Updated October 15, 2026
MailCheap
Mailchimp

MailCheap vs Mailchimp

A focused newsletter sender vs an all-in-one marketing suite

11
Features Compared
4
Key Differences
5
FAQs Answered
TL;DR

For a newsletter to 10,000 readers, Mailchimp Essentials costs about $110/month and Standard $135/month, billed by contacts. MailCheap costs $39/month for a weekly issue, billed by emails sent. Mailchimp adds customer journeys, segments, A/B tests, landing pages and hundreds of integrations; MailCheap only sends newsletters, but sends them cheaply with strict deliverability defaults.

Platform Overview

See how each platform looks

MailCheap

MailCheap dashboard screenshot

Open-source newsletter app by Marc Lou, priced by emails sent: self-host it on Amazon SES or use the hosted cloud.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp dashboard screenshot

Popular all-in-one marketing platform with email, automation, and CRM features.

Key Differences

The main things that set these tools apart

The bill
MailCheap wins

Mailchimp charges by contact tier, and unsubscribed contacts still count unless you archive them. MailCheap charges by emails sent and does not count readers its list cleanup marks dormant. At 10,000 readers a weekly newsletter costs $39 on MailCheap and $110 to $135 on Mailchimp.

Marketing beyond the newsletter
Mailchimp wins

Mailchimp has customer journeys, segments, A/B tests, landing pages, a website builder and ads. MailCheap has campaigns, one welcome email and a public issue site.

Integrations
Mailchimp wins

Mailchimp connects to e-commerce platforms, CRMs and form tools out of the box. MailCheap has a REST API and MCP server but no native integration catalog.

Agents and automation by API
MailCheap wins

MailCheap's MCP server and REST API cover the whole product with the same checks as the dashboard. Mailchimp has no MCP server for its marketing product; its assistant app can draft campaigns.

Pricing Comparison

At 10,000 subscribers

MailCheap
$39/month

Growth plan, 75,000 emails/mo for a weekly issue.

Visit MailCheap
Mailchimp
$110/month

Essentials at 10,000 contacts, monthly. Standard is about $135.

Visit Mailchimp
Best for SaaS
Sequenzy
$49/month

At 10,000 subscribers

60,000 emails/mo (~6 per contact), unlimited contacts.

Free plan: up to 2,500 emails/month. Paid plans from $19/month (15,000 emails), unlimited contacts on every plan. See all plans

Start for free

Feature Comparison

11 features compared side-by-side

Feature
MailCheap
Mailchimp
Sequenzy
Pricing
Pricing model
Emails sent, dormant readers excluded
Contacts, including unsubscribed unless archived
Per email sent
Free plan
No (self-host is free)
250 contacts, 500 sends/month
Free plan (2.5k emails/mo)
Branding removal
No badge on any plan
Paid plans
Marketing features
Automations
One welcome email
Customer journeys (4 steps on Essentials, 200 on Standard)
Visual builder and sequences
Segmentation
A/B testing
Landing pages
Newsletter issue site only
Landing pages and website builder
Integrations
API and MCP
Hundreds of native integrations
API, MCP, Zapier and native integrations
Sending and access
Deliverability guardrails
Warm-up, bounce and complaint pauses, list cleanup
Compliance reviews and account limits
Managed, with domain checks
MCP server
Full read and write, sends with confirmation
No MCP; assistant app drafts campaigns
Official remote MCP
Self-hosting
Open source (AGPL-3.0)

API, CLI and MCP: How AI-Ready Is Each Tool?

What you, or an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT, can do in each tool without opening the dashboard. “MCP” means the vendor's own MCP server can do it. Each status links to the doc that confirms it.

MailCheap
MCP server
Official, read and writeHosted

mailcheap.ai/mcp. OAuth for ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, API key for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Every API endpoint is also a tool; sends are marked irreversible so agents ask first.

MCP docs
CLINoneAPIREST
Through its MCP (6 of 14)

Create and update contacts, Create campaigns, Send or schedule campaigns, Read campaign analytics, View or manage unsubscribes, Set up sending domains

Checked October 15, 2026
Mailchimp
MCP server
Claude/ChatGPT app onlyHosted

No MCP server for Mailchimp Marketing. The official Mailchimp app in Claude and ChatGPT drafts campaigns. Transactional sends work through the Mandrill MCP (paid add-on).

