5 Mailchimp Alternatives for Small Teams, Compared
People rarely leave Mailchimp because it stopped working. They leave because, somewhere between the free plan and the second invoice, it stopped feeling like a tool made for a business their size. The welcome email they wanted to automate turns out to need an upgrade. The branding at the bottom of every email won’t come off. The support inbox goes quiet after the first month. None of these is a crisis on its own. Together they add up to a quiet feeling that you are renting space in someone else’s product.
If that’s where you are, the good news is that the alternatives have matured. Several now do everything a small team needs, and some do it on a free plan. The less good news is that “Mailchimp alternative” covers tools built for very different people, and switching to the wrong one just moves the frustration somewhere new.
A note on method: this comparison is built from each vendor’s published pricing pages, plan documentation, and help centers — checked directly against the official pages — not from years of running a business on all six tools. Where something depends on daily use, I say so. Every tool here is free to start, and a short parallel test with your own list will tell you more than this article can.
What Mailchimp’s plans actually give a small team
Before comparing replacements, it helps to be precise about what you’re replacing, because the reasons to leave are specific.
The Free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 email sends a month, for one user and one audience. It does not include automation flows or email scheduling, the Mailchimp branding stays on your emails, and email support is available for the first 30 days only. It is a genuine starting point, but a narrow one: 500 sends a month is two newsletters to a list of 250.
Essentials, the entry paid plan, adds scheduling, testing, and removes the branding, but its automation is limited to flows of up to four steps.
Standard is where Mailchimp’s automation really opens up, with up to 200 flows and five user seats.
So the practical path for a small team that wants a proper welcome sequence runs straight to Standard. That’s the plan to price against when you compare alternatives.
About Mailchimp’s prices. I haven’t listed Mailchimp’s dollar figures here, deliberately. Its pricing page shows regional prices that vary by where you are, and the headline price can be an introductory rate for the first 12 months, followed by regular pricing. Before you decide anything, check your price on Mailchimp’s own page from your own location — and check what it becomes in year two, not just year one.
Three things to check in any replacement
Feature lists converge. Every tool on this page has a drag-and-drop editor, forms, automation, and reporting. Three questions actually separate them.
1. Is automation included on the plan you’ll really pay for? This is the most common reason people leave Mailchimp, so it’s the first thing to check in a replacement. Some tools include working automation on the free plan. Others reserve it for a mid-tier plan, which quietly moves the real price up. Look up where automation starts, not where pricing starts.
2. How does the price scale — by contacts, or by sending? Most email tools charge by list size. Brevo charges by monthly email volume instead. Neither model is better in general, but one of them will be much cheaper for you specifically. A large list you email rarely favors volume pricing. A small list you email often favors contact pricing.
3. What will you have to rebuild? Moving a contact list is easy. Moving automations, signup forms, templates, and integrations is the part that eats a weekend. The more you’ve built inside Mailchimp, the more weight this question deserves.
The alternatives at a glance
Prices below are the vendors’ published USD prices. Where a tool prices by list size, I’ve shown the 1,000-subscriber tier so the numbers are comparable.
| Tool | Free option | Entry paid plan | Where automation starts | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite | Free plan: 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/mo, 3 automations | Comfort: $19/mo ($17.10/mo billed yearly) at 1,000 subscribers | Free plan | Small businesses, beginners |
| Brevo | Free plan: 300 emails/day | Starter: $9/mo ($8.08/mo billed yearly), from 5,000 emails/mo | Standard: $18/mo ($16.17/mo billed yearly) | Large lists, infrequent sends |
| Kit | Free plan: up to 10,000 subscribers, no automations | Creator: $39/mo ($390/year) at 1,000 subscribers | Creator plan | Newsletter writers, creators |
| Moosend | 30-day free trial only | Pro: $16/mo ($13/mo billed yearly) at 1,000 subscribers | Pro plan | Budget-focused senders |
| GetResponse | 14-day free trial | Starter: $19/mo ($15.58/mo billed yearly) at 1,000 contacts | Marketer: $59/mo ($48.38/mo billed yearly) | Funnels, webinars, courses |
Prices change often in this category. Treat this table as a starting point and confirm on each vendor’s pricing page before you commit.
