Mailchimp Alternatives for Online Stores in 2026: 6 Tools

For an online store, the Mailchimp alternatives to compare are Klaviyo, Omnisend, Brevo and Shopify Messaging (Shopify's own app, formerly Shopify Email), with Drip and Seguno as two more tools built for e-commerce. Each one bills on a different number: active profiles, contacts, emails sent, people on the list or opted-in subscribers only. The lowest subscription in this comparison is Brevo's Starter plan, at $9 a month on Brevo's pricing page on November 4, 2026.

This guide reads each vendor's pricing page, Help Center or Shopify App Store listing as they stood on November 4, 2026, in US dollars. It is written for stores leaving Mailchimp: what each alternative bills on and where its prices start, what the same store would be billed for on each, and how to move your list without sending your subscribers a second opt-in email.

Why do online stores look for a Mailchimp alternative?

Mailchimp prices its marketing plans on contacts. On its Shopify App Store listing on November 4, 2026, Essentials started at $13 a month, Standard at $20 and Premium at $350, next to a free plan, with "pricing based on number of contacts" on each paid plan.

Mailchimp's Help Center defines what that number covers:

• Who counts. Subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts are all included in your contact count. Archived, cleaned and deleted contacts are not.
• The free plan. Up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with a daily limit of 250. Above 250 contacts, sending is put on hold until you upgrade or reduce your contact total.
• Paid plan limits. Essentials stores up to 50,000 contacts with a monthly send limit of 10 times your contact limit, Standard up to 100,000 at 12 times, and Premium starts at 10,000 contacts and goes up to 200,000 at 15 times.
• Going over. If your contact total passes your contact limit during a billing cycle, Mailchimp keeps sending and adds a charge to your bill.

A non-subscribed contact, in Mailchimp's contact definitions, is someone who has interacted with you but has not opted in to marketing; a customer who ordered without subscribing fits that definition. For an online store, these rules raise three questions to put to each alternative: which contacts you pay for, what the unit is (contacts, emails sent or subscribers), and how it reads your Shopify data. Each alternative below documents a Shopify app or integration.

Mailchimp also has a Shopify app, rated 4.8 out of 5 from 1,556 reviews on its App Store listing on November 4, 2026. For a plan-by-plan comparison with Klaviyo, see Klaviyo vs Mailchimp.

Which Mailchimp alternatives fit an online store?

Sources, read on November 4, 2026: Klaviyo pricing page and App Store listing, Omnisend pricing page, Brevo pricing page and Brevo PushOwl listing, Shopify Messaging page and listing, Drip listing, Seguno pricing page and listing, Mailchimp listing. Monthly billing unless noted.

What does each alternative cost, and what does it bill on?

Klaviyo: billed on active profiles

Klaviyo sells email, SMS and WhatsApp marketing in one app, according to its Shopify App Store listing.

• Price. Its pricing page lists a free plan for up to 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month. The listing shows Email at $20 a month for 251 to 500 contacts, and SMS at $15 a month for up to 1,250 SMS and MMS credits, carrier fees included.
• What it counts. Any profile that can be emailed, regardless of consent status, including people who shared an email address at checkout without opting in, according to Klaviyo's Help Center. Email-suppressed profiles leave the count once the suppression is processed.
• Leaving Mailchimp. Klaviyo documents a Mailchimp integration that syncs your audiences into Klaviyo lists, with subscription information and email receive, open and click activity.

Our Klaviyo pricing guide gives the price at every list size. If Klaviyo itself is the tool you are trying to avoid, our list of Klaviyo alternatives covers more options.

Omnisend: billed on subscribers and non-subscribers

Omnisend sells email, SMS, web push and pop-ups in one app, according to its App Store listing.

