Mailchimp free plan changes, 2026
250 contacts, free.
Number 251 puts
the newsletter on hold.
Since 17 February 2026, Mailchimp’s free plan allows 250 contacts and 500 email sends a month, no more than 250 a day, with one audience and one seat. It has no automations and no scheduling, and every email carries the Mailchimp badge. Unsubscribed contacts count towards the 250, and going over puts sending on hold until you upgrade or archive contacts. The cheapest way up is Essentials, from $13 a month for 500 contacts. Below: what changed and when, a checker that says whether Free still fits your list, the signs it is time to leave, and a receipt that prices a year of your email three ways, Builderify’s email campaigns included.
By the Builderify team
Mailchimp’s free plan changes,
in order.
The 2026 change is the third cut in four years. The contact limit has gone from 2,000 to 250, monthly sends from 10,000 to 500, and automations have gone altogether. Mailchimp told free users about the latest change in January; it took effect on 17 February 2026.
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Until 2022
2,000 contacts · 10,000 sends a month. The free plan most tutorials still describe: 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends a month.
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2022
500 contacts · 2,500 sends a month. Contacts cut to 500 and monthly sends to 2,500.
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500 contacts · 1,000 sends a month · 500 a day. Monthly sends cut to 1,000, with a new daily limit of 500.
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500 contacts · 1,000 sends a month · 500 a day. Mailchimp discontinued its Classic Automation Builder. Free accounts have had no automation flows since.
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250 contacts · 500 sends a month · 250 a day. Contacts halved to 250, sends to 500 a month and 250 a day.
Each chart has its own scale, starting at zero. The 2022 step is drawn at mid-year because its exact day is not documented; the other dates are from Mailchimp’s notices. Mailchimp has also retired its Classic Automation Builder for everyone, renaming its Customer Journey Builder “Marketing Automation Flows” in June 2025; on the free plan, flows are listed as not included.
Mailchimp free plan limits,
next to the first two paid plans.
Free is still a real plan: you can collect sign-ups with Mailchimp’s forms and popups and send a campaign to everyone. What it removes is anything that runs on its own, anything scheduled, and room to grow. Paid plans are priced by how many contacts you have, and their send allowance is a multiple of that number.
| Mailchimp | Free $0 up to 250 contacts | Essentials $13 a month, from 500 contacts | Standard $20 a month, from 500 contacts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contacts | 250 | Priced by tier | Priced by tier |
| Email sends | 500 a month, 250 a day | 10× your contact tier | 12× your contact tier |
| Automation flows | No | Up to 4 flow steps | Up to 200 flows |
| Email scheduling | No | Yes | Yes |
| Remove Mailchimp branding | No | Yes | Yes |
| Pre-built templates | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Custom-coded templates | Create, upgrade to send | Create, upgrade to send | Create and send |
| Popup forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Seats | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Audiences | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Support | Email, first 30 days | 24/7 email and chat | 24/7 email and chat |
| Over the limit | Sending held | Overages billed | Overages billed |
Unsubscribes still count
Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts towards your total. Only archived, cleaned and deleted contacts are left out. A list of 200 subscribers and 60 unsubscribes is already over.
Over 250, sending stops
On Free, going over the contact limit puts a hold on live and test emails until you upgrade or bring the total back to 250. On paid plans Mailchimp bills the overage instead.
500 sends is two newsletters
Every recipient of every email is one send. At 250 contacts, 500 sends is two campaigns a month, and the daily limit means each one can go to no more than 250 people in a day.
Premium is $350 a month at 10,000 contacts. Essentials and Standard come with a 14-day free trial. Prices are Mailchimp’s US-dollar starting prices on 8 October 2026, before tax.
Is Mailchimp’s free plan
still enough for your list?
Free fits when three things are true: your contacts, unsubscribes included, stay at 250 or fewer; every email you send in a month adds up to 500 or fewer; and nothing needs to go out on its own. Put your numbers in and it checks all three.
Your audience total in Mailchimp.
People who join in a typical month.
Newsletters, announcements, offers.
Sent on their own after someone joins. 0 for none.
- Contacts 600 of 250: sending would be on hold
- Sends this month 2,520 of 500, 2,020 over
- Welcome emails Need an automation flow, not on Free
At 600 contacts, Free has no room for a single campaign and no welcome emails. The receipt below prices the same email elsewhere.