MailerLite
If the reason you’re leaving is “I want a welcome sequence without paying for it,” MailerLite is the most direct answer on this list.
Why it replaces Mailchimp well. The free plan includes three automations, which is precisely the thing Mailchimp’s Free plan leaves out. Paid plans include the full feature set — you pay more only for a bigger list or more sending, not to unlock capabilities — so there’s no equivalent of Mailchimp’s step from Essentials to Standard just to get real automation. Websites, landing pages, signup forms, digital products, and bookings are included, so a small operation can consolidate more of its setup into one account. At 1,000 subscribers, the Comfort plan is $19 a month, or $17.10 a month billed yearly.
What to know before switching. MailerLite reviews new accounts before enabling sending. It protects everyone’s deliverability, but it means the gap between signing up and sending isn’t always zero, so don’t start the account the night before a launch. The free plan tops out at 250 subscribers — the same ceiling as Mailchimp’s Free plan, so this is a move for the automation, not for more free room. Reporting is solid rather than deep.
Choose MailerLite if you want the closest like-for-like replacement for Mailchimp, with automation included from the start and a bill that stays small as you grow.
Brevo
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the alternative that changes the pricing model itself, which makes it either the obvious choice or the wrong one.
Why it replaces Mailchimp well. Brevo charges by how many emails you send, not by how many contacts you store. If you’ve been paying Mailchimp to keep a large list that you email once a month, that difference can change your bill dramatically. The free plan allows 300 emails a day. Starter begins at $9 a month ($8.08 billed yearly) from 5,000 emails a month, and SMS and transactional email sit alongside marketing email in the same account.
What to know before switching. Workflow automation starts on the Standard plan, at $18 a month ($16.17 billed yearly), not on Starter. Removing the Brevo logo from Starter is a paid add-on; it’s included on Standard. And the free plan’s daily cap of 300 emails makes a single large announcement awkward — a list of 1,000 can’t all be emailed on the same day for free.
Choose Brevo if your list is large relative to how often you email it, or you want SMS and email under one roof.
Kit
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the alternative for people who realize, on the way out of Mailchimp, that what they actually run is a newsletter.
Why it replaces Mailchimp well. Kit’s free plan carries up to 10,000 subscribers, which no other tool here comes close to. It includes unlimited broadcasts, forms, and landing pages, plus the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. The Creator Network lets other Kit newsletters recommend yours — a growth channel with no counterpart at Mailchimp.
What to know before switching. Kit’s free plan includes no visual automations and no email sequences. If the welcome sequence was your reason for leaving Mailchimp, Kit’s free plan won’t solve it; you’ll need the Creator plan, which is $39 a month at 1,000 subscribers, or $390 a year. Email design is also deliberately plain. If your brand depends on designed, image-rich campaigns, Kit will feel restrictive in a way Mailchimp didn’t.
Choose Kit if your emails are a newsletter with a person’s voice behind it, and you’d rather have a big free audience allowance than free automation. For a closer look at this choice, see Kit vs MailerLite.
Moosend
Moosend competes on value: close to a full feature set at a low price per subscriber.
Why it replaces Mailchimp well. Automation workflows, landing pages, and subscription forms are all included in the Pro plan, with no separate tier to climb for real automation. At 1,000 subscribers, Pro is $16 a month, or $13 a month billed yearly. Real-time reporting and email heatmaps are included too.
What to know before switching. There’s no permanent free plan, only a 30-day free trial, so the “run it next to Mailchimp for a while” approach costs money once the trial ends. The template library and integration catalog are smaller than the long-established tools’, and the brand is less well known, which matters if you’re choosing a system you’ll depend on for years.
Choose Moosend if you want serious automation at the lowest monthly price and don’t need a free plan to live on.
Start a free trial with Moosend
GetResponse
GetResponse is the alternative for teams who find Mailchimp too limited rather than too expensive.
Why it replaces Mailchimp well. Beyond email, GetResponse builds out into the rest of a selling setup: sales funnels, abandoned cart recovery, and on its Creator plan, webinars, a course creator, and paid newsletter subscriptions. Every paid plan includes unlimited monthly email sends. At 1,000 contacts, Starter is $19 a month ($15.58 billed yearly).
