Mailchimp Alternatives for SaaS Teams in 2026

Prices checked 7 October 2026; each price links to the vendor page it came from.

Why SaaS teams leave Mailchimp

Start with the money. The Mailchimp pricing page lists a free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day), then Essentials at $13, Standard at $20 and Premium at $350 a month for the first 500 contacts. Each paid card carries a "Save 50%" box, so Standard shows $10 for 12 months before "starts at $20". The contact bands behind it read $100 for 2,501 to 5,000 contacts ($50 in year one), $135 for 5,001 to 10,000 ($67.50), $230 for 10,001 to 15,000 ($115) and $310 for 20,001 to 25,000 ($155). The growth from 500 to 10,000 contacts is twentyfold in list size and nearly sevenfold in price, and the discount hides that until month thirteen.

Then the limits. Monthly sends are capped at 10 times your contacts on Essentials, 12 times on Standard and 15 times on Premium, and when you pass a contact or send limit the page says Mailchimp bills overages automatically after the trial. Essentials allows flows of up to 4 steps and three seats; Standard allows up to 200 flows, five seats and five audiences; Premium is unlimited on seats and audiences and adds SSO. Custom-coded templates can be created on Essentials but need an upgrade to send. A product team that wants a branching onboarding sequence is therefore pushed to Standard, and one that wants SSO or many roles to Premium at $350.

Finally the model. Mailchimp organises people into audiences, tags and campaigns, and nothing on its pricing page describes product events, workspaces or trial state. Teams cope by exporting data from the app and applying tags, and a tag records what was true when it was applied. Transactional email is a different product: the pricing page has a separate Transactional tab beside Email Marketing. The result is two vendors on one invoice before the product has launched its first lifecycle flow.

The alternatives, one by one

1. Loops: the cheapest step from a newsletter tool to product email

Loops's pricing page prices by subscribers: $48 at 4,788; $99 at 9,998; $198 at 24,339; and $249 at 49,989. Mailchimp Standard reads $100 for 2,501 to 5,000 contacts; $135 for 5,001 to 10,000; and $310 for 20,001 to 25,000, so the gaps are $52, $36 and $112 a month at the three comparable sizes. The free plan includes all features, unlimited contacts and up to 4,000 sends in a rolling 30 days to the 1,000 newest contacts, against Mailchimp's 250 contacts and 500 sends. It carries a small "Powered by Loops" footer.

Transactional sending is included on paid plans and there are no seat fees, while Mailchimp's Standard plan stops at five seats. Pick it when the person writing the emails is a founder or a product marketer rather than a lifecycle specialist. For its own limits, see Loops alternatives.

2. Customer.io: replace tags with events

Customer.io's pricing page reads Essentials at $100 a month for 5,000 profiles and $145 for 10,000, billed monthly, which lands next to Mailchimp Standard's $100 and $135 for the same bands. What it buys is different: 1 million emails a month, 2 object types, a visual workflow builder and transactional email on every plan. The price steps to $235 at 20,000 profiles and $325 at 30,000, so there is no Mailchimp-style 50% cliff, but there is no intro discount either.

Moving from Mailchimp means deciding what each tag meant and turning it into an event or an attribute the app sends. That is the real cost, and the reason to read Customer.io vs Loops before you choose between the two.

3. MailerLite: the nearest like-for-like swap

MailerLite is familiar to Mailchimp users and cheaper. Its pricing page reads a free plan with up to 250 subscribers, 2 seats and 2,500 emails a month (five times Mailchimp's free sends), then Comfort at $19 for 1,000 subscribers; $49 for 5,000; $89 for 10,000; and $179 for 25,000. Power reads $39, $69, $129 and $239 and sends without a monthly cap. Against Mailchimp Standard that is $51, $46 and $131 a month less at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000, though each Mailchimp band is a range (for example 5,001 to 10,000) rather than a single stop.

The page lists a website builder and landing pages, EU data storage and an ISO 27001 certificate. It does not provide transactional email, which comes from MailerSend, so an app that sends resets still needs a sender. Choose it when your Mailchimp usage is broadcasts and a couple of automations.

4. Brevo: a bigger free allowance, priced by volume

Brevo's pricing page lists a free plan with 300 emails a day, and its help article says the free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts. Starter starts at $9 a month and Standard at $18, both from 5,000 emails a month, with Professional from $499 for 150,000 to 10 million sends. Because the email volume you choose sets the tier, a list that grew faster than your mailing frequency is cheaper here than on Mailchimp's contact bands. Transactional and campaign email share one account, which removes the second invoice Mailchimp's separate Transactional tab implies.

5. Kit: free until 10,000 subscribers, if automations can wait

Kit's pricing page offers a free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages, forms, tagging and segmentation. Automations and sequences arrive on Creator, which reads $33 at 1,000 subscribers; $75 at 5,000; $116 at 10,000; and $166 at 25,000. It was built for people who sell to an audience, so it suits a product whose email is an editorial newsletter plus a few triggered messages, not one driven by app events.

6. Userlist: for B2B teams that outgrew audiences

Where Mailchimp has audiences and tags, Userlist has companies and users. On its pricing page, Basic is $149 for up to 10,000 users plus $10 per extra 1,000, and Professional is $349 with A/B split testing and conversion goals. Basic's $229 at 18,000 users and $369 at 32,000 show how it scales. Its floor makes it dearer than Mailchimp Standard at 5,000 contacts ($149 against $100), but a workspace with eight members is one company record, not eight loosely connected contacts.

7. Encharge: flows for SaaS, from a small floor

Encharge Growth starts at $99 a month for 2,000 subscribers ($79 billed yearly) and reads $179 at 5,000; $249 at 10,000; and $389 at 25,000 on its pricing page, with unlimited flows. Mailchimp's Essentials plan stops at 4-step flows, so Encharge is more generous in structure and more expensive in price. Premium ($159 at 2,000) adds HubSpot, Salesforce and transactional email.

