Review
We ran a real list of 4,200 subscribers through Mailchimp for four months. Deliverability held. The invoice climbed.
Still a solid, dependable email platform with the best-known name in the category. Its pricing model charges you for contacts whether they open anything or not, and that is where competitors have caught up hard.
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Email is the only marketing channel you own, which is why the choice of platform matters more than the choice of social network. We moved a 4,200-person list to Mailchimp for four months and sent seventeen campaigns, including two automated sequences, to see whether the default choice is still the right one.
The unglamorous core worked. Authentication setup was straightforward, inbox placement was consistently good, and no campaign landed in spam during the test. Open rates tracked closely with what the same list produced elsewhere, which is all you can ask.
Building a campaign is fast — the editor is mature, blocks behave, and mobile previews are accurate.
Welcome sequences, abandoned carts and date-based sends are all straightforward. Branching logic is where it feels dated next to newer tools, which let you build conditional journeys more freely and see them more clearly.
Mailchimp bills on total contacts. A subscriber who has not opened an email in two years costs the same as your best customer. At 4,200 contacts we were paying materially more than MailerLite would have charged for the same sending volume, and the gap widens as lists grow.
The counter-argument is that you get landing pages, forms, ecommerce integrations and reporting in one place. If you use those, the maths improves. If you only send a newsletter, it does not.
MailerLite is the value pick with a genuinely good editor. ConvertKit suits creators selling digital products and has stronger tagging. Brevo charges by sends rather than contacts, which suits large but quiet lists.
Dependable and easy to recommend to a business that wants everything in one familiar place. If your list is growing and email is your main channel, price the alternatives before your next renewal — the savings are real.
| Free plan | Up to 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/mo |
|---|---|
| Essentials | From $13/mo, scales with contacts |
| Standard | From $20/mo with more automation |
| Segmentation | Behaviour, tags, purchase data |
| Landing pages | Included on all plans |
| Support | Email on Essentials, 24/7 chat on Standard |
Scores from our own testing. Prices are launch RRP in USD.
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