I just read about this “freemium” approach to web startups. Basically, you build a cool app, make it free, build up a bunch of users, then find a way to “monetize” later. D’oh! Why didn’t anyone tell us about this when we started in 2001? We wasted all this time building a strong, profitable company with an awesome product and over 100,000 users, when we coulda been just giving it all away? We’ve got to make up for lost time, people!
We’re proud to announce our “Forever Free” plan, where customers can signup with 500 subscribers and send up to 3,000 emails a month. Noooo, this is not a watered-down, 30-day “free trial” plan. This is a “forever free” plan, where you get full access to our amazing, head-sploding features (and even our world-famous power features) list, so long as your list is under 500 subscribers.
This is perfect for small businesses and e-retailers, artists, bands, bloggers, non-profits, churches, and anyone just getting started in email marketing.
If you know someone out there who could use a powerful email marketing tool, help spread the monkey love, will ya?
I logged in today to check on one of my campaigns, and thought there was some kind of an error! Very exciting stuff, and believe me, I’m spreading Monkey Love :D
WOW! I just logged in and saw this! AWESOME!!! :) What a great news!!!
Loving the MailChimp so far ;)
Was with a new client signing them up for the Chimp today, we were pleasantly surprised to see the new plans!
You guys are always doing something that impresses me (and so many other people as well). From the small features that make all the difference to something huge like this.
Coming from a small non-profit, I can tell you that this is BIG news. I’ve been vocal about my love for Mailchimp so far, but I’ll try and step up my game as a way to say ‘thank you’.
[...] Here is the original post: Freemium Email Marketing from MailChimp | MailChimp Email … [...]
Having just passed 100 subscribers this weekend I was so excited to see this! Yaay! Perfect timing! :)
Mailchimp was already one of the best value 4 money email marketing clients I could find – now you’re even better! Way to go!! Because of Mailchimp, I can produce great e-newsletters that helps abandoned and abused animals find new homes. Mailchimp is helping my non profit project to remain and grow. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!
I think I love you guys. Actually, no I’m sure of it now.
Thank you!
This is GREAT for us as a small business! We are expanding our list monthly and love the idea until our list gets larger!
Now just spread some of this free full featured Monkey Love to the Survey team ;-).
j/k – They are great too!
@Adam – we actually don’t have a survey team. You’re probably talking about our relationship with SurveyMonkey. That’s an awesome survey product, but we’re not related in any way (except for the simian ancestry). But I will certainly pass on the love to them.
[...] Freemium Email Marketing from MailChimp | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog blog.mailchimp.com/freemium-email-marketing-from-mailchimp – view page – cached MailChimp is free. This is perfect for small businesses and e-retailers, artists, bands, bloggers, and anyone just getting started in email marketing. — From the page [...]
I have a list of about 250 – I had to buy credits a while back. How does that work? Burn through the credits then back to free until I push 500? Free bananas for life?
There’s some kind of conversion button in the app, but I believe most people on PAYG plans are burning through their credits before converting to free.
You guys are the best!
Thanks!
I have a couple paid accounts and a free one. I think it’s awesome that you also retro applied these to existing free accounts, that’s really upstanding. Many companies have stupid rules where they only apply to new accounts and stuff like that.
Thanks for noticing, Mika! :-)
Guys,
It is a really great news! Especially for start ups and small business like our. Thanks a lot!
You made my day! =)
[...] and Intel. It’s about to get a lot more popular too, because this week they announced a new “Forever Free” pricing plan that is just too good to [...]
Gotta love the chimp! I too thought there was some sort of error, but no, it’s the real deal. Can’t wait to get to the point where 500 Subscribers and 3000 emails a month isn’t enough. Wahooooooooooooooooooooo – Lots of monkey love from us.
I just started using MailChimp for my prayer letters (us missionaries need to keep friends and family updated!) and was a little disheartened when I realized I already had a list 94 persons strong! Being able to grow my list to 500 is going to really free me up to make beautiful, interesting frequent updates (that people are more inclined to actually read!). Thanks so much!!! I LOVE YOU GUYS!
Cool, congrats on the list growth! Are you using the geo-map tracker in your reports to see where they’re all opening from? Bet that’s fun. And glad we’re able to help you keep sending those updates!
I, too, ended up paying monthly just to get a bigger limit than 100 people so I’m wondering if/how I could downgrade back to the free account now that that’s no longer a problem?
Hey, as long as you have fewer than 500 users on all of your lists, you can actually go ahead and switch over to the free plan. Just go to your account page, then to pricing plans. There should be a button to switch you over.
Just got put onto the Chimp thing by Yoast and love it! Thanks, perfect for me at the moment, hope to build lists so that I have to pay you soon!
This is a fantastic offering. I’m so excited about it.
This is absolutely fantastic! Thank you and I plan on spreading the word to other churches about this amazing service. You guys are the best!
This is great. It is actually an incentive to get the list past 500, at which point I will feel really proud to pay you guys.
THANKS!
We’re a fan of the chimp~
I can’t believe this is free. Amazing functionality. easy to use and great reports. This is the first time I have used an email system and the power is incredible. I found MailChimp from Drupal.org. There is a Drupal module that syncs MailChimp and Drupal. I’ll probably end up becoming a paying customer.
That’s so awesome, I would like to know, can I have multiple lists with it and just no more than 500 subscribers on all lists combined. Also if so would someone who is on multiple lists count as 1 subscriber or would the count as 1 for each list they are on. Not that it would matter too much I would still be well under 500 subscriber…for now anyway.
ouch i think i’ll stick with pay as you go for now to keep my emails badge free, that’s one of the reasons i choose mailchimp is no footer advertising so my emails look more professional.
Oh, what’s that you say… all other prices reduced too? Sweeet! ;)
thank you! what a great promotion for your service.
