Mailchimp Alternatives in 2026: One We Measured in Full, Five We Priced, and Two We Cannot Yet Compare

People look for alternatives to Mailchimp 1,300 times a month, and they ask the same question a second way, as alternatives to mailchimp, a further 1,300 times. Another 480 search for competitors. That is a lot of people trying to leave the largest brand in the category.

Before the list, one piece of honesty about what this article is and is not.

OUR TAKE: We have measured one alternative to Mailchimp in full, and it scores 3.49 against Mailchimp's 3.32. For five more we read their own pricing pages on the same day, from the same American address, and nothing else. And the two alternatives the market asks about most are not in our catalogue at all, which we would rather tell you than paper over. What follows is organised by how much we actually know.

Why people leave, in their own words

We read one hundred Mailchimp reviews in full and sorted them by star rating. The themes that separate the unhappy from the happy are not about features.

Theme	Share of 1-2 star reviews	Share of 4-5 star reviews	Gap
Billing and charges	33%	3%	+30
Support	52%	26%	+27
Cancellation	17%	0%	+17
Locked out of the account	16%	0%	+16
Price and increases	11%	0%	+11
Interface	3%	13%	-10

So the reason to switch, if you have one, is almost certainly commercial rather than functional. The interface is the one thing reviewers name more in praise than in complaint. Keep that in mind while reading any alternatives list, including this one: if you are leaving because the software annoys you, you may be solving the wrong problem.

## The structural reason to look elsewhere

Mailchimp's published price is promotional for twelve months and the rate that follows is not published to an American reader. The vendor states the rule in its terms, naming an introductory discount "for the first 12 (twelve) months of service, starting from the date of enrollment followed by the then-currently monthly list price based on your contacts and email sends"^[8], and renders the figure as an empty slot or a bare zero in the markup it serves^[2].

Derived from the vendor's own fifteen percent, the three card prices become about fifteen twenty-nine, twenty-three fifty-three and four hundred and eleven seventy-six a month. On Premium that is seven hundred and forty-one dollars a year more than the card shows.

Two of the five rivals below publish their annual rate with the saving computed on the page. If year-two certainty is why you are reading this, that difference matters more than any feature table.

The one alternative we have measured in full

ActiveCampaign, which scores 3.49 on our scale against Mailchimp's 3.32.

It is the deeper automation product and the more expensive entry. There is no free tier at all, only a fourteen-day trial, and the cheapest published way in is fifteen dollars a month on annual billing, which is one hundred and eighty committed up front. Every price its pricing page displays is an annual rate; the monthly rates of nineteen, fifty-nine, ninety-nine and one hundred and seventy-nine appear on no page of its site.

Where it beats Mailchimp: it publishes its entire billing catalogue, including a contact ladder reaching forty-nine bands, which means you can price your own growth. Where it loses: it has no free tier, six add-ons are named on its pricing page and none is priced, and its help centre states the harsher contact rule, that every contact counts toward your limit regardless of list status. Mailchimp excludes archived and cleaned contacts from billing and documents how to use that^[15].

Its cancellation theme runs at 38% of low reviews against 4% of high ones, which is worse than Mailchimp's 17% against zero.

## Five alternatives whose pricing we read today

Same method on all five: the vendor's own pricing page, served from the United States on 8 October 2026, counting dollar amounts in the visible text.

Product	Dollar amounts in visible text	Published entry	Basis the vendor states	Annual rate published
Mailchimp	12	$13 / $20 promotional	500 contacts, 12 months	no, sales-gated
GetResponse	14	$19, or $15.58 annual	the vendor states -18%	yes
Kit (ConvertKit)	9	$33, or $390 a year	1,000 subscribers, -17%	yes
Beehiiv	6	$49	yearly billing shown	partially
MailerLite	3	$12	not stated on the card	not in visible text
Brevo	0	none in visible text	prices render client-side	no

GetResponse publishes the most figures of the six and states both terms plainly: nineteen dollars a month, or fifteen fifty-eight paid annually, with the saving marked as eighteen percent on the page. Its entry plan advertises unlimited monthly sends, which is a different pricing model from Mailchimp's send multiple.

