Pricing checked 7 October 2026
Mailchimp Pricing 2026
Mailchimp is the best starting pick for a small, content-led team that wants a free plan and a familiar builder. The free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. Once the list grows past that, Essentials starts at $13 a month and Standard at $20 a month, both at the 500-contact size on monthly billing.
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Mailchimp plans at a glance
Mailchimp prices by the number of contacts on your list, and the same contact count also sets how many emails you can send in a month. The table lists the plans and brackets that carry a published figure. Where no figure is published for a size, the table says so instead of guessing from a neighbouring bracket.
| Plan or bracket | Starting price | Billing | What it covers | Key limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | No charge | Up to 250 contacts, 1 audience, up to 500 sends a month (250 a day at most) | Hard caps on contacts and sends; not built for automated journeys |
| Essentials, 500 contacts | $13/month | Monthly billing | 500 contacts and more sends than Free | No annual rate is published for this size |
| Standard, 500 contacts | $20/month | Monthly billing | 500 contacts and up to 6,000 emails a month at this size | The price rises at each contact bracket above 500 |
| Contact bracket 2,501–5,000 | $100/month | Monthly figure shown | Up to 60,000 emails a month | The step from the 500-contact price is large |
| Contact bracket 5,001–10,000 | $135/month | Monthly figure shown | Up to 120,000 emails a month | Every contact in the bracket sits under one flat rate |
| Contact bracket 10,001–15,000 | $230/month | Monthly figure shown | Up to 180,000 emails a month | Large lists move the bill quickly, so compare alternatives at this size |
Source: the official Mailchimp pricing page. Contact brackets and included sends can change, so check the page on the day you buy.
How the bill is built
Mailchimp charges for the contacts you store, and it counts them in a generous way. Archived, unsubscribed and duplicate records can all sit on the list and push you into a higher bracket. Before you pick a plan, export the list, remove duplicates and decide what to do with people who have not opened an email for a long time. A cleaner list can move a team back down a bracket without changing a single campaign.
Each bracket also sets the monthly send allowance. The 500-contact Standard selector covers up to 6,000 emails a month, while the 2,501–5,000 bracket covers up to 60,000. A list that gets mailed often, such as a daily digest to a modest audience, can run out of sends before it runs out of contacts. Check the send allowance as well as the price.
Mailchimp does not publish a figure for every contact count. No price is given for Essentials or Standard between 1,500 and 2,500 contacts, for example, so this guide says pricing on request for those sizes rather than estimating. Use the calculator on the Mailchimp pricing page to confirm the figure for your exact list before you set a budget.
What you pay at realistic list sizes
The cost of Mailchimp depends on the list size you pay for, not only on the plan name. The table below takes six list sizes and shows the monthly figure that applies. The 12-month column is simple arithmetic, 12 times the monthly price. It is not an annual discount. Where the page publishes no figure for a size, the cell says pricing on request.
| Contacts | Plan or bracket | Monthly price | 12 months at that price | Emails a month covered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | Free | $0 | $0 (12 × $0) | Up to 500 sends |
| 500 | Essentials | $13 | $156 (12 × $13) | More than Free; no figure published |
| 500 | Standard | $20 | $240 (12 × $20) | Up to 6,000 |
| 2,500 | Essentials or Standard | Pricing on request | Pricing on request | Pricing on request |
| 3,500 | Contact bracket 2,501–5,000 | $100 | $1,200 (12 × $100) | Up to 60,000 |
| 7,500 | Contact bracket 5,001–10,000 | $135 | $1,620 (12 × $135) | Up to 120,000 |
| 12,000 | Contact bracket 10,001–15,000 | $230 | $2,760 (12 × $230) | Up to 180,000 |
The gap between 500 and 3,500 contacts is the number to plan around. Moving from the Standard price at 500 contacts ($20) to the 2,501–5,000 bracket ($100) multiplies the monthly bill by five. A team that expects to pass 2,500 contacts within a year should price that step now, and should not treat the 500-contact figure as a budget for the year.
Mailchimp, plan by plan
Free: the place to learn the builder
The free plan suits someone new to email marketing, or a team moving off a spreadsheet. It supports one audience, up to 250 contacts and up to 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 sends in a day. For a newsletter with a few hundred readers, that is enough to build a regular habit, test subject lines and learn the template editor.