When to leave Mailchimp’s free plan:
six signs, any one is enough.
Staying is the right call while your list is small, you send once or twice a month, and the badge does not bother you. Leaving, to a paid plan or another tool, is the right call the month one of these becomes true.
-
01
Your total passes 250
Counting unsubscribes. The next contact puts sending on hold, so you find out on the day you meant to send.
-
02
You want a welcome email
Anything sent on its own, from a welcome note to an onboarding series, is an automation flow, and Free has none.
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03
You send more than twice a month
At 250 contacts, 500 sends is two campaigns. A weekly newsletter needs four times that.
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04
You want to schedule a send
Free sends now or not at all. Scheduling starts on Essentials.
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05
The badge has to go
Free keeps Mailchimp’s branding on every email. Removing it starts on Essentials.
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06
A second person needs in
Free has one seat and one audience. Essentials has three of each.
Before you go anywhere, export. In Mailchimp, click Audience, choose the audience if you have more than one, then Export audience and Export CSV. You get an email when it is ready, and the file stays under Audience, More options, Export history for 30 days. The ZIP holds separate files for subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed and cleaned contacts. Keep the unsubscribed file too: those people asked not to be emailed, wherever you send from next.
Credits or a monthly plan?
A year of your email, three receipts.
A monthly plan charges for the size of your list, whether you send or not. Credits charge for what you send. Mailchimp sells both, and so, in a different shape, does Builderify. Same numbers as the checker above; change them in either place.
Adds scheduling, branding removal and automation flows of up to 4 steps. The price follows your contact count, unsubscribes included.
Essentials features, no subscription. Test sends and bounces use credits too. Mailchimp shows its rates only inside an account; reviewers report 5,000 credits at about $150, with bigger blocks cheaper per credit.
One Pro pack for 15,000 credits. Bought once; purchased credits never expire.
- Mailchimp plan
- $318
- Mailchimp credits
- $1,050
- Builderify credits
- $69
Mailchimp prices are its US-dollar monthly prices before tax, at the contact tier that holds your list; for 501 to 1,500 contacts, only Essentials’ price is confirmed by more than one source. Builderify uses its published rate card: 0.5 credits an email, 1 a new lead, 10 per 1,000 page loads of the widget that carries your sign-up forms, and 250 free credits a month. Packs are one-time, from $9 for 1,000 credits.
A Mailchimp free plan alternative,
with its gaps listed.
Builderify’s email is built for a list that grows from your own website. Sign-ups from popups, quizzes, bookings and contact forms land in your lead lists, each confirmed by email first. Automated sequences and campaigns then go out from your own domain, with no plan, no seats and no contact limit.
The Mailchimp free plan’s biggest gaps are the ones covered: welcome emails send themselves, campaigns can be scheduled, and Builderify adds no badge to your emails, only the unsubscribe line. A teammate with their own login is 250 credits, once.
What it does
- Sequences: emails on day and hour offsets from when someone joins, with a sending window and weekends skipped if you like
- New sign-ups enrol in a list’s sequence on their own, once they confirm
- Campaigns built in a drag-and-drop designer or a rich-text editor, sent now or scheduled, paused and resumed
- Your own verified domain, with SPF, DKIM and DMARC records listed for you
- First name, last name, email and unsubscribe merge tags
- Open counts per campaign and per sequence email
- One-click unsubscribe; unsubscribed and bounced contacts are skipped automatically
- No Builderify badge in your emails
Not yet
- Importing a CSV: an exported Mailchimp list cannot be brought in as a file
- Segments and tags: a campaign goes to one whole list
- Click tracking, test sends and subject-line A/B tests
- Branching, or stopping a sequence when someone replies
- Attachments
Sending is paced to protect your domain’s reputation: 100 emails an hour by default, so 1,000 subscribers take about ten hours. You need your own domain, not a Gmail or Outlook address, and each sending domain is reviewed before its first send.
Setting up the domain
The records are the same three every sender needs. The SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide explains each one and builds your SPF and DMARC records.
If a send bounces
Bounce reports come back to your dashboard and the contact is marked bounced. The bounce codes decoder explains what 550 5.7.26 and the rest mean.
Bringing a big list?
