Mailchimp Pricing (2026): Free Stops at 250 Contacts

Mailchimp is free only up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends. Paid marketing plans start at $13 per month, but Standard at $20 is the first tier that makes sense when automation and segmentation affect revenue.

Mailchimp pricing at a glance

Mailchimp has four Marketing plans: Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium. The headline prices look simple, but the paid plans scale by contact count, while each plan multiplies that contact allowance into a monthly send limit. That makes the number of contacts in your account, not just the number of newsletters you send, the main driver of the bill.

Verified against Mailchimp's live pricing page and billing documentation on 3 August 2026. Prices below are current US dollar starting prices before optional add-ons.

Those are starting points, not flat prices. Essentials allows monthly sends equal to 10 times its contact tier, Standard allows 12 times, and Premium allows 15 times. If an Essentials account is priced for 5,000 contacts, for example, its monthly allowance is 50,000 sends. The contact tier rises as the database grows, even when most people on that database receive nothing in a given month.

The base price also hides a sharp change in what you are buying. Essentials is the low-cost broadcast plan. Standard adds the automation, segmentation, reporting, and experimentation controls that can change revenue. Premium is not a cheap way to buy more email volume. It is a governance and support plan for organizations that need unlimited seats, unlimited audiences, phone help, and a much larger base allowance.

Which Mailchimp plan should you choose?

The cleanest decision is to separate volume from operating complexity. If you only need to send a newsletter, buy enough capacity. If email triggers revenue actions, such as a lead follow-up, product education sequence, or win-back flow, buy the workflow controls that reduce manual work and missed conversions.

Free: only for a genuinely small list

Mailchimp Free costs $0 and supports one audience, one Owner seat, up to 250 contacts, 500 sends per month, and 250 sends per day. It includes limited templates, basic reporting, and a one-click automated welcome email.

At 250 contacts, the monthly allowance buys two full-list sends. The daily cap means you can send one full-list newsletter in a day, but not a second one to the same 250 people until another day. Once the account goes above 250 contacts, Mailchimp holds sending until you upgrade or reduce the count.

Who never needs to pay? A local-services owner with 180 opted-in customers, one monthly update, and a simple welcome email can stay on Free indefinitely if the list remains below the cap. The same is true for a community organizer or a side project that sends one or two full-list messages a month and does not need multi-step automation. Paying would add headroom, not an economic outcome.

Free stops making sense before it technically stops working when growth is the goal. A B2B SaaS lead who wants a welcome sequence, trial education, and a sales handoff needs more than one basic welcome action. A DTC brand cannot run weekly campaigns to 250 people because four full-list sends require 1,000 sends, twice the monthly allowance. In those situations, Free is a demo environment, not the operating plan.

Essentials: the practical newsletter plan

Mailchimp Essentials starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly sends. It supports three audiences and three seats, scheduled emails, all templates, A/B testing, single-email automations, automation flows with up to four steps, and 24/7 email and chat support. It can scale to 50,000 contacts.

For a solo agency owner sending a weekly newsletter to 500 contacts, Essentials is ample. Four campaigns use 2,000 of the 5,000 sends. The remaining 3,000 can cover resend tests, lead nurturing, and the occasional promotion without paying for Standard.

The wall is automation depth. Four-step flows are enough for a short welcome sequence, but a longer lifecycle with branching segments, several educational messages, and win-back logic quickly becomes cramped. Essentials also lacks Standard's advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, custom reports, and custom-coded templates.

Pick Essentials when email is a consistent publishing channel and the work is still campaign-led. Skip it when a workflow, not a calendar, decides who should receive the next message.

Standard: the default for revenue automation

Mailchimp Standard starts at $20 per month for 500 contacts and 6,000 monthly sends. It supports five audiences and five seats, expanded automation flows, advanced segmentation, custom-coded templates, multivariate testing, custom reports, personalized onboarding, and 24/7 email and chat support. The plan scales to 100,000 contacts.

The $7 monthly jump from Essentials is easy to justify for a growth lead if one useful segment, one avoided manual export, or one improved flow saves a few minutes. The economic question is not whether 1,000 extra sends are worth $7. It is whether the deeper workflow and measurement controls save time or improve one conversion.

