Most platforms charge you for contacts and then meter you on sends, so a list you have not pruned costs you twice — once in subscription, once in headroom. Two of the four here never cap what you send at all.
Check your own allowance
How big is the list you’re mailing?
30,000 emails
That is all Mailchimp Standard allows you in a month — 12× your 2,500 contacts, or twelve sends to the whole list. One extra full-list send past the cap costs $5 on Constant Contact at $0.002 an email. Moosend does not cap you at all.
| Platform | Monthly send cap | What happens when you cross it | Plan this applies to |
|---|---|---|---|
Moosend Best |
No cap | Nothing — there is no ceiling to cross | Pro |
| Unlimited broadcasts | Nothing on broadcasts | Every plan | |
| 10x subscribers (Lite), 12x (Plus) | Not published as an overage charge | Lite and Plus | |
| 10x your contact limit | Not published as an overage charge | Pro | |
Constant Contact Incumbent |
10x (Lite), 12x (Standard), 24x (Premium) | Billed at $0.002 per email | All three tiers |
Mailchimp Incumbent |
10x (Essentials), 12x (Standard), 15x (Premium) | Overages billed | All paid tiers |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Moosend places no cap on campaigns or sends on Pro. It also sells pay-as-you-go email credits at $1 per 1,000 emails that never expire — the only platform in this comparison that does, and a genuinely different billing model if your sending is seasonal rather than steady.
Being stopped at a limit and being charged past it are different failure modes, and which one is worse depends on you. A hard cap protects the budget and interrupts the campaign; overage billing keeps the send going and surprises you on the invoice. AWeber and Benchmark cap at 10x without publishing an overage rate, which is the conservative option. Constant Contact’s $0.002 is only about $2 per extra thousand emails — small until a resend to a 50,000 list makes it $100. The platforms worth singling out are the two with no ceiling at all, because neither failure mode applies.
Unlimited broadcasts
Kit never caps email broadcasts on any plan, including the free one. The limits on Kit’s free plan are elsewhere — one automation, one sequence, one user — not on how much you send.
Full Kit review →10x on Lite, 12x on Plus
A real cap, but a generous one: a 1,000-subscriber list on Lite can send 10,000 emails a month. AWeber does not publish an overage charge, so the cap appears to be a stop rather than a bill.
Full AWeber review →10x your contact limit
The same shape as AWeber at a slightly lower multiple. Benchmark does not publish an overage rate either.
Full Benchmark Email review →The full comparison prices all four challengers against Mailchimp and Constant Contact at your list size, row by row.
10x your contact count on Essentials, 12x on Standard and 15x on Premium. Crossing it results in overage billing rather than a stop. The free plan is far tighter: 250 contacts and a maximum of 500 sends a month or 250 a day.
Yes. Constant Contact bills $0.002 per email past the cap — roughly $2 per extra thousand emails — rather than blocking the send.
Moosend places no cap on campaigns or sends on its Pro plan. Kit places no cap on broadcasts on any plan, including free.
Because the cheaper tiers price on contacts and meter on sends, an unpruned list costs you twice — once in subscription and once in headroom. That is the structural reason a resend or a twice-weekly segment hits the ceiling before the contact limit does.