Pricing behavior — Marketing Automation
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Pricing
Pricing for Mailchimp
How pricing changes as you scale: upgrade triggers, cost cliffs, and plan structure (not a live price list).
Sources linked — see verification below.
Freshness & verification
Pricing behavior (not a price list)
These points describe when users typically pay more and what usage patterns trigger upgrades.
Actions that trigger upgrades
- Need real automation beyond basic drip—requires Standard ($13.99/mo) or Premium ($299/mo)
- Need advanced segmentation and comparative reporting—Premium tier only ($299/mo)
- Contact count exceeds free tier (500)—forced to Standard plan
- Need to remove Mailchimp branding from emails—requires Essentials ($13/mo minimum)
- Need multivariate testing (4+ variants)—Premium tier only
What gets expensive first
- Free tier reduced from 2,000 to 500 contacts after Intuit acquisition—legacy grandfathered accounts expire
- Audience management: contacts in multiple audiences count multiple times toward billing
- Unsubscribed contacts still count toward your contact limit unless archived
- API rate limits: 10 concurrent connections; batch operations limited to 500 per request
- Transactional email is a separate add-on (Mandrill)—not included in any marketing plan
- Content restrictions: affiliate marketing, cryptocurrency, and some health claims prohibited
Plans and variants (structural only)
Grouped by type to show structure, not to rank or recommend SKUs.
Free
- Free - $0 for 500 contacts - 1,000 sends/mo, basic automation, HubSpot branding
Plans
- Essentials - $13/mo for 500 contacts - Remove branding, A/B testing, 24/7 support
- Standard - $13.99/mo for 500 contacts - Automation, send time optimization, retargeting
Premium
- Premium - $299/mo for 10,000 contacts - Advanced segmentation, multivariate testing
Next step: constraints + what breaks first
Pricing tells you the cost cliffs; constraints tell you what forces a redesign.
Open the full decision brief →Sources & verification
Pricing and behavioral information comes from public documentation and structured research. When information is incomplete or volatile, we prefer to say so rather than guess.