Its limits show up quickly once you want automation. A free list is not the place for multi-step journeys such as onboarding or trial reminders, and the send cap rules it out for any list that grows past a few hundred people. Treat the free plan as a learning environment, and set a date to upgrade when the list nears 200 contacts.
Price: $0. Pricing page: mailchimp.com/pricing.
Essentials: the low-cost paid step
Essentials at 500 contacts is listed at $13 a month on monthly billing. It is the cheapest paid entry point on this page, and it suits a team that has outgrown the free cap but does not yet need automated journeys. Its best use is a regular broadcast newsletter or promotional email to a list that is growing steadily.
Where it falls short: no annual rate is published for this contact size, so a 12-month figure can only be worked out at the monthly rate ($156). It also has no published figure for contact counts between 1,500 and 2,500, so a list in that range needs a quote from Mailchimp before you plan a budget. If the plan is to build welcome sequences or behavioural flows, price Standard from the start rather than upgrading twice.
Price: $13 a month at 500 contacts, billed monthly. Pricing page: mailchimp.com/pricing.
Standard: where journeys and AI assistance sit
Standard at 500 contacts is listed at $20 a month, with up to 6,000 emails a month at that size. It is the plan most SaaS and content teams end up on, because it is the tier where the journey and automation features are described on the official page. Those features are what justify the step up from Essentials, because they turn a newsletter tool into a sequence engine.
Mailchimp's AI features, including drafting help and subject-line suggestions, are useful for first drafts and scheduling. They are not a substitute for a clear brief. A machine draft tends to run longer than a lifecycle email should, so the editing stays with you. Confirm on the official page which AI features come with the plan you choose, because this guide does not assume that every AI feature is included at every tier.
Where it falls short: the price rises with the contact bracket, so a Standard list that grows from 500 to 3,000 contacts moves from $20 to $100 a month. Billing events such as failed payments or trial endings are not something Mailchimp receives on its own from a payment processor. You will need a connector for those, and its cost belongs in the budget (see the next section).
Price: $20 a month at 500 contacts, billed monthly. Pricing page: mailchimp.com/pricing.
Connecting billing and product events
Many SaaS teams want an email to go out when a payment fails, when a trial is about to end, or when a customer upgrades. Mailchimp can send that email once the event is in its system, but the event has to reach Mailchimp first. That usually takes a connector, and the connector's price is part of the true cost of the setup.
Make is one option. Its Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month with no time limit, up to 2 active scenarios, and scenarios that can run at most every 15 minutes. Its Core plan is listed at $10.59 a month, or $9 a month billed annually, for 10k credits a month. Each module action in a scenario uses one credit, so a payment-failed flow that touches three modules uses three credits each time it runs.
Payment processors are the other half of the picture. Stripe prices standard card processing per transaction, with no monthly platform fee on that pricing. Lemon Squeezy prices per transaction as a merchant of record, and lists no fixed monthly fee. Processor fees are separate from your Mailchimp bill, so a $0 monthly figure on a processor's page is not the total cost of sending a billing email.
A practical way to budget this: add up the Mailchimp bracket for your list, the connector plan that covers your credit count, and the processor's per-transaction fees. Then compare that total with the cost of a platform that receives billing events directly.
Decision table: which plan for which need
Use this table to match your situation to a plan. Each row gives the choice, the reason and the price basis from the official figures.
| If you need | Pick | Because | Price basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| To learn the builder and send a newsletter to a small list | Free | It covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month | $0 |
| Regular broadcasts to a list of about 500, with no automation | Essentials | It is the cheapest paid step and sends more than Free | $13/month at 500 contacts, monthly billing |
| Onboarding or trial sequences, and timing features | Standard | Automation is the feature that justifies the step up | $20/month at 500 contacts, monthly billing |
| A list between 2,501 and 5,000 contacts | The 2,501–5,000 bracket | The bracket sets both the price and the send allowance | $100/month (bracket figure) |
| Billing events, such as failed payments, triggering emails | Mailchimp plus a connector such as Make | Mailchimp needs the event delivered to it first | Make Free: 1,000 credits a month; Core from $9/month billed annually for 10k credits |
| A list between 1,500 and 2,500 contacts | Request a quote | No monthly figure is published for this range | Pricing on request |
How to choose
Start with the contact count you expect in twelve months, not the count you have today. If that number is under 250, the free plan is enough to learn on. If it sits between 250 and 500, Essentials is the cheapest paid choice, provided you do not need journeys. If you need automation from the start, price Standard at your expected bracket rather than at 500 contacts.
