Mailchimp alternatives — what replaces it and what you save

Mailchimp is still the first name that comes to mind for a newsletter. It is also the most expensive in our comparison: a 2,500-contact list costs €39.11 a month on the cheapest paid plan, while the same list is handled by EmailOctopus for €16. This article goes through what replaces Mailchimp in which situation and how much switching really saves.

The short answer

• Biggest saving

  Brevo

  A 10,000-contact list costs €28 a month, while Mailchimp asks €95.59 — a saving of €811 a year.

  Start free — 300 emails/day

• Best for a small list

  EmailOctopus

  2,500 subscribers free — the entire list size for which Mailchimp bills €39.11 a month.

  Start free — 2,500 subscribers (ad)

• Closest to the same way of working

  MailerLite

  The same basic logic as Mailchimp — list, campaign, automation — but cheaper.

  Start free — 250 subscribers

Mailchimp and six alternatives

Prices are monthly prices excluding VAT, read from the services’ own price lists on 3 September 2026. For each we took the cheapest paid plan that supports that list size.

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

How much switching saves

Below is the difference compared with Mailchimp’s cheapest paid plan, per year. The figures are calculated directly from the monthly prices in the table above.

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EmailOctopus’s free plan holds 2,500 subscribers, so at the two smaller list sizes the free plan is also an option — in return the emails carry the service’s branding.

What replaces Mailchimp in which situation

• The list grew past the free plan → EmailOctopus: the free plan carries up to 2,500 subscribers, ten times Mailchimp’s. Try it free (ad)
• Large list, newsletter once a month → Brevo: the price follows sending volume, so a rarely emailed list is a fraction of Mailchimp’s price. Try it free
• You want the most familiar way of working → MailerLite: the same structure as Mailchimp without overage fees. Try it free
• You sell courses or use funnels → Systeme.io: replaces not only Mailchimp but also the course platform and the landing page tool. Try it free (ad)
• You need multi-step automation → ActiveCampaign: the only one in the comparison whose own feature list includes lead scoring — and pricier too. Try it free

The free plan is the biggest single difference

Mailchimp’s free plan has narrowed so much that it no longer carries even a first campaign: 250 contacts, 500 emails a month and a daily limit of 250 emails. If the list has 250 names, two newsletters a month fill the quota exactly, leaving no room for a third.

Among the alternatives EmailOctopus gives 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, Systeme.io 2,000 contacts and unlimited sending. The difference is tenfold. In practice this means many paying Mailchimp customers could handle the same list for free elsewhere.

Overage fees and the first-year price

Two features of Mailchimp’s pricing are worth knowing before you compare figures:

• First-year discount. The price list often shows a 12-month offer price, after which billing rises to the list price. The table above shows the list price, i.e. what you pay from the second year on.
• Overage fees. If the contact or sending limit is exceeded, the excess is billed separately. In the contact-based alternatives the limit is handled as a tier change, so you know the price in advance.
• Unsubscribes count toward the limit. This is the third and least-known difference. According to Mailchimp’s own help page, the monthly limit counts not only subscribers but also the unsubscribed and non-subscribers; archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not count.

The last point is worth reading twice, because it is a silent price rise. Unsubscribes accumulate on every list, and at Mailchimp they leave the counter only when you archive them separately. At MailerLite and EmailOctopus unsubscribes do not count toward the limit at all. The same list can therefore look a different size purely because of the counting rule — and if you are considering switching, compare a figure that has been counted the same way. The rules by service: how contacts are counted. Help pages read 5 September 2026.

How to migrate without the list suffering

1. Export the contacts from Mailchimp as a CSV file and include the subscription date and source. Consent has to be demonstrable afterwards, and that information is easier to keep than to rebuild.
2. Clean the list before importing. Leave out the unsubscribed, hard bounces and addresses inactive for years. They bring no sales, but they damage a new sender’s reputation at exactly the stage when it is most fragile.
3. Authenticate the sender domain in the new service (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) before the first send.
4. Start with a small send. Send first to the most active subscribers and grow the volume over a few sends — a new sender builds reputation gradually.
5. Rebuild the automations before you close the old account. Automations do not transfer as a file, and the old account is worth keeping open until the new one is demonstrably running.

If two options remain, compare them directly: MailerLite vs Mailchimp. The data protection side of the move — demonstrating consent and data location — is covered in the GDPR article.

For whom Mailchimp is still the right choice

In two situations switching does not pay. First: the integrations have been built around Mailchimp and rebuilding them costs more than the yearly saving. Second: you use Mailchimp as part of a wider Intuit setup, so data already moves between the systems.

In other cases the only question is how big the list is and how often you send to it — and the table above answers both.