Two-product email comparison
HubSpot vs Mailchimp: Which Email Platform Fits?
By Marcus Hale · Updated Oct 2026
HubSpot Marketing Hub is priced per seat, from $7 a month on Starter to $800 on Professional. Mailchimp is priced by contact band, from a Free plan (250 contacts, 500 sends a month) through Essentials from $13 and Standard from $20 to Premium from $350. For a consultant or coach who tracks deals and wants email to react to a deal stage, HubSpot is the better home. For a newsletter-led list, Mailchimp is simpler and cheaper.
Who should pick which
Pick HubSpot when the thing that decides your next email is a deal rather than a subscription. A consultant who logs every inquiry, moves it from "discovery call booked" to "proposal sent", and wants the nurture to stop the moment the stage changes is describing a CRM job. Starter at $7 a month per seat puts email on the same record as the deal. Its email automation row reads up to 10 automated actions, which is enough for a short follow-up, and the unlimited tier is Professional at $800 a month.
Pick Mailchimp when the list itself is the asset: a coach or course creator whose program is a weekly note, a welcome series and a few launch emails to a few thousand subscribers. The bill follows the list, not the headcount, so Standard at $100 a month for 2,501-5,000 contacts (shown as $50 for the first 12 months) covers five people with logins. The question that separates the two is whether a deal stage or a subscriber tag decides what someone receives next.
Decision snapshot
| Area | HubSpot | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free tools at no cost; the email automation row allows 1 automated action | Free: 1 seat, 1 audience, 250 contacts, 500 sends a month (250 a day) |
| Paid entry | Marketing Hub Starter at $7 a month, priced per seat | Essentials from $13, Standard from $20 at 500 contacts |
| Upper plans | Professional $800 a month, Enterprise $3,600 a month | Premium from $350 a month at the entry selector |
| What the bill follows | Seats, with the plan tier deciding the features | The contact band you sit in, with the plan deciding sends and seats |
| Automation ceiling | Up to 10 automated actions on Starter, unlimited on Professional | Up to 4 flow steps on Essentials, up to 200 flows on Standard and Premium |
| Seats | Billed per seat | 3 on Essentials, 5 on Standard, unlimited on Premium |
| Built around | Contact, company and deal records, with email as one tool that reads them | Audiences and tags, with campaigns and journeys built on top |
What each plan lets you automate
The headline prices hide the number that matters most for a coach or consultant: how long a sequence you can build before the plan says no. HubSpot's pricing page has an email automation row that reads 1 automated action on Free, up to 10 on Starter, unlimited actions on both Professional and Enterprise, each with omni-channel marketing automation (up to 300 workflows for 10 teams on Professional, up to 1,000 workflows for 300 teams on Enterprise). Mailchimp's pricing page sets its ceiling differently, with Essentials limited to up to 4 flow steps and Standard and Premium both allowing up to 200 flows.
| Plan | HubSpot Marketing Hub | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 automated action | Free plan: 1 seat, 1 audience, 250 contacts, 500 sends a month |
| Entry paid | Starter $7 a month per seat, up to 10 automated actions | Essentials from $13, up to 4 flow steps, 3 seats, sends at 10x contacts |
| Middle | Professional $800 a month, unlimited actions plus omni-channel automation (up to 300 workflows) | Standard from $20, up to 200 flows, 5 seats, sends at 12x contacts |
| Top | Enterprise $3,600 a month, unlimited actions plus omni-channel automation (up to 1,000 workflows) | Premium from $350, up to 200 flows, unlimited seats, sends at 15x contacts |
HubSpot's table does not say whether "automated actions" counts emails, property changes and tasks separately, or whether the limit applies to one workflow or to the whole account. Assume the strict reading: each email, each field change and each notification is an action. On that reading, a call-booking follow-up (a confirmation, a stage change, a task to prepare, a reminder the day before, a post-call email, two nudges for non-bookers and a tag for people who go quiet) is eight actions. It fits Starter with two to spare. A seven-email launch sequence with a tag, a deal-stage update and a task notification is ten, which is exactly the ceiling, so a second sequence needs Professional.
Mailchimp's constraint is narrower and arrives sooner. Four flow steps on Essentials is a short welcome and one follow-up, not a sell sequence, which is why a coach who wants a real welcome-then-offer series ends up on Standard from $20 at 500 contacts. Standard's 200 flows is not a practical limit for a solo operator. The practical limits there are 5 seats and the send allowance of 12 times your contact count.
