For startups
Your list grows fast. Your email bill shouldn't.
You add subscribers quickly and send sparingly. day3 bills by send, not list size, so a fast-growing list never inflates the bill.
Sound familiar?
- Every tool raises the price the moment your list crosses the next tier.
- You need to tell users what shipped, not build funnels or lifecycle automation.
- No time to learn a marketing platform. No sales call just to send an email.
- Signups arrive in bursts after a launch, and most of them won't hear from you for weeks.
How day3 fits
Unlimited subscribers
Add users as fast as you can acquire them. Sends are the only meter, so the bill holds flat.
Live in minutes
Verify a domain, import the list, write, send. A whole campaign fits on one screen.
Deliverability built in
Authenticated sending, double opt-in, and auto-suppression keep launch emails out of spam.
Starts at $1/mo
Priced for pre-revenue, and the list can grow as fast as you like without moving the bill.
What that costs, concretely
You launch, pick up 12,000 signups over a quarter, and email the whole list twice in that time.
$5/mo
8,000 emails a month fits the 10,000 plan. The 12,000 subscribers are free, on this plan and every other.
Per-subscriber pricing meters the 12,000 people on the list, every month, including the two months you sent nothing.
Why the two meters diverge for a startup
A startup's list and its sending schedule grow at completely different rates. Signups arrive in bursts, driven by a launch, a Show HN, a podcast mention. Sending stays roughly constant, because it's gated by how often you actually ship something worth telling people about, which is a function of engineering time rather than of audience size.
Per-subscriber pricing charges for the first curve. Send-based pricing charges for the second. In the early months, when the list is compounding and the release cadence isn't, that difference is most of your email bill.
It also removes a small but real perverse incentive. When contacts cost money, there's pressure to prune the list, to not put every signup on it, to delete the people who haven't opened anything in six months. All of that is optimising your list for your billing model rather than for your business. When subscribers are free, the correct list is simply the accurate one.
The practical version: put your whole user base on it. Keep the churned accounts, marked as churned. Keep the people who unsubscribed, marked as unsubscribed. None of it costs anything and all of it is worth having when you eventually want to segment.
When day3 is the wrong call
If your growth plan runs on lifecycle email, onboarding drips, trial-nurture sequences or win-back flows, day3 is the wrong tool today. Automations are designed but not shipped, so you'd be buying a promise. Pick a marketing platform, or plan to run one alongside day3 rather than instead of it.
Questions
- What's the best email tool for an early-stage startup?
- If you mainly email users about product changes rather than run automation, day3 keeps costs flat as the list grows. Subscribers are unlimited on every plan.
- Will day3 get more expensive as we grow?
- Only if you send more. Adding subscribers never raises the bill. day3 prices by sends, not list size.
- Can we use day3 for our app's transactional email too?
- Yes, and it's usually the reason startups pick it. Password resets, receipts and magic links go out through one API call from the same verified domain and the same monthly allowance as your campaigns, so you're not paying and configuring two vendors.
- What happens to our data if we stop paying?
- You drop to the free tier and keep everything: audiences, domains, drafts, sending history. It all exports as CSV or JSON whenever you want it. Nothing is held hostage to a subscription.
- Is $1/mo a real price or an introductory rate?
- Real. Delivery costs roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails, so the low tiers are priced against card processing fees rather than against email. Every tier covers its own costs as it stands.
Keep reading
- How send-based pricing worksWhat counts as a send, what happens at the monthly cap, and why list size never moves the bill.Read on
- day3 vs MailchimpMailchimp is a broad marketing platform, and its bill climbs as your contact count grows, even in a month you send nothing.Read on
- APIOne REST API for your app's transactional email, your audiences, and your campaigns, plus an MCP server that turns your AI editor into a composer. Built so migrating from another provider is one script and staying in sync afterwards is a webhook handler.Read on
- DeliverabilityAuthenticated domains, one-click unsubscribe, and automatic suppression of bounces and complaints.Read on
- SaaS teamsChangelogs and release notes are a job of their own. day3 does that one job well, with deliverability and compliance built in and pricing that ignores list size.Read on
- PricingNine plans from $1/mo for 1,000 emails to $220/mo for 1,000,000. Unlimited subscribers on all of them.Read on