Best Mailchimp alternatives for newsletter publishers

The short answer

If you are leaving Mailchimp because its price climbs with your contact count and you mostly publish a newsletter, the closest newsletter-first options are beehiiv and Kit. MailerLite and Brevo suit publishers who also run general email marketing. FlockStack suits publishers who want to pay for the emails they send, need an API or an MCP server, or want the code to be open source. Each fact on this page was read from the provider's own pages on October 20, 2026. None of these platforms was tested hands-on for this page, and the order is alphabetical, not a ranking.

How the alternatives were chosen and compared

These five were chosen because each serves newsletter publishers and publishes its prices. The comparison uses the criteria that matter to someone who sends a newsletter:

• What the price follows: contacts, emails sent, or a share of revenue.
• The free plan, and what it leaves out.
• Sending limits, because a plan can cap monthly emails.
• Automation, an API and an MCP server, for connecting the newsletter to the rest of your work.
• Fees on paid subscriptions, if readers pay you.
• Moving your list, and what doesn't come with it.

FlockStack is one of the five. It is listed where its name falls alphabetically, and where a competitor is the better choice, the section says so. Where a provider's page doesn't list a fact, this page says "not listed" rather than guessing.

What a newsletter costs on each

A weekly issue to every subscriber, billed monthly, at three list sizes. Mailchimp is the first row, for reference. The prices were read from each provider's own pricing page.

Read the table with care, because the plans don't include the same things. Kit's and beehiiv's Free plans have no automations. MailerLite shows its Comfort plan, which limits monthly emails, beside its Power plan, which doesn't. Brevo is priced by the emails you send, so only the volume it lists a price for is shown; a bigger volume is "No verified price" here, not free. Mailchimp's plan is the lowest-priced one whose send limit covers the emails, and its page shows no price above the bands it lists. The newsletter cost calculator works the same sums for your own list, sends and paying readers. Sources: mailchimp.com/en/pricing/marketing, beehiiv.com/pricing, brevo.com/pricing, kit.com/pricing, mailerlite.com/pricing.

Fees on paid subscriptions

Mailchimp is a general marketing platform, and its pricing page doesn't list paid newsletter subscriptions. If readers will pay you, the fee matters as much as the plan:

Where readers pay through your own Stripe account, Stripe's card fees apply on top.

What you may be leaving, and what you may miss

Mailchimp's price follows contacts in bands, and each plan limits monthly sends to 10, 12 or 15 times the band's contacts, by plan. Its Essentials plan has up to 4 steps in an automation flow, and its pricing page lists SMS marketing as an add-on, more than 300 integrations, and phone support on Premium. If you use SMS, a large set of integrations or Mailchimp's onboarding, a newsletter-only platform may leave gaps. If most of what you do is send a newsletter, you may be paying for features you don't use.

The alternatives, one by one

beehiiv

Best for: newsletters that want to grow and earn inside one platform. What it offers: a price that follows the size of your list with no limit on sends, a Free plan to 2,500 subscribers, automations and paid subscriptions from Lite with a 0% take rate, an ad network from Lite, and API access on every plan. The trade-off: the price steps up with your list, as the table shows, and its Free plan has no automations. Choose it over FlockStack if you want to earn from ads or sponsors inside the platform, or you email a large list every day. See FlockStack vs beehiiv.

Brevo

Best for: publishers who also send promotions, transactional email or SMS. What it offers: a price that follows the emails you send, a Free plan, MCP for ChatGPT and Claude from Starter, and automation and A/B testing from Standard. Starter starts at $9 a month for 5,000 emails, Standard at $18, and Professional at $499 for 150,000 emails, read in US dollars. The trade-off: it is a general marketing suite, so its pricing page lists no newsletter-specific tools such as paid subscriptions, and its price at larger volumes wasn't read for this page. Choose it over FlockStack if you need SMS or WhatsApp alongside your email.

FlockStack

Best for: publishers who send on a schedule, want a REST API and an MCP server on every plan, or want open-source code (AGPL-3.0) they can run on their own server. What it offers: a Free plan with 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, paid plans priced by the emails you send with a cap on active subscribers, 0% of paid subscriptions, and automations with 15 triggers. The trade-off: FlockStack has no mobile app and no reader network of its own beyond an opt-in recommendations directory, the Free plan has 1 newsletter and 2 automations, and a buyer who needs enterprise security or team-role features should check its documentation first, because it isn't built for that today. Choose it if the price per email, an API-first workflow or the source code matter more than a large feature suite. See the pricing page, the newsletter API and the MCP server.

Kit

Best for: creators who sell digital products or subscriptions alongside a newsletter. What it offers: a Free plan to 10,000 subscribers with no limit on landing pages, forms or broadcasts, visual automations and sequences from Creator, an MCP server from Creator, and selling digital products and subscriptions for 3.5% + $0.30 a transaction, card processing included. The trade-off: the Free plan has no automations, and the price of Creator steps up with your list. Choose it over FlockStack if you want a creator-focused tool with its own selling features and don't mind a per-transaction fee.

MailerLite

Best for: small teams that want a simple, general email tool. What it offers: a Free plan with 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, a pricing page that says every paid plan gets its full feature set, with a bigger list or more sending costing more, and full MCP and API access on paid plans. The trade-off: the Free plan is small, its Comfort plan has lower limits on emails, automations and seats than Power, and its pricing page doesn't describe paid newsletter subscriptions. Choose it over FlockStack if you want a general-purpose tool with a long list of ready-made integrations and you don't need an open-source codebase. It lists 100+ integrations on its Free plan.

Moving from Mailchimp

Export your audience from Mailchimp as a CSV and import it into the new platform; Mailchimp's help center has the current steps. FlockStack reads a Mailchimp contact export as it is, and an import starts no automations, so nobody gets a welcome series. What doesn't move is Mailchimp's own content: its automations, templates and campaign archives. FlockStack imports past posts only from Substack, beehiiv, WordPress and Ghost exports, so a Mailchimp archive stays behind. Keep Mailchimp running until your first send from the new platform has gone out, and send the first issue to your most engaged readers, so the new sender builds a reputation. The moving guide has the details for FlockStack.