# Mailchimp Pricing in 2026: Four Numbers on the Page, and the One That Starts in Month Thirteen

> Mailchimp's real pricing: the promotional twelve months, the list price derived from the vendor's own fifteen percent, the twenty contact bands with two prices between them, and the five figures published nowhere.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/mailchimp-pricing — The Professional's Toolkit · updated 2026-10-08_

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Twelve dollar amounts appear in the visible text of Mailchimp's pricing page as it is
served to an American reader. Four of them are distinct prices. The page runs to 607,797 characters
of markup to deliver them[2].

That is not the interesting part. The interesting part is which number is missing, and that the
vendor tells you it exists.

**OUR TAKE:** Every paid figure on this page is a promotional rate for twelve months, and the rate
that follows is the one you will live with. The vendor publishes the rule for it in two separate
legal documents and renders the figure as an empty space. Below, the whole ladder as far as it is
published, the arithmetic for month thirteen marked as our derivation, and the five prices that are
not published at all.

## The four numbers on the page

Free is nought. Essentials is thirteen dollars, Standard is twenty, Premium is three hundred and
fifty[2]. A fifth figure, two hundred and ninety-nine dollars, appears in a footnote about
support rather than as a plan price.

Every paid figure carries the words "per month for 12 months". None of them is the price you pay in
month thirteen.



> 💡 **undefined:** Work out your band before you compare tiers. Essentials and Standard share the same entry band, so the seven dollars between them buys capability rather than capacity.

## What the twelve months actually mean

The vendor's standard terms set it out: an introductory promotional discount of "15%, 25%, or 50%
off the monthly base price of Mailchimp Premium, Standard or Essentials plan 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].

Three more published consequences follow from that. Cancelling during the period forfeits the
offer. Pausing does not pause it: "Pausing your account does not pause the promotional period and
the promotion will expire 12 months from when it was originally applied to your account."[8]
And changing plan does not extend it. The twelve months run on the calendar, whatever you do.

## Month thirteen, derived

The vendor publishes the percentage and withholds the figure, so the following is our arithmetic on
the vendor's own number, and we label it as such wherever it appears.

| Plan | $ on the card | $ derived list price | $ more per month | $ more per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | 13 | 15.29 | 2.29 | 27.53 |
| Standard | 20 | 23.53 | 3.53 | 42.35 |
| Premium | 350 | 411.76 | 61.76 | 741.18 |

The method can be checked, because the same page served to a European reader publishes both
figures for all three tiers:

| Plan | € promotional | € list | Implied discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | 9.95 | 11.71 | 15.03% |
| Standard | 15.31 | 18.01 | 14.99% |
| Premium | 267.92 | 315.20 | 15.00% |

Fifteen percent, three times over, on the vendor's own published pairs. The derivation is sound. It
is still a derivation.



> 💡 **undefined:** Divide your planned monthly sends by your list size. Above twelve, Standard will not hold you, and the send multiple is the reason rather than the contact count.

## The ladder, and where its ends are kept

Price is a function of the contact band. The page publishes twenty bands, from nought to five
hundred up to over a million[2]. The selector that would reveal what each band costs is served
to an American reader with the `disabled` attribute set in the markup, and to a European reader
without it.

Two ceilings are published, on the comparison page rather than the pricing page. Standard: "Up to
100,000 contacts with our $800/mo tier". Essentials: "Up to 50,000 contacts with our $385/mo
tier"[3].

| Plan | Promotional, 12 months | Contacts at that price | Published ceiling | Contacts at the ceiling | Span |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | 250 | not published | 250 | — |
| Essentials | $13 | 500 | $385 | 50,000 | 29.6x |
| Standard | $20 | 500 | $800 | 100,000 | 40.0x |
| Premium | $350 | 10,000 | not published | 200,000 | — |

Premium's thirteen hundred and fifty is not comparable with the other two. Its floor is ten
thousand contacts, which the help centre states and the page's data payload records[5]. We note
it because reading the column downward is the obvious mistake and it would be a large one.

