The 10 best Mailchimp alternatives in 2026

Mailchimp is genuinely great. It shows up on three of Zapier's best apps lists for a reason:

• Best email drip campaign software

• Best marketing automation software

• Best campaign management software

But "genuinely great" and "right for you" aren't always the same thing. People look for paid and free Mailchimp alternatives for all kinds of reasons. Maybe the pricing is getting too complicated for your growing list, or the interface feels too cluttered. Or you might just need something more specialized, whether that's a tool built for eCommerce or one with more advanced AI features.

The good news is that the Mailchimp alternatives market has never been stronger. The team at Zapier has spent a collective hundreds of hours testing these tools head-to-head, and based on that testing, here are the 10 best Mailchimp alternatives depending on what you're actually looking for.

The best Mailchimp alternatives

• ActiveCampaign for advanced marketing automation

• Kit for creators

• Constant Contact for more email templates

• HubSpot for an all-in-one marketing, sales, and service platform

• Klaviyo for eCommerce email marketing

• SendGrid for high-volume transactional emails

• Flodesk for solopreneurs

• Audienceful for email newsletters

• Brevo for a free Mailchimp alternative for marketing automation

• MailerLite for a free Mailchimp alternative for email marketing

What makes the best Mailchimp alternative?

Unless you're looking for a particular feature, it can be hard to find a tool that beats Mailchimp—especially for beginners and small businesses. It's easy to use, relatively affordable, and has enough advanced features to help you build an audience. It also has a cartoon chimpanzee as its mascot, and who doesn't love that? 

To be a legitimate alternative to Mailchimp, an email marketing platform needs to have all the core features Mailchimp offers—like email templates, automated customer journeys, and audience segmentation. On top of that, it should offer something Mailchimp doesn't—such as:

• Better pricing

• More robust analytics

• More advanced marketing automation tools

• Better deliverability

• A niche use case (like creators or eCommerce brands)

After all, if you're considering a switch from Mailchimp, the new app needs to be worth your while. Now—on to the apps.

The best Mailchimp alternatives at a glance

Best Mailchimp alternative for more robust features and advanced marketing automation

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign pros: 

• Extremely customizable 

• Advanced automation and testing for email, SMS, and website

• Active Intelligence suite: AI builds full campaigns, suggests segments, and optimizes send times

ActiveCampaign cons: 

• No free plan available

• Steep learning curve (but lots of advanced features) 

ActiveCampaign has been on the block almost as long as Mailchimp (it's only two years younger), and it has some pretty advanced features. For example, its lead scoring options are extensive and give you much more control over personalization and segmentation than you get with Mailchimp.

But it's the marketing automation features in ActiveCampaign that really set it apart. You can do things like include SMS blocks and website messages as steps within your automated campaigns, which isn't possible in Mailchimp. ActiveCampaign's automation map is also nifty: it allows you to view multiple automated journeys on one map to see how they work together, giving you a much more holistic view of your campaigns.

Mailchimp offers a free plan and feels a lot simpler than ActiveCampaign, but with that simplicity, there are tradeoffs. So if you're ready to graduate from Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign is a solid next step.

It's also worth noting that ActiveCampaign has gone deep on AI with its Active Intelligence suite. You can generate complete email campaigns—including copy, images, layout, and automation—from a single prompt. You can also get AI-suggested audience segments based on your customer data and use predictive send timing to hit each contact at the right moment. For power users, this is particularly useful.

ActiveCampaign also offers a number of native integrations. But you can unlock thousands more when you connect ActiveCampaign with Zapier. From there, you can automate your most repetitive ActiveCampaign tasks. Learn more about how to automate ActiveCampaign, or get started with a pre-made workflow.

ActiveCampaign pricing: Starts at $15/month (billed annually) for Starter, which includes email and marketing automation for up to 1,000 contacts. 

