Mailchimp Essentials costs $13, $26.50, $45 and $75 a month at 500, 1,500, 2,500 and 5,000 contacts, and Standard costs $20, $45, $60 and $100, in USD list prices. Essentials suits regular newsletters and simple automations; Standard adds longer automations, more seats and a higher send limit.
Those are the USD figures in Mailchimp's own price data behind the pricing page on 5 November 2026, and the contact slider jumps straight between those four sizes: there is no step between 2,500 and 5,000. Mailchimp prices regionally, so a screen in another country can show different figures and currencies. Use the table to plan, then read the total on the page for your own contact count before you pay.
The price table at four list sizes
| Contacts | Essentials a month | Standard a month | Standard premium over Essentials | Essentials sends a month | Standard sends a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $13 | $20 | $7 | 5,000 | 6,000 |
| 1,500 | $26.50 | $45 | $18.50 | 15,000 | 18,000 |
| 2,500 | $45 | $60 | $15 | 25,000 | 30,000 |
| 5,000 | $75 | $100 | $25 | 50,000 | 60,000 |
The send limits come from the compare-plans page: Essentials allows 10 times your contact limit, Standard 12 times, and Premium 15 times. Free is capped at 500 sends a month and 250 a day on a 250-contact list. Over a year the Standard premium is $84 at 500 contacts, $222 at 1,500, $180 at 2,500 and $300 at 5,000.
Cost per contact, which is the number that falls
Mailchimp's price rises with the list but not in a straight line. Dividing each price by the contact count shows where it gets cheaper to hold a contact.
| Contacts | Essentials per contact a month | Standard per contact a month |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | 2.6 cents | 4.0 cents |
| 1,500 | 1.8 cents | 3.0 cents |
| 2,500 | 1.8 cents | 2.4 cents |
| 5,000 | 1.5 cents | 2.0 cents |
The jump from 500 to 1,500 contacts triples the list but only doubles the Essentials bill. The more useful reading is the reverse: a list that stalls at 1,000 contacts is paying more per person than one that reaches 2,500. If you are inside a tier, adding contacts is almost free until you cross the next threshold, which argues for cleaning the list before it crosses rather than after.
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Buy nowWhat Standard buys that Essentials does not
The compare-plans page separates the two on a handful of limits that matter to a small business.
- Automation length. Essentials includes flows up to four steps; Standard allows up to 200 steps per flow with branching. A welcome email, a reminder and a follow-up fit in four; a flow that waits, checks a purchase, branches and re-engages does not.
- Seats. Essentials includes three, Standard five.
- Branded and dynamic content. Branded templates and dynamic content are listed on Standard and Premium, not Essentials.
- Sending custom-coded templates. Standard can create and send; Essentials can create but must upgrade to send.
- Intuit Assist. Mailchimp lists the generative AI features as a no-cost add-on on Standard and Premium only, and notes it is in beta for certain users in select countries and in English only. Essentials does not list it.
- Onboarding. Standard includes one personalised consultation in the first 90 days.
The practical rule: stay on Essentials until you hit one of these limits, and only then pay the premium. The premium is smallest at 500 contacts ($7) and largest at 5,000 ($25), so the extra features are cheapest to buy while the list is small.
A worked choice for a bakery at 1,500 contacts
An illustrative bakery has 1,500 contacts from a shop sign-up sheet and website form. It sends a monthly newsletter and a welcome email, and wants to run a "birthday month" offer.
Essentials at 1,500 contacts ............ $26.50 a month ($318 a year)
Standard at 1,500 contacts .............. $45.00 a month ($540 a year)
Difference .............................. $18.50 a month ($222 a year)Each need maps to a plan. A monthly newsletter and a welcome email are two simple campaigns that fit in four steps. A birthday-month offer is a date-based automation: trigger on a birthday field, send one email, done. That also fits. Essentials works, and the $222 a year difference is better spent on a better offer. If the bakery later wants a flow that branches on whether a customer ordered in the last 30 days, that is the point where Standard earns its premium.
