We make Drry, which sends email too, so read this with that in mind. Is Mailchimp free? Yes, for up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. How much does Mailchimp cost after that? At 0 to 500 contacts, Essentials is $13 a month and Standard $20, each after a 14-day free trial, and every paid plan climbs with the size of your list: at 2,500 contacts Standard is $60 a month, and at 10,000 it is $135. Premium starts at $350 a month. Every figure here was read from mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing and Mailchimp's help centre, as checked September 2026.
Mailchimp is one of the best-known email tools there is, and much of what it charges for is genuinely good: a mature editor, a huge template library, automation flows, predictive segments on the upper plans, SMS as an add-on and hundreds of integrations. The pricing is not complicated either. It is one idea, applied everywhere: you pay for how many contacts you store. The rest of this page is what that idea costs at the list sizes people actually have.
Is Mailchimp free?
Yes, and the Free plan is a real one, but it is small. It holds 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, and no more than 250 sends in a day. That is two emails a month to a full list of 250, and never more than one full-list send in a day. Go over either limit and Mailchimp pauses sending, including test emails, until you upgrade or bring the list back under.
So think of it as a trial without a clock rather than a plan to run a business on. The moment a lead magnet starts working, the list passes 250 and the question becomes which paid plan, and at what size.
How much does Mailchimp cost as your list grows?
Here is the ladder, read from the pricing page's own contact selector, band by band. Prices are per month on monthly billing. From the 10,000-contact band up, the page offers 15% off for the first 12 months to new customers and recent Free plan sign-ups; the figure after the slash is that first-year price.
| Contacts | Essentials | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 500 | $13 | $20 | From 10,000 |
| 501 to 1,500 | $26.50 | $45 | From 10,000 |
| 1,501 to 2,500 | $45 | $60 | From 10,000 |
| 2,501 to 5,000 | $75 | $100 | From 10,000 |
| 5,001 to 10,000 | $110 / $93.50 | $135 / $114.75 | $350 / $297.50 |
| 10,001 to 15,000 | $180 / $153 | $230 / $195.50 | $465 / $395.25 |
| 20,001 to 25,000 | $270 / $229.50 | $310 / $263.50 | $620 / $527 |
Two things stand out. The first band is cheap and the next few are not: going from 500 to 2,500 contacts triples Standard, from $20 to $60. And the steps keep coming: 10,000 contacts on Standard is $135 a month, about 6.8 times the 500-contact price, for the same features.
Essentials, Standard and Premium: what the price buys
- Essentials sends up to 10X your contact limit a month, with 3 seats and 3 audiences. Automation is thin: up to 4 flow steps. It is the plan for a newsletter you write and send by hand.
- Standard sends up to 12X your contact limit, adds up to 200 automation flows, branded templates, dynamic content and custom reports, with 5 seats and 5 audiences. Mailchimp calls it the best value, and for anyone who wants a welcome sequence it usually is.
- Premium starts at 10,000 contacts, sends up to 15X your contact limit, and adds unlimited seats and audiences and phone support. It is built for a marketing team rather than one person.
Sends are rarely the limit that bites. At 2,500 contacts, Standard allows 30,000 sends a month, which is a weekly email with plenty to spare. The contact count is the number that moves the bill.
Worked example: a 2,500-contact list
Worked example: a 10,000-contact list
Overages, peaks and the unsubscribed
- Overages are billed, not blocked. After the free trial, going past your contact or send limit on a paid plan adds a charge for extra blocks of contacts and sends, rather than stopping your campaigns. Mailchimp's help centre says the block size and price depend on your plan and band.
- The bill follows your peak. Mailchimp bills on the highest number of contacts you held during the billing period, so a big import you clean up a week later is still charged at the high point that month.
- Unsubscribed contacts count. Subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts are all in your total; archived, cleaned and deleted contacts are not. Archiving the people who left is routine maintenance on this pricing, not a nicety.
- The Free plan pauses instead. There is no overage on Free: sending stops until you upgrade or reduce the list.
Mailchimp also sells email credits through a Pay As You Go option for infrequent senders, and offers nonprofits a discount on request. Both are worth a look if you send a few times a year.
