EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp — which should you choose?

Mailchimp is the best-known name on the market and EmailOctopus its cheapest challenger. The comparison is unusually one-sided on price and data location — on both of the axes by which this site usually settles a choice, EmailOctopus wins clearly. Mailchimp’s answer is two things that are not on the price list.

The short answer

Choose EmailOctopus if you send a newsletter and the list is growing. It is cheaper at every list size, free up to 2,500 subscribers, and the data stays in the EU.

Choose Mailchimp if the integrations have already been built around it or if you want list checking inside the app: Omnivore checks imports automatically, while EmailOctopus’s help page tells you to go through the list by hand.

Comparison table

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.(ad) = ad link

• The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.
• EmailOctopus: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.

The free plans differ tenfold

This is the clearest difference in the comparison, and it settles the choice more often than the paid plans’ prices do.

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Free plan limits read from the services’ own price lists (EmailOctopus, Mailchimp) on 3 September 2026. EmailOctopus’s free plan emails carry the service’s own branding.

In practice the difference means this: on EmailOctopus’s free plan you can grow the list to 2,500 names and send it four newsletters a month without paying anything. Mailchimp’s free plan is enough for trying things out and a board’s internal communication — a 250-name list fits two newsletters a month.

Prices side by side

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Cheapest paid plans (EmailOctopus Pro, Mailchimp Essentials) read from the price lists on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. EmailOctopus’s price list shows monthly prices on annual billing. Mailchimp’s figure is the list price after the first-year discount.

Two things deepen the gap outside the table. Mailchimp’s price is the list price after the first year, and its contact tiers are bands, so one subscriber over the band’s edge moves the whole bill to the next tier. Overage fees are opened up separately: Mailchimp’s overage fees.

Note too that at 2,500 subscribers the comparison is not €16 against €39.11 but zero against €39.11, because EmailOctopus’s free plan covers exactly that list size.

Data location: the EU against the United States

EmailOctopus is a British company, but the lists are stored in AWS’s Irish data centre inside the EEA. Mailchimp is part of the US Intuit group, and the transfer outside the EU relies on the Data Privacy Framework and standard clauses. Both read from the services’ own privacy policies on 3 September 2026.

The transfer is not prohibited and using Mailchimp is not unlawful. The difference is in what you record in your own policy and how long the answer to a customer is. What to check: email marketing and GDPR.

Deliverability: Omnivore is the difference

We do not test deliverability ourselves. Below are two things: Tooltester’s 2017–2024 series as history — it ended in January 2024, and the source no longer stands behind its method — and eight points from the services’ own help pages, which are the current basis of this comparison.

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Tooltester ended the series with the January 2024 round and explained why in August 2026: seed lists proved unreliable and providers started optimising for them. The figures are therefore history, not a measurement of current deliverability.

Source: Tooltester deliverability test, 12 rounds 8/2017–1/2024. About 80 seed addresses, 28 providers, shared IP addresses. Average across all platforms in the latest round 83.1%. Average and range calculated from the published rounds.

Deliverability features from the help docs

Eight points read from each provider’s own help pages on 13 September 2026. This replaces percentages as a buying basis: a feature can be checked and dated, a seed-list result no longer can. Every cell links to the article it was read from.

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Yes = the help page describes the feature. No = the help page says it is absent or points to an external tool. — = not found in the help pages; that does not mean the feature is absent.

As history: in Tooltester’s series Mailchimp’s average was 87.6% and its range 81.6–95.5%, the narrowest of the five we compare; EmailOctopus was not in the series. The series ended in January 2024.

Read from the help pages, the difference is in one point. Mailchimp’s Omnivore checks every import and send automatically — it estimates how many addresses are likely spam traps or will produce a complaint, and blocks the send if the risk is too high. EmailOctopus’s help page advises double opt-in and going through the list by hand. Neither help page describes a deliverability meter or a dedicated IP.

Most of deliverability is still the sender’s own responsibility — authentication, list quality and sending pace: what Gmail and Yahoo require of senders.

Contact counting

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The rules are read from the providers’ own help pages. “Not read” means the rule could not be opened in the original source — we do not guess it in either direction.

• EmailOctopus. Unsubscribed contacts do not count toward the limit, nor do hard bounces and spam complaints, which are marked as unsubscribed automatically. Contacts awaiting double opt-in do not count either. One trap: the same address is counted separately for every list — an address on six lists is six contacts.
• Mailchimp. An unsubscribed contact counts toward the monthly limit, as do non-subscribers who ended up in the account by other routes. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not count, so lowering the bill takes a separate step: the contacts have to be archived, not just allowed to unsubscribe.

At Mailchimp an unsubscribed contact counts toward the monthly limit until it is archived separately. The bill therefore follows the list’s history rather than its current size, and the 2,500-contact band fills up faster than the subscriber count would suggest.

At EmailOctopus the unsubscribed do not count toward the limit, nor do hard bounces or spam complaints. There is one trap: the same address is counted separately for every list, so an address on six lists is six contacts — keep one list and separate groups with tags. All seven rules: how contacts are counted.

What Mailchimp gives

Over 300 integrations and the best-known name on the market. That is not an empty advantage: a ready connector exists for most e-commerce and publishing platforms, guides are plentiful, and finding someone who knows the tool is easier. EmailOctopus has no CRM and no e-commerce integrations on the same scale, and its automations are light.

So if you are already on Mailchimp and the integrations work, the real price of the move is not the monthly fee but rebuilding them. All directions and savings: Mailchimp alternatives.

Which one for you