How Mailchimp pricing works
Mailchimp prices by the number of contacts on your list, not by how many emails you send. Every plan includes a send limit set as a multiple of your contacts, ten to fifteen times depending on the tier. The headline prices you see are for a 500-contact list, which is why the entry point looks cheap and the real cost arrives as your list grows.
The plans
- Free covers up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends a month, with Mailchimp branding. Fine for testing, not for a real list.
- Essentials starts around $13 a month at 500 contacts, adding scheduling, A/B testing, and basic support.
- Standard starts around $20 a month at 500 contacts and is the tier most businesses actually need. The visual automation builder, send-time optimization, and dynamic content live here.
- Premium starts around $350 a month, with advanced segmentation, phone support, and more users.
What you actually pay at 10,000 contacts
At 10,000 contacts, Standard runs about $135 a month. The send allowance is generous, so volume is rarely the problem. The list is: at 50,000 contacts the same plan climbs well past $300 a month, and you can pay more next year for sending the exact same campaigns, simply because more people subscribed.
Three things to watch
- Unsubscribed contacts still count toward your bill unless you archive them by hand.
- Transactional email is separate. Receipts and password resets run on Mandrill, a different product with its own pricing, around $20 per 25,000 emails.
- One brand per account. Running several brands means several subscriptions.
The entry price is not the price. With contact-based billing, your bill grows with your list whether or not you send more.
How SmartMailing compares
SmartMailing prices by emails sent, not by contacts, so a growing list does not raise your bill on its own. Marketing and transactional run on one stack under the same brand, there is a per-brand deliverability score you can read before sending, and multiple brands live under one account. You can import your Mailchimp list in a click and see your own brand running on it for free.