Take a B2B SaaS company with 500 prospects. Its growth lead wants to separate high-intent trial users from inactive signups, send different education paths, and compare several subject and content combinations. Essentials can send the emails, but Standard is designed to decide which people receive them and measure the result with more control. That distinction is worth paying for when a qualified lead is worth hundreds of dollars.

Standard is the best default for a business that can name the revenue workflow it wants to automate. If you cannot name that workflow, stay on Essentials until you can. Features bought without an operating use become subscription decoration.

Premium: support and governance, not bargain volume

Mailchimp Premium starts at $350 per month with 10,000 contacts and 150,000 monthly sends. It supports unlimited audiences and seats, phone and cobrowse support, extended onboarding, and 24/7 email and chat support. Its published ceiling is 200,000 contacts before custom pricing.

That base price is 17.5 times Standard's $20 entry price, but the two figures are not comparable because Premium starts at 10,000 contacts while Standard starts at 500. At 10,000 contacts after the introductory offer, Standard is $135 per month with 120,000 sends and Premium is $350 with 150,000 sends.

Premium therefore costs an extra $215 per month for only 30,000 more sends at that tier. That is $7.17 per 1,000 incremental sends, before assigning any value to support and governance. A large marketing department with many users, several business units, and a hard requirement for phone support may accept that premium. A small growth team usually should not.

The cost math Mailchimp does not show you

Price per send is useful only when you distinguish allowed volume from used volume. A generous allowance looks efficient on paper, but an unused allowance does not create value.

At the base tier, Essentials costs $13 for 5,000 allowed sends, or $2.60 per 1,000 allowed sends. Standard costs $20 for 6,000, or $3.33 per 1,000. Premium costs $350 for 150,000, or $2.33 per 1,000. Premium has the lowest normalized allowance cost of the three, but only if a buyer actually needs something close to that volume and the plan's team controls.

Now use a realistic small-business workload: 500 contacts and four full-list campaigns per month. That is 2,000 actual sends. Essentials costs $6.50 per campaign and $6.50 per 1,000 actual sends. Standard costs $10 per campaign and $10 per 1,000 actual sends. Standard is more expensive for identical broadcast work because its value sits in workflow capability, not bulk-email efficiency.

Where Standard breaks even against Essentials

Standard costs $7 more per month at 500 contacts, a 53.8% premium. If you assign that entire difference to throughput, the extra 1,000-send allowance equals two additional full-list campaigns, so the marginal price is $3.50 per extra campaign.

That is the least persuasive reason to upgrade. The better break-even is labor. At a loaded labor cost of $50 per hour, Standard needs to save only 8.4 minutes per month to recover its $7 premium. At $100 per hour, it needs to save 4.2 minutes. One avoided manual segment export can clear that bar.

For a DTC brand doing 50 orders a day, the decision can be even simpler. If a more precise segment or longer lifecycle flow produces one incremental order with more than $7 in contribution margin, Standard has paid for itself that month. That is not a promise that the feature will create the order. It is the threshold the operator should measure.

The promotion step-up matters more at scale

Mailchimp currently shows a 15% introductory offer for eligible new or recent Free customers with at least 10,000 contacts. Standard displays at $115 per month for the first 12 months, then $135. Premium displays at $298, then $350.

The Standard step-up adds $240 over the next 12 months. Premium's adds $624. Put the post-promotion figure, not the teaser, into a 24-month budget. The offer is billed monthly and expires 12 months after it was originally applied, even if the account is paused.

Seven hidden costs that change the Mailchimp bill

Mailchimp's headline plan price is only the first layer. Contact hygiene, audience structure, temporary list spikes, channel add-ons, and credit rules can all raise the effective cost.

1. Unsubscribed contacts still count

Subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts count toward the contact total. Archived, cleaned, and deleted contacts do not. An unsubscribed contact cannot receive marketing, but it can still help push an account into a higher billing tier if it remains active in the database.

For a local-services owner with 4,900 marketable contacts and 600 old unsubscribes, the billing footprint is not 4,900. It is 5,500 unless those old records are archived or removed appropriately. List hygiene is therefore a direct P&L task, not administrative tidying.

