Pricing guide
Comparison
ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp in 2026: Official Pricing and Plan Limits
Official USD prices and published limits for ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp, checked on November 13, 2026, including contact tiers that do not line up one-for-one and what each vendor's pricing page actually states.
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The short answer
ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp both sell contact-based email and marketing plans in USD, but they do not use the same plan names, the same starting list sizes, or the same send-limit formulas.
On November 13, 2026 (America/Denver):
- ActiveCampaign published four plans — Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise — with a 1,000-contact minimum and no free plan on the official pricing page. At 1,000 contacts, official USD rates were $19 / $59 / $99 / $179 a month, or $15 / $49 / $79 / $145 a month billed yearly. A 14-day trial (no credit card needed) and a 30-day money-back guarantee were advertised. The full ladder is in our ActiveCampaign pricing guide.
- Mailchimp published four marketing plans — Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium — plus a Pay As You Go alternative described on the official pricing page. The Free plan is officially up to 250 contacts and 500 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 250. Paid Essentials officially starts at $13 per month for 500 contacts and 5,000 sends. Standard officially starts at $20 per month for 500 contacts and 6,000 sends. Premium officially starts at $350 per month for 10,000 contacts and 150,000 sends. Official help documentation lists contact maxima of 50,000 (Essentials), 100,000 (Standard), and 200,000 before a custom Premium plan.
Those Mailchimp dollar figures come from the official pricing API that mailchimp.com/pricing loads (/forms/pricing/ in USD). ActiveCampaign figures come from its official pricing page and USD catalog. This is a dated comparison of published rate cards, not a hands-on ranking and not a coupon page.
See ActiveCampaign's official plans
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How we researched this comparison
On November 13, 2026, we recorded ActiveCampaign prices from activecampaign.com/pricing and from https://www.activecampaign.com/marketing/api/v1/pricing-catalog?c=ac2024¤cy=USD. We recorded Mailchimp plan names, trial and promotion copy, nonprofit discount language, and Pay As You Go from mailchimp.com/pricing. Dollar amounts and per-tier send limits for Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium come from Mailchimp's official USD pricing payload at https://mailchimp.com/forms/pricing/?currency=USD&locale=en. Contact maxima, send multiples, seat counts, and several feature bullets come from Mailchimp's official help article on pricing plans, which we opened the same day.
We did not invent prices, testimonials, or a multi-month test narrative. We also did not fill in Mailchimp tiers the official API does not list. Mailchimp's paid ladder jumps from 500 to 1,500 contacts (there is no official 1,000-contact Essentials or Standard row). ActiveCampaign's ladder starts at 1,000 contacts and has no official 500-contact row. The tables below respect those gaps.
All dollar amounts are USD. Mailchimp's official pricing payload also listed other supported currencies; we did not record those rates for this article.
Official entry points, side by side
| Item | ActiveCampaign (official, 13 Nov 2026) | Mailchimp (official, 13 Nov 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | None on the pricing page we checked | Yes: up to 250 contacts, 500 sends per month, 250 sends per day, 1 audience, 1 seat with Owner permissions |
| Paid plan names | Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise | Essentials, Standard, Premium (plus Pay As You Go credits) |
| Billing unit | Contacts, minimum 1,000 | Contacts; paid Essentials and Standard official prices start at 500 contacts, Premium at 10,000 |
| Starting paid price | Starter $19/month, or $15/month billed yearly, at 1,000 contacts | Essentials $13/month at 500 contacts; Standard $20/month at 500 contacts; Premium $350/month at 10,000 contacts |
| Yearly billing | Official annual totals published in the USD catalog | The official pricing page refers to monthly or annually recurring charges, and it advertised a vendor promotion of 15% off for businesses with 10,000+ contacts for the first 12 months. The USD API payload we recorded is a monthly plan catalog (essential_monthly_plan_v0 and equivalents). We are not inventing a full Mailchimp yearly rate table from that payload |
| Trial | 14-day free trial, no credit card needed, as advertised | Official pricing page: “Try free for 14 days,” including copy that invites you to try the Standard plan for free and then cancel or downgrade to Essentials or Free |
| Money-back guarantee | 30-day guarantee advertised on the official pricing page | Not something we are inferring from Mailchimp's pricing page; we did not record an equivalent 30-day money-back claim there |
| Official promotions (vendor, not this site) | None recorded as a coupon or percent-off on the AC pricing page | 15% nonprofit and charity discount (request via Billing after signing up, per official page copy); 15% off for 10,000+ contacts for the first 12 months, as advertised on the pricing page, with the vendor's footnotes |
A few definitions from official Mailchimp help are worth repeating, because they affect how a “contact” count should be compared. Mailchimp counts subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts toward the contact total. Archived, cleaned, and deleted contacts do not. A “send” is one email to one contact; official help says test and transactional emails count toward the monthly sending limit. If your other vendor would exclude unsubscribed contacts, or would not count tests, a like-for-like list size may not be the number both calculators would bill.
