What Mailchimp can do for you

Mailchimp is a marketing platform that primarily focuses on email. It offers a suite of tools for managing email lists, designing newsletters, and tracking the performance of your email campaigns. While the service originally focused solely on email marketing, it’s grown to become an all-in-one solution. Customers can create websites, landing pages, sign-up forms, and surveys. There are a host of analytics features available, such as A/B testing and Audience segmentation, as well as automations like ad retargeting and transactional email. Mailchimp also leverages AI within its content creation tools to help you write unique copy and optimize your campaigns. There are over 300 integrations so you can connect Mailchimp to your other apps, like Shopify, Square, or Yelp., Mailchimp pricing structures and tiers, Mailchimp pricing includes three paid subscription plans, a free plan, and also a pay-as-you-go option. As well as pricing based on level of service, the cost of each Mailchimp plan increases based on the number of contacts your business has. Each plan enjoys volume-based discounting according to the number of contacts on top.Essentials and Free offer core email functionality while Standard and Premium include the full suite of Mailchimp tools. For Essentials and Standard, the first month is free. You can see prices at a glance below, or keep reading for a full breakdown of each tier.

Mailchimp pricing – Free

Price: $0

There’s no charge to get started with Mailchimp as long as your mailing list is 500 contacts or less. With this plan, you get 1,000 monthly sends — so if you have 500 contacts, you can send two emails per month to each. It’s worth noting emails sent with the free tier will include Mailchimp branding which can only be removed once you upgrade to a paid plan.The license is for a single seat, and you can’t segregate your contacts into different Audiences. You can create customizable forms and landing pages with the free Mailchimp tier, but use of features like pre-built email templates and Creative Assistant is limited, as is reporting functionality. Essentially, this plan is a good choice if your organization is early in its marketing journey or doesn’t have a large mailing list. You also get email support for the first 30 days of your plan.

Mailchimp pricing – Essentials

Price: from $13 per month

Mailchimp’s Essentials plan is much like the free tier, but you get monthly email sends equal to 10x your plan’s contacts — so if you have 500 contacts, you can send up to 5,000 emails per month, priced at $13 per month. The contact limit for this plan is 50,000, which costs $385 per month.Essentials subscribers can create up to four journey points per Automated Customer Journey and up to three Audiences for more flexible targeting. There’s also support for scheduling, A/B testing, and you can remove the Mailchimp branding from your emails. In terms of users, Essentials includes three seats and two tiers of role-based access (RBAC). 24/7 customer support is available by email and chat. If your business’s sales are growing or you want custom branding for your marketing emails, Essentials is a good entrypoint to Mailchimp’s paid plans.

Mailchimp pricing – Standard

Price: from $20 per month

If you’re looking for the full Mailchimp package, the Standard pricing plan is the place to start. The monthly email limit is 12x your contact number (up to 100,000 contacts) and you can have up to 200 journey points per Automated Customer Journey. You can upload your own HTML code to customize your emails, and make sure they’re put in front of the most optimal customers with predictive and behavioral targeting plus up to four Audiences. You’ll also get access to Mailchimp’s generative AI tools and campaign manager features.There are five seats included in the Standard tier, with four tiers of role-based access. Access to a full suite of reporting and analytics tools is included, so this Mailchimp pricing plan is well-suited to experienced marketers wanting to make data-driven decisions.  

Mailchimp pricing – Premium

Price: from $350 per month

The Mailchimp Premium tier is much like the Standard plan, but with a little more white-glove service. There’s migration assistance available, plus up to four onboarding consultations and priority support via phone and email. As for the usage numbers, the monthly email limit is 15x your contacts. The rates run from $350 a month for up to 10,000 contacts (150,000 monthly email sends), to $1,600 a month for 200,000 contacts (3 million sends). If you have more contacts than this, you can request a quote by contacting sales — there’s no upper limit so the plan can always keep up with business growth.

On the admin side, Premium customers get unlimited seats with five tiers of role-based access. The number of Audiences is unlimited too.

