Mailchimp: review, prices and data location

The review is based on the provider’s own sources: prices from the pricing page, data location from the privacy policy and billing rules from the help pages — each one dated.

Overview

Prices

The table below shows what Mailchimp costs at three list sizes compared with the other tools.

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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.

What the price covers: Essentials is the cheapest paid plan; Standard costs €17.38 / €52.14 / €117.32 at the same list sizes. The price is the list price: the first 12 months are sold at a discount, after which the price rises to this. The contact tiers are bands (1,501–2,500, 5,001–10,000), so the price does not rise evenly.

All plans and extra fees →

Deliverability

Deliverability is the share of sent messages that reaches the inbox instead of the spam folder. The figures come from Tooltester’s test series, which ended in January 2024 — they describe 2017–2024, not the present. The average and the range are calculated across all rounds.

Who Mailchimp suits

Best when: A team that already uses Mailchimp and has built its integrations around it

Not for you if: You are starting now: the same money buys clearly more elsewhere

Three plans, and the steps are bands

Mailchimp’s price does not rise one subscriber at a time but by contact band: 0–500, 501–1,500, 1,501–2,500, 2,501–5,000, 5,001–10,000 and so on. Inside a band the price does not move, but crossing the line it jumps.

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From the price list on 3 September 2026, list price in euros excluding VAT. The first 12 months are sold cheaper than this; the table shows the price that remains in force after the offer period.

Two things make the comparison misleading if you only read the headline price. First, the big figure shown on the price list is often the first-year offer price, and below it in smaller type it says “Then, starts at” — that latter figure is the real monthly price from the second year on. Second, overage fees: if the contact or sending limit is exceeded, the excess is billed separately instead of the price moving to the next tier.

The free plan is a trial plan

250 contacts, 500 emails a month and a daily limit of 250 emails. In practice a 250-name list fits two newsletters a month, and there is no room for a third. The other free plans in the comparison hold many times more contacts — EmailOctopus 2,500, ten times, and Systeme.io 2,000, eight times — or five times the sending volume (MailerLite).

What Essentials lacks

Essentials is Mailchimp’s cheapest paid plan, and exactly the parts people usually come to Mailchimp for have been cut from it: automation paths are at most four steps long, while Standard allows up to 200, and there are no generative AI features at all. Standard also brings send time optimisation and wider reporting.

In practice this means Mailchimp’s realistic comparison price is often not Essentials but Standard — and then a 2,500-contact list costs €52.14 a month while EmailOctopus asks €16.

When Mailchimp is still the right choice

In two situations. First, when the integrations have already been built around it: Mailchimp is the best-known tool on the market, so almost every e-commerce and publishing platform has a ready-made connector and a guide for it. Second, when you use other Intuit software and the data already moves between the systems.

For someone starting a new list these arguments do not apply, and then at a 2,500-contact list you pay the highest price in the comparison for nothing in return. The alternatives and the savings: Mailchimp alternatives.

Where the data is stored

Mailchimp is part of the US Intuit group and, alongside ActiveCampaign, is one of the two tools compared whose data does not stay in the EU. The transfer is lawful under the Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses, but it has to be recorded in your own documentation with its transfer basis. If data location is a buying criterion, the five others compared answer it more simply.

We get no commission from Mailchimp

Mailchimp is in the comparison without a partnership: we are not members of any Mailchimp programme, the link goes straight to the service and pays us nothing. That is why this page can say about the service exactly what its price list says. How the site is funded →

Integrations are Mailchimp’s strongest argument

Mailchimp lists over 300 integrations in its directory, highlighting Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva, Zapier, Square, Wix, Squarespace, Stripe, Salesforce, LinkedIn, WordPress and Facebook. In the comparison only ActiveCampaign states more (over 1,000 apps).

This is the one point where Mailchimp’s price can be justified. If your stack includes a rarer platform, the likelihood of a ready-made connector and a guide is the highest in the comparison at Mailchimp. The difference shrinks as soon as you use WordPress or Shopify — practically every tool compared has a ready connector for those. Checked 4 September 2026.

How Mailchimp compares with the alternatives

• On price: the most expensive in the comparison at 2,500 contacts (€39.11). At 10,000 contacts the most expensive is ActiveCampaign at €149 and Mailchimp second at €95.59 — Brevo handles the same list for €28 and EmailOctopus for €36.
• On the free plan: 250 contacts and 500 emails a month is the tightest combination in the comparison. EmailOctopus gives ten times the contacts and twenty times the sending volume.
• On integrations: here Mailchimp beats everyone except ActiveCampaign. It is the only argument that survives a price comparison.

All head-to-head comparisons featuring Mailchimp: Brevo vs Mailchimp · EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp · Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign · Mailchimp vs GetResponse · MailerLite vs Mailchimp · Systeme.io vs Mailchimp.

The closest equivalent with a familiar way of working is MailerLite; the cheapest alternatives and the savings: Mailchimp alternatives.

What we do not know yet

The figures above were read from the service’s own price list and privacy policy, and they are dated. On usability and support response time we say nothing: they cannot be read from the documentation, and a guess would harm the reader more than a missing fact. The deliverability figures above were measured by a third party, not by us. The full method →