We make Drry, one of the alternatives below, so read accordingly. The best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026 are MailerLite, Brevo, Kit, Klaviyo and Systeme.io, with Drry as the pick for coaches who want their list and their paid community in one place. Most people leave Mailchimp for one reason: the bill climbs with every contact tier, and it counts contacts you can no longer email. The Mailchimp figures below carry the date we checked them and a link to the source. Other vendors are described by how they charge rather than by a price, because prices move, so verify current terms before you commit to anything, including us.
Credit where it is due: Mailchimp is where a huge share of small businesses sent their first campaign, the editor is friendly, the template library is enormous, and it connects to almost everything. None of that is why people leave. They leave because the free plan is small and every paid plan is priced by contact tier, so a list that is growing is a bill that is growing, whether or not the list is earning. If your question is how Drry compares on its own, Drry vs Mailchimp is the direct head-to-head.
Why do people leave Mailchimp?
Three things, usually in this order. First, the free plan: 250 contacts and 500 sends a month is a trial in all but name, and sending is paused the moment you pass either. Second, the tiers: Essentials is $13/mo and Standard $20/mo a month at 0 to 500 contacts after a 14-day free trial, and both rise with every contact tier after that. Third, and the one that stings, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts count toward your tier. A list you have been collecting for five years can be half people you are not allowed to email, and you pay for them anyway until you archive them.
So the real question is which of those is hurting you. If it is the size of the free plan, several tools below are more generous. If it is the per-contact pricing, a send-priced tool changes the shape of the bill. If it is that you are paying for an email tool AND a course platform AND a community AND a checkout, the answer is a different kind of product altogether.
MailerLite: the closest like-for-like swap
MailerLite is what most Mailchimp users would have designed if they had been asked: a clean drag-and-drop editor, landing pages, automations, and a simple website builder, without the sprawl. It is the least disruptive move on this list, because the mental model is the same.
- Best for: small businesses that like how Mailchimp works and just want it simpler and cheaper to grow on.
- Pricing structure: a free plan capped by subscribers and monthly sends, then paid plans priced on how many subscribers you have and how much you send. It can also sell digital products and paid newsletters.
- What you give up: very little day to day. The integration catalogue is smaller than Mailchimp's, and it is still priced by list size, so the bill still grows with the list, just from a lower starting point.
Brevo: priced on sends, not contacts
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the structural answer to the Mailchimp complaint. Its marketing plans are priced mainly on how many emails you send, not on how many contacts you store, so a large, quiet list that you mail twice a month costs far less to keep. It also bundles SMS, WhatsApp and a light CRM.
- Best for: businesses with a big list and a modest sending rhythm, and anyone who wants email, SMS and a simple sales pipeline under one login.
- Pricing structure: a free plan with a daily sending cap, then paid plans sized by monthly email volume, with extra channels and features priced on top.
- What you give up: polish, a little. The editor and templates are serviceable rather than lovely, and the send-based model flips the risk: a high-frequency sender with a small list can pay more than they did before.
Kit: the creator's email tool
Kit, formerly ConvertKit, is built for people whose business is their audience: newsletter writers, course creators, podcasters. Tagging and visual automations are its strengths, and its free plan is far larger than Mailchimp's. We have a separate guide for people leaving it, Kit alternatives, which is also a fair picture of its limits.
- Best for: creators with a newsletter at the centre of the business, who sell a product or two alongside it.
- Pricing structure: a generous free plan, then paid plans priced on subscriber count, plus a per-transaction fee when you sell through its own commerce.
- What you give up: the small-business extras, such as the website builder and the ecommerce depth. It is also still an email tool, so the course or community you are emailing people about lives somewhere else. See Drry vs Kit.
Klaviyo: if what you run is a shop
If your Mailchimp account mostly sends abandoned-cart emails and product launches for an online store, Klaviyo is the tool that ecommerce teams move to. It reads your store's order data deeply and builds segments and flows from what people bought.
- Best for: Shopify and other ecommerce stores where email revenue is measured per order.
- Pricing structure: a free tier, then plans priced by how many active profiles you hold, with SMS billed separately.
- What you give up: it is not cheaper. It earns its price by making a store more money, and a service business or a coach without a product catalogue pays for depth it will not use.
