The newsletter cost for a list of 1,000 subscribers depends on one thing above all: whether you pay per subscriber or per email sent. Hosted services such as Mailchimp price their paid plans by contact total, and a Korean service we checked, Stibee, publishes ₩16,000 a month (₩170,000 a year prepaid) for 501–1,000 subscribers. A self-hosted WordPress newsletter plugin costs ₩0 for the software; what you pay is the sending route, which ranges from nothing (inside Gmail or Google Workspace limits) to about $4.80 a year on Amazon SES at four sends a month. The trade-off is real: hosted services bring a drag-and-drop editor, their own sending servers and zero setup, while the plugin route puts SMTP, SPF and DKIM configuration on your side. Every figure here was read from the companies’ official pages on 1 October 2026; where a price was not shown, this article says so instead of guessing.
What this article covers
① how hosted services price a 1,000-subscriber list ② what a self-hosted plugin actually costs once sending is included ③ the two side by side in one table ④ where hosted services are better ⑤ the setup burden the plugin route carries ⑥ moving an existing list by CSV ⑦ three questions that decide which route fits. Estimates are marked “about”; everything else links to its source.
① Hosted newsletter cost at 1,000 subscribers: priced by list size
Hosted services bill by how many people are on your list, not by how much you send. Mailchimp’s help article About Mailchimp Pricing Plans states that the Free plan includes up to 250 contacts and 500 sends per month with a daily limit of 250, and that for paid plans “the starting price includes up to 500 contacts, and the price increases with your contact total.” The exact monthly price for 1,000 contacts is shown only in the calculator on Mailchimp’s pricing page, which varies by region and currency, so this article does not quote a dollar figure for it. Enter 1,000 contacts there to see your number.
For a fully published tier table, Stibee, the hosted newsletter service most Korean businesses use, is a clean example. Its official pricing page (prices include VAT) lists the Standard plan as:
- 0–500 subscribers: ₩8,900 a month (₩96,000 a year prepaid)
- 501–1,000 subscribers: ₩16,000 a month (₩170,000 a year prepaid) — the tier this article uses
- 1,001–2,500 subscribers: ₩27,000 a month (₩290,000 a year prepaid)
At 1,000 subscribers that is ₩192,000 a year billed monthly or ₩170,000 prepaid. Subscriber 1,001 moves you to the next tier. Stibee’s free Starter plan caps the list at 500 subscribers and two sends a month and adds a “made with Stibee” sponsor line to every email, so at 1,000 subscribers the free plan is not an option. The pattern is the same across hosted services: the list grows, the bill steps up.
② Self-hosted plugin newsletter cost: software plus sending
With a plugin installed on your own WordPress site, the software and the sending are separate line items. The software can be free while the sending costs nothing or a few dollars, depending on the route the mail takes.
Software: ₩0 / $0. WOR-PRO Newsletter, the plugin WOR-PRO Lab builds and runs on this site, has no subscriber limit, nothing locked behind a paywall and is free for commercial use. The free version includes signup forms (block, shortcode, widget), eight email design templates, open, click and bounce tracking, three automatic sends (on publish, on a schedule as a digest, and on subscription confirmation) and Polylang language routing. Only if you want AI drafts or automatic social posting do you add the Pro add-on at $79 a year. The comparison below uses the free version.
Sending: $0 to a few dollars, by route. The plugin sends through whatever route your WordPress site already uses for mail. In practice that is one of three.
- Your hosting’s mail server (the default) — no extra cost. Daily limits differ by host and deliverability is often poor, so it is not recommended beyond a few hundred subscribers.
- Gmail or Google Workspace SMTP — no extra cost if you already have the account, but there are limits. Google’s own pages state 500 emails a day for a personal Gmail account and 2,000 messages a day per user on Google Workspace. A single send to 1,000 subscribers takes two days on personal Gmail and fits in one day on Workspace.
