Mailchimp vs MailerLite (2026)

MailerLite is the better buy for most small businesses and creators. Its Comfort plan costs $49 a month for 5,000 subscribers against $75 for Mailchimp Essentials, it bills only active subscribers, and its free plan sends 2,500 emails a month with automations included. Mailchimp is worth the extra money if you need its 300+ integrations, an Android app, predictive segments or phone support on Premium. Both free plans stop at 250 contacts. Prices checked November 4, 2026.

Pricing compared

Both vendors publish US dollar prices that rise with list size. These are monthly prices checked November 4, 2026, for each company's entry plan and its plan with full automation:

Contacts	Mailchimp Essentials	Mailchimp Standard	MailerLite Comfort	MailerLite Power
500	$13	$20	$12	$25
2,500	$45	$60	$33	$49
5,000	$75	$100	$49	$69
10,000	$110	$135	$89	$129
25,000	$270	$310	$179	$239
50,000	$385	$450	$319	$389

MailerLite Comfort costs less than Mailchimp Essentials at every size in the table, and the gap grows with your list: $26 a month at 5,000 contacts and $91 at 25,000. Mailchimp's tiers also jump from 500 to 1,500 contacts, so a list of 1,000 pays $26.50 on Essentials, while MailerLite has a 1,000 tier at $19. MailerLite takes 10% off for yearly billing (Comfort is $10.80 a month for 500 subscribers, billed yearly). Mailchimp was offering 15% off the first 12 months for lists over 10,000 contacts when we checked.

MailerLite bills only active subscribers, so people who unsubscribe or bounce stop costing you money. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts, and you have to archive or delete people to take them off the bill. If you keep old contacts around, your Mailchimp bill reflects them.

The plans also hold different things at the same price. Comfort already includes 50 automations of up to 100 steps, while Essentials caps a flow at 4 steps, so the fair automation match for Comfort is Mailchimp Standard. At 10,000 contacts that is $89 against $135. Power and Standard are closer: Standard is $5 cheaper at 500 contacts, and Power is cheaper from 2,500 up. Mailchimp's top plan, Premium, starts at $350 a month for 10,000 contacts; MailerLite quotes Enterprise prices for lists over 200,000.

Sending limits work differently too. Mailchimp lets Essentials send 10 times your contact limit each month, Standard 12 times and Premium 15 times, with overage charges if you go over. MailerLite Comfort sends 10 times the top of your tier, and Power has no monthly cap under a fair use policy. If you send daily to a large list, Power's unlimited sending is the simpler bill. Mailchimp also sells Pay As You Go email credits with Essentials features, which suits someone who sends a few times a year.

Free plans and trials

Both free plans stop at 250 contacts. Mailchimp Free gives you 500 emails a month (no more than 250 a day), one user and one audience. You can't schedule campaigns or build automated flows, Mailchimp branding stays in your emails, and email support lasts only for your first 30 days. It works for trying the editor or sending a handful of announcements.

MailerLite Free gives you 2,500 emails a month, two users, 3 automations of up to 5 steps, 3 sign-up forms, a website, a landing page and one digital product or booking. A/B testing and the Shopify and WooCommerce integrations are on Free too. Support is the knowledge base. Once your active subscribers pass 250, MailerLite locks sending until you upgrade or trim the list; Mailchimp puts a similar hold on sending.

Trials follow the same pattern. Mailchimp gives 14 days on Essentials or Standard, and its offer terms say you must give valid payment details when you sign up. Every new MailerLite account gets 14 days of premium features, including 24/7 live chat and email support, without a credit card.

Automation and segmentation head to head

On Mailchimp, the Free plan has no flows and Essentials allows flows of up to 4 steps, which covers a short welcome series. Standard opens up flows of up to 200 points and flow templates, plus advanced segmentation, predictive segments that group contacts by how likely they are to buy, content blocks that change for each reader, and custom reports. If you want Mailchimp to sort your list by likelihood to buy, Standard is the plan to budget for.

MailerLite gives you a visual automation builder on every plan. Free allows 3 automations, Comfort 50 and Power unlimited, each with up to 100 steps on the paid plans. Ecommerce triggers work on every plan, RSS campaigns and personalized email content start on Comfort, and only Power lets a single automation start from more than one trigger. MailerLite's pricing page lists self-updating segments and tags on every plan but no equivalent of Mailchimp's predictive segments.