• Price. On Omnisend's pricing page, the free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, Standard costs $16 a month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails, and Pro $59 a month for 2,500 contacts with unlimited emails. The page also displayed a 30% discount on the first three months, which brings Standard to $11.20 a month during that period.
• What it counts. Subscribers plus non-subscribers, meaning customers who gave an email or phone number by ordering or abandoning a cart without opting in to marketing; only unsubscribed contacts are excluded, according to Omnisend's billing article, which adds that paid plans are billed upfront every 30 days.
• SMS. On Pro, from $0.007 per message on the pricing page, a starting rate that applies to high-volume US sends.
• Leaving Mailchimp. The same page lists a free migration of your contacts, data and segments.

The full tier table and three worked costs are in our Omnisend pricing guide.

Brevo: billed on emails sent per month

Brevo is a marketing platform for email, SMS and, on its higher plans, WhatsApp.

• Price. On Brevo's pricing page, the free plan sends up to 300 emails a day once your account is approved, Starter costs $9 a month from 5,000 emails a month, Standard $18 with marketing automation and A/B testing, and Professional $499 from 150,000 emails a month, with WhatsApp, pop-ups, push and 10 seats.
• Billing. Yearly billing takes 10% off on the same page, and SMS credits are sold separately.
• On Shopify. Brevo's app is Brevo PushOwl, which lists its own bundles: a free Basic bundle, Plus at $19 a month ($180 a year) and Power at $79 a month ($852 a year).

Our Brevo pricing guide explains how email volume and contact limits interact.

Shopify Messaging: billed on emails sent, inside Shopify

Shopify Messaging is Shopify's own app for email, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, according to its App Store listing.

• Price. On Shopify's Messaging page, the first 10,000 manual or automated emails each month are free, then you pay $1 per 1,000 additional emails ($0.001 each), with lower rates applied automatically above 300,000 emails a month.
• Conditions. The same page says Shopify Messaging is available on all Shopify plans, with no monthly commitment, and that SMS is charged separately and available in select countries.
• What it counts. Emails sent, so the size of your list does not move the bill on its own.

The Shopify plan you pay for comes on top: our guide to Shopify pricing lists every plan.

Drip: billed on people and email volume

Drip presents itself as email automation and pop-ups for Shopify stores. Its App Store listing shows a $39 monthly subscription with a 14-day free trial, and states that the price increases with the number of active people on your list and the volume of emails you send. The listing names segments built from Shopify customer data, an automation workflow builder, onsite pop-ups and embedded forms, Shopify-only automation templates and unlimited users.

Seguno: billed on opted-in subscribers only

Seguno is an email marketing app built for Shopify and billed through Shopify. On Seguno's pricing page, you only pay for active subscribers, defined as Shopify customers who agreed to receive marketing emails (the Subscribed badge in your Shopify customer list).

• Price. On the same page, Seguno is free for 250 subscribers or fewer, Standard costs $35 a month including 2,500 subscribers and Professional $215 a month including 25,000, with unlimited sending on every plan and a 10-day free trial.
• What Standard adds. Pop-ups, reviews, back-in-stock alerts, browse and cart abandonment, and custom multi-email automations.
• Billing. Seguno's FAQ says an app charge is added to your Shopify bill every 30 days, with no separate contract.

What would the same store be billed for on each tool?

The store is fictional. It leaves Mailchimp with 5,000 email contacts: 2,500 subscribed, 1,500 customers who ordered without opting in (non-subscribed) and 1,000 unsubscribed. Each month it sends four campaigns to its 2,500 subscribers (10,000 emails) and about 2,000 automated emails (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase), so 12,000 emails in all.

Rules and prices from the Mailchimp Help Center, Klaviyo Help Center, Omnisend billing article, and the pricing pages and listings in the sources above, read on November 4, 2026.

What the example shows:

• One list, three counts. The same store is 5,000 contacts in Mailchimp, about 4,000 in Klaviyo and Omnisend, and 2,500 in Seguno.
• Archive before you compare. Archived contacts leave Mailchimp's count, according to its Help Center, so archiving the 1,000 unsubscribed contacts gives you the number you really pay for today.
• The unit changes the winner. Per-email pricing (Shopify Messaging, Brevo) follows sends, not list size; per-subscriber pricing (Seguno) leaves out the 1,500 customers who never subscribed.

