Software costs for small businesses: budget, discounts and cancelling
Estimate the full cost of email and automation software, check published discounts, and cancel or downgrade without losing data.
Before you buy, work out the full bill rather than the headline price: the plan tier you will actually need at your expected volume, add-ons, payment processing fees for paid newsletters, currency and tax if you buy from abroad, and the renewal price after any introductory period. The subscription worth-it guide and the cost estimators show how to put those numbers side by side.
Read the cost-by-list-size and year-one budget guides first, then decide between monthly and annual billing. Discount pages only list what each vendor publishes on its own site, with the date checked, so use them to confirm whether a student, nonprofit or annual discount applies rather than searching for codes.
If you are cutting costs on a tool you already pay for, try the cheaper fixes first, such as removing inactive subscribers or dropping a tier. If you still plan to leave, read the matching cancel or downgrade guide for what happens to refunds, credits, data and published content, and export your data before you act.
What Kit, MailerLite, Brevo and beehiiv list on their official pricing pages for 1,000, 2,500 and 5,000 subscribers, with unverified tiers marked rather than guessed.
A worked calculator for paid newsletters at $5 and $10 a month with 50, 250 and 1,000 paying readers, comparing Kit's percentage fee with beehiiv's flat plan plus Stripe fees.
What MailerLite, Kit, beehiiv, Moosend and Make each do when you pass a subscriber or credit limit: automatic tier upgrades, locked or delayed sending, stopped scenarios, extra-credit pricing and the alerts worth setting up.
A month-by-month budget for a Shopify store growing from 2,500 to 8,000 contacts on MailerLite and Moosend, using each vendor's dated pricing tiers, with the tier crossings, sending limits and Shopify connection caveats that change the total.
The arithmetic for 300 and 900 leads a month through a four-step automation: Make credits versus Pabbly Connect tasks, the polling checks that change the answer, and the MailerLite tier cost as follow-up contacts pile up.
A month-by-month budget for growing from 1,000 to 5,000 subscribers with one launch sequence and course sales, on Kit Creator versus MailerLite, including the tier jumps, a launch-month sending cap and the per-sale fees each vendor documents.
Find the charge currency, tax and payment method before you subscribe, using MailerLite's documented billing rules as a worked example. Includes conversion maths and failed-payment steps.
A plain method to compare cash timing, setup time and the work a tool actually removes, with worked examples using Kit and MailerLite prices checked October 29, 2026.
Each platform counts inactive and unsubscribed contacts differently. Learn what each one bills for, when a cleanup changes the invoice, and a re-engagement process that does not burn your reputation.
What Calendly Free leaves out according to its pricing page, what Standard adds for a small business that books clients, and the prices listed on 2026-10-13.
The lifetime plans on Pabbly Connect's official pricing page, the terms that govern them, the break-even point against subscription plans, and the risks of paying once for a service you will rely on for years.
A worked calculator for a Make scenario that summarizes text with OpenAI and emails it, combining Make credits with OpenAI's published per-token prices, with every assumption labeled.
Worked math on the annual discounts beehiiv, Kit, MailerLite and Moosend publish, the break-even month for each, the risk of prepaying for a tier your list will outgrow, and the refund terms to read first.
A worksheet formula of runs times billable steps, plus branches, polling overhead and retries, applied to Make credits and Pabbly Connect tasks with prices from their official pages.
A year-one newsletter budget under three list sizes, using official prices for a .com domain, free and paid newsletter plans, and free email forwarding, with totals for a free path and a paid path.
Free plans for email marketing, automation and email at your domain, with each plan's documented cap, the domain you still have to pay for, and the paid upgrade most businesses hit first.
Every discount Make lists on its own pages as of the date checked: annual prepayment, the Start-up Plan, nonprofit pricing and the upgrade credit conversion, plus how to work out your annual saving.
Make's documented steps to cancel or downgrade, what happens to credits, extra credits, teams and scenarios, the refund position, and a pre-cancellation checklist.
The three savings MailerLite publishes on its own site, how to claim each without a promo code, why they do not stack, and yearly costs at 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers.
MailerLite's documented steps to cancel, downgrade or delete an account, what its refund policy allows, which limits apply on Free, and what to export before you leave.
What beehiiv itself publishes to lower the bill: yearly billing, the free plan, the 14-day Pro trial and the promo-code field, with yearly costs at 1,000 and 10,000 subscribers.
beehiiv's documented steps to pause, downgrade or delete, its refund terms, what stops on the Free plan, how custom domains, the Ad Network and paid recommendations are affected, and an export checklist.
Every discount Moosend publishes on its own site as of October 30, 2026: annual and biannual savings, the nonprofit discount, the no-card trial and credits, with worked costs at 2,000 and 10,000 subscribers.
Moosend's documented steps to cancel a plan, downgrade instead, or deactivate and delete the account, what its help center says about billing after cancelling, and an export checklist to run first.
MailerLite, Kit, beehiiv, Moosend, Make and Pabbly side by side: refund windows, annual versus monthly, what happens on downgrade or cancellation, and one-time plan terms, each row taken from the vendor's own terms or help pages.
User seats and role types on MailerLite, Kit, beehiiv, Moosend and Make, taken from each vendor's pricing and help pages, with the cheapest plan that fits a three-person team on each.
An itemized 12-month budget for a solo coach in two versions, a lean one at about $26 and a comfortable one at about $489, covering domain renewal, mailbox, MailerLite, scheduling and Make credits, with prices dated 2026-10-30.