Same pricing model, different price
Most comparisons against Mailchimp involve a tool with a different pricing model. Mailercloud is an exception: both bill email marketing by how many contacts you store. That makes this a cleaner question: what do you get for Mailchimp's higher rate, and do you need it?
Price by list size
| Contacts | Mailercloud Premium (monthly) | Mailchimp Standard (monthly) |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | Free plan covers it | Paid plan required |
| 10,000 | About $50 | About $135 |
| 25,000 | About $125 | Higher tier |
| 50,000 | About $230 | Higher tier |
| 100,000 | About $380 | Higher tier |
Mailercloud figures come from its pricing page, with 30% off for annual billing. Mailchimp Essentials at 10,000 contacts is about $110 and Premium about $350. Mailchimp counts unsubscribed contacts in your total, so an older list may land a tier higher than you expect.
Sending is the other difference. Mailercloud Premium includes unlimited emails under a fair-use policy. Mailchimp plans come with a monthly send limit tied to your contact tier. If you send two or three campaigns a week, Mailercloud's model is easier to live with.
A worked example: one year at 10,000 contacts
Here is what a year of email costs a business with 10,000 contacts sending two campaigns a week, about 80,000 emails a month.
| Option | Monthly | Year | Sending |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailercloud Premium, annual | About $35 | About $420 | Unlimited under fair use |
| Mailercloud Premium, monthly | About $50 | About $600 | Unlimited under fair use |
| Mailchimp Essentials | About $110 | About $1,320 | 10x contacts, about 100,000 a month |
| Mailchimp Standard | About $135 | About $1,620 | 12x contacts, about 120,000 a month |
Mailercloud saves roughly $900 to $1,200 a year here. That is real money for a small business, and the main reason to switch. The question is whether you would spend a similar amount on the website builder, landing pages or social tools Mailchimp already includes.
Fair use versus hard caps
The two tools handle sending volume in opposite ways. Mailchimp publishes a hard monthly limit per plan as a multiple of your contact tier, so you know in advance when a heavy month will push you to upgrade. Mailercloud offers unlimited emails on Premium under a fair-use policy, which is simpler day to day but less precise at the extremes.
For most senders this favors Mailercloud: a normal campaign rhythm never approaches a fair-use limit, and you stop thinking about caps. If you mail very frequently to a large, lightly engaged list, read Mailercloud's fair-use terms first, because deliverability and engagement will matter more than the plan page suggests.
Use-case matchups
| Situation | Better fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Newsletter to 10,000 contacts, two or three sends a week | Mailercloud | Lower price and no per-tier send cap |
| List under 1,000 contacts that wants to stay free | Mailercloud | Free plan covers 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails |
| Business with no website that needs pages and email | Mailchimp | Website builder and landing pages included |
| Team relying on a niche integration | Mailchimp | 300+ integrations |
| Interactive emails with forms or carousels in Gmail | Mailercloud | AMP support |
| One person running email, social posts and ads | Mailchimp | Social posting and ad tools in the same account |
Transactional email: Email API versus Mandrill
Neither tool sends receipts and password resets from its marketing product. Mailercloud sells an Email API with SMTP and REST, starting at $7/month and billed separately from the Marketing Platform. Mailchimp sells Mandrill as an add-on, which our Mailchimp comparison lists at $20 per block of 25,000 emails. Either way you manage two products, two sets of logs and, often, two suppression lists. If your app sends both kinds of email, factor that second product and its setup into the comparison.
What Mailchimp's extra cost buys
Mailchimp is no longer just an email tool. At the same account you get:
- A website builder and landing pages, so small businesses can skip a separate site builder.
- Social posting, ads and postcards, useful if one person runs all marketing.
- 300+ integrations, including stores, CRMs, form tools and event platforms. If your stack includes something niche, Mailchimp is more likely to connect to it.
- A larger template library and editor with AI content help.
- Customer journeys on Standard, and advanced segmentation and multivariate testing on Premium.
If you would use several of these, the price difference shrinks, because you would otherwise pay for a site builder or social tool separately.
What Mailercloud does better
- Price and sending headroom, covered above.
- A usable free plan. 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails a month versus Mailchimp's 250 contacts and 500 sends.
