Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the email marketing platform that most people encounter first. Founded in 2001 and acquired by Intuit in 2021, it holds a dominant position in the small-business segment partly because of its longevity and partly because its free tier — up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month — gives new senders a functional starting point without a credit card. The campaign builder is drag-and-drop, the template library is large, and the onboarding is designed to be accessible to non-technical users who have never configured an ESP before.

The product has grown well beyond basic campaigns. Mailchimp now includes multi-step automation journeys, audience segmentation by behavior and purchase history, A/B testing, landing pages, a lightweight CRM, and e-commerce integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce. For a small business running occasional promotional emails, it covers a lot of ground in one interface.

The cost conversation changes as lists grow. Mailchimp prices by total contact count, and that count historically included unsubscribed contacts — a frustrating quirk that inflated bills for active list managers. Even after policy adjustments, a list of 10,000 subscribers on the Standard plan runs over $100 per month, and 50,000 contacts pushes well above $350 per month. Advanced automations and behavioral segmentation also require the Standard or Premium tier. At volume, the combination of contact-based billing and feature gating sends many senders looking at self-hosted options like listmonk, where the list can be any size and the only cost is SMTP delivery.