Price is only one line of the decision: the tools differ in automation depth, SMS and Shopify data, as the sections above describe.

How do you move from Mailchimp without emailing your list twice?

1. Export your audience. In Mailchimp, choose Export audience: the export may come as a ZIP with separate CSV files for subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed and cleaned contacts, only Owners and Admins can export audiences, and exports stay available for 30 days, according to Mailchimp's export article. Open and click rates are not included, so export your email reports separately.
2. Keep the opt-outs. Import the unsubscribed and cleaned files as suppressed contacts, so the new tool does not email them.
3. Use the vendor's migration path. Klaviyo syncs audiences through its Mailchimp integration; Omnisend's pricing page lists a free migration of contacts, data and segments.
4. Disconnect Mailchimp from Shopify first. Klaviyo's migration article asks merchants whose Mailchimp account is integrated with Shopify to disconnect Mailchimp from Shopify before integrating Mailchimp with Klaviyo; otherwise, double opt-in emails could be sent to existing subscribers.
5. Rebuild forms and automations. Forms created in Mailchimp cannot be redirected to Klaviyo, according to the same article: recreate your sign-up forms and your automations as flows in the new tool.
6. Remove the integration before cleaning Mailchimp. Klaviyo warns that contacts you clean in Mailchimp before removing the integration are suppressed in Klaviyo.
7. Downgrade or close Mailchimp once the new forms and flows are live.

How do you check your own cost before you switch?

1. Count contacts by status in your Mailchimp export: subscribed, non-subscribed, unsubscribed.
2. Count your monthly emails: campaigns times recipients, plus automated emails.
3. Match each tool's unit to those numbers with the table above: profiles, contacts, emails or subscribers.
4. Read each price at your count on the vendor's page, and keep promotions apart from the standard price, such as Omnisend's 30% off the first three months on its pricing page.
5. Add texts if you send them. Klaviyo's SMS plan starts at $15 a month on its listing, Omnisend's SMS starts at $0.007 per message on Pro on its pricing page, and Brevo and Shopify Messaging charge SMS separately.
6. Compare more apps. Our ranking of the best email marketing apps for Shopify covers their features and ratings.

Where does WhatsApp fit next to your new email tool?

Kanal, our WhatsApp marketing app for Shopify, does not send email, so it does not replace any tool on this list. It adds WhatsApp next to the one you choose: WhatsApp campaigns and segments, abandoned cart recovery on WhatsApp, order notifications and back in stock alerts, with revenue tracked per message and a shared team inbox for the replies. RCS and SMS are included from the Scale plan.

• Consent stays separate. Kanal does not sync the Shopify checkout consent box, so your email subscribers are not WhatsApp subscribers. Kanal collects WhatsApp opt-ins with its own pop-up and chat widget, which open WhatsApp, next to the email pop-up of your email tool.
• Integrations. Among the email tools in this guide, Kanal integrates with Klaviyo. It has no integration with Mailchimp, Omnisend, Brevo, Shopify Messaging, Drip or Seguno; with those, the two apps run side by side on the same store.
• Price. On our pricing page on November 4, 2026, Pro cost €89 a month, Scale €149 and Business €350, and Meta bills WhatsApp messages on top. Kanal installs from the Shopify App Store, where it is rated 5.0.

If cart reminders are where you would start, our comparison of WhatsApp and email for abandoned cart recovery sets the two channels side by side.

Mailchimp alternatives at a glance

Leaving Mailchimp means choosing a new number to pay on as much as a new tool. Archive what you no longer email, count your list by status and your monthly sends, read each price at your own numbers, and move your audience with the opt-outs and the Shopify disconnection handled before the first send.