Mailchimp vs MailerLite: what the contact-count price actually buys
These two platforms price email almost identically — by contact count, in tiers, with a free plan as bait. What differs is what arrives at each price: Mailchimp sells you a marketing platform that includes email; MailerLite sells you email that has grown a platform around it. That ordering explains every meaningful difference in the table below.
The verified numbers
| Mailchimp (verified Oct 23, 2026) | MailerLite (verified Oct 23, 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | 250 contacts (cut from 500), 500 sends/month, 250/day, basic email only | Up to 1,000 subscribers, free automations and forms included |
| Entry paid | Standard — $20/mo at 500 contacts (first-year promo ~$10); automations from this tier up | $12/mo for up to 1,000 subscribers (annual ~$10.80), automations included |
| Growth tier | Scales by contact tier; seats: 5 on Standard, unlimited on Premium | Power — $22.50/mo annual for larger lists, unlimited everything incl. seats |
| Overage behaviour | Cross a contact tier → billed for the higher tier automatically, sending continues | List grows into the next tier's price band at renewal |
| Signature quirk | Annual billing restricted (not offered at low contact counts) | Yearly billing discount applies broadly |
Full breakdown: Mailchimp pricing explained. The ruler behind both vendors' numbers — why "contacts" is the most expensive thing to be measured by — is in the three rulers of email pricing.
Where each one wins
Mailchimp wins the platform around the email. E-commerce integrations, audience segmentation tooling, retargeting-adjacent features and a reporting layer that treats campaigns as marketing data. If email is one channel inside a broader marketing operation — a shop, ads, segments that behave like audiences — Mailchimp's $20 buys infrastructure MailerLite does not try to replicate. The price of that ambition is the free tier's collapse to 250 contacts and promo-priced first years that double at renewal.
MailerLite wins the email itself, per dollar. At every comparable list size the price is lower, automations are included a tier earlier, and the free plan (1,000 subscribers with real automations) is more than four times Mailchimp's allowance. For the core creator-and-small-business job — a newsletter, a welcome sequence, an occasional campaign — it does the same work for meaningfully less. The workflow you would build on either is the same one we set up in the Kit welcome sequence tutorial; both platforms can run it, at different prices.
The overage asymmetry is the real story
The sharpest difference is behavioural, not nominal. Mailchimp's tier system bills you into the next tier the moment your contact count crosses the line — sending continues and the invoice steps up without a confirmation. MailerLite's bands apply at billing renewal; growth inside a cycle does not trigger a mid-cycle charge. For a list that grows in bursts (a promotion, a viral post), the same 1,100-subscriber month can be a surprise invoice on one platform and a non-event on the other. We put this behaviour at the centre of the Mailchimp piece precisely because pricing pages do not surface it.
The decision, by situation
- Newsletter, course launches, audience of a few thousand: MailerLite. The same feature floor at a lower meter, with a free plan that is actually usable.
- Selling physical products, needing deep shop integration and segmentation: Mailchimp's Standard tier is the price of the platform, not the sends.
- Migrating off a shrinking Mailchimp free tier: the exit mechanics, what breaks and what does not, are in moving from Mailchimp to Kit — MailerLite's import path is comparable.
- Comparing on subscriber pricing instead: Kit's 10,000-subscriber free tier changes the math entirely — see Kit vs Mailchimp and Kit vs MailerLite.
What we cannot verify
Both vendors' figures were read from their own pricing pages on October 23, 2026. Mailchimp's $20 Standard figure is the 500-contact price as displayed to our region, with a first-year promotional rate we did not test the renewal conditions of; its annual-billing availability at low contact counts is stated by the vendor, not tested. MailerLite's $12 figure is the monthly price at the 1,000-subscriber band, with the annual figure as displayed. We have not run parallel campaigns on both platforms to compare deliverability, and none of our statements should be read as a deliverability verdict. Contact-tier pricing scales non-linearly beyond the bands quoted here — get the cart quote for your actual list size. See How We Test.