Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor’s starting monthly rates for 0 to 500 subscribers are approximately:

• Lite: $13, with 2,500 email sends.
• Essentials: $31, with unlimited marketing sends.
• Premier: $171, with unlimited marketing sends and higher-tier support.

These are USD prices before promotions and tax. Larger subscriber bands cost more. Lite’s allowance is five times the subscriber limit; Essentials and Premier have separate transactional allowances of up to ten times that limit.

The free trial lasts 30 days and allows 500 contacts and 500 emails total. It is a temporary evaluation option, not an ongoing free plan.

Annual billing offers a 10% discount, excluding agency and multi-team accounts. Budget separately for paid features such as non-human click filtering and eligible website-builder access. Frequent senders should compare their expected newsletter and journey volume against Lite’s cap before choosing it solely for its lower starting price.

MailChimp

Prices current October 2026 start at these monthly USD rates before promotions and tax:

• Free: $0 for 250 contacts, with 500 monthly sends and a 250-send daily limit.
• Essentials: $13 for 500 contacts, with 5,000 monthly sends.
• Standard: $20 for 500 contacts, with 6,000 monthly sends.
• Premium: $350 for 10,000 contacts, with 150,000 monthly sends.

Premium starts at a different contact band, so its headline price is not a like-for-like comparison with the smaller plans. Paid send allowances equal ten, twelve or fifteen times the selected contact limit, respectively. Contact and sending overages can increase the bill.

Eligible Essentials and Standard trials last 14 days. Check the billing terms when signing up. SMS and Transactional Email cost extra. Pay As You Go credits offer an alternative for occasional senders.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor combines responsive templates, a drag-and-drop builder and custom HTML options. Teams can use branded templates for recurring newsletters, while designers can supply more specialized layouts.

AI Writer and AI Email Booster provide writing assistance and suggestions. Treat their output as draft material that still needs checks for accuracy, tone and suitability for the audience.

Template section locking can help protect brand elements, but availability depends on the plan. Confirm that restriction if several people will edit shared designs. The practical choice is between reusable layouts that non-designers can maintain and custom HTML that gives developers more responsibility for compatibility and upkeep.

MailChimp

Mailchimp’s builder supports reusable templates, content blocks and separate desktop and mobile styling. You can adjust spacing or alignment for one device without changing the other, which is useful when a desktop layout becomes crowded on a phone.

Free accounts have a limited template selection and retain Mailchimp branding. Paid plans remove that branding, while sending custom-coded templates requires Standard or Premium and uses the legacy builder.

Standard and Premium also provide dynamic content. Generative AI access is limited to eligible users, countries and languages rather than guaranteed across every account. Choose a plan around the design controls you need, not simply the presence of an AI label.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor offers embedded, popup and hosted signup forms, giving businesses ways to collect subscribers from an existing site or a separate signup page. Custom fields and segmentation help organize those subscribers for targeted email.

Dynamic content can tailor parts of a message instead of requiring a separate campaign for each audience group. Its usefulness depends on collecting reliable information, such as interests or customer type, rather than adding fields without a clear purpose.

A website builder is available as a separate purchase on eligible plans. Do not assume website creation or SMS marketing is included in the email subscription when estimating the cost of a broader marketing setup.

MailChimp

Mailchimp includes forms and unlimited landing pages on all plans. That makes it possible to create a signup destination for an event, offer or newsletter without first building a complete website.

Tags, contact profiles and basic segmentation support everyday audience organization. Standard and Premium add advanced and predictive segmentation, behavioral targeting and dynamic content. Those upgrades matter when targeting needs to go beyond straightforward groups or interests.

SMS marketing is a paid add-on in supported countries and requires approval. Collecting SMS subscribers through a landing page requires an approved SMS program. Businesses planning email and text campaigns should budget for messaging credits and obtain the appropriate consent for each channel.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor supports permission-based access, helping teams decide who can work on campaigns, subscribers and automation. For example, journey management requires automation permission, so access should reflect each person’s responsibilities.

Its agency offering adds management across separate client accounts and supports agency branding. That arrangement is relevant when a service business manages email for several customers, rather than several employees working on one brand.

Distinguish agency account capabilities from a standard single-team subscription before purchasing. A useful setup keeps client access, billing responsibilities and campaign ownership clear. Teams should also decide who maintains subscriber fields and journey rules, since inconsistent data can undermine otherwise well-organized campaign work.

MailChimp

Mailchimp’s team limits vary substantially by plan. Free allows one seat. Essentials allows three seats and two access roles. Standard allows five seats and four roles. Premium offers unlimited seats and five roles.

That makes Standard relevant for a team that wants someone to prepare content or inspect results without giving everyone administrator access. Premium adds enterprise single sign-on.

Audience limits also differ: one on Free, three on Essentials, five on Standard and unlimited on Premium. More audiences are not automatically better organization. For one business, a primary audience with tags and segments can avoid unnecessary duplication and simplify contact management.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor reports cover campaigns, journeys and transactional email, with engagement and geographic information. Website and conversion measurement can add context beyond email interactions, provided the necessary tracking is connected.

Non-human click filtering is a paid add-on for Essentials and Premier. It applies from activation onward, does not clean historical reports and cannot identify every bot. Teams comparing results over time should account for when filtering was enabled.