- A sending service such as Amazon SES — you pay per email. Amazon SES pricing lists outbound email at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. Four sends a month to 1,000 subscribers is 4,000 emails a month, 48,000 a year, so $4.80 a year. One send a month is $1.20 a year. (Attachment data is billed separately, but newsletters rarely carry attachments.)
The SMTP connection itself is done with a free plugin from the official WordPress directory, WP Mail SMTP. After installing it, open WP Mail SMTP → Settings in the admin menu, enter the sender address, pick the mailer (Gmail, Amazon SES and others are listed) and paste the credentials that service gives you. From then on every email WordPress sends, newsletters included, leaves through that route.
③ Yearly newsletter cost at 1,000 subscribers, side by side
| Setup | Yearly cost (1,000 subscribers) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hosted service, Stibee Standard | ₩170,000 prepaid / ₩192,000 billed monthly | VAT included. From subscriber 1,001 the tier is ₩290,000 a year |
| Hosted service, Mailchimp paid plan | Not quoted here — see the calculator on the pricing page | Starting price covers up to 500 contacts; price rises with contact total |
| Plugin + hosting mail or Gmail / Workspace SMTP | $0 | Within sending limits: Gmail 500 a day, Workspace 2,000 a day |
| Plugin + Amazon SES, four sends a month | About $4.80 | $0.10 per 1,000 emails. At 2,000 subscribers it is $9.60 |
| Plugin + Pro add-on + SES | $79 + about $4.80 | Only if you want AI drafts and social auto-posting |
The gap comes from the billing unit. Hosted services charge for people on the list; sending services charge for emails actually sent. A site with a large list that mails a few times a month pays least on the plugin route. A service that sends tens of thousands of emails a day is outside the assumptions of this table and should recalculate.
④ Where hosted services are better: read this before you switch
Switching on price alone has a few regret points. Three things listed on the hosted services’ own pages are not matched by a plugin:
- Drag-and-drop editor and responsive templates — Stibee includes a drag-and-drop editor even on its free Starter plan; Mailchimp’s help page lists its email templates and A/B testing on paid plans. A WordPress plugin is strong at turning posts into emails but does not give you a free-form layout editor inside the email.
- Their own sending servers and deliverability management — hosted services run the sending infrastructure and watch spam-rate and reputation for you. Stibee’s help centre has dedicated articles on checking spam classification rates and improving delivery. On the plugin route, deliverability is the responsibility of whatever sending route you chose.
- Zero setup — sign up and send the same day. No SMTP, no DNS records. Stibee Standard also includes unlimited sends, automated emails and three user seats.
If your team designs a new email layout every issue, or nobody can own the sending setup, the hosted fee is a reasonable price for those three things. The plugin route fits when the reason to switch is not the bill but ownership: you want the list in your own database, and you want publishing a post and sending the email to happen in one place.
⑤ The plugin’s burden: SMTP, SPF, DKIM and sending limits
Going self-hosted hands you the work a hosted service used to do. Specifically, three jobs:
- Connecting the sending route (SMTP) — the WP Mail SMTP setup from section ②. Done once, but it has to be redone when a password or API key changes.
- Domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) — DNS records that let receiving mail servers verify the email really came from your domain. Google’s Email sender guidelines require, since 1 February 2024, SPF or DKIM authentication from all senders to Gmail accounts, and SPF plus DKIM plus DMARC from anyone sending 5,000 or more messages a day. Without these records, mail lands in spam or is rejected. The records are TXT entries added in the DNS panel of wherever your domain is registered; the values come from your sending service (Gmail, SES and so on).
- Living within sending limits — 500 a day on Gmail, 2,000 on Workspace, are the provider’s limits and cannot be raised by you. Once the list outgrows them, you move to a sending service.
If nobody on your side can take these three jobs, one option is to have the hosting provider carry them. WOR-PRO Lab’s managed hosting (₩99,000 a month, billed once a year: ₩99,000 × 12 months + 10% VAT included, actual charge ₩1,306,800 a year) includes newsletter setup and ongoing management (signup forms, email authentication, delivery checks) and the Newsletter Pro licence. It is a bundle that also covers hosting, security, backups and SEO setup, so it is not something to buy for the newsletter setup alone; it makes sense when you want the whole site run for you.
