The best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026, ranked: Brevo for cost-conscious senders, MailerLite for clean simplicity, Kit (ConvertKit) for creators, GetResponse for marketers who need real automation, ActiveCampaign for CRM-heavy workflows, AWeber for veterans who want reliability, and Moosend for the lowest-priced full-featured option. Below is the long version — why each one belongs on this list, who it’s right for, who it isn’t.
Why look for Mailchimp alternatives in 2026?
Mailchimp is still a perfectly capable email marketing platform — it powers hundreds of thousands of small businesses, has the best beginner onboarding in the category, and integrates with almost everything. But it has also become the textbook example of “starts cheap, gets expensive”. Past 1,000 contacts the pricing climbs faster than the value, advanced automations are locked behind the Standard plan, deliverability sits middle of the pack, and the platform’s identity has drifted from “email tool” to “broader marketing suite” that small senders don’t necessarily need.
So bloggers, creators, e-commerce owners, and small SaaS teams keep asking the same question: what are the best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026? Below are the seven we’d actually recommend after testing each one over the past several months, ranked by overall fit rather than by raw feature count. Free and paid options included.
How we chose these 7 alternatives
To make this list a tool had to: (1) offer a free plan or a free trial generous enough to validate the fit; (2) be actively maintained, with feature releases in the last 12 months; (3) have a credible WordPress integration; (4) score above 85% on independent deliverability seed-list testing; (5) appeal to a clearly definable user — not just “anyone who emails”. Tools that are great but extremely niche (Beehiiv for paid newsletters, Loops for SaaS-only) we mention in the FAQ but didn’t rank.
Quick comparison: 7 best Mailchimp alternatives
| Tool | Free plan | Paid from | Best for | Stand-out feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 9,000 emails/mo, unlimited contacts | $9/mo | SMBs with large infrequent lists, online stores | Email-priced model, SMS + WhatsApp included |
| MailerLite | 1,000 contacts, 12,000 emails/mo | $10/mo | Solopreneurs, small businesses, clean design lovers | Best price-to-polish ratio |
| Kit (ConvertKit) | 1,000 subscribers | $15/mo | Creators, course sellers, paid newsletters | Creator-native tagging & commerce |
| GetResponse | 500 contacts, 2,500 emails/mo | $19/mo | Marketers needing real automation | Strongest mid-tier automation builder |
| ActiveCampaign | 14-day trial only | $15/mo | CRM-heavy automation, sales teams | Deep behavioural triggers + CRM |
| AWeber | 500 subscribers | $15/mo | Veterans wanting reliable simplicity | Long-standing deliverability + drag-and-drop landing pages |
| Moosend | 30-day trial | $9/mo | Bootstrapped teams wanting full features cheap | Best price for unlimited emails + automation |
1. Brevo — the best cheap Mailchimp alternative
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the strongest Mailchimp alternative for anyone who cares more about cost than absolute polish. Where Mailchimp charges by contacts stored, Brevo charges by emails sent — and that inverts the math entirely if you have a large list you email infrequently. A local services business with 20,000 past customers it emails monthly pays Brevo $9/month; Mailchimp would be over $200/month.
Beyond price, Brevo bundles in things Mailchimp doesn’t: native SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, a lightweight CRM with pipelines and deals, and a transactional email API. The free plan supports 9,000 emails per month with unlimited contacts. Deliverability is in the same ballpark as Mailchimp (86–89%). The template library is smaller, and the automation builder is less sophisticated than ActiveCampaign or GetResponse, but for the price these are easy trade-offs to make.
Choose Brevo if: you have a large list, email mid-frequency, run an online store, or want one tool covering marketing + transactional. Read our full Brevo review for 2026.
2. MailerLite — the cleanest Mailchimp alternative
If Mailchimp’s interface ever felt cluttered to you, MailerLite is the cure. It’s the tool that small businesses move to when they want everything Mailchimp does but with a calmer, more focused experience. The drag-and-drop builder is arguably the cleanest in the category, the template designs feel modern out of the box, and the dashboard never tries to upsell you on five things at once.
