Two tools, one pricing model
Mailchimp and MailerLite are closer than most pairs on this site. Both are self-serve email marketing tools for small businesses, newsletters and stores. Both charge by audience size. Both have a drag-and-drop editor, landing pages, signup forms and a visual automation builder. So the comparison is less about "can it do X" and more about what you pay per subscriber, where each plan stops, and which extras you will actually use.
For our full notes on each, see the Mailchimp comparison and MailerLite comparison.
Ownership and direction
The companies behind the two tools explain a lot about where each is heading.
Mailchimp has been part of Intuit since 2021. Since then it has moved toward being a marketing platform for small businesses that also use Intuit products, with more emphasis on ecommerce data, predictive audiences and a broad suite (email, SMS, landing pages, websites, social posting). Pricing has moved up over the same period, and the free plan has shrunk.
MailerLite is an independent company that also runs MailerSend, its transactional email product. It has kept the core product smaller and aimed new features at creators and small businesses: websites with blogs, digital products and paid newsletters. Its June 2026 repricing shows it is not immune to price rises either, but it remains the cheaper of the two at most list sizes.
What 10,000 subscribers costs in 2026
Older comparisons quote MailerLite at $73/month for 10,000 subscribers. That price is gone. On 16 June 2026 MailerLite renamed its plans (Growing Business became Comfort, Advanced became Power) and raised prices across every tier.
| At 10,000 subscribers | Mailchimp | MailerLite |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid plan | Essentials, about $110/mo | Comfort, about $89/mo |
| Plan most teams need | Standard, about $135/mo | Comfort or Power ($129/mo) |
| Send allowance | 10x contacts on Essentials, 12x on Standard, 15x on Premium | 10x tier ceiling on Comfort, unlimited on Power |
| Who counts | Every contact in the audience, including unsubscribed | Active subscribers |
| Seats | 3 on Essentials, 5 on Standard | 3 on Comfort, unlimited on Power |
Free plans are now small on both sides. Mailchimp's free plan is 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day). MailerLite's is 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails, and since 13 August 2026 it is also capped at 3 automations, 3 forms, 1 landing page and 1 website. MailerLite's is still more useful for a small real newsletter, but neither is a long-term home.
The unsubscribed-contact tax
The row that changes real bills is "who counts." Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts stored in an audience toward your contact tier. MailerLite bills on active subscribers.
A worked example: you have 10,000 active subscribers, plus 3,000 people who unsubscribed over the years and 1,500 imported contacts who never opted in. MailerLite prices you at 10,000. Mailchimp prices you at 14,500, which puts you in a higher tier than the headline comparison suggests. The fix on Mailchimp is to archive unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts regularly, which removes them from the count while keeping their history. Build that into your routine if you choose Mailchimp, or the price gap with MailerLite grows every year.
Where the automation gap actually shows
On a simple welcome series, you will not notice a difference. The gap appears when you branch on data or need many flows.
Mailchimp's Customer Journey Builder is limited to 4 flow steps on Essentials, so real automation starts on Standard, which allows up to 200 flows. There it can start and branch on purchase activity from a connected store, engagement, tags and audience fields, and Standard and Premium add predictive segmentation and customer lifetime value. If you run a Shopify or WooCommerce store and want "bought twice, not in 60 days" logic, Mailchimp has more to work with.
MailerLite's visual builder is easier to read and covers welcome, nurture, date-based and abandoned form flows cleanly. Auto resend, which re-sends a campaign to non-openers with a new subject line, is included on both paid plans and has no Mailchimp equivalent. The limit to watch is count: Comfort allows 50 automations, Power is unlimited.
Creator features vs store features
MailerLite includes a website builder with a blog, landing pages (10 on Comfort, unlimited on Power), digital product sales (5 on Comfort, unlimited on Power) and paid newsletter subscriptions on Power, charged through Stripe. A writer can run a site, a free list and a paid tier without another tool.
Mailchimp has landing pages and a website builder too, but no native paid newsletter. Its extra weight sits on the store side: deep ecommerce integrations, product recommendation blocks and audience analytics. If your revenue is a store, that is useful. If your revenue is subscribers paying for writing, MailerLite fits better.
