Mailchimp Pricing in 2026: What Happened to the Generous Free Plan?

Mailchimp has four tiers. The Free plan covers 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month. Essentials starts at $13/month for 500 contacts with 3 user seats and no Mailchimp branding on emails. Standard starts at $20/month for 500 contacts with 5 user seats, automation, and send-time optimization. Premium starts at $350/month for 10,000 contacts with unlimited users, advanced segmentation, and phone support. All paid plans scale based on your total contact count.

Mailchimp's free plan includes 500 contacts, 1,000 email sends per month (daily limit of 500), 1 audience, 1 user seat, basic email templates, a landing page builder, and basic reporting. It does not include email scheduling, A/B testing, multi-step automation, custom coded templates, or the ability to remove Mailchimp branding from emails. Email-only support is available for the first 30 days only.

Yes. Mailchimp counts unsubscribed, non-subscribed, and cleaned contacts toward your total contact count for billing purposes. You must manually archive these contacts to remove them from your billable count. A list with 5,000 active subscribers could contain 7,000 or more billable contacts if you have not archived unsubscribed users in several months.

Yes. Mailchimp offers email credits as an alternative to a monthly subscription. You buy blocks of credits and send emails without a recurring fee. This is useful for businesses that send infrequently, such as quarterly newsletters. The per-email cost is higher than monthly plans but there is no ongoing commitment. Credit blocks start at around $20 for a set number of sends.

Yes. Mailchimp offers a 15% discount for registered nonprofits and charities. You need to apply through Mailchimp's billing settings and provide documentation of your nonprofit status. The discount applies to all paid plans and is applied as a percentage off your monthly bill.

Yes, but with significant limitations. If you downgrade to the free plan, you lose access to automation workflows, A/B testing, custom branding removal, and email scheduling. Your contact limit drops to 500, so if you have more than 500 contacts, you will need to delete or archive the rest. Any paused automations will be permanently deactivated.

Klaviyo is built specifically for e-commerce with deep Shopify and WooCommerce integrations, revenue attribution per email, and powerful browse and cart abandonment flows. Mailchimp is a generalist platform that works well for newsletters, content creators, and service businesses. For stores where more than 50% of email revenue comes from automated flows, Klaviyo typically provides better ROI despite costing more at similar contact counts.

If you exceed your contact limit, Mailchimp will prompt you to upgrade to a higher tier. You may be automatically upgraded and charged the higher rate. If you exceed your monthly email send limit, you will be charged overage fees at a premium per-email rate. These overage charges can add up quickly and are not always obvious until you check your billing statement.

No. Transactional email (order confirmations, password resets, shipping notifications) is a separate Mailchimp product called Mandrill. It starts at $20 per block of 25,000 emails and must be purchased on top of your regular Mailchimp plan. You need a paid Mailchimp plan to access Mandrill.

Yes. Mailchimp allows you to export your subscriber lists, campaign reports, and templates. Contact data exports as CSV files. However, rebuilding your automations, templates, and integrations in a new platform typically takes 10 to 20 hours of work depending on complexity. The data itself is portable, but the workflow setup is not.