ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Newsletter Tool or Automation Platform?

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp at a glance

Both tools price by contacts, not by seats, and both cap monthly sends at a multiple of your contact limit. What differs is what each plan includes. Mailchimp has a free plan and more seats per plan. ActiveCampaign has multi-step automation and site tracking on every plan, and sells deals and pipelines as a CRM add-on.

Every row comes from the vendors' own pricing, app and help pages, read in a US browser, in USD, on 23 October 2026. One catch before you compare prices: Mailchimp's pricing page shows monthly prices, and ActiveCampaign's shows only prices billed yearly. Both vendors also publish a page comparing themselves with the other. We quote those only on each vendor's own terms.

What's the real difference between ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp?

Mailchimp's plans grow from the newsletter up, and ActiveCampaign's start from automation. Mailchimp's Free plan sends campaigns with no automation flows, Essentials adds flows of up to 4 steps, and branching starts on Standard. ActiveCampaign Starter, at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts billed yearly, already has multi-step automation, site tracking and a library of "950+ automation recipes".

The second difference is the CRM. Every ActiveCampaign plan keeps contact profiles, custom fields, tags and lists, and deals, pipelines and lead scoring come with an Enhanced CRM add-on from Plus up. Mailchimp calls its audience tools a "Marketing CRM": contact profiles, tags, segments and groups for marketing. Its CRM page names no deals or pipelines.

How much do ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp cost by list size?

Mailchimp is cheaper in the middle of both price lists: Standard is $45 a month at 1,000 contacts against $49 for ActiveCampaign Plus, and $135 against $189 at 10,000. At the entry level, ActiveCampaign Starter is cheaper up to 2,500 contacts and Mailchimp Essentials above that. Both pricing pages read on 23 October 2026.

The two pages don't bill the same way. ActiveCampaign shows every price as "Billed yearly" and shows no monthly price. Mailchimp shows monthly prices and says annual plans exist only for Standard and Premium at 10,000+ contacts, through sales. So the table sets a yearly-billed ActiveCampaign price next to a monthly Mailchimp one. If you'd rather pay month to month, check ActiveCampaign's monthly price at checkout before you compare.

We pair the plans by their place in each list: Starter with Essentials, Plus with Standard, Pro and Enterprise with Premium. That pairing is ours, not either vendor's. Mailchimp Premium's base price includes 10,000 contacts, so below that size it costs $350 a month whatever your list.

Mailchimp currently shows "Save 15% on 5,000+ contacts" for the first 12 months. At 10,000 contacts that puts Essentials at $93.50 a month for a year, then $110. ActiveCampaign adds a refund promise instead: "Guaranteed results in 30 days or your money back."

Seats differ more than prices. Mailchimp gives 3 seats on Essentials and 5 on Standard; ActiveCampaign gives 1 on Starter and Plus and 3 on Pro. Outgrowing your tier works differently too. Mailchimp bills overages and says "we won't interrupt your service". ActiveCampaign says you can upgrade "to the next contact band or plan without penalties".

Sources: https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing, https://mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/ and https://mailchimp.com/help/about-mailchimp-pricing-plans/, read on 23 October 2026.

Is Mailchimp still free, and what does the free plan leave out?

Yes. Mailchimp's Free plan covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no more than 250 a day. ActiveCampaign has no free plan, only a 14-day trial with no credit card. Checked 23 October 2026.

Free gives you 1 audience, 1 seat, a limited set of templates, basic reporting, forms and landing pages. Mailchimp's plan table leaves out automation flows (Free gets a "Free preview"), email scheduling and removing Mailchimp branding, and support is email-only for the first 30 days. If you pass 250 contacts, Mailchimp puts "a hold" on sending live and test emails until you upgrade or trim the list.

Those limits are the first downsides of Mailchimp most people hit. On the paid plans, the ones we'd weigh are flows capped at 4 steps with no branching on Essentials, overage charges when you pass the contact or send limit, SMS credit prices that show only inside the account, and annual billing that needs a sales call.

Which has better automation, ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp?

ActiveCampaign, going by what both vendors publish. It has multi-step automation on every plan and no action cap from Plus up. Mailchimp holds flows to 4 steps on Essentials and starts branching on Standard. Checked 23 October 2026.

