“Mailchimp suits small businesses, creators and online stores that want an easy start, a free plan and lots of integrations. Plan for the real cost: unsubscribed contacts count toward billing, the first-year discount ends, and branching automation sits on Standard. Archive inactive contacts and price your list size a year ahead before you commit.”
Research-based review · not hands-on tested Built from the vendor’s documentation and pricing pages and from patterns in customer reviews. How we work.
Overall: (8.0 + 8.0 + 5.5 + 8.5 + 6.0) ÷ 5 = 7.20, shown as 7.2. The five criteria are weighted equally.
Scores are editorial judgments in half-point steps, based on documented features, published pricing and repeated themes in customer reviews. They are not lab measurements, so treat the words as the guide: 8.0+ Strong, 7.0 to 7.9 Good, 6.0 to 6.9 Average, below 6.0 Weak.
If any of these matter to your decision, check them directly with the vendor or during your trial.
Businesses with large lists on a tight budget, teams that need branching automation on the cheapest paid plan, companies that want phone support without paying for Premium, and senders who only need transactional email.
By Abdullahi Abdirahman, Founder & Editor, SoftReviewLab. Pricing and plan limits checked on Mailchimp’s official pricing pages in October 2026. This is a research-based review built from Mailchimp’s plan pages and help center, plus customer ratings on G2 and Trustpilot. SoftReviewLab has no affiliate relationship with Mailchimp, so nothing on this page earns a commission.
This Mailchimp review answers the question most small business owners actually have: is Mailchimp still a good choice in 2026, and what will it really cost once your list grows? My answer is yes for small businesses, creators and online shops that want an easy start, a free plan and a huge list of integrations. It is a weaker choice if you have a large list and a tight budget, or if you need advanced automation on the cheapest paid plan.
Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform owned by Intuit. You build emails with a drag-and-drop editor, collect sign-ups with forms and landing pages, send automated messages with Marketing Automation Flows, and add SMS or transactional email if you need them. The product is easy to start with. The catch is pricing: every contact on your account counts toward the bill, including people who unsubscribed, and the price rises quickly as your list grows. I score Mailchimp 7.2 out of 10.
If you want to check the current plans yourself, the official page is Mailchimp’s marketing pricing page. That link is a plain link to Mailchimp, not an affiliate link.
Mailchimp is an email marketing platform for small and mid-sized businesses, branded today as Intuit Mailchimp. The core job is email: you collect contacts, group them, write campaigns and send them. Around that core, Mailchimp adds automation, forms, landing pages, social posting, SMS, reporting and AI writing help.
The way it works is simple to explain. First, you bring contacts into an audience, either by importing a list, connecting your online store or adding a sign-up form to your website. Second, you organise those contacts with tags and segments, for example “bought in the last 90 days” or “signed up from the webinar page.” Third, you send one-off campaigns, or build automation flows that send messages when someone does something, such as joining your list or abandoning a cart. Finally, the reports show opens, clicks, orders and revenue so you can see what worked.
Three terms matter before you compare plans:
If you are still deciding what kind of email tool you need, my guide to choosing email marketing software walks through the questions to answer first. This review focuses on what Mailchimp gives you and what it costs.
This review is research-based. I did not run a paid Mailchimp account through a lab test for it, and I don’t present any measured results. Instead, I worked from the sources a careful buyer would use: Mailchimp’s pricing page, its full plan comparison, its help center article About Mailchimp Pricing Plans, the Transactional Email pricing page and Mailchimp’s documentation on how contacts are counted. For customer experience, I looked at Mailchimp’s ratings on G2 and Trustpilot.
I score every tool on the same five criteria: setup and ease of use, features, pricing and value, integrations, and support. Each criterion is worth 20 percent, so the overall score is the plain average of the five. In this review, I keep facts and opinion apart. Plan limits, prices and ratings come from the named sources. Statements such as “this is a weak point” or “this plan is the sensible default” are my editorial judgment, and I say so where it matters.
You can read the full method on the How we research and score section of our About page.
Mailchimp’s feature list is long, and many of the features people mention in reviews sit on Standard or Premium rather than the cheaper plans. Here is what each part does and where it starts.
Every plan includes the drag-and-drop email builder, forms, landing pages and Content Studio, which is where you store images and brand assets. The Free plan gets a limited set of pre-built templates, and paid plans unlock the full library. Paid plans also remove Mailchimp branding from your emails and let you schedule campaigns, which the Free plan can’t do.
If you have a designer or developer, note one detail: on Free and Essentials you can create custom-coded templates, but Mailchimp’s comparison page says you need Standard or Premium to send them. Dynamic content, which changes parts of an email based on who receives it, also starts on Standard.