We did not find an equally short official definition of an ActiveCampaign “contact” on the pricing page we checked, so we are not asserting that the two vendors count a list identically. If the billable population would differ, official prices at “2,500 contacts” may not describe the same people.
Official USD prices at published tiers
Because the two official ladders skip different steps, the table uses only tiers at least one vendor publishes, and it leaves the other cell blank when there is no official row.
ActiveCampaign columns show month-to-month rates, with the yearly-billed monthly equivalent in parentheses. Mailchimp columns show official monthly API prices. Essentials is blank above 50,000 contacts because that is the official maximum. Premium is blank below 10,000 contacts because that is where official Premium pricing starts. ActiveCampaign Starter is blank above 25,000 contacts because that is the official Starter cap.
| Contacts | AC Starter | AC Plus | AC Pro | Mailchimp Essentials | Mailchimp Standard | Mailchimp Premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | No AC paid tier below 1,000 | No AC paid tier below 1,000 | No AC paid tier below 1,000 | Free plan ($0) if you stay within Free limits | Free plan ($0) if you stay within Free limits | Free plan ($0) if you stay within Free limits |
| 500 | No official AC tier | No official AC tier | No official AC tier | $13 (5,000 sends, 3 seats) | $20 (6,000 sends, 5 seats) | No official Premium row |
| 1,000 | $19 ($15) | $59 ($49) | $99 ($79) | No official MC row (next official paid step is 1,500) | No official MC row (next official paid step is 1,500) | No official Premium row |
| 1,500 | No official AC row at 1,500 | No official AC row at 1,500 | No official AC row at 1,500 | $26.50 (15,000 sends) | $45 (18,000 sends) | No official Premium row |
| 2,500 | $49 ($39) | $119 ($95) | $189 ($149) | $45 (25,000 sends) | $60 (30,000 sends) | No official Premium row |
| 5,000 | $99 ($79) | $179 ($145) | $259 ($205) | $75 (50,000 sends) | $100 (60,000 sends) | No official Premium row |
| 10,000 | $189 ($149) | $239 ($189) | $469 ($375) | $110 (100,000 sends) | $135 (120,000 sends) | $350 (150,000 sends, unlimited seats) |
| 25,000 | $489 ($391) | $489 ($389) | $789 ($629) | $270 (250,000 sends) | $310 (300,000 sends) | $620 (375,000 sends) |
| 50,000 | Not published (Starter cap is 25,000) | $759 ($609) | $1,209 ($969) | $385 (500,000 sends) | $450 (600,000 sends) | $815 (750,000 sends) |
| 100,000 | Not published | $1,499 ($1,199) | $1,999 ($1,599) | Not published (Essentials cap is 50,000) | $800 (1,200,000 sends) | $1,025 (1,500,000 sends) |
Enterprise ActiveCampaign official month-to-month rates, for readers who need them in this comparison, were $179, $319, $469, $739, $1,099, $1,459, and $2,169 at 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000 contacts (yearly-billed equivalents $145, $255, $375, $589, $879, $1,169, and $1,735). Mailchimp's official Premium API also continues past 100,000 contacts: for example, $1,600 per month at 200,000 contacts and 3,000,000 sends. Official help says that if you want to store more than 200,000 contacts, Mailchimp will customize a plan. The API row we saw at 250,000 contacts carried a $0 price, which is consistent with a non-self-serve custom quote; we are not treating $0 as a published 250,000-contact rate.
How to use the table without forcing a false tie:
- At very small lists (250 contacts or fewer), Mailchimp publishes a free plan. ActiveCampaign, on the date we checked, did not. That is the main official-price difference at the bottom of the market.
- At 500 contacts, official Mailchimp Essentials is $13 and Standard is $20. There is no official ActiveCampaign 500-contact price; the published AC minimum is the 1,000-contact band ($19 / $15 yearly-billed on Starter).
- At 2,500 contacts, official Mailchimp Essentials ($45) and Standard ($60) sit next to official ActiveCampaign Starter ($49 month-to-month, $39 yearly-billed). Plus ($119 / $95) and Pro ($189 / $149) are higher, and they include official Plus- or Pro-level items that Essentials does not claim to include. Price alone is not a feature comparison.