MCP docs
CLIOfficialAPIREST
Through its MCP (1 of 14)

Send transactional email

API only

Create and update contacts, Add contacts to lists or tags, Create segments, Create campaigns, Send or schedule campaigns, Trigger automations, Create A/B tests, Create and edit templates, Read campaign analytics, View or manage unsubscribes, Set up sending domains, Create forms or landing pages

Checked September 28, 2026
Sequenzy
MCP server
Official, read and writeHosted or local

250+ tools. Hosted with OAuth or local with an API key.

MCP docs
CLIOfficialAPIREST
Through its MCP (14 of 14)

Create and update contacts, Add contacts to lists or tags, Create segments, Create campaigns, Send or schedule campaigns, Build automations, Trigger automations, Create A/B tests, Create and edit templates, Send transactional email, Read campaign analytics, View or manage unsubscribes, Set up sending domains, Create forms or landing pages

Checked September 28, 2026

If You Leave Later: What You Can Take With You

Switching is easier when your data comes with you. Unsubscribes matter most: without them, people who opted out get emailed again.

MailCheap
Contacts and custom fields
Yes

GET /api/v1/contacts/export returns a one-hour CSV link, filterable by newsletter and status

MailCheap docs
Unsubscribes and bounces
Yes

Contacts export with status=unsubscribed

MailCheap docs
Templates as HTML
Yes

GET /campaigns/{id} returns each issue's content

MailCheap docs
Automations
Not confirmed

No automations to export beyond the welcome email

Open and click history
Not confirmed

Per-campaign reports via API; per-subscriber event history not documented

Mailchimp
Contacts and custom fields
Yes

Audience > All contacts > Export audience (CSV/ZIP), or Account > Settings > Manage my data account export

Mailchimp docs
Unsubscribes and bounces
Yes

Audience export ZIP has separate CSVs for unsubscribed and cleaned (bounced) contacts

Mailchimp docs
Templates as HTML
Yes

Saved/code templates: Export as HTML; account export has HTML for all templates. Drag-and-drop ones not individually

Mailchimp docs
Automations
No

Account export covers audiences, templates, emails and reports; automations and journeys are not listed.

Open and click history
Yes

Account export includes granular_activity folder with per-contact open and click data

Sequenzy
Contacts and custom fields
Yes

Subscribers > Export downloads a CSV with status, tags and custom attributes, or page through GET /subscribers

Sequenzy docs
Unsubscribes and bounces
Yes

Unsubscribed and bounced contacts carry their status in the CSV export, and GET /suppressions lists them

Sequenzy docs
Templates as HTML
Yes

GET /templates/{id}/render returns the exact email-safe HTML that is sent

Sequenzy docs
Automations
Yes

GET /sequences/{id} returns each sequence's steps, delays and conditions as JSON; other tools cannot import it directly

Sequenzy docs
Open and click history
Yes, on request

Full per-contact open and click history is exported on request; opens and clicks also stream out through webhooks as they happen

Pros & Cons

Honest strengths and weaknesses of each platform

MailCheap

Pros
  • About a third of Mailchimp's price for a weekly newsletter
  • Dormant readers do not count toward the plan
  • Strict automatic deliverability protection
  • Full MCP server and REST API
  • Open source and self-hostable
Cons
  • No automations, segments or A/B tests
  • No integration catalog
  • No free plan on the cloud version
  • New product with little track record

Mailchimp

Pros
  • Customer journeys, segments and A/B testing
  • Landing pages and website builder
  • Hundreds of native integrations
  • Familiar, widely supported platform
Cons
  • Priced by contacts, unsubscribed included unless archived
  • Free plan limited to 250 contacts
  • Journeys limited to 4 steps on Essentials
  • No MCP server for marketing email

What Users Say

Reviews from Trustpilot, linked to the source

Trustpilot

“Helped me resolve situations and waited till I did what they recommended. Never felt rushed or as if they were doing something else while waiting on me. Very responsive.”

Jaimie LancasterView on Trustpilot
Trustpilot

“I've been using Mailchimp since 2013, mainly because migrating years of subscribers and automations to another platform takes a huge amount of time. Unfortunately, that's the only reason I've stayed. Very poor service, unprofessional.”

