Why Newsletter Creators Are Leaving Mailchimp

Mailchimp Isn’t the Same Company Anymore

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

• The free plan was cut from 500 contacts and 1,000 emails to 250 contacts and 500 emails per month (January 2026)
• Automations were removed from the free plan entirely
• Founder Ben Chestnut was pushed out
• Prices have risen steadily across every tier
• The digital storefront and subscription feature was shut down in February 2024 — killing any native path to paid memberships

Mailchimp still holds roughly 67% email marketing market share, but that number has been declining since 2022. The trajectory is clear: Intuit is extracting value from Mailchimp’s user base, not investing in it.

For newsletter creators who want more than a shrinking email tool, there’s a fundamentally different option.

What Mailchimp Charges Now

Mailchimp’s pricing scales by contact count, and contacts include people who’ve unsubscribed — you’re billed for contacts you can’t even email.

Plan	Starting Price	Contact Limit	Monthly Send Limit
Free	$0	250	500 emails
Essentials	$13/mo	50,000	10x contacts
Standard	$20/mo	100,000	12x contacts
Premium	$350/mo	200,000+	15x contacts

Scaled pricing on the Standard plan: 2,500 contacts costs ~$60/month. 5,000 contacts costs ~$90/month. 10,000 contacts crosses $150/month.

And Mailchimp is only an email tool. It has a basic landing page builder, but no blog, no CMS, no website, and no way to create or sell paid memberships.

What Ghost Offers Instead

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform that combines a full website, email newsletters, and paid memberships in one system. Run by a nonprofit foundation, Ghost charges a flat hosting fee and takes 0% of your revenue.

Ghost(Pro) Publisher costs $29/month (billed annually). That includes:

• A complete website and blog with your own domain
• Unlimited email newsletter sends
• Paid memberships with direct Stripe integration (0% platform fee)
• Built-in SEO tools (sitemaps, meta tags, structured data)
• Multiple newsletters with audience segmentation
• SSL, CDN, backups, and managed hosting

At the same cost as Mailchimp’s Standard plan with 2,500 contacts ($60/month), Ghost gives you everything Mailchimp does for email delivery plus a full publishing platform and monetization tools.

The Fundamental Difference

Mailchimp is an email marketing tool. Ghost is a publishing platform.

Mailchimp sends emails. It doesn’t host your content. It doesn’t build your website. It doesn’t help readers find your work through search engines. It can’t create paid memberships anymore (that feature was killed in 2024). To get what Ghost includes in one platform, a Mailchimp user needs:

• Mailchimp for email ($20-150+/month depending on list size)
• WordPress or Squarespace for a website ($8-40+/month)
• Memberful or Patreon for paid memberships ($0-49+/month plus fees)
• Yoast or a similar SEO tool ($0-99/year)

That’s 3-4 separate tools with separate logins, separate billing, and no integration between subscriber data and website analytics.

Ghost unifies all of this. Write a post, choose your audience, and publish — it goes to your website and your subscribers’ inboxes in one action. Your member data, email analytics, and website traffic all live in the same dashboard.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Ghost	Mailchimp
Email newsletters	Built-in, unlimited sends	Core product, send limits by plan
Website/blog	Full CMS included	Landing pages only (no blog/CMS)
Paid memberships	Native Stripe integration, 0% fee	Removed in February 2024
SEO tools	Built-in (sitemaps, schema, meta)	None (emails aren’t indexed)
Custom domain	Included free	N/A (not a website platform)
Multiple newsletters	Yes, each with own subscriptions	Yes, via audience segmentation
Audience segmentation	By tier, label, newsletter	By tags, behavior, purchase history
Marketing automation	Basic (welcome emails, tiers)	Advanced (multi-step journeys)
A/B testing	Subject lines	Up to 8 variations (Standard+)
Integrations	Zapier, REST API	300+ native integrations
Self-hosting	Yes (open-source, MIT)	No
Revenue share	0%	N/A (no monetization)

Where Mailchimp Still Wins

Mailchimp has genuine advantages for specific use cases:

Advanced marketing automation. Multi-step customer journeys, abandoned cart emails, behavioral triggers, purchase-path automation — Mailchimp’s automation builder is significantly more powerful than Ghost’s. If you run an e-commerce store and need complex email sequences triggered by customer behavior, Mailchimp (or a dedicated marketing automation tool) is the better fit.

Deep e-commerce integrations. 300+ native integrations including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Salesforce with purchase data syncing. Ghost connects to external tools through Zapier and its REST API, but doesn’t have the native e-commerce integration depth.

Multivariate A/B testing. Test up to 8 campaign variations simultaneously on the Standard and Premium plans — subject lines, from names, content, and send time. Ghost’s A/B testing is limited to subject lines.

Large list management at scale. Mailchimp’s Standard plan handles up to 100,000 contacts at $800/month. For organizations sending promotional emails to very large lists, Mailchimp’s infrastructure is battle-tested.

Where Ghost Wins

Your own website and brand. Ghost is a complete publishing platform. Your content lives on your domain, ranks in search engines, and looks exactly how you want it to. Mailchimp emails are ephemeral — they’re read and deleted. Ghost posts are permanent, searchable, and drive organic traffic for years.

Paid memberships with 0% platform fee. Ghost connects directly to your Stripe account. If a reader pays you $10/month, you keep $10 minus Stripe’s ~2.9% processing fee. Mailchimp removed its subscription feature entirely.

Built-in SEO. Every Ghost post generates proper meta tags, structured data, Open Graph tags, and appears in an XML sitemap. This matters because search-driven content compounds — a well-optimized post ranks and drives subscribers for years. Mailchimp emails don’t rank in search engines at all.

Nonprofit, mission-driven organization. Ghost is run by the Ghost Foundation, registered as a nonprofit in Singapore. It can’t be acquired, can’t issue stock, and reinvests 100% of revenue into the product. Mailchimp is now a division of Intuit, a publicly traded company with quarterly earnings pressure.

Predictable pricing. Ghost charges a flat rate regardless of list size (within plan limits). No surprise bills because your contact list grew. No charges for unsubscribed contacts.

The Pricing Math

For a newsletter creator with 2,500 subscribers who wants a website, newsletters, and paid memberships:

Mailchimp + WordPress + Memberful:

• Mailchimp Standard (2,500 contacts): ~$60/month
• WordPress hosting (managed): ~$30/month
• Memberful (Starter): $0 + 10% of revenue
• Total: ~$90/month + 10% of membership revenue

Ghost Publisher:

• $29/month (billed annually)
• 0% revenue share on memberships
• Total: $29/month

At 5,000 subscribers, Mailchimp alone costs ~$90/month. Ghost Publisher still costs $29/month until you exceed 1,000 members — at which point the Business plan at $199/month covers up to 10,000.

Who Should Stay with Mailchimp

Mailchimp makes sense if:

• You run an e-commerce business and need deep Shopify/WooCommerce integration
• Your email strategy relies on complex multi-step automation sequences
• You need advanced multivariate A/B testing across content, subject, and send time
• You already have a separate website and just need an email sending tool

Who Should Switch to Ghost

Ghost is the better choice if:

• You’re a writer, blogger, or newsletter creator — not an e-commerce store
• You want your content to live on a website you own, not just in email inboxes
• You want to monetize through paid memberships (Mailchimp can’t do this anymore)
• Mailchimp’s rising prices and shrinking free plan concern you
• You want one platform for publishing, email, and memberships instead of 3-4 tools
• Platform independence matters — Ghost is open-source and can be self-hosted

Making the Move

The migration process:

1. Export your Mailchimp subscribers (Audience → All Contacts → Export)
2. Import the CSV into Ghost via the Admin panel
3. Set up your custom domain
4. Install a theme and customize your brand
5. Configure your newsletter design and welcome emails
6. Connect Stripe for paid memberships

Ghost also has a REST API that can automate subscriber imports for larger lists.

Build Your Newsletter Brand

When you move to Ghost, your publication’s design is entirely in your hands. Unlike Mailchimp’s landing page templates, Ghost themes give you a complete website that reflects your brand.

Our Luno theme includes custom membership pages, a table of contents for long-form posts, and 6 hero layout variations — all designed for newsletter publishers who take their brand seriously.

See Luno live demo →

Browse Ghost themes →