Ghost vs Mailchimp: Full Comparison for 2026

Different Products for Different Problems

Mailchimp is an email marketing tool. Ghost is a publishing platform. Comparing them requires understanding what each product actually does — and what it doesn’t.

Mailchimp sends emails. It has basic landing pages, but no blog, no CMS, no SEO tools, and — since February 2024 — no membership or subscription features. To publish content alongside your Mailchimp newsletters, you need WordPress, Squarespace, or another platform.

Ghost publishes content to a website and sends it to subscribers’ inboxes in one action. It includes a full CMS, email newsletters, paid memberships, and built-in SEO — all in a single platform.

The question isn’t which is better. It’s which problem you’re solving.

Email Capabilities

Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s core strength is email marketing:

• Multi-step customer journeys with behavioral triggers
• Multivariate A/B testing: up to 8 variations (subject, from name, content, send time)
• 300+ native integrations (Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce)
• SMS marketing alongside email campaigns
• Advanced audience segmentation by purchase behavior, engagement, and demographics
• Established deliverability infrastructure (99.99% transactional delivery rate)

For e-commerce businesses running complex email sequences triggered by customer purchases, Mailchimp’s automation depth is significantly stronger than Ghost’s.

Ghost

Ghost’s email is designed for publishing, not marketing:

• Write a post and send it to subscribers simultaneously
• Multiple newsletters per site with independent subscriptions
• Segmentation by membership tier, label, or newsletter subscription
• Three modes: publish and email, publish only, email only
• Custom email design (fonts, colors, buttons, headers)
• Per-post analytics: opens, clicks, individual link performance
• Unlimited sends on all plans

Ghost’s email is simpler than Mailchimp’s. It doesn’t have complex automation sequences or A/B testing beyond subject lines. But it’s integrated with a full publishing platform, which Mailchimp is not.

Website and Content

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has basic landing page templates but no CMS, blog, or content publishing capability. Emails live in inboxes — they’re not permanent, indexable web pages. Mailchimp content doesn’t rank in search engines and doesn’t build an organic traffic channel.

Ghost

Every Ghost post is a permanent web page on your domain with proper SEO markup:

• Auto-generated XML sitemap
• Schema.org structured data
• Custom meta titles and descriptions
• Canonical URLs
• Clean semantic HTML

This matters because email content is ephemeral — read once and archived. Ghost content is permanent — it ranks in search and drives traffic for years after publication.

Memberships and Monetization

Mailchimp

Mailchimp shut down its digital storefront and subscription feature in February 2024. There is currently no native way to sell memberships, subscriptions, or digital products through Mailchimp. Creators who want paid memberships need to use a third-party tool (Memberful, Patreon, etc.) and integrate it back in.

Ghost

Ghost has native paid memberships with 0% platform fee:

• Multiple tiers with custom pricing
• Per-post content access rules (free, paid, specific tier)
• Direct Stripe connection — you own the billing relationship
• One-time payments and tips (Ghost 6.0)
• Revenue dashboard: MRR, churn, customer LTV
• Automated free-to-paid conversion tracking

This is the most significant functional gap. Mailchimp is purely an email sending tool with no monetization path. Ghost is a publishing business platform.

Pricing

Mailchimp (as of February 2026)

Plan	Starting Price	Contact Limit	Notes
Free	$0	250	500 emails/month, no automation
Essentials	$13/mo	50,000	Basic features
Standard	$20/mo	100,000	Automation, A/B testing
Premium	$350/mo	200,000+	Advanced features

Prices scale with contact count. Standard plan at 2,500 contacts: ~$60/month. At 5,000 contacts: ~$90/month. Mailchimp charges for unsubscribed contacts and contacts who haven’t confirmed opt-in.

Ghost(Pro) (as of February 2026)

Plan	Monthly (annual billing)	Members	Staff
Starter	$15/mo	1,000	1
Publisher	$29/mo	1,000	3
Business	$199/mo	10,000	15

All plans: unlimited email sends, SSL, CDN, backups, free custom domain, full CMS.

The Cost Gap

For a newsletter creator with 2,500 subscribers:

Mailchimp Standard + WordPress + Memberful:

• Mailchimp: ~$60/month
• WordPress hosting: ~$30/month
• Memberful (for memberships): $0 + 10% of revenue
• Total: ~$90/month + 10% of membership revenue

Ghost Publisher:

• $29/month, everything included, 0% revenue share
• Total: $29/month

Ghost replaces 3 tools with 1 at less than a third of the cost.

The Intuit Factor

Intuit acquired Mailchimp for $12 billion in November 2021. Since then:

• Free plan cut from 500 contacts to 250 contacts (January 2026)
• Automations removed from the free plan
• Founder Ben Chestnut pushed out
• Subscription/storefront feature shut down (February 2024)
• Prices raised across tiers

Mailchimp’s market share (67% of email marketing) has been declining since 2022. The trajectory suggests continued extraction — higher prices, fewer features on lower tiers.

Ghost is run by a nonprofit foundation that cannot be acquired and reinvests 100% of revenue into the product. Different incentive structures produce different outcomes.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Ghost	Mailchimp
Email sending	Built-in, unlimited	Core product (send limits by plan)
Marketing automation	Basic (welcome emails)	Advanced (multi-step journeys)
A/B testing	Subject lines	Up to 8 variations
Website/blog	Full CMS	Landing pages only
Paid memberships	Native, 0% fee	Removed Feb 2024
SEO tools	Full toolkit	None
E-commerce integrations	Via API/Zapier	300+ native
SMS marketing	No	Yes
Custom domain	Included free	N/A
Self-hosting	Yes (MIT license)	No
Business structure	Nonprofit	Intuit subsidiary
Contact billing	By member count	By contact count (incl. unsubscribed)

Who Should Choose Mailchimp

• You run an e-commerce business with Shopify/WooCommerce
• Complex multi-step email automation drives your revenue
• You need multivariate A/B testing across content and timing
• SMS marketing alongside email is part of your strategy
• You already have a separate website and just need email sending

Who Should Choose Ghost

• You’re a writer, blogger, or newsletter creator
• You want publishing, email, and memberships in one platform
• Mailchimp’s rising prices and shrinking features concern you
• You want your content to live on a website that ranks in search
• Paid memberships are part of your business model
• Platform independence and ownership matter

The Publishing Difference

Ghost turns your content into a permanent, searchable, brand-defining web presence — not just emails that are read and forgotten.

Our themes are designed for publishers who want their brand reflected in every touchpoint, starting at $69.

Browse Ghost themes →

For the full case for leaving Mailchimp, see our Mailchimp alternative guide.