
Mailchimp's pricing - byg80
http://mailchimp.com/pricing/all/
======
grey-area
Some clients of mine left mailchimp for this very reason (and because the web
style editor wasn't great, but mostly pricing).

You start on a free plan, and get 2000 users, you hit that limit, and are
considering moving up, then realise that their lowest plan is actually _below_
the number of users on the free plan - you have to go up to the 5th plan to
actually get over 2000 users again. The limits are pretty low and the costs
mount steeply, but the worst thing was not having a clear first step _up_ from
the free plan.

They also have an insane number of plans.

~~~
sathishmanohar
> Some clients of mine left mailchimp for this very reason

left in favor of? Mind sharing them?

~~~
grey-area
Sendgrid, they have a far more sensible pricing structure based on no. of
emails sent, which doesn't get expensive till you're truly at a larger scale.
Sending 2000 mails a month should not cost $30 in my opinion. There are plenty
of options though.

~~~
aquadrop
But they are a bit different. MailChimp is about marketing emails, that's why
2000 - it's the number of subscribers, not emails. On paying accounts they
have no limit to the number of emails sent. SendGrid gravitate more to
transactional emails, and they limit number of emails sent per month. So
choosing between them isn't that trivial.

~~~
grey-area
Unless you have a _tiny_ number of subscribers, I think someone charging by
emails sent is better value, but even without that, the step between 2000 on a
list free, and 500 on a list paid for, seems somewhat bizarre, they should
eliminate that.

~~~
aquadrop
Not tiny number of subscribers but large emails/subscribers ratio. If you have
1000 subscribers and some daily news, you'll end up with much less price at
MailChimp than SendGrid. And main thing about step from free account is
unlimited number of emails vs 12000 limit. In the end, it's just a matter of
thinking and finding the best tool for your specific situation.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
This could barely be closer to our exact use-case, so I'm glad you used it as
an example - nice to have the decision seconded! We ran for almost a month on
the free plan, but were just about to exceed the 'total number of emails sent'
limit, so upgraded. MailChimp's pricing automatically adjusts to the
appropriate band depending on your current number of subscribers, so although
the pricing is convoluted, I don't _really_ need to worry about it. Even for a
small business, £30/month (~ 5,000 subscribers) is very little, and for the
peace of mind that comes with a solid offering such as MailChimp, it's well
worth it.

I'm sounding like a shill, but I'm really not - just a very happy customer at
the moment.

------
nemesisj
A few things here that I think most are missing:

1\. Mailchimp is targeted (and priced for) the small business. Most small
businesses aren't going to have lists more than a few thousand, which means
most of Mailchimp's customers are going to be paying less than 50ish bucks a
month.

2\. If you've got thousands and thousands of emails to send, and are paying
multiple thousands of dollars to mailchimp each month, you're probably just
going to use mandrill and hire a dev to help you out there.

3\. For those customers that are spending larger amounrd (500-1000 bucks a
month?), they're going to marketing managers at midsize businesses who would
never get IT love and can easily justify the purchase against conversions to
sales.

4\. Lastly, most people who use mailchimp send more than 1 email a month,
therefore, most of the commentary surrounding the pricing divided by one send
a month isn't really accurate.

~~~
grey-area
_A few things here that I think most are missing:_

We left mailchimp after trying them out, and didn't miss any of these points,
they're all quite obvious if you have priced out email.

1\. Small startups definitely will

2\. If you've got thousands of emails to send, you can send them for $10 with
competitors

3\. For customers spending a larger amount, again they could be spending a lot
less with competitors, email is not expensive, particularly in bulk.

4\. If you're sending a few emails a month, that's not going to affect many of
the calculations. Sure daily emails would affect these calculations, but that
is _very_ unusual for small businesses in my experience - around 1 or 2 a
month is the norm for many, or customers get annoyed.

I'm sure Mailchimp will suit some customers with no tech team, small
subscriber list, or daily emails to send, but they should sort out their
pricing scheme - they are far too fine-grained, far too high at the top end,
and with too big from free to the lowest level IMO.

~~~
nemesisj
For your second point, again, I think the point of MailChimp pricing is you
may have thousands of emails to send, but you won't be sending to thousands of
email addresses. This makes most of their customers start on the free plan,
then graduate to something that's not a huge cost.

Simplicity and familiarity are the bread and butter for most of these
customers. They're not marketing to tech people. They're marketing to the
flower shop on the corner who has a list of 1,500 people and ads 2 email
addresses a week.

So, I think maybe we're in violent agreement here :)?

Lastly - the key thing about MailChimp pricing is that you move up and down on
their pricing plans automatically. It's unbelievably low friction. Most of the
time when you move up or down, it's because you've just imported new people
and have a new email to send. So you don't care. You just get on with it and
then forget about it later.

I don't even know why I'm carrying so much water for MailChimp, other than I
think people are missing the point of what and who they target.