- At 10,000 contacts, official Mailchimp Essentials is $110 and Standard is $135. Official ActiveCampaign Starter is $189 month-to-month or $149 yearly-billed; Plus is $239 or $189 yearly-billed. Official Mailchimp Premium starts here at $350. Send caps also diverge at this size: Mailchimp Essentials 100,000, Standard 120,000, Premium 150,000; ActiveCampaign 10× / 10× / 12× / 15×, or 100,000 / 100,000 / 120,000 / 150,000 on Starter / Plus / Pro / Enterprise.
- Mailchimp's official 15% first-year promotion for 10,000+ contacts, if it still applies when you buy, would change a Standard or Premium invoice. We are not reprinting a discounted shadow table. Read the current offer footnotes on Mailchimp's pricing page. It is a vendor promotion, not a coupon issued by this site.
Send limits, seats, and audiences
ActiveCampaign publishes send caps as 10× contacts on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, and 15× on Enterprise. Included seats are 1 / 1 / 3 / 5. Starter also limits lists to 5, business goals to 15, and automation actions to 5, and it caps contacts at 25,000. SMS and enhanced CRM pipelines are official add-ons from Plus upward, and they are not included on Starter.
Mailchimp official help publishes send caps as 10× the contact limit on Essentials, 12× on Standard, and 15× on Premium. That matches the official API send numbers we recorded (for example, 5,000 sends at 500 contacts on Essentials, 6,000 on Standard, 150,000 at 10,000 contacts on Premium). The Free plan is the exception: 500 sends a month and 250 a day, not a 10× formula.
Official Mailchimp seats and audiences:
- Free: 1 audience, 1 seat (Owner)
- Essentials: 3 audiences, 3 seats (Owner and Admin); automation flows with up to 4 steps; single email automations; A/B testing; scheduled emails; SMS marketing add-on; 24/7 email and chat support
- Standard: 5 audiences, 5 seats (Owner, Admin, Author, or Viewer); expanded automation flows and templates; advanced segmentation and pre-built segments; custom-coded email templates; multivariate testing; SMS add-on with MMS in select locations; custom report; personalized onboarding; 24/7 email and chat support
- Premium: unlimited audiences and unlimited seats (Owner, Admin, Author, Manager, or Viewer); extended personalized onboarding; SMS add-on with MMS for US and Canadian customers, as official help states; phone support and cobrowse; 24/7 access as described on the help page
The official Mailchimp pricing payload also listed a scheduling add-on at $8 (scheduling_addon_v0). We are reporting that official add-on price; we are not expanding it into a feature review.
Official Mailchimp help states that if your contact total exceeds your contact limit during a billing cycle, service is not interrupted; you see an additional charge, and you can raise the tier or reduce the audience. We did not record a public per-contact overage dollar figure from the payload we saved, so we are not inventing one. Confirm current overage rules on Mailchimp's official pricing or help pages. For ActiveCampaign, we likewise flagged catalog overage language in the pricing guide without treating it as a fully documented public rate card.
What the official feature lists actually contrast
It is tempting to treat “Standard versus Plus” as a like-for-like pair because both sit above each vendor's cheapest paid plan. Official documentation does not support that shortcut.
Mailchimp's official help presents Essentials as a plan for frequent email senders who need extra sending power and support, with relatively tight automation (flows of up to four steps, single email automations). Standard is described as the plan for marketers who want data-backed insights and personalized recommendations, with expanded automation, advanced segmentation, and multivariate testing. Premium is described for extra-large audiences and dedicated support.
ActiveCampaign's official grid presents Starter as a tightly limited automation plan (five actions per automation, email only, limited segmentation). Plus adds cross-channel marketing, generative AI for content and images, landing pages and site messages, and access to CRM and SMS add-ons. Pro adds predictive sending, conditional content, advanced segmentation, and attribution. Enterprise adds SSO, HIPAA support as listed, Salesforce-class CRM integrations, and a dedicated account team.
Those lists overlap in obvious places — both vendors sell automations, segmentation, A/B or multivariate tests on higher plans, and SMS as an add-on — but they are not published as a one-to-one matrix. We will not invent a winner for “automation power” or “ease of use” from marketing copy. If a specific capability decides the purchase (for example, ActiveCampaign's officially documented CRM pipeline add-on, or Mailchimp's officially documented unlimited Premium seats), confirm it on that vendor's current plan comparison, then look up the official price at your contact count.
Pay As You Go is an official Mailchimp alternative we should not ignore. The official pricing page says you can buy email credits as needed instead of a monthly or annual recurring charge, and that it is best for infrequent senders. We did not extract a complete official credit price list for this article, so we are not quoting per-credit figures. If your sending is occasional, look at that official option directly. ActiveCampaign's official pricing page, on the date we checked, was organized around monthly and yearly contact-tier subscriptions plus add-ons, not a similarly labeled credit pack as the primary alternative.
