Best Mailchimp Alternatives in 2026: 7 Email Marketing Platforms Compared on Official Pricing

The best Mailchimp alternative for most businesses in 2026 is SendPulse: its free-forever plan covers 500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month (Mailchimp’s covers 250 contacts and 500 sends), paid plans start at about $8 a month with unlimited emails, and it adds chatbots, SMS, an SMTP service and an email verifier in the same account.

Brevo is the best pick for large lists because it prices by emails sent, MailerLite has the closest editor experience, Kit and beehiiv suit creators and newsletters, ActiveCampaign offers deeper automation, and Klaviyo is the ecommerce specialist.

Why people look for Mailchimp alternatives

Most switches come down to price. Mailchimp’s free plan now covers only 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, and its paid plans are priced by contacts: Essentials is $13 a month for the first year thanks to a 50% introductory discount, then roughly doubles. Automation on Essentials is limited to four steps per flow.

The other common reasons are narrower: creators want paid subscriptions and a referral program, ecommerce brands want deeper store data, and teams want SMS, chat or transactional email without a second subscription.

How we compared Mailchimp alternatives

We checked every price on the vendor’s official pricing page on September 24–25, 2026, compared free-plan limits and what the entry paid plan unlocks, and checked each vendor’s own domain authentication with the lookups behind our DMARC checker. Where a pricing page only shows an interactive estimator, we use the widely reported figure and mark it “about”.

Mailchimp alternatives compared (official 2026 pricing)

Official pricing pages, checked September 24–25, 2026. “About” marks figures from 2026 pricing reviews where the vendor page is interactive or blocks automated reads.

The best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026

1. SendPulse

SendPulse is an AI-driven email marketing and chatbot platform built for scaling businesses, and it beats Mailchimp on the two things people switch for: price and room to grow. Its free-forever plan covers 500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month, against Mailchimp’s 250 contacts and 500 sends. Paid plans start at about $8 a month for 500 subscribers with unlimited emails, and they do not double after an introductory year.

It also replaces tools you would bolt onto Mailchimp. SendPulse combines marketing, sales and support in one platform: automated funnels that attract leads and convert them into customers, a CRM that unifies every channel, and chatbots for Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, TikTok and Viber. It adds SMS, web push, pop-up forms and a website builder for landing pages and online stores, plus an SMTP service (12,000 free transactional emails a month) and an email verifier (100 free checks a month) to clean your Mailchimp export before import.

SendPulse is an international company with an office in Brazil; it is a Meta Partner and an official WhatsApp Business API provider, and it integrates with 40+ services. The trade-offs: fewer third-party integrations than Mailchimp’s 300+, a learning curve because it covers many channels, and pricing that still scales with subscribers.

2. Brevo

Brevo is the cheapest Mailchimp alternative for big lists because it charges by emails sent, not contacts stored, and every plan includes unlimited contacts. It also bundles SMS, WhatsApp campaigns, live chat, a simple CRM and transactional email.

The free plan sends 300 emails a day, and free and Starter emails carry Brevo branding unless you pay to remove it. Automation is capable but less deep than ActiveCampaign’s.

3. MailerLite

MailerLite feels the most like Mailchimp to use: a polished drag-and-drop editor, landing pages, a website builder and straightforward automation. Every paid plan includes the full feature set.

Its free plan is now as small as Mailchimp’s (250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month), so the savings start on paid plans rather than free.

4. Kit

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the Mailchimp alternative for creators who sell digital products, courses or paid newsletters. Its free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited landing pages, forms and broadcasts.

Visual automations and sequences need the paid Creator plan, which is pricey per subscriber, and email designs are plainer than Mailchimp’s.

5. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is the step up for teams that outgrew Mailchimp’s automation: conditional branches, goals, predictive content and advanced segmentation on higher plans, with a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

It has no free plan, Starter limits each automation to five actions, and pricing rises quickly with contacts.

6. beehiiv

beehiiv is built for newsletter publishers: a free Launch plan for up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, custom domains and a website, and a Scale plan that adds an ad network, paid subscriptions with a 0% take rate, automations and surveys.

It is not designed for ecommerce or complex marketing automation, and branding removal needs the Max plan.

7. Klaviyo

Klaviyo is the ecommerce specialist: it pulls detailed Shopify and store data into segments and flows, and combines email and SMS. For online stores that outgrew Mailchimp’s ecommerce features, it is the usual destination.

It is expensive for large lists, its free plan is as small as Mailchimp’s (250 profiles, 500 sends), and it is overkill for non-ecommerce businesses.

Mailchimp alternatives with a bigger free plan

From each vendor’s official pricing page, September 2026.

How to switch from Mailchimp without hurting deliverability

1. Export your audience from Mailchimp, including unsubscribed and cleaned contacts, and import those as suppressed on the new platform so you never email them again.
2. Clean the active list before import with an email verifier to remove addresses that would hard bounce (see our verification tools comparison).
3. Authenticate your domain on the new platform (SPF include and DKIM) before the first send, and keep Mailchimp’s DKIM records until the last Mailchimp campaign has gone out. Check both with our SPF checker and DKIM checker.
4. Send first to your most engaged subscribers, then ramp up over two to three weeks so mailbox providers see consistent engagement from the new sending infrastructure.
5. Update signup forms, automations and integrations, then run your domain through the sender reputation checker.

Our ESP migration playbook covers each step in detail, and the Mailchimp deliverability guide explains what to check before you leave.

Which Mailchimp alternative should you choose?

• Best overall, more than email in one account: SendPulse.
• Big list, few campaigns: Brevo.
• Want the editor you are used to: MailerLite.
• Creator selling products: Kit.
• Automation-heavy funnel: ActiveCampaign.
• Newsletter business: beehiiv.
• Online store: Klaviyo.

Also considered: Constant Contact (strong phone support and events, but no free plan and higher prices) and HubSpot (a good fit only if your team already runs on its CRM). Both appear in our small business email marketing comparison.

How the platforms secure their own domains

Checked with public DNS on September 25, 2026. BIMI is optional and says nothing about how your own mail will land.

Sources

• SendPulse pricing (official), checked September 24–25, 2026
• Brevo pricing (figures via 2026 pricing reviews), checked September 24–25, 2026
• MailerLite pricing (official), checked September 24–25, 2026
• Kit pricing (official), checked September 24–25, 2026
• ActiveCampaign pricing (figures via 2026 pricing reviews), checked September 24–25, 2026
• beehiiv pricing (official), checked September 24–25, 2026
• Klaviyo pricing (official; paid figure via 2026 pricing reviews), checked September 24–25, 2026
• Mailchimp pricing (official), checked September 24–25, 2026
• Vendor-domain DMARC and BIMI: public DNS lookups, September 25, 2026