What a consultant with two users pays
The two tools count different things, so a fair comparison starts from the same business. Take a consultant with an assistant, two people with logins, and a list of 3,000 contacts. Mailchimp's page puts that list in the 2,501-5,000 band, where Standard lists $100 a month and shows $50 a month for the first 12 months. Standard includes 5 seats, so both people are covered. HubSpot Marketing Hub is priced per seat, so the same team on Starter is 2 seats at $7 each, $14 a month.
| Team and list | Mailchimp Standard | HubSpot Starter (seat floor) | HubSpot Professional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 person, 500 contacts | $20 a month (Essentials from $13) | 1 x $7 = $7 | $800 for the first seat |
| 2 people, 3,000 contacts | $100 a month, $50 in year one | 2 x $7 = $14 | from $800, up to 2 x $800 = $1,600 |
| 5 people, 10,000 contacts | $135 a month, $67.50 in year one | 5 x $7 = $35 | up to 5 x $800 = $4,000 |
Over a year, the two-person team pays Mailchimp $50 x 12 = $600 in year one and $100 x 12 = $1,200 in year two. HubSpot Starter at the seat floor is $14 x 12 = $168. Professional starts at $800 x 12 = $9,600 a year, and if every seat bills at the listed price the two-person ceiling is $1,600 x 12 = $19,200. The page does not state how many seats the $800 covers, so treat $9,600 to $19,200 as the range to put to HubSpot. Mailchimp's nearest rung, Premium, starts at $350 a month at the entry selector, less than half of HubSpot's $800.
Two limits on the HubSpot side keep the $14 from being a quote. The page text prices the seat, not the contact count, so a 3,000-contact list will add a cost that the starting figure does not show. And the Starter price carried a "Limited-time 65% off" badge in our October capture of HubSpot's pricing page, so $7 may be a promotional rate rather than the long-run one. Budget a second year on the number you are quoted at checkout, not on the headline.
A discovery call, tracked in each tool
Follow one inquiry through both systems. A prospect fills in your "book a call" form on Monday and books for Thursday.
In HubSpot the form creates or updates a contact, you attach a deal with an owner and the stage "call booked", and a workflow sends the confirmation. On Thursday you move the deal to "proposal sent". That change is itself the trigger that stops the nurture and starts the proposal follow-up, because the email tool reads the same record you just edited. If the prospect goes quiet, the deal stays visible in your pipeline, and the next email is a decision about a named deal, not a segment.
In Mailchimp the form adds the contact to the audience with a "call-booked" tag, and a journey sends the confirmation. When you move on to the proposal, someone has to change the tag by hand or through a connector, because Mailchimp's plan pages list audiences, roles and flows and no deal or pipeline object. The status lives in a tag, a merge field or a separate spreadsheet, and the quality of the follow-up is the quality of that housekeeping.
For ten inquiries a month, the Mailchimp way is workable. For forty, with two people working them, the tag drifts out of date and a prospect gets a nurture email after signing. That is the situation HubSpot's deal record exists to prevent, and it is the strongest argument for paying for it.
Where Mailchimp is the better home
Mailchimp wins when the person on the list is a reader rather than a prospect. A coach with 5,000 subscribers who sends a weekly note, runs a welcome series and opens the cart twice a year does not need a pipeline, and paying per seat for a CRM they will not open is waste. Mailchimp's Standard plan lists 12x your contact count in monthly sends, which is 60,000 at 5,000 contacts, and custom-coded templates that can be built and sent (on Essentials they can be built but not sent). Its Free plan is a real starting point for a list under 250.
Team shape tips the balance mostly at the top of the ladder. Five people on HubSpot Starter is 5 x $7 = $35 in seats, below Mailchimp Standard's $100 at 2,501-5,000 contacts, though that leaves out whatever contact-based cost HubSpot adds. On Professional the same five seats could reach 5 x $800 = $4,000, while Mailchimp Standard already includes 5 seats in its price and Premium, from $350, has unlimited ones. If the people on the account are a designer, a copywriter and an assistant who only ever touch campaigns, seat pricing at HubSpot's upper tiers punishes you for adding them.
If the list is course buyers and newsletter readers and you have no deals to track, look beyond both. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) lists a Free plan for up to 10,000 subscribers, and Creator at $33 a month for 1,000 subscribers (billed yearly) adds Visual Automations and sequences (kit.com/pricing). That is built for the course seller, and the Kit vs Mailchimp comparison sets it against Mailchimp.
Moving a consultant's list from one to the other
Contacts move as a CSV in either direction. The pipeline objects around them do not, and that is where a HubSpot and Mailchimp switch costs the most time.
| Piece | Mailchimp to HubSpot | HubSpot to Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts and fields | Merge fields become contact properties; create each property before the import or its values are dropped | Properties export as columns; each one needs a matching merge field before you import |
| Status | Tags carry across as an import column; decide now whether a tag becomes a lifecycle stage, a list or a deal stage | Lifecycle stage and deal stage have no equivalent and have to be flattened into tags first |
| Deals and companies | Nothing to migrate; this is the new capability, and you start entering deals by hand | Not exportable into Mailchimp; keep a CSV copy of the pipeline before you cancel |
| Automations | Each journey is rebuilt as a workflow; count actions against the Starter ceiling of 10 before you choose the plan | Each workflow is rebuilt as a journey; a stage change that used to trigger it becomes a tag change |
| Forms | Signup forms are rebuilt and the embed code on your site changes | HubSpot forms are replaced by Mailchimp forms with the same effect on your site |
| Opt-outs | Take the opt-out list with you as its own file. Anyone who unsubscribed in the tool you are leaving has to be suppressed in the new one before the first campaign goes out, and the active-contact CSV will not tell you who they are. | |
Both vendors publish a data processing agreement, HubSpot's and Mailchimp's. That covers the vendor's role as a processor of your data; it does not store your proof that each person agreed to be mailed, so carry the consent date and source across as fields. Run both systems for as long as your longest sequence and cancel the old one after its last automation has finished.