Systeme.io: the free all-in-one
Systeme.io is for the Mailchimp user who has realised they are also paying for a page builder, a course host and a checkout. It puts funnels, email, online courses and communities on one bill, with a genuinely free plan and 0% transaction fees stated on its own pricing page.
- Best for: solo businesses selling their own digital products who want to stop stitching tools together.
- Pricing structure: a free plan, then flat monthly tiers, with no transaction fee on sales.
- What you give up: email depth. The editor and segmentation are simpler than a dedicated email tool, and the product is arranged around funnels first, with the courses and community alongside.
Drry: your list and your community in one place (ours)
Our product, so treat this as a pitch with numbers you can check. Drry is not a standalone email tool and will not out-feature one. It is a paid-community platform for coaches that sends the email too: broadcasts to your whole community or to an audience your forms captured, lists and smart segments, the automatic new-content email, and, from Creator, automations that welcome, nurture and win people back. The difference from Mailchimp is what sits behind the email: your courses, community feed, events and checkout, in your own brand. More on the email side at Drry email and automations.
- Best for: coaches who are paying Mailchimp to email people about a course, a membership or a programme that lives on another platform, and want one place for both.
- Pricing structure: a free plan with no card (100 members, 500 contacts and 700 marketing sends a month), then Creator at $29 a month (25,000 contacts, 60,000 sends) and Growth at $99 (no contact cap, 500,000 sends, and email from your own domain). Members never count as contacts, and 0% of member payments on every plan, paid into your own Stripe account.
- What you give up: the email specialist features. No A/B testing, no SMS, no shop order data driving your emails, a much smaller template library, and send allowances sized for a community rather than a large newsletter. If email IS your business, pick one of the tools above.
How do you choose a Mailchimp alternative?
Whichever you pick, move the list properly: export with the status column, carry your unsubscribes across, and warm the new sender up rather than mailing everyone on day one. Our guide to moving your email list to a new platform covers each step, and email automation for coaches covers what to rebuild first. If ActiveCampaign is also on your shortlist, our ActiveCampaign alternatives guide takes the same approach.
Questions coaches ask
What is the best Mailchimp alternative?
For most small businesses leaving over price, MailerLite or Brevo: both are full email tools with a free plan, and Brevo prices mainly on how much you send rather than how many contacts you store. For creators with a newsletter, Kit. For an online shop, Klaviyo. For a coach who wants the list, the courses and the paid community in one place, Drry (we make it, so weigh that). There is no single best, because the reason you are leaving decides it.
Is Mailchimp still free?
Yes, with a small ceiling. Mailchimp's free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, 250 a day, and sending is paused if you pass either. That is enough to learn on and not much more, which is why most people searching for an alternative have just hit it.
Why is Mailchimp so expensive as your list grows?
Every paid plan is priced by contact tier, and Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts toward that tier, so the bill tracks the whole database rather than the people you can actually mail. Standard is $20/mo a month at 0 to 500 contacts and rises with every tier after that. Cleaning out old contacts helps; moving to a tool priced on sends, or on a flat plan, changes the shape of the bill.
Can I move my Mailchimp list without emailing people who unsubscribed?
Yes, if you export the right file. Export your audience with its status column, so unsubscribed and cleaned contacts are marked, and import that into the new tool rather than a list of subscribed addresses alone. Drry's import reads a status column and adds those people to your blocked list instead of importing them, so day one is not an email to everyone who already said no. Our guide to moving an email list walks through the whole thing.
Does Drry replace Mailchimp?
For a coach emailing their own community and leads, usually yes: broadcasts are on every plan including free (700 sends a month on free, 60,000 on Creator at $29 and 500,000 on Growth at $99), and automations start on Creator. For a shop, an agency or a big general newsletter, no. Drry has no A/B testing, no SMS, and no shop order data feeding your emails, and a dedicated email tool is the better buy for that job.
Does Drry charge by contact count like Mailchimp?
Not by the contact. The price is the plan: free holds 500 contacts, Creator ($29 a month) holds 25,000, and Growth ($99 a month) has no contact cap. Members of your community never count toward those contact numbers, and Drry takes 0% of what members pay you on every plan.