Mailchimp pricing: what it actually costs.
Mailchimp prices by contact count across 3 plans, Essentials, Standard and Premium. Here is the real ladder, independently verified in US dollars, what actually counts as a contact, and a calculator so you can see both platforms at your own numbers.
Pricing checked September 7, 2026. Mailchimp sets these prices, not us, and they can change them any time.
120,000 sends included on this plan.
List price, resolved at the contacts and email volume shown above.
How much does Mailchimp cost
Mailchimp Standard costs $108.88 a month at 10,000 contacts, and its cheapest plan, Essentials, starts at $11.75 a month for up to 500. The price is set by how many contacts you have, in brackets, so it sits flat and then jumps rather than rising with your list. Here is the whole shape of it.
The dotted line marks 10,000 contacts, and each price beside a vendor above is that vendor at that point. Lines show the monthly list price at 2 emails per contact a month. A line that stops has run past that vendor’s own published ladder; nothing here is extrapolated. Move the calculator further down the page and the marked position moves with it.
Both OnVoard lines are on the same 2 settings: how many contacts you have, and how much email you send.
Mailchimp pricing plans and tiers
Mailchimp sells 3 plans, Essentials, Standard and Premium, and each one has its own contact ladder and its own monthly email included with it. Every row below was captured 1 bracket at a time in US dollars. The comparisons on this page use Standard, the plan closest in features to what OnVoard offers.
2 different questions live on this ladder, and they do not always have the same answer: the cheapest plan that technically fits your contact count, and the plan that has the capabilities you would actually use. The toggle above answers the first one at any plan you pick. The rest of this page, and the calculator further down, compare against Standard, because Essentials lacks the automation and personalisation depth a real switcher is usually weighing against the price.
Mailchimp calls this “Save 15%”: 15% off the monthly base price of any plan at 10,000 or more contacts, for the first 12 months, new customers only (or Free customers within 90 days of account creation). At 10,000 contacts on Standard that would run about $92.55/mo while it lasts, dropping back to $108.88/mo after 12 months or if your list falls below 10,000. This is a monthly-plan promo, not an annual discount; Mailchimp does not publish a self-serve annual plan.
What counts as a contact in Mailchimp
Subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count toward your bill. Only archived, cleaned and deleted contacts stop counting, and the same person saved in 2 audiences is billed twice, because Mailchimp counts per audience rather than per unique person across the account.
You pay the 15,000 price for every list size from 10,001 up to 15,000. There is no rate in between.
This is why "what counts as a contact" is a money question rather than a definitional one. Mailchimp Standard charges $108.88 a month up to 10,000 contacts and $180.17 from 10,001. The unsubscribed contacts you have not archived, and the duplicates sitting across 2 audiences, are what push a list over a line like that one.
Both figures are rows on the Standard ladder above, captured September 7, 2026 with US dollars explicitly selected.
Mailchimp email send limits
Every Mailchimp plan includes a fixed multiple of your contact bracket in monthly email: 10 times on Essentials, 12 on Standard, 15 on Premium. The limit moves only when your bracket does, so sending less does not lower the bill and sending more is not something you can simply pay for at a published rate.
- The limit is tied to the bracket, not to your listOn Standard at 10,000 contacts that is 120,000 emails a month. A 6,000-contact list in the same bracket gets the same figure, and pays the same price.
- No published per-email rate above itMailchimp does not publish an overage price for the Marketing plans, so there is no stated way to buy a small batch of extra sends in a heavy month. The documented lever is the contact bracket.
- Sending less does not reduce anythingThe included email is bundled into the bracket price. A quiet month costs exactly what a busy one does, because contacts are the only axis the price moves on.
OnVoard splits those into 2 separate things you set: how many contacts you have, and how much email you want included. That is the whole reason the 2 lines on the chart above are shaped differently. See both at your own numbers.
Mailchimp fees and extra charges
Mailchimp does not publish a per-email overage fee on the Marketing plans, so the charges that actually move a bill are structural rather than itemised: crossing a contact bracket, the peak-count rule, and a promotional rate ending. Each one is real and each one is avoidable if you know it is there.
