Mailchimp vs Substack
Pricing
Mailchimp: Free tier (250 contacts), Standard from $20/mo
Substack: Free, 10% of paid subs
Description
Mailchimp: Email marketing platform with campaigns, automation flows, landing pages and sign-up forms, owned by Intuit
Substack: The OG paid newsletter platform
Pros
- Landing pages, pop-up forms and social posting are included on every plan, Free too
- Automation flows on Standard can run up to 200 steps with branching
- 14-day free trial of the Standard plan
- Built-in audience discovery
- No upfront costs
- Simple and focused
Cons
- The Free plan is small: 250 contacts, 500 sends a month (250 a day), one user and Mailchimp branding
- Going over your contact or send limit adds overage charges automatically
- Automations on Free are a preview only, and Essentials caps each flow at 4 steps
- 10% cut is steep at scale
- Limited customization
Details
Mailchimp covers newsletters, automated email flows, landing pages, sign-up forms and basic social posting, with 100+ email templates. It is owned by Intuit, which also makes QuickBooks.
It suits founders who want one marketing tool for email, forms and simple landing pages, and who expect to use automations.
Pricing grows with your contact list. Free stops at 250 contacts. Standard starts at $20/month for 500 contacts and lets you send 12 emails per contact a month. Outside the US the site shows prices as estimates based on exchange rates, and taxes come on top.
Substack pioneered the paid newsletter model. Founded by Chris Best and Hamish McKenzie in 2017. Free to start, they take 10% of paid subscriptions. Over 5M paid subscriptions on the platform. Great for writers who want zero setup friction.
Mailchimp verified
Substack verified