Kit, formerly ConvertKit, is the creator-focused option and the dearest entry at thirty-three dollars a month for one thousand subscribers, or three hundred and ninety a year with the seventeen percent saving computed on the page. It prices on subscribers rather than on all contacts, which for a list with many unsubscribes is a materially different basis.

MailerLite is the cheapest published entry at twelve dollars, and publishes the fewest figures of the five that publish any. Its free tier covers a thousand subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails.

Beehiiv starts at forty-nine dollars and is built for newsletters with monetisation rather than for marketing automation. It publishes a take rate of zero percent on paid subscriptions.

Brevo publishes no dollar amount at all in the visible text of its pricing page. The figures exist in the markup and are assembled in the browser, which is the same pattern we measured on HubSpot. If you shortlist it, price it inside the product rather than from the page.

The two alternatives we cannot yet compare

This is the gap worth naming, because the market cares about it more than about anything above.

The single largest comparison anyone searches for in this category is Mailchimp against Constant Contact, at 1,600 searches a month. Second is Mailchimp against Klaviyo, at 720. Both figures are larger than Mailchimp against MailerLite at 1,180 only in the sense that Constant Contact beats it outright; Klaviyo sits just behind.

Neither product is in our catalogue. We have measured neither, and we are not going to summarise somebody else's review of them.

What makes the gap more pointed is that Mailchimp itself treats Klaviyo as its principal rival. On the vendor's own comparisons hub, Klaviyo is named seven times, ActiveCampaign and Brevo five each, Constant Contact four and HubSpot twice. The vendor's view of its competitive set and the market's search behaviour agree with each other, and our catalogue currently agrees with neither.

Both will be measured. Until they are, treat their absence from this list as our limitation rather than as a judgement about the products.

## The free tiers, compared where they can be

If you are leaving Mailchimp over cost rather than capability, the free tiers are where the comparison actually bites, and they are not built the same way.

Mailchimp's free tier is two hundred and fifty contacts, five hundred sends a month and two hundred and fifty a day, with no band above it^[5]. Reaching the limit holds your sending rather than charging you, which makes it the only plan in the product whose bill cannot move^[5]. What it gives up is long: fifteen capabilities read "Not included" in that column, among them email scheduling, A/B testing, dynamic content and the generative features^[3].

MailerLite publishes a free tier covering a thousand subscribers and 2,500 monthly emails, with all three of its email editors included. That is four times the contacts and five times the sends.

ActiveCampaign has no free tier at all. The cheapest published way in is fifteen dollars a month on annual billing, which is one hundred and eighty committed before you have sent anything.

Kit, Beehiiv and Brevo all advertise free entry points of some kind, and we did not measure their limits, because we measured only their pricing pages. We are naming that rather than guessing.

What the ratings will tell you, and what they will not

Any alternatives list you read will quote scores at you. Two cautions, both measured on this product rather than assumed.

The first is that a displayed score is not the average of the platform's own published distribution. Mailchimp shows two point five on Trustpilot from one thousand five hundred and thirty-eight reviews, while that page's own histogram averages two point nought eight. On Gartner Peer Insights it shows four point three from one thousand two hundred and sixty-eight, while its histogram averages four point four. Both platforms weight toward recency, and on these two sites the weighting pushes in opposite directions.

The second is that different platforms measure different relationships. Across the two app stores Mailchimp carries 74,983 ratings at four point nine and four point seven. Across Trustpilot it carries one thousand five hundred and thirty-eight at two point five. People like using this software and dislike buying it, and a single averaged score hides exactly that.

Four of the nine review properties we tried refused to be read, including two of the three the vendor itself cites when it claims thirty-three thousand reviews. We did not substitute figures from search snippets.

## What to check before you switch, whichever you pick

The questions that cost money are the same across all of these vendors, and the answers differ more than the feature lists do.

Which contacts are billable? Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed, and excludes archived, cleaned and deleted^[5]. ActiveCampaign counts all of them. Kit prices on subscribers. Three different bases, three different bills for the same list.

