Mailchimp’s Pricing Plans: Are They Worth it?

Mailchimp was founded back in 2001 when email marketing was just starting in the digital world.

In the beginning, Mailchimp offered templates and mailing lists that made it a lot easier to get in touch with your audience.

As automated marketing evolved, Mailchimp expanded to a fully automated email service provider (ESP).

Today, the platform claims to specialize in creating, sending, and tracking email campaigns.

From newbie business owners to professionals, Mailchimp suggests that its email automation is for everyone.

But what do they have to offer, and what will you get for the pretty penny you pay for their services?

It’s time to find out!

While Mailchimp has 3 paid plans, it also offers a Free plan.

The Free plan includes basic features such as marketing CRM, a website builder, a single domain, forms, and landing pages.

Let’s see what features the Free plan has to offer.

Mailchimp also offers marketing features in the Free plan such as:

Mailchimp offers basic pre-built templates for both emails and landing pages in their Free plan.

The choice of email templates is pretty limited though, with access to only a few of the templates out of the 100+ that you would get in the paid plans.

If you have some coding experience and want to customize your templates, you won’t be able to in the Free plan, you’d need to upgrade.

You can segment your audience based on data, tags, group preferences, and other information collected by Mailchimp, including campaign activity and location.

This is something you can do with most of the email marketing tools.

With Mailchimp’s Free plan, you’ll be able to send targeted emails to different members of your audience and monitor their behavior.

This is one of the most useful features Mailchimp offers, but as with the other features in the Free plan, it’s limited, as you can only work with one audience at a time.

Knowing your prospects’ names and email addresses doesn’t tell you a lot about them.

This is where Mailchimp’s tags come in handy — you simply add the relevant tags to know exactly who you’re talking to.

You can use this CRM feature not only for marketing but also to improve customer satisfaction and up-sell customers.

The contact profile feature gives users an in‑depth view of each person in their audience — it’s simple and accessible from any device.

Of course, you won’t be able to get the full functionality that can help you sell on autopilot, but it’s a decent start.

Mailchimp offers a free website builder and a single domain.

So in addition to building email campaigns and landing pages, users can also get their website up and running with Mailchimp and then synchronize their opt-ins.

You simply choose from the available templates and then customize them to suit your brand.

The website builder and domain is nice to have in the Free plan, but you’d be limited to the templates Mailchimp offers.

When users opt for the Free plan, they won’t be able to automate their email marketing as extensively as with paid plans, but they’ll still be able to create email sequences such as:

Unfortunately, in Mailchimp’s Free plan, you won’t get the following features:

Mailchimp’s Essentials plan is the entry-level plan, as it offers just the basics.

For $9.99 a month you're limited to 500 contacts, and you'll get just a few extras that aren’t available in the Free plan.

Let’s explore the features on offer.

With the Essentials plan, you’ll get access to the complete gallery of over 100 Mailchimp templates for emails, landing pages, and websites.

You’ll also be able to remove Mailchimp logos from your email materials and customize your branding freely.

Unlike in the Free plan, the Essentials plan allows you to create 3 audiences, and you can personalize each of them.

You’ll be able to use tags and filters to define your audience members and create contact profiles.

Not only will you be able to segment based on demographic data, but you’ll also be able to personalize based on campaign engagement, app engagement, and purchase behavior.

For example, you can send email blasts with specific offers for leads (offering them a cheaper product), while also up-selling existing customers with more expensive products.

However, you still won’t be able to create automation sequences based on behavior.

A/B testing campaigns test different versions of a single action to see how small changes can have an impact on your results.

With this feature in the Essentials plan, you can choose what aspects of your email marketing you want to test, like:

According to Mailchimp, the Standard plan is the most recommended out of all the plans.

In addition to the features from the Free and Essentials plans, you’ll also get a few extra features with the Standard plan.

The starting price for the Standard plan is $14,99/month for up to 500 contacts, and you’ll be able to have up to 5 audiences.

If you have 2,500 contacts, the price will go up to $49,99/month, and if you want to get in touch with 15k, the price jumps to $159/month.

If you get more than 100k subscribers, you’ll have to upgrade to a different plan.

What do they offer for that price?

This is perhaps the most important feature included in the Standard plan.

