Mailchimp

Mailchimp's Pricing Has Become Absurd Mailchimp's free tier vanished in stages — first capped at 500 contacts (down from 2,000), then gutted feature by feature. A 10,000-subscriber list now costs $100+/month on Standard, and $230/month on Premium. Automations, A/B testing, and advanced segmentation are locked behind higher tiers. Meanwhile, you're sending emails through Mailchimp's shared infrastructure, where deliverability depends on neighbors you can't control. The privacy angle is worse: Mailchimp (owned by Intuit since 2021) tracks subscriber behavior across campaigns, shares data within the Intuit ecosystem, and scans email content for "compliance." Your subscriber list — the single most valuable marketing asset you own — lives on someone else's servers. Self-hosted alternatives eliminate per-subscriber pricing entirely. A $5/month VPS running Listmonk can handle 100,000+ subscribers. You control the data, the sending infrastructure, and the delivery reputation. Best Alternatives