Mailchimp halved its free plan again
Free plan cut to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with a 250-a-day cap.
What changed
- Free tier cut, Jan 2026
- Before: 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/mo
- After: 250 contacts, 500 sends/mo, 250/day
- Existing customers: unknown
Cheaper alternatives to Mailchimp
At 10k subs, Mailchimp costs $110/mo. 7 newsletter platforms cost less:
- Sendy + SES: $4.30/mo (Self-hosted, SES à la carte at $0.10 per 1k)
- MailCheap: $39/mo (Plan for one issue a week (~4.3 emails per subscriber))
- Flodesk: $72/mo (Lite plan (Pro above 25k))
- Buttondown: $79/mo (Base plan, no add-ons)
- Bento: $79/mo (Marketing Platform)
- MailerLite: $89/mo (Comfort plan)
- Ghost(Pro): $105/mo (Starter (Publisher above 1k))
Mailchimp alternatives: 7 cheaper newsletter platforms compared, at every size.
Sources
Every price and change for Mailchimp: Mailchimp.