Yes, usually, but "better" depends on what you send. If you want a generous free start and a real automation builder, look at Kit (its automations start on the paid plan) and MailerLite (three automations even on free). If you want the lowest bill at a few thousand subscribers, price MailerLite, Brevo (it bills by emails sent, though its calculator also ties each tier to a contact allowance) and Buttondown. If your newsletter is really a publication, Ghost and beehiiv are built around that, and if it sits next to a blog and you don't need a marketing-automation tool, a CMS with a newsletter built in can be the cheapest answer.
Full disclosure: I work on VeloCMS, one of the eight options below. It isn't first on the list, it isn't the right pick for most people asking this question, and I've given it the same treatment as everyone else, weaknesses included.
Last verified: 2026-10-04.
A note on method, because pricing pages are slippery. Every number below came from the vendor's own page on 2026-10-04 (each link carries that access date). Several of those pages only render real prices after you move a subscriber slider, and two of them (Mailchimp, Brevo) opened in British pounds for me, so I switched them to USD. Unless I say "billed yearly," figures are monthly billing. All eight vendors' pages were reachable, so I didn't have to swap anyone out. Your list size, send frequency and tax situation will move these numbers, so treat this as a map, not a quote.
Why are people leaving Mailchimp?
I can't hand you a survey, and I won't invent one. What I can do is point at things on Mailchimp's own pages that explain the shopping behavior.
Price is banded by contacts. On the pricing page (USD, accessed 2026-10-04), Standard is $45 a month in the 501 to 1,500 band and $100 a month in the 2,501 to 5,000 band. Essentials, the cheaper tier, is $26.50 and $75 in the same bands. Premium starts at $350 a month. And "contacts" is broader than people you actually email: Mailchimp's help center (accessed 2026-10-04) says non-subscribed contacts "are included in your contact total and count towards your monthly contact limit."
There's also a send ceiling on paid plans. The page's own tooltips say the monthly send limit is 12 times your maximum contact count on Standard and 10 times on Essentials (in the 2,501 to 5,000 band that works out to 60,000 and 50,000 sends), with overages if you cross it. That's generous for a weekly newsletter, but it's one more number to track.
None of this is scandalous. Mailchimp is a big, mature product with 300+ integrations listed on its pricing page and a developer program (a Marketing API with webhooks, plus a separate transactional API). It's priced like a platform. If you run a list of a few thousand people and send one email a week, you may be paying for a machine you only half drive.
What does Mailchimp's free plan actually include now?
Per the pricing page's own footnote: one seat, one audience, up to 250 contacts, up to 500 sends per month, and 250 per day. That's a sampler, good for testing a signup form and a welcome email, not for running a newsletter with any momentum.
The other free tiers are more usable, and they're different shapes. MailerLite's free plan is 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, with two seats and three automations. Kit's free plan goes up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited broadcasts, landing pages and forms, but visual automations and sequences start on the paid Creator plan. beehiiv's free plan covers 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends. Brevo's free plan allows 300 emails a day once your account is approved for sending. Buttondown's free tier is "absolutely nothing for your first 100 subscribers." Ghost and VeloCMS have no free plan: Ghost offers a "Try for free" button on its pricing page, and VeloCMS has a 14-day trial on its pricing page (all accessed 2026-10-04).
How do the options compare at 1,000 and 5,000 subscribers?
Prices in USD, accessed 2026-10-04 from each vendor's own page (linked in the sections below). Two figures separated by a slash mean about 1,000 / about 5,000 subscribers.
- Mailchimp · Free plan: yes (250 contacts) · Price: Essentials $26.50 / $75, Standard $45 / $100 (contact bands 501–1,500 and 2,501–5,000) · Best for: teams that want the full marketing suite and will pay for it.
- Kit · Free plan: yes (up to 10,000 subscribers, no automations) · Price: Creator $39 / $89 monthly billing, or $33 / $75 with the yearly toggle, Pro $79 / $139 monthly, or $66 / $116 yearly · Best for: creators who sell digital products and want visual automations.
- MailerLite · Free plan: yes (250 subscribers) · Price: Comfort $19 / $49 monthly billing, or $17.10 / $44.10 yearly, Power $39 / $69 monthly billing, or $35.10 / $62.10 yearly · Best for: small lists that want a low bill and a real automation builder.
- Brevo · Free plan: yes (300 emails a day) · Price: by email volume, with a contact allowance per tier; Starter $9 at 5,000 emails a month (500 contacts shown as included), $17 at 10,000 (1,500) and $32 at 20,000 (500,000), Standard from $18 · Best for: occasional senders, or anyone who also needs transactional email.
