# Bulk email software: what 50,000 and 500,000 emails a month cost

> 500,000 emails a month costs about $74 on self-hosted software with Amazon SES, against $456 to $559 on hosted plans. The bulk email software options, priced at 50k and 500k emails, and the deliverability rules that apply.

Source: https://sendbroadcast.net/bulk-email-software

Most bulk email software charges you for the size of your list, not for the email you send. That is the number people miss. A list of 125,000 people that gets one email a week costs $456 to $559 a month on a hosted plan. The same 500,000 emails cost $50 on Amazon SES. The gap is the software that sits between your list and the sending service, and you can rent it or own it.

Quick answer

Choose a **hosted platform** like EmailOctopus or MailerLite if your list is under about 10,000 people and you never want to touch a server. Choose **self-hosted software on Amazon SES** if your list is large, because you pay about $0.10 per 1,000 emails and nothing per subscriber. On SES, **Listmonk** is free if you are comfortable in a terminal, **Sendy** is $69 once and built around SES, and **Broadcast** is $250 once with sequences, a modern editor and support.

Conflict of interest

We make [Broadcast](https://sendbroadcast.net/), one of the self-hosted options on this page. Every other price is the vendor's own list price on monthly billing, checked on their sites on 25 October 2026. If a number has moved, [tell us](mailto:simon@furvur.com) and we will fix it.

## What "bulk email software" means

There are two layers in any bulk email setup. The **sending service** hands your messages to Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark, SendGrid and Resend are sending services. The **bulk email software** holds your list, renders your campaign, sends it through the service, and processes the unsubscribes, bounces and complaints that come back.

Hosted platforms bundle both layers and bill you for both every month. Self-hosted software runs on your own server and connects to a sending service you choose. You pay for the software once, or not at all, and the sending service bills you per email.

Neither model sends "better" email by default. Inbox placement depends on your domain, your list and your content much more than on the logo of the tool. What changes is the bill, the work, and who owns the list.

## Costs at 50,000 and 500,000 emails a month

Two lists, each emailed once a week, so four sends a month. 12,500 subscribers is 50,000 emails. 125,000 subscribers is 500,000 emails. Hosted platforms price by subscriber tier, so each uses the smallest tier that fits the list.

| Option | 50,000 emails a month | 500,000 emails a month | Also pay |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| MailerLite Comfort | $129 | $559 | Nothing |
| EmailOctopus Pro | $60 | $456 | Nothing |
| EmailOctopus Connect, on your SES | $42.50 + $5 SES = $47.50 | $223 + $50 SES = $273 | Nothing |
| Self-hosted software on Mailgun | $35 + $12 server = $47 | Mailgun quotes this volume | The software license, once |
| Self-hosted software on Amazon SES | $5 + $12 server = $17 | $50 + $24 server = $74 | Listmonk $0, Sendy $69 or Broadcast $250, once |

How the numbers were worked out, all checked on 25 October 2026 on monthly billing:

**MailerLite** lists Comfort at $129 for up to 15,000 subscribers and $559 for up to 130,000, from the price slider on [mailerlite.com/pricing](https://www.mailerlite.com/pricing). **EmailOctopus** lists Pro at $60 for up to 15,000 subscribers and $456 for up to 140,000, and Connect at $42.50 and $223 for the same tiers, on [emailoctopus.com/pricing](https://emailoctopus.com/pricing). **Amazon SES** is $0.10 per 1,000 emails at its à la carte rate on [aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/). **Mailgun** Foundation is $35 a month for 50,000 emails, and Mailgun asks larger senders to contact sales, on [mailgun.com/pricing](https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/). The servers are DigitalOcean's 2 GB Droplet at $12 and 4 GB Droplet at $24 on [digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets).

At 50,000 emails, every option is affordable and the choice is about convenience. At 500,000, the hosted bill is six to seven times the self-hosted one, every month, and it grows with every signup. Over three years, that is $16,416 on EmailOctopus Pro at the 140,000 tier against $2,914 for Broadcast on SES with the $250 license included.

We have a longer breakdown for one volume in [what it costs to send 100,000 emails a month on your own server](/compare/cost-to-send-100000-emails), and a [pricing calculator](/calculator) for your own list size.

## The options, by how much work you want

### Hosted bulk email platforms

**EmailOctopus** is the cheapest hosted plan in the table. The free Starter plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month with EmailOctopus branding on the emails. Pro allows ten emails per subscriber per month at each tier, keeps reports forever, and adds unlimited forms, landing pages and users. Its Connect option sends through your own Amazon SES account, which cuts the price further. There is more detail on our [EmailOctopus pricing and alternatives](/compare/emailoctopus-alternative) page.

**MailerLite** costs about twice as much as EmailOctopus at 15,000 subscribers. Comfort is the cheaper of its two paid plans, and Power costs more. See [MailerLite pricing](/compare/mailerlite-pricing) for every tier.

**Brevo** is the exception to the per-subscriber rule. It prices by emails sent, starting at $9 a month for 5,000 emails on its Starter plan, so a big list you email rarely stays cheap there. Its per-volume prices are on our [Brevo pricing](/compare/brevo-pricing) page.

Pick hosted if your list is small, your time is expensive, or nobody on the team wants to own a server.

### Self-hosted bulk email software

You install the software on a server you rent, connect it to a sending service, and import your list. Updates and backups are your job. In exchange, a subscriber costs you nothing to keep.

**Listmonk** is free, open source under the AGPL, and ships as a single Go binary with a Postgres database. It is fast and it sends through several SMTP servers at once. It has no drip sequences. The latest stable release on GitHub is v6.2.0 from 26 June 2026.