Mailchimp pricing – Pay As You Go

Price: $20 per credit block (5,000 emails)

If your email marketing is sporadic or low in volume, Mailchimp offers a credits-based pricing plan. Each credit can be used to send one email to a single contact — so if you have 500 contacts and buy 5,000 credits, you can send 10 emails per contact. Credits are purchased in ‘blocks’, with discounts applied the more blocks you buy. Each block is worth 5,000 credits. Prices start at $20 per block when you buy 1–20 blocks. Keep in mind credits expire after 12 months.

Additional Mailchimp costs to consider

For the most part, Mailchimp’s subscription plans include the bulk of available services. There are a few additional tools that can be added on top, as well as charges if you exceed your monthly send limit.

Websites

If you need a website for your business, Mailchimp can handle that too. There’s a free plan where you’ll get a simple website with a Mailchimp-branded domain, while the paid tier for $10 a month lets you link a custom domain to your site. Both plans can use Mailchimp’s simple no-code web designer tool.

Transactional emails

Mailchimp can also handle transactional emails — emails sent when a customer takes an action on your site, such as making a purchase or requesting a password change. Pricing is by block, and each block is 25,000 email credits. Blocks cost $20 when you buy up to 20, with discounting applied the more you buy.

SMS

Customers in the United States can add SMS marketing features to their paid plan. Prices are pay-as-you-go, starting at 1,000 credits for $20. A single SMS consumes one credit and an MMS consumes three.

Overages

If you go over your contact list or monthly email send limits, you’ll be charged overage fees. These vary based on your plan and use a block-based pay-as-you-go pricing structure, just like Mailchimp’s other services.

Other vendors offering email marketing tools

Mailchimp is one of the most popular platforms for email marketing, but it’s far from the only one. Here’s how it compares to three alternative solutions.

Mailchimp pricing vs Omnisend

While Mailchimp does support SMS alongside its primary focus of email, Omnisend — as suggested by its name — is more of an omnichannel solution. It offers tools for email, SMS, web push notifications, and customer retargeting on Google and Facebook. Omnisend pricing is more straightforward than Mailchimp’s, with two paid tiers costing $16 and $59 per month. There’s also a free plan although its monthly email send limit is half that of the Mailchimp equivalent. Omnisend is likely a better fit for businesses requiring SMS capabilities, as this has only recently been added to the Mailchimp product and is US-only.

Mailchimp pricing vs Klaviyo

With Klaviyo, there’s a heavier emphasis on e-commerce and delivering results through marketing automation. The platform makes it easy to trigger different actions throughout the customer experience, such as sending personalized recommendations based on viewed products or nudges for abandoned carts. Klaviyo pricing is from $20 per month for the email-only plan and $35 per month for email and SMS. There’s also a free tier for up to 250 contacts, which includes 500 monthly email sends and 150 monthly SMS credits.

Mailchimp pricing vs SendGrid

SendGrid leans more towards transactional email with its API and SMTP service, with a focus on deliverability at scale — although it does offer an email marketing platform akin to Mailchimp’s as well. SendGrid pricing is separated for the API and email marketing products. The former starts at $19.95 per month. The latter starts at $15 per month for the Basic tier and $60 for the Advanced tier. Both products have a free tier as well. Contact and send allowances are more generous with SendGrid compared to Mailchimp, especially for the free email marketing plan which allows up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 email sends a month.

Mailchimp pricing – the Vertice verdict

To sum up, Mailchimp is definitely one of the most straightforward tools for meeting your organization’s email marketing needs. With no experience necessary, it’s ideal for small businesses but still scales well as your requirements grow. Furthermore, Mailchimp’s website and SMS solutions may let you eliminate other apps from your stack. Speaking of which, increasing SaaS visibility is where the Vertice platform can help, unifying all your SaaS subscriptions in one location so you can optimize your footprint and more effectively manage tail spend. On top of that, we can help you procure Mailchimp for the lowest price thanks to our market intel on what other companies are paying. To get started, get in touch.