Do not delete records casually just to cut the bill. Preserve anything required for consent, suppression, tax, or customer-history obligations in the right system. The practical move is to decide which records need to remain in Mailchimp as active contacts and archive those that do not need marketing activity.

2. Duplicates across audiences can be billed twice

Mailchimp counts duplicate contacts stored in separate audiences toward the total. The vendor recommends one primary audience for this reason. Segments and tags usually create cleaner separation than copying the same person into several audiences.

An agency with a 3,000-person newsletter audience and a 2,000-person webinar audience might assume it has 5,000 people. If 800 addresses appear in both, the account still carries 5,000 contact records for pricing even though only 4,200 individuals are represented. Consolidating the structure can delay the next pricing tier without reducing reach.

3. The highest contact count can set the month's charge

Mailchimp uses the peak contact total during the billing period. A temporary import can therefore create a lasting charge for that cycle, even if the list is reduced later.

Suppose a B2B team imports 8,000 event leads for a one-off follow-up into an account that normally holds 9,000 contacts. The peak becomes 17,000. Import timing and list cleanup now affect the bill. Check the projected tier before a large upload, archive ineligible records first, and budget the peak rather than the month-end total.

4. Paid plans use add-on blocks for overages

When a paid account exceeds its contact or send allowance, Mailchimp can charge for one or more add-on contact blocks instead of stopping service. The exact block size and price depend on the plan and contact tier, and Mailchimp shows them only after login and limit selection. There is no honest universal overage price to quote.

The vendor does publish one Standard example: a block with 1,000 extra contacts and 12,000 extra sends. Treat that as an illustration, not a price card. Before a campaign likely to cross the line, open the in-account calculator and compare the add-on with moving to the next contact tier.

5. Pay As You Go credits expire

Mailchimp Pay As You Go is built for irregular senders. The smallest block is 5,000 credits, and localized prices appear inside the account. One credit is consumed for each attempted email, including tests, automations, bounces, and messages stopped for compliance review.

Credits expire after 12 months. Unused credits are not refundable unless a system malfunction occurred. A seasonal business should divide the block by every attempted send, not just successful customer deliveries, and buy only what it can reasonably use before expiry.

6. Transactional email is a separate add-on

Mailchimp Transactional covers app or API messages such as receipts, password resets, and alerts. It requires Standard, Premium, or a legacy Monthly plan, so the API price sits on top of the marketing subscription.

The first 20 blocks cost $20 per 25,000 emails. Higher volume steps down through $18, $16, $14, $12, and $10 per block. A dedicated IP adds $29.95 per month. New users can send up to 500 test emails to a verified domain, but unused monthly transactional capacity does not roll over. Sending stops when blocks run out unless automatic top-ups are enabled.

A founder comparing an email API should therefore add the base Marketing plan and the Transactional blocks together. At low volume, the $20 block is not the full Mailchimp cost because access itself requires an eligible paid marketing plan. Our email marketing software guide separates newsletter platforms from transactional infrastructure for exactly this buying decision.

7. SMS has its own expiring credits

Mailchimp SMS Marketing is available as an add-on to Essentials or higher. In the United States, an SMS uses one credit and an MMS uses three. The credit subscription renews monthly, while unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over.

That expiry changes campaign economics. If a DTC brand needs 2,000 messages for a launch month but only 300 in a normal month, a recurring block sized for the launch can waste capacity afterward. Reset the subscription after the spike and price MMS at three times the credit consumption of SMS.

Mailchimp versus Brevo, Kit, and Constant Contact on price

Mailchimp is easiest to beat when a buyer mainly needs inexpensive sending. It is harder to replace when the business already uses its audience data, templates, automations, and reporting as one operating system. Migration time has a cost, so compare both the subscription and the work required to reproduce active flows.

The useful normalization is different for each alternative. Brevo competes on send economics, Kit competes on subscriber generosity for creators, and Constant Contact competes on a simpler entry price and refund window.