8. ActiveCampaign, HubSpot and Klaviyo: bigger platforms, different logic

ActiveCampaign's pricing page sets Starter at $79 for 5,000 contacts and $149 for 10,000, billed annually, which is $21 below Mailchimp's undiscounted $100 band at 5,000 and $14 above its $135 band at 10,000. HubSpot's Marketing Hub lists Starter at $7 and Professional at $800 a month, with automated actions limited to 10 on Starter. Klaviyo's Email plan reads $100 at 5,000 profiles, $150 at 10,000 and $400 at 25,000. They solve CRM-led, sales-assisted and commerce-led problems respectively; moving to one of them for list size alone is paying for capability you will not use. See ActiveCampaign alternatives for what that bill looks like at larger sizes.

9. Intercom, Resend and Postmark: the narrower jobs

Intercom's pricing page charges per seat (Advanced $85, Expert $132 a month) with usage on top, and prices bulk email per send, so it fits a support-led team that wants onboarding messages in the inbox. Resend lists marketing plans from free at 1,000 contacts to $80 at 10,000 contacts on its page, plus a transactional Pro plan at $20 for 50,000 emails. Postmark reads $15 at 10,000 emails on its page. Resend and Postmark are the options for the transactional work Mailchimp prices separately.

What it costs at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 contacts

Mailchimp shows contact bands, so its cells give the top of the band that covers each size. The introductory price is in brackets because it applies only to the first 12 months.

Compare list prices first. At 5,000 contacts Mailchimp's $100 matches Customer.io and Klaviyo and is beaten only by the low-cost group of Loops ($48), MailerLite ($49), Resend ($40), ActiveCampaign Starter ($79) and Kit ($75). At 10,000 the $135 is above MailerLite ($89), Loops ($99), Kit ($116) and Resend ($80), and below Customer.io ($145), ActiveCampaign Starter ($149) and Klaviyo ($150). At 25,000, Mailchimp's $310 is the middle of the table: less than Encharge, ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo, but $112 to $131 more than Loops and MailerLite.

Now the introductory price. In year one Mailchimp is $50 at 5,000 contacts, which is level with Loops and MailerLite, and $67.50 at 10,000, which is below both. So the saving from leaving appears in month thirteen, when the $135 band applies. If you are already past the first year, the lower rows show the gain directly. If you have just started, a move to a tool with a free plan, such as Loops or Kit, is still worth planning before the discount lapses, because migrating later means moving a bigger list.

Two cautions. Mailchimp charges for contacts and sends, and its send cap on Standard is 12 times your contacts, so a 10,000-contact list can send up to 120,000 emails a month on the $135 band; overage charges apply beyond that. Second, tools that count profiles, active people or tracked users (Customer.io, Klaviyo, Userlist) bill on a different definition from Mailchimp's contact count, so the same export can price differently on arrival.

Which one for which situation

• You are a one- or two-person SaaS team sending onboarding and announcements: Loops, with its free plan and subscriber-based pricing.
• Your product emits events and you want journeys to follow them: Customer.io; budget for the engineering time to send events.
• You mostly send broadcasts and want less to pay: MailerLite, or Brevo if your sends are low relative to your list.
• Your email is an editorial newsletter with a paid tier: Kit, which is free up to 10,000 subscribers.
• Your customer is a team: Userlist, or Customer.io with company objects.
• Transactional mail is the main problem: Postmark or Resend on their own, and keep Mailchimp for newsletters until you decide what to do with it.

Migrating off Mailchimp

A Mailchimp account holds audiences, contacts with merge fields, tags and groups, segments, automations, signup forms and pop-ups, templates and campaign reports. Treat each as its own task.

1. List what is live. Count audiences, active automations (flows) and forms. Mailchimp's plans cap seats, audiences and roles, so older accounts often have several audiences created to work around limits; decide which ones become one list in the new tool.
2. Write down what every tag and group means. A tag such as "trial" records an event at a moment in time. In an event-based tool it becomes an event, an attribute or a segment, and half of the tags are usually obsolete.
3. Export every status separately. Download subscribed, unsubscribed and cleaned (bounced) contacts as their own files. Load the unsubscribed and cleaned file as suppressions before any send, so that nobody who opted out is emailed by the new tool.
4. Port the templates. Mailchimp merge tags such as *|FNAME|* will not render elsewhere. Re-map each variable to the new tool's syntax, and test a render with a blank value.
5. Rebuild forms. Signup forms and pop-ups hosted by Mailchimp must be replaced and the embeds on your site updated; for in-app signup, call the new vendor's API from your own code.
6. Move transactional mail on purpose. If you were using Mailchimp's separate Transactional product, treat it as its own migration to Postmark, Resend or a lifecycle tool that includes transactional sending.
7. Authenticate the new sender. During the overlap, Mailchimp's authentication records and the new vendor's can both sit in DNS; just merge the two SPF includes into a single record.
8. Overlap, then downgrade. Run the new tool for a billing cycle. Mailchimp's page says you can downgrade to the free plan at any time, but that plan allows 250 contacts and 500 sends a month and pauses sending beyond that. Export your reports first, then downgrade or cancel.

Our pick

For a SaaS team leaving Mailchimp, Loops is the one to try first: a free plan with all features, $99 at 9,998 subscribers against Mailchimp Standard's $135, transactional sending included and no seat fees. Customer.io is the runner-up when the product can send events and you want journeys that follow them, at $145 for 10,000 profiles. MailerLite is the answer if you simply want the same kind of tool for less.

Related reading: Loops vs Resend, Resend alternatives, email for early-stage SaaS and transactional vs marketing email.