beehiiv vs Mailchimp: A Newsletter Platform Against an Ecommerce Sender

beehiiv and Mailchimp are compared 130 times a month in the United States, mostly by people leaving Mailchimp for a newsletter. They are built for different jobs. beehiiv's own comparison page says so directly: "Mailchimp was built for e-commerce, with support for cart abandonment workflows, sales campaigns, and promotional blasts." ^[49]. beehiiv was built for publishing.

This comparison uses beehiiv's pages for beehiiv and our own measurement of Mailchimp, taken in September 2026 from Mailchimp's pricing page served to an American reader.

The short answer

For a newsletter, beehiiv is cheaper and better equipped at almost every size above the free plans, and it publishes every price where Mailchimp publishes three. For a small business sending promotions, Mailchimp's model can still fit. On our composite scores, beehiiv is 3.61 and Mailchimp 3.46.

## Free plans

	beehiiv Free	Mailchimp Free
Audience ceiling	2,500 subscribers	250 contacts
Sends	Unlimited	500 a month, 250 a day
Support	Chatbot	Email, first 30 days
Scheduling	Yes	Not included

beehiiv's figures from its pricing file ^[3]; Mailchimp's from our September measurement of its pricing page ^[21]. beehiiv's free plan holds ten times the audience and has no send limit.

How each one charges

beehiiv prices by active subscribers across the workspace, with every tier published: Lite from $59 a month or $588 a year at 1,000 subscribers, rising to $469 a month at 100,000 ^[3].

Mailchimp prices by contacts, and to an American reader in September 2026 it published only entry prices and two ceilings. The cards showed Essentials at $13 and Standard at $20 for 500 contacts, both marked as 15% first-year promotions, and the comparison page published $385 for Essentials at 50,000 contacts and $800 for Standard at 100,000 ^[21]. Prices for the bands in between were not shown.

## Price at the sizes that can be compared

Audience	beehiiv	Mailchimp
500 to 1,000	Lite $59 monthly / $49 annual	Standard $20 promotional at 500
50,000	Lite $299 monthly / $249 annual	Essentials $385
100,000	Lite $469 monthly / $399 annual	Standard $800

At the bottom, Mailchimp's entry plan is cheaper, though only for 500 contacts and only for the first year. At 50,000 and 100,000, where both vendors publish a figure, beehiiv's Lite costs less than Mailchimp's published price on either billing period.

What beehiiv's comparison page says about price

beehiiv's own page lists beehiiv at $119 and Mailchimp at $350 for up to 10,000 subscribers ^[49]. The $119 is Lite billed annually. The $350, in our September measurement, is Mailchimp's Premium plan, its top tier, shown on the card for its smallest band ^[21]. That compares beehiiv's middle plan with Mailchimp's most expensive one. The page's 100,000 figures, $399 and $800, line up with Lite annual and Mailchimp Standard's published ceiling, which is a fairer pair.

The first year and the second, at small sizes

Below 2,500 subscribers, the comparison is between beehiiv's free plan and Mailchimp's paid ones, because Mailchimp's free plan stops at 250 contacts ^[21].

Audience	beehiiv	Mailchimp, year 1	Mailchimp, year 2 (derived)
500 subscribers	$0, Free	$240 on Standard ($20 promotional)	about $282
2,000 subscribers	$0, Free	Not published to US readers	Not published
2,500 subscribers	$0, Free	Not published	Not published

Mailchimp's year-two figure is our derivation from the promotion it states, 15% off for twelve months: $20 divided by 0.85 is $23.53 a month. Mailchimp did not publish the figure itself.

For a newsletter that does not need ecommerce features, beehiiv costs nothing up to 2,500 subscribers, with unlimited sends.

Price transparency, measured

We measure how much of its own price list each vendor publishes. beehiiv publishes all eleven tiers for both paid plans, monthly and annual, in a Markdown file generated from its plan data ^[3]. In our September measurement of Mailchimp's American pricing page, twenty contact bands were offered, and three figures were published: the entry price on each card and two ceilings on the comparison page ^[21]. The prices of eighteen bands appeared nowhere.

A buyer at 12,000 contacts can price beehiiv in one look: the 25,000 tier, $199 a month on Lite or $2,028 a year ^[3]. The same buyer at Mailchimp has to start the checkout to see a number.