Where a HubSpot or Mailchimp decision goes wrong
- Reading $7 as the price of HubSpot email. It is Starter's per-seat starting figure, with automation capped at up to 10 actions, and it carried a limited-time badge in our capture.
- Multiplying Professional by seats without asking what the $800 includes. The page says pricing is per seat but not how many seats the listed figure covers.
- Keeping both tools live with a manual sync. Within a quarter the two records disagree about who has unsubscribed or who has bought.
- Choosing HubSpot for a newsletter. If nobody will log a deal, the CRM is an expensive address book and Mailchimp or Kit does the sending for less.
- Choosing Mailchimp Essentials for a sales sequence. Up to 4 flow steps is a welcome email, and custom-coded HTML templates can be built but not sent on that plan.
Verdict: HubSpot for a consultant who tracks deals, Mailchimp for a newsletter-led list
For the consultant or coach this site is written for, the deciding fact is whether you log deals. If you do, HubSpot is the better pick: the stage on a deal can stop a nurture, start a proposal follow-up and show you who is stuck, and Starter at $7 a month per seat is a cheap way to find out, provided your sequences fit inside up to 10 automated actions. Plan on Professional at $800 a month once a second sequence or a branch needs unlimited actions, and ask what that price includes in seats before you commit to two or more.
Mailchimp wins when you do not log deals: a newsletter, a welcome series and a few launches to 3,000 or 5,000 subscribers, where Standard at $100 a month (shown as $50 for the first 12 months at 2,501-5,000 contacts) covers five seats and a 12x send allowance, and the Free plan covers a list under 250. Neither is the best fit for a course seller whose list is buyers and readers; for that reader Kit is the better pick. If you want deal tracking and sequences but not HubSpot's $800 step, read Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign. Prices are from hubspot.com/pricing/marketing and mailchimp.com/pricing, read on 2026-10-07.
Related comparisons
For the guides behind these tools, see the small-business automation guide, the B2B automation guide and the alternatives hub.
- Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign: Prices a middle path for people who want deal tracking and sequences without HubSpot's jump to $800: ActiveCampaign Starter at $15 and Plus at $49 for 1,000 contacts.
- Kit (formerly ConvertKit) vs Mailchimp: The creator-side alternative to Mailchimp for a course seller who does not need a CRM at all.
- Klaviyo vs Mailchimp: Only relevant if the thing you sell is a store order rather than a call or a program.
- Brevo vs Mailchimp: Another challenger to Mailchimp's contact-band pricing, for lists that are large and lightly mailed.
Frequently asked questions
Is HubSpot Marketing Hub cheaper than Mailchimp?
At the entry rung, on paper, yes: HubSpot lists Starter at $7 a month per seat, while Mailchimp lists Essentials from $13 and Standard from $20 at 500 contacts. Two catches follow. HubSpot's page text gives no price at a given contact count, so $7 is a floor rather than a quote, and Starter's email automation row stops at up to 10 automated actions. Unlimited actions arrive with Professional at $800 a month, which is eight times Mailchimp Standard's $100 at 2,501-5,000 contacts.
Does HubSpot have a free plan for email?
HubSpot's page lists free tools at no cost, and its feature table gives the Free column 1 automated action. That is enough to send a confirmation after a form, not a nurture sequence. Mailchimp's Free plan allows 1 seat, 1 audience, 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with 250 as the daily ceiling, so a consultant with 150 contacts can begin free on either one.
Which is better for a consultant who tracks deals?
HubSpot. A deal is an object there, with a stage and an owner, and an email can react to it. In Mailchimp the closest thing is a tag or a field you keep up to date yourself, because its plan pages list audiences, roles and flows rather than a pipeline. Start on Starter and move to Professional only when a sequence outgrows 10 actions.
Which is better for a coach selling a course to a newsletter list?
Mailchimp is simpler, and it is cheaper once more than a couple of people log in: Standard includes 5 seats at $100 a month for 2,501-5,000 contacts, shown as $50 for the first 12 months. Neither is ideal for selling a course, though. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is built for creators, with a Free plan to 10,000 subscribers, and the Kit vs Mailchimp page prices it.
Can I use Mailchimp for the newsletter and HubSpot for the CRM?
You can, and it is a common split, but every person then exists in two systems. An unsubscribe in Mailchimp has to reach HubSpot, a new HubSpot deal has to change what Mailchimp sends, and nobody can say which record is the master. The split works for a small, stable list and falls apart as soon as two people edit contacts.
What do I lose moving from HubSpot to Mailchimp?
Deals, companies, owners and lifecycle stages have no home in Mailchimp. Contacts and their custom properties export as a CSV; stage and owner have to be converted to tags or merge fields before the move, and workflows are rebuilt as journeys by hand.