Then decide where your triggers come from. Broadcasts and newsletters need only the list. Lifecycle emails need events from your product or billing system, which means a connector and its cost. Add that cost before you compare the Mailchimp figure with any other tool.
What to ask before you sign
Ask which plan includes the journey features and the timing features you plan to use, and confirm the answer on the official page on the day you buy. Ask what happens to the send allowance when your contact count moves into a new bracket mid-month. And ask how archived or unsubscribed contacts are counted, because that decides whether you are billed for your real list size.
Setup and migration checklist
Moving into Mailchimp or out of it is mostly a data task. The checklist puts the steps in the order that protects subscriber consent and your billing count. Finish each step before starting the next.
| Step | Action | Check before moving on |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Clean the list | Remove duplicates, archived records and contacts who have never engaged | The contact count matches the people you can legally email |
| 2. Export suppression lists | Export unsubscribes and bounces as their own file | Suppressed addresses stay suppressed in the new system |
| 3. Choose the plan | Match the expected bracket to the tables in this guide | The bracket figure and send allowance are confirmed on the official page |
| 4. Import the audience | Import the cleaned list with its consent fields | A sample of contacts shows the right tags and status |
| 5. Rebuild journeys | Recreate the welcome sequence first, then the behavioural flows | Each journey has one entry rule and one exit rule |
| 6. Connect events | Set up the connector for billing or product events | A test event reaches Mailchimp and triggers the right email |
| 7. Send a test campaign | Send to an internal list before the first real send | Links, merge fields and unsubscribe links all work |
Freeze journey edits during the move, and change one thing at a time. If you change the platform and the copy together, you cannot tell which change affected results.
Workflow advice for AI-assisted email
AI drafting in an email tool is most useful when the brief is tight. Give the assistant one goal, a word limit and one call to action, then edit the draft yourself. Keep a short library of briefs you reuse, and store the winning subject lines next to the emails they came from. The prompt gallery on this site lists constraints that work across tools, including word caps, single calls to action and preview text that complements the subject line.
When you plan a welcome sequence, write each branch condition in terms that Mailchimp segments can express, such as a signup source tag, a product interest field or a purchase flag. If a branch needs data Mailchimp does not hold, write that down as a requirement for the connector instead of a segment you hope to build later.
Related
- Top AI-native email tools: where Mailchimp fits in the wider list.
- Pricing overview: pricing for the other tools on this site.
- How we evaluate: how we read vendor pricing pages and how to report a correction.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mailchimp free?
Yes, there is a free plan. It covers up to 250 contacts and up to 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 sends in a day. It has one audience and suits learning the builder and running a small newsletter.
How much does Mailchimp cost for 500 contacts?
At 500 contacts, Essentials is $13 a month on monthly billing and Standard is $20 a month. Standard at that size covers up to 6,000 emails a month. Over 12 months that is $156 for Essentials and $240 for Standard, calculated as 12 times the monthly price.
Why does the price jump so much above 2,500 contacts?
Mailchimp prices by contact bracket. The 2,501–5,000 bracket is $100 a month, compared with $20 a month for Standard at 500 contacts. Each bracket sets a new price and a new send allowance, so the bill moves in steps rather than rising smoothly with each contact.
Is there a yearly rate?
The figures in this guide are monthly. Where the official page does not publish an annual rate for a contact size, this guide does not estimate one. Check the pricing page for the exact figures before you choose a billing period.
Do the AI features cost extra?
This guide does not assume that every AI feature is included in every tier. Confirm on the official pricing page which AI features come with the plan you choose, because inclusions can differ between plan levels.
Can Mailchimp send an email when a payment fails?
Mailchimp can send the email, but it needs to receive the payment event first, and that usually requires a connector. Make's Free plan includes 1,000 credits a month, and its Core plan is listed at $9 a month billed annually for 10k credits. Processor fees, such as those from Stripe or Lemon Squeezy, are separate from both.
Does a cleaner list lower the bill?
It can. Because Mailchimp bills by contact count, removing duplicates and archived records can move a list down a bracket. Export your suppression lists first, so that opt-outs stay suppressed in any system you move to.