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Is Mailchimp’s Free Plan Still Worth It?

If you’re using Mailchimp’s free plan to send newsletters or customer updates, you’ve probably noticed the email we all received recently. Starting February 17th, Mailchimp is cutting its free tier down to 250 contacts and 500 monthly emails. For many small businesses, that’s not just a minor change — it’s a threshold that makes the free plan almost unusable.

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This isn’t the first time Mailchimp has tightened the free plan, and it won’t be the last. Since being acquired by Intuit in 2021 for $12 billion, the platform has been systematically reducing what users get for free. What was once a generous 2,000 contacts has been cut to 500, and now down to just 250.

Let’s be clear: we’re not here to bash Mailchimp. They’re a massive platform with powerful features, and for many businesses, they’re still a solid choice. But these changes create real problems for small businesses who’ve built their email marketing around the free tier, and it’s worth understanding what’s happening and what your options are.

What’s Actually Changing

From February 17th, Mailchimp’s Free Marketing plan will have these new limits:

Contact limit: Up to 250 contacts (down from 500)
Monthly send limit: Up to 500 email sends (down from 1,000)
Daily send limit: Up to 250 email sends

The features on the Free Marketing plan aren’t changing, but here’s what that actually means: you still won’t get automation (that was removed in June 2025), you won’t get email scheduling, and every email you send will have Mailchimp branding on it.

If you currently have fewer than 250 contacts and haven’t been sending more than 500 emails per month, you won’t be affected immediately. But if your list grows beyond 250 contacts, Mailchimp will lock your account until you either archive contacts to get back under the limit, or upgrade to a paid plan.

Why Is This Happening?

The simple answer is that Mailchimp has shifted from a growth-focused strategy to a monetization-focused one. When Intuit acquired Mailchimp in 2021, the goal was to integrate it with QuickBooks, TurboTax, and their other small business tools to create an “end-to-end customer growth platform.”

The generous free plan that made Mailchimp famous was designed to capture market share and get users hooked on the platform. Once you’ve built your contact list, designed your templates, and set up your workflows, switching to another platform becomes a hassle. That’s when the pricing starts to creep up.

This is a classic business strategy: capture the market with a generous free tier, then extract value once switching costs are high. It’s not unique to Mailchimp — we’ve seen it happen with lots of software platforms after acquisition. But it does mean that what made Mailchimp attractive to small businesses in the first place is slowly being eroded.

Who Gets Hit Hardest?

The 250-contact limit is particularly problematic for:

PTAs, sports clubs, and community groups (most have more than 250 families)
Churches and non-profits (most have more than 250 members or donors)
Small businesses with modest but growing customer lists
Anyone who uses Mailchimp as a lightweight CRM

What makes this especially frustrating is that Mailchimp counts all contacts towards your limit, including people who’ve unsubscribed. So you could be paying for contacts who can’t even receive your emails.

The automation removal that happened in June 2025 was equally painful. Welcome emails for new customers, thank-you messages after purchases, event reminders — these aren’t marketing gimmicks, they’re how businesses stay connected with their customers. Without automation, someone has to manually send each message, which often means it doesn’t happen at all.

What Are Your Options?

If you’re affected by these changes, you’ve got three main paths forward:

Option 1: Upgrade to Mailchimp’s Paid Plans

Mailchimp’s Essentials plan starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly email sends. That’s $156 per year for basic email marketing.

This makes sense if:

You’re already deeply integrated with Mailchimp
You’re using other Intuit products like QuickBooks
You need the specific features that Mailchimp offers
The cost fits comfortably in your budget

The downside is that Mailchimp’s pricing continues to climb as your list grows, and you’ll be paying for all contacts (including unsubscribed ones).

Option 2: Switch to a More Generous Alternative

There are plenty of email marketing platforms that offer more generous free tiers or better value on paid plans. Here are a few worth considering:

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Free plan: Unlimited contacts, 300 emails per day (9,000 per month)
Paid plans from $18/month
Includes email, SMS, CRM, and automation
Pricing based on emails sent, not contacts stored

Brevo is particularly good value because you’re not paying for contacts sitting in your database — you’re paying for emails actually sent. If you have 1,000 contacts but only email them once a month, you’re not being charged for having 1,000 contacts.