Mailchimp renamed its Customer Journey Builder to Marketing Automation Flows. This is where you build welcome series, abandoned cart reminders, post-purchase follow-ups and re-engagement emails. The plan limits here are the single most important feature difference in Mailchimp:
In practice, a 4-step limit is enough for a short welcome series. It is not enough for flows that split people by behaviour, for example sending one message to buyers and another to people who only browsed. In my judgment, that is why Standard is the sensible default for most businesses that plan to use automation seriously. My guide to email marketing automation workflows shows which flows are worth building first.
All plans include contact profiles, tags, surveys, an audience dashboard and basic segmentation. Standard and Premium add advanced segmentation, predictive segmentation, behavioural targeting, customer lifetime value and purchase likelihood. Those predictive features are useful mainly for online stores with enough order data to make the predictions meaningful.
Every plan also gets a few AI-assisted features that Mailchimp lists separately: a subject line helper, personalised product recommendations and “next best action” suggestions.
Basic reports are on every plan. A/B testing starts on Essentials, and the Free plan does not include it. Standard and Premium add multivariate testing, custom reports, anomaly detection, send time optimisation and delivery by time zone. If you send to customers in several countries, delivery by time zone is a practical feature, and it sits on Standard.
Landing pages, pop-up forms, sign-up forms, social posting and the inbox are on every plan, including Free, and so is the mobile app. Standard and Premium add social post scheduling, Campaign Manager, Google retargeting ads and a marketing calendar.
SMS is a paid add-on rather than part of the base price. Essentials can add SMS, while Standard and Premium can add SMS and MMS. Mailchimp says MMS is available in select locations on Standard and for US and Canadian customers on Premium. Short codes cost extra on every plan, and sending to several audiences or several countries may also cost more. You can send SMS from automation flows and use pre-built SMS automations on any plan that has the add-on.
Mailchimp’s generative AI features, branded Intuit Assist, are listed on Standard and Premium as a no-additional-cost add-on. They are not included on Free or Essentials. Mailchimp describes these features as being in beta and available in English. I have not assessed the quality of the AI output for this review, so treat it as a helper for first drafts rather than a reason to choose a plan.
Transactional emails are the one-to-one messages your website or app sends automatically, such as order confirmations, password resets and receipts. Mailchimp sells this as a separate add-on. On the plan comparison, it is “demo only” on Free and Essentials and available as a paid add-on on Standard and Premium. I cover the block pricing in the pricing section below.
If you only need transactional email and no marketing campaigns, a dedicated sending service is usually a simpler fit. My SMTP.com review covers one option, and the guide to fixing website emails that go to spam explains the setup that any sender needs.
Mailchimp has four plans: Free, Essentials, Standard and Premium. The price of each paid plan depends on how many contacts you have, so the “starting price” only applies to a very small list. The table below shows Mailchimp’s regular monthly price at common list sizes, as listed on its pricing page in October 2026.
| Contacts | Essentials | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 500 | $13 | $20 | $350 |
| 1,500 | $26.50 | $45 | $350 |
| 2,500 | $45 | $60 | $350 |
| 5,000 | $75 | $100 | $350 |
| 10,000 | $110 | $135 | $350 |
| 15,000 | $180 | $230 | $465 |
| 20,000 | $230 | $285 | $535 |
| 25,000 | $270 | $310 | $620 |
| 30,000 | $300 | $340 | $685 |
| 40,000 | $340 | $410 | $750 |
| 50,000 | $385 | $450 | $815 |
| 75,000 | Not available | $630 | $900 |
A few limits come with these prices. Essentials stops at 50,000 contacts, so a bigger list has to move to Standard or Premium. Standard goes up to 100,000 contacts, which costs $800 a month at the regular price. Premium starts at $350 a month for up to 10,000 contacts, and larger Premium accounts are handled by Mailchimp’s sales team. Mailchimp also says annual plans for Standard and Premium are available through sales once you pass 10,000 contacts.
When I checked, Mailchimp’s pricing page offered new customers 50 percent off for the first 12 months, and said the discount stays even if you switch between Essentials, Standard and Premium. Under that offer, Standard for 500 contacts costs $10 a month and Essentials $6.50 a month for the first year.
This is a real saving, but it is temporary. After 12 months, your bill goes to the regular price, which is double. A business on Standard with 5,000 contacts would pay $50 a month in year one and $100 a month from year two, before any list growth. My advice is to budget with the regular price, not the promotional one, and treat the first year as a bonus.
| Contacts | Essentials: first 12 months / after | Standard: first 12 months / after |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 500 | $6.50 / $13 | $10 / $20 |
| 2,500 | $22.50 / $45 | $30 / $60 |
| 10,000 | $55 / $110 | $67.50 / $135 |
| 25,000 | $135 / $270 | $155 / $310 |
| 50,000 | $192.50 / $385 | $225 / $450 |
This is the part of Mailchimp pricing that surprises people most. According to Mailchimp’s pricing plans help article, subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count toward your contact total and your price. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not.