What Mailchimp costs at 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 50,000 contacts
Mailchimp Standard runs from $43.08 a month at 1,000 contacts to $329 at 50,000. Every figure below was computed once, at build time, at twice the contact count in monthly email, so the rows differ by list size alone. OnVoard's 2 are priced at the identical workload.
| List size | Mailchimp Standard | OnVoard Marketing Platform | OnVoard All-In-One |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 contacts | $43.08/mo | $17.00/mo | $21.90/mo |
| 5,000 contacts | $85.38/mo | $25.00/mo | $29.90/mo |
| 10,000 contacts | $108.88/mo | $35.00/mo | $59.80/mo |
| 50,000 contacts | $329.00/mo | $175.00/mo | $299.00/mo |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Marketing Platform is the email-only comparison, which is the like-for-like one against Mailchimp. All-In-One is the same email plus every other OnVoard app, priced on the same 2 settings.
Is Mailchimp free, and what the free plan actually includes
Yes, up to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, which is the same ceiling most of the field publishes. That is a real plan rather than a trial, and below a small list size it is genuinely the right answer.
| Free plan | Contacts | Emails a month | What runs out first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | 250 | 500 | Sending, at 2 emails per contact a month. |
| OnVoard | No limit | 500 | Sending. No contact limit, so 500 emails a month is the only ceiling. |
Contacts and emails are each vendor’s own published free-plan limits. “What runs out first” is the two of them divided, nothing else: a free plan at its full contact ceiling buys that many emails per contact a month before it stops. OnVoard's free plan has no contact limit, so what runs out first there is the email rather than the list.
Is Mailchimp worth it for an ecommerce store
If email is the only thing you need, Mailchimp is a fair buy with a large ecosystem behind it. If you are an ecommerce store, the honest problem is not Mailchimp's price, it is what the price buys: a store also runs loyalty, reviews, restock alerts, popups, recommendations and cart goals, and none of those are in this bill.
Signed up through a popupPopup
Joined a back-in-stock waitlistRestock
Added an item to unlock a discountCart
Left a 5-star reviewReviews
Earned points for the review+50 pts
Opened a winback emailEmailThis is one customer record in OnVoard, with every app writing to it: the popup that captured them, the restock waitlist they joined, the cart nudge, the order, the review they left, the points that review earned, and the winback email that brought them back. Mailchimp's price covers the last item on that list. The argument for a bundle is not that email is cheaper, it is that the other 6 are not 6 more subscriptions and 6 more contact lists.
Every activity in the drawing is a real OnVoard event type, and every app named is one you can read about on its own product page. The shopper and the figures are illustrative.
One bill, 7 jobs.
For a store that would otherwise pay separately for email, loyalty, reviews, restock alerts, popups, recommendations and cart goals, the bundle is the stronger buy. At the workload set on this page it is $59.90 a month less than those 7 bought one at a time, and the volume limits on them come off.
The comparison is against our own published prices for the same 7 apps, sized for a store doing about 200 orders a month. That order figure is a starting assumption, not a measurement of your store: the apps that price on orders are Reperks, Product Recommender and Back In Stock, and yours will differ. It is only stated up to 50,000 contacts, because above that the 2 ways of buying cross over repeatedly.
At 10,000 contacts and 20,000 emails a month.
$59.90 a month less than buying them one at a time
- Email campaigns and automations
- Popups
- Cart goals
- Restock alerts
- Reviews
- Loyalty points
Product recommendations
All 7, one subscription, one bill.
Mailchimp compared with OnVoard, and what the same budget buys
At the same contacts and the same monthly email, OnVoard's Marketing Platform is the like-for-like line and All-In-One is what the same kind of money buys instead. Set your own numbers below; every figure on this page that moves, moves with them.
The buttons above fill this in from your contact count. 4x means 4 emails a month per contact.
We use the audience number entered above as the billable contact, profile or subscriber count for each platform. Vendors define billable audiences differently, and a real count after migration can differ.
| Vendor | Estimated price | Plan | Fits workload | Pricing basis | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OnVoardLowest cost | $35.00/mo | Marketing Platform | Fits | By contacts + sends | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $45.00/mo at 30,000 emails a month. VerificationNo capture date is published for this figure.
| |||||
| MailchimpPromo available | $85.38/mo | Essentials | Fits | By contacts | |
How this number was worked out
What makes this bill go up nextGrows to $148.05/mo at 15,000 contacts. Promo available$72.57/mo promotional price. "Save 15%": 15% off the monthly base price at 10,000+ contacts, first 12 months, new customers only (or Free customers within 90 days of account creation). Ends immediately if contacts drop below 10,000. 1 per account. List price with the published 15% discount applied. Not compared above: promo prices never sort and never earn the lowest-cost badge. VerificationChecked September 7, 2026. | |||||
Pricing is not feature equivalence. These estimates show what each platform charges for the workload you entered. Plans can include different automation, segmentation, SMS, support, ecommerce, and other features.
