MailchimpMailCheap vs Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a marketing suite. For a newsletter of 10,000 subscribers, MailCheap costs $39 a month and Mailchimp Essentials $110.
Monthly billing. Mailchimp's price from its pricing page, October 13, 2026.
01 · Features
Side by side
From Mailchimp's pricing page and MailCheap's, on October 13, 2026. Where Mailchimp does more, the table says so.
| Feature | MailCheapMailCheap | MailchimpMailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Run by your AI agent (MCP) | Every plan, every action, sending included | Claude and ChatGPT apps that plan and draft |
| REST API | Every action | Marketing API |
| Open source | AGPL-3.0, free to self-host | No |
| Free plan | No, free when you self-host | Under 250 contacts |
| Automations | Welcome email | Automation flows |
| A/B tests | No | A/B and multivariate |
| Websites and landing pages | Web archive and signup form | Yes |
| Predictive segments | No | Standard and Premium |
02 · Price
What it costs a month
The cheapest plan with room for your list, sending one issue a week: about 4.3 emails per subscriber a month. Monthly billing, in US dollars.
Every MailCheap plan has every feature. Paying yearly costs 10 months: 2 months free.
| Subscribers | MailCheap | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $19Starter | $26.50Essentials $7.50 a month less with MailCheap. |
| 10,000 | $39Growth | $110Essentials $71 a month less with MailCheap. |
| 50,000 | $149Scale | $385Essentials $236 a month less with MailCheap. |
| 100,000 | $149Scale | $800Standard $651 a month less with MailCheap. |
- Free under 250 contacts. Prices go by tiers of contacts: 501 to 1,500, 5,001 to 10,000 and so on.
- Essentials stops at 50,000 contacts, so 100,000 needs Standard.
- Above 10,000 contacts the page offers 15% off the first 12 months; these are the prices after it.
Source: mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing, checked October 13, 2026. MailCheap: pricing, from $19 a month.
03 · AI agents
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Cursor
- Codex
- Grok Bot
Your AI agent writes, schedules and sends each issue, reads the stats and imports your list
Mailchimp has a Claude connector and a ChatGPT app that plan and draft campaigns. Its MCP server searches its docs.
04 · Open source
Self-host it free, or let us run it
MailCheap is open source under the AGPL-3.0: the code that runs mailcheap.ai is the code you can run. Mailchimp isn't open source: you can't run it on your own server.
Self-host
FreeRun MailCheap on your own server, at no cost. No support: you keep it up to date yourself.
MailCheap Cloud
From $19 a monthWe run it: sending, your archive, your domain setup and updates, with support by email.
Moving from Mailchimp?
Export your subscribers, import the file as it is, and send. People who unsubscribed or bounced stay out.
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Mailchimp is a trademark of its owner, shown here to name the product compared. MailCheap isn't affiliated with Mailchimp. Prices and features come from mailchimp.com on October 13, 2026 and may have changed since.