Method
How we evaluate AI email marketing tools
This site is about the AI features that email platforms ship inside their own products: Mailchimp's, Brevo's, Kit's and the rest. It answers three questions per platform: what the AI does according to the vendor, which plan you need to use it, and what that plan costs. This page explains how those answers are produced and what they are not.
What the editor does
The editor opens each vendor's pricing page, plan-comparison page and help documentation on a given date, and records what they say. A price, a plan name, a usage cap, an AI credit allowance or a feature description is accepted only if it appears on the vendor's own site. Review sites, listicles and marketing copy from third parties are not sources for numbers.
Every guide shows the date its figures were read and links the page they came from. Where we show a screenshot of a pricing page, the caption gives the capture date and URL, and the image is never edited or cropped to hide anything.
What the editor does not do
- No testing claims. The editor does not run vendor accounts, send campaigns or measure results. When a guide says an AI feature "drafts a subject line" or "suggests send times", it is repeating the vendor's documentation and says so. We make no claim about how good the output is.
- No scores or star ratings. A score would imply a measurement. Instead, each guide gives a written pick and the condition under which it flips.
- No estimated prices. If a vendor publishes no price for a tier, the guide says "pricing on request" and links the vendor.
- No invented statistics about open rates, revenue lift or hours saved.
How a recommendation is made
Each pricing guide ends with who should choose the platform and who should look elsewhere, and the reason is written out. The questions behind it are concrete. Are the AI features on the free plan, a paid tier, or a paid add-on? Are they metered in credits that run out, or unlimited within the plan? Does the AI touch only copy (subject lines, body drafts), or also audiences and send times? And what does the platform cost at 1,000, 10,000 and 50,000 contacts or at the equivalent email volume, using only the prices the vendor publishes?
Where two platforms are close, we say so and give the deciding factor, for example "if you already have a large list, per-contact pricing decides it".
Corrections
AI feature names and plan limits change faster than most pricing pages. If a guide no longer matches the vendor's page, send us the guide's path and the vendor URL showing the difference. We re-read the vendor page, fix the guide in place and update the date. We do not wait for a scheduled review to correct a known error.
Independence
No vendor pays for placement, coverage or the removal of criticism. A recommendation earns its place only through the questions above, answered from the vendor's own pages, and the reason is written out where the reader can argue with it.
Who writes it
One editor, working under the pen name Callum Reyes. About explains what that means. Start with the comparison of AI email marketing tools or the pricing guides index.