ActiveCampaign's plan table caps Starter at "5 actions per automation" and keeps it to email. Plus, Pro and Enterprise get "Unlimited actions" and cross-channel marketing. Multiple triggers, the 950+ recipe library and site tracking are on every plan. Custom event tracking and sales automation start on Plus, and the automations map, predictive sending and conditional content start on Pro. Active business goals run 15, 25, 200 and 200 from Starter to Enterprise.

Mailchimp's plan table gives Essentials "Single email automations" and flows "with up to 4 steps". Standard and Premium allow up to 200 flows, with "Multiple Starting Points" and "Branching Points". Predictive segments are on Standard and Premium only. Free has no automation flows.

Our reading: for a short welcome series, either entry plan will do. Once a sequence has to branch on what the contact did, Mailchimp means Standard, $45 a month at 1,000 contacts, and ActiveCampaign means Plus, $49 billed yearly, for steps without an action cap.

Does ActiveCampaign have a CRM? Does Mailchimp?

ActiveCampaign has one in two layers, and Mailchimp has a marketing CRM without a sales pipeline. Every ActiveCampaign plan has contact profiles, custom fields, tags and lists. Deals, pipelines, account records and lead scoring come with the Pipelines Enhanced CRM add-on, sold from Plus up. Checked 23 October 2026.

A second add-on, Sales Engagement, includes everything in Pipelines plus automated 1:1 email and win probability. Starter can't buy either. Neither the pricing page nor ActiveCampaign's plan overview gives the add-on price, so ask for it in writing before you count on it.

Mailchimp's page is called "Marketing CRM Software for Small Businesses". It covers contact profiles, tags, segments and ready-made segments, all for marketing. Deals and pipelines aren't on it. For a sales pipeline you connect a CRM, which the next section covers.

If your team already sells in Pipedrive, HubSpot or Monday.com, ActiveCampaign's add-on would be a second pipeline to keep in sync. If you have no CRM yet, it could be your first one.

Deliverability, sending limits and SMS

Both cap monthly sends at the same multiples of your contact limit: 10x on the entry plans, 12x in the middle and 15x on top. Mailchimp's Free plan is the exception at 500 a month. Checked 23 October 2026.

Mailchimp counts "Test and transactional emails" toward the monthly limit, and sells Transactional Email as an add-on to Standard and Premium. ActiveCampaign sells transactional email as an add-on on every plan.

ActiveCampaign sells dedicated IPs on any plan if you have "at least 100,000 active, opted-in, engaged contacts", and "Each dedicated IP costs $750 USD." The Mailchimp pricing and help pages we read list no dedicated IP for marketing plans. We make no claim about whose deliverability is better.

SMS is a paid add-on on both. Mailchimp sells it from Essentials, with MMS from Standard for US and Canadian programs. A US text costs 1 credit and an MMS 3, credits don't roll over, and the price per credit appears in your SMS settings. ActiveCampaign sells SMS on Plus, Pro and Enterprise, its credits don't roll over either, and US sending needs A2P 10DLC registration. Its public pages give no SMS price.

If you handle patient data: ActiveCampaign lists "HIPAA support" on Enterprise only. See which CRMs sign a BAA before you put PHI in either tool.

Connecting your email tool to your CRM and operations

ActiveCampaign builds more of its CRM connections itself. Its Salesforce and Pipedrive integrations are "Built by ActiveCampaign". Mailchimp's Salesforce listing is a third-party app from $25 a month, and its Pipedrive listing is built by Pipedrive and sends contacts one way. Checked on both app directories on 23 October 2026.

On ActiveCampaign, Salesforce sync is two-way and comes with Enterprise only. Pipedrive works on every plan: an automation step creates deals in Pipedrive, and a separate import pulls Pipedrive contacts in. Monday.com connects through a middleware app on every plan, which can move an item to a group when a new contact is created. Zoho is named among the "Standard CRM integrations" on every plan.