Behavior-based automation allows you to reach your customers at the right moment for them to convert, purchase, or strengthen their relationship with your brand.

So instead of scheduling your newsletters, you can create automation sequences that adapt to your customers’ schedules.

For example, you can send them an automated email once they try a new feature or browse through a specific product category on your page.

You can also create powerful IF/THEN automation rules based on different filters to set up your conversion, onboarding, nurturing, and all other kinds of email marketing campaigns.

The predicted demographics feature enables users to make an educated guess about the gender and age of their contacts.

This is a useful addition, as it allows marketers to tailor their marketing efforts to suit specific, targeted audiences.

You can also calculate customer value from your historic data, as well as determine how likely they are to purchase your offers.

This feature can have a bit of a learning curve, but it comes in handy for scaling.

You’ll be able to schedule your social post to publish at a time that works for you and your followers.

This is only available in the Standard plan, and it also offers the option to pause a post — this allows you to pause a social post until the scheduled publish date and time.

The Standard plan’s dynamic content feature allows you to automatically personalize your emails based on different customers’ preferences.

For example, if you have different audiences, each audience will see content catered specifically to them.

This means you only have to launch a single email campaign, create two types of content, and the dynamic content feature will do the rest.

Within this feature, you’ll be able to use Mailchimp’s send-time optimization and time-zone delivery function effectively.

Mailchimp’s Premium plan is suitable for the pro marketers who need more advanced personalization and email marketing automation to scale their business.

This plan starts from $299/month for up to 10,000 contacts and unlimited audiences, but users will have to pay more as contacts increase.

Now it’s time to answer the burning question: are Mailchimp’s pricing plans worth it?

Well, that depends.

Each of the plans have restrictions on email sending and the number of audiences (lists) you can segment.

So if you plan on increasing your contact list, you’ll have to think ahead a little.

The Free plan is capped in terms of personalization, templates, and automation. So if your business grows to a larger scale, it should be considered a temporary launching pad.

For most users, the paid plans would be more suitable. In the lower price range, the Essentials plan offers the bare basics but with limited automation rules.

The Standard plan, recommended by Mailchimp, has contact and email sending limits which make it less than ideal for large-volume email senders.

That being said, Mailchimp’s Premium plan offers some advanced bells and whistles, like multi-variate testing and priority phone support, but we’re not so sure that justifies the sky-high price of $299/month.

Mailchimp’s pricing plans require some extensive thought, and if you’re not quite convinced, we’ve got a powerful alternative in store.

Mailchimp has moved from being just an email tool to providing other automated marketing features, but it's still not an all-in-one marketing platform by nature, and getting access to everything you need on Mailchimp is extremely pricey.

Systeme.io offers an all-inclusive package, with every single feature you'll ever need to run your online business, all under one roof!

We offer a simple, effective, and free all-in-one platform for all of your business-building needs, with an intuitive user interface that’s easy to use.

Let’s take a look at what you’ll get when you switch to systeme.io.

A complete sales funnel is the key to building relationships with your customers that will last and make an impact.

With systeme.io’s powerful sales funnel builder, you can:

Combine our powerful sales funnel builder with our smooth email automation feature, and you’ll be able to:

Don’t have a website yet? Don’t sweat it! We’ll get your website up and running in minutes.

Taking your leads on their purchase journey with an appealing website just got a whole lot easier.

Our website builder enables you to:

We’ll make up for what Mailchimp lacks, and that’s an affiliate marketing feature.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn some serious income, that’s why we’ve made it simple.

After you sign up for our Free plan, you get an affiliate ID and can start earning commissions from referrals immediately.

With our affiliate marketing feature, you’ll be able to:

If you’ve got some course content you want to get out into the world, you can easily manage your gated content with our online course creator.

You won’t have to worry about the small things with our simple interface and our effective templates.

Rest assured that your online courses will be organized and delivered on time to your students. With this feature, you’ll be able to:

Automated marketing is the cornerstone of a successful online business, and in this fast-paced digital world, you’ll want to make the most of this feature.

Whether you’re a newbie or a pro, our automation features will allow you to:

Our price plans are made to fit your business’ budget as it grows, and each plan comes with the features your business needs.

All of our plans, including our Free plan, come with these guaranteed features: