Mailchimp pricing and plan limits

Mailchimp is free for a list of up to 250 contacts, with a cap of 500 emails a month. Past that you pay by list size. At 500 contacts, Essentials is $13 a month and Standard is $20 a month; at 1,000 contacts, the next band up, they’re $26.50 a month and $45 a month. Most small businesses sending a regular newsletter belong on Essentials.

Which plan should a small business pick?

Essentials, if you send a newsletter and an occasional promotion. It removes Mailchimp’s branding, lets you schedule sends, adds A/B testing, and its automation flows allow up to 4 steps per flow, which covers a welcome email or a simple series for new subscribers. It also gives you 3 users. At 500 contacts it’s $13 a month, at 1,000 $26.50 a month, and at 5,000 $75 a month.

Standard is for the business whose email does more of the selling on its own: automation flows with up to 200 steps per flow and up to 3 triggers per flow, sending at each subscriber’s best time, dynamic content, custom reports, and 5 users. That costs $20 a month at 500 contacts and $100 a month at 5,000. If you can’t name the flow you’d build on Standard that needs more steps than Essentials allows, you don’t need it yet. Premium is for teams with large lists who want phone support; its lowest band is 10,000 contacts, at $350 a month.

Say you run a yoga studio with about 1,200 people on your list: members, drop-ins from the last few years, and people who signed up for a free class. You send a weekly schedule email and a monthly workshop announcement.

The free plan is out on the first import, because your list is over 250 contacts. At 1,200 contacts, Essentials is $26.50 a month and Standard $45 a month, the same as at 1,000, because both sizes fall in one band. In a month with five weekly emails plus the workshop announcement, that’s six emails to 1,200 people, 7,200 sends, well inside Essentials’ monthly allowance (10 times the contact limit).

Before you import, go through the list. Members and people who signed up for your newsletter asked to hear from you; someone who only left an address to book a class may not have, so ask them before you add them to your marketing emails. If some people unsubscribed in the past, keep that record and don’t import them as subscribers. On Mailchimp, unsubscribed contacts still count toward your bill, so archive them rather than delete them: that keeps their unsubscribe on record and keeps you in the band you actually need.

What moves you up a plan or a band?

Your list size, more than anything else. Mailchimp prices each plan by the number of contacts you store, in bands, so the bill jumps when you cross a band’s top: 500 contacts costs $13 a month on Essentials, and 501 puts you in the next band at $26.50 a month. Every contact counts toward that total, subscribed or not, except the ones you archive or delete.

Sends come second. Essentials allows 10 times the contact limit each month and Standard 12 times the contact limit, which is plenty for a weekly newsletter. Test emails and transactional emails count toward it too.

Then features. The usual reason to move from Essentials to Standard is automation: a flow that needs more steps than Essentials allows, or more than one trigger. Seats are the other: Essentials has 3 users, Standard 5 users.

Skip Mailchimp if

• Your list is small and you want free to last. Mailchimp’s free plan stops at 250 contacts and caps you at 500 emails a month, and other free plans in this guide allow more of both. When a free email marketing plan is enough compares the free plans in this guide and what ends each one. When Mailchimp’s free plan stops being enough weighs paying against moving.
• Price is what decides it. At 1,000 contacts and about one email a week, the lowest paid bill in this guide is Brevo (Starter) at $17 a month. What email marketing costs at 500, 1,000, 2,500, and 5,000 contacts lays every tool side by side.
• You email a few dozen customers now and then. A newsletter tool may be more than you need yet: can you send a customer newsletter from Gmail or Outlook? draws the line.
• You send only a few times a year. Mailchimp’s own Pay As You Go option, where you buy email credits instead of a monthly plan, comes with the Essentials features and suits infrequent senders better than a monthly bill. This guide doesn’t record its prices, so check them on Mailchimp’s pricing page.

Plans and prices

Every figure here is the whole monthly bill for the band, not a price per contact. Mailchimp publishes no yearly price table: it says annual plans are available for Standard and Premium plans of 10,000 contacts or more, priced through its sales team, so there’s no annual column to weigh here.

Costs that are easy to miss

• Unsubscribed contacts count. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts toward your total. Archived, cleaned, and deleted contacts don’t. Archive the people who left every few months, rather than deleting them: an archived contact keeps its unsubscribe on record and can’t be imported back as a subscriber, and it stops counting toward your band. Archiving doesn’t change the bill on its own: if your count now fits a lower band, choose the smaller contact limit under Account, Billing, Monthly plans or credits, Change Plan, and click Downgrade. You keep your current plan until the billing cycle ends, and the lower price starts with the next one.
• Going over doesn’t stop you; it charges you. On a paid plan, if your list passes your band’s limit during the month, Mailchimp keeps sending and adds a charge to your bill. On the free plan it puts sending on hold instead.
• The band edge is sharp. One contact over a band’s top moves you to the next price. If you’re sitting just above an edge, trimming a few stale contacts and lowering your tier saves you the difference every month.
• The lower price for large lists lasts a year. Mailchimp’s 15% saving applies only from the 10,000-contact band up, and only for the first 12 months: Essentials at the 10,000 band is $93.50 a month for that year, then $110 a month. Budget on the second figure.
• The free plan’s support ends early. Free accounts get email support for the first 30 days only.
• Going back to free is a one-time move. Mailchimp lets you downgrade from a paid plan to the Free plan only once over the life of your account. If you’re paying to try Essentials, treat a later move back to free as one you can make once.

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Our view

Mailchimp is a safe, complete choice for a small business that sends a regular newsletter and wants room to add a welcome series later. Our position: use the free plan only for a small list you email once or twice a month; otherwise start the trial on Essentials, and stay there until a flow you need has more steps than Essentials allows. What you give up is price. At 1,000 contacts and about one email a week, Essentials is $26.50 a month, while the lowest paid bill in this guide is Brevo (Starter) at $17 a month, and Mailchimp charges for every contact it stores, including the ones who left. If you’ll keep your list clean and value having a well-known tool your next hire may already know, it’s worth the difference. If the bill is the deciding factor, it isn’t: when leaving Mailchimp pays runs the numbers, and our small-list head-to-head compares the move most small lists weigh.

Your next step

Count your list: the people who agreed to get your emails. Anyone who unsubscribed stays on record but out of that count (on Mailchimp, archived). If that fits inside 250 contacts and you send once or twice a month, start on the free plan. Otherwise, start the 14-day trial on Essentials at the band your cleaned list falls in, send your next newsletter from it, and check the bill estimate on the billing page before the trial ends. Start with Mailchimp.