What 2,500 contacts costs a solar installer
An illustrative solar installer has 2,500 enquiry contacts, mostly people who asked for a quote and never booked. It sends one newsletter a month and a quarterly "is your system performing?" email, so 6 sends a month at most per contact. Both plans' send limits (25,000 and 30,000) are far above 15,000 actual emails a year, so the limit is no concern.
Needs: 1 newsletter, 1 quarterly check, a 5-email nurture for new enquiries
Essentials: flows capped at 4 steps -> nurture must be cut to 4 emails, $45 a month
Standard: 5-email nurture with a wait-until-opened branch, $60 a monthThe nurture series is the deciding factor. If four emails say what five did, Essentials saves $180 a year; if the branch matters (send the quote reminder only to people who opened the first email), Standard pays for itself if it recovers a single job. That is a business judgement about a single customer's value, not a software one.
A growing list: what happens when you cross a tier
Mailchimp's price follows contact count, so growth makes the bill step up. Suppose a bicycle repair shop adds 100 contacts a month from its repair counter, starting at 1,400 on Essentials.
| Month | Contacts | Tier | Bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1,400 | 1,500 | $26.50 |
| 1 | 1,500 | 1,500 | $26.50 |
| 2 | 1,600 | 2,500 | $45 |
| 10 | 2,400 | 2,500 | $45 |
| 11 | 2,500 | 2,500 | $45 |
| 12 | 2,600 | 5,000 | $75 |
Mailchimp's slider has no step between these sizes, so the jumps are as large as they look. Two lessons follow. The bill jumps by $18.50 the moment the list passes 1,500, a 70% rise for 100 more people, and by $30 when it passes 2,500, a 67% rise. And the contact count is the number Mailchimp counts, which is not your count of customers who want emails: Mailchimp's help centre says subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count towards the total, while archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not. Archive the ones you no longer email so you are not paying to store them.
How much list-cleaning is worth before you cross a threshold
Suppose the repair shop sits at 1,560 contacts. Moving to the 2,500 tier costs $18.50 more a month, $222 a year. If 80 of those contacts have bounced, never opened an email in a year or asked to leave, removing them drops the list to 1,480 and keeps the bill at $26.50. That is $222 a year saved by an hour of cleanup, plus better deliverability because you stop sending to dead addresses.
Do this before a campaign and not after, because contacts are counted when you hold them, not when you mail them, and Mailchimp bills on the peak contact total in the billing period, so a clean-up after the peak does not lower that month's bill. A quick list-hygiene pass: remove hard bounces, remove addresses that have not opened in 12 months after one last win-back attempt (see win-back segments), and never import a purchased list.
The free trial and the intro discount, read carefully
The pricing page offers a 14-day trial of Standard, from which you can cancel or downgrade to Essentials or Free. After the trial it bills the then-current fee, and Mailchimp says it will send billing reminders before the trial ends. Separately, businesses with 10,000 or more contacts can save 15% for the first 12 months, which is irrelevant at the list sizes in this tutorial but matters if you plan to grow past that.
A sensible trial plan is to build the actual automation you want in the 14 days, then decide. If the flow needs more than four steps, you have your answer. If it fits, downgrade to Essentials before the first bill.
Free plan limits, so you know when to leave it
Free allows one seat, one audience of up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month with a 250-a-day cap. The compare-plans table lists automation flows as not included (its automations section calls them a free preview), and email scheduling is not included either. Mailchimp's help centre says going past 250 contacts puts a hold on sending until you upgrade or cut the list, so a list of 260 contacts forces a paid plan, as does any need to schedule a send. A shop with 200 contacts and one email a month is the ideal Free user. The comparison with other free tools is in what the free plan's limits cover.
Comparing Mailchimp's price with the alternatives at the same size
A fair test is to price your exact list at two or three competitors, not to trust a headline. At 5,000 contacts, Mailchimp Essentials at $75 or Standard at $100 can be compared with Brevo at the same size, or with a newsletter platform if your emails are essays more than offers, as covered in beehiiv against Mailchimp. Include the cost of moving: exporting contacts, rebuilding templates and re-checking consent takes an afternoon at least, and consent records are the part that cannot be skipped.