Brevo: lower sending cost

Brevo starts with a $0 plan that allows up to 300 emails a day without a credit card. Its Starter plan costs $9 per month, or $8.08 per month with annual billing, at 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly emails. Standard starts at $18 monthly or $16.17 on the annual cadence. The Brevo pricing page shows a 10% yearly-billing discount.

At the comparable Starter allowance, Brevo costs $1.80 per 1,000 allowed sends. Mailchimp Essentials costs $2.60. A small company buying 5,000 sends therefore saves $4 per month with Brevo before annual billing, and it gets the same 500-contact reference point.

Brevo also includes transactional email access on all plans, while Mailchimp requires an eligible paid Marketing plan plus Transactional blocks. Brevo's Pay As You Go email credits do not expire, which is materially better for a seasonal sender than Mailchimp's 12-month expiry.

Choose Brevo when send cost, irregular credit use, or marketing plus transactional delivery is the priority. Choose Mailchimp Standard when its deeper marketing workflow, segmentation, and reporting controls are worth more than the sending discount. This is a workload decision, not a brand preference.

Kit: the strongest free offer for a creator list

Kit charges $0 for its Newsletter plan with up to 10,000 unique active subscribers, unlimited broadcasts, one basic visual automation, and one user. Kit says none of its plans impose sending limits, which makes its pricing model far more generous than Mailchimp Free for a growing creator newsletter.

Kit Creator at 1,000 subscribers is displayed at $390 per year, or $33 per month on the annual cadence, with a stated $78 yearly saving. That makes the equivalent monthly price $39, derived from $390 plus the $78 saving, divided by 12. Creator and Pro have a 14-day trial with no card required.

A writer with 8,000 active subscribers and a weekly broadcast has an obvious price case for Kit Newsletter: the plan is free and broadcasts are unlimited. Mailchimp would require a paid contact tier. The decision gets closer when a company needs Mailchimp's broader campaign operations instead of a creator-first publishing workflow.

Choose Kit for a creator business whose core job is publishing to one subscriber list. Skip it as a price comparison if the business needs Mailchimp-specific multichannel operations or already has complex Mailchimp automations that would be expensive to rebuild. The Kit review and creator newsletter economics goes deeper on that tradeoff.

Constant Contact: a lower entry price with a refund window

Constant Contact starts at $12 per month for Lite, $35 for Standard, and $80 for Premium. New plans come with a 30-day full-refund guarantee, and prepaying 12 months can save up to 15%, according to the current Constant Contact pricing page.

Its Lite entry price is $1 below Mailchimp Essentials. That difference is too small to decide a migration by itself. The more useful distinction is risk: Constant Contact publishes a 30-day guarantee, while Mailchimp generally does not refund paid fees outside narrow exceptions.

SMS is not automatically free on Constant Contact's lower plans. Lite and Standard can add 1 to 500 messages for $10 per month, while Premium includes 500. Compare that with Mailchimp's credit-based SMS add-on using your expected mix of SMS and MMS, since a US MMS consumes three Mailchimp credits.

Choose Constant Contact if a published refund window and familiar campaign workflow matter more than squeezing every dollar from send volume. Choose Mailchimp Standard if its segmentation and automation controls better match the revenue work. A $1 base-price saving disappears instantly if the alternative requires extra manual time.

The practical alternative decision

For pure value, the shortlist is straightforward. A creator with up to 10,000 active subscribers should price Kit first. A cost-sensitive sender or a business combining marketing and transactional email should price Brevo first. A buyer who values a 30-day refund guarantee should consider Constant Contact. A business already operating revenue flows in Mailchimp should calculate migration labor before leaving.

Klaviyo belongs on the shortlist for an ecommerce brand where customer data and store-triggered messaging drive the decision, but its economics need a separate workload model. The Klaviyo versus Mailchimp pricing math works through that ecommerce case without forcing another comparison table here.

Trials, annual plans, discounts, and refunds

Mailchimp offers a 14-day trial of Essentials and Standard. Without a payment method, the current trial allows 100 sends. Adding a payment method makes the remaining plan allowance available for the rest of the trial.

That is enough time to inspect templates and build a small flow, but it is not enough to infer long-term campaign performance. Use the trial to verify the operating fit: import a clean sample, recreate one real segment, build one representative automation, invite the users who will need access, and confirm which reports they can actually use.