For a typical small business sequence (a welcome series, an abandoned cart reminder, a follow-up after purchase), MailerLite Comfort does the job for less money. Mailchimp Standard is the better fit if you want its predictive segments and custom reports on the same screen as your flows.

Email building, testing, websites and AI

Both have a drag-and-drop email builder with templates. MailerLite includes three editors on every plan, including Free: drag-and-drop, a rich-text editor and custom HTML, with more than 70 content blocks such as surveys, quizzes and countdown timers. Mailchimp Free gets a limited selection of templates; custom-coded templates can be sent from Standard and Premium, while Free and Essentials can build them but must upgrade to send.

Testing favors MailerLite at the low end. A/B tests run on its Free plan, and multivariate testing starts on Comfort. Mailchimp starts A/B testing on Essentials, and its help center lists multivariate testing on Standard and Premium.

MailerLite goes further outside the inbox. It builds websites with a blog, landing pages and pop-ups, including a spin-the-wheel pop-up, and sells ebooks, bookings and paid newsletter subscriptions through Stripe. Mailchimp has a landing page builder that pulls product photos from a connected store, sign-up and pop-up forms, surveys, and social posts and ads you can schedule from your account. It also offers SMS as an add-on for paid plans in selected countries, which MailerLite's marketing plans don't include.

On AI, Mailchimp Standard and Premium include Intuit Assist at no extra cost, which Mailchimp labels a beta in English for selected countries. MailerLite Comfort and Power include an AI writing assistant, a subject line generator, an AI landing page builder and Smart Sending. MailerLite also runs an MCP server so Claude or ChatGPT can manage campaigns and subscribers; on Free that access is limited and can't send email.

Integrations, apps and team seats

Mailchimp's main advantage is reach. It connects with more than 300 apps, against the 100+ MailerLite lists on its pricing page, and its free iOS and Android app lets you create and edit campaigns, read reports and add contacts from your phone. MailerLite's mobile app, MailerLite Manager, runs on iPhone and iPad only and sends rich-text campaigns; drag-and-drop and HTML campaigns stay on the desktop. MailerLite also has an iPad app for collecting subscribers at events, even offline.

Seats cost more on Mailchimp. It gives you 1 user on Free, 3 on Essentials, 5 on Standard and unlimited on Premium. MailerLite gives 2 on Free, 3 on Comfort and unlimited on Power, so a team of six pays $25 a month for 500 subscribers on MailerLite Power and $350 on Mailchimp Premium.

Neither sends app emails such as password resets without an add-on or a second product. Mailchimp sells Mailchimp Transactional as an add-on for Standard and Premium. MailerLite points you to MailerSend, a separate product from the same company with its own pricing. Mailchimp also counts test and transactional emails toward your monthly send limit, which is worth checking if you test a lot.

Support and the companies behind them

Mailchimp gives every paid plan 24/7 email and chat support, starting with Essentials at $13 a month. Standard adds one personalized onboarding session, and Premium adds phone and priority support, four onboarding sessions and a dedicated onboarding specialist. Free accounts get email support for 30 days.

MailerLite's support depends on the plan. Free has the knowledge base, Comfort has email support and Power has 24/7 live chat. During the 14-day trial everyone gets 24/7 live chat and email. If you want live chat at the lowest price, Mailchimp Essentials gets you there for $13; on MailerLite you need Power at $25.

Mailchimp started in Atlanta in 2001 and has belonged to Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks, since 2021. MailerLite began in 2010 and is a fully remote company with 163 people in more than 40 countries. Nonprofits get 30% off MailerLite's paid plans and 15% off Mailchimp's.

Who each one suits

Pick MailerLite if you send a regular newsletter and a few automated sequences, want a website or landing pages in the same account, or watch your monthly bill. From 2,500 contacts up, Comfort costs 17% to 35% less than Mailchimp Essentials, and MailerLite charges only for active subscribers.

Pick Mailchimp if your other tools already connect to it, you want predictive segments and custom reports, your team uses Android phones, or you need phone support and hands-on onboarding from a large company. Expect to pay more for those as your list grows.

If you are a creator who wants a free plan that holds a bigger list, look at Kit. If you want SMS and a CRM in the same account, Brevo is the closer fit. If you sell online and want each sale traced to the email, link or source that brought it in, Platformly keeps email, automations, tracking links and sales reports on the same contact records.