Mailchimp Review 2025: Pros, Cons, Pricing

Mailchimp is probably one of the most recognizable names in the email marketing industry. But since its acquisition by Intuit in 2021, it’s gone from a popular ESP with a generous free plan to an aggressive platform that wants to push you to upgrade to a paid plan every chance it gets.
This pivot hasn’t sat well with long-time users. Nevertheless, Mailchimp is still a top choice many people consider when looking for an email marketing platform.
So, let’s see if signing up for the platform is still worth it. We’ll give you our unbiased opinion and explore alternative options in our Mailchimp review for 2024.
A Quick Look at What Mailchimp Offers
Mailchimp started as an email marketing platform, but it does a lot more these days. You can think of it as a one-stop shop for small business marketing needs. It offers transactional emails, landing pages, social media ads, CRM, and even an AI assistant.
However, many of the recent additions aren’t as polished or intuitive as its core email marketing features. Users often report that these new tools lack the depth and flexibility you find in dedicated platforms.
Getting started with Mailchimp is relatively easy, even for people who aren’t computer-savvy. You can build emails that look nice and see how they look on different devices.
But if you’re not familiar with marketing basics, you might bump into some unexpected issues with your campaigns and automations.
Here’s a rundown of the Mailchimp features you’re likely to use most often as a small business:
Feature | Description | Our Score |
---|---|---|
Customer Journey Builder | Create personalized workflows based on how your customers interact with your business. | ★★★★☆ |
Email Builder | A drag-and-drop tool to design appealing emails without coding. | ★★★☆☆ |
Email Templates | Customizable, pre-designed templates that make email creation quick and efficient. | ★★★★☆ |
Sign-up Forms | Customizable forms that can be embedded on your website or social media to grow your subscriber list. | ★★★★☆ |
A/B Testing | Test different versions of your emails to see which one gets more opens, clicks, and conversions. | ★★★★★ |
Marketing Analytics | Insights into your campaign performance to help you make data-driven decisions. | ★★★★☆ |
Dynamic Content | Personalize email content for each subscriber based on their preferences and behavior. | ★★★★★ |
Multi-channel Campaigns | Manage campaigns across email, social media, and SMS from a single platform. | ★★★☆☆ |
Integrations | Streamline your workflow and automate processes by connecting to third-party tools. | ★★★★★ |
What Do the Users Say?
Mailchimp reviews tend to be mixed. Many people love its user-friendly design and feature variety. Some even call it a “versatile ally” or say it’s “worth it for any company starting out.” Its many integrations and strong analytics are big pluses, too.

But that’s only one part of the picture.
The biggest gripes are about its pricing and the limited free plan. Plus, larger organizations and high-volume senders say their email deliverability isn’t always reliable.
Another common complaint is that Mailchimp’s new owners seem to have strayed from what made the platform great in the first place.
Take, for example, this irritated user who complains that the company isn’t focusing on what users need anymore.

To give you a clearer picture of what users think about Mailchimp, we’ve summarized the key points in the table below.
Positive Aspects | Negative Aspects |
---|---|
User-friendly design | Expensive pricing |
Lots of features | Limited free plan |
Comprehensive analytics | Inconsistent deliverability |
Extensive integrations | Confusing segmentation features |
Template variety | Limited customization |
Who Should Choose Mailchimp? And Who Shouldn’t?
To summarize our review of Mailchimp so far and make your decision easier, let’s give you our key recommendations.
Go with Mailchimp if:
- You’re a small business owner and want to start email marketing to communicate with your customers.
- You’re looking for robust integrations with e-commerce platforms and other marketing tools to streamline your workflows.
- You want an easy-to-use tool and don’t mind being slightly overcharged.
Choose a Mailchimp alternative if:
- You need near-perfect deliverability to make sure your emails consistently reach your subscribers’ primary inboxes.
- You need a more cost-effective solution that offers a better balance between features and affordability for your growing subscriber list.
- You want a simpler way to manage your audience without compromising the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
Mailchimp Pros
Let’s acknowledge the strengths that make Mailchimp a popular choice among many users.
Intuitive User Interface
Mailchimp’s user interface is easy to use. Most users like it because it doesn’t feel intimidating and helps them start quickly.
The things that most people want to do, like starting an email list or creating an HTML or plain text email, are easy. But the advanced features, like segmentation and automation, have a learning curve.
Here’s one happy user talking about the beginner-friendly UI — and of course, complaining about the price.