Nonprofit pricing is also official on Mailchimp's side: the pricing page states a 15% discount for nonprofits and charities, requested by signing up for a free account and contacting Billing with a link to the organization's website. We did not record an equivalent official nonprofit rate on ActiveCampaign's pricing page.
Choosing from official limits
If you need an official free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, Mailchimp publishes one; ActiveCampaign, on the date we checked, published a 14-day trial instead.
If your list is around 500 contacts and you want the lowest official paid monthly rate we recorded, Mailchimp Essentials at $13 is the lowest published paid step among these two vendors, with a 5,000-send cap and three seats. There is no official ActiveCampaign 500-contact price.
If your list is 1,000 contacts and you can work inside ActiveCampaign Starter's official limits, official Starter ($19 month-to-month, $15 yearly-billed, 10,000 sends, one seat) sits close to what Mailchimp charges officially at the neighboring 1,500-contact step (Essentials $26.50, Standard $45). The contact counts are not the same, which is why this paragraph does not call one of those rows cheaper without qualification.
If you need more than two user seats, official ActiveCampaign Starter is a poor official fit (maximum of two seats in the catalog). Official Mailchimp Essentials includes three seats, Standard five, and Premium unlimited seats. Official ActiveCampaign Plus still includes one seat, Pro three, and Enterprise five; extra-seat dollar rates were not something we verified in the ActiveCampaign catalog.
If you expect to pass 25,000, 50,000, or 100,000 contacts, map the official caps first: ActiveCampaign Starter stops at 25,000, Mailchimp Essentials at 50,000, Mailchimp Standard at 100,000, Mailchimp self-serve Premium documentation at 200,000, and ActiveCampaign Plus, Pro, and Enterprise continue higher on the official catalog. Then compare official prices at the tiers both vendors publish, and add any add-ons from each official calculator.
Check ActiveCampaign's current official quote
Affiliate link: we may earn a commission if you buy through this link. You pay the same price.
For the full ActiveCampaign contact ladder, see ActiveCampaign pricing in 2026. For a comparison against Klaviyo's official active-profile prices, see ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo.
FAQ
Is ActiveCampaign cheaper than Mailchimp?
It depends on list size, plan, and billing cadence, and the official ladders do not share a 1,000-contact Mailchimp row or a 500-contact ActiveCampaign row. At 2,500 contacts, official Mailchimp Essentials ($45/month) is close to official ActiveCampaign Starter ($49 month-to-month, $39 yearly-billed), while official Plus and Pro are higher. At 10,000 contacts, official Mailchimp Standard ($135) is below official ActiveCampaign Plus month-to-month ($239) and below or near Plus billed yearly ($189), but the published feature sets are not the same. Use the dated table above rather than a single yes-or-no.
Does Mailchimp have a free plan?
Yes. Official help and the official pricing API describe a Free plan of up to 250 contacts, 500 sends per month, and a daily send limit of 250, with one audience and one Owner seat. Official help says that if you exceed 250 contacts on Free, a hold is placed on sending until you upgrade or reduce the list.
Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?
Not on the official pricing page we checked on November 13, 2026. It advertises a 14-day free trial.
Why is there no price at 1,000 contacts for Mailchimp?
Mailchimp's official paid API tiers go 500, then 1,500, then 2,500 contacts (and so on). We did not interpolate a 1,000-contact Mailchimp price.
Are the 15% Mailchimp offers coupons from this site?
No. The official Mailchimp pricing page advertised a 15% discount for nonprofits and charities, and a 15% offer for businesses with 10,000 or more contacts for the first 12 months, subject to the vendor's terms. We do not issue Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign coupon codes.
Sources and method
- ActiveCampaign official pricing page and official USD catalog
https://www.activecampaign.com/marketing/api/v1/pricing-catalog?c=ac2024¤cy=USD, checked November 13, 2026 (America/Denver). - Mailchimp official pricing page, checked the same day: plan names, 14-day trial copy, Pay As You Go description, nonprofit 15% request process, and the 10,000-contact 15% first-year promotion copy.
- Official Mailchimp USD pricing API used by that page:
https://mailchimp.com/forms/pricing/?currency=USD&locale=en, checked the same day. Source for Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium dollar amounts, audience-size steps, send allotments, seat counts in the payload, and the $8 scheduling add-on. - Official Mailchimp help on pricing plans (plan maxima, 10× / 12× / 15× send multiples, Free daily send limit, seat and audience counts, overage behavior, and feature bullets), opened the same day.
No unofficial “Mailchimp pricing chart” blogs were used for dollar figures. If Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign changes a published rate after this date, the official page is the authority, and this article should be updated.