Mailchimp

Email marketing and simple automations for small teams.

Overview

Mailchimp is the email-marketing platform most small businesses start with: campaigns, a drag-and-drop editor, audiences and segments, automations, landing pages, forms and basic CRM, owned by Intuit since 2021. It is broad and familiar rather than specialised, which is both why people choose it and why they eventually outgrow it.

Where it fits in my work

Mailchimp is the answer when a client needs a newsletter and a welcome sequence, not a revenue engine: a consultancy, a restaurant, a community, a content business. The editor is approachable enough that the client runs it after handover, the free tier covers the first few hundred contacts, and the integrations with Shopify , Typeform and Calendly are already built. For an e-commerce store where email is a sales channel, I point people at Klaviyo . For the emails a product sends — receipts, notifications, magic links — marketing tools are the wrong shape; that is Resend 's job.

Key features

Campaign builder with templates, A/B testing and send-time optimisation Audiences, tags, segments and a lightweight CRM Customer Journeys automation builder Landing pages, forms, pop-ups and a basic website builder Reporting, plus integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Canva and hundreds of apps Intuit Assist and generative content features

Best for

Small businesses and non-technical teams who want dependable newsletters and simple automations without learning a marketing platform. Stores that live on email revenue, or products that send transactional mail, should look elsewhere.

Where it fits in my stack

Mailchimp → Typeform and Calendly feed contacts in; n8n connects it to anything else; Klaviyo is the upgrade path for e-commerce.

Pros

Familiar, approachable and easy to hand over to a client Free plan to start; large integration ecosystem Good templates and deliverability for newsletters Automation builder covers the common sequences

Limitations

Contact-based pricing climbs quickly; unsubscribed contacts can still count Promotional first-year discounts hide the ongoing price Automation and segmentation are shallow next to Klaviyo for commerce Transactional email is a separate product (Mandrill)

Pricing

As listed on mailchimp.com/pricing: a Free plan for up to 250 contacts with monthly send limits; Essentials from $13 a month; Standard from $20 a month (with a 14-day trial); Premium from $350 a month with unlimited contacts — all at promotional first-year rates that rise after 12 months and scale with contact count. Check the official pricing page with your real list size.

Verdict

Mailchimp is the right default for a small business newsletter and the wrong tool for an e-commerce revenue program or product email. I recommend it for exactly the first case and am honest about the bill as the list grows.