Mailchimp pricing can be tricky to navigate, especially with all the different plans and features.
Whether you’re just starting or scaling your business, understanding the cost structure can save you both time and money.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the Mailchimp pricing plans, explore the features they unlock, and help you choose the best Mailchimp plan that best aligns with your marketing strategy and budget.
Switch to Retainful for simple pricing, ecommerce-focused features and precise abandoned cart tracking.
Mailchimp Pricing Overview
As many other email marketing platforms, Mailchimp also offers pay-as-you-go model for pricing.
Mailchimp offers four primary pricing plans:
- Free: Ideal for beginners, this plan allows up to 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly email sends.
- Essentials: Starting at $13/month, it includes basic email features, A/B testing, and 24/7 email support.
- Standard: Starting at $20/month, it adds advanced automation, custom-coded templates, and enhanced reporting.
- Premium: Starting at $350/month, it offers unlimited contacts, priority support, and advanced segmentation.
Here are the basic differences between the pricing plans of Mailchimp.
| Plan | Starting Price (500 contacts) | Email Sends (per month) | Users | Audiences | Key Features | Best For |
| Free | $0 | 350+ | 1 | 1 | Basic templates, limited automation | Beginners, hobbyists |
| Essentials | $13-$15 | 5,000 | 3 | 3 | Basic automation, 24/7 support | Small businesses |
| Standard | $20-$23 | 6,000 | 5 | 5 | Multi-step automation, predictive segmentation | Growing businesses |
| Premium | $350+ | 150,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Advanced testing, priority support | Large enterprises |
How Mailchimp billing works?
In Mailchimp pricing, “Contacts” refer to individuals or businesses that are saved in your Mailchimp audience list, whether or not they are actively receiving emails.
This includes anyone you’ve added to your list, even if you aren’t sending emails to them currently. Unsubscribed contacts, non-engaged subscribers, and those who have bounced can still count toward your total contact count.
Mailchimp Pricing Tiers and Plans Explained
The Essentials, Standard, and Premium plans from Mailchimp are designed to serve businesses at different stages of growth, offering progressively more advanced features, higher limits, and greater flexibility.
Here’s a detailed comparison of all pricing plans in Mailchimp:
Mailchimp Free Plan:
- Contacts: Up to 500 subscribers.
- Monthly Sends: 1,000 emails per month, with a daily limit of 500.
- Emails per Contact: Each email sent to a contact counts as one send.
- Automation: Very basic email automation.
- Templates: Access to a limited selection of basic, featured, and themed email templates.
- Reporting: Basic reporting tools to track performance.
- Audience: One audience (list).
- Segmentation: Basic segmentation capabilities.
Free Plan Limitations:
- No customer journey builder
- Support: Email support is available for the first 30 days.
- Advanced Features: No access to features like A/B testing, advanced automation, or custom-coded templates.
- No access to transactional emails
- Email scheduling
- Dynamic content
Mailchimp Essential Plan:
Mailchimp Essential pricing plan starts from $13-$15/month for 500 contacts ans supports up to 50,000 contacts. You get email sends of 10x contact count (e.g., 5,000 emails for 500 contacts).
Here are the major features this Mailchimp plan supports:
- Forms and landing page builder
- 24/7 Email & Chat Support
- Pre-built Email Templates
- Email Scheduling
- Basic segmentation
- A/B Testing
Essentials Plan Limitations:
- Audience limit: Only 3 audiences (lists) allowed.
- Email automation: Only basic, single-step automations; no multi-step customer journeys or pre-built automation templates.
- Segmentation: Limited to basic segmentation (tags, groups); no advanced or predictive segmentation.
- Reporting: Basic analytics only. Lacks advanced reporting tools.
- Other channels: No access to retargeting ads or advanced social posting features.
- Transactional emails: Demo only
- Custom-coded Templates: Only pre-built templates are available.
- Dynamic Content: Only available in Standard and Premium plans
- Support: 24/7 email & chat, but no phone support.
Mailchimp Standard Plan
Mailchimp Standard pricing plan supports up to 100,000 contacts and you get 12x monthly email send limit (e.g., 6,000 emails/month for 500 contacts).
Here are the features you get access to in the Standard Plan:
- Includes advanced automation with multi-step journeys and branching logic.
- Enables predictive and behavioral segmentation, dynamic content personalization.
- Supports retargeting ads on Facebook and Instagram.
- AI-powered creative assistant for better design.
- Send-time optimization for better engagement.
- 24/7 email and chat support.
Limitations in Standard Plan:
- Multi-step customer journeys with branching and multiple starting points, but there is a cap – typically up to 200 journey points per automation.
- Basic A/B testing (subject lines, content)
- No premium migration sevices
Mailchimp Premium Plan
The Mailchimp Premium plan is the platform’s top-tier, enterprise-level offering, designed for large businesses, agencies, and organizations with sophisticated marketing needs and large or complex audiences
Mailchimp Premium pricing plan starts at $350/month for 10,000 contacts, scaling up to $1,600/month for 200,000 contacts. You get email sends of up to 15x your contact count in emails per month (e.g., 150,000 emails for 10,000 contacts)
In this Premium, you get:
- Advanced Segmentation: Create highly detailed and complex segments using unlimited conditions.
- Multivariate Testing: Go beyond A/B testing with multivariate testing, allowing you to compare up to three variables in your campaigns for deeper optimization and better results.
