Daily vs monthly email limits: will your newsletter fit?

The short answer: a monthly allowance is only one boundary

A free newsletter plan needs enough stored contacts, enough sends over its allowance period and enough capacity on the actual campaign day. Mailjet Free has a larger audience allowance than Selzy or smoove, but its 200-email daily maximum still prevents one same-day send to 500 people. A monthly total can fit while the deadline fails. Use the limits together rather than selecting the largest number in an advert.

Start with recipients and the delivery deadline

Write a list of planned campaigns with their send dates and the number of recipients in each segment. State whether every recipient must receive the message that day. An event reminder or a time-limited offer has a different deadline from an evergreen sequence. If you need several delivery days to fit a cap, ask whether the resulting timing still serves the purpose. More stored contacts do not automatically create more same-day capacity.

A 500-person newsletter today

Mailjet Free holds up to 1,000 contacts and permits 6,000 emails per month, but only 200 per day. The 500-person audience therefore cannot all receive that newsletter today on Free. Selzy Free holds only 100 contacts, so it fails the audience boundary before volume is considered. smoove Free also has a 100-contact ceiling and only 200 monthly emails. This example tests published capacity, not inbox placement, queuing behaviour or delivery speed.

An 80-person weekly newsletter

Four sends to 80 people use 320 emails. They fit Mailjet’s stated monthly and daily allowances when each send day stays below 200. They also fit Selzy’s 100-contact and 1,000-email monthly limits. They exceed smoove’s 200-email monthly allowance even though the 80-person list fits. The calculation is 80 × 4, and it excludes welcome messages, reminders and other automated traffic. Add every message stream that uses the chosen account before relying on the spare capacity.

Why automations can change the answer

Suppose the same 80-person list receives fourteen newsletters in a month: 80 × 14 is 1,120 emails. That exceeds Selzy Free’s monthly allowance despite staying below its contact limit. Now add the messages created by new subscriptions or purchases. Check whether each stream uses the same package or a separately priced transactional service. Record how the account counts retried, rejected or multi-recipient messages; do not assume a billing rule that the package does not specify.

Keep the reset period and retained features with the plan

A daily allowance, a calendar-month allowance and a rolling window are different rules. Confirm the account’s reset time, its handling of queued messages and what happens at the ceiling. Then choose the package you would keep after any trial. Segmentation, branding removal and automation can have different tier requirements even when a small audience fits. An upgrade decision should include the editor, integration and workflow the operator actually needs.

Use a small, authorised acceptance test

Prepare a sample segment of addresses you control, a newsletter, one welcome event and an unsubscribe. Check mobile rendering, the sender setup, suppression and export. These proposed checks do not establish measured results for any of the products here. Keep the sending schedule, dated plan conditions and full quote together, then review them when list size or campaign frequency changes. Compare the detailed Mailjet and Selzy buying examples or inspect the smoove profile before making the shortlist.

Newsletter capacity questions