Eight marketing automation vendors, captured on 21 October 2026 with robots.txt checked against every path first. Three publish a number in the document they send you. Three send a pricing page whose prices are not in it. One sends a pricing hub with no prices at all. One we could not collect on policy grounds, and say so.
HubSpot is the default shortlist entry and the least knowable price on it. Its marketing pricing page sent 73,851 bytes of document containing 42 characters of server-rendered text and 0 currency figures. The numbers exist and are published, but they are assembled in your browser, which means a buyer, a procurement file and a search engine all see an empty page.
Adobe Marketo Engage is the one vendor on this page we did not collect. Adobe's robots.txt bans automated access except for search-engine inclusion, and the Marketo product host did not answer our request. No Marketo price, plan or feature claim appears here, because we would have to invent it.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, still sold as Pardot, publishes a single pricing hub instead of a per-product rate card. That hub contains 0 currency figures. The one contract fact the document does state is that monthly or annual contract on Starter.
Klaviyo publishes structured prices for its entry tiers: $0.00 for the free plan, $20.00 for the Email plan and $35.00 for Email plus SMS, all in USD, at the 251 to 500 active profiles band. It defines the unit it bills on in the same document: contacts who may receive marketing emails.
Brevo is the most machine-readable page in the set. Free $0, $9/month, $18/month, $499/month, Enterprise Custom Price, each with monthly, unitCode MON, covering marketing automation, SMS, WhatsApp, CDP and CRM in one plan.
Customer.io publishes the entry price for both self-serve tiers plus the actual unit rates: $100/month on Essentials, $1,000/month on Premium, $0.12 per 1,000 emails for additional emails and $0.009 per profile for additional profiles, with unlimited user seats on every plan.
Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign belong with HubSpot rather than with the three above. Their pricing documents render copy without prices: Mailchimp's contains 1 currency figure, and it is a support threshold rather than a plan price; ActiveCampaign's contains 0 in 24,657 characters of text.
Last verified 2026-10-21. Plans move and prices follow usage bands; confirm current rates before you quote this page.
Captured 21 October 2026, one fetch each, robots.txt checked against the exact path first. "In the document" means the figure is in what the server sent, visible copy or the vendor's own structured price data. A price that only appears after JavaScript runs is recorded as absent, because that is what a buyer filing a budget, a procurement reviewer and a search engine all experience.
| Vendor | Price in the document | Currency figures found | Meter | Entry published | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Yes, structured | 5 plans, USD | Contacts on plan, plus email volume | $9/month Starter, $18/month Standard | Enterprise: Custom Price |
| Customer.io | Yes, copy and structured | 2 tiers plus unit rates | People profiled, plus emails sent | $100/month Essentials | Enterprise Custom |
| Klaviyo | Yes, structured | 3 offers, USD | Active profiles | $20.00 Email, $35.00 Email plus SMS | Larger bands and Premium are quoted |
| HubSpot | No | 0 | Seats and contact bands, per its own product pages | not in the document | Everything: client-rendered |
| Mailchimp | No | 1 | Contacts | not in the document | The one figure is $299 per month for customer success |
| ActiveCampaign | No | 0 | Contacts and seats | not in the document | Everything: client-rendered |
| Salesforce Account Engagement | No | 0 | Users and editions, sold through a hub | not in the document | Quote, and product pricing URLs return 404 |
| Adobe Marketo Engage | Not collected | n/a | Users and workload | n/a | Robots refusal, see methodology |
| Count | 3 of 8 | 37.5 percent of the set | 3 entry prices published | 5 require a conversation |
Icons collected from each vendor's own site on 21 October 2026. Marketo has none, because we did not fetch anything from Adobe to draw one from. The line under each name is the finding, not the pitch.
The order is the finding: the three vendors that publish are not the three biggest names.
Logos 7 of 8 tiles: each icon is the vendor's own declared site symbol, fetched once from the page the prices come from, normalised to PNG and hashed in the arm's logo-manifest.json. Trademarks belong to the vendors and are used here to identify them. No third-party logo source, and no logo where the vendor was not collected.