Read more: ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp

Best Mailchimp alternative for creators

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Kit pros: 

• Flexible tagging allows for easy search and segmentation

• Intuitive email editor that works like a web builder

Kit cons: 

• A/B testing limited to only subject lines 

• Emphasis on minimal, text-forward newsletters can be limiting

Where ActiveCampaign is for Mailchimp graduates, Kit is better for folks who don't yet need a tool as robust as Mailchimp.

Kit is pretty barebones when it comes to email building, and more advanced marketers will probably feel like there's something left to be desired. It lacks advanced testing options, and compared to a tool like Mailchimp, it also doesn't offer much in terms of reporting. And its small number of template designs and customization options (unless you know HTML) are a bit limiting.

That's not to say it doesn't have its strengths, though. Kit offers flexible contact management, impressive automation capabilities (especially given the simplicity of the app overall), and a ton of landing page templates. And because the focus is really on solo creators and small eCommerce businesses, it offers some unique features that you won't find in most other email marketing apps (looking at you, tip jar.)

When you integrate Kit with Zapier, you can automate even more of your email marketing workflows. Learn more about how to automate Kit, or get started with a pre-made workflow.

Kit pricing: Free for up to 10,000 subscribers, unlimited landing pages and forms, and audience segmentation; cost of paid plan depends on the number of subscribers but starts at $33/month (billed annually) and includes free data migration and other advanced features.

Read more: Kit vs. Mailchimp

Best alternative to Mailchimp for more templates

Constant Contact

Constant Contact pros: 

• Robust library of design templates, suitable for nearly every occasion 

• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop builder 

Constant Contact cons: 

• Can only A/B test subject lines 

• No free plan available

Compared to Mailchimp, Constant Contact is better for email marketing beginners who need simple features and ready-to-send templates. Even though its email builder isn't quite as robust as Mailchimp's, it has three times as many (over 600) email templates that cover nearly any campaign you're sending.

Constant Contact's automation features aren't as deep as Mailchimp's, but it can automate welcome, birthday, anniversary, and resending emails—and you can set up workflows for eCommerce websites. Similarly, the testing and reporting options aren't as advanced, but if you need only the basics, it has you covered. For example, you can test subject lines, and you can see opens, clicks, bounces, and conversion rates. 

Constant Contact also has an AI content generator that writes email copy from a few talking points, and an AI template library where you can type a description ("a minimalist newsletter for a coffee shop") and get a matching design in seconds. Speaking as someone whose worst nightmare is staring at a blank canvas, this is a handy feature.

Plus, Constant Contact offers live chat and phone support on every plan. If that's how you like to get your customer support, that could be the deciding factor.

With Zapier, you can also connect Constant Contact with your other apps. This way, you can automate every step of your email marketing workflows. Learn more about how to automate Constant Contact.

Constant Contact pricing: No free plan available; cost of paid plans depends on the number of contacts but starts at $12/month. 

Read more: Constant Contact vs. Mailchimp

Best Mailchimp alternative for longer buyer lifecycles and an all-in-one tool

HubSpot

HubSpot pros: 

• Generous free plan, which includes unlimited contacts and 2,000 email sends a month 

• Breeze AI woven throughout the platform: write content, predict email engagement before you send, remix content across channels

HubSpot cons: 

• Sub-par email templates

• Full suite can be overwhelming

The main difference here: HubSpot is an all-in-one tool that combines marketing, sales, content management, operations, customer service, and commerce into one platform, while Mailchimp is more purely marketing software.

For example, the automations you can set up in HubSpot are highly advanced. This makes it much more suited for longer buyer lifecycles because you can trigger automated email sequences that nurture people all the way through the funnel and segment your list based on all sorts of factors, including their behavior and their stage in the customer lifecycle.

Having said that, it's not quite as easy to build an email in HubSpot. The builder is excellent, but Mailchimp has more templates and makes the process a lot smoother. Because HubSpot is very CRM-focused, there are a lot more moving parts—so it's natural that emails would be a bit more complicated.

Finally, you'll get more advanced analytics in HubSpot than you will in Mailchimp—again, it makes sense given all the integrated features you're working with.

HubSpot is just built to do a lot more than Mailchimp can do, so be sure you need all of its extra features before making the switch—it's harder to set up and, naturally, it'll cost you more.

The AI story here is also more mature than Mailchimp's. Breeze, HubSpot's AI assistant, is baked into the whole platform (not just the email builder). You can generate and refine content, predict email engagement before you hit send, and use Content Remix to repurpose one piece across multiple channels.

When you use Zapier to connect HubSpot, you can practically set everything from your email marketing workflows to lead management on autopilot. Learn more about how to automate HubSpot, or get started with a pre-made workflow. 

HubSpot pricing: Free plan available; cost of paid plans depends on which parts of the software you use—Marketing Hub Starter starts at $20/month/seat for 1,000 marketing contacts.

Read more: HubSpot vs. Mailchimp

Best Mailchimp alternative for eCommerce

Klaviyo

Klaviyo pros: 

• Intuitive platform with a growing K:AI suite built specifically for eCommerce

• Advanced features, including segmentation, automation, and analytics 

Klaviyo cons: 

• Marketing channels limited to email and SMS 

• Paid plans can get pricey fast 

The quick version: Klaviyo is more suitable for larger brands doing eCommerce email marketing.

For starters, you can add automated alerts for people shopping at your store—things like abandoned cart reminders, order updates, and alerts for price drops. And it's all a lot more customizable than in Mailchimp. You can also set eCommerce-specific benchmarks that help you compare how you're doing against other brands in the industry.

Klaviyo doesn't have as many digital marketing channels as Mailchimp, though—it's limited to email and SMS. Mailchimp, on the other hand, lets you do landing pages, postcards, social posts, ads, and surveys. 

Overall, Klaviyo offers more granular customization and more in-depth options for segmentation, automation, and analytics, with special attention to the eCommerce side of things. And its K:AI suite makes it one of the more AI-forward options on this list. It includes a Marketing Agent that autonomously creates campaigns from your website data, Segments AI that builds complex audience segments from plain-text prompts, and predictive analytics for customer lifetime value and next order date. So if you sell products online and want to see a solid and fast ROI, Klaviyo is a great option.

Klaviyo also integrates with Zapier, allowing you to automatically do things like add leads and subscribers from forms and ads. Learn more about how to automate Klaviyo, or get started with a pre-made workflow. 

Klaviyo pricing: Free plan includes up to 250 contacts; paid plans start at $20/month.

Read more: Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp

Best Mailchimp alternative for transactional email and deliverability

SendGrid

SendGrid pros: 

• Drag-and-drop feature to create and design emails easily

• Deep reporting options, focusing on deliverability metrics 

SendGrid cons: 

• Steep learning curve 

• It might be expensive to scale after you cross the 200K email mark—price jumps from $89.95/month to $249/month

SendGrid focuses on high-volume sending, especially for transactional emails. For that reason, it tends to be more geared toward IT/developer folks, with words like "inbound parse" and "IP access management" popping up all over the place. You can choose no-code, low-code, or full-code, which is a serious amount of flexibility. That's not to say beginners can't use it—it'll just have more of a learning curve (though the documentation is great).

SendGrid is also known for its deliverability (reports will vary a bit, but you're looking at around 97% for SendGrid and 86% for Mailchimp). It has all sorts of important things happening in the background to achieve this level of deliverability, and if you're dealing with transactional emails, that number matters. You'll also get analytics focused on optimizing that deliverability.

In the end, SendGrid is more technical than Mailchimp and may require a steeper learning curve. If you're just working with a small list, SendGrid may not be the right choice. But if you're looking for a Mailchimp alternative to improve email deliverability, it's a great app to check out.

Connect SendGrid with Zapier to streamline even more of your email marketing workflows. Learn more about how to automate SendGrid, or get started with a pre-made workflow.