**Sendy** is $69 once per domain and is built around Amazon SES. Its own site says it also works natively with SendGrid, Mailjet and Elastic Email, and that it handles bounces, complaints and unsubscribes in real time. It has autoresponders, a timed series after signup.

**Mautic** is free under the GPL v3 and is the deepest open-source automation tool. It is also the heaviest to run. Version 7.2.1 shipped on 23 September 2026.

**Broadcast** is our product: $250 once for one server, with every feature and no subscriber limit. It sends through Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, Resend or any SMTP server, processes bounces and complaints automatically, and adds sequences with branching. It is not open source.

If you are choosing between the self-hosted tools, [the self-hosted email marketing comparison](/self-hosted/email-marketing-software) goes through each one in depth.

### Your own script on a sending API

You can write a loop that calls the SES or Mailgun API. It will send. Then you need an unsubscribe page, the List-Unsubscribe headers Gmail requires, a bounce and complaint webhook, a suppression list, retries, throttling to your sending quota, and a way to stop a send halfway. That is a product, not a script. Build it if email is your business. Otherwise use one of the tools above.

## Deliverability basics for bulk senders

Sending 500,000 emails is easy. Getting them into inboxes takes three habits.

### Authenticate your domain

Gmail's [email sender guidelines](https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126) apply to anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts. You need SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your sending domain, with the From domain aligned to SPF or DKIM. A DMARC policy of `p=none` is enough to meet the rule. Every sending service in the table gives you the DKIM records to add. Our [free DMARC checker](/tools/free-dmarc-testing-tool) confirms all three.

Gmail also requires one-click unsubscribe for marketing email, and a visible unsubscribe link in the body. That is the [List-Unsubscribe header](/list-unsubscribe-header) your bulk email software has to add. Check that yours does before you pick it.

### Warm up a new domain or sending service

A new domain that sends 500,000 emails on day one looks like a spammer. Start with your most engaged subscribers, a few thousand a day, and double the volume every few days while bounce and complaint rates stay low. The [domain warm-up guide](/warm-up-email-domain) has a full schedule.

### Keep the list clean

Remove hard bounces after the first one. Suppress anyone who marks you as spam, forever. Stop mailing people who have not opened or clicked in six months, or send them one re-permission email and keep only those who click. Use double opt-in on your sign-up form so bots and typos never reach the list.

The thresholds are strict. Gmail asks you to keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.30%, and recommends below 0.10%. Amazon SES puts an account under review at a 5% bounce rate or a 0.1% complaint rate, and can pause sending at 10% or 0.5%, according to its [sending review FAQ](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/faqs-enforcement.html). A list you bought or scraped will cross those lines in one send. No software fixes that.

For the longer version, read the [self-hosted email deliverability guide](/deliverability) and [hard bounce vs soft bounce](/hard-bounce-vs-soft-bounce).

## Where Broadcast fits

Broadcast is for the sender with a list large enough that per-subscriber pricing hurts, who wants a product rather than a project. You install one Docker image on a $12 to $24 server, connect Amazon SES or another sending service, and import your list as CSV with tags and custom fields intact. Bounces and complaints from SES come back by webhook and remove the address from future sends. The [Amazon SES setup guide](/docs/esp-integrations/aws-ses) shows the steps.

It costs $250 once for one server, $1,000 for up to 25 servers, and updates are included. The current price, including any monthly promotion, is on the [pricing page](/pricing).

It is the wrong choice if you want zero server work, if your list is a few hundred people, or if you need the source code. In those cases, use EmailOctopus or Listmonk.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the cheapest bulk email software?

For large lists, free self-hosted software like Listmonk on Amazon SES. SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 emails, so 500,000 emails cost $50 plus a server. For small lists with no server, EmailOctopus's free Starter plan covers 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month.

### What is the best bulk email software?

It depends on list size and how much server work you accept. EmailOctopus is the cheapest hosted plan we checked. Listmonk is the best free self-hosted tool. Sendy is the cheapest paid option on SES. Broadcast adds sequences, support and any sending service for $250 once.

### How much does it cost to send 500,000 emails a month?

On self-hosted software with Amazon SES, about $74 a month: $50 for SES and $24 for a 4 GB server. On hosted plans for a 125,000-subscriber list emailed weekly, $456 on EmailOctopus Pro and $559 on MailerLite Comfort, as of October 2026.

### Can I send bulk email from Gmail or Outlook?

No. Personal mailboxes have daily sending limits far below a bulk send, and messages from them do not carry the unsubscribe headers Gmail requires from bulk senders. Use bulk email software with a sending service.

### Is bulk email legal?

Yes, to people who agreed to receive it. Laws like CAN-SPAM in the US and GDPR in the EU require consent or an existing relationship, a working unsubscribe link, and your physical address. Sending to bought lists breaks the sending service's terms as well as the law in many countries.

## Related

- [Email marketing on Amazon SES: what you need on top](/amazon-ses-email-marketing)
- [The cheapest email marketing platforms](/cheapest-email-marketing)
- [Amazon SES pricing](/compare/amazon-ses-pricing)
- [What 100,000 emails a month costs on your own server](/compare/cost-to-send-100000-emails)
- [Postmark vs Mailgun vs Amazon SES](/compare/ses-vs-postmark-vs-mailgun)
- [The 7 best self-hosted email marketing platforms](/self-hosted/email-marketing-software)

## Stop paying for the size of your list

Broadcast runs on your server and sends through Amazon SES or the provider you already use. No subscriber limits, a $250 one-time license, and email support when you need it.

[How Broadcast works](https://sendbroadcast.net/) [Try the live demo](https://demo.sendbroadcast.net/)