Live data from Hacker News

Mailchimp's pricing

mailchimp.com

41–50 of 89 posts

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#43
If I may add a few things: 1. I think most of the comments here concentrate on price alone. You need to remember that email marketing is a tool. If you have even 2000 subscribers and not making $30 from that list: a) It's your hobby. No problem. Hobbies sometimes can get expensive. b) There is something really not right with your list/efforts. 2. All the people outraged at Mailchimp's prices should compare them to the competition and see that most of the companies offer similar pricing. 3. Try explaining successfully to your local restaurant manager how to set up his/her own mail server. 4. After you have successfully explained #3, try explaining all the regulations and SPAM compliance. 5. Finally - Mailchimp is for small and mid-size businesses. Once you go over $1000 in email marketing costs you are in a different ball game.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#44
post #13

I think I would much rather roll out my own solution using Mailgun/Amazon's API with a basic RoR/Golang prototype than use these shady monkeys. It's their business and they have every right to price it the way they see it fit, but when there's something deceptive going on, as an end user I think I have every reason to point it out. For example, when you start with a free plan and you decide to upgrade to a paid plan,…

Mailchimp has a lot of handy stuff:

* You can just dump email addresses in it, and it'll keep eliminating ones that it's already seen that have unsubscribed/bounced/whatever.

* Analytics/tracking/stats.

* They work hard to make sure the emails get delivered/are not seen as spam.

* The system is fairly user friendly.

So... I've built similar systems in the past myself, but there's some value in doing it really well that I'm not sure I could "build in a weekend".

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#45
post #14

I started out using mailchimp when I had less than 2000 subscribers. It worked great! But now that my mail list is growing, I find it increasingly expensive. Any recommendations on alternative providers?

aweber

postmark

mailgun

sendgrid

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#46
what do you guys think of postmarkapp?

I'm not a customer but curious about their rep, they have a flat(ish) pricing model at $1.5/1000 emails sent (and then lower for more)

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#47

A few things here that I think most are missing: 1. Mailchimp is targeted (and priced for) the small business. Most small businesses aren't going to have lists more than a few thousand, which means most of Mailchimp's customers are going to be paying less than 50ish bucks a month. 2. If you've got thousands and thousands of emails to send, and are paying multiple thousands of dollars to mailchimp each month, you're p…

A few things here that I think most are missing:

We left mailchimp after trying them out, and didn't miss any of these points, they're all quite obvious if you have priced out email.

1. Small startups definitely will

2. If you've got thousands of emails to send, you can send them for $10 with competitors

3. For customers spending a larger amount, again they could be spending a lot less with competitors, email is not expensive, particularly in bulk.

4. If you're sending a few emails a month, that's not going to affect many of the calculations. Sure daily emails would affect these calculations, but that is very unusual for small businesses in my experience - around 1 or 2 a month is the norm for many, or customers get annoyed.

I'm sure Mailchimp will suit some customers with no tech team, small subscriber list, or daily emails to send, but they should sort out their pricing scheme - they are far too fine-grained, far too high at the top end, and with too big from free to the lowest level IMO.

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#49
post #13

I think I would much rather roll out my own solution using Mailgun/Amazon's API with a basic RoR/Golang prototype than use these shady monkeys. It's their business and they have every right to price it the way they see it fit, but when there's something deceptive going on, as an end user I think I have every reason to point it out. For example, when you start with a free plan and you decide to upgrade to a paid plan,…

Amazon SES is cheaper, but still pretty expensive at the volume where you'd be paying Mailchimp six figures. Sure, $100k to send emails is a lot, but that's the tier with 300 million emails per month! If you moved that to Amazon, it'd still cost you $30k (Amazon is $0.10 per thousand emails).

Re: Mailchimp's pricing

#50
I really really dislike their pricing scheme.

We have 5000 subscribers, but only send 1 email every month or two. This costs $55. Compare this to someone that has 500 subscribers, and sends each of them 10 emails per month - that only costs $10 per month. It just doesn't add up.

Post reply on HN