~~~
grey-area
_So, I think maybe we 're in violent agreement here :)?_

I think so yes :)

I suppose it comes down to which businesses you have worked with. I haven't
encountered many businesses which have very few customers/prospects and send
loads of mail, but there definitely will be some, which would be a better fit
for mailchimp (like a florist as you say). For those who have lots of users,
it's not such a good choice.

------
CD1212
Sorry for the shameless plug: I have been developing my own email marketing
platform, primarily because I felt that the editor to create emails of some
large providers was not easy enough for many people to use.

I haven't posted it to HN before, and so far have only shown it to friends and
clients. Please sign up (free trial) and see what you think?

[https://emailhamster.com/](https://emailhamster.com/)

~~~
orliesaurus
You're using mailgun right? I just registered but the email arrived from
mailgun's servers :O

~~~
CD1212
Yes, for a new project setting up a custom delivery infrastructure seemed
pointless. This is something I would like to remedy in the future though.

Thank you for signing up! I hope you find it useful.

------
lylemckeany
Their main pricing page,
[http://mailchimp.com/pricing/](http://mailchimp.com/pricing/), is much better
from a marketing and sales standpoint. I'm surprised they even provide a link
to the "all" page since it probably doesn't apply to 99% of their potential
customers.

------
reneherse
If an infinite number of monkeys type on an infinite number of keyboards,
eventually one of them will write an infinitely scrolling, infinitely minute &
obtuse pricing list.

Pardon the snark; This week I have to move a client off of MC because their
WYSIWYG style editor is practically useless. Anyone with a recommended
service?

~~~
hkmurakami
Oh. So that's why this crashes safari on my iPad after scrolling a ton.

------
stefanve
I thought that there was a strange bug on this page, look at the ridicules
price hikes.

501 - 1,000 $15 1,001 - 1,050 $20

5$ for 50 mails ..... 10 cent per email wow, I think you could get a better
deal at the post office :)

~~~
Axsuul
That's the number of subscribers, number of emails you can send is unlimited.
But regardless, this is a pretty stupid way to list out your pricing scheme.

------
neya
I think I would much rather roll out my own solution using Mailgun/Amazon's
API with a basic RoR/Golang prototype than use these shady monkeys.

It's their business and they have every right to price it the way they see it
fit, but when there's something deceptive going on, as an end user I think I
have every reason to point it out.

For example, when you start with a free plan and you decide to upgrade to a
paid plan, you actually need to go about 5 levels to actually get over 2000
users! And it's not pretty cheap either. I mean $100k to send just emails?
(Keep scrolling down)

I once used them when Feedburner bailed out on us, only to never look back at
these monkeys (that's their trademarked mascot) and I rolled out my own basic
solution on my VPS in just good old PHP (with Wordpress) and it worked well.
And I definitely didn't spend $5 for 50 emails, just $20 for my basic Linode.

~~~
patio11
If you're capable of banging out basic RoR/Golang prototypes which can be used
by non-technical email marketers, this skill alone can get you $20k+
engagements to build them with a bit of company-specific secret sauce in them.
The sauce doesn't have to be that complicated at all -- for example, "I wish
there was a way to send people an email on day N of their trial if their
account had less than X objects in it... and I want N, X, and the object type
to be editable without having to talk to Engineering" justifies $X0k at a lot
of places.

(That's sort of software-firm specific because that's who I typically sold
that to. Let's see, what's a more prosaic option. Oh, OK: consider a small
insurance company in Kansas which collects a meagre $20 million in premium
income per year. There exists a non-technical marketing manager within that
company who wishes that there was a way to email business customers a
solicitation in December to pre-pay their premiums for the following year to
book a current-year expense for tax purposes. She calculates that getting an
extra 6 months of float on 20% of their $12 million in business policies is
worth approximately $100,000. Can you imagine what you could sell her for
$40,000?)

In related news: businesses pay serious money for things which make them
money. Consider adapting one's behavior to optimize for this. You can use the
resulting money to buy lots of fun things, including stupefyingly large
amounts of MailChimp credits if that floats your boat.

