EMAIL MARKETING REVIEW · 2026

Omnisend review

An ecommerce email platform that genuinely undercuts the category at 10,000 contacts, provided you notice what happened to SMS on May 4, 2026, and how Omnisend defines a billable contact.

Ratings from G2 (1,185 reviews), Capterra (836) and Trustpilot (504), pricing verified August 2026.

The verdict

Omnisend is an email and web-push platform built for ecommerce stores, and on raw subscription price it is one of the better deals in the category. Paid plans start at $16 per month for up to 500 contacts. At 10,000 contacts you pay $132 per month on the Standard plan or $150 on Pro — figures we read directly from the tier table embedded in Omnisend’s own pricing page in August 2026, not from a sales quote. Omnisend advertises ‘up to 35% smaller invoice’ for merchants switching from Klaviyo, and at the tiers we checked the arithmetic holds up. The free plan is also unusually honest: every paid feature is unlocked, and the limits are volume limits, not feature gates.

The reason this review runs long is May 4, 2026. On that date Omnisend restructured SMS, the channel it built its ’email and SMS for ecommerce’ pitch on. The Standard plan lost SMS entirely for new subscribers. Pro subscribers who signed up before that date receive monthly SMS credits equal to their plan price — a $59 plan comes with $59 of SMS — but anyone subscribing on or after it pays for every message as an add-on, from $0.007 per US SMS. The pricing page’s own SMS calculator now reads ‘Add Global SMS credits to your Pro plan’, which makes SMS effectively a Pro-only, pay-per-send channel for new customers. One blast to 10,000 US numbers adds roughly $85 to $90 to that month’s bill.

Two more rules are worth absorbing before your first invoice. Omnisend bills for billable contacts, not subscribers: anyone who has received an automated message counts toward your tier, including abandoned-cart visitors and purchasers who never opted in to marketing. Only unsubscribed contacts are excluded. And there is no annual billing at all — the advertised 30% discount is a three-month prepay promo, not a yearly rate, so the price you see from month four onward is the price you keep paying.

None of this sinks the tool. Third-party ratings are strong and consistent — 4.6 on G2 across 1,185 reviews, 4.7 on Capterra, 4.4 on Trustpilot — and support quality is praised repeatedly, which matters because live chat and email support run 24/7 on every plan, including Free. We score Omnisend 8.3: cheaper at scale than most of the category and clearer about its limits than its fine print suggests, but no longer the email-plus-bundled-SMS bargain it was before May 2026. If you send newsletters rather than run a store, MailerLite (our 9.2) remains the stronger buy. For ecommerce automation at 10,000-plus contacts, Omnisend belongs on the shortlist.

What Omnisend really costs at scale

Omnisend prices on contact count, so the number that matters is not the $16 entry point but what your tier costs after two years of list growth. The published table runs from 500 contacts up to 150,000; beyond that you are into custom quotes. All plans bill monthly. There is no annual option, discounted or otherwise.

Plan	Monthly	Annual (per mo)	What you get
Free	$0	n/a (monthly only)	Up to 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo, 500 web push/mo; all features included; ‘Powered by Omnisend’ branding
Standard	From $16 ($132 at 10,000 contacts)	No annual billing; 3-mo prepay promo cuts entry to $11.20/mo	Emails capped at 12x list size (6,000/mo at entry tier), unlimited web push; no SMS for subscriptions started on or after May 4, 2026
Pro	From $59 ($150 at 10,000 contacts)	No annual billing; 3-mo prepay promo cuts entry to $41.30/mo	‘Unlimited’ emails (fair-use cap of 60x list size), unlimited web push, AI personalization; SMS as a pay-per-send add-on (US from $0.007)
Custom	Quote (150,000+ contacts)	n/a	Lists above 150,000 contacts; dedicated account expert and 24/7 priority support

The scaling curve is steady rather than punishing. Standard runs $16 at 500 contacts, $132 at 10,000, and tops out at $1,508 per month at the 150,001-contact tier; Pro runs $59 at 2,500 contacts, $150 at 10,000, and $1,940 at 150,001. At 10,000 contacts the Standard allowance is 120,000 emails per month — the 12x multiplier — which is comfortable for a weekly campaign plus automations, and the $18 monthly gap between Standard and Pro at that size is small enough that many stores will take Pro for the higher send ceiling alone. To see where your own list lands on the curve, run it through our real cost calculator.