So if 4,000 people are subscribed but 1,500 more have unsubscribed over the years, you may be paying for a 5,500-contact tier. The fix is free: archive or delete contacts you no longer email. Mailchimp explains how in its help article on archiving and unarchiving contacts. Archiving keeps their history in case you need it later, without counting them toward the bill.
This billing model is one of the clearest differences between Mailchimp and some competitors. For example, my Campaigner review notes that Campaigner says it does not charge for unsubscribed contacts. If your list has a lot of churn, check this point on any platform you consider.
Each plan has a monthly send limit tied to your contact tier:
| Plan | Monthly send limit | Example: 1,500-contact tier |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 500 sends a month, maximum 250 a day | Not available (Free is capped at 250 contacts) |
| Essentials | 10 times your contact limit | 15,000 sends |
| Standard | 12 times your contact limit | 18,000 sends |
| Premium | 15 times your contact limit | 150,000 sends (Premium starts at a 10,000-contact tier) |
For most small businesses that send one or two campaigns a week, 10 times the contact limit is plenty. The limit matters more if you send daily or run a lot of automation. Mailchimp’s help center also notes that test emails and transactional emails count toward your monthly sending limit.
What happens when you go over is different by plan. On paid plans, Mailchimp says it won’t interrupt your service and will add an additional charge instead. On the Free plan, it places a hold on sending live or test emails. In my view, automatic overage charges are convenient but easy to miss, so check your contact count and send usage before each billing date.
The Transactional Email pricing page sells sending in blocks. Each block is a credit for 25,000 emails, and the price per block falls as you buy more:
| Total blocks | Emails per month | Price per block |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 20 | Up to 500,000 | $20 |
| 21 to 40 | 500,000 to 1 million | $18 |
| 41 to 80 | 1 million to 2 million | $16 |
| 81 to 120 | 2 million to 3 million | $14 |
| 121 to 160 | 3 million to 4 million | $12 |
| 161 or more | 4 million or more | $10 |
A dedicated IP address is optional at $29.95 a month. Mailchimp says new transactional users can get up to 500 free sends to their verified domain, with restrictions. At the time I checked, there was also a sales-led offer of 50 percent off the base price for 12 months for new transactional customers who buy at least 1 million emails (40 blocks) a month on a Standard or Premium plan. Essentials accounts are not eligible.
Mailchimp advertises “99% email delivery” for this product. That is Mailchimp’s own claim, and I have not measured it.
The Mailchimp free plan is still one of the main reasons people start with it. It gives you up to 250 contacts, 500 sends a month with a daily cap of 250, one audience and one user seat. You get the email builder, forms, landing pages, the mobile app, basic reports and a free preview of automation flows.
The limits are real, though:
My take: the free plan is good for testing the editor, building a sign-up form and sending your first few newsletters. It is not built to run a business’s email marketing for long. Once you have more than a couple of hundred subscribers, you will need a paid plan.
Besides the Free plan, Mailchimp describes a risk-free 14-day trial on its paid plans. The trial is offered on Essentials and Standard. Trial terms such as sending caps and payment details are shown at sign-up, so read them before you start. For Premium, Mailchimp says qualified new customers can arrange a trial through its sales team.
If you send only occasionally, Mailchimp also sells pay-as-you-go email credits instead of a monthly plan. According to its help center, pay-as-you-go accounts get the same features as Essentials. This can suit a business that sends a few seasonal campaigns a year, but compare the credit cost against a month or two of Essentials before you buy.
Integrations are one of Mailchimp’s strongest points. Mailchimp lists more than 300 integrations on every plan, including the Free plan. That matters because email marketing works best when your store, website, CRM and forms feed contacts and purchase data into your email tool automatically.
Setup is mostly self-serve. You verify a sending domain, import contacts, connect your store or website and build a sign-up form. Whatever tool you use, follow Google’s email sender guidelines for authentication and spam rates, because a well-built campaign still fails if it lands in spam. My email deliverability guide covers that setup step by step.
| Plan | Support | Onboarding and success |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Email support for the first 30 days | None |
| Essentials | 24/7 email and chat | Customer success management with 30,000+ contacts |
| Standard | 24/7 email and chat | 1 personalised onboarding session; customer success management with 30,000+ contacts |
| Premium | Phone and priority support, plus screen-share cobrowse | 4 onboarding sessions and customer success management; migration help through sales |
Mailchimp notes that phone support is offered in English only. My judgment here is that support is adequate on paid plans for routine questions, but phone access only on Premium is a real gap for smaller businesses that hit a billing or account problem and want to talk to someone quickly.