Without an importer, Builderify is the better fit for a list you are starting or rebuilding from your site. If your existing list is the point, pick a tool that imports it, from the table below.
Added with one script tag on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Framer or plain HTML. See Broadcast in full.
Stay free, upgrade,
or switch?
| Tool | List on free | Sends on free | Automation on free | Branding removed on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | 250 contacts | 500 a month, 250 a day | None | Essentials, from $13 a month |
| MailerLite | 250 subscribers | 2,500 a month | 3 automations | Comfort |
| Kit | Up to 10,000 subscribers | Unlimited broadcasts | Sequences on Creator | Creator, $33 a month or $390 a year at 1,000 |
| Brevo | Not stated on its pricing page | Up to 300 a day | Not stated | Paid plans |
| Builderify | No contact limit | 0.5 credits each, 250 free credits a month | Sequences included | No badge in emails |
Your list is under 250 including unsubscribes, you send once or twice a month, and nothing needs to send itself.
Stay on Mailchimp Free. It still does that well. Archive old unsubscribes and cleaned contacts to keep your total down.
Mailchimp is set up, the list is past 250, and you want a welcome email and scheduling.
Mailchimp Essentials. From $13 a month at 500 contacts, with scheduling, no badge and automation flows of up to 4 steps. Longer flows need Standard, from $20.
You send a few times a year, to a list that would cost a monthly plan.
Mailchimp Pay As You Go. Essentials features with no subscription. Buy only what you send, and send it within 12 months, when the credits expire.
Your list is the asset, and you want it free for longer.
Kit’s free plan. Up to 10,000 subscribers and unlimited broadcasts, with Kit’s branding. Sequences and removing the branding start on Creator, $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers.
You want email tied to your website’s own forms, welcome sequences without a plan, and no badge in your emails.
Builderify. Emails cost 0.5 credits each from 250 free credits a month, with no contact limit or subscription. If you need to import an existing list, segments or click tracking today, pick one of the tools above.
Mailchimp's free plan, before you ask.
On 17 February 2026 Mailchimp cut its free plan from 500 contacts and 1,000 sends a month to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 sends a day. Free still has one audience and one seat, and it has had no automation flows since Mailchimp retired its Classic Automation Builder on 1 June 2025.
Yes. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts towards your total; only archived, cleaned and deleted contacts are left out. Archiving old unsubscribes is the usual way to stay under 250 on Free.
Mailchimp puts a hold on sending live and test emails until you upgrade to a paid plan or bring your total back to 250 or fewer, for example by archiving contacts. On paid plans it bills the overage instead of stopping your sends.
No. Mailchimp's pricing page lists marketing automation flows as not included on Free, so a welcome email or series needs a paid plan. Essentials, from $13 a month at 500 contacts, allows flows of up to 4 steps; Standard, from $20, allows up to 200 flows.
For a list you grow from your own website, yes. Every account gets 250 free credits a month, an email costs 0.5 credits, there is no contact limit, welcome sequences are included and no Builderify badge is added to your emails. It cannot import a CSV, segment a list or track clicks yet, so if moving an existing list is the point, a tool with an importer fits better.
Sources
Vendor pages and reviews, read on 8 October 2026.
- Mailchimp Marketing plan pricing and feature comparison
- Mailchimp Help About Mailchimp pricing plans
- Mailchimp Help About pricing tiers and add-on contact blocks
- Mailchimp Pay As You Go plan
- Mailchimp Help About the Pay As You Go plan
- Mailchimp Help View or export contacts
- PriceTimeline Mailchimp's notice on the 17 February 2026 free plan limits
- Sage Community Hub Advisory: Mailchimp announces changes to free plan (2023)
- EmailOctopus Mailchimp pricing update 2023: the details
- EmailOctopus Mailchimp update: no more automated email on the free plan
- Email Tool Tester Mailchimp pricing, by contact tier (updated 5 August 2026)
- Email Vendor Selection Mailchimp pricing (updated 18 September 2026)
- Retainful Mailchimp pricing 2026, every plan
- SendX Mailchimp pricing, Pay As You Go credits
- MailerLite Pricing: Free and Comfort
- Kit Pricing: Free and Creator
- Brevo Pricing and plan FAQ
On the shutdown tracker: MailerLite free plan, Mailchimp free plan, Mailchimp automations on the free plan.
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