Mailchimp pricing in 2026 — the ladder, the caps and the month-thirteen bill

Mailchimp's marketing plans start at $13 a month for Essentials, $20 for Standard and $350 for Premium at up to 500 contacts — those are the standard prices after the 50%-off first year that the pricing page advertises up front. Your real bill depends on which contact band your audience falls into, and the bands climb fast: the same Standard plan is $100 a month at 2,501–5,000 contacts and $310 at 20,001–25,000.

That structure — a promotional year, contact bands, and send caps tied to your contact count — is the whole story of Mailchimp's pricing, and each piece is below. If the ladder sends you shopping instead, the Mailchimp alternatives comparison prices eight other platforms at the same list sizes, on the same day.

The three plans, band by band

Mailchimp bills by contact band: 0–500, 501–1,500, 1,501–2,500, 2,501–5,000 and so on up past a million. The prices below are the page's "Then, starts at" figures — what a plan costs once the first-year offer ends — at four bands we read directly. All are per month; the page displays monthly prices only, with no annual-billing toggle.

Between the bands we tabled, the page also showed Standard at $45 (501–1,500), $60 (1,501–2,500), $135 (5,001–10,000) and $230 (10,001–15,000) — with Essentials at $26, $45, $110 and $180 at those same bands. Premium holds at $350 until five figures, then steps to $465 at 10,001–15,000. No Essentials price is displayed at all at the 75,001–100,000 band, which reads as the page steering six-figure lists to Standard and Premium.

The 50%-off first year, and month thirteen

The offer that headlines the page — "50% off for 12 months" — applies to Essentials, Standard and Premium alike, so Standard at 0–500 contacts shows as "$10 per month for 12 months". Two things about it are worth saying plainly. It is real and worth taking if you're staying anyway. And it is the number most people remember signing up for, which makes month thirteen — when Standard reverts to $20, or $100 at 5,000 contacts — the month this site gets read. Budget on the "then, starts at" column, and treat the promo year as a bonus rather than the price.

Send caps: the multiplier that decides your plan

Every Mailchimp plan caps monthly sends as a multiple of your contact count: 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium. At 500 contacts on Standard that is the "send up to 6,000 emails each month" the page shows. The fine print differs by tier, and the difference matters: on Standard and Premium, "overages apply if contact or email send limit is exceeded" — you pay extra — while on Essentials, "sending will be paused" until you upgrade or the month rolls over.

The multiplier is the quiet reason frequent senders find Mailchimp expensive: a daily email to your whole list is roughly 30× your contact count, which no Mailchimp tier permits at the listed price. Platforms with unlimited sends — GetResponse and Moosend among the ones we compare — exist largely for that sender.

Seats, audiences and the other quiet limits

The plan grid carries limits that don't make the headline price. Essentials includes 3 seats and 3 audiences; Standard, 5 of each; Premium, unlimited seats and audiences. Automation depth splits the same way: Essentials allows flows of up to 4 steps, while Standard and Premium allow up to 200 flows. Custom-coded templates can be created on Essentials but only sent on Standard and up, and onboarding sessions and phone support are Premium-tier goods. If any one of these is the feature you actually need, it — not the contact band — is what sets your price.

Is Mailchimp free? The page gives two answers

Mailchimp has a free plan, and its own pricing page described the cap two different ways on the day we read it: one section says "Under 250 contacts? It's free.", another says "if your business has fewer than 500 contacts, try our basic Free plan". We print neither figure as fact — the free-plan guide documents the discrepancy and compares the free plans rivals publish unambiguously, several of which are far larger.

Nonprofit discount and Pay As You Go

Two footnotes from the page worth knowing. Nonprofits and charities get 15% off, requested by signing up for a free account and contacting the billing team with your organisation's website. And infrequent senders can skip the subscription entirely: the Pay As You Go plan sells email credits, which the page pitches as "best for infrequent senders" — its credit prices aren't displayed on the pricing page, so we don't quote them. SMS marketing also exists as an add-on with its own pricing flow we did not read; if SMS is central for you, price it separately before deciding anything.

What the same money buys elsewhere

The ladder above is the fair way to judge any alternative's pitch, so run one number: at 2,501–5,000 contacts, Standard's $100 a month buys the same list a $49 Comfort plan at MailerLite, $39 at Sender, or $31.50 at EmailOctopus — monthly billing, same-day reads, sources on the comparison page. None of those platforms matches every Mailchimp feature; all of them cover the campaign-plus-basic-automation core most 5,000-contact senders use. Whether the difference funds anything you'd miss is the whole question, and it's yours, not ours.

A standing note on freshness: this page's figures are a single-day reading of a page Mailchimp is free to edit at any time, without announcement. The reading date at the top is part of every number here — when the page and this ladder disagree, the page has moved, and a correction note to us fixes it for the next reader.