Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign — which should you choose?

Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign end up in the same comparison for a rare reason: they are the two most expensive in our comparison at a mid-sized list, and neither stores the data in the EU. The two things this site usually settles a choice by — price and data location — therefore do not separate these two at all. That makes the page shorter and more honest than most: one real difference remains.

The short answer

Choose ActiveCampaign if you build paths where the email is chosen by the recipient’s behaviour. At a 2,500-contact list it costs €39, 11 cents less than Mailchimp, and for the same money you get substantially more automation.

Choose Mailchimp if the list is large and your need is a newsletter. At 10,000 contacts the difference is €641 a year in Mailchimp’s favour, and you can pay month by month — ActiveCampaign’s price list has only annual billing.

Choose neither if you are starting now and do not need either one’s specialities. These are the most expensive in the comparison, and five other tools keep the data in the EU.

Comparison table

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.

• 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.
• ActiveCampaign: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.
• ActiveCampaign: the smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact column shows that price.

Prices side by side — and why they are not comparable

Both price by contact count and both in euros, so the figures look directly comparable. One line on the price list breaks that.

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Cheapest paid plans (Mailchimp Essentials, ActiveCampaign Starter) read from the price lists (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign) on 3 September 2026, monthly prices excluding VAT. ActiveCampaign’s figures are monthly prices on annual billing — the monthly-billing price is not shown on the price list at all — and its smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact row shows the price for a thousand contacts. Mailchimp’s figure is the list price after the first-year discount.

The middle row is why this page exists. An 11-cent difference is not a difference. But it is not a tie either, because the figures are not about the same thing: ActiveCampaign’s €39 commits you for a year, Mailchimp’s €39.11 commits you to nothing. An annual commitment is a real price for a small business when the tool turns out to be wrong after three months.

At a large list the order flips clearly. At 10,000 contacts ActiveCampaign asks €149 and Mailchimp €95.59, and the difference is €641 a year. Both pricing models and all seven tools’ figures side by side: two pricing models.

The only difference that really decides

When price and data location do not separate them, what remains is what the tool does. Here the difference is large and it can be read from the price lists.

ActiveCampaign’s cheapest Starter plan limits automation to five actions per automation, and it has no conditional content. Conditional content starts on the Plus plan and lead scoring on the Pro plan. At a 2,500-contact list that means €39, €95 and €149 a month depending on how far you go. There are over 1,000 integrations.

Mailchimp’s Standard plan costs €52.14 at the same list size and Essentials €39.11. There are over 300 integrations — fewer than at ActiveCampaign, but Mailchimp is the best-known name on the market, so a ready connector exists for most e-commerce and publishing platforms and guides are plentiful.

The practical rule of thumb: if you describe your need with the words “I send a newsletter to the list”, at ActiveCampaign you pay for features you do not use. If you describe it with “I want the person who clicked the pricing page to get a different email from the others”, Mailchimp’s Essentials is not enough and the comparison is ActiveCampaign’s Plus against Mailchimp’s Standard.

Contact counting — on a new account the same trap at both

The price list says what a thousand contacts cost. It does not say what counts as a contact, and in this pair the answer changed recently.

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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.

• 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.
• ActiveCampaign. The rule depends on the account creation date. ActiveCampaign’s own help article gives two answers: on accounts created on or after 3 November 2025, all contacts count toward the limit regardless of status, i.e. unsubscribed, unconfirmed and bounced too; on accounts created on or before 2 November 2025, only active ones. A new account is therefore in the same group as Mailchimp in this comparison. The help page opens only in a browser (HTTP 403); the text was read through the help centre’s own API on 5 September 2026.

At Mailchimp an unsubscribed contact counts toward the monthly limit until it is archived separately. At ActiveCampaign the rule depends on the account creation date: on accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 all contacts count toward the limit regardless of status, on accounts created before that only active ones.

So if you open an account now, at both the bill follows the list’s history rather than its current size, and lowering it takes a separate step. On an old ActiveCampaign account the situation is different — worth knowing if you compare your own bill with someone else’s experience. All seven rules side by side: how contacts are counted.

Deliverability: Omnivore against Engagement Management

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 ActiveCampaign’s average was 90.8% and Mailchimp’s 87.6%, but Mailchimp’s range was the narrowest of the five we compare. The series ended in January 2024.

Read from the help pages, both have automatic cleaning, but at a different point. Mailchimp’s Omnivore checks addresses before sending and blocks sending to risky ones; ActiveCampaign’s Engagement Management removes the inactive afterwards. ActiveCampaign gives a dedicated IP on any plan for a 100,000-contact list; Mailchimp’s help pages do not mention it. Neither describes a deliverability meter for an ordinary account — ActiveCampaign’s ABU meters are visible only to resellers.

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

Data location: no winner here

Of the seven tools in our comparison, five store the list data in the EU. These two are the ones that do not.

Mailchimp is part of the US Intuit group. ActiveCampaign’s own privacy policy lists transfers to the United States, Australia, Ireland, Brazil and Costa Rica. Both transfers are lawful and rely on the Data Privacy Framework or standard clauses, but both have to be recorded in your own privacy policy with their transfer basis. Both read from the services’ own privacy policies on 3 September 2026.

This does not make either a wrong choice. It means both prices include a work step that an EU provider’s price does not — and that if you are comparing these two precisely because of data location, you are on the wrong page. What to check and what to record: email marketing and GDPR.

Free plans: one has none

Mailchimp’s free plan holds 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, and the daily limit is 250 emails. That is enough for trying things out, not for growing a list. ActiveCampaign has no free plan at all, only a 14-day trial.

If the size of the free plan is a selection criterion, neither is the answer. EmailOctopus gives 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month without paying anything. All seven side by side: free email marketing.

The third option is strong in this comparison

On most vs pages the third option is a caveat. Here it is the main recommendation: these two are the most expensive in the comparison at a 2,500-contact list, and five other tools keep the data in the EU.

If the need is a newsletter, Brevo asks €21 for 2,500 contacts and EmailOctopus €16, both with EU data. If you are already on Mailchimp and wondering where to move, the savings are calculated separately: Mailchimp alternatives. And if you want a familiar way of working for less, MailerLite vs Mailchimp compares exactly that direction.

Which one for you