Mailchimp’s free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends. Past that, the honest answer to “what does Mailchimp cost” is: it depends, on a contact-count slider Mailchimp doesn’t convert into a single published number. Essentials starts at “50% off for 12 months,” and what it costs in month 13 isn’t a static figure anywhere on the pricing page — it recalculates against however many contacts you’re carrying by then.
That’s not unique to Mailchimp, as it turns out — it’s most of this category. Worth knowing before comparing any of these tools on price.
Why People Leave Mailchimp
Two reasons dominate. The pricing structure itself — a list that grows past a contact-tier boundary triggers a price jump that arrives without much warning, and Mailchimp’s own pricing page confirms overage billing kicks in automatically once you exceed your plan’s contact or sending limit. And a mismatch of purpose: Mailchimp is a general-purpose email tool, and a lot of its users are running an online store, where a platform built specifically around product sales does more with the same list.
A Pricing Pattern Worth Naming First
Before the alternatives: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Brevo all price primarily through an interactive contact-count calculator rather than a flat published number for most tiers. We checked each directly rather than repeating a third-party figure, and none of the three displays a static, stable ongoing price without you first entering a contact count into their tool. If a page quotes you one flat number for any of these three, that number is almost certainly a promotional rate at one specific contact tier — check it against the live calculator for your actual list size before deciding anything.
The Alternatives, By Scenario
You run an online store: Omnisend
Free to 250 contacts and 500 emails/month. Standard is $11.20/month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails. Pro is $41.30/month for 2,500 contacts, unlimited emails, and SMS from $0.007 per message. This is the one alternative on this page with fully static, verified pricing — no calculator required to quote it.
The reason to switch: Omnisend’s templates and automation triggers are built around ecommerce events — abandoned cart, post-purchase follow-up, product recommendations — rather than general newsletters. If that’s what your list is actually for, Omnisend does more of it out of the box than Mailchimp does. It’s a poor fit if you’re running a general-purpose newsletter with no store behind it. Full Omnisend review.
You’re a creator or solo newsletter writer: Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
Free up to 1,000 subscribers, with unlimited landing pages, forms, and broadcasts — a genuinely usable free tier, not a capped trial. Creator is $33/month ($390/year), Pro is $66/month ($790/year), both still scoped to 1,000 subscribers with the paid tiers adding automation depth, SMS, and analytics rather than raising the subscriber cap directly.
Kit is built specifically for creators monetising an audience — newsletters, digital products, paid subscriptions — rather than ecommerce or general business marketing. If that’s your use case, it’s a more purpose-fit free tier than Mailchimp’s.
You want automation depth and can work with a calculator: ActiveCampaign
Four tiers — Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise — each adding automation complexity, segmentation depth, and user seats. Pricing is entirely contact-count-driven with no static number displayed without entering your list size into ActiveCampaign’s own tool, so we’re not going to print a number we can’t verify. What we can say: it’s positioned above Mailchimp on automation sophistication, and priced accordingly — check the live calculator at your actual contact count before comparing.
You want the lowest sending cost at volume: Brevo
Brevo prices primarily by monthly email volume rather than contact count, which is a genuinely different model from every other tool on this page — useful if you have a large list you email infrequently, since Mailchimp, Omnisend, and Kit all charge based on how many contacts you’re storing, not how often you email them. Brevo’s own pricing page is also interactive rather than static; verify current numbers directly before committing, the same caution as ActiveCampaign above.
Cost Comparison — What’s Actually Verifiable
| Tool | Free tier | Entry paid price | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts, 500 sends/mo | Promotional; ongoing rate not statically published | Contact-count calculator |
| Omnisend | 250 contacts, 500 emails/mo | $11.20/mo, 500 contacts, 6,000 emails | Flat, verified |
| Kit | 1,000 subscribers, full features | $33/mo ($390/yr), still 1,000 subs | Flat, verified |
| ActiveCampaign | None published | Not shown without contact count | Contact-count calculator |
| Brevo | Varies | Not statically shown | Email-volume calculator |
A Concrete Scenario
An online store with 3,000 contacts, sending weekly promotional emails plus automated abandoned-cart and post-purchase sequences. On Mailchimp, that contact count likely pushes into a mid-tier plan with a real dollar figure that only shows once you plug 3,000 into the calculator — and if the list grows to 4,000 mid-year, the price moves again without much warning. On Omnisend, the same store at 3,000 contacts lands solidly in the Pro tier ($41.30/month, 2,500 contacts as the stated ceiling but scaling predictably from there), with the ecommerce automations built in rather than assembled from generic building blocks.
