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Mailchimp at a Glance

We evaluated Mailchimp based on features, pricing, user experience and customer support. Here is how it did:

Mailchimp Pricing and Plans

For email marketing, Mailchimp’s pricing is dependent on the number of contacts on your list, with each plan having a cap. There is also a limit on the number of emails you can send to your contacts each month.

Here is a summary of this information across all four Mailchimp plans:

Free Plan

With a limit of 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends, Mailchimp’s Free plan is best suited for small businesses that have few contacts and send infrequent emails. It can also be a way for businesses that are unfamiliar with email marketing to get a feel for how it works and decide what they need.  

The Free plan covers email essentials, including contact profiles, basic segmentation and basic design templates. Users can set up automated abandoned cart and/or welcome emails, but they don’t get access to Mailchimp’s more advanced automation features for customer journeys.

Essentials Plan

The Essentials plan starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts. For the maximum number of 50,000 contacts, the Essentials plan is $385 per month. The plan allows for three users with owner and admin roles. 

The Essentials plan is also an upgrade from the free plan in terms of features, with access to all email templates, surveys, email scheduling, and more. It also comes with customer journeys with up to four journey points.

Standard Plan

The Standard Plan starts at $20 per month for 500 contacts and goes up to $800 per month for 100,000 contacts. It includes five users with owner, admin, author and viewer permissions. 

The plan includes all of Mailchimp’s essential and advanced features, including custom-coded email templates, multivariate testing, comparative reports and personalized onboarding. Users can also take full advantage of Mailchimp’s customer journey automation builder with up to 200 journey points.

Premium Plan

Mailchimp’s Premium plan is the most comprehensive of the paid plans. It offers similar capabilities as the Standard plan but with a larger contact list. It starts at $350 a month for 10,000 contacts and goes up to $1,600 a month for 200,000 contacts. Any more than that, and you’ll need to get a custom plan.

The Premium plan has unlimited users with owner, admin, author, manager and viewer permissions. It also comes with phone support in addition to the email and chat support offered in the Standard and Premium plans. 

Mailchimp Features

Mailchimp’s email marketing features vary in plan availability. Consider which features are most important to you as you compare plans.

How To Use Mailchimp 

With Mailchimp, you can add contacts, design emails, create customer journeys and more. Learn how to make the most of Mailchimp’s essential features below. 

Adding Contacts

Before you send your first email, you’ll need to add contacts to your Mailchimp account. If you already have a list of contacts, you have three ways to get it into the platform:

1. Import the list via a .CSV or .TXT file.
2. Copy and paste the contacts into the database.
3. Import the list from another software, such as WooCommerce, Salesforce or Shopify.

Regardless of the method you choose, you must have permission from each and every contact on the list to market to them. 

Creating Emails

Mailchimp has an easy drag-and-drop email builder. You can use it to create emails from scratch or to customize Mailchimp’s email templates. To add new information to an email, simply drag a block of your choosing (e.g., text, image, etc.) over to the email, releasing it when it’s in the right spot. To edit the block, click on it to bring up an editor on the left side of the screen.

Setting Up Automated Customer Journey Workflows

Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder makes it easy to automate emails with a drag-and-drop interface. You can automate an email to send based on a specified trigger. For example, maybe you have your customers’ birthdays in Mailchimp’s database. You can create an email that Mailchimp sends to your customers on these days. You would use the Customer Journey Builder to set the trigger as the birthday, craft the birthday message and set the action as sending the email.

Segmenting Contacts

Creating segments helps you target certain types of customers with different email campaigns. You can create segments within Mailchimp’s Segment Builder. There are plenty of templates to help you get started, such as groups for new customers and recent subscribers. Or, you can create a segment from scratch based on requirements of your choosing, such as whether or not they opened a previous email you sent.

Tracking Campaign Performance

Mailchimp’s Marketing Dashboard allows you to track all of your key metrics in one place. You can customize the metrics you want to see and look at them as of today as well as over time. You can also use this information to generate reports. 

Mailchimp Alternatives

Mailchimp is just one of the many email marketing service providers on the market. This chart compares the starter plans for Zoho Campaigns, GetResponse and Constant Contact to Mailchimp. 

Mailchimp vs. Zoho Campaigns

Zoho Campaigns is less structured than Mailchimp. You get unlimited email sends, and you pay based on how many contacts you have. Mailchimp, on the other hand, has both contact and email limits for every plan. Going over the email limit can even result in overage charges.

In terms of user experience, Mailchimp has the competitive edge. It offers a variety of sleek templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. 

Mailchimp vs. GetResponse

GetResponse and Mailchimp both offer a free plan for up to 500 contacts as well as email, automation and segmentation builders. Compared to Mailchimp, GetResponse has a more robust segmentation interface, allowing teams to get incredibly specific about the filters they use to segment their contacts. 

However, Mailchimp’s well-designed user interface sets it apart. It is easy to navigate with a drop-and-drop editor, email templates and AI Creative Assistant, making the learning curve for new email marketers minimal.

Mailchimp vs. Constant Contact

One of Mailchimp’s key advantages over Constant Contact is that its Free plan offers similar functionality to Constant Contact’s Lite plan — minus the $12-per-month price tag. Beyond the starter plans, both platforms offer a drag-and-drop email builder, a visual automation builder and campaign management. 

Constant Contact’s customer support and online community do set it apart from Mailchimp. It offers live chat and phone support for all plans and has a highly engaged community forum to get answers to questions without having to contact support. Mailchimp offers 24/7 live chat and email support in its paid plans. Only the top plan gets phone support, and the Free plan is limited to 30 days of email support.

The Bottom Line

Mailchimp is a popular all-in-one email marketing tool. The company has been in business for over two decades, creating a name for itself with its easy-to-navigate user interface. 
Mailchimp’s interface is built around a drag-and-drop editor. There is a database of email templates to choose from that you can drag and drop into the editor to customize. Plus, Mailchimp’s AI-powered Creative Assistant can turn your colors, fonts, blocks and more into custom templates automatically. 

Mailchimp’s forever-free version works for small businesses that are new to email marketing. As long as your contact list is under 500 contacts, you can use Mailchimp’s basic features for free with up to 1,000 sends a month. 

Experienced marketers can choose one of Mailchimp’s paid plans to get access to more monthly email sends and a larger contact database. These plans also have a customer journey builder and segment builder to help large e-commerce businesses drive sales.

Methodology

We at the MarketWatch Guides team spent over 100 hours testing almost 35 marketing software solutions, including Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Semrush and Google Analytics. These providers help with some or all of the following marketing disciplines:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Text/short message service (SMS)
• Email marketing

We conducted a survey in 2024 of 200 professionals who were currently using marketing software or had marketing HR software within the past year. We analyzed the results of this survey to determine the following rating criteria:

• User Experience (7%)
• Pricing (8%)
• Features (65%)
• Customer Support (5%)
• Reputation and Reviews (15%)

Visit the full marketing methodology page for more details on our rating system.