The free plan covers 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails per month. Paid plans start at $10/month for 1,000 contacts with no monthly email cap. Automations, landing pages, signup forms, and a basic website builder are all included. Deliverability is consistently good (88–91% in recent seed tests). The downside: the automation builder is less powerful than GetResponse or ActiveCampaign — fine for welcome series, sequence-based nurturing, and tag-based segmentation, but not for complex CRM-driven flows.
Choose MailerLite if: you’re a solopreneur or small business who values design simplicity and predictable pricing.
3. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) — the creator’s Mailchimp alternative
Kit (the platform formerly known as ConvertKit) is purpose-built for creators — newsletter writers, course sellers, podcasters, YouTubers, indie authors. Its data model is tag-and-sequence-based rather than the list-and-segment model used by Mailchimp, which fits how creators think about their audiences: “people who clicked the photography link”, “subscribers from the YouTube channel”, “buyers of Course A”.
The free plan supports up to 1,000 subscribers and includes broadcasts, landing pages, and a basic Creator Pro creator-storefront feature. Paid plans start at $15/month and unlock automations, integrations, and the full creator commerce stack (sell paid newsletters, digital downloads, mini-courses directly from inside Kit). Deliverability is excellent (91–94%) — Kit invests heavily here because their customer base lives on it.
Choose Kit if: you make a living (or want to) from your audience. The native commerce features alone can save $30/month vs running Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy alongside another email tool.
4. GetResponse — the best Mailchimp alternative for real marketers
GetResponse is the closest like-for-like Mailchimp replacement, with the added benefits of real automation on cheaper tiers, slightly stronger deliverability, and gentler pricing past 1,000 contacts. The free plan supports 500 contacts and 2,500 emails per month; paid plans start at $19/month for Starter and unlock the workflow builder at $59/month on the Marketing Automation plan.
The automation builder is the strongest in the mid-market: branching logic, scoring, behavioural triggers, webhook actions, and pre-built workflow templates for the common use cases. Landing pages are unlimited from the free plan, and GetResponse also includes webinars on higher plans — useful if you sell B2B or run a course.
Choose GetResponse if: you want a feature-for-feature Mailchimp replacement that scales more affordably and gives you proper automations sooner. See our full GetResponse vs Mailchimp comparison.
5. ActiveCampaign — the most powerful (and most expensive) alternative
ActiveCampaign is what you graduate to when your automations stop fitting in any other tool. Its workflow builder supports nested branches, deep behavioural triggers, lead scoring with multiple weighted signals, conditional content, and split testing inside automations. It also bundles a real CRM — pipelines, deal stages, sales sequences, win probability — which makes it a serious option for SaaS teams and B2B marketers who’d otherwise need email + HubSpot.
No free plan — there’s a 14-day trial. Paid plans start at $15/month for very small lists; the realistic cost at 5,000 contacts is around $135/month on the Plus plan, which is where most of the interesting features live. Deliverability is strong (89–92%). The interface has a steeper learning curve than anything else on this list.
Choose ActiveCampaign if: you are running real lifecycle marketing, your funnel has more than three branches, and you’d otherwise need a separate CRM. Don’t choose it if you’re sending a weekly newsletter.
6. AWeber — the reliable veteran’s choice
AWeber has been doing email marketing since 1998 and shows it — in mostly good ways. It is dependable, fast to set up, supportive of legacy use cases (some of the best RSS-to-email handling in the industry), and has consistently strong deliverability (88–91%) thanks to decades of careful sender reputation management. The free plan supports 500 subscribers; paid plans start at $15/month.
What’s missing compared to newer tools: the automation builder is functional but visually dated, the template library shows its age in places, and the broader marketing-suite features (landing pages, signup forms) are basic rather than best-in-class. AWeber also includes a small but well-executed mobile app for managing campaigns on the go.