~~~
adyus
I've been following your advice and newsletters, and I get great value from
them.

However, one thing that I still haven't figured out is this: how would I find
say, that small insurance company in Kansas who has $100k to spend on a
solution I could offer to their problem? Where would I begin to look? Cold-
contacting seems unscalable.

I know networking goes a long way toward such contacts, but it can't be just
that. Is there a way to search for clients that's between cold-calling and a
personal network contact?

~~~
patio11
Go to the local Chamber of Commerce, or other watering holes for businesses,
and say you're going to teach a free lecture on business use of email at the
VFW hall, with reception to follow. The hall rents out for ~$20. Buy donuts
and Starbucks coffee for the reception.

Talk for an hour on how to solve business problems with email. After the hour
is over, you're going to be mobbed with people who want to pick your brains
about email. At that point you just continue teaching them things until you
win the engagement.

This built Brennan Dunn's business (to a ~7 figures consultancy with 10ish
FTEs if I recall correctly), in a very not-generally-associated-with-great
-Rails-sales-environment part of the country. It was also, broadly speaking, a
major portion of my lead generation when I was consulting. (I sold consulting
services primarily to B2B software companies, so speaking at events likely to
be attended by them was generally a win.)

n.b. "I follow your newsletters and get great value from them" a) Thanks, that
really makes me happy and b) this points the way towards another option for
you, since if the small insurance company in Kansas was saying that about your
newsletter then you're pretty much made for pipeline.

Also, with regards to cold-calling: I've never done it, partly because it
would give me stress hives and partly because I've never needed to do it, but
I disagree that it is necessarily unscalable. After all, if you're selling
$40k engagements, then adding ~10 qualified leads to the pipeline every month
would easily sustain a small consultancy. That's not all that much calling. As
your consultancy grows you tend to collect recurring engagements / referrals
organically, but if you absolutely positively have to make e.g. $2 million
this year to cover all employee salaries, that's still only one engagement a
week, and if you're counting in the millions you have throw-money-at-this-
problem options to being tired of all the talking on the phone.

~~~
adyus
As usual, a very useful and thought-out reply. Thanks for taking the time.

As soon as I get over the typical impostor syndrome and realize I have a lot
to share in a newsletter, I'll follow your advice :) 'Tis true, "do stuff,
tell people" is still the best advice.

One thing I'm still struggling with is how to explain and justify the
(otherwise normal but perceived as) high cost of web development to a crowd
that's anything but tech savvy. How do you justify your consulting fee?
"Everybody charges that" doesn't sit well with me...

Although, I do see a point in making them do the math to figure out how much
more they'd make by paying me, but I'm bearish on how many small business
owners would actually do so.

Maybe I'm still thinking too small...

~~~
bradleyland
I'm no patio11, but I did follow (I think) a similar trajectory. I used my
consulting gig to build a nest-egg that I invested in my own startup, which
will hit $1.2MM in revenue this year. I wanted to augment his comments with a
couple of things that I know worked for me.

> I know networking goes a long way toward such contacts, but it can't be just
> that.

For me, it was literally "just that". However, understand that "networking" is
a vague term. For me, networking was more than just showing up at social
events and being nice to everyone, although that certainly counts. For
example, I had a reputation for showing up at my clients' offices any time
there was cake (birthdays, etc). It became a kind of running joke with
everyone, and always got lots of laughs. But I digress.

Networking is the subtle combination of being present and expressing your
value to those who are interested. This does not mean shouting your pitch at
everyone you meet. Rather, it means listening to what people say, thinking
about the challenges they're facing, then offering your advice on how
technology could help them.

> One thing I'm still struggling with is how to explain and justify the
> (otherwise normal but perceived as) high cost of web development to a crowd
> that's anything but tech savvy. How do you justify your consulting fee?
> "Everybody charges that" doesn't sit well with me...

Maybe I'm just being narcissistic here, but my very favorite piece of advice
for people in the technology field is "stop selling technology". The person
you're selling to isn't interested in buying technology. The world is full of
companies selling technology, and the buyer you're targeting doesn't
understand any of it. The most successful sales pitches I've been a part of
(and continue to be part of) are couched entirely in the language that the
buyer uses, not the language I use.

Take a second and internalize that.

The small business owner doesn't have the time to become an expert in
technology. They might even think that they do. For example, I would
occasionally have a customer ask me what technology we used to build our
websites. Some customers would ask about specific technologies: "Do you use
'pee-aych-pee'?" I would always deflect those questions tactfully by
explaining that the technology that drives a website are nuts-and-bolts, which
we can figure out once we really understand the problem the customer needs to
solve. I would say something like:

"As a geek, I'd love to talk to you about PHP, Ruby, and ASP.NET, but I think
that might be getting ahead of ourselves. I like to approach technology
problems from the other direction. All of those technologies are great, but
they're a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Let's talk about what
problems you need to solve, then figure out what technology fits best."

If the client doesn't light up when you say that, then you're probably talking
to the wrong client. It's very difficult to work with pseudo-experts. They end
up meddling too much in the technology side of the work.

Back to the bigger picture, I don't think you're "thinking too small",
although you might be thinking of this from the wrong direction. The best way
to convince people to do business with you is to sound like them. Use their
language. Put a lot of effort in to understanding them (their role, their
challenges, etc). Resist the urge to jump right in to technology. A deep
understanding of clients' problems will save you, even when/if you make a bad
technology decision. If you do these things, you'll never have to justify your
price. That doesn't mean that everyone will want to do business with you, but
it acts as a natural selector for the types of clients you want to do business
with.

