We ran Mailchimp on two real email lists for 60 days — testing deliverability, automation, templates, and comparing against ConvertKit. Here's the honest verdict.
Mailchimp is the world's most recognised email marketing platform, with over 12 million active users. Founded in 2001 and acquired by Intuit in 2021, it offers email campaigns, automations, landing pages, social ads, and a CRM-lite audience management system. The free plan supports 500 contacts and 1,000 email sends per month — a meaningful limitation, but sufficient for early-stage founders testing email as a channel.
In 2024–25, Mailchimp significantly expanded its AI capabilities: AI-generated email copy, subject line suggestions, send-time optimisation, and a Creative Assistant that auto-generates branded email templates from your website's colors and logo.
Mailchimp is less ideal for: creators and coaches who prioritise deliverability above all (ConvertKit is stronger here), businesses with lists above 2,500 contacts (pricing becomes less competitive), and teams who need sophisticated behavioural automation (ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo are better).
Mailchimp's email designer is the most polished in the industry at free tier. 300+ professionally designed, responsive templates cover every category — welcome sequences, abandoned cart, re-engagement, newsletters, promotions, and seasonal campaigns. The drag-and-drop editor is intuitive: adding products from a connected Shopify store takes 30 seconds. No other free email tool matches Mailchimp's visual output quality.
Mailchimp's e-commerce suite is its strongest differentiator versus creator-focused tools like ConvertKit. The Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce integrations sync purchase history, product catalogues, and customer lifetime value into Mailchimp's audience profiles. This enables true e-commerce automations: abandoned cart sequences (average 6.3% purchase recovery rate in our test), post-purchase upsells, and purchase-based segmentation.
Mailchimp's Customer Journey Builder (Essentials and above) is their visual automation tool. It maps customer paths from entry point (signup, purchase, form fill) through a branching sequence of emails, time delays, and conditional splits. It's simpler than ActiveCampaign's automation engine but more visually intuitive. In our test, a 5-step welcome sequence was live in 28 minutes.
| Feature | Free | Essentials ($13) | Standard ($20) | Premium ($350) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sending & Contacts | ||||
| Contacts | 500 | 500–50k | 500–100k | 200k+ |
| Emails/Month | 1,000 | 10× contacts | 12× contacts | Unlimited |
| Send Time Optimisation | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Design & Templates | ||||
| Email Templates | Basic | 300+ | 300+ | 300+ |
| A/B Testing | Limited | 3 variants | 8 variants | Unlimited |
| Dynamic Content | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automation & E-com | ||||
| Classic Automations | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customer Journey Builder | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| E-commerce Reporting | Basic | Standard | Advanced | Full |
| Predicted Demographics | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
Mailchimp pricing scales with contact count. Prices below are for 500 contacts. A list of 10,000 contacts would cost: Essentials $110/mo, Standard $135/mo. Annual billing saves ~15%.
Common Questions