SideBySend
Snapshot 1, recorded 8 September 2026. All prices in USD.

Change record

When Mailchimp got expensive

Mailchimp did not raise its published tier prices in 2026. It cut the free plan in January and raised legacy account prices in April, and only one of those is visible on the pricing page.

Snapshot 1, 8 September 2026. Two recorded events.

The sequence

  1. Verified

    Mailchimp cut the free plan to 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends

    The free plan went from 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends to 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends, with a 250 a day cap. Trackers logged the change between mid January and February 2026.

    Effect on a bill. A free list between 250 and 500 contacts now has to pay. The cheapest paid step is Essentials at 13 dollars a month.

    source checked 8 September 2026

  2. Estimate

    Mailchimp raised legacy account prices by roughly 11 to 13 percent

    Accounts still sitting on older plan pricing were moved up by about 11 to 13 percent. The public tier table did not change, so the increase only shows on invoices rather than on the pricing page.

    Effect on a bill. An older Mailchimp account can now pay more than the published number for the same tier. Compare an invoice against the table rather than assuming the table applies.

    source checked 8 September 2026

What the free tier cut costs in practice

The free plan used to hold 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends. It now holds 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends, with a 250 a day cap. A list that sat comfortably inside the old limits at 400 contacts has no free option left.

The cheapest paid step is Essentials at $13 a month, which covers up to 500 contacts and 5,000 sends. So the real cost of the cut, for a small list, is $156 a year to keep doing what was free the month before.

VendorPlanMonthlyConfidenceNote
MailchimpEssentials$13VerifiedCheapest paid step once the free plan runs out.
MailerLiteComfort$12VerifiedFree plan also stops at 250 subscribers after the June 2026 cut.
KitCreator$39DerivedFree Newsletter plan covers this size, so the paid price rarely applies.
Cheapest paid plan at 500 contacts across the three vendors small senders usually shortlist. Free plan ceilings are in the note column, because at this list size they decide the answer.

The April increase is the harder one to see

In April 2026 Mailchimp moved legacy account pricing up by roughly 11 to 13 percent. The published tier table did not change, so the increase only appears on invoices.

That is the failure mode a dated dataset is built for. A pricing page read once, at any point in 2026, would show the same Essentials and Standard ladder before and after. Nothing on the page reveals that a subset of accounts is now paying more for the same tier.

This entry is marked estimate rather than verified, because the increase was reported through account holders rather than published by Mailchimp. If a firmer figure surfaces, the entry gets corrected in a later snapshot and the correction gets its own changelog line.

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