Each figure below is quoted from the vendor's own page at the hash printed in the methodology table. Where we do arithmetic, the last column says so and shows the operation.
| Vendor | Plan | Published price | What it includes | Our arithmetic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | Free | $0 | The entry plan of the set | |
| Brevo | Starter | $9/month | per month | |
| Brevo | Standard | $18/month | per month | |
| Brevo | Professional | $499/month | per month | 27.7 times the Standard price |
| Customer.io | Essentials | $100/month | starts at, per month | |
| Customer.io | Premium | $1,000/month | starts at, with 1 million emails per month | 10 times Essentials |
| Customer.io | Additional emails | $0.12 per 1,000 emails | per additional 1,000 emails | $120 to send one million extra emails |
| Customer.io | Additional profiles | $0.009 per profile | per additional person or object profile | |
| Klaviyo | Free | $0.00 | 250 profiles, 500 email sends/month | |
| Klaviyo | $20.00 | 251 to 500 active profiles | ||
| Klaviyo | Email plus SMS | $35.00 | 251 to 500 active profiles | 75 percent more than email alone |
| Mailchimp | Customer success threshold | $299 per month | spend level, not a plan price |
Three real bars, four absences. The zero bars are measurements of each vendor's served document (how many currency figures it contains) or a declared refusal, never an opinion about the product.
The three vendors publishing numbers bill on contacts who may receive marketing emails, people profiled, or a contact plan. The five that do not are the ones whose price depends on seats, editions, and which bundle a salesperson chooses. A buyer cannot be shown a price that does not exist yet, and that is most of what a quote is.
73,851 bytes of document, 42 characters of text, 0 prices. It is not that HubSpot hides its pricing; it is that the pricing is assembled client-side, which has the same effect on everyone who does not run JavaScript. That includes the systems that cite this category.
Customer.io is the only vendor here that lets you price growth rather than entry: $0.12 per 1,000 emails per extra 1,000 emails and $0.009 per profile per extra profile. Plan prices tell you where you start. Unit rates tell you what year three looks like.
Marketo appears on every mid-market shortlist and on this page as "not collected". Adobe's robots.txt states that automated access is prohibited except for search-engine inclusion. We complied, which means one of the most compared products in the category stays a question you ask a human. Say that out loud in the procurement meeting rather than quoting a blog's guess.
Seats and contactsPrices client-rendered
A CRM-led marketing, sales and service platform sold in Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions, with marketing automation priced against contact bands and seats. It is on almost every mid-market shortlist because it bundles the CRM the sales team already uses.
The marketing pricing page sent 73,851 bytes containing 42 characters of server-rendered text and 0 currency figures. We record that as absent rather than guessing at a number we cannot attribute to the document.
Teams that want the CRM and the marketing tool from one vendor, and that are prepared to run a sales process to find out what it costs.
Platform agreementCollection refused by robots.txt
We did not fetch anything from Adobe. The robots.txt served by adobe.com states that automated access without express permission is prohibited, permitting it only for the purpose of inclusion in search engines. Our collector is not a search engine. On top of that, the Marketo product host did not answer the request at all on 21 October 2026. So this page carries no Marketo price, plan name, or capability claim.
Organisations with an enterprise marketing-operations function, a real budget owner, and a procurement process that expects a negotiated agreement rather than a card.
Sold through a pricing hubNo figures in the hub
B2B marketing automation inside the Salesforce ecosystem, sold in editions with per-user pricing. The product is still widely searched as Pardot.
Salesforce's product-level pricing URLs return 404: we tested five paths for Account Engagement and Pardot on the capture date. The company-wide pricing hub answers, and contains 0 currency figures. The only contract fact it states is that monthly or annual contract on Starter.
Salesforce-standardised revenue organisations where integration cost dominates tool cost, and where a quote is expected.
Active profilesStructured prices publishedSMS priced separately
Lifecycle marketing built around a profile model, dominant in ecommerce and increasingly used by B2B subscription businesses. It publishes its entry prices as structured data, not just as page copy.
$0.00 for the free plan, $20.00 for the entry Email plan and $35.00 for entry Email plus SMS, in USD, at 251 to 500 active profiles. The free tier caps at 250 profiles, 500 email sends/month.
Klaviyo states the unit in the same document: contacts who may receive marketing emails. That definition matters more than the price, because a list of engaged and disengaged contacts is billed the same.
Businesses whose lifecycle programme is list-led and who want a published number to start from.
ContactsOne figure, and it is not a price
The default email platform for small and mid-sized businesses, now sold with CRM, journeys and audience features.