How are sends allowanced? Mailchimp gives a multiple of the contact limit, ten, twelve or fifteen times by tier^[5]. GetResponse advertises unlimited monthly sends on its entry plan. Those are not comparable numbers and no comparison table that puts them in one column is telling you the truth.

What happens at the limit? On Mailchimp's paid plans the bill grows and sending continues^[6]. On its free plan sending stops^[5]. ActiveCampaign stops sending rather than billing. Decide which failure you would rather have at nine o'clock on a campaign morning.

And how do you leave? Mailchimp publishes the cancellation path through to the final click for monthly plans, and routes annual plans through sales^[16]. That is better than the category norm and worth checking wherever you go next.

What the vendor says about its own rivals

Mailchimp runs a comparisons hub, and reading whom it chooses to argue with is more informative than reading the arguments.

Across that page Klaviyo is named seven times, ActiveCampaign and Brevo five each, Constant Contact four and HubSpot twice. So the vendor's own competitive set is led by a product the market also asks about most and that we have not measured, which is a coincidence worth stating plainly rather than quietly.

There is a second thing in that list. GetResponse, MailerLite, Kit and Beehiiv are not named at all, although four of them are the rivals whose prices we could actually read today and three of them publish more clearly than Mailchimp does. A vendor's comparison page is a marketing document; it picks fights with the products it loses customers to, not the products that undercut it.

Treat any vendor-run comparison the same way, including the ones on the alternatives' sites.

## The cost of leaving, which nobody puts in a table

Switching costs are not a feature column, and three of them are published facts about this product rather than generalities.

The refund position depends on the term you are on. Monthly: "You won't be entitled to a refund or credit from us under any circumstance on monthly Paid Marketing Plans."^[8] Annual: a sixty-day money-back guarantee^[8]. So leaving mid-year costs you the remainder of the month on one term and nothing on the other, and the term with the guarantee is the one whose price is not published.

The exit path also depends on the term. A monthly plan is closed in the app, and the vendor publishes the steps through to the final click^[16]. An annual plan is closed by contacting sales^[8].

And the promotional clock does not care what you do. Pausing does not pause it, and cancelling during the period forfeits the offer outright^[8]. If you are weighing a switch at month ten, the discount you would be walking away from has two months left on it regardless.

Those three facts together make the cheapest moment to leave this product the end of a monthly cycle in month twelve, which is also the moment the price changes.

Where Mailchimp is genuinely hard to beat

A fair alternatives article has to say this part. Mailchimp's free tier is a real tier, not a trial: two hundred and fifty contacts, five hundred sends a month, and no band above it, which makes it the only plan in the product whose bill cannot move^[5].

Its documentation is the best we have measured in this category. It publishes the expensive answers without being asked, including that the bill runs on "the peak contact total during your billing period"^[6] and that archiving takes a contact off the invoice while preserving the data and the reports^[15].

And the usability evidence is not close. Across the two app stores the product carries 74,983 ratings at 4.9 and 4.7. No alternative in this list has a comparable base of evidence that people enjoy using it.

## One thing no alternative fixes

Whichever product you choose, the contact count is the meter, and the habits that control it are yours rather than the vendor's.

Every vendor in this list prices on the size of your list, and every one of them bills you for people who will never open another email. Mailchimp is unusual in publishing two documented ways to take those people off the invoice, through archiving and through automatic cleaning of failed addresses^[15][14]. ActiveCampaign publishes the opposite rule. Kit changes the basis entirely by counting subscribers rather than contacts.

So before you migrate, work out what your list would cost at each vendor using that vendor's own definition of a billable contact. Three vendors, three totals, same people. The spread between them is usually larger than the spread between the headline prices, and it is the number the comparison tables never show.

## How to read this list in three months

Six of the seven products named here will have had the full treatment this one has: pricing read from the United States, the terms read in full, ratings counted with the shared-ownership platforms counted once, and a corpus of reviews cross-tabulated by theme. Two more, Constant Contact and Klaviyo, have to enter the catalogue first, and the demand measured here is the argument for putting them there.

When that happens this article gets rewritten rather than appended to. If you are reading it later and the comparisons still say we measured only a pricing page, the work has not landed yet and you should weight it accordingly.