~~~
wikwocket
The second point here is well-articulated. You don't have to "justify the high
cost of web development." This is because you shouldn't be selling "web
development."

You are selling a way for them to invoice their clients without Susie printing
out 4 different Excel workbooks and walking them over to Accounting. You are
selling a way for them to find customers that's more reliable than placing an
ad in the yellow pages. You are selling a way for them to find which customers
to upsell without Jeff the intern going into the basement and sorting through
5000 file folders.

And so on. Solve business problems, preferably ones that are pain points, and
that have dollar signs attached. These are the key.

------
jabo
A slider for email volume vs price would have been nice.

~~~
idProQuo
Either that or just expose the formula for calculating cost.

The plans are too exact to really be "plans". Is anyone thinking "I have
exactly 52000 users right now"? I feel like bigger brackets or a sliding scale
would be more appropriate.

------
alextingle
MailChimp are just spam enablers. The vast majority of e-mail I get from them
is to e-mail addresses that definitely never ever signed up for anything. They
claim they use double opt in, but that's just a damn dirty lie.

Furthermore, they are past masters at helping their spammers craft their spam
to defeat SpamAssassin and baysian filters, so the spam that actually makes it
to my inbox is disproportionately from them. It's got so bad that I've got
special mail server rules that focus on just them.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
If you saw it from the other end, in the eyes of a legitimate customer, you'd
realise how laughable that is. MailChimp discourages spam to the extent that
it's actually difficult to send email to your own customers! I can assure you
that they use double opt-in, unless a customer has imported a list which they
are trusted to only do legitimately. FWIW, I cannot remember having ever
received any spam from MailChimp.

~~~
FooBarWidget
I second this. It's almost like they discourage me from sending _any_ email at
all. Even when I need to send an important security announcement to my
customers I still get chills.

------
eof
I think the real thing here is:

0 - 500 $10 unlimited

501 - 1,000 $15

1,001 - 1,050 $20 // $5 = 50 emails

1,051 - 1,150 $25 //$5 = 100 emails

1,151 - 2,500 $30 //$5 = 1350 emails

2,501 - 2,600 $35 // $5 = 100 emails

~~~
icebraining
Subscribers, not emails.

~~~
estel
Sure, but the intervals are still bizarre.

------
jontro
What are we expected to discuss here? I do not see anything wrong with this
page.

~~~
fourstar
My thoughts at first until I clicked and scrolled down... and down... and
down... until I realized how insane it is to spend $100k on sending out
emails.

------
orliesaurus
Hey guys since we're in theme, can we get some feedback on our pricing
[https://www.mailjet.com/pricing](https://www.mailjet.com/pricing)

\- Does the price sound reasonable? \- Have you tried our service before, if
so what do you think of it? \- Does it bother you our infrastructure is hosted
in Europe?

~~~
contextual
I may take a peek at Mailjet later today. Your pricing looks better for
someone like me to grow with.