The marketing pricing document contains 1 currency figure, and it is $299 per month of spend that qualifies for included customer success. That is a service threshold, not a plan price, and we record it as such rather than presenting it as the cost of Mailchimp.
Teams with a simple newsletter and lifecycle need who are not trying to forecast a software line item.
Monthly plans published as structured dataEmail, automation, CDP and CRM togetherEnterprise quoted
A French platform that bundles transactional email, marketing email, automation, chat, CRM and a customer data platform behind one plan ladder, and publishes the whole ladder as machine-readable offers.
Structured offers: $0, $9/month, $18/month, $499/month, with Custom Price at the top, each declared against monthly, unitCode MON and covering marketing automation, SMS, WhatsApp, CDP and CRM in one plan.
The jump from $18/month to $499/month is 27.7 times, which is the largest step in any published ladder on this page. It is also the only step that a buyer can see before a call, which is precisely the point of publishing it.
Teams that want one bill across email, automation and CRM, and that will read the ladder honestly, including the step they have to jump.
Contacts and seatsPrices client-rendered
Automation-led marketing and sales platform, strong on journey logic and CRM-lite pipelines, positioned between SMB tools and enterprise suites.
Its pricing document renders 24,657 characters of server text and 0 currency figures. The page is rich in product description and empty of the thing a buyer needs from a pricing page.
Teams whose automation logic is the requirement rather than the nice-to-have, and who will accept a demo to get a number.
People and messages meteredUnit rates publishedUnlimited seats
A lifecycle messaging platform built around data: segment on any user attribute, send across email, push, in-app and SMS, and orchestrate on behaviour.
$100/month on Essentials and $1,000/month on Premium, with Custom above, and the growth rates stated outright: $0.12 per 1,000 emails per additional 1,000 emails, $0.009 per profile per additional people or object profile. Premium includes 1 million emails per month, and unlimited user seats on every plan.
Adding a million emails beyond the included volume costs $120 at the published rate. Entry prices tell you the floor; unit rates are the only published thing that tells you the slope. The tier step itself is 10 times from Essentials to Premium.
Product-led companies with real behavioural data and engineers who will own the integration.
| Situation | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You must put a number in a budget before a demo | Brevo or Customer.io | The only two ladders here that a document can answer with; see the published-prices table |
| Your cost driver is the size of your contact list | Klaviyo or Brevo | Both publish entry bands; Klaviyo states the profile definition on the page |
| Your cost driver is message volume | Customer.io | $0.12 per 1,000 emails per 1,000 emails is the only published marginal rate in this census |
| Sales owns the CRM and wants automation beside it | Salesforce Account Engagement or HubSpot | Both are ecosystem decisions before they are pricing decisions |
| Automation complexity is the requirement | ActiveCampaign | Journey depth, and accept that the price arrives from a demo |
| The team is large and the list is small | Customer.io | unlimited user seats on every plan, so headcount does not raise the bill |
| Seed-stage, under $10M raised | Customer.io | Its startup program gives a full year free through our Startup Program |
| Enterprise marketing operations with a negotiated agreement | Adobe Marketo Engage | Quote-shaped buying; not comparable to a published card |
| Nobody will open a dashboard weekly | None of them | A lifecycle platform nobody segments is a subscription to unused capacity |
If you send one campaign a month and your CRM already has an email tool, this category is too much machine. The cost is not the licence, it is the segmentation work, the deliverability hygiene and the person who has to keep both alive.
If you cannot push user data into a platform, a lifecycle-engineering tool becomes a very expensive newsletter. That rules out the most transparent vendor on this page for a lot of buyers, and it is a capability question, not a price question.
And if your real problem is that the list is dirty, fix the list. On a contact-metered plan, every dead profile is a line item for a message nobody receives. Klaviyo says so on the page: the bill is on contacts who may receive marketing emails, whether or not they read anything.
This census cannot say. The pricing page sent 73,851 bytes with 42 characters of server-rendered text and 0 currency figures. The price exists in the browser, and we only publish what we can attribute to a document.
We did not collect it. Adobe's robots.txt prohibits automated access outside search-engine inclusion, so no Marketo figure appears on this page. Read the vendor's own page in a browser and date-stamp what you see.
Not published in the document we could reach. The product-level pricing paths return 404 and the Salesforce pricing hub contains 0 currency figures. It is sold per user in editions, so the number comes from a quote.