- beehiiv · Free plan: yes (up to 2,500 subscribers) · Price: Lite $59 / $109 monthly, or $49 / $95 yearly, Pro $109 / $199 monthly, or $95 / $169 yearly · Best for: newsletter-first operators who want growth tooling.
- Buttondown · Free plan: yes (first 100 subscribers) · Price: $9 at 1,000 subscribers, $29 at 1,100 to 4,800, $79 at 5,100, plus add-ons · Best for: writers who want markdown, an API and an independent vendor.
- Ghost · Free plan: no · Price: Starter $18 monthly or $15 yearly (1,000-member cap), Publisher $35 / $75 monthly, or $29 / $63 yearly · Best for: publications where newsletter and membership are the business.
- VeloCMS · Free plan: no (14-day trial) · Price: Pro $9 for both sizes (up to 5,000 subscribers), Business $29 up to 50,000 · Best for: blog-plus-newsletter setups that don't need an automation suite.
Which alternative is cheapest at 5,000 subscribers?
It depends on what you're counting, which is exactly why this question is hard to Google. Take a list of 5,000 and a weekly newsletter, roughly 20,000 emails a month (my arithmetic: four sends times 5,000).
Brevo's Starter calculator shows $32 a month for 20,000 emails, monthly billing, and that tier's plan summary lists 500,000 contacts as included (the lower email tiers list far fewer contacts, so a 5,000-person list doesn't fit on the $9 tier). MailerLite Comfort is $49 a month, or $44.10 billed yearly. Ghost's Publisher plan is $75 monthly or $63 yearly. Kit's Creator is $89 monthly or $75 yearly (Kit's free plan covers you to 10,000 subscribers if you only need broadcasts). Mailchimp Essentials is $75, Standard $100. MailerLite Power is $69 monthly. beehiiv Lite is $109 monthly or $95 yearly. Buttondown is a puzzle at this size: its slider shows $29 at 4,800 and $79 at 5,100, and I couldn't land on exactly 5,000, so check where your number falls. VeloCMS Pro is $9, which is the lowest paid price here that fits a 5,000-person list, but as you'll see below you're buying a CMS with a newsletter inside it, not an email platform.
Two caveats matter more than the ranking. Cheap tiers often hide the feature you actually wanted (automations on Brevo start at Standard, on beehiiv at Lite, on Buttondown as a $29 add-on). And "billed yearly" prices are a commitment, so compare like with like.
What are the best Mailchimp alternatives, one by one?
Mailchimp (the baseline)
Mailchimp's strength is breadth. It has automation flows, email plus SMS (SMS is an add-on in select countries), a long integration list, a Marketing API and a transactional API, and a 14-day trial on Standard (all per its pricing page, accessed 2026-10-04). Premium, at $350 a month, is where phone and priority support, a dedicated onboarding specialist and unlimited users and audiences live (Standard allows five seats and five audiences). If your business needs the same vendor to handle campaigns, automations and a developer-facing API, it's a sensible default.
The price curve is the catch. $100 a month for Standard at 5,000 contacts sits well above MailerLite Power at $69 or Brevo's $32 for a weekly send, and the free plan is small enough to be a demo. Non-subscribed contacts count toward your tier, so list hygiene turns into a billing task.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
Kit is built for creators who sell things. Its free plan goes to 10,000 subscribers and includes unlimited broadcasts, landing pages, forms, tagging and the ability to sell digital products and subscriptions. The paid Creator plan adds unlimited visual automations, email sequences, A/B-tested subject lines, SMS marketing and RSS campaigns, and Pro adds unlimited users, deliverability reporting and a referral system (kit.com/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). The pricing page also advertises free migrations (its FAQ says that service is for creators on a paid plan).
Prices rise quickly with list size: Creator is $39 monthly at 1,000 subscribers and $89 at 5,000 (the yearly toggle brings those to $33 and $75, with the page's "save 17%" label). The free plan is generous but has no automations, so most people hit the paywall when they build their first welcome sequence. Kit also has a developer site with an API reference.
MailerLite
MailerLite is the one I'd price first if the goal is "Mailchimp-shaped features, smaller bill." At 1,000 subscribers the Power plan is $35.10 a month billed yearly ($39 billed monthly), and at 5,000 it's $62.10 yearly or $69 monthly. Comfort is cheaper still, at $19 and $49 monthly or $17.10 and $44.10 on yearly billing (mailerlite.com/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). Power has unlimited automations, landing pages and user seats; the free plan includes three automations.