SendGrid pricing: Free for up to 100 emails/day; starts at $19.95/month for up to 50,000 emails/month, or $34.95/month for up to 100,000 emails/month.

Read more: SendGrid vs. Mailchimp

Best Mailchimp alternative for solopreneurs

Flodesk

Flodesk pros:

• Minimalist, easy-to-use editor

• Beautiful templates and an extensive font library

• Option to add eCommerce features

Flodesk cons:

• Limited native automations

• Free plan doesn't include email sending; you'll need a paid plan to run campaigns

Flodesk isn't trying to out-feature Mailchimp. It's built for solopreneurs and creators who want gorgeous emails and a simple workflow. You get modern templates, a deep font library, and signup forms that actually look good. And if you sell digital products or courses, the Everything plan adds sales pages, checkout, and instant delivery so you can run the whole thing in one tool.

The interface has just six sections to navigate, and every email template looks like something a real brand would send. Features like built-in checkout pages and link-in-bio tools also mean you're not cobbling five different apps together just to sell a digital product.

Flodesk's automation is simple and easy to use, but it's limited. If you want to A/B test subject lines, build complex multi-path automations, or run a physical product store with abandoned cart recovery, Mailchimp is the stronger tool. That said, for a one-person business that wants beautiful emails, a clean experience, and tools built around how solopreneurs actually work, Flodesk is one of the best Mailchimp alternatives out there.

Flodesk doesn't have too many native integrations, but it does integrate with Zapier. That means you can automate everything from adding leads to building email lists. Learn more about how to automate Flodesk, or get started with a pre-made workflow.

Flodesk pricing: Free plan available with forms, landing pages, and templates (no email sending); paid plans Lite plan starts at $19/month (billed annually) for up to 25,000 subscribers with unlimited email sends. The Everything plan adds eCommerce features like checkout flows and payment processing.

Read more: Flodesk vs. Mailchimp

Best Mailchimp alternative for email newsletters

Audienceful

Audienceful pros:

• Full email marketing feature set

• Simple, intuitive interface

• Generous free plan

Audienceful cons:

• No pre-made templates

• Less robust analytics than some

Mailchimp has a bit of a Goldilocks problem for newsletter senders: it can feel like too much tool for people who just want to send a clean, well-crafted email every week. Audienceful is built for exactly those people. It sits in the sweet spot between bare-bones newsletter tools and full-on marketing automation platforms, so you get everything you need without the bloat you don't.

With Audienceful, you get a flexible email editor, segmentation, automation, and analytics, all wrapped in a surprisingly simple interface. That said, don't expect a library of polished templates—there aren't any. Instead, you build your own look using the Theme tab (color scheme, typography, layout) and save it as a reusable custom template. It's a bit more setup upfront, but it also means your emails won't look like everyone else's.

The editor itself is text-forward, which makes sense for a newsletter tool. You can still add media, buttons, columns, and other rich elements, though. And it accommodates however you like to work, with things like Notion-style slash commands or a drag-and-drop. Once you're up and running, the homepage dashboard gives you a clean view of what matters: audience growth, engagement, and open and click rates by campaign.

When you connect Audienceful with Zapier, you can automate workflows that go beyond the newsletter itself—like syncing new subscribers from your CRM or triggering a Slack notification when you land a new subscriber.

Audienceful pricing: Free for up to 1,000 contacts, 2 team members, and most features; paid plans start at $29/month (billed annually) for up to 3,000 contacts, whitelabeling, and additional automation allowance.

Best free Mailchimp alternative for marketing automation

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Brevo pros: 

• Good feature set for a free plan 

• Advanced reports, including standard heat maps, and conversion and deal tracking

Brevo cons: 

• Email templates are slightly outdated 

• Reporting features are limited and scattered throughout 

The first thing you'll notice is Brevo's generous free plan, so if you're looking for a free Mailchimp alternative, it's a good place to start. It offers 100,000 contacts for free, and while it's not as robust as a true CRM, you can use it like one if you want. Plus, its segmentation options are impressive, and you can do transactional email—all on the free plan.