## The rate falls, the bill multiplies

| Plan | $ per 1,000 contacts at entry | $ per 1,000 contacts at the ceiling | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | 26.00 | 7.70 | -70% |
| Standard | 40.00 | 8.00 | -80% |

Growing your list gets cheaper per contact and more expensive in total. Both are true, the page
shows you only the cheapest end, and the eighteen bands between the two ends carry no published
price at all.



> 💡 **undefined:** If you send receipts rather than campaigns, price the transactional product instead. It publishes a full six-step ladder with the unit named.

## What the money includes, in sends

The allowance is a multiple of the contact limit, and the vendor states each multiple in its own
sentence: ten times on Essentials, twelve on Standard, fifteen on Premium[5].

| Plan | Multiple | Contacts at entry | Sends included at entry | Contacts at ceiling | Sends at ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | 10x | 500 | 5,000 | 50,000 | 500,000 |
| Standard | 12x | 500 | 6,000 | 100,000 | 1,200,000 |
| Premium | 15x | 10,000 | 150,000 | 200,000 | 3,000,000 |
| Free | not a multiple | 250 | 500 a month, 250 a day | 250 | same |

The multiple also applies to overage blocks, so one block of a thousand extra contacts on Standard
brings twelve thousand extra sends with it[6].

## Going over, and what it costs

On a paid plan the service continues and the bill grows: "If your contact total or send count ever
exceeds the limit of your plan, we won't interrupt your service. Instead, you'll see an additional
charge on your monthly bill."[6] The unit of that charge is an add-on contact block. Its price
is not published.

One rule deserves to be read twice, because it changes how you manage a list: "We calculate your
monthly bill based on your feature plan and pricing tier, as well as the peak contact total during
your billing period."[6] The peak, not the closing figure. A list you grow and then prune
inside one cycle is billed at its largest.

On the free tier the mechanism inverts. Sending is held until you upgrade or cut the list[5].



> ⚠ **undefined:** The bill is computed on the peak contact total of the billing period, not the closing one.

## The levers you do have

Two statuses come off the invoice, and the vendor documents both. Cleaned contacts, meaning
addresses that have failed, do not count[14]. Archived contacts do not count either, and
archiving is a deliberate action with a published trade-off: the data is preserved, the contact
cannot be edited or marketed to, and the billing tier no longer includes them[15].

That is a documented way to reduce your own bill. It is worth knowing that the nearest comparable
product, ActiveCampaign, publishes the opposite rule.

## The annual rate, and why you probably cannot have it

Annual billing exists. Its price does not appear on any page: "For Premium and Standard 10,000+
contact plans, annual plans are available. Contact sales to learn about pricing and
eligibility."[4] So the annual term is available only above ten thousand contacts, and only
through a conversation.

Then the terms close the other door: "Annual Paid Marketing Plans are not eligible for introductory
promotional discounts or non-profit discounts."[8] A buyer chooses between a published
discounted monthly price and an unpublished annual one. Not both.

The refund position differs by term as well. On monthly plans: "You won't be entitled to a refund or
credit from us under any circumstance on monthly Paid Marketing Plans."[8] On annual plans
there is a sixty-day money-back guarantee[8]. The guarantee attaches to the term whose price is
not published.



> ⚠ **undefined:** The price of an add-on contact block is not published, and every overage is charged in them.

## Four more prices that are not published

The pay-as-you-go plan. Its page carries no amount of money at all, in 329,312 characters of
markup, while asking you to choose a credit package[10]. Nine credit quantities are published in
the help centre and no rate for any of them, because the rates live inside the product[11].

SMS credits. The SMS page publishes forty-four dollar amounts and none of them is the price of an
SMS credit block[13]. Credits are an add-on to a paid plan, they expire monthly and do not roll
over, and purchase requires approval.