Privacy protections and automated security checks make opens and clicks imperfect measures of human interest. Use them alongside conversions, unsubscribes and business outcomes. Ecommerce revenue measurement also depends on the store connection and tracking setup, not simply having an email report available.

MailChimp

Mailchimp includes basic reporting on every plan. Standard and Premium add custom reports and more advanced analytical features. A connected ecommerce store can supply purchase data, helping teams assess sales-related activity rather than relying only on email engagement.

Bot filtering is enabled by default and applies across account reporting, not separately to individual campaigns. It covers supported Apple privacy-related opens and email or SMS click activity, with historical coverage limited to the dates Mailchimp supports.

Filtering can reduce reported engagement without indicating that real performance has worsened. It identifies most bot activity, not all of it. Compare conversions, bounces and unsubscribes alongside opens and clicks when evaluating campaign changes.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor accepts subscriber imports from CSV and Excel files, with columns mapped to subscriber fields. Prepare consent records and unsubscribe information before migration so that an import does not become an excuse to contact people who opted out.

Importing contacts does not recreate previous automations or reporting history. Allow time to rebuild journeys, check field mappings and retain any historical reports the business needs.

Monthly billing depends on total subscriber count, so review the resulting account size before committing to a plan. Agencies can use separate client accounts and branding through the agency offering. That structure serves client management needs rather than simply expanding one company’s mailing list.

MailChimp

Mailchimp imports contacts from files, pasted spreadsheets and supported connected apps. When updating existing contacts by import, blank values can overwrite existing field data, so review the file carefully.

Billing includes subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts do not count toward the marketing plan total. Duplicate contacts across separate audiences can also increase the total, making audience structure a financial consideration.

Mailchimp does not detect unsubscribes or duplicates across independent audiences. Preserve suppression information during migration rather than assuming one audience protects another. For infrequent email programs, Pay As You Go provides Essentials-level features without a recurring marketing subscription, although credits still need to be purchased.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor journeys can contain up to 250 steps, including emails, delays, time windows, conditions and custom-field updates. Conditions split subscribers into yes-or-no paths using information such as fields, segment membership or campaign activity.

Branches cannot merge later, so a shared follow-up may need duplicating. Activity-based conditions also need an appropriate delay to give recipients time to respond. These details affect maintenance more than the headline step limit.

Updating fields from trigger-event data and applying numeric calculations require Essentials or Premier. Lite’s sending allowance also constrains journey emails. Transactional sending has its own allowance on higher plans, so unlimited marketing journeys should not be mistaken for unlimited password resets or order notifications.

MailChimp

Mailchimp’s Marketing Automation Flows support automated sequences, with important restrictions at the entry level. Free does not include live marketing automation flows, while Essentials supports flows with up to four steps.

Standard and Premium support up to 200 steps per flow, multiple starting points and branching. These plans are more relevant when contacts should follow different routes according to behavior rather than receive a short, fixed sequence. Ecommerce workflows depend on the store connection and available customer or order data.

Transactional Email is a separate paid add-on for Standard and Premium monthly marketing plans. It is developer-oriented and intended for messages such as password resets and order notifications, not a substitute for a marketing automation subscription.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor’s integration directory covers ecommerce, CRM, analytics and other business tools. Shopify and Salesforce connections are available, while its API supports custom integrations when an existing connector does not meet the requirement.

Evaluate the actual data flow before choosing a connector. A contact sync alone may not provide purchase details, unsubscribe updates or events needed by an automated journey. Check sync direction, field coverage, update timing and any additional fees.

For a custom build, define which system owns each field and how consent changes will move between systems. This matters more than the number of apps in a directory, particularly when customer records are edited in several places.

MailChimp

Mailchimp connects with tools including Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce and QuickBooks Online. Its Shopify connection can sync customer and order information, supporting ecommerce targeting and workflows when the required plan features are available.

The builder can also use product and abandoned-cart blocks with supported stores or a suitable custom API integration. That creates a practical connection between store data and email content.

Check whether an integration moves only contacts or also purchases, products and subscription status. Connector fees and maintenance can sit outside the email subscription. Custom API work needs technical ownership: Mailchimp’s standard support team does not provide in-depth API troubleshooting, so developer help may be an additional expense.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor’s Lite plan includes basic email support. Agents provide coverage Monday through Friday, with limited weekend support. Essentials and Premier use a priority email queue, but priority access is not a guaranteed resolution time.

Phone support is reserved for Premier. It operates Monday through Friday, from 9am to 5pm in the relevant regional time zone: San Francisco, Sydney or London.

The documented support benefits center on email and Premier phone access, so do not budget around an assumed live-chat service. Support also does not include custom report generation. For teams sending time-sensitive campaigns, the practical question is whether weekday email assistance is sufficient or regional phone access justifies the upgrade.

MailChimp

Mailchimp provides new Free accounts with email support for the first 30 days. After that, free users retain self-service resources and the Mailchimp Assistant chatbot rather than ongoing technical email support.

Essentials and Standard include 24/7 email and chat support. Premium adds a dedicated support team and phone access. Check language availability before choosing a support channel.

Standard includes one personalized onboarding session and Premium includes four, with onboarding available during the first 90 days for eligible accounts. Plan these sessions around setup questions rather than leaving them unused. Billing and compliance teams work through email, so phone access does not mean every issue can be handled by phone.