Sending limits

beehiiv sends without limit on every plan ^[3]. Mailchimp ties sends to a multiple of the contact limit, which in our measurement was ten, twelve or fifteen times depending on plan. For a weekly newsletter that is rarely a constraint; for a daily one it can be.

What sending limits mean for a weekly newsletter

A weekly newsletter sends about 4.3 issues a month. On Mailchimp's free plan, 500 sends a month at 250 contacts covers two full sends; the weekly schedule does not fit ^[21]. On paid Mailchimp plans, the multiple of ten to fifteen times the contact limit covers a weekly or twice-weekly schedule. A daily newsletter, at about 30 sends a month, exceeds every Mailchimp multiple.

beehiiv has no send limit on any plan, Free included: the vendor's FAQ says you are "never penalized for sending more frequently or for emailing your full list." ^[3].

Features compared for a newsletter

	beehiiv	Mailchimp, per beehiiv's table
Web posts	Yes	Not listed
Multiple publications	Yes: 3 on Lite, 10 on Pro	Not listed
Podcast sites	Yes	Not listed
Link in bio	Yes	Not listed
Advanced web builder	Yes	Not listed
Paid subscriptions, platform share	0%	0%

The beehiiv column is confirmed in its own pricing file ^[3]. The Mailchimp column is beehiiv's claim on its comparison page ^[49]; we have not measured these Mailchimp features ourselves. Beyond the table, beehiiv offers an ad network, paid recommendations and a referral program from Lite ^[3]; Mailchimp's strength, by beehiiv's own account, is ecommerce automation ^[49].

Where Mailchimp is stronger

• Ecommerce. Cart abandonment, product recommendations and store integrations are its home ground, as beehiiv's own page concedes ^[49].
• Phone support on its Premium tier, which our measurement found as the only tier with a published phone line. beehiiv has none on any self-serve plan ^[14].

Where beehiiv is stronger

• Price transparency. Every tier published, in a machine-readable file ^[3].
• No send limits.
• A free plan ten times larger.
• Monetisation: paid subscriptions, ads, recommendations and sponsorships.
• Website, podcast and community in one account.

Promotional pricing to watch

Mailchimp's entry prices were first-year promotions in our measurement, with no published price for month thirteen; our derived estimate for Standard was $23.53 a month after the offer. beehiiv's published prices are list prices, with no first-year discount shown on the pricing file ^[3].

Migration from Mailchimp

beehiiv publishes migration guides for several platforms, Mailchimp among them. Export audiences with tags as CSV, check the whole list fits the tier, and rebuild automations, which Mailchimp structures differently. Mailchimp's audience fields map to beehiiv custom fields during import ^[9].

Support, compared

	beehiiv	Mailchimp
Free plan	Buzz chatbot	Email for the first 30 days
Entry paid plan	Support tickets	Not measured
Top self-serve plan	Priority tickets (Pro)	Phone (Premium)
Phone line	None on self-serve plans	Premium only

beehiiv's support terms from its help centre ^[14]; Mailchimp's from our September measurement ^[21]. Neither vendor publishes response times.

Our support axis scores reflect this: beehiiv 3.1, Mailchimp 2.4. beehiiv's recent reviews are more positive about support, 12 positive to 7 negative in our corpus ^[19].

A company newsletter, priced on both

Not every newsletter is a creator's. Take a software company with 8,000 customers and prospects, sending a monthly product newsletter and a five-email onboarding sequence.

On beehiiv, 8,000 subscribers sit on the 10,000 tier: Lite is $139 a month or $1,428 a year ^[3]. The onboarding sequence fits within Lite's ten live automations. Custom HTML and A/B testing are included from Lite. If the company wants to trigger emails from its own product, the Send API requires Pro, $239 a month at that tier ^{[3] [32]}. beehiiv branding stays on Lite.

On Mailchimp, the price at 8,000 contacts was not published to American readers in our measurement ^[21]. The company would have to start a checkout to compare. Mailchimp's ecommerce and transactional tools are broader, which matters if the onboarding emails depend on product events.

For a content-led company newsletter, beehiiv is the more transparent and probably the cheaper buy. For lifecycle email driven by product data, neither is the natural fit; ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo, depending on the business, are built for it.