Is Mailchimp worth the price?
For a lot of businesses, yes. If you run a shop, Mailchimp's e-commerce integrations, SMS add-on and predictive segments earn their keep, and a mature tool with a very long integration list is worth paying for. It is also easy: the editor and templates are good enough that a first campaign takes an afternoon.
Where it gets expensive is a slowly growing list that you email to sell something hosted somewhere else. You pay by the contact for the email, then separately for the course platform, the community and the checkout the email points at. If that is you, compare the whole stack, not just the email line. Our Mailchimp alternatives guide covers the dedicated email tools, including the ones priced on sends rather than stored contacts, and moving an email list covers the export, including the status column that keeps the unsubscribed unsubscribed. Pricing the tools people usually compare it with: Kit pricing and ActiveCampaign pricing.
How Drry compares (the disclosed pitch)
Our side, stated plainly so you can discount it. Drry is not a standalone email tool; it is a community platform for coaches that sends your email too. Broadcasts are on every plan, and the price is the plan rather than the contact band:
- Free: 500 contacts and 700 sends a month, next to up to 100 members in your community. Members never count toward the contact number.
- Creator, $29 a month: 25,000 contacts and 60,000 sends a month, plus email automations.
- Growth, $99 a month: Unlimited contacts, 500,000 sends a month and a custom sending domain.
So the 2,500-contact list above is $29 a month on Creator against $60 on Mailchimp Standard, and the 10,000-contact list is still $29, or $348 a year against $1,620, with 4 emails a month to all of them inside the allowance. And the same plan holds the courses, community and 0% checkout the email is selling. See Drry email and Drry vs Mailchimp.
The trade-offs are real. Drry has no A/B testing, no SMS, no shop order data feeding your emails and a far smaller integration catalogue. If you run a store, an agency or a big general newsletter, a dedicated email tool is the better buy, and Mailchimp may well be it.
Questions coaches ask
Is Mailchimp free?
Yes, with a small ceiling. Mailchimp's Free plan holds up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 in a day, and sending is paused if you go over either limit until you upgrade or trim the list. Everything past that is a paid plan priced by how many contacts you store, as checked September 2026 against mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing.
How much does Mailchimp cost?
At 0 to 500 contacts, Essentials is $13 a month and Standard $20, after a 14-day free trial. The price rises with every contact band: at 2,500 contacts Essentials is $45 and Standard $60; at 10,000 they are $110 and $135 ($93.50 and $114.75 for the first 12 months under a 15% introductory offer). Premium starts at $350 a month at 10,000 contacts, $297.50 for the first 12 months.
Do unsubscribed contacts count toward my Mailchimp bill?
Yes. Mailchimp's help centre says subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count toward your contact total, while archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not. So 2,400 subscribers plus 400 people who unsubscribed is 2,800 contacts, which puts Standard in the 2,501 to 5,000 band at $100 a month rather than $60. Archiving the unsubscribed is the cheapest fix there is.
What happens if I go over my Mailchimp contact or send limit?
On a paid plan, nothing stops: once the free trial is over, Mailchimp bills the overage automatically, in add-on blocks of contacts and sends, and it bills on the peak number of contacts you held during the billing period, so a list that briefly spiked is charged at the spike. On the Free plan, sending is paused instead until you upgrade or reduce the list.
Is Mailchimp Standard worth it over Essentials?
If you want automated sequences, usually yes. Standard adds the fuller automation flows (up to 200, against up to 4 flow steps on Essentials), branded templates, dynamic content and custom reports, and raises monthly sends from 10X to 12X your contact limit. The gap is $7 a month at 500 contacts and $15 at 2,500. If you only send a newsletter, Essentials does that job.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Mailchimp?
Usually, depending on why you are paying. Several email tools price on sends rather than stored contacts, or have a bigger free plan. Drry, which we make, prices by plan rather than by contact band: Creator is $29 a month and holds 25,000 contacts with 60,000 sends a month, alongside your community, courses and payments. It is only the right swap if you want those too; our Mailchimp alternatives guide covers the dedicated email tools.