EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp: What the Lower Price Leaves Out

The short answer: if you send a newsletter and a few sequences and want the smallest bill, EmailOctopus Pro costs $31.50 a month for 5,000 subscribers on monthly billing, against $75 for Mailchimp Essentials and $100 for Standard, and its free plan holds 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month (EmailOctopus pricing, Mailchimp pricing, both read on 26 October 2026). If your emails run on cart and order data from a store, or you want SMS beside email, Mailchimp does that and EmailOctopus's pricing page does not list it.

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EmailOctopus is a plain, low-cost sender: campaigns, landing pages, forms, automations and an API, with every paid feature on one Pro plan. Mailchimp is a broader marketing suite for small businesses, with store connections, SMS and AI generation spread across three paid tiers. The real question is whether you use the breadth you would be paying for.

Before you move the list:

1. Put the gap in yearly terms. At 5,000 subscribers, ($75 - $31.50) x 12 = $522 a year between Mailchimp Essentials and EmailOctopus Pro, both on monthly billing (EmailOctopus pricing, Mailchimp pricing). Set that against the features you would give up.
2. Merge your lists first. EmailOctopus counts only subscribed contacts, but counts a person once on every list they are on (pricing article). Mailchimp counts unsubscribed contacts too (plans article). Import into one EmailOctopus list and use tags for the rest.
3. Count the steps in your longest automation. EmailOctopus allows 5 steps in a sequence on its free plan and 650 on Pro; Mailchimp Essentials stops at 4 (EmailOctopus pricing, Mailchimp pricing).
4. Save the first month of reports. EmailOctopus keeps reports for 30 days on the free plan and indefinitely on Pro, so on free, export your opens and clicks before they expire.

What each one documents

EmailOctopus rows from its pricing page and pricing article; Mailchimp rows from its pricing page, plans article and store guide.

The three points that decide it

Who gets counted

Unsubscribed and bounced contacts do not count on EmailOctopus (pricing article). On Mailchimp they do, unless you archive them (plans article). A five-year-old list with a long tail of unsubscribes costs less to keep on EmailOctopus before a single price is compared. The one trap runs the other way: the same person on three EmailOctopus lists is billed three times.

What you get without paying

EmailOctopus's free plan holds ten times Mailchimp's subscribers and twenty times its monthly sends, at the cost of EmailOctopus branding, one landing page, one form and 30 days of reports (EmailOctopus pricing). There is no free trial of Pro; the pricing FAQ points you to the free plan instead.

What the lower price leaves out

Mailchimp connects Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and other stores for free and uses their orders in emails (store guide), sells SMS as an add-on and includes generative AI on Standard and Premium (pricing). EmailOctopus's pricing page lists none of those; its integrations row names the API, Zapier and Make. For a newsletter, that loses nothing. For a shop, it loses the flows that pay for the tool.

Twelve months on each

Monthly prices in USD, checked on 26 October 2026 on the EmailOctopus pricing page and the Mailchimp pricing page. The last column is the Essentials price minus the EmailOctopus Pro monthly price, times 12.

Nonprofits get 20% off for life on EmailOctopus and 15% on Mailchimp, per the EmailOctopus and Mailchimp pricing pages.

The free version is the test

Sign up for EmailOctopus's free plan, which asks for no card, import up to 2,500 subscribers into one list and rebuild your welcome sequence within its 5 steps (pricing page). Send the next two newsletters from it. If no one on the team misses a Mailchimp feature in a month, the yearly gap in the table above is yours to keep.

EmailOctopus presents its automatic upgrades as one less thing to manage, and they are; its help article says a list that grows past the tier is moved up immediately and charged the difference (pricing article). The bill follows the list up without a prompt, so removing contacts you no longer need is your job, not the vendor's.

A Make scenario feeds the list, a person checks the first run

EmailOctopus documents a Make integration that pushes data in from other apps, with adding a new contact when a customer pays in Stripe as one of its examples (Make article). Built as one step of the job: when Stripe records a payment, the scenario adds the buyer to your list with a custom field for the product, and the welcome sequence for that product starts. Before switching it on, a person runs one real test purchase, checks the new contact's fields and confirms that the buyer agreed to marketing email at checkout. Consent does not come from the payment.

Choose EmailOctopus if

• Your email is a newsletter plus a few sequences.
• Your list carries many unsubscribes you would otherwise pay for.
• You want unlimited users with defined roles without a top-tier plan.

Choose Mailchimp if

• Store orders and carts drive your emails.
• You want SMS, custom reports or AI generation in the same account.
• You want to test paid features on a 14-day trial before paying.

FAQ

Does EmailOctopus offer a free trial?

No. Its pricing FAQ recommends starting on the free plan, which has no time limit and needs no credit card.

Do unsubscribed contacts count on EmailOctopus?

No. Its pricing article says only subscribed contacts count, and that contacts on several lists are counted once per list.

What is EmailOctopus Connect?

EmailOctopus's Amazon SES product, sold separately with its own prices; the main pricing page links to it for anyone who wants that route instead of the standard plans compared here.