An overage mistake that costs a month's budget
The expensive error is a one-off import. A bakery owner uploads 1,200 contacts from an old spreadsheet in the middle of the month, taking a 1,500-contact account to 2,700. Mailchimp does not stop the account; it adds a charge for add-on contact blocks above the 1,500 limit, and its help centre says the bill reflects the peak contact total stored that month, even if contacts are deleted later. The 2,700 contacts are also past the 2,500 tier, so moving up to end the extra charges means the 5,000 tier at $75 a month, almost three times the $26.50 the bakery budgeted, for a list where only 300 of the new contacts were ever emailed.
Avoid it by importing in batches after a clean-up, checking the audience count after every import, and reading the billing page the same day. If you do overshoot, archive the contacts you will not email at once; Mailchimp says a temporary rise needs the lower total kept for a full billing cycle to avoid further additional charges. Ask support what the next bill will be.
The break-even sum for a paid plan
A plan is worth paying for when the extra revenue it enables exceeds its cost. Try this on your own figures. Illustrative inputs: Essentials at 1,500 contacts costs $26.50 a month. If your average order is $35 and your margin is 40%, each order earns $14 in margin, so the plan pays for itself with two extra orders a month. Standard at $45 needs just over three. Most small lists clear that if the emails are relevant, and fail it if they are not, so spend your effort on the offers and not the plan.
The same logic argues against paying for features you will not use. A Standard flow that no one builds is $222 a year (at 1,500 contacts) of waste. Mark a date three months after you choose a plan and look at which features you opened.
Four steps, used well: a welcome flow on Essentials
Because Essentials caps flows at four steps, it helps to see what four steps can do. An illustrative bakery welcome flow for new sign-ups looks like this.
Step 1 Send "Welcome, here is 10% off your first order" (immediately)
Step 2 Wait 3 days
Step 3 Send "Our three most-ordered loaves and how to order"
Step 4 Send "Birthday club: tell us your birthday for a free pastry" (after 5 days)That is a complete onboarding series. Whether a delay counts as one of the four steps is not something I could confirm on the pricing page, so test it with your own flow in the free trial before relying on it. If your design does not fit, restructure it as two flows rather than assume Standard is the only way.
How many emails will you actually send?
Send limits are the part of the plan owners rarely check, because they look big. Do a quick sum before assuming. A 1,500-contact list on Essentials allows 15,000 sends a month, and Mailchimp counts test and transactional emails towards that limit. Sending to everyone weekly is 6,000 a month, well inside the limit. Adding two automated emails per new subscriber and a monthly segment email to 500 people adds perhaps 1,500 more. Total: 7,500 against a 15,000 cap.
The cap matters at the extremes. A list of 500 contacts with Free's 500-sends cap fits only one email a month; the same list on Essentials (5,000 sends) fits ten emails to everyone. That alone, not any feature, is often the reason a growing shop leaves Free.
Reading regional price differences without being fooled
Mailchimp prices by region. A person opening the page from a different location can see another currency and a lower or higher figure, and the figures I use here are Mailchimp's USD list. Two habits help. First, always read the price after choosing your contact count on the live page, with the currency shown. Second, if the figure on your screen is lower than this tutorial's, do not assume this tutorial is wrong; your account's regional list is the one you pay.
When comparing against a competitor, compare in the same currency and the same billing period. A monthly price against an annual one is the quickest way to misjudge a tool.
Premium, and why this tutorial stops at Standard
Mailchimp also sells Premium, which carries a 15-times send limit, five roles, unlimited users, phone support and four onboarding sessions. It is aimed at larger lists and teams; the page lists a custom route for very large lists. For a list under 5,000 contacts you are very unlikely to need it, so the real choice is Free, Essentials or Standard. If a salesperson steers you to Premium at 2,500 contacts, ask which specific feature you would use in the next 90 days.