Anything above two hundred and fifty thousand contacts on Premium: "Please contact sales for
further details and pricing."[4]

And customer success management, which is gated by spend rather than by tier: "Customer Success is
included with select custom plans that spend at least $299 per month with Mailchimp."[4] That
threshold sits below the three hundred and fifty dollars the Premium card displays, and it is
attached to select custom plans rather than to Premium, so the page cannot tell a Premium customer
whether it applies to them.


## The two credit products, and what a credit is

Two of the five priced lines are sold in credits rather than subscriptions, and both are worth
understanding before you assume a subscription is the only way in.

Pay-as-you-go buys email sends outright. The unit is simple: "Each email you send costs one credit,
so an email sent to 100 contacts costs 100 credits."[10] The feature set matches the middle
tier: "The Pay As You Go plan comes with the same set of features as the Essentials
plan."[10] The help centre publishes nine credit quantities, from five thousand up to
twenty-five million, and no price for any of them[11].

Two conditions attach to it. Unused credits are not refundable: "Yes, but we don't provide refunds
for unused credits."[10] And if you later move to a monthly plan, remaining credits convert to a
proprietary balance the vendor calls MonkeyRewards and are applied against the monthly bill rather
than returned[10].

SMS credits work differently again. They are an add-on to a paid marketing plan rather than a
standalone purchase, they renew monthly, and they expire: "Unused credits will expire each month
and do not roll over."[13] Purchase requires approval before it completes. SMS is not available
on the free tier at all.



> ⚠ **undefined:** The customer-success threshold of two hundred and ninety-nine dollars of monthly spend sits below the Premium card price and is attached to select custom plans rather than to Premium.

## One rule that applies to every term

Tucked into the termination section of the standard terms is a clause that applies regardless of
which product you bought: "If your account is inactive for 24 or more months, we may terminate your
account and you won't be entitled to a refund for any prepaid amounts or reimbursement for unused
Pay as You Go Credits."[8]

That is the only published expiry on pay-as-you-go credits, and it is in the terms rather than on
the pay-as-you-go page. If you buy credits as a seasonal sender, which is precisely the use the
vendor describes for that plan, two quiet years costs you the balance.

## The one complete price list

Transactional email, on a six-step ladder with the unit stated[12]:

| Blocks | Emails per month | $ per block | $ per 1,000 emails |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 20 | 1 to 500k | 20 | 0.80 |
| 21 to 40 | 500k to 1M | 18 | 0.72 |
| 41 to 80 | 1M to 2M | 16 | 0.64 |
| 81 to 120 | 2M to 3M | 14 | 0.56 |
| 121 to 160 | 3M to 4M | 12 | 0.48 |
| 161 and above | 4M and above | 10 | 0.40 |

One block is twenty-five thousand emails. Eighty cents per thousand at the bottom, forty at the
top, a span of exactly two. A dedicated sending address costs twenty-nine ninety-five a month.

It is a developer product, and it is the only part of this catalogue where you can price your own
usage from the page.


## What the page does show you, and how we know what it hides

It is worth being precise about the mechanics, because the gap between what this page contains and
what it displays is the whole story of its pricing.

The page ships a currency selector offering sixteen currencies, from Australian dollars to South
African rand, and the selected value is set on the server from the reader's own address[2]. So
there is not one pricing page, there are sixteen renderings of one, and they do not carry the same
information. Read from Ashburn, the page yields twelve dollar amounts. Read from Europe, the same
URL yields nineteen euro amounts, and the extra seven are the post-promotional rates for every
tier.

The contact selector tells a similar story. Twenty bands are published in both renderings, inside
the same HTML element. In the American copy that element carries the `disabled` attribute. In the
European copy it does not.

Neither of those is a secret, and neither required anything unusual to find. They are in the markup
the vendor sends to the browser. The point is only that the figure a buyer most needs is present in
the vendor's own system, rendered on request to some readers, and absent for others.

