Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email and marketing automation platform for small and growing businesses. It was founded in Atlanta in 2001, as an email service a web design agency called the Rocket Science Group built on the side, and was acquired by Intuit in 2021; the Mailchimp trademark is registered to The Rocket Science Group.¹ A one-person company uses it to keep a contact list, design emails from templates, collect sign-ups with landing pages and forms, and send campaigns and automated messages from one hosted account.¹³

Its pricing follows the contact count. The Free plan includes up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with a daily limit of 250 sends; once an account goes over 250 contacts, Mailchimp holds live and test sends until it upgrades or reduces its contact total, and unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts count toward that total.³ Those limits started on February 17, 2026, down from 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends, as reported by the New Zealand agency Energise, quoting Mailchimp’s email to users.⁴ OneManOnly dates the change in How Email Platforms’ Free Tiers Changed in 2025–26.

The paid Essentials plan starts at $13 a month on monthly billing for up to 500 contacts and is $26.50 a month on the 501–1,500 tier, the smallest that holds a 1,000-person list, with 15,000 sends a month; that puts Mailchimp 10th of 13 platforms in Cheapest Paid Email Platform at 1,000 Subscribers.² Annual plans are offered only on Standard and Premium at 10,000 contacts or more.² On the time side, Essentials adds scheduled emails, A/B testing and automation flows of up to four steps, so a welcome or follow-up email can go out without a manual send.³