Now a solo newsletter writer with 800 subscribers, monetising through paid subscriptions rather than product sales. Mailchimp’s free tier doesn’t cover them (250-contact cap), and neither would Omnisend’s ecommerce focus be the right tool even if it did. Kit’s free tier — 1,000 subscribers, full feature set, no card required — is built exactly for this case and costs nothing until they outgrow it.
The Contact-Tier Trap, Explained
Here’s specifically what happens with contact-tiered pricing, since it’s worth understanding rather than just avoiding. A list grows from 2,400 to 2,600 contacts — a small, ordinary change. If that crosses a plan’s tier boundary (commonly set at round numbers like 2,500), the monthly price can jump meaningfully even though almost nothing about your actual usage changed. This is the mechanism behind most “Mailchimp got expensive overnight” complaints, and it isn’t unique to Mailchimp — it’s how ActiveCampaign and most contact-based pricing models work too.
The practical defense: prune your list periodically. Contacts who haven’t opened an email in six months or more are costing you tier-boundary risk without providing engagement value — removing them isn’t just good email hygiene, it’s a direct lever on your bill.
When to Stay on Mailchimp
If your list is small, growth is slow, and you’re not close to a contact-tier boundary, Mailchimp’s free or entry-level cost is genuinely competitive and the platform is mature and well-documented. The reason to leave is almost always a specific trigger — a store that needs ecommerce automation, a list that just crossed a pricing tier and the renewal shocked you, or a creator business that Kit’s free tier fits better. Without one of those triggers, switching is churn for its own sake.
Migrating Off Mailchimp
All four alternatives above support CSV contact import, and most offer a guided migration tool for Mailchimp specifically — check each platform’s current import options before starting. Automations and templates generally do not transfer automatically; budget time to rebuild your core automation sequences on the new platform rather than assuming a clean 1:1 migration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why won’t you just tell me what ActiveCampaign or Brevo cost?
Because neither publishes a static number — both require entering a contact count or email volume into their own calculator, and any number quoted without that context is a snapshot that may not match your situation. We’d rather point you to the live calculator than repeat a figure we can’t verify held true for your list size.
Is Omnisend cheaper than Mailchimp?
At comparable contact counts, generally yes for ecommerce use — and Omnisend’s price is fully public and static, which Mailchimp’s isn’t past the free tier. But Omnisend’s SMS charges are usage-based on top of the base price, so factor that in if SMS is part of your plan.
What’s the best free plan here?
Kit’s, for a non-ecommerce use case — 1,000 subscribers with the full feature set, not a crippled trial. Omnisend’s free tier is more limited (250 contacts) but is the right free tier specifically for an online store.
Why does contact-tiered pricing exist at all?
Sending email at scale costs the provider money in deliverability infrastructure, and a larger list represents more of that cost regardless of how often you email it — which is the justification, even when it doesn’t feel proportional to a specific price jump. Brevo’s volume-based model exists specifically as an alternative for people who found contact-tiered pricing punishing relative to their actual sending frequency.
Will switching lose my sender reputation?
Partially — sender reputation is tied to the sending domain and IP history, and a new platform means starting some of that history over, particularly if you don’t configure your own domain’s authentication (SPF, DKIM) correctly on the new platform. This is a real migration cost worth planning for, not a reason to avoid switching, but budget a few weeks of lower initial deliverability while the new platform builds reputation.
Is SMS marketing worth adding?
Only Omnisend among these alternatives has integrated SMS at a stated rate ($0.007+ per message). Whether it’s worth adding depends entirely on whether your audience responds to SMS at a rate that justifies the per-message cost — test on a small segment before rolling it out broadly.
How We Assessed This
Omnisend and Kit’s pricing was verified directly against their own current pricing pages and is stated exactly as published. Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Brevo’s pricing pages render primarily through an interactive calculator rather than static published numbers — where we could not verify a stable figure, we said so rather than repeating a number from a third-party aggregator. Disclosure: no tool on this page is linked through an affiliate relationship.
Related