$20.00 for Klaviyo's entry Email plan at 251 to 500 active profiles, against $9/month for Brevo's Starter plan. Both are structured prices on the vendor's own page.
Customer.io: $0.12 per 1,000 emails per additional 1,000 emails and $0.009 per profile per additional profile, which makes a million extra emails cost $120.
Yes. Brevo $0 and Klaviyo $0.00, the latter capped at 250 profiles, 500 email sends/month.
One publishes it: Customer.io gives companies that raised under ten million dollars a full year free through our Startup Program. The others handle it commercially.
Because that is what the documents contain. A census that printed an estimate in every empty cell would look more complete and be worth less. 37.5 percent is the finding.
We implement the decision-stage pages and the measurement that make a shortlist decision defensible, and we publish these censuses because a buyer who can read a price can make a decision. The method, the refusal and the hashes are below.
Founders and marketing leads. Two vendors publish a price you can plan against and one publishes a per-unit rate worth modelling. Put those in the budget file and put the rest in a column called "needs a quote", which is the honest state of the category.
Buyers running a shortlist. Ask every vendor two questions: what is the marginal rate, and what raises the tier. Only one vendor here answered the first question in a document, and it is the question that decides year three.
Finance and procurement. A price assembled in a browser is not a price a procurement file can cite. Require the figure in writing, dated, with the edition, contact band and seat count that produce it.
Researchers and journalists. The citable number is the share: 37.5 percent of the eight vendors checked publish a readable price, and the two biggest names in the category are among the five that do not. Every cell traces to a capture with a SHA-256 printed below, and the Marketo refusal is documented rather than papered over.
Seven vendor pricing pages were captured with one compliant fetch each on 21 October 2026, and one vendor was deliberately not fetched. Before every request, the host's robots.txt was read and the exact target path tested against the User-agent: * block; the full check is recorded in the collection protocol at docs/plans/vendor-comparisons-protocol.md in the DataDab repository.
The Adobe refusal. www.adobe.com/robots.txt opens by stating that automated access without express permission is prohibited, allowing it solely for inclusion in search engines. Under our standing rule that ends the arm: no request was made to a Marketing Cloud or Marketo page, and no Marketo figure appears on this page. The Marketo product host also failed to answer an HTTP request at all on the capture date. Both facts are reported; neither is worked around.
What counts as published. A figure is published if it appears in the document the server sent, either in visible copy or in the vendor's own schema.org price data. We do not run JavaScript and we do not switch user agents to make a site serve us something else, so a client-rendered price is recorded as absent. That is a property of the method, and it is also the property that matters to the systems that quote this category.
No paid placement. No vendor paid for inclusion, was shown this page in advance, or was given a chance to amend it. The Mailchimp figure we found is quoted because it is the only one there, not because it flatters the vendor. Corrections go through the address in the cite box.
Every capture below is identified by its SHA-256 prefix. Re-verify before quoting: this page is refreshed quarterly, and marketing automation pricing pages change more often than the products do.
| Vendor | Page captured | Retrieved | SHA-256 (first 12) |
|---|---|---|---|
| hubspot | https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/marketing | 2026-10-21 | e59e178309ab |
| salesforce | https://www.salesforce.com/pricing/?bc=OTH | 2026-10-21 | c050d483dcc3 |
| klaviyo | https://www.klaviyo.com/uk/pricing | 2026-10-21 | 8b6fd3c94210 |
| mailchimp | https://mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/ | 2026-10-21 | 466d121dc491 |
| brevo | https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ | 2026-10-21 | efccdd953a69 |
| activecampaign | https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing | 2026-10-21 | 7aa8751c4fe8 |
| customerio | https://customer.io/pricing | 2026-10-21 | c027fdbebd97 |
| marketo | not fetched: robots refusal on 2026-10-21 | n/a | n/a |
Covering this research? Please link the primary source so readers can verify the data and methodology:
Markdown: [HubSpot vs Marketo vs Pardot vs Klaviyo: Who Publishes a Marketing Automation Price | DataDab Research](https://www.datadab.com/research/hubspot-marketo-pardot-klaviyo-marketing-automation-pricing)
Spot an error? Send the URL to amit@datadab.com; corrections are published on the page.
This page is re-verified quarterly. Check the methodology section for the current verification date before quoting figures.