- AMP email. You can send interactive emails (forms, carousels) that work inside supported inboxes such as Gmail, with an HTML fallback for others. Mailchimp does not support AMP.
- Separate Email API. Mailercloud offers transactional sending as its own product starting at $7/month, which some teams prefer to Mailchimp's Mandrill add-on.
Where Mailercloud is thinner
The free plan leaves out A/B testing and the AI subject line generator. Premium includes 25 advanced automations, with unlimited advanced automations on the custom-priced Enterprise plan. There is no landing page or website builder, and the integration directory is much smaller, so check that your store, CRM or forms tool connects before you commit.
Two sample businesses
A regional retailer with 12,000 contacts and two campaigns a week. Sending roughly 100,000 emails a month runs close to Mailchimp's send caps on lower tiers, and the contact count lands the account above the 10,000 tier. The team does not use landing pages or social tools; its site runs elsewhere. Mailercloud's Premium plan covers the list with unlimited sends under fair use for a fraction of the cost, and the migration is mostly a list export and template rebuild. Mailercloud is the practical choice.
A local studio with 3,000 contacts, no website and a busy Instagram account. The owner wants a simple site, a booking landing page, social posts scheduled next to email and a monthly newsletter. Mailercloud would handle the newsletter but leave the site and social tools to other products. Mailchimp covers all of it in one account, and at 3,000 contacts the price difference is modest. Mailchimp is the better fit.
The pattern is simple: the more your marketing is just email, the more Mailercloud's price advantage matters.
Moving from Mailchimp to Mailercloud
- Export everything. In Mailchimp, export the full audience, including unsubscribed and cleaned contacts, not just subscribed ones.
- Map fields. Create Mailercloud custom fields for the merge fields you use and recreate tags you segment on.
- Import with suppression. Import subscribed contacts to lists, and add unsubscribed and cleaned addresses to suppression so they are never mailed.
- Authenticate your domain. Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for your sending domain in Mailercloud before sending.
- Rebuild automations. Recreate customer journeys as Mailercloud workflows. Keep the logic simple at first and check you stay within Premium's advanced automation limit.
- Rebuild templates. Recreate your newsletter and key automation templates; HTML exports can help but usually need cleanup.
- Replace the extras. Move any Mailchimp-hosted landing pages or website, and swap integrations that Mailercloud lacks.
- Warm up. Send first to your most engaged segment, then widen over a few campaigns.
Going the other way is the same process in reverse; the main new work is setting up landing pages and journeys in Mailchimp and choosing the tier whose send cap fits your frequency.
Checklist for both directions
| Workstream | Mailchimp to Mailercloud | Mailercloud to Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts | Export full audience incl. unsubscribed and cleaned | Export contacts, lists and custom fields |
| Fields | Map merge fields to custom fields, recreate tags | Map custom fields to merge fields and tags |
| Suppressions | Add unsubscribed and cleaned addresses to suppression | Import suppressed contacts as unsubscribed |
| Automations | Rebuild journeys as workflows within Premium's limits | Rebuild workflows as journeys (Standard or higher) |
| Templates | Recreate newsletter and automation templates | Recreate templates; replace AMP with HTML and links |
| Extras | Rehome landing pages, website and social tools | Set up landing pages or website in Mailchimp if wanted |
| Sending | Authenticate domain, warm up with engaged contacts | Authenticate domain, choose a tier whose send cap fits |
Where Sequenzy fits
Both tools bill by contacts. That is fine for a newsletter list, but for a SaaS company whose "contacts" are every user who ever signed up, it means paying for people who rarely get email. Sequenzy has unlimited contacts and charges by emails sent, typically $49/month for 60k emails (unlimited subscribers). It sends transactional and marketing email from one account and triggers sequences from Stripe, Paddle and Polar billing events.
It does not support AMP emails, and it does not include Mailchimp's website builder or social tools. If those matter, stay with one of the two.
Quick decision list
- Is email the only marketing tool you need? Mailercloud's price advantage is hard to beat.
- Do you send more than once a week? Mailercloud's fair-use unlimited sending avoids Mailchimp's caps.
- Do you need a website, landing pages or social tools in the same account? Mailchimp.
- Does a key app only integrate with Mailchimp? Check before switching.
- Is your list a SaaS user base with billing-driven flows? Consider a send-priced tool instead of either.