Customer ratings for Mailchimp tell two very different stories depending on where you look, so I report them side by side rather than average them:
| Source | Rating | Reviews | What stands out |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | 4.3 out of 5 | 12,989 | Praise for ease of use, templates, automation, analytics and integrations |
| Trustpilot | 2.5 out of 5 (“Poor”) | 1,531 (299 in the last 12 months) | 66% one-star and 20% five-star reviews |
| Capterra | No rating yet | 0 on the current listing | Listing showed no user reviews when checked |
On G2, the themes that repeat in positive reviews are ease of use, templates, automation, analytics and the integration list. The repeated complaints are that pricing grows with the list, advanced features take time to learn, automation is limited on lower plans, support can be slow, and design customisation has limits.
On Trustpilot, the picture is much harsher. Mailchimp’s profile showed a TrustScore of 2.5 from 1,531 reviews, with 66 percent of reviews at one star, 5 percent at two stars, 4 percent at three, 5 percent at four and 20 percent at five. Trustpilot also showed that Mailchimp invites customers to review, has a paid Trustpilot subscription, and replied to 92 percent of negative reviews, typically within 24 hours. Trustpilot says its TrustScore gives more weight to recent reviews and adds seven neutral 3.5-star reviews to every company’s calculation.
Why the gap? This is my reading rather than a measured fact: G2 reviews tend to come from people rating the product as a tool, while Trustpilot is open to anyone and often reflects account, billing or support experiences. Both are useful. If you are choosing Mailchimp, the Trustpilot pattern is a good reason to understand the billing rules in this review before you commit.
One more lesson from this research. Capterra’s current Mailchimp listing said “contact vendor for pricing” and “free trial not available,” while Mailchimp’s own pricing page shows public prices, a Free plan and a 14-day trial. Third-party listings go out of date, which is why I always check prices on the vendor’s own page.
| Criterion | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Setup and ease of use | 8.0 | Drag-and-drop builder, templates and self-serve setup make the first campaign easy. Advanced segmentation and flows take longer to learn. |
| Features | 8.0 | Email, automation, forms, landing pages, SMS, AI and transactional email in one account. The best automation and segmentation need Standard. |
| Pricing and value | 5.5 | A real free plan and low entry price, but costs rise fast with list size, unsubscribed contacts count, and promo prices double after a year. |
| Integrations | 8.5 | More than 300 integrations on every plan, which covers most stores, websites and CRMs. |
| Support | 6.0 | 24/7 email and chat on paid plans, but phone support only on Premium, limited help on Free, and poor Trustpilot ratings. |
If your emails go out but sales don’t follow, the problem is often the strategy rather than the tool. My article on why email newsletters don’t bring in sales covers the free fixes worth trying first.
Mailchimp is not the only sensible choice. These are the alternatives I would look at, depending on what pushes you away from Mailchimp:
I have reviewed ActiveCampaign in full, and my ActiveCampaign review covers its plans, automation limits and real costs. I also compare the two directly in ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp. I haven’t published full reviews of MailerLite, Brevo or Klaviyo yet, so check their official pricing pages directly and compare them at your real list size.
Mailchimp remains one of the easiest ways for a small business to start email marketing, and Standard covers the automation most growing businesses eventually need. What holds it to 7.2 out of 10 is cost and support: billing for unsubscribed contacts, steep price rises as your list grows, and phone support only on Premium.
My recommendation: if you are starting out or have a small list, Mailchimp is a reasonable and low-risk choice, so start on Free, move to Standard when you need real automation, and archive inactive contacts from day one. If you already have a large list or your margins are tight, compare it against an alternative such as Campaigner at your actual list size before you commit. Before you pay, use the Free plan or the 14-day trial to import a real sample of your list, connect your store or website, and build the one automation you need most. You can check current plans on Mailchimp’s official site.
Mailchimp has a Free plan for up to 250 contacts. At the regular price, Essentials starts at $13 a month and Standard at $20 a month for 500 contacts, and Premium starts at $350 a month for up to 10,000 contacts. Prices rise with your contact count. When checked in October 2026, new customers were offered 50 percent off for the first 12 months.
Yes. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward your contact total and price. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not count, so archiving people you no longer email lowers your bill.
Essentials limits automation flows to 4 steps with no branching and offers basic segmentation and A/B testing. Standard adds up to 200 flows with branching, advanced and predictive segmentation, multivariate testing, send time optimisation, custom reports, generative AI features and one onboarding session.
Phone support is included only on the Premium plan, and Mailchimp says it is offered in English only. Essentials and Standard get 24/7 email and chat support, and the Free plan gets email support for the first 30 days.
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