Two questions get mixed up on pricing pages. The first is whether email as a channel is paying you back after you count the software, your time, and anything else you spent. The second is whether a paid plan fee is covered by a handful of extra sales or a little more revenue per subscriber. This page keeps the two calculations apart and shows the arithmetic. The calculator starts with empty fields, so no industry averages are baked in.
What this page calculates
Program ROI asks: for a month (or another period you choose), what did you get back relative to what the whole email program cost?
Tool-cost break-even asks: how many extra sales — or how much subscriber revenue at your margin — would cover the subscription fee alone?
Comparing sticker prices leaves out your own time, and quoting a headline like “email returns $X for every $1” leaves out your own numbers. The calculator uses only what you type in; the Litmus figure further down is a dated survey quote, not a default.
Program ROI (calculator A)
labor = hours × hourly rate
total cost = tool cost + labor + other costs
ROI % = (attributed revenue − total cost) / total cost × 100
Attributed revenue should be money you can honestly tie to email for that period. If you only have gross sales, say so; if you have contribution margin after product cost, use that and you will get a stricter ROI.
When total cost is 0, ROI is undefined — there is nothing to divide by. The calculator shows a message instead of Infinity.
Worked example: program ROI (illustrative numbers)
Say you spend 4 hours a month writing and sending newsletters, and you value that time at $40/hour. Your email tool costs $30 a month (an illustrative fee, not a quoted price; current plan prices are in the table below). You also spend $25 on a design template pack that month. Email-attributed sales for the month are $900.
- Labor = 4 × 40 = $160
- Total cost = 30 + 160 + 25 = $215
- Profit = 900 − 215 = $685
- ROI = 685 ÷ 215 × 100 ≈ 318.60%
Those dollar inputs are an example, not a benchmark. Swap in your hours, rate, and revenue. Enter the same numbers in the calculator below and you should see 318.60%.
Tool-cost break-even (calculator B)
Here the fee is the only cost in the frame. You still need a margin %, because a $50 order is not $50 of contribution if half of it is product cost.
contribution per sale = average order value × (margin % ÷ 100)
sales to break even = plan price ÷ contribution per sale
Or, if you think in list economics:
contribution per subscriber = revenue per subscriber × (margin % ÷ 100)
subscribers needed to break even = plan price ÷ contribution per subscriber
If margin is 0%, or revenue per subscriber is 0, break-even is undefined.
Worked example: break-even (illustrative numbers)
Plan fee $30 a month (illustrative). Average order $50. Margin 40%.
- Contribution per sale = 50 × 0.40 = $20
- Sales to cover the fee = 30 ÷ 20 = 1.5, so round up: 2 extra sales that month that you would not have made without the paid plan’s features
That does not prove the plan caused the sales. It only tells you the height of the bar.
Use the calculator
The calculator below runs in your browser, loads no external scripts and doesn’t send what you type anywhere. Every field starts empty.
No data leaves this calculator. Every field starts empty. There are no industry benchmark defaults.
Results are rounded to two decimal places. Break-even counts can come out as decimals; round them up to whole sales or subscribers.
What a paid plan costs at a small list
Prices change. The amounts below are monthly list prices on monthly billing, as shown on Kit’s plan comparison (starting prices for up to 1,000 subscribers) and Flodesk’s pricing page (one flat price at any list size) on 11 November 2026.
| Plan | Monthly price, billed monthly |
|---|---|
| Kit Creator | $39/mo |
| Kit Pro | $79/mo |
| Flodesk Email | $46/mo |
| Flodesk Everything | $99/mo |
Kit says its annual plans “offer 12 months for the price of 10” (Billing at Kit), and Flodesk lists lower monthly prices for annual billing on its pricing page. For side-by-side bands and who counts as billable, use the email marketing software pricing guide. For creator picks on a tight budget, see best email marketing for creators under $50.
Is a paid plan worth it?
A free plan can be enough for broadcasts. It stops being enough when a feature you need is paid-only (on Kit, visual automations and email sequences are part of the paid plans, not the Free plan) or when send or contact limits on another tool force an upgrade. Walk that decision with:
- Kit vs beehiiv vs MailerLite for creator stacks
- Flodesk vs MailerLite when design vs automation cost is the fork
- ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse when automation depth vs bundled tools matters
- Brevo vs Moosend when the billing model changes the fee
- Omnisend vs Klaviyo for Shopify for store flows
If you are leaving Mailchimp, use our Mailchimp to Kit migration checklist. If you are leaving Kit for a newsletter-first setup, see Switch from Kit to beehiiv.
Run break-even on the fee you would actually pay. If two extra sales at your margin clear the month, the fee is easy to justify. If you need dozens of sales and you only send a quiet monthly update, stay on a free or cheaper plan until your workflow needs the upgrade.
About “$36 for every $1”
You will see blogs claim email returns about $36 for every $1 spent. The figure appears in Litmus’s State of Email Report (Fall 2020), based on a survey of more than 2,000 marketing professionals. Litmus writes that “the anonymously reported ROI of email programs fell. It decreased from 42:1 in 2019 to 36:1 in 2020.” These are figures marketers reported themselves, not audited results. Primary PDF: Litmus State of Email Report, Fall 2020.
Litmus’s 2024 State of Email Trends report still uses the $36 figure, while its write-up of the 2025 survey gives ranges instead: 35% of marketing leaders said they get $10–$36 back for every $1, and 30% said $36–$50. Your own attributed revenue is a better guide than any of these.
FAQ
Why split program ROI and break-even?
Because a cheap tool with heavy labor can lose money, and an expensive tool can still pay for itself if it makes a couple of extra sales possible. Mixing the frames hides which problem you have.
What if ROI comes out negative?
Your costs were higher than the revenue you could attribute to email for that period. Cut labor, improve the offer, or check attribution before you blame the ESP alone.
Can I omit labor?
You can type 0 hours, but then you are measuring software ROI, not program ROI. Say which one you mean.
Do you store my numbers?
No. The calculator runs locally in your browser.
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