Limits are where it bites. Comfort caps landing pages and forms at ten, and the page says its monthly email limit is ten times your subscriber tier, whereas Power is unlimited. The free plan stops at 250 subscribers, so it's a trial, not a home. On the developer side, MailerLite's API docs describe a RESTful API with webhooks and a global limit of 120 requests per minute.
Brevo
Brevo is the odd one out because its slider is email volume rather than list size. Starter is $9 a month for 5,000 emails, and the page's calculator shows $17 for 10,000, $25 for 15,000 and $32 for 20,000 on monthly billing. There's a catch in the plan summary beside the slider: it lists a contact allowance that grows with the tier, 500 contacts at 5,000 emails, 1,500 at 10,000, 2,500 at 15,000 and 500,000 at 20,000. I read that as a contact cap, though the page doesn't explain it, so confirm with Brevo before sizing a list. Standard starts at $18 and adds automation, A/B testing and a landing page; Professional is $499 a month (brevo.com/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). The free plan sends up to 300 emails a day.
That model suits a big list that gets mailed rarely, and it's awkward if you mail everyone every day (and, if those contact allowances are hard caps, a small list on a low-volume tier is tighter than the sticker price suggests). It's also the strongest fit here for developers, since the pricing FAQ says every plan includes transactional email with RESTful APIs, SMTP and outbound webhooks. The trade-off: marketing automation isn't on Starter, and the price steps up sharply to the $499 Professional tier when you need multiple users or WhatsApp.
beehiiv
beehiiv is a newsletter platform with a website, podcast, community and digital products on every plan. Free covers up to 2,500 subscribers with unlimited sends, Lite adds paid subscriptions, automations and A/B testing, and Pro adds webhooks, advanced analytics and removal of beehiiv branding. It takes 0% of paid subscription revenue, though Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction still applies (beehiiv.com/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). An API is included on every plan.
The weakness is scale pricing. Lite is $49 a month at 1,000 subscribers on yearly billing ($59 monthly) and $95 at 5,000 ($109 monthly); Pro is $95 and $169 on yearly billing. The beehiiv logo stays on your newsletter until Pro, and webhooks are Pro-only. It's built for growing and monetizing a newsletter, not for the sort of transactional or lifecycle email Brevo and Mailchimp handle.
Buttondown
Buttondown is the small independent, run by a fully remote team that says it is profitable and self-funded. It's free up to 100 subscribers, then $9 a month at 1,000, $29 anywhere from 1,100 to 4,800, and $79 at 5,100. The page says it charges for active subscribers, and the base tier already includes a rich text or markdown editor, custom-domain sending and hosted archives (buttondown.com/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). Its API docs describe a RESTful interface for subscribers and sending.
The real cost is the add-ons. Tagging and segmentation, paid subscriptions, comments and surveys, analytics, RSS-to-email, sponsorships and email attachments are each +$9 a month, archives on a custom domain, automations and multiple newsletters are +$29, and teams and whitelabeling are +$79. The page also says the prices assume at most one email a day to your whole list, so heavier senders need a custom quote. If you want a lot of features, the à la carte model stops being cheap.
Ghost
Ghost is a publishing platform with newsletters and memberships built in, not an ESP you bolt onto a site. Starter is $15 a month billed yearly ($18 monthly) for up to 1,000 members, with no paid subscriptions. Publisher, which adds paid subscriptions, three staff users and custom themes, is $29 yearly or $35 monthly at 1,000 members, and $63 or $75 at 5,000. Business is $199 yearly or $239 monthly up to 10,000 members. The page says all plans include unlimited email sends and no payment fees from Ghost (ghost.org/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). Developers get an Admin API, Content API and webhooks; per the pricing page's comparison table the Content API is on every plan, while the Admin API and webhooks start at Publisher.
The pricing page lists no email-automation builder and no SMS; it lists Zapier and n8n automation (Publisher and up) for workflows instead. There's no free plan, and the price follows member count, so Publisher more than doubles between 1,000 and 5,000 members. It's the strongest fit when the newsletter is the product and you want to own the whole publication.
VeloCMS
VeloCMS is a blog CMS with a newsletter built in: you send a post to a segment (everyone, free members, paid members, or a tag), delivered through Resend. Pro is $9 a month: newsletter with tag segmentation, up to 5,000 subscribers, membership and paywall at a 0% platform fee (your own Stripe key), and a custom domain. Business is $29 for up to 50,000 subscribers and five team members; Agency is $69 for unlimited subscribers (velocms.org/pricing, accessed 2026-10-04). No free plan, and the 14-day trial takes a card at signup.