A solar installer's year, priced on both plans
To finish with a full-year view, take the illustrative solar installer from earlier at 2,500 contacts for twelve months. Essentials is $45 x 12 = $540; Standard is $60 x 12 = $720. If the branching nurture series wins one extra job in the year at a $1,500 margin, Standard returns more than eight times its $180 premium; if it wins none, the premium is a pure cost. Decide by writing down, before you upgrade, the number of jobs the series must win to justify itself, and review it after six months.
Three questions to ask before upgrading mid-year
- Which feature is blocked right now? Name it. "More power" is not a feature.
- Can the same result be had with a segment and a manual send? Many owners upgrade for automation they could run by hand once a week.
- What does the upgrade cost for the rest of the term, not just a month? Prorated charges for a mid-term move depend on your billing cycle, which the billing screen shows.
Write the answers down. It makes the upgrade a decision, not a reaction to a nudge in the dashboard.
A checklist for choosing and checking the plan
- Count real, consenting, emailable contacts and write the number down.
- Write down the longest automation you want and count its steps. Four or fewer, Essentials; more, Standard.
- Check whether you need five seats or the Standard-only content features.
- Open the pricing page, move the contact slider to your number and note the total in your currency.
- Multiply the monthly total by 12 and compare with the cheapest alternative at the same list size.
- Calendar a check at 80% of your next tier boundary.
When the choice depends on how much the emails earn, count revenue per send for a quarter first. The AI guide covers where AI writing help fits, and drafting a campaign with Intuit Assist covers the Standard add-on honestly, including what to check before sending.
Mailchimp price questions that come up at each contact tier
Why does my Mailchimp price differ from this table?
Mailchimp prices by region and shows local currency from some locations, so a screen in another currency or a lower price book will not match. The figures here are USD list prices. Open the pricing page, choose your contact count and read the total shown before checkout.
What happens if I go over my contact limit?
Mailchimp says it bills overages automatically after the free trial and, as long as you pay on time, does not stop campaigns or pause the account. The charge comes in add-on contact blocks, based on your peak contact total that month. If the bigger list is permanent, raise your tier; if not, archive contacts and keep the lower total for a full billing cycle.
Is the Free plan enough for a small shop?
Only for very small lists. Free allows 250 contacts and 500 sends a month with a 250-a-day cap, one seat, and no email scheduling. A shop that wants a welcome series or scheduled campaigns should plan on Essentials.
Do I pay more to send more emails to the same list?
Sends are capped by plan and tier rather than priced separately: Essentials allows 10 times your contact limit, Standard 12 times. A 1,500-contact Standard list can send 18,000 emails a month. Going beyond that triggers overage billing.
Further reads
- ConvertKit (Now Kit) vs Mailchimp: Free Plans and Automations Compared — Free plans and automation limits side by side.
- Hiring a Mailchimp Expert: What to Ask For, What It Costs and the Brief — What an expert setup costs and the brief to give.
- Best All-in-One AI for Marketing vs Separate Tools: A Cost Check — One real small-firm marketing stack costed against an all-in-one platform, with a break-even sum, a decision rule and lock-in and export checks.
- AI for Boutique Owners: A Weekly New-Arrivals Email Routine — Turn eight rows of item notes into subject lines, short copy and a scheduled Mailchimp email each week, with a worked eight-item drop and a claims check.
- AI-Powered Marketing Tools for a Motorcycle Dealer: Spring Campaigns — A ten-week spring plan for a motorcycle dealer: which AI tools to use for used-bike posts, service reminders and demo days, with list prices.
- Home Builder Lead Generation: Nurture Enquiries With an AI Sequence — Follow up website enquiries with six AI-drafted messages on plot, budget and timing, sent by Zapier or your CRM, with consent and opt-outs handled first.
- How Much Is beehiiv? What Each Plan Costs for a Business Newsletter — beehiiv's Free, Lite and Pro plans after the October 2026 change, with prices by list size and cost scenarios for a business newsletter.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Mailchimp pricing and compare-plans pages (mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing), the USD price data behind the pricing page's contact slider, and Mailchimp help centre articles on pricing plans and additional charges, all read 5 November 2026.