This is terrific! As a small biz owner in startup mode this is great news! It’s nice someone cares about the lil’ guys! Hopefully soon I’ll be upgrading to your paid service so you can actually make a few bucks on me.
Also, in the interim I will definitely be referring the product and service to my customers.
Also looking into your partner and affiliate programs.
Thanks
Pam
I am so happy for this! Just like Ron B says, Once I reach 500, I will be happy to pay you. Just make sure you use up your credits before converting – it seems I just lost my remaining credits by switching to the Free account.
Great stuff, you’re leading in this market!
Just one question, how do you prevent people from just using your free system to spam (and create multiple accounts to do so)
That’s an excellent question, Wesley! But if we told you the answer, that would kinda tip off the bad guys. Let’s just say it’s a mix of human review plus a sprinkle of new-fangled computer technology. Also, keep in mind we’re not some startup trying to ramp up our numbers with a free version. We’ve been doing this since 2001, and have seen a whole lotta crap in our time.
Finally, it doesn’t hurt that spammers (unfortunately) have much easier, cheaper, faster tools out there to get their work done.
They *could* sit around and try to do what you describe, or they could just jump on the spam forums, pay a few bucks, and have access to a gigantic botnet of infected computers waiting to send spam for them – http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2008/07/dissecting-managed-spamming-service.html
In theory it’s good news. In practice, I got the $10.00 invoice, as every month, even if I have a list under 500 subscribers and my sendings are well below 3000 times a month. Moreover, I sent an email to Mailchimp 28 hours to explain me the situation, and still no answer.
Jorge – If you’re currently on a monthly plan, the “Forever Free” plan is an actual account-type that you have to convert to. There’s a button in your settings allowing you to convert. If you were expecting it to auto-convert you to free just because you’re sending very few emails, sorry for the misunderstanding. The reason we don’t auto-convert you is the free account places a logo in your footer. Most people are fine with that, but some prefer no logos, and would rather pay. The reason you waited 28 hrs for a reply is probably because yesterday was Labor Day here in the US, and our customer svc. team was running on a skeleton crew.
We are just getting started and so far it has taken us a lot longer to get up to speed than we anticipated. I’m okay with that, though. Mostly because I’m really okay with Freemiums. Which gets underlined when you write it ’cause you monkeys made that one up. Have to tell you that I’m a serious fan of “head-sploding”; that’s even a better word than Freemiums.
Anybody NOT a Millennial over there in Chimp territory?
Woohoo! This is great news for a youth pastor in the Philippines (me). Thank you Mailchimp! :-)
Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU :-)
WOW. I mean wow. As an independent podcaster this is 1 of the best tips/rewards I’ve received to help me expand. This is already a great tool with up to 100 subscribers, but now 500??? Combined with the iphone web app I’m a loyal chimp! Thanks!
This is really excellent. Great for those of us who are small enough that even the least expensive account from you, or your competitors, are a bit more than we need or can handle. Will certainly earn our loyalty and recommendations!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
As the admin of 2 small non-profit organisations I’m over the moon to discover we can now go free.
Makes me even happier to sign up our main business to a fee paying account.
Thank you and monkey love!
Just a simple thank you for this. Now I need to grow my list and get over 500 subscribers! I’ll be happy to pay you at that point – win-win time :-)
You’re one of the best businesses I’ve ever dealt with, online or off. And you can quote me on that.
More monkey love and thanks again.
Bless you, MailChimp. Bless you.
This is awesome. I do a lot of work with non-profits and small businesses, and you just made them a great deal. Nice work!
Just started spreading monkey love and am loving doing it. The delivery is fabulous and am planning to sign up for a paid account soon. Just a suggestion, maybe you can add some plans such as a monthly payment for say 10000 emails. Apart from the pay as you go plan…. let me know the thoughts…
Raja, There’s already a plan for that, actually! The list of monthly plans is at – http://blog.mailchimp.com/pricing/
My friend just got a new client and this is perfect timing! I’m going to show her this & she’ll give me finders fee . . . free dinner & all the Knob Creek/Grey Goose shots I can down!! YIPPEE!!
And perfect for the business I’m going to start in November 2009. Can’t wait . . .
[...] pendapat yang mengatakan bahwa freemium tidak bisa berjalan. Saya menjadi terusik ketika membaca salah satu posting di blog MailChimp, (sebuah aplikasi web untuk melakukan pemasaran melalui email). Intinya posting itu [...]
Great news that you are making this move. Interestingly, I have been using pay as you go since I crossed 100 subscribers (just topped 200) and recently purchased (as in last week!) 5,000 credits. Bummer on the timing ;)
This will obviously take me some time for a monthly newsletter to use up and as I carefully build my database and hopefully I will be past the 500 mark before the 5,000 credits runs out..
But for folks that are in my situation and have purcahsed credits already and therefore won’t be able to avail themselves of your great “freeforever” service — possibly you could offer a thank you in the form of inbox inspections or something similar.
Or at least a few bananas.
this is absolutely wonderful! thank you for supporting small business. I stay at home with my kids and grow my coaching practice from home. I just switched. It was *so* easy! thank you, thank you :-)
I might not be seeing the correct button, but I can’t find the option to switch over to “forever free”. When I go into my account and look at pricing options it’s not listed.
Is there a reason for this? or somewhere else I should look?
Thanks in advance for any help!
Hi Chantal, it’s only an option if your list is below 500 subscribers. if you qualify, but don’t see the option, contact our support team – http://blog.mailchimp.com/support
[...] features and same customer support you get with paid accounts. Details were posted on our blog: http://blog.mailchimp.com/freemium-email-marketing-from-mailchimp/” – Ben Chestnut of [...]
[...] celebration of of our Forever Free Plan, