Head to head

Email Bump vs Mailchimp

Mailchimp meters contacts and then caps sending at 10 to 15 times that number, rations seats until its $350/mo tier, and keeps billing you for people who unsubscribed. We meter contacts, and that's the whole model.

Twelve rows below, including the three where Mailchimp is clearly the better buy. Those come first — its integration catalogue alone settles some evaluations.

12 rows Checked 2 August 2026
The short version

Which one you want, in three sentences

Pick Mailchimp if you need a specific native integration, if non-marketers need to build emails without training, or if you're also using its ads, commerce and landing pages. Breadth is what you're paying for and it's real.

Pick Email Bump if you keep hitting the send ceiling, if the seat limit rather than the list size put you on a higher tier, or if you'd rather stop paying for contacts who unsubscribed two years ago.

Pick neither if you run a store — Klaviyo's data model beats both — or if you need EU data residency, since we send from us-east-1 and Mailchimp is US-hosted too.

Line by line

12 differences that matter

Mailchimp's column comes from their published pricing and documentation on 2 August 2026.

 
Mailchimp
Email Bump
Pricing model
Priced on contacts stored, in four tiers, with sending capped at a multiple of that count.
Priced on contacts, one plan. Sending is uncapped under fair use.
Send allowance
1× on Free, 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium.
No multiplier at all.
Unsubscribed contacts
Stay in your audience and stay billable until you archive them yourself.
Stop counting toward the bill automatically, along with bounced addresses.
Free plan
250 contacts, 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat.
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month, no daily cap. Marketing footers carry a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge until you upgrade.
Team seats
1 on Free, 3 on Essentials, 5 on Standard, unlimited on Premium ($350/mo at 500 contacts).
Unlimited on every plan, including free.
Automation
Follow-ups, journeys and predictive segmentation start on Standard.
Flows with triggers, waits and branches on every plan, including free.
Transactional email
Mailchimp Transactional, formerly Mandrill, is a separate purchase.
Included — same plan, same key, and SMTP on the same credential.
Landing pages, ads, commerce
All included in the platform.
None of them.
Integrations
The largest catalogue in the category.
Far fewer — a REST API, webhooks, SMTP and a CLI to build against instead.
Inbound email
Not part of the marketing platform.
Included — receive, parse, download attachments and forward, over API or CLI.
Agent surface
A REST API and a large integration catalogue.
CLI, an MCP server with 29 tools, and agent skills. An agent can create the account, verify the address and send without a browser.
Data region
United States.
United States, on Amazon SES. No EU region.
Against us

Three places Mailchimp is the better choice

The integration catalogue. Whatever your ops team bought last quarter, Mailchimp probably has a native connector for it. We have an API, webhooks and SMTP. If nobody on your team can spend an afternoon wiring something up, that gap decides it and no amount of pricing argument changes that.

Non-marketers can use it. Mailchimp's editor and template library are built so a founder or an office manager can send something presentable without being taught. That's a genuine product achievement and it's worth money.

It's more than email. Landing pages, ads, commerce, a light CRM. If you're using three of those, replacing Mailchimp with an email tool means buying three more subscriptions, and the cheaper line item isn't the cheaper stack.

FAQ

Email Bump vs Mailchimp, asked and answered

Is Email Bump cheaper than Mailchimp?

Usually, and the gap widens with list age. Mailchimp bills for unsubscribed contacts until you archive them; we stop counting them automatically. Mailchimp caps sends at 10–15× your contacts; we don't cap sends. Mailchimp's unlimited seats start at $350/mo; ours are on the free plan.

Where Mailchimp wins on price is at the very bottom — $13/mo on Essentials at 500 contacts is cheaper than anything sensible, if 500 contacts and 5,000 sends is genuinely your shape.

Can I import my Mailchimp audience?

Yes — contacts, tags and custom fields import from a standard CSV export. Take the export that includes subscription status, so unsubscribed and cleaned addresses arrive as unsubscribed rather than as fresh contacts.

Automations don't transfer, here or anywhere. They get rebuilt.

Do you have landing pages and ads like Mailchimp?

No. No landing pages, no forms builder, no ad management, no commerce. Email, inbound email, contacts, segments and flows.

If you're using Mailchimp as a small marketing suite rather than an email tool, we replace part of it and you should price the rest before switching.

What happens to unsubscribed contacts?

They stop being billable the moment they unsubscribe, and so do hard-bounced addresses. You keep the record — you need it, so you never email them again — but you don't pay to store it.

This is the single biggest difference in what the two bills actually look like after a couple of years.

Try it against your own list

Import a segment and compare

5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free. Run one campaign through both and let the delivery and click numbers decide.