Best For

When to choose each tool

Choose MailCheap if you...
  • Newsletter-only senders paying Mailchimp contact tiers
  • Large lists with many inactive or unsubscribed contacts
  • Writers who use AI agents to draft and schedule
Choose Mailchimp if you...
  • Small businesses that need journeys, segments and landing pages
  • Stores that rely on e-commerce integrations
  • Teams that want one familiar marketing suite
Choose Sequenzy if you...
  • Per-email pricing with Mailchimp-style automations
  • SaaS and product companies sending lifecycle email
Start for free

When Sequenzy fits better than either

Automations without contact pricing

Sequenzy has visual automations, segments and A/B tests like Mailchimp, but bills by emails sent with unlimited contacts like MailCheap.

A bigger free plan than Mailchimp's

Sequenzy's free plan covers 2,500 emails a month with unlimited contacts, against Mailchimp's 250 contacts and 500 sends.

Agent access across the product

Sequenzy ships an official MCP server, REST API and CLI, so agents can build and send campaigns and sequences.

Overview

Plenty of newsletters live on Mailchimp because it was the default a decade ago. MailCheap is aimed squarely at them: its homepage claims it runs a newsletter 75% cheaper than Mailchimp. The claim holds for a newsletter. The question is whether a newsletter is all you use Mailchimp for.

Why the bills differ so much

Mailchimp prices by contact tier, with a monthly send allowance of 10 times your tier on Essentials and 12 times on Standard. Unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts still count unless you archive them, so lists that have been collecting for years cost more than their active readers suggest.

MailCheap prices by emails sent, with an active-subscriber cap per plan. Its list cleanup moves readers who ignore several issues to dormant after one last email, and dormant readers do not count. For a weekly issue:

Readers MailCheap Mailchimp Essentials Mailchimp Standard
10,000 $39 about $110 about $135
50,000 $149 $385 higher

What Mailchimp does that MailCheap does not

  • Customer journeys. Up to 4 steps on Essentials and 200 with branching on Standard. MailCheap has one welcome email.
  • Segments and A/B tests. Mailchimp can target by tags, activity and purchase data and test subject lines and content. MailCheap sends to everyone, or to the most engaged readers first.
  • Landing pages, website builder and ads. MailCheap's site is an issue archive with a signup form.
  • Integrations. Mailchimp connects natively to stores, CRMs and form tools. MailCheap offers a REST API and MCP server.

Where MailCheap is ahead

Beyond price, MailCheap is stricter about deliverability on your behalf: imports drop typo domains, spam traps and disposable addresses; new contacts get a test batch before the full send; and campaigns pause above 2% bounces or 0.08% complaints. Its MCP server lets ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor draft, schedule and send issues, while Mailchimp only offers an assistant app that drafts campaigns. And the code is open source if you ever want to self-host.

Decision checklist

  • Choose MailCheap if Mailchimp is just your newsletter sender.
  • Stay on Mailchimp if journeys, segments, landing pages or store integrations are part of how you sell.
  • Choose Sequenzy for automations and segments billed per email with unlimited contacts. See also MailCheap alternatives and Mailchimp alternatives.

Frequently Asked Questions

5 questions answered about MailCheap vs Mailchimp

Testimonials

Sequenzy Testimonials

Yusuke

Yusuke

Founder, LandingBoost

It’s the first tool where I’m actually willing to keep working on email without it turning into one giant scary blast. Favorite part is still what I said, being able to split stuff. Drafts vs campaigns vs a single-person send. I can park a lot of “don’t send this yet” work with labels and not feel like it’s one click away from going to everyone. Sequences later. Consent / lists first. I’m slow on purpose.

Rakesh Reddy

Rakesh Reddy

Founder, CrawlRaven

We used Sequenzy to replace a generic onboarding flow with coordinated lifecycle journeys covering signup, connecting Google Search Console, discovering SEO opportunities, upgrading, and paid-customer retention. Event triggers, conditional branches, personalization, and enrollment cancellation gave us precise control over who receives each message - and when someone should exit a journey. We backfilled eligible users into the appropriate journeys. The initial emails went out without bounces, complaints, suppressions, or unexpected recipients. Future users now enter the relevant journeys automatically based on their activity in CrawlRaven.