------
hristiank
If I may add a few things: 1\. I think most of the comments here concentrate
on price alone. You need to remember that email marketing is a tool. If you
have even 2000 subscribers and not making $30 from that list: a) It's your
hobby. No problem. Hobbies sometimes can get expensive. b) There is something
really not right with your list/efforts. 2\. All the people outraged at
Mailchimp's prices should compare them to the competition and see that most of
the companies offer similar pricing. 3\. Try explaining successfully to your
local restaurant manager how to set up his/her own mail server. 4\. After you
have successfully explained #3, try explaining all the regulations and SPAM
compliance. 5\. Finally - Mailchimp is for small and mid-size businesses. Once
you go over $1000 in email marketing costs you are in a different ball game.

------
kamilszybalski
Seriously.. try [https://madmimi.com/](https://madmimi.com/)

~~~
lingben
their pricing plan is also bonkers:

$10 for 500 contacts $42 for 10,000 contacts

there's a lot of space between 500 and 10,000 !!

~~~
contextual
Actually, you can customize your plan (on the right). Seems pretty reasonable
and flexible to me.

~~~
lingben
you're right, thanks I hadn't noticed that

------
dhimant
I started out using mailchimp when I had less than 2000 subscribers. It worked
great! But now that my mail list is growing, I find it increasingly expensive.
Any recommendations on alternative providers?

~~~
lingben
aweber

postmark

mailgun

sendgrid

~~~
dhimant
Thanks! This is great!

------
qnickmans
disclaimer : I'm involved with www.mailjet.com.

Mailjet is "merging" transactional and marketing email services. Transactional
via API and on top of our APIs we build web interfaces for marketers to manage
contact list, html and stats pages.

We charge per email send, whatever its "origin".

One need to know that managing marketing emails and transactional emails is
not the same in daily operations. Marketing emails are send to "lists" and
there is an important effort a reliable provider needs to put in place to
avoid spammers come on your platform. Lists need to be double opt-in etc. and
a lot of marketeers don't follow these strict rules. The provider (here
Mailjet.com or Mailchimp) has to develop and invest in a lot of work to detect
'spammers' before and even during the sending process, interact with its
support teams to educate customers, etc. Their job is to guarantee to ISPs
only high quality, opt-in messages are send out. That's the only long term
battle a provider needs to fight for.

------
mattsfrey
Mailchimp is ideal for sending a high volume of emails to a small amount of
users. I couldn't imagine using them with a large volume of users, it's
literally $0.005 per user, imagine if you only need to send a monthly or even
weekly email to 1mil+ users, total rape on the per email basis

------
JonoBB
I really really dislike their pricing scheme.

We have 5000 subscribers, but only send 1 email every month or two. This costs
$55. Compare this to someone that has 500 subscribers, and sends each of them
10 emails per month - that only costs $10 per month. It just doesn't add up.

~~~
bpaluzzi
I really really dislike the pricing at an "all-you-can-eat" buffet. I only eat
one french fry, yet I get charged £7.99 for it. If someone orders just french
fries at McDonalds, they get dozens of fries for £0.99. It just doesn't add
up.

------
eibrahim
A much cheaper alternative is streamsend
[http://www.streamsend.com/291.html](http://www.streamsend.com/291.html)
(affiliate link).

I maintain an unlimited list and pricing is very reasonable. Also their
affiliate program is very good.

------
guyinblackshirt
I'm happy with CampaignMonitor for my email newsletters, and I find the
pricing reasonable
[http://www.campaignmonitor.com/pricing/](http://www.campaignmonitor.com/pricing/)

------
poissonpie
That is the mother of all pricing tables. It almost looks like a parody.

~~~
aquadrop
This is special page for 'all' pricing, real users page is much better.

~~~
andyhmltn
You mean this:[http://mailchimp.com/pricing/](http://mailchimp.com/pricing/) ?
True that it's better, but it just doesn't work :p

~~~
aquadrop
Worked a minute ago for me :)

------
lingben
what do you guys think of postmarkapp?

I'm not a customer but curious about their rep, they have a flat(ish) pricing
model at $1.5/1000 emails sent (and then lower for more)

------
tatata
maybe paid plans are 2000 (free) subscribers + X (paid) subscribers? Otherwise
it's pretty flawed

------
contextual
I use Mailchimp, but I'm getting to hate it. It's too expensive, their payment
options are limited and customer support is slow. That with a lot of minor
idiosyncrasies that are starting to fray my nerves.

Migration will no doubt be a hassle, but I'm looking to move to another
service (soonish).

