Is MailChimp free? This is a question I get asked the most about MailChimp. In short, it can be. There are, of course, limits to the free account. Read on to learn what you can and can’t do with MailChimp’s free account plan.
Please note, I share these comments with you because my clients have asked these questions. I am not paid by MailChimp to promote them or write about them. I use MailChimp and prefer that my clients work with MailChimp, so I write a lot of articles about MailChimp to further their knowledge and to help me develop my expertise.
Is MailChimp’s Forever Free plan really free forever?
Yes, it most certainly is.
I used MailChimp’s free account level, known as the MailChimp Forever Free account, for many years before I decided to go to paid.
A lot of email marketing programs will give you a free trial of 14 or 30 days. MailChimp’s Forever Free account doesn’t have a time limit.
Is MailChimp free if you want to send unlimited emails?
Nope. But a free MailChimp account will allow you to send up to 12,000 emails a month, every month. If a free email limit of 12,000 emails a month is not enough for you, you probably also have a lot of subscribers, which brings us to the next question…
Is MailChimp free if you have a lot of subscribers?
The MailChimp Forever Free subscriber limit is 2,000. Here’s the thing, if you have more than 2,000 subscribers, you are probably making money off of your email list anyway and you probably need some of the paid features, which I am about to talk about. But let’s return to the 2,000 subscribers. If you had 2,001 subscribers you would pay MailChimp $30.00 a month.
Does MailChimp’s free account have a list limit?
In MailChimp language, a list is a list of email addresses. To my knowledge, MailChimp doesn’t limit how many lists of email addresses you have in your free MailChimp account. However, keep in mind that MailChimp counts your total email subscribers in all lists toward your 2,000 subscriber limit. So if you have two lists in MailChimp and each list has 200 email subscribers you will have a total of 400 subscribers; this means you can still add 1,600 email addresses to your list(s) before you will have to upgrade to a paid MailChimp plan.
Is MailChimp free if you want to do autoresponders?
MailChimp’s free account limits you from using autoresponders or automation. If you haven’t heard of autoresponders or automated emails, they are very useful tools. Autoresponders will send a sequence of emails automatically for you when someone does something, like signing up for a free course or maybe you want to send emails on your customers’ birthdays. Automation can go much deeper; it can relate to things people do on your website, like you could send a follow-up email when they abandon their shopping cart during a purchase.
Mailchimp has changed its paid price plan. And they changed ‘lists’ to ‘audiences’. In the free plan you can have only one audience. That means paying if you have more than one list.
Of course you can segment your audience in ‘groups’ but that’s something different: users can change this according to interests. The best way to segment you audience would be using tags.
Arno – Thank you for the information about the updated plans. I will be updating my website to reflect the current information soon.
Hello,
I’m slightly confused about the interchange between subscriber and email list in the article.
Are email addresses and subscribers considered the same thing?
Hi there, Jenny!
Yes. Email addresses and subscribers are the same thing.
Is there a limit on the number of log ins in a certain period of time? Or the number of computers used to access an account? Last night I logged in to a club account for the first time on my husband’s computer. I had to go through the verification process since it was a new computer. That was fine. Today, I logged in on my laptop and it took me again to the verification page. But the button is grayed out. So I cannot request a code or a security question. So for now, I can’t work in our club account on my computer.
Hi there, Karyn!
I’d check with MailChimp directly on this one. You shouldn’t have a limit to the number of computers through which you can access your MailChimp account.
I’ve noticed that although I have less than 300 audience members MailChimp wouldn’t let me add another subscriber. It seems that because I have a landing page MailChimp won’t let me add anyone else to my audience. I’ve tried deleting it and that’s a challenge to figure out how to do, and now MailChimp says I it won’t delete it for 7 days because it needs “data.” I’m not happy with MailChimp. I went with an Ecwid website because MailChimp was integrated and as soon as I set it up they were not available. Having to deal with my newsletter separately is a pain.
Hi there, Deborah!
It’s unusual that you can’t add more audience members. I’d try contacting MailChimp for support help.
For the free MailChimp account, there is a limit of 2000 emails in a day and 10000 in a month. Mailchimp has an add-on feature for the paid accounts, one can pay a small sum for an extra number of emails in the month. Is this feature also available for the free accounts?
It is said that franchises and agencies can have multiple free accounts and can synchronize the accounts with just one email address and password. I work for a branch office of an international charity organization, are we considered as a franchise? Are we allowed to set up several free accounts for different groups of clients?
Hi there, Grace!
These are all great questions. Since I wrote this article, a lot has changed with MailChimp. So I would check with them directly.