Elvis Sun

Elvis Sun

Founder, PressPulse & Medialyst

Codex basically one-shotted the migration for syncing our audience from SendGrid to Sequenzy. Sequenzy is fully observable, so agents can just set everything up. The net impact is saving $45/mo, plus 2 hours of my time every time I need to repurpose a newsletter. That's 8 hours a month. My consulting rate is $550/hr, so every hour automated is super valuable.

Caden Sumner

Caden Sumner

Solo founder, Moxie Docs

Lifecycle email was the kind of thing I knew I would need eventually, but have never had to build it out myself and had no idea where to start. In literal hours I had a fully working (but basic) flow for onboarding new users, detecting churn, and re-engaging people who have trials lapsing to hopefully convert. Sequenzy let me offload the entire “keep users engaged and recover the ones who are slipping” workflow to something that just runs. Every hour I'd have spent building and babysitting lifecycle emails went into shipping the actual product instead.

The Stand Comedy Club

The Stand Comedy Club

Edinburgh, Glasgow & Newcastle

I'd been looking for an alternative transactional and marketing email platform for some time, and I'm really glad I came across Sequenzy. The system is easy to configure and use, the email builder is excellent, and the API integration and documentation are first class. Best of all, the support is exceptional. Nic is always available, responds quickly, and is genuinely keen to improve the platform. We've had numerous feature requests implemented incredibly quickly, and any issues we've encountered have been resolved almost immediately. The AI integration is also genuinely useful, rather than feeling like it's been added simply for the sake of having AI. We've already seen improved open and click rates compared with our other providers, and the platform offers excellent value for money. Highly recommended - definitely worth trying. Anything I had disliked about the system has already been addressed. We had improvements made to the email builder and we had team/user access controls expanded just by asking. The turn around time for making these changes has been very impressive.

Oct 7, 2026

G2
Jim

Jim

Founder

I run a SaaS, and found Nic on X where I kept seeing posts about his email marketing tool, Sequenzy. I decided to try it for email marketing. Literally on the first day, I used it to send a marketing campaign and I got 5 sales. What I like most is the ai assistant because it actually writes emails that feel real instead of the usual ai slop chatgpt returns, so they do not end up in spam. It also has a 2.5k free email limit which is way better than most tools that only give you around 1k. The best part though is that it handles everything for me, tags, subscribers, sequences and all of it. Without it i would probably be managing a database and a bunch of cron jobs just to make email automation work. Sequenzy just makes my life a lot easier. it can also be set up with 2-3 clicks! Give it a try!!

Mar 10, 2026

Dhiva Logu

Dhiva Logu

Founder

I love everything about Sequenzy and also the kind of support I get from Nic. It's already the best choice for campaigns & Sequences. Specially the integrations with payment providers, auth providers & analytics etc.. is really spot on. Best in terms of features & pricing in the email segment 100% recommend it for SaaS emails :)

Mar 10, 2026

Petros

Petros

Shopify App Store review

The setup was fast and simple. It synced customer, product, and order data quickly. Generating automated flows was simple, and it improved my monthly bottom line by about 7%.

Filip Panoski

Filip Panoski

Founder, Bazzly

I've used 2 other email marketing tools. They were supposedly "market leaders". Both were clunky, unnecessarily expensive and horrible support. When I tried Sequenzy I thought there'd be trade-offs compared to the others. But there weren't, it had everything I needed, there was no bloat, emails delivered extremely fast, and the founders shipped anything I asked in a day. The best part is that Sequenzy is AI native, I rarely do stuff in the dashboard, just use my AI to create campaigns, sequences and segment customers which saves me a ton of time. Never been happier with an email marketing tool.

Max Eccles

Max Eccles

Founder, InstantInterior AI

$600 revenue in 30d from email automations. Very happy I migrated to Sequenzy. Before I was making zero from email automations.

Leo

Leo

Maintainer, Email SDK

Sequenzy's most powerful feature is probably those campaigns. It seems useless at first but they are one of the most important things to send to your users. I get to talk to my users 1:1 and help them set it up for their use case. The owner is really active on X, really nice and helpful. He's the type of person to go out of his way to help you, so you get really good support!

