Every month I get the same email from three different people. "Mailchimp raised my price again. Where should I go?"
The answer is not always the same ESP. Where you go depends on what you actually do with email. But the migration process is the same regardless of where you land.
Here is exactly how to do it without losing subscribers, breaking deliverability, or spending 3 months rebuilding your account.
Why people are leaving Mailchimp in 2026
Three reasons come up repeatedly in the exit conversations I have with people:
- Pricing. Mailchimp counts every subscriber, including unsubscribes, and their pricing tiers punish list growth. See my Mailchimp pricing breakdown.
- Automation. The Customer Journey builder feels stuck in 2019. Competitors have moved past it.
- Feature stagnation. Since the Intuit acquisition, Mailchimp has focused on integration into the Intuit product ecosystem, not innovation for the email marketer.
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Together they add up to a lot of people quietly leaving.
Where to migrate to (based on what you actually do)
The wrong question is "what is the best Mailchimp alternative." The right question is "what am I trying to do with email that Mailchimp is not supporting well."
My playbook based on use case:
Creators, newsletters, personal brands
Kit (formerly ConvertKit). Built for creators. Free migration for lists over 5K. See Kit vs Mailchimp.
Ecommerce
Klaviyo. The gold standard for Shopify and WooCommerce. Predictive segments, lifetime value modeling, revenue attribution.
Advanced automation and B2B
ActiveCampaign. Most powerful automation builder in the category. Better than Mailchimp on every dimension except brand recognition.
Small budget, need free tier
BrevoAffiliate. Free tier of 300 emails a day. Not limited by subscriber count, only by daily send volume.
Design forward
Flodesk. Flat pricing. Best in class templates. Now shipping AI features. See my Flodesk Studio review.
The pre-migration checklist
Do these three things before you touch anything in the new ESP:
- Clean your Mailchimp list. Remove unsubscribes, hard bounces, and anyone who has not opened or clicked in 12 months. Dead weight ruins your reputation on the new platform.
- Export everything. Subscribers, tags, segments, campaigns (as reference), automation flows (as reference), templates. Save it all locally. You will thank yourself later.
- Document your automations. Screenshot every automation flow. Write the logic in plain English. You will rebuild these, not import them.
Skipping the cleanup is the most common mistake. You are not saving time by keeping dead subscribers. You are inheriting a deliverability problem on day one of the new ESP.
Clean the list before you export. Not after. The number one reason migrations tank deliverability is people importing years of dead subscribers into a fresh ESP and immediately looking like a spammer.
— Carlos Gil, Editor in Chief, BestSendsThe migration process, step by step
Week 1: Setup and import
Sign up for the new ESP. Verify your sending domain (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). Import your cleaned subscriber list. Set up tags and segments. Do not send anything yet.
Week 2: Rebuild automations and templates
Rebuild your welcome sequence first. Then any post purchase or lead nurture flows. Then broadcast templates. Test every automation with your own email address before turning them on.
Week 3: Parallel running
Continue sending from Mailchimp on your normal schedule. Send one test broadcast from the new ESP to a small segment (500 to 2,000 subscribers). Check deliverability using Mail Tester or Gmail's postmaster tools.
Week 4: Full cutover
Move all broadcast sends to the new ESP. Turn on automations. Cancel Mailchimp (or downgrade to free while you validate everything is working).
Week 5 to 8: Monitor and optimize
Watch open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate closely. Compare against your industry benchmarks. Any dip in the first 4 weeks post migration is normal. A sustained dip past week 4 needs diagnosis.
Common migration mistakes I see
- Skipping list cleaning. Covered above. This is the big one.
- Not warming the new sending domain. If you are on a dedicated IP or custom domain, warm it up. Do not send 100K on day one.
- Rebuilding automations in a rush. Every ESP has slightly different automation logic. Give yourself time to test.
- Cancelling Mailchimp too early. Keep it as a backup for 30 days minimum. Costs almost nothing on the free tier.
- Announcing the migration to subscribers. Do not do this. It creates confusion and gives them a reason to unsubscribe. Migration should be invisible.
What to do the day after cutover
Send one broadcast to your full list from the new ESP. Nothing fancy. A note that thanks them for reading and previews what is coming.
This does two things. First, it gives your sending domain and IP an engagement boost. Second, it confirms deliverability is working across the whole list.
Then wait 48 hours before you send anything else. Watch your reports. If open rates come in above 30% and unsubscribes stay under 0.5%, you are clean. Proceed with normal sending.
If open rates come in below 20% or unsubscribes spike above 1%, something is wrong. Pause. Check your deliverability setup. Fix it before you send again.
No. Migration is invisible to subscribers if you do it right. They keep receiving your emails from the same sender name and address. What changes is your ESP behind the scenes.