The calculator picks whichever of Mailchimp’s three plans is cheapest at your numbers, so it will often name Essentials. The rest of this page compares against Standard, which is the plan closest in features to what OnVoard offers. Compare all platforms, same contacts and email carried over.
This is the part that does not show up in a price comparison. Because the recommendations and the email are one platform, the social proof shown on the storefront rides into the campaign: the same product block, with the same real stat printed on it. Bought as 2 subscriptions from 2 vendors, that is an integration project. Bought as one, it is the default.
The social-proof labels on each recommendation are a real Product Recommender feature. The products and the figures in the drawing are illustrative, as on every OnVoard product page.
Marketing Platform is the email-only comparison. All-In-One is the same email with every other app included.
Frequently asked questions
How does Mailchimp price its plans?
By contacts, in brackets, across 3 plans: Essentials, Standard and Premium. Each plan includes a fixed multiple of monthly sends for its bracket (10x for Essentials, 12x for Standard, 15x for Premium). Premium is unusual: it charges the same flat $329/mo from the smallest bracket all the way to 10,000 contacts, so a small list on Premium pays the same as a 10,000-contact one.
Is "Save 15%" an annual discount?
No, and this is the trap in Mailchimp's own pricing page: "Save 15%" is a promotion on the MONTHLY plan, not an annual one. It is 15% off the monthly base price at 10,000 or more contacts, for new customers only (or Free customers within 90 days of signing up), for the first 12 months. Drop below 10,000 contacts and it ends immediately. Mailchimp does not publish a self-serve annual plan at all; annual pricing is sales-gated.
What happens if I send more email than Mailchimp includes?
Mailchimp does not publish a per-email overage rate for the Marketing plans. What is documented instead is that your bill is set by the PEAK contact count reached during the billing cycle, not the count at renewal, so trimming your list right before it renews does not undo an overage; you have to hold the lower count for a full cycle. OnVoard states this plainly: below Unlimited, extra sends are $1 per 1,000 from a balance you top up; at Unlimited, there is nothing to run out of.
Do unsubscribed contacts count toward the Mailchimp bill?
Yes. Subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count; only archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not. The same person saved in 2 different audiences is also billed twice, since Mailchimp counts per audience rather than per unique person account-wide.
Can I move down a Mailchimp plan or bracket if my list shrinks?
Yes: Account, then Billing, then Change Plan under Marketing Plan, then Downgrade. 2 things to know before you do. First, a downgrade takes effect at the start of your next billing cycle, not immediately, so you keep the plan you are on for the rest of this one. Second, because the bill is set by the peak contact count reached during a cycle, a list that falls mid-cycle does not lower that cycle's charge either way; the downgrade changes what you pay starting next cycle, not this one.
What does OnVoard do differently?
2 things. First, contacts and email are 2 separate settings you set yourself, with a last option that removes the send limit entirely rather than a plan tier you outgrow. Second, Mailchimp's price only ever buys email; OnVoard's All-In-One price is the same 2 settings plus every other OnVoard app, for a higher contact rate instead of separate bills.
Is the OnVoard saving on this page a like-for-like comparison?
The Mailchimp and OnVoard Marketing Platform figures are: both are list prices at the same contacts and the same monthly email, and neither is a promotional rate. The All-In-One saving is a different comparison and says so where it appears: it is our bundle against the same 7 OnVoard apps bought one at a time, sized by an order volume the page shows and lets you correct. It is only stated up to 50,000 contacts, because above that the 2 ways of buying cross over repeatedly and no single number stays true.
How were these numbers checked, and how current are they?
Pricing checked September 7, 2026. Every row on all 3 plans is independently verified in USD, captured 1 contact bracket at a time with USD explicitly selected. Above 200,000 contacts Mailchimp is sales-gated with no published price, so this page stops there rather than extrapolating.
How these numbers were checked
Every Mailchimp price on this page was read from Mailchimp's own published pricing with US dollars explicitly selected, 1 contact bracket at a time. Nothing is converted from another currency and nothing beyond their published ladder is extrapolated.
The rest of the comparison cluster
See it against your own numbers.
Set your contacts and email in the calculator above, or just start free and find out.