Mailchimp Review

Mailchimp cut its free plan for the fourth time in January 2026.

The free tier dropped from 500 contacts to 250 contacts. Monthly sends were cut from 1,000 to 500. Automation workflows were removed from the free plan entirely. Then in April 2026, Mailchimp issued price increase notices to legacy paid users averaging 11 to 13%.

For context: In 2019, the Mailchimp free plan covered 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month. Every cut since the Intuit acquisition has been substantial. If you are evaluating Mailchimp based on what you remember hearing about it five years ago, you are working from outdated numbers.

Mailchimp charges for contacts who cannot receive your emails.

Subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts all count toward your billing tier. If you have a total list of 10,000 contacts but 3,000 have unsubscribed, you are billed for all 10,000. The only way to remove unsubscribed contacts from your billing count is to manually archive them, which strips historical data and requires remembering to do it regularly.

Here is the math on a real scenario: A business has 8,000 total contacts, with 5,000 active subscribers and 3,000 unsubscribed. On Mailchimp Standard, 8,000 contacts costs approximately $100/month. The same 5,000 active subscribers on GetResponse costs $34/month on the Email Marketing plan. That gap is $792/year for identical sending volume, with GetResponse additionally including landing pages, basic automation, and website builder at that price.

At 10,000 contacts with a normal 25% unsubscribe rate, the effective cost premium over GetResponse is roughly $70 to $85/month. Over three years of platform use, that is $2,500 to $3,000 in billing for contacts who never open another email.

• Best email designer in the category: The drag-and-drop editor produces professional output with reliable cross-client rendering. If visual quality of newsletters is the priority, Mailchimp wins this comparison at every price tier.
• 300+ integrations: Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, QuickBooks, Salesforce, WordPress, Canva. The integration library is one of the broadest available. Virtually any platform a small business runs has a native connection.
• QuickBooks sync: The Intuit acquisition produced one real product improvement. If you run QuickBooks, customer purchase history syncs cleanly into Mailchimp audience segments. No competitor replicates this at the same depth.
• Lowest learning curve in the category: Mailchimp is where businesses go when they have never touched email marketing. The setup flow assumes no prior knowledge. For teams that need to be operational in an afternoon, it delivers.
• Send-time optimization (Standard+): Delivers to each subscriber at their individually optimal time based on historical open behavior. Works without manual configuration and adds measurable lift on larger lists.
• Established deliverability infrastructure: Twenty-three years of sending history means Mailchimp's shared IP pools carry strong domain reputation with major inbox providers. Deliverability on new accounts benefits from this history immediately.

• Bills for unsubscribed contacts by default: Every unsubscribed contact counts toward your tier unless you manually archive them. On a list with normal churn, you pay 20 to 40% more than your active subscriber count would suggest.
• Free plan is now functionally unusable: 250 contacts, 500 emails/month, no automation. The free plan exists to acquire accounts, not to run an actual business. In 2019 this was 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends.
• Customer Journeys has a shallow ceiling: The automation builder handles welcome sequences and abandoned cart. It does not support contact scoring, multi-condition branching, or event-based triggers at the depth that ActiveCampaign or GetResponse provide on standard paid plans.
• No webinars, no conversion funnels: GetResponse at $49/month for 10,000 contacts includes webinar hosting up to 100 attendees and full conversion funnels. Mailchimp Standard at the same volume costs $115 to $135/month and includes neither.
• Ecommerce is a secondary feature: Basic abandoned cart and post-purchase flows work. Klaviyo and Omnisend offer product-level segmentation, predictive lifetime value, and revenue attribution that Mailchimp does not match at any tier.
• Redirect links affect some inbox placements: Mailchimp wraps tracked URLs in their own redirect layer. Some email clients flag these as potential phishing. It is a known platform issue, not a reason to avoid the product, but it adds friction that platforms with direct link tracking avoid.
• April 2026 price increase for legacy users: Accounts created before May 2019 received notices of 11 to 13% increases. If you are on an older paid plan, check your billing.

Looking for a better value at the same price?

GetResponse includes unlimited emails, landing pages, webinar hosting, and full automation starting at $15/month. At 5,000 contacts it costs $34/month vs. Mailchimp Standard at approximately $100/month for the same list size.