is yours. The rate is yours. The reputation is yours. If you leave RadarSend, the sending comes with you.
What's different.
You connect a sending provider.
Amazon SES takes about fifteen minutes to set up. The cost savings start with the first send — you're paying your provider directly instead of through a per-contact markup.
No drag-and-drop email builder.
Drag-and-drop builders are useful when you're getting started with email. When you're serious about it, you have your own templates. RadarSend uses MJML, HTML, and a template system that keeps your design intact.
Need a specific integration?
RadarSend has a full REST API, webhooks, a WordPress plugin, and MCP for AI assistants. If you need something connected that isn't covered, get in touch — between our API and integration experience, we can help.
No free tier.
RadarSend starts at $49/month. It's for teams that already know email works for them and need automation, scoring, and honest metrics.
Every month the gap compounds.
At 50,000 contacts, a typical platform charges $350–$600/month. RadarSend plus SES is roughly $144. That's $200–$450 in savings per month — $2,400 to $5,400 per year.
The savings fund themselves. The sending provider costs a fraction of what the platform was charging. The features don't shrink. And the engagement data gets honest for the first time.
The switching cost is a few hours of migration. The staying cost is a few thousand dollars a year — plus reports built on data that's half machine.
A bigger list should be good news, not a bigger bill.
Same automation. Same segmentation. Same reporting. A sending provider you own, engagement numbers you can trust, and a bill that doesn't punish you for growing.
If you have questions about your specific setup, we'll walk through it with you.