The intro discount deserves a precise reading. Omnisend’s ‘30% off’ requires paying three months upfront: Standard’s entry tier drops to $11.20 per month, billed as $33.60 today, and Pro’s to $41.30 per month, billed as $123.90. When the prepaid term ends you revert to the full monthly rate. Since there is no annual plan, there is no way to lock a discount beyond those three months — a structural difference from competitors whose advertised prices assume annual commitment, and one that cuts both ways. You are never trapped in a twelve-month contract, but you also never pay less than list price after the first quarter.

SMS is a separate budget line entirely. Credits are prepaid, and the per-message rate depends on how much you buy at once: a US SMS costs $0.009 on the smallest purchase ($10 to $49.99), $0.0085 at $50 or more, $0.008 at $1,000, and $0.007 only once you are buying $10,000 of credits at a time. US MMS runs $0.025 down to $0.019. A store at 10,000 contacts sending one monthly SMS campaign should therefore budget roughly $85 to $90 on top of the $150 Pro subscription — call it $240 a month all-in, which is still competitive, but around 60% more than the number on the pricing page.

The hidden costs

You are billed for people who never subscribed. Omnisend’s contact tiers count billable contacts, and the definition is broad: any contact who has received an automated message counts, including abandoned-cart visitors who never joined your list, purchasers who never opted in to marketing, and imported contacts without opt-in dates. Only unsubscribed contacts are excluded. In practice an ecommerce store’s billable count can sit meaningfully above its marketing list, and pruning stale non-subscribers becomes a recurring chore with a direct line to your invoice.

The May 4, 2026 SMS change took real money off the table. Before that date, Pro’s bundled credits meant a $150-tier subscriber effectively got $150 of SMS every month at no extra cost. New subscribers get nothing bundled and pay per send. Legacy Pro users keep their credits — but lose any accumulated balance permanently the moment they downgrade or cancel, which is a quiet lock-in for anyone grandfathered on the old terms. Standard subscribers who signed up after the cutoff cannot send SMS at all without moving to Pro.

There is no annual discount, full stop. The 30% promo applies to a single three-month prepaid term. If you are comparing Omnisend’s sticker price against a competitor’s annual price, you are comparing different things — Omnisend’s number is what you actually pay every month indefinitely, which is honest, but it also means no reward for commitment.

Standard’s email cap fails ungracefully. The allowance is 12x your list size per billing cycle, and there is no overage option: you cannot pay your way past the ceiling mid-cycle. Exceed it and Omnisend drops contacts from automation workflows — the help center’s word is ‘canceled’ — until your cycle renews or you upgrade a tier. For a store, that means abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows silently stop firing during your busiest sending period, which is precisely when you hit the cap. If you run heavy automation, treat the 12x limit as a hard architectural constraint, not a soft quota.

Pro’s ‘unlimited’ email is 60x your list size. The fair-use ceiling is disclosed in a tooltip on the pricing page rather than the plan card. At 10,000 contacts that is 600,000 emails a month — few stores will hit it, but ‘unlimited’ it is not.

Features that matter

The free plan is the most credible on-ramp in the ecommerce ESP market. Where most vendors gate automation or segmentation behind paid tiers, Omnisend’s $0 plan includes every feature of the paid plans — automation workflows, segmentation, signup forms, web push, reporting — and limits you only on volume: 250 contacts, 500 emails and 500 web push notifications per month, with ‘Powered by Omnisend’ branding on what you send. No credit card is required, and it is a permanent plan, not a trial. You can build and test your entire automation stack before paying anything.