What to know before switching. Starter includes one custom automation workflow. Unlimited automation begins on the Marketer plan, at $59 a month ($48.38 billed yearly) at 1,000 contacts, which is the plan most teams leaving Mailchimp for automation will actually need. There’s a 14-day free trial of the premium features, after which the account continues with limited free access. If you only need email and a welcome sequence, you’ll be paying for capabilities you don’t use.
Choose GetResponse if you plan to sell through webinars, funnels, or courses and want those under the same roof as your email.
Start a free trial with GetResponse
How to move off Mailchimp without losing anything
Switching is mostly mechanical, but a few steps protect you from the problems that actually cost money.
Export everything, not just subscribed contacts. Export your unsubscribed and cleaned contacts too, and import them into the new tool as suppressed. If you move only your subscribed list, someone who unsubscribed from Mailchimp can end up back on your list at the new provider — a compliance problem and a deliverability one.
Authenticate your sending domain with the new provider. Your new tool will ask you to add DNS records so it can send on behalf of your domain. Do this before your first campaign. Emails sent without it are more likely to land in spam, and the new provider’s first impression of your list matters.
Rebuild the automations you actually use, not all of them. Moving is a good moment to delete the flows you set up once and never looked at again. Rebuild the welcome sequence first, since it’s the one that runs every day.
Run both for one send. Send your next newsletter from the new tool while your Mailchimp account is still active. If something breaks — a form that still posts to Mailchimp, an integration you forgot — you’ll find out while you can still fix it quietly.
When staying on Mailchimp makes sense
A comparison of alternatives can make leaving sound inevitable. It isn’t, and switching has a real cost in time and attention. There are situations where staying put is the sensible call.
Your list fits comfortably inside the free limits, and you don’t need automation. If you email 150 people once a month and that’s all you intend to do, a switch buys you very little. Spend the weekend on your emails instead.
Your business runs on Mailchimp integrations. Mailchimp connects to more than 300 other tools. If your online store, booking system, and CRM all feed into it, the cost of moving isn’t the email tool — it’s rebuilding and re-testing every one of those connections. Check that each integration you depend on exists at the destination before you commit.
You’ve built a lot of automation, and it works. A team with a dozen flows on the Standard plan is facing a genuine migration project, not a quick move. If those flows are performing, the question isn’t whether an alternative is cheaper per month, but whether the saving outlasts the weeks it takes to rebuild and debug them.
Your team knows it well. Familiarity is worth something. If several people send from the account and none of them struggle, the productivity you’d lose while everyone relearns a new editor is a real cost, even if it never shows up on an invoice.
If none of these describes you — and especially if you’re paying for Standard mainly to get a welcome sequence — the alternatives above are worth a two-week test.
Picking by situation
You left because Mailchimp’s free plan has no automation. MailerLite. Three automations on the free plan is the most direct fix on this list.
You have a big list and email it only occasionally. Brevo. Paying by sends instead of contacts can change your bill more than any feature difference.
What you run is really a newsletter. Kit, especially if you’d rather have 10,000 free subscribers than free automation. See Kit vs MailerLite if you’re deciding between those two.
You want real automation for the lowest monthly cost. Moosend, provided you don’t need a free plan to stay on.
You plan to sell through webinars, funnels, or courses. GetResponse, on the Marketer or Creator plan.
You’re not sure yet. Start on MailerLite’s free plan. It’s the closest match to how Mailchimp works, so there’s less to relearn while you find out what you actually need.
The honest way to decide
Every tool here will send your emails. The differences that matter — how the editor feels when you’re tired, whether your emails land in the Primary tab, whether the automation builder matches how you think — only show up in use.
So pick two from the list above. Import the same small slice of your real list into each, and send your next newsletter from both. Two weeks of that will tell you more than any comparison, including this one.
When you’ve chosen, start free, keep your list clean, and spend the time you save on writing emails people are glad to open.
Related: For the full six-tool comparison, see email marketing tools for small teams. If you’re deciding between the two most common picks, see Kit vs MailerLite.