Viraj

Viraj

Founder, SnapCount

After using Loops and Resend, I was looking for an email infrastructure service that had MCP support, Affonso and Dodo Payments integrations, and was affordable. Came across Sequenzy, and the support from Nic has been unbelievable. Migration was done in 24 hours without any issues, and I can run all of my products from a single account.

Louis

Louis

Founder

Easy migration from another tool. Premium customer service and easy to set everything up

Apr 9, 2026

Jim

Jim

Founder, FixMyLanding

It helped me grow to $100 MRR, get #1 on Uneed, make more sales, get acquired. I literally love Sequenzy, it's so simple, I love the dashboard. I also saw the integrations and was shocked. 3 sales today, all thanks to Sequenzy. Honestly, thanks.

King Killers

King Killers

Shopify App Store review

Loving the Sequenzy app so far due to the affordability and large subscriber limits. Planning on this becoming my main email app. Campaign + flows setup with the help of their AI took less than 30 minutes.

Verified User

Verified User

Computer Software

SaaS-focused feedback, fast processing, and plenty of integrations. It is very SaaS-focused, supports a wide range of integrations, and processes feedback right away.

Jun 17, 2026

G2

Not sure which to pick?

If you're a SaaS founder who needs Stripe integration and unified email, try Sequenzy free. No credit card required.

Related Comparisons

Written by Sequenzy, which appears in this comparison. How we compare tools

Sequenzy pricing reference

Sequenzy - Complete Pricing Guide

Pricing Model

Sequenzy uses email-volume-based pricing. You only pay for emails you send. Unlimited contacts on all plans — storing subscribers is always free.

All Pricing Tiers

  • 2.5k emails/month: Free (Free annually)
  • 15k emails/month: $19/month ($205/year annually)
  • 30k emails/month: $29/month ($313/year annually)
  • 60k emails/month: $49/month ($529/year annually)
  • 120k emails/month: $99/month ($1069/year annually)
  • 300k emails/month: $199/month ($2149/year annually)
  • 600k emails/month: $399/month ($4309/year annually)
  • 900k emails/month: $599/month ($6469/year annually)
  • 1.2M emails/month: $799/month ($8629/year annually)
  • 2M emails/month: $1299/month ($14029/year annually)
  • 3M emails/month: $1999/month ($21589/year annually)
  • 4M emails/month: $2499/month ($26989/year annually)
  • 5M emails/month: $2999/month ($32389/year annually)
  • Unlimited emails/month: Custom pricing (Custom annually)

Yearly billing: All plans offer a 10% discount when billed annually.

Free Plan Features (2,500 emails/month)

  • Visual automation builder
  • Transactional email API
  • Team and agent inbox
  • Landing pages
  • Unlimited team members
  • Goal tracking & revenue attribution
  • Unlimited lists and segments
  • Payment integrations
  • API, MCP, and CLI access
  • Unlimited sending domains
  • SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
  • Deliverability monitoring
  • Send time optimization
  • A/B testing

Paid Plan Features (15k - 5M emails/month)

  • Visual automation builder
  • Transactional email API
  • Team and agent inbox
  • Landing pages (Create hosted signup pages and attach a custom domain.)
  • Unlimited team members
  • Goal tracking & revenue attribution
  • Unlimited lists and segments
  • Payment integrations (Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy)
  • API, MCP, and CLI access
  • Unlimited sending domains
  • SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
  • Deliverability monitoring
  • Send time optimization
  • A/B testing

Enterprise Plan Features (Unlimited emails)

  • Visual automation builder
  • Transactional email API
  • Team and agent inbox
  • Landing pages
  • Unlimited team members
  • Goal tracking & revenue attribution
  • Unlimited lists and segments
  • Payment integrations
  • API, MCP, and CLI access
  • Unlimited sending domains
  • SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
  • Deliverability monitoring
  • Send time optimization
  • A/B testing

Important Pricing Notes

  • You only pay for emails you send — unlimited contacts on all plans
  • No hidden fees - all features included in the price
  • No credit card required for free tier

Contact

  • Pricing Page: https://sequenzy.com/pricing
  • Sales: hello@sequenzy.com