Brevo also allows you to create a customized live chat window to embed on your website, which you can then manage inside Brevo.

Brevo has also added Aura AI, its built-in AI marketing agent that generates subject lines and body copy, optimizes send times based on past engagement, and automates audience segmentation. The AI content generator is even available on the free plan, which is a nice bonus you don't get with many competitors.

While Mailchimp offers a lot of channels that Brevo doesn't, if you're looking for an inexpensive (or free) marketing platform, it's a strong contender.

Brevo doesn't have as many native app integrations—65ish compared to Mailchimp's over 300—but when you connect Brevo with Zapier, you can unlock thousands more. Learn more about how to automate Brevo, or get started with a pre-made workflow.  

Brevo pricing: Free plan includes up to 300 emails per day; from $8.08/month (billed annually) for the Starter plan, which includes 5,000 emails/month and unlimited daily sends.

Read more: Brevo vs. Mailchimp

Best free Mailchimp alternative for email marketing

MailerLite

MailerLite pros: 

• Pre-built content blocks make building emails super quick

• Generous allotments for segmentation and automation

MailerLite cons: 

• No pre-made email templates on the free plan

• AI features not as advanced as some competitors

If Brevo isn't quite doing it for you, or if you've been in the email marketing game for a while, MailerLite is another solid option. While its pre-made design templates don't match up to Mailchimp, it more than makes up for this with dynamic, pre-designed content blocks. Your emails can include more than just text and images, too. There's a countdown timer that dynamically shows the time remaining until you launch a product or before a sale is over. You can add product details, embed a video, pull in your most recent blog posts with a dynamically updating RSS block, and more. It's a great way to send interactive emails instead of just digital letters.

MailerLite has also improved its AI features. There's an AI writing assistant with multiple tone options, an AI subject line generator, and Smart Sending, which uses AI to deliver each email at the optimal time for each individual subscriber. Not the most advanced AI suite on this list, but solid for the price.

Beyond email content, MailerLite also includes robust automation and audience segmentation features in the free plan. An intuitive builder makes quick work of mapping out automation workflows—or you can hit the ground running with a pre-built flow. Create both persistent and one-time segments and view aggregate statistics by segment, too.

Plus, MailerLite integrates with Zapier—meaning you can automate things like adding new MailerLite subscribers from Google Sheets. Here are more ideas for how to automate MailerLite.

MailerLite pricing: Free for up to 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month; $10/month (billed annually) for the Growing Business plan, which includes unlimited monthly email sends and advanced features.

Read more: MailerLite vs. Mailchimp

Which Mailchimp alternative should you use?

As ChatGPT might say, "ultimately, the choice between Mailchimp and another tool will depend on the specific needs and priorities of the user." I don't mean to sound like the robots, but it's true: figure out what your biggest pain point is with Mailchimp, and then take a few of these Mailchimp alternatives for a spin to see which one does the trick.

If Mailchimp feels limiting because you want deeper automation and smarter segmentation, ActiveCampaign is the most natural upgrade. If you're a solo creator focused on newsletters and simple funnels, Kit keeps things lightweight without sacrificing automation. Running an online store? Klaviyo is purpose-built for eCommerce, with segmentation and automation tied directly to shopping behavior. And if your main concern is cost, Brevo or MailerLite offer some of the most capable free plans on the market.

For many teams, the easiest approach is to pick the tool that best matches your primary use case, run a small test campaign, and see how it fits your workflow before committing to a full migration.

Related reading:

• How to set up marketing automation with Zapier

• Email marketing automation ideas to enhance your campaigns

• Ways to automate your email newsletters and drip campaigns

• The best email marketing automation tools

This article was originally published in January 2023 by Deb Tennen. The most recent update was in March 2026.