The honest limits: it isn't a dedicated email platform. The admin has a basic automation editor (trigger on signup or on a tag, then emails with delays; I read the code, I didn't run it), not a visual branching builder, and there's no SMS or A/B testing that I can point to. A custom sender domain is listed under Business, not Pro. The ecosystem is much smaller than anything above. The pricing FAQ lists API access on Pro, but I couldn't find a send-campaign endpoint or check for a send cap, so verify both.
Which of these have APIs, webhooks or MCP servers?
For developers, the practical differences are small but real. Ghost documents Admin and Content APIs plus webhooks. Mailchimp has a Marketing API with webhooks and a transactional API. MailerLite's API is RESTful with webhooks and a 120-requests-per-minute global limit. Brevo includes REST, SMTP and outbound webhooks on every plan. beehiiv gives you an API on every plan and webhooks on Pro. Buttondown has a RESTful API for subscribers and sending. Kit has an API reference on its developer site.
A newer wrinkle is MCP, the protocol for letting an AI assistant manage your account. MailerLite lists an MCP integration on its free plan, Brevo on Starter, beehiiv on Lite and Kit on Creator, all per their pricing pages (accessed 2026-10-04). I haven't tested any of them, so read that as "listed," not "recommended." For VeloCMS I'm deliberately not listing an MCP story, because I didn't verify one for this article, and its API is covered in the VeloCMS section above.
Who is each option best for?
Mailchimp: teams that want automations, SMS, a big integration list and a developer API under one roof, and will pay for it.
Kit: creators selling digital products or subscriptions who want visual automations and a generous free tier to start.
MailerLite: small lists that want a Mailchimp-like feature set at a lower price.
Brevo: occasional senders with big lists, and developers who also need transactional email.
beehiiv: newsletter-first operators who care about growth tooling and 0% fees on paid subscriptions.
Buttondown: writers who want a markdown-friendly, API-first tool from a small independent team.
Ghost: publishers whose newsletter and membership are the business.
VeloCMS: people who already want a blog with a newsletter and paid membership in one login and don't need an automation suite.
When is VeloCMS the wrong choice?
Quite often, to be blunt. If you need branching email automation (multi-path workflows, behavior triggers), pick Kit, MailerLite, Brevo or Mailchimp; VeloCMS's drip editor only starts from a signup or a tag and has no visual workflow builder. If SMS, landing-page testing or A/B experiments are part of the plan, same answer. If you rely on a long list of third-party integrations, the ecosystem here is much smaller. If you want a free tier, there isn't one. And if you only want to replace Mailchimp but keep your existing site on WordPress, Webflow or a custom Next.js build, moving the whole site to get a newsletter is a lot of migration for a small gain; a standalone tool like MailerLite or Buttondown fits better.
FAQ
Is Mailchimp still free?
Yes, but small: up to 250 contacts, 500 sends a month and 250 a day (pricing page, accessed 2026-10-04).
Can I move my list without losing subscribers?
Usually, with care. Export your audience as CSV, import it into the new tool, and keep your unsubscribed and non-subscribed people out of the active list so you don't mail people who opted out. Kit advertises free migrations for paid plans (kit.com/pricing), and Ghost's comparison table lists member import and export (ghost.org/pricing). Plan a few smaller test sends first; I'm giving that as practice, not a vendor claim.
Do I pay for contacts or for emails sent?
It varies. Mailchimp, Kit and MailerLite price by contacts or subscribers, Ghost by members, beehiiv by subscribers, Buttondown by active subscribers (per its FAQ), and Brevo by emails sent.
Which of these can take paid subscriptions without a platform cut?
Per their pages: Ghost Publisher and up states no payment fees from Ghost, beehiiv Lite and up takes 0%, Buttondown has paid subscriptions as a +$9 add-on, and VeloCMS Pro charges a 0% platform fee with your own Stripe key. Kit lets you sell subscriptions on its free plan and lists 3.5% + 30 cents per transaction on every plan, which its page says includes card processing. I didn't verify Buttondown's or MailerLite's cut on paid newsletters, so check them. Stripe's own processing fees apply on top wherever Stripe is used.
Which ones have automations?
Kit, Mailchimp, Brevo (Standard and up), MailerLite, beehiiv (Lite and up) and Buttondown (as a $29 add-on) list automations. Ghost lists Zapier and n8n instead, and VeloCMS has a basic trigger-plus-delays drip editor rather than a visual builder.
Sources (all accessed 2026-10-04)
Mailchimp pricing · Mailchimp contacts help · Mailchimp Marketing API · Kit pricing · Kit developers · MailerLite pricing · MailerLite API · Brevo pricing · beehiiv pricing · Buttondown pricing · Buttondown API · Ghost pricing · Ghost API docs · VeloCMS pricing · Resend
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