How much does it cost to send 1 million emails a month with systeme.io?
A critical question for any scaling business is understanding the cost of high-volume email marketing. Many email marketing platforms charge based on a combination of contacts and email volume, leading to costs that can exceed $1,000/month for sending a million emails.
At systeme.io, our pricing philosophy is different. Unlimited email sending is included in all our plans. For a list large enough to send millions of emails, the cost is a flat $97 per month via our Unlimited plan, which includes unlimited contacts.
1. Our pricing philosophy: Pay for contacts, not for email sending
Our plans are tiered based on the number of contacts in your account, not the number of emails you send. This model is designed to give you predictable costs and encourage you to build a strong relationship with your audience without worrying about your bill.
Our plans scale with your contact list:
- Free Plan: Unlimited sending for up to 2,000 contacts.
- Startup Plan: Unlimited sending for up to 5,000 contacts.
- Webinar Plan: Unlimited sending for up to 10,000 contacts.
- Unlimited Plan: Unlimited sending for unlimited contacts.
2. Proof of performance for high-volume deliverability
Our infrastructure is designed not just for affordability but for high-performance deliverability at scale. We use our own systeme.io account to run our business, demonstrating what is possible on our platform.
Here is a summary of our account's performance for a complete month:
- Emails Sent: Over 5.4 million (1)
- Average Open Rate: 42.1% (2)
These results demonstrate the level of performance you can achieve. This success is a partnership between our powerful infrastructure and your good sending practices.
3. Best practices for achieving high deliverability
To achieve and maintain a high open rate like ours, we strongly recommend following these industry-standard best practices. These practices are essential for building a positive sender reputation and ensuring your emails land in the inbox.
a. Authenticate your domain:
This is non-negotiable for serious email senders. Authenticating your domain (using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records) proves to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Gmail and Outlook that you are a legitimate sender, which drastically improves your inbox placement.
(Click here to learn how to authenticate your personal domain name)
b. Clean your list regularly:
Only send emails to people who have given you explicit consent to be on your list. Regularly clean your list of inactive contacts (those who haven't opened an email in 3–6 months) and bounced email addresses to keep engagement rates high.
(Click here to learn more about email list cleaning)
c. Warm up your sending:
If you are migrating a large, existing list to systeme.io, you must gradually warm up your sending reputation. Start by sending to your most engaged contacts first and slowly increase your volume over 7–14 days.
(Click here to learn more about our recommended warm-up strategy)
d. Understand our pool system:
Our automated system protects deliverability for our entire community by grouping senders into pools based on their performance metrics (open rate, spam rate, bounce rate). Consistently following good practices will place you in a low-risk pool, ensuring the best possible deliverability.
(Click here to learn more about how our email sending system works)
4. Conclusion: Scale your business, not your bill
systeme.io offers a simple, flat-fee structure that allows you to focus on growing your business without worrying about escalating email costs. By combining our powerful infrastructure with your commitment to good sending practices, you have everything you need to scale your email marketing effectively.