⑥ Moving your list: one CSV file
Migrating a list is a single file. Every hosted service has an export; Stibee’s help article Exporting the subscriber list, for example, describes clicking Address book → Subscriber list → Export → Export subscriber list, after which a download link is emailed to you and the file contains the email address, how the subscriber was added, groups, marketing-consent status and subscription date. A filter lets you export only subscribers who have not unsubscribed.
On the WOR-PRO Newsletter side the import rule is simple. If the first row contains a column named email, the importer reads the email, first_name, last_name, status, locale columns; if there is no email header, it treats the first cell of each row as the address. Addresses already on your list are skipped, not overwritten, and malformed addresses are listed with their line numbers. So rename the exported service’s address column to email, drop or rename the other columns to match those five names, and upload. One file can hold up to 10 MB or 100,000 rows.
One caution: a subscriber who never gave marketing consent on the old service still has not given it after the move. Filter on the consent column before importing, or re-confirm consent through the plugin’s automatic confirmation email after the import.
⑦ Which route fits: three questions
- Where should the list live? Inside a service is convenient; inside your own WordPress database means it goes wherever your site goes. A business that treats its list as an asset wants the latter.
- How fast will the list grow? Under a few hundred subscribers with a couple of sends a month, a hosted free plan is enough. If you plan to pass 1,000, use the table above to compare a bill that steps up with each tier against one that counts emails sent.
- Is there someone to do the setup? If nobody can configure and maintain SMTP, SPF and DKIM once, the hosted fee is the price of that person. If there is, that money stays with you.
If you run a WordPress blog and want each new post to reach subscribers without a separate tool, the route where publishing and sending happen on one screen carries the least day-to-day overhead. The plugin is on the WOR-PRO Newsletter download page: leave your email and the confirmation message carries the download button. For a related look at how platform costs hide in list size and feature caps, see Wix Limits and Hidden Costs: Why WordPress Is the Better Choice.
Sources
- Mailchimp, About Mailchimp Pricing Plans — Free plan 250 contacts, 500 sends a month, 250 a day; paid starting price covers up to 500 contacts
- Mailchimp, Marketing pricing — contact-count calculator (regional pricing; no figure quoted here)
- Stibee Help, Plan types — Starter 500 subscribers, two sends a month, sponsor line; Standard 501–1,000 subscribers ₩16,000 a month (₩170,000 a year), VAT included
- Stibee Help, Exporting the subscriber list — export path and file contents
- Amazon SES pricing — outbound email $0.10 per 1,000
- Gmail Help, sending limits — 500 emails a day
- Google Workspace Admin Help, Gmail sending limits — 2,000 messages a day per user
- Google, Email sender guidelines — SPF or DKIM for all senders; SPF, DKIM and DMARC at 5,000 or more messages a day
- WP Mail SMTP on wordpress.org — SMTP connection plugin
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자주 묻는 질문
Can a free hosted plan handle 1,000 subscribers?
Usually not. Mailchimp's Free plan includes up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, and Stibee's free Starter plan caps the list at 500 subscribers and two sends a month with a sponsor line in every email, according to their official pages. At 1,000 subscribers you are on a paid tier priced by contact count.
Is a self-hosted WordPress newsletter plugin really free?
The software can be free, but sending is a separate cost that depends on the route. Within Gmail (500 a day) or Google Workspace (2,000 a day) limits there is no extra charge; a sending service such as Amazon SES bills $0.10 per 1,000 emails, which is about $4.80 a year for four sends a month to 1,000 subscribers. SMTP, SPF and DKIM setup is on you.
Can I move my existing subscriber list to WordPress?
Yes. Export the list from your current service as a file, rename the address column to email, and upload the CSV. WOR-PRO Newsletter reads the email, first_name, last_name, status and locale columns and skips addresses already on the list. Subscribers who never gave marketing consent should be re-confirmed after the move.