1. 1

   Model the contact tier

   Count subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts that will remain active. Remove duplicate audience records from the estimate and include the largest expected import during the billing cycle.

2. 2

   Model the sending workload

   Multiply each campaign and automation by its expected recipients. Add tests, resends, and lifecycle messages. Compare the result with the plan's 10 times, 12 times, or 15 times contact formula.

3. 3

   Build the hardest workflow

   Do not spend the trial styling a basic newsletter. Recreate the segment, branch, report, or team handoff most likely to force an upgrade.

4. 4

   Budget month 13

   If the 15% offer applies, record both the promotional and post-promotion prices. Add likely overages, Transactional blocks, SMS, and any dedicated IP.

Mailchimp annual pricing is not a public discount table

Mailchimp makes annual plans available through sales to eligible Standard and Premium customers with at least 10,000 contacts. It does not publish a universal annual price on the live pricing page. That means a buyer cannot safely take the monthly figure, multiply by 12, and assume a particular discount.

The visible 15% offer for eligible 10,000-plus-contact customers is not annual prepayment. It is billed automatically each month for the first 12 months. Its clock starts when the promotion is first applied and keeps running if the account is paused.

The annual-lock trap appears during the trial. Buying an annual plan ends the free trial immediately and starts the annual billing cycle. Get the sales quote, renewal terms, and expected contact tier in writing before accepting. The current monthly offer may be easier to exit even when its headline discount looks similar.

Nonprofits get 15%, students do not have a listed offer

Mailchimp provides a 15% discount to verified nonprofits and charities. Approval should be requested before purchasing because the discount is not retroactive and does not create a refund for earlier payments.

Mailchimp does not list a student discount on its live pricing page or current discount documentation as of 3 August 2026. A student running a tiny list should use Free within its 250-contact and 500-send limits, then compare Brevo or Kit before paying a standard Mailchimp rate.

Refunds are the exception

Mailchimp's policy is generally no refunds. The documented exceptions are a system malfunction that caused a problem or an account terminated without cause. Unused Pay As You Go credits are also nonrefundable outside a system malfunction.

Plan changes need the same care. Upgrades take effect immediately and may create a prorated charge. Downgrades take effect at the next billing cycle. An account gets only one lifetime downgrade from a paid plan to Free, so do not treat paid-to-Free switching as a recurring seasonal tactic.

Mailchimp pricing FAQ

Is Mailchimp free?

Yes. Mailchimp Free costs $0 for up to 250 contacts and 500 sends per month, with a 250-send daily cap. It supports one audience, one Owner seat, limited templates, basic reporting, and a one-click automated welcome email. If the account exceeds 250 contacts, sending is held until the count is reduced or the plan is upgraded.

How much does a Mailchimp subscription cost?

Mailchimp Essentials starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts and 5,000 sends. Standard starts at $20 for 500 contacts and 6,000 sends. Premium starts at $350 with 10,000 contacts and 150,000 sends. Paid prices rise with the contact tier, and add-ons or overages can increase the bill.

Does Mailchimp have a student discount?

No public student discount is listed on Mailchimp's live pricing or discount pages as of 3 August 2026. Students with very small lists can use Free, while larger creator lists should compare Kit and cost-sensitive senders should compare Brevo.

Can I get a refund from Mailchimp?

Usually not. Mailchimp's stated policy is no refunds unless a system malfunction caused a problem or the company terminated an account without cause. The 15% nonprofit discount is not retroactive, and unused Pay As You Go credits are not refundable outside a malfunction.

Has Mailchimp's free plan changed?

Yes. The former 500-contact and 1,000-send figures no longer apply. The current live limit is 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends. Mailchimp does not present a complete public price-history ledger, so verify the live page whenever the list is close to a limit.

Is Mailchimp worth the price?

Mailchimp is worth paying for when its workflows, segmentation, reporting, or team controls save more than the plan premium or improve a measurable revenue action. Essentials is economical for regular newsletters. Standard is the stronger default for revenue automation. Premium is worthwhile only when governance, unlimited users and audiences, onboarding, or phone support justify the large jump.

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