Getting approved and staying in the inbox
The two tools protect their shared sending reputation in different ways, and you feel it on day one.
MailerLite reviews every new account manually before the first campaign. You complete a profile about your business and marketing practices, verify your website, and request approval. It usually takes a few hours. Accounts with no live website, an incomplete profile or a list that looks purchased wait longer or get declined. The upside is a cleaner shared pool of senders.
Mailchimp lets you start faster and screens imports and campaigns automatically with its abuse-prevention system, Omnivore. If an uploaded list or a campaign trips it, sending can be paused while Mailchimp's compliance team reviews the account.
On both, deliverability depends mostly on your own list hygiene. Authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, avoid purchased lists, and remove people who have not engaged in months.
Support when something breaks
Mailchimp's Free plan includes email support for the first 30 days only. Essentials and Standard get 24/7 email and chat, and Premium adds phone and priority support. MailerLite's Free plan relies on community support, Comfort gets 24/7 email, and Power adds 24/7 live chat. If live chat matters and you have more than a small list, Mailchimp Essentials includes it at a lower plan level than MailerLite does.
Use-case matchups
| Situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Writer launching a paid newsletter | MailerLite | Paid subscriptions via Stripe on Power, plus a website with a blog |
| Shopify store with repeat buyers | Mailchimp | Purchase-based journeys, predictive segments and CLV on Standard |
| Nonprofit with 25,000 contacts and a tight budget | MailerLite | Lower price per subscriber and no charge for unsubscribed contacts |
| Agency managing a client that already uses Intuit tools | Mailchimp | Ecosystem fit and a familiar interface |
| Team of 8 marketers sharing one account | MailerLite Power | Unlimited seats without paying for Mailchimp Premium |
| SaaS product emailing its user base | Sequenzy | Unlimited contacts and Stripe-triggered lifecycle email |
Migration checklist
Migration in either direction is contacts-easy and workflow-hard.
| Workstream | Mailchimp to MailerLite | MailerLite to Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts and fields | Use MailerLite's Mailchimp importer for subscribers and merge fields | Export CSV and import into one Mailchimp audience |
| Structure | Map Mailchimp tags to MailerLite groups | Map groups to tags inside a single audience |
| Suppressions | Export unsubscribed and cleaned contacts and import them as unsubscribed | Import MailerLite unsubscribes and bounces as unsubscribed or archive them |
| Automations | Rebuild Customer Journeys as MailerLite automations by hand | Rebuild automations as journeys; check Essentials' 4-step limit |
| Templates | Recreate designs in MailerLite's editor | Recreate designs in Mailchimp's editor |
| Account setup | Complete the profile and request approval before your first send | Archive stale contacts early so you land in the right tier |
| Domain | Authenticate SPF, DKIM and DMARC, then send to engaged contacts first | Same |
Where Sequenzy fits, and where it does not
If you run a store or a newsletter, choose between Mailchimp and MailerLite. Sequenzy is not trying to replace MailerLite's paid newsletters or Mailchimp's app marketplace.
Sequenzy is relevant when the "list" is a SaaS product's user base. Both tools above price by audience size, so a product with 30,000 signed-up users pays for all of them even if most get two emails a month. Sequenzy prices by emails sent with unlimited contacts (free up to 2,500 emails/mo, then $19/mo for 15k emails), triggers email from Stripe subscription events through a native Stripe integration, and sends transactional email from the same account. Its importer can pull subscribers, segments, custom fields, suppressions, campaigns and automations from either Mailchimp or MailerLite with an API key.
Decision checklist
- Is price per subscriber the main constraint? MailerLite.
- Will you keep unsubscribed contacts in the audience rather than archiving them? MailerLite, or budget for Mailchimp's higher tier.
- Do you need purchase-based journeys and predictive CLV? Mailchimp Standard.
- Do you sell paid newsletters or digital products? MailerLite.
- Do you need more than 5 seats? MailerLite Power.
- Do you need to send today, before an account review? Mailchimp.
- Are your contacts SaaS users and should billing events drive email? Sequenzy.
