Mailchimp

What Mailchimp gets right

Brand recognition. If you have ever signed up for an email list, there is a 60% chance it was sent through Mailchimp. Almost every website builder, e-commerce platform, and form tool has a native integration. If you ask a friend to recommend an email tool, this is the name they remember.

The free tier is also still real: up to 500 contacts, basic sending. For a side project, a tiny membership, or someone who sends one email a month, that is plenty.

Where it loses

The pricing curve. Past 500 contacts, the Essentials plan kicks in at $13/mo, and that is for 500 contacts. By 1,500 contacts you are at roughly $30/mo on Essentials. By 5,000 contacts, Essentials is around $75/mo. For comparison, Beehiiv is free up to 2,500 subscribers, and Kit is free up to 10,000.

The contact-counting rules are also infamous. Mailchimp counts everyone in your audience toward your tier, including unsubscribed contacts and bounces, unless you actively archive them. Most users do not realise this until they get billed. There is a way to clean it up but it is hidden.

The product itself has aged. The editor still has the warm yellow-and-black aesthetic of mid-2010s SaaS. Modern competitors feel ten years newer. Email automations require the Standard plan, which jumps you to $20/mo+, and the visual builder is less flexible than Kit's.

Independent deliverability tests over the last year or two have consistently shown Mailchimp scoring lower than Kit, Beehiiv, MailerLite, and Postmark for transactional. That is not a fatal flaw, but it is not a selling point either.

When it still makes sense

• You are already using it everywhere and the migration cost is real.
• You have a list under 500 contacts that you do not expect to grow.
• You need an integration that only Mailchimp supports (rare in 2026, but it happens).

What to use instead

For most one-person businesses today:

• Beehiiv if you are publishing a newsletter for content monetisation.
• Kit if you have a digital product or course and want sequences and tags.
• Buttondown or Postmark Newsletters if you want a developer-shaped, simpler tool.

Verdict

If you already use it and it works, do not migrate just for the sake of it. If you are choosing a new email tool today, look elsewhere first. Mailchimp is the safe-but-mediocre option in a category that has moved on.