Choose AWeber if: you value reliability and human support over the shiniest interface, and especially if you’ve been doing email marketing for a long time and want a tool that respects that.
7. Moosend — the lowest-priced full-featured alternative
Moosend offers more features at $9/month than most competitors offer at $25. Unlimited emails on every paid plan, a capable visual automation builder, landing pages, signup forms, and a respectable template library. Deliverability is decent (~87%). There’s a 30-day free trial rather than a permanent free plan.
The catch: Moosend is the smallest company on this list, the integration library is narrower than competitors (around 80 native integrations vs Mailchimp’s 300), and customer support is slower to respond. The platform also has fewer tutorials and community resources, which can matter when you’re stuck. For bootstrapped teams with clear requirements and the patience to fill in occasional gaps with Zapier, Moosend is excellent value.
Choose Moosend if: you’re cost-sensitive, you know what you need, and you’d rather pay $9/month for features than $25/month for polish.
Honourable mentions we considered
A few tools we tested but didn’t rank because they’re niche or new: Beehiiv (excellent for paid newsletters, weak for transactional or e-commerce), Loops (best-in-class for SaaS product emails but limited for general marketing), EmailOctopus (good cheap option but the automation builder is too basic), Klaviyo (incredible for Shopify stores doing 6+ figures, overkill and pricey otherwise), Substack (great if you’re a writer only, not really a marketing tool).
FAQ: Mailchimp alternatives
What is the best free alternative to Mailchimp?
For most users, Brevo’s free plan is the best free Mailchimp alternative because of the unlimited contact limit and 9,000 emails per month. MailerLite’s free plan is a close second and beats Brevo on interface polish. For creators specifically, Kit’s free 1,000-subscriber plan is the best fit because of the creator-native features.
Which Mailchimp alternative is best for bloggers?
It depends on what kind of blogger you are. Hobby blogger? MailerLite or Brevo on the free plan. Serious blogger building toward an audience-based business? Kit (ConvertKit) — the creator features pay for themselves. Blogger who also runs a shop? Brevo. See our detailed GetResponse vs Mailchimp for bloggers comparison.
Which Mailchimp alternative is cheapest at scale?
Brevo at 10,000+ contacts you email weekly or less. Moosend if you email at high frequency to a moderate list. At very large scale (50,000+ contacts), get quotes from all three of Brevo, GetResponse, and Mailchimp — pricing becomes negotiable past that point.
Is migrating away from Mailchimp difficult?
The data part is straightforward — every tool on this list accepts CSV imports from Mailchimp’s standard export. The harder parts are recreating automations and tags (these don’t carry across), making sure your sending domain is properly authenticated on the new tool (allow a day or two for DNS to settle), and warming up the new sender reputation if your old volume was high. Plan for a week of overlap where both tools are sending, and prefer migrating when you have a quieter sending schedule.
Will I lose deliverability if I switch from Mailchimp?
Short-term, maybe — every new sending account starts from a neutral reputation and takes 2–4 weeks to warm up on the new platform’s IP pool. Long-term, several of the alternatives on this list (Kit, GetResponse, MailerLite) consistently outperform Mailchimp on independent seed tests, so most senders see a deliverability improvement once warmed up. Cleaning your list during migration helps a lot — unengaged subscribers drag everything down.
Our pick of the 7
If you forced us to pick one as a default recommendation for someone leaving Mailchimp today, it would be Brevo for businesses and MailerLite for solopreneurs and small newsletters. They cover the widest range of use cases at the best prices, with deliverability in the same band as Mailchimp or better. Kit is the right answer for creators, and GetResponse is the right answer for anyone whose growth depends on real automations.
Start free with any of them:
Want a deeper dive on any of these? Read our Brevo Review 2026 for the full inspection of the budget pick, or our head-to-head GetResponse vs Mailchimp comparison if you’re still weighing the legacy choice.
Affiliate disclosure: ToolTrusted may earn a commission from links above at no extra cost to you. See our disclosure page. Rankings reflect our independent editorial verdict.