What European readers see

In our September measurement, Mailchimp's pricing page served to a European address showed nineteen euro amounts, including both the promotional and the post-promotional rate for every tier, while the American page showed two dollar amounts in the same position ^[21]. beehiiv serves one price list in US dollars, the same in its Markdown file and on its page ^[3].

For a buyer outside the United States, Mailchimp may actually show more of its ladder than it shows Americans. For beehiiv, card charges are in dollars, so the cost moves with the exchange rate.

Templates and design control

beehiiv includes email templates, a custom builder and a website builder on every plan, with custom HTML from Lite and an advanced website builder with custom fonts on paid plans ^[3]. Removing beehiiv branding requires Pro. Mailchimp's template library is large and its editor familiar to many small businesses; we did not measure its design limits by tier.

The design difference that matters most for a newsletter is the web archive. beehiiv publishes every post to a website with its own analytics, redirects and custom pages ^[3]; beehiiv's comparison table lists web posts as not offered by Mailchimp ^[49].

A year at scale, priced

Where both vendors publish a price, the gap is large.

50,000 subscribers, weekly. beehiiv Lite costs $2,988 a year billed annually or $3,588 billed monthly ^[3]. Mailchimp Essentials, at its published ceiling of $385 a month for 50,000 contacts, costs $4,620 a year ^[21]. Essentials allows sends at ten times the contact limit, so a weekly schedule fits. beehiiv saves $1,632 a year on annual billing, $1,032 on monthly.

100,000 subscribers, weekly. beehiiv Lite costs $4,788 a year annual, Pro $7,188 ^[3]. Mailchimp Standard's published ceiling, $800 a month, is $9,600 a year ^[21]. beehiiv saves $4,812 on Lite and $2,412 on Pro.

Our arithmetic on each vendor's published figures. Mailchimp's ceilings were the only band prices it published to American readers in our measurement.

Sending email from code

Both vendors let developers send email programmatically, on different terms. beehiiv's Send API is a Pro feature, not available on Lite or in the trial after it ends ^{[32] [7]}. Mailchimp sells transactional email as a separate product priced in blocks of 25,000 emails, from $20 down to $10 a block in our September measurement, with a dedicated IP at $29.95 a month ^[21].

For a newsletter that only needs to send posts, neither matters. For a product that sends receipts and password resets, Mailchimp's transactional service is built for the job; beehiiv's Send API is built for sending newsletter content from other systems.

What each vendor recommends

beehiiv's pricing page marks Pro "Most Popular" ^[2]. Mailchimp, in our measurement, placed its "Mailchimp Recommends" badge on Premium, its $350 tier, not on Standard ^[21]. Both are the vendors' emphasis. For most newsletters the right beehiiv plan is Lite unless branding must go, and the right Mailchimp plan is the cheapest one whose send multiple covers the schedule.

Our scores, axis by axis

Axis	beehiiv	Mailchimp
Value for money	3.4	3.4
Capability and depth	3.9	3.8
Ease of use	3.9	3.8
Integrations	3.4	3.6
AI	3.6	3.0
Support and reliability	3.1	2.4
User sentiment	3.9	3.0
Docs and learning	3.7	3.8
Composite	3.61	3.46

Mailchimp leads on integrations and documentation; beehiiv on support, sentiment and AI. Value is level: beehiiv's free plan is far better, Mailchimp's entry price lower for a small paid list.

Leaving Mailchimp, step by step

1. Export each audience with tags and merge fields.
2. Remove unsubscribed, cleaned and bounced contacts; beehiiv counts suppressed addresses as active until deleted ^[10].
3. Check the total fits the beehiiv tier; an over-limit import is held whole ^[9].
4. Map fields to beehiiv custom fields during import ^[9].
5. Publish your welcome automation before importing, so new subscribers are enrolled ^[9].
6. Send to your most engaged readers first; high bounces and complaints can trigger an account review ^[8].

## Who should choose which

Choose beehiiv for a newsletter, especially one you will monetise, at any size above a few hundred subscribers.

Choose Mailchimp for a store or service business whose email is mostly promotions and transactional follow-up, particularly if you need its ecommerce automations.

Our composite scores: beehiiv 3.61, Mailchimp 3.46.