- Priority Support: Receive priority phone, live chat, and email support.
- Advanced Role-Based Access: Assign granular permissions for different team roles, supporting secure collaboration across large or distributed teams.
Mailchimp Website Plan:
Mailchimp’s Website plan is aimed at users looking to build and manage a website with integrated marketing tools. It’s a comprehensive plan that provides everything you need to create a professional website while taking advantage of Mailchimp’s marketing automation features.
What it offers:
- Website builder with customizable templates
- Integrated marketing tools (e.g., email campaigns, ad creation)
- Custom domains and branding options
- E-commerce features for selling products online
- Analytics for tracking website performance and user behavior
Mailchimp Transactional Email plan
Mailchimp’s Transactional plan, previously known as Mandrill, is designed for businesses that need to send one-to-one, personalized emails like order confirmations, receipts, password resets, and shipping notifications.
Pricing is based on purchasing “blocks,” with each block allowing you to send up to 25,000 transactional emails.
What it offers:
- Reliable delivery of transactional emails
- Real-time reporting and analytics
- API integration for seamless automation
- Dedicated IP for better sender reputation
- Advanced segmentation for more personalized messaging
Access to Important Features in Every Mailchimp Pricing Plan
Email Automation
- Essentials: Only basic, single-step automations (e.g., welcome emails, simple autoresponders).
- Standard: Unlocks multi-step automations with branching logic, behavior-based triggers, and up to 200 journey points for complex journeys.
- Premium: Adds advanced automation, multivariate testing (test multiple variables in one campaign), and the most flexible automation workflows.
Template Customization
- Essentials: Access to pre-built and customizable templates with a drag-and-drop editor.
- Standard: Everything in Essentials, plus dynamic content (personalization based on subscriber data) and AI-powered creative assistant.
- Premium: All Standard features with more advanced template management and unlimited customization.
Segmentation
- Essentials: Basic segmentation (lists, tags, and groups).
- Standard: Predictive segmentation (AI-driven), behavioral targeting, dynamic segmentation, and send-time optimization.
- Premium: Advanced segmentation with unlimited conditions, deeper audience insights, and comparative reporting for large-scale targeting.
Other Marketing Channels
- Essentials: Basic integrations, landing pages, signup forms, but limited to email as the main channel
- Standard: Includes retargeting ads, social media posting, and advanced integrations.
- Premium: All Standard features, with priority support and advanced integrations for complex marketing stacks.
Related Reading: Explore best Mailchimp alternatives in our complete comparison guide:
Better Pricing in Mailchimp Alternatives
1. Retainful
Retainful is the best Mailchimp alternative for ecommerce email marketing. Acquire, nurture and retain customers without a hefty price tag.
Automate life-cyle emails with an easy-to-setup automation that doesn’t take 3 page manual to setup.
Grow your email list by capturing the email addresses of the visitors with targeted sign-up forms.
Track abandoned carts precisely and recover upto 30% with our single-click cart recovery.
Unlike Mailchimp pricing, Retainful doesn’t charge you for inactive contacts. Its billing is based on only the active contacts after auto-list suppression.
How affordable is Retainful than Mailchimp?
Sending 10,000 costs $9 in Retainful, while $19.40 in Mailchimp.
You can send unlimited email campaigns and segment email lists even in the basic plan.
Retainful has a very generous free plan – acces to all the core features. You can setup upto 10 pre-built automation workflows in the free plan.
Learn more: Compare Retainful vs Mailchimp and find out which one suits your pricing and email marketing needs: Retainful vs. Mailchimp – which is better?
2. Omnisend
Omnisend is the best Maichimp alternative for omnichannel marketing, supporting emails, SMS, and push notifications. While Mailchimp is primarily focused on email and social media, Omnisend offers SMS and web push notifications as additional channels.
Coming to the affordability of Omnisend compared to Mailchimp – sending 10,000 emails costs $26.65, while Mailchimp costs $19.40.
Omnisend’s free plan is more generous: it unlocks nearly all core features (including advanced automation, segmentation, SMS, web push, and 24/7 support).
Price tiers and Email Volume:
- Free plan: 500 Emails
- $16/month: 6000 Emails
- $59/month: Unlimited Emails
3. Yotpo
Yotpo stands out as a compelling alternative to Mailchimp, especially for e -commerce brands seeking an all-in-one platform for customer engagement, loyalty, reviews, and multichannel marketing.
Unlike Mailchimp, Yotpo charges based on email volume, not contact list size.
In its free tier you can send up to 10,000 emails per month with all email marketing features unlocked – no charge for list size or inactive contacts
Unlike Mailchimp, which bills for all contacts, Yotpo only bills for actual email sends, helping you avoid wasted spend on disengaged subscribers.
Price tiers and Email Volume:
- Free plan: Upto 1000 emails
- $16/month: 6000 Emails
- $59/month: Unlimited Emails
Upto 60% less expensive than Mailchimp. Switch to Retainful for affordable ecommerce email marketing.
Wrapping Up!!
Mailchimp is an all-in-one solution with tiered pricing that accommodates businesses of all sizes, but choosing the right Mailchimp pricing plan depends on how you prioritize growth, email features, and budget.
Take the time to evaluate your current goals and choose which plan can fully support your marketing needs.
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