When you log in, you see a dashboard that shows you important information like how your recent emails performed, how many new people joined your audience, and what tasks you need to do next.
The sidebar on the left is where you find all the tools you need. Here, you can create new campaigns, look at your reports, and manage your subscribers easily.
Check out this screenshot to get a feel for Mailchimp’s dashboard.

Simple Email Editor
With Mailchimp’s editor, you can drag and drop items to add them to your email. These include your logo, images, colors, and styles.
The editor lets you easily add dynamic content to your emails. Add your preferred content block to your email and turn on “Dynamic Content” for that block.
You can also see how your email looks on different devices and send a test email to check everything before you send it to everyone.
Users on the Standard plan get a few more perks, including generative AI. Mailchimp’s Content Optimizer gives you recommendations on how to improve your email subject lines, email preheaders, and email content for better engagement. And you can use it to automatically generate your email’s first draft.
Here’s a screenshot of the email builder interface.

Plenty of Templates
An email template is a ready-to-use design for your emails. It helps you maintain a consistent look and feel across your communications while saving time on design.
Mailchimp offers a variety of email templates, from straightforward layouts to fully-designed themes for different industries and marketing goals. You can filter templates by purpose and industry.
Until 2021, anyone could use the company’s templates for free. But now, only paying users can enjoy pre-designed themes.
The switch didn’t sit well with many users who were stuck with basic one-column layouts with just one background color and hardly any customization options.
Read this user’s feedback on Mailchimp’s free templates.

If you’re at least on the Standard plan or higher, on top of pre-designed templates, you get to add your own custom code into your designs. You also get Mailchimp’s AI Creative Assistant, which customizes templates based on your brand logo and colors.
Robust Automation
Automating your marketing frees up your time. It also lets you create a customized experience for your contacts, which may boost engagement and sales. So, let’s get into our Mailchimp marketing automation review.
Mailchimp’s customer journey builder lets you visually represent all paths a contact can take. You start with a goal in mind, such as making a purchase, and define a starting point, such as signing up for a newsletter.
Then you’ll define the steps the user has to take to travel in your email marketing customer journey.
Their customer journey builder is a versatile tool. You’re free to design journeys from scratch or customize pre-designed templates that follow email automation best practices and make your job easier.
However, in true Mailchimp fashion, you don’t get to use the journey builder’s full functionality unless you upgrade to the Standard or Premium plans.
If you’re on the Essential plan, you can only make straight-line journeys with up to four steps. Since you can’t use if-this-then-that logic, you’ll end up having to make a bunch of similar journeys for different situations, which means a lot of extra work.
Mailchimp Cons
Despite its advantages, there are drawbacks to Mailchimp that might lead users to consider other options. Let’s cover some of the most significant ones.
Limited Customization
While Mailchimp gives you a lot of room to adjust how your emails look, the settings are too basic to let you build professional-looking emails from scratch or adjust existing ones effectively.
These are the items you have control over:
- Email fonts (size, style, and typeface),
- Email colors (text and background),
- Email layout and structure,
- Button styles and colors,
- Image placement and size,
- Padding and spacing for elements,
- Header and footer customization,
- Content alignment options.
Less-than-Stellar Deliverability
Independent studies show that Mailchimp’s email deliverability has been up and down, ranging from 82 to 95 percent over the past four years. But the most recent number is a bit worrying — just 85.4 percent of emails actually get through.
What’s more, only 75.4 percent of Mailchimp’s emails make it to the primary inbox. Ten percent end up in the Promotions tab and the rest are tagged as spam or not delivered at all.
These numbers aren’t the worst among Mailchimp’s alternatives. But they’re certainly not as good as what you can get. An email marketing platform with the right practices can give you much higher deliverability rates.
Complicated Segmentation
Your email segmentation strategy can make or break your efforts. It lets you split your contacts into smaller groups with common traits and customize your message to connect better with each one.
Mailchimp makes building segments incredibly complicated, but not advanced enough. You have to figure out where it stores the information you need and how you can chain multiple criteria to build a segment.
You can define segments based on three sets of criteria:
- Tags: Internal labels based on what you know about your audience.
- Groups: Information the audience tells you about themselves when they sign up.
- Audience interactions: Behavioral data, such as whether they’ve opened your last campaign, or e-commerce data, such as their last purchase.
Then you can apply up to five conditions based on these criteria to filter contacts who share certain common traits. If you upgrade to the Premium plan, you can create segments with multiple nested conditions.
This user puts it pretty well:

There’s also a predictive segmentation feature if you’re on the Standard plan or higher. It’s supposed to automatically build segments for e-commerce businesses using AI. However, it needs tons of data and won’t give you 100 percent accuracy.
Basic CRM
Let’s start our Mailchimp CRM review on a positive note.
Mailchimp is a lightweight starting point to get into CRM. However, it’s not the most advanced tool when it comes to sales team or pipeline management. It’s a better option for email nurture campaigns rather than sales operations.
The company is transparent about the limited functionality and positions its CRM as a tool for small businesses.
You can start your CRM from scratch or import your audience data from another platform. It connects to Mailchimp’s other features to let you segment your customers, analyze their behavior, and send them targeted content.
Mailchimp Pros and Cons Overview
Here’s a balanced look at what Mailchimp has to offer:
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
User-friendly interface | Variable deliverability rates |
Wide range of templates | Limited free plan features |
Comprehensive analytics | Can be costly for larger lists |
Extensive integration options | Lackluster deliverability rates |
Email automation features | Complex pricing structure |
A/B testing capabilities | Confusing segmentation |
Inconsistent customer service | |
Phone support only on the premium plan |
Mailchimp Pricing
The last bit of our Mailchimp review in 2024 is focused on costs.
The platform’s pricing is based on the number of contacts in your audience. You can start using the platform for free, but once you hit 500 contacts on your list, they start billing you.
There are three paid plans:
- Essentials: The most basic features with limited customer support and low usage caps.
- Standard: Most of the features are available and usage caps are higher.
- Premium: Access to all the features with unlimited caps and priority support.
Here’s how much each plan will cost you assuming you have 25k contacts on your list:
Tier | Monthly commitment | Annual commitment |
---|---|---|
Essentials | $270 | Not available |
Standard | $310 | Not available |
Premium | $620 | Not available |
Many Mailchimp users complain about the cost. Even those who like the service think it’s too expensive.
This user review sums it up nicely:

Email Platforms Like Mailchimp
So, let’s assume you’re among the growing number of users who find that Mailchimp doesn’t quite meet your needs or expectations. What are your options?
Brevo
Brevo, once known as Sendinblue, is a user-friendly email marketing and CRM tool designed for small businesses.
Like Mailchimp, it’s a multi-channel platform that supports email, SMS, and WhatsApp. But the CRM functionality is stronger. You can customize your pipeline, track your deals at different stages, and generate revenue reports.
Here’s a list of other benefits you can expect from Brevo:
- Customizable email workflows,
- Marketing automation tools,
- Sign-up forms and landing page,
- Automated welcome email series,
- Re-engagement campaigns,
- Transactional email and SMS.
MailerLite
MailerLite is another all-in-one digital marketing platform with a focus on emails. It doesn’t feature a CRM, but it has an advanced website builder with plenty of integrations and templates.
Unlike Mailchimp, it doesn’t come with a hefty price tag. It’s especially suited for small businesses, freelancers, and content creators looking for a straightforward tool to support their online marketing. That’s why it can serve as an alternative to ConvertKit and Beehiiv.
These are a few more benefits and features you can expect from MailerLite:
- Landing page builder,
- Pop-up and embedded signup forms,
- A/B testing,
- Online store to sell digital products,
- E-commerce integrations,
- Transactional emails.
Campaign Refinery
At Campaign Refinery, we’ve built our platform with one clear focus: getting your emails where they need to go — the primary inbox.
We don’t offer all the bells and whistles that you find with other platforms. But there’s a good reason for that
We believe that by focusing on the core email marketing features, we can help you grow your audience exponentially and boost your engagement rates.
Here’s what you’ll get when you join Campaign Refinery
- Unmatched deliverability.
- Straightforward tag-based segmentation.
- A simple but powerful automations builder.
- Exclusive SOPs and educational resources.
- A squeaky clean email list with valid addresses only.
- Pre-built campaign templates for inspiration and efficiency.
- Becoming part of an exclusive community of reputable, high-volume senders.
Need more features? Integrations can do the rest!
Campaign Refinery supports 1000+ integrations, so you can easily connect and enhance your email campaigns with the tools you already use and love.
Campaign Refinery Guides You to the Primary Inbox
Ditch the clutter you get with Mailchimp. We trim the fat and only give you the essentials but with unbeatable deliverability.
Apply to become a Campaign Refinery customer today and watch your deliverability stats soar!