The comparison page is the one place where the ladder's upper end surfaces, and it is worth opening
even though nothing links to it from the cards. It publishes 225 cells across the four tiers,
counted, and two of those cells carry the only high-band prices this vendor prints anywhere[3].



## FAQ

**Is the price on the Mailchimp pricing page the price I will pay?**

For twelve months, yes. Every paid card carries the words per month for twelve months and reflects a fifteen percent introductory discount. After that the vendor applies the then-current monthly list price for your contacts and sends, and does not publish that figure to a United States reader.

**Does Mailchimp publish an annual price?**

No. Annual plans are stated to exist for Premium and Standard above ten thousand contacts, with pricing and eligibility through sales. They also cannot be combined with the introductory discount.

**How much does Mailchimp cost at 50,000 contacts?**

Three hundred and eighty-five dollars a month on Essentials, which the comparison table publishes as that tier's ceiling. Standard's published ceiling is eight hundred dollars at one hundred thousand contacts. Neither figure appears on the pricing page.

**Can I get a refund from Mailchimp?**

Not on a monthly plan, where the terms state no entitlement to a refund or credit under any circumstance, with discretionary exceptions. Annual plans carry a sixty-day money-back guarantee claimed through billing support.

## What to do with all this

Work out your contact band before you compare tiers. On the lower half of the ladder the band moves
the price more than the tier does, and Essentials and Standard share the same entry band, so the
seven dollars between them buys capability rather than capacity.

Then price month thirteen yourself, using the vendor's fifteen percent, and budget that figure
rather than the one on the card. For Premium the difference is seven hundred and forty-one dollars
a year.




## Sources

[1] Mailchimp vendor pricing page, read from the United States — https://mailchimp.com/pricing/ (2026-10)
[2] Mailchimp vendor plan comparison table — https://mailchimp.com/en/pricing/marketing/compare-plans/ (2026-10)
[3] Mailchimp vendor marketing-plans page — https://mailchimp.com/en/pricing/marketing/ (2026-10)
[4] Mailchimp vendor documentation on plans — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-mailchimp-pricing-plans/ (2026-10)
[5] Mailchimp vendor documentation on additional charges — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-additional-charges/ (2026-10)
[6] Mailchimp vendor documentation on pricing tiers — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/mailchimp-pricing-tiers/ (2026-10)
[7] Mailchimp standard terms of use — https://mailchimp.com/en/legal/terms/ (2026-10)
[8] Mailchimp promotional offer terms — https://mailchimp.com/en/legal/promotional-offer-terms/ (2026-10)
[9] Mailchimp vendor pay-as-you-go page — https://mailchimp.com/pricing/pay-as-you-go (2026-10)
[10] Mailchimp vendor documentation on pay-as-you-go — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-the-pay-as-you-go-plan/ (2026-10)
[11] Mailchimp vendor transactional email page — https://mailchimp.com/pricing/transactional-email (2026-10)
[12] Mailchimp vendor SMS page — https://mailchimp.com/pricing/sms-marketing (2026-10)
[13] Mailchimp vendor documentation on cleaned contacts — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-cleaned-contacts/ (2026-10)
[14] Mailchimp vendor documentation on archiving — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/archive-unarchive-contacts/ (2026-10)
[15] Mailchimp vendor documentation on closing an account — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/close-an-account/ (2026-10)
[16] Mailchimp vendor about page — https://mailchimp.com/en/about/ (2026-10)
[17] Trustpilot, displayed score and distribution — https://www.trustpilot.com/review/mailchimp.com (2026-10)
[18] Gartner Peer Insights, published histogram — https://www.gartner.com/reviews/product/ailchimp-594139131 (2026-10)
[19] TrustRadius, structured data — https://www.trustradius.com/products/mailchimp/reviews (2026-10)
[20] Apple App Store listing — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mailchimp-email-marketing/id366794783 (2026-10)
[21] Google Play listing — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mailchimp.mailchimp (2026-10)