MailerLite

Free plan: 1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month
Paid plans from $10/month
Clean, simple interface
Includes landing pages and automation

MailerLite is a solid middle-ground option. It’s cheaper than Mailchimp, easier to use, and has a more generous free tier. However, their free plan has also been reduced recently (from 1,000 to 500 subscribers), so they’re following a similar trajectory.

EmailOctopus

Free plan: 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails per month
Paid plans from $9/month
Simple, no-frills email marketing
Good deliverability

EmailOctopus is one of the most generous free plans available right now. It’s deliberately simple, which means fewer features but also less complexity.

Constant Contact

No free plan (30-day trial)
From $12/month for 500 contacts
Excellent customer support
Strong for small businesses and non-profits

Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan, but their pricing is competitive, and they’re known for having genuinely helpful customer support, something that matters when you’re setting up your first campaigns.

Sender

Free plan: 2,500 subscribers, 15,000 emails per month
Paid plans from $7/month
Includes automation and transactional emails
Good value for growing lists

Sender stands out for price and features. At $7/month for 1,000 contacts, it’s nearly half the price of Mailchimp’s comparable plan.

Option 3: Do Nothing (For Now)

If you’re currently under the new limits, you don’t have to do anything immediately. Keep using Mailchimp’s free plan until you hit the 250-contact threshold or 500 monthly email limit.

This makes sense if:

You genuinely don’t need more than 250 contacts
You’re not planning to grow your list significantly
You’re happy to clean your list regularly to stay under the limit

The risk with this approach is that you might hit the limit at an inconvenient time, like right before a big campaign launch.

What We’d Recommend

For most small businesses, switching to a platform with better free-tier limits or more transparent pricing makes sense. Here’s how we’d think about it:

If you send occasional newsletters to a modest list: Consider Brevo or EmailOctopus. Both offer generous free tiers and simple interfaces. Brevo’s model of charging per email sent (rather than contacts stored) is particularly good if you email infrequently.

If you need automation and segmentation: Look at MailerLite or Sender. Both include automation in their free or low-cost plans, which Mailchimp now charges $13/month minimum to access.

If you want rock-solid support: Constant Contact is worth the investment. They don’t have a free plan, but their support team is genuinely helpful, which matters when you’re learning email marketing.

If you’re heavily invested in Mailchimp: Sometimes the switching cost isn’t worth it, even if the price is higher. If you’ve got complex automations, integrations with other tools, or a large library of templates, staying with Mailchimp and upgrading might be the path of least resistance.

How to Make the Switch

If you do decide to move to another platform, here’s the basic process:

Export your contacts from Mailchimp Go to Audience → All contacts → Export Audience. This gives you a CSV file with all your contact data.
Choose your new platform Most platforms offer free trials. Test the email builder, check the analytics, and make sure the platform feels right before committing.
Import your contacts Upload your CSV file to the new platform. Most services will automatically match fields like name, email, and tags.
Update your signup forms If you have signup forms on your website, update them to connect to your new platform instead of Mailchimp.
Recreate key automations Build out your welcome emails, abandoned cart sequences, or whatever automations you rely on.
Send a test campaign Before going live, send a test to yourself and a few colleagues to make sure everything looks right.
Keep Mailchimp active for a month Don’t delete your Mailchimp account immediately. Keep it running for at least a month to catch any issues and make sure all your contacts migrated successfully.

The whole process typically takes a few hours to a couple of days, depending on how complex your setup is.

The Bigger Picture

Mailchimp’s free plan changes are part of a broader trend in the software industry. Platforms offer generous free tiers to build market share, then gradually tighten the screws once they’ve got a large user base locked in.

This isn’t necessarily evil, running a massive email infrastructure costs real money, and companies need to be profitable to survive. But it does mean that “free forever” plans often aren’t really forever.

The lesson here is to be strategic about where you build your business infrastructure. If a tool is critical to how you communicate with customers, you should probably plan to pay for it eventually. Free tiers are great for getting started, but they’re usually not a long-term business strategy.

What We Can Help With

If you’re not sure whether to stick with Mailchimp or switch to an alternative, we can help you work through the decision. We work with businesses on their email marketing setup regularly, and we can:

Review your current email marketing needs and recommend the right platform
Help you migrate from Mailchimp to another service
Set up your email templates, signup forms, and automations
Integrate your email marketing with your website and other business tools

Email marketing is one of the highest-ROI marketing channels available. The platform you use matters, but what matters more is actually using it consistently and strategically.