Mailchimp vs Klaviyo Pricing: The Contacts Trap

Mailchimp vs Klaviyo pricing is the most quietly misleading comparison in email marketing, because the two vendors bill different counts: Mailchimp bills every contact in your audience, including unsubscribed ones you cannot email, while Klaviyo bills only active profiles. Run your list through our free Mailchimp vs Klaviyo pricing calculator: on 6,000 contacts with 20% unsubscribed at Mailchimp Standard, Mailchimp costs $135 a month and Klaviyo costs $100 — a $35 gap that is entirely a billing-model effect, because Klaviyo bills 4,800 profiles and drops a pricing tier.

Why the Tier Tables Mislead

Publish the two tier tables side by side and the comparison looks close: at 5,000 contacts, Klaviyo Email is $100 and Mailchimp Standard is $100; at 10,000, Klaviyo is $150 and Standard is $135. But those tables assume both vendors bill the same count, and they do not. A 6,000-contact list with 20% dead weight bills at 6,000 on Mailchimp (10,000 tier, $135) and at 4,800 on Klaviyo (5,000 tier, $100). Any guide that never asks about your unsubscribed share has not compared the prices you will actually pay.

Mailchimp's Pricing, Line by Line

Mailchimp's monthly tiers, checked September 2026 (500 / 1,000 / 2,500 / 5,000 / 10,000 / 25,000 / 50,000 / 100,000 contacts): Essentials $13 / $27 / $45 / $75 / $110 / $230 / $385 / $650; Standard $20 / $40 / $60 / $100 / $135 / $280 / $450 / $800. Essentials is the cheap entry but locks automation; Standard is the tier most growing stores buy, with advanced automation, behavioural targeting and send-time optimisation. Premium starts at $350 a month including 10,000 contacts and scales by quote. The billing rule that matters: unsubscribed contacts stay in the audience and count toward billing until archived — archiving them is free, and it is the cheapest Mailchimp optimisation there is.

Klaviyo's Pricing, Line by Line

Klaviyo's Email plan by active profiles, same tiers: $20 / $30 / $60 / $100 / $150 / $375 / $720 / $1,380. One contact equals one billing unit regardless of lists, and only profiles that can receive marketing count. The free plan covers 250 profiles. SMS is separate and moved to dollar-based pricing in July 2026 (about $15 buys roughly 1,000 US toll-free texts at entry level, plus a small included allowance). Klaviyo's ecommerce depth — segmentation, predictive analytics, Shopify-native flows — is its feature case; its billing case is simply that dead contacts cost nothing.

The Tier Drop: Where the Saving Actually Lives

Both vendors charge by tier, so a count one contact over a boundary jumps a full tier — there is no per-contact smoothing. That step function is what makes the unsubscribed share so valuable: at 5,200 contacts with 20% dead weight, Mailchimp bills 5,200 (10,000 tier, $135) while Klaviyo bills 4,160 (5,000 tier, $100). The $35 saving is not a discount; it is a tier boundary crossed by billing fewer contacts. Lists sitting just over a boundary are the ones where archiving — or switching — pays for itself immediately.

When Each One Wins

Clean lists favour Mailchimp's headline rates: at 10,000 clean contacts, Standard ($135) undercuts Klaviyo ($150). Dirty lists favour Klaviyo's active-profile billing, by a whole tier at common list sizes. Small stores should weigh Essentials ($13) against Klaviyo ($20) at 500 contacts on automation needs, not price alone. And whatever you choose, clean the list first: archiving 20% dead weight in Mailchimp cuts its bill to the lower tier and erases the gap the switch was supposed to close — which is either the cheapest fix or the reason to switch, depending on whether you will actually do it.