Mailchimp alternatives in 2023: 15 options, 5 with unlimited contacts (pay per email sent)
Mailchimp is too expensive, and is bloated with too many features.
Mailchimp is currently $70 - $100 dollars a month for 5k contacts. $20 per thousand contacts. Even if you don't send them any emails.
Let’s look at Mailchimp Alternatives.
There are two ways these services can bill, per email or per contact.
Per email, you get billed for the emails you send.
Per contact, you get billed for how many contacts you have in the system, regardless of if you send them an email or not.
TLDR
I am switching to Mailjet for per email pricing and Live Collaboration (multiple editors at the same time)
EmailOctopus is a good, cheap replacement that still charges per contact.
Buttondown is well made and "friendlier."
Per-Email Pricing
Mailjet:
- https://www.mailjet.com/pricing/
- per email
- $15 a month for 15,000 emails/month
- 0.001 per email / $1 dollar per thousand emails
Brevo:
- https://www.brevo.com/pricing/
- per email
- $25 a month for 20k emails/month
- 0.00125 per email / 1.25 per email
Mailcoach:
- https://mailcoach.app/pricing
- per email
- 9 dollars a month for 2k emails a month, 0.002 per email after that.
- 0.0045 per email / 4.50 per thousand emails
sunshine.email:
- https://sunshine.email/pricing
- per email
- £15/month for up to 5,000 emails, £2 per additional 1,000 emails
- 0.003 per email / $3 per email
- Text-based editor
Flodesk:
- https://flodesk.com/pricing
- unlimited pricing
- $38 a month unlimited contacts and emails sent.
Per-Contact Pricing
Sensor Pro:
- https://sensorpro.eu/
- per contact
- $9 a month for 5k
Mailblast:
- https://www.mailblast.io/pricing
- per contact
- $17 for 15,000 contacts (15k is smallest plan they offer)
EmailOctopus:
- https://emailoctopus.com/pricing
- per contact
- 24 a month 5k contacts
Buttondown:
- https://buttondown.email/pricing
- per contact
- 29 per month 5k contacts
MailerLite:
- https://www.mailerlite.com/pricing
- per contact
- 35 dollars a month for 5k contacts
MailBlaze:
- https://www.mailblaze.com/pricing
- per contact
- 44$ a month for 5k contacts
Sendfox:
- https://sendfox.com/pricing
- per contact
- 49 dollars per 5k contacts one time fee
Moosesend:
- https://moosend.com/
- per contact
- $64 a month for 5k contacts
ConvertKit:
- https://convertkit.com/pricing
- per contact
- $792 per year (66 per month but billed annually) for 5k contacts
- ConvertKit is better for creators, solo sellers, and users who prioritize highly customizable automations. It has more automation flexibility but fewer design capabilities and weaker reporting compared to Mailchimp.
Mailmodo:
- https://www.mailmodo.com/pricing/
- $99/Month for 2,500 Contacts
- Basically same price as or more expensive than Mailchimp but it is an alternative
Self Hosting
I don't want to self host but if you do, here are 3 options:
Sendy:
- https://sendy.co
- 1$ per 10,000 emails via Amazon SES
listmonk:
- https://listmonk.app/
- free open source
Ghost:
- https://ghost.org/
- free, open source
I usually use Mailchimp for my new projects because it's so easy to setup and I can use their forms link to add subscribers to my list manually.
However recently I noticed new users can't create any automation, so even tho you want a very simple welcome email automation, you have to pay for that.
That's why I returned the EmailOctopus, they have a very simple UI and you can have 2500 subscribers for free. Their API has a good documentation, easy to use. But my attempt to use it failed because of many cors errors so you can not use it easily on front end. Still a good tool nonetheless.
Thanks for sharing this. Bookmarked!
just use google workspace if it is under 1500 per day
Excellent article; Mailjet looks pretty fair.
What do you use to monitor your email reputation? Like spam reports, bounces, and other email metrics? You could send 20K emails a month, but if 80% of them end up in a spam volume is not important.
Thank you for including such important and helpful information in the post. It benefits in numerous ways.
Thanks for Sharing , Helpful content
Thanks for sharing! It'll definitely help a lot when I attempt to launch my first product on the global market in the near future.
found new "selzy"
I'm also using Mailjet. It's indeed affordable and reliable, but I always feel their website loads rather slowly.
For the free version, I belive the best one is Mailchimp.
Thanks for the shout-out, Josh! I'm the founder of Buttondown, and happy to answer any questions folks might have :)
Nice list. Thanks for sharing!
Good
I tried several of these services one weekend and found Brevo to be the easisest to use and has a generous free tier. If you are on a budget, go with Brevo.
Thanks for sharing. podwise use amazon SES, because it has 62000 email for free per month, when you at AWS Free Tier.
Yeah I've been using ListMonk (self host) with ClickSend SMTP configuration. It has a great API so I can quickly build extra tools I need.
You should include the free tier limit for each to compare... thanks for aggregating either way.
For context: I think most small projects need mailing services primarily for waitlist/beta feedback loops and then can consider paying. That means finding the cheapest tool that supports the most people i.e your product waitlist pops off and you get 5k signups but you will only email them like 2x a month with major updates or poll etc.
I'm using Google Sheets and the Gmail API via AppScript and recently have considered moving to a dedicated tool to consider analytics and other cool stuff. But this seems a 'low order bit' when compared to actually building hence me not moving away from it in any haste.
same here using sheet with script. just yesterday designed new html template.
This is great. thanks. I am using Sendgrid personally, which I haven't spent a bunch of time with but its a cheaper option for sure.
ghost.org isn't self hosted email solution. you will still need mailgun to send out emails.
In 2023, some alternatives to Mailchimp for email marketing may include:
Constant Contact
SendinBlue
HubSpot
ConvertKit
AWeber
GetResponse
ActiveCampaign
Drip
Campaign Monitor
Klaviyo
These alternatives offer various features and pricing options to cater to different business needs and preferences in email marketing.
This is a great list, for drip email campaigns I built EchoFox.io which is primarily a chat bot, but it collects visitors into a CRM.
This makes it easy to segment your visitors, and setup automated drip email campaigns.
I built it on top of SES and Event Bridge. So you get a good price.
I've been using MailGun, they have a pay as you go pricing, and support for multiple sending domains.
Can vouch for Brevo
Great list ty!
Just a note with self hosting. Emails can get tricky w security and maintaining your send authority. Definitely sending from your own server can be risky. The ones that link up to Amazon ses help to decouple the important bits. I think mautic is another popular one
Loops is also a great alternative (disclaimer: I work there). I've personally sent over 1,000,000+ emails through them for my weekly newsletter.
We just won Product Hunt's #1 product of the week and #2 product of the month.
We have a generous free tier and allow for both marketing + transactional emails in one place. No more needing to juggle two separate products with wildly different UIs and pricing.
This comes right on time for us! We have some people on our waiting list and need to begin sending emails. Also, I had no idea Ghost was able to send newsletters. Maybe we should change from WordPress to that :)
Thanks for sharing!