Home › Blog › Best Mailchimp alternatives
Updated September 21, 2026 · Prices verified from vendor pricing pages, September 2026 · Affiliate disclosure
Mailchimp is a good product with a billing structure that punishes exactly the moment you succeed. We read its official pricing page (both the US and EU versions) and three things stand out.
None of this makes Mailchimp unique — every platform on this page has a catch, and we name each one. It means the honest comparison is not "who's cheapest" but "whose catch costs the least at your list size."
Every figure below comes from the vendor's own pricing page, checked September 2026. Where billing regions differ, we say so.
| Tool | Verified entry price | Free plan | The catch we'd flag first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kit | Creator $33/mo (or $390 billed yearly) at 1,000 subscribers | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Downgrades are manual — you email support to shrink your bill after cleaning your list |
| Brevo | Starter from $9/mo (USD) | Yes | Regional pricing: the same plans are cheaper in EUR (Starter €7), so your bill depends on where the vendor thinks you are |
| ActiveCampaign | Starter from $15/mo, billed annually, at 1,000 contacts | No (14-day trial) | No monthly rates published anywhere — monthly billing costs roughly 20% more and only appears at checkout |
| MailerLite | Comfort from $12/mo | Yes | "Starting" prices are the smallest subscriber band; the ladder climbs quickly past it |
| GetResponse | From $19/mo for 1,000 subscribers, unlimited sends | Trial-based | The "from $13.30/mo" figure in its own promotions is the discounted 12-month prepay rate, not the monthly bill |
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is built for newsletter and audience businesses, and its pricing page reads like a rebuttal to Mailchimp's: a free plan up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited landing pages, unlimited forms, unlimited broadcasts, with no sending limits on any plan. Paid plans start at $33 per month (Creator) or $66 per month (Pro) at 1,000 subscribers on monthly billing — $390 and $790 respectively billed yearly, about 17% less.
The catches: selling digital products carries a 3.5% + $0.30 transaction fee per sale on the plans we checked, and plan downgrades are manual — Kit's own FAQ says you must email support after cleaning your list to lower your bill. Automatic upgrades happen the moment you cross a tier, which is convenient mid-launch and expensive if you import a stale list. If your business is a newsletter, a course, or an audience, Kit's free tier alone makes it the first alternative to try.
Brevo's official pricing data lists Starter at $9 per month and Standard at $18 per month (USD), with a free plan beneath them. Two things make Brevo interesting beyond the sticker: the USD figures come from a published machine-readable price feed rather than a marketing image, and the same feed shows the EU versions of the same plans priced at €7 and €15 — a regional gap worth knowing before you sign up from anywhere in Europe.
Brevo's model prices by email volume rather than punishing every new contact, which is why it tends to stay cheap as a list grows. The trade-off is that its cheapest tiers are send-capped rather than feature-complete — check the daily send allowance against your campaign calendar before you commit.
ActiveCampaign is what Mailchimp users graduate to when they need real multi-step automation and CRM pipelines. Its official plan summary lists Starter from $15, Plus from $49, Pro from $79, and Enterprise from $145 per month — all at the 1,000-contact band, all billed annually.
Here's the part worth pausing on: ActiveCampaign's pricing page publishes no monthly-billing rates at all. Monthly checkout runs roughly 20% above the annual figure, but you only see that number when you're already in the purchase flow. Starter also limits each automation to 5 actions and 1 user — the moment your workflows need branching or a second seat, you're on Plus. And add-ons (an AI suite around $50 per month, SMS credits, extra users) stack outside the plan price. Buy ActiveCampaign for the automation depth, but budget from the checkout screen, not the headline.
MailerLite's own copy prices the Comfort plan from $12 per month — the full toolset sized for solopreneurs and small teams — and the Power plan from $25 per month for people running several funnels and revenue streams. A free plan sits below both. The interface is lighter than ActiveCampaign's and cheaper than Mailchimp's equivalent tier, which is exactly why small operations keep landing on it.
The catch is the one common to contact-tier platforms: "$12/month" is the first rung of a ladder that climbs with your list. Budget for the tier you'll be on at year-end, not the one you're on today — and note that a cleaned list can lag your billing tier if you don't manage it.
GetResponse prices by list size with unlimited sending: from $19 per month for 1,000 subscribers on monthly billing, with 18% off for 12-month prepay. Its own promotional pages advertise "from $13.30/mo" — that's the discounted prepay figure, and it's the number that will follow you around comparison tables. Both numbers are official; the monthly one is what you'll actually pay month-to-month.
Its differentiator is the built-in webinar and funnel tooling: if your marketing runs on live events and multi-step funnels, bundling them replaces a second subscription. If it doesn't, GetResponse is simply the middle-priced option here.
If you'd rather not move, here's the honest picture from Mailchimp's official pricing page. On the EU billing page we checked, Essentials starts at €11.41 per month (with a 500-email monthly base at the smallest tier), Standard at €17.55 per month (6,000 emails monthly), and Premium at €307.11 per month (150,000 emails) — with a free plan capped at 250 contacts. US-billing figures are set per region and only finalize at signup.
Mailchimp remains the strongest all-in-one for commerce-heavy teams, and Premium includes phone support nobody else on this list matches. The math you should run is Mailchimp's bill at your January contact count versus the alternative's — not today's.
Every price on this page comes from the vendor's own pricing page or published plan documentation, verified in September 2026 and dated here. When a vendor's promotional figure and its billing figure differ, we print both and tell you which is which. Where a number couldn't be verified from an official source, it isn't here. Our methodology page explains the full process, and our disclosure explains how affiliate commissions do and don't touch what we publish.
Mailchimp's official pricing page caps the free plan at 250 contacts and pauses sending when you cross the limit — small enough that most working lists outgrow it immediately. Paid tiers then sit on a contact ladder, and exceeding a contact or send limit triggers automatic overage billing on paid plans.
Brevo's Starter plan starts at $9 per month (USD, official pricing page, September 2026), undercutting Mailchimp's EU-billed Essentials (from €11.41/month) at the smallest tier. MailerLite's Comfort plan is close behind from $12 per month. Both are full platforms, not trials.
Kit — free up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and broadcasts, 40 times Mailchimp's free-contact cap. Kit earns instead from Creator plans (from $33/month) and per-sale fees on digital products.
The advertised $15/$49/$79 are billed-annually rates at 1,000 contacts. Monthly billing runs roughly 20% higher and appears only at checkout — the pricing page publishes no monthly rates — and add-ons such as the AI suite (around $50/month) and SMS credits stack on top. Treat the checkout figure as the real one.
Teams whose commerce stack (product sync, cart recovery, dashboards) is deeply wired into Mailchimp, and accounts large enough to be on custom-quoted plans. Migration costs in both cases can exceed the monthly savings.