Web push is quietly one of the better inclusions. Both paid plans carry unlimited web push notifications at no extra cost, which gives stores a free-to-send re-engagement channel while competitors charge for it or skip it. Pro adds AI personalization on top of the standard automation library.

Support is a genuine differentiator at this price. Live chat and email support run 24/7 on every plan, including Free — rare at the $16 tier, rarer still at $0 — and review comments across G2, Capterra and Trustpilot repeatedly single out support quality. Once your spend passes $400 per month you get a named customer success manager. Switchers get a free white-glove migration: Omnisend rebuilds your contacts, segments and automations from your previous platform within five days at no cost, which removes the main friction of leaving Klaviyo or Mailchimp mid-quarter.

The honest caveat is that the feature story now has an asterisk on its historically loudest channel. Omnisend’s automation library was built around email-plus-SMS sequences, and for new customers the SMS half is a metered add-on on Pro only. The workflows still work; each text in them now has a visible unit cost.

Who should choose Omnisend

Ecommerce stores with 2,500 to 50,000 contacts are the center of the target. At 10,000 contacts, $132 to $150 per month for full automation, segmentation and unlimited web push undercuts the ecommerce incumbents, and the pricing table is published all the way to 150,000 contacts, so you can see your costs three years out without talking to sales.

Klaviyo switchers have the cleanest case: Omnisend’s own ‘up to 35% smaller invoice’ pitch checked out at the tiers we verified, and the free five-day migration means the switching cost is mostly the decision itself. New stores should simply start on the free plan — it is the rare $0 tier that lets you build real automations before your list justifies paying.

Email-first senders who want SMS occasionally, rather than structurally, also do fine here: pay-as-you-go credits at $0.0085 to $0.009 per US message make a quarterly SMS campaign a rounding error, with no monthly SMS subscription to carry.

Who should look elsewhere

If you publish newsletters or run a content business rather than a store, MailerLite (9.2) gives you more subscribers per dollar and a simpler bill; Omnisend’s ecommerce automation would be paying for machinery you will not use. If your marketing leans on complex CRM-style journeys, lead scoring and sales handoffs rather than cart recovery, ActiveCampaign (8.7) is the deeper automation platform. High-volume senders with large, low-engagement lists should look at Brevo (8.4), whose send-based pricing avoids paying for contacts you rarely email — the exact cost model where Omnisend’s billable-contact rules hurt most.

SMS-heavy operations should think hardest. A brand sending multiple texts per contact per month now faces Pro-only access, per-message billing, and rates that only reach $0.007 at $10,000 credit purchases. Run the numbers against dedicated SMS platforms before assuming the bundled convenience is worth it. Our full rankings across these scenarios are on the best email marketing software page.

FAQ

How much does Omnisend cost for 10,000 contacts?

$132 per month on Standard (with 120,000 emails per month included) or $150 on Pro (unlimited emails, fair-use capped at 60x list size), per the pricing table verified in August 2026. SMS is extra on both: one campaign to 10,000 US numbers costs roughly $85 to $90 in prepaid credits.

Is Omnisend’s free plan actually free?

Yes, and it is a permanent plan rather than a trial. You get up to 250 contacts, 500 emails and 500 web push notifications per month with every paid-plan feature unlocked — automations, segmentation, forms and reporting — and no credit card required. The trade-off is ‘Powered by Omnisend’ branding on your messages.

Does Omnisend include free SMS?

Not for new customers. Since May 4, 2026, SMS is unavailable on Standard for new subscribers, and new Pro subscribers no longer receive the bundled monthly credits legacy users got. SMS is now a pay-per-send add-on on Pro, from $0.007 per US message at the highest credit volumes ($0.009 at the lowest). Legacy Pro users keep credits equal to their plan price but forfeit accumulated credits permanently if they downgrade or cancel.

Does Omnisend offer an annual discount?

No. Omnisend bills monthly only. The advertised ‘30% off’ is a promo that requires paying three months upfront — $11.20 per month on Standard’s entry tier ($33.60 billed today) or $41.30 on Pro ($123.90) — and applies only to that prepaid term, after which you pay the standard monthly rate.

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