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Own Your Data

Mailchimp vs Listmonk and Amazon SES: Listmonk Pricing, Real Costs and Owning Your Email List

By

October 30, 2026

5 min read

Mailchimp prices by contact count, so a growing list costs more every month whether you email it or not. Listmonk is a self-hosted newsletter manager on PostgreSQL; Amazon SES sends at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. What you save, and the deliverability work you take on.

Email Marketing
Own Your Data
Mailchimp
Amazon SES
Self-Hosting

An email list is one of the few marketing assets you can own outright. Renting the tool that holds it is fine, but the pricing model matters: Mailchimp charges by contacts held, with Standard starting at $20 a month for 500 contacts at its current promotional rate and rising with list size.

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The self-hosted setup

Piece

What it does

Cost

Listmonk

Lists, subscribers, campaigns, templates, analytics; single binary; AGPLv3

Hosting only

PostgreSQL

Where the list lives

A small managed instance

Amazon SES

Sending, via SMTP or API

$0.10 per 1,000 emails

At 20,000 subscribers and four sends a month, SES is about $8 a month. The saving is real once the list is in the tens of thousands.

What you take on

  • Deliverability. SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain, one-click unsubscribe for bulk mail, and keeping spam complaints below Gmail's 0.3% limit are now your job.

  • Bounce and complaint handling: SES reports them, and your list has to act on them, or your sending is paused.

  • Templates and signup forms. Listmonk has them; matching your brand takes an afternoon.

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As of October 30, 2026. Provided as is, for general information, and accurate to the best of our knowledge on the date shown. Not legal, compliance, tax, financial or other professional advice. Prices, limits and vendor services change; check current vendor documentation before relying on anything here. Terms of use.