On Mailchimp, Salesforce sync comes from Beaufort 12, "Starting at $25 USD/month per Salesforce org", with a two-way sync. The Pipedrive listing, developed by Pipedrive and last updated in December 2016, sends "contacts and segments from Pipedrive to Mailchimp". The Monday.com listing is free and syncs "leads and subscribers" with campaign stats on your boards. The Zoho CRM listing is free too: it maps "Mailchimp subscribers with Zoho CRM contacts/leads".

For HubSpot, look in HubSpot's marketplace, not theirs. Neither ActiveCampaign's nor Mailchimp's directory has a HubSpot app, but HubSpot builds one for each. Its ActiveCampaign Data Sync syncs contacts, companies and deals one way or both ways. Its Mailchimp Campaign Sync sends HubSpot contacts to Mailchimp and brings sends, opens, clicks and bounces back into HubSpot. Both are listed as "Built by HubSpot" (checked 26 October 2026). Outfunnel, a paid third-party app, is the other option on both sides.

A native app covers the common path: new contacts or deals moving one way. You need an automation layer such as Make, n8n or Zapier when the sync has to go both ways and the app doesn't, when a field the app doesn't map has to move, or when a third system joins in, such as billing or support. ActiveCampaign includes API access, webhooks and Zapier on every plan. We compare those three tools in Make vs n8n vs Zapier.

This is the work Retailbox does. We connect it to your CRM and other tools through APIs and webhooks, so the email tool, the CRM and the ops systems see the same contact.

Moving from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign, or back

Contacts move as CSV files, and segments get rebuilt. We found no one-click Mailchimp importer in ActiveCampaign's help center. Its article is called "Manually migrate contacts from Mailchimp". Checked 23 October 2026.

The steps: export each Mailchimp audience or segment as CSV, import it into ActiveCampaign, and map each column to a field, creating fields as you go. Mailchimp groups come over in a separate import as tags. Segments have to be recreated, and since ActiveCampaign works only with dynamic segments, a static Mailchimp segment becomes a tag plus a segment on that tag. Active Intelligence, ActiveCampaign's AI assistant, can also run the contact import.

ActiveCampaign lists "Contact migration" among the free services on its pricing page, and its comparison page promises "Complimentary migration within defined limits". It doesn't say what the limits are.

Mailchimp's export can include subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed and cleaned contacts, as separate CSV files. The columns cover your audience fields, tags, notes, opt-in and confirmation times, and the marketing permissions a contact gave if your audience uses GDPR fields. Open and click history doesn't come with the contacts.

Going back the other way, Mailchimp offers Premium Migration Services to some new Premium accounts that sign up through sales, within their first 30 days. ActiveCampaign's migration article covers contacts, fields, groups and segments, not automations or templates, so plan to rebuild those. Before you switch, read what breaks in a migration.

ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp: which one to choose

Choose Mailchimp for newsletters, a small list or a free start, and for a team that needs several seats on a mid-priced plan. Choose ActiveCampaign when automation has to branch on behavior, when sales needs follow-up from the same tool, or when you want the email tool and the CRM to come from one vendor.

Looking for something similar to Mailchimp in general? ActiveCampaign is a close match on the basics: both price by contacts and use the same 10x, 12x and 15x send multiples. If this comparison shows you need a real CRM first, take the 6-question CRM picker.

• Choose Mailchimp if you have under 250 contacts and send a newsletter. The Free plan covers 500 sends a month.
• Choose Mailchimp if several people need access on a budget: Essentials has 3 seats and Standard 5, against 1 on ActiveCampaign Starter and Plus.
• Choose ActiveCampaign if you want multi-step automation at the lowest price: Starter is $15 a month for 1,000 contacts, billed yearly, capped at 5 actions per automation.
• Choose ActiveCampaign if marketing has to hand leads to sales. Deals and pipelines are an add-on from Plus up, and its Pipedrive and Salesforce apps are built by ActiveCampaign.
• Choose Mailchimp Standard if you need branching flows at the lower mid-tier price: $45 against $49 for ActiveCampaign Plus at 1,000 contacts, $135 against $189 at 10,000.
• If your sales team lives in HubSpot, either tool can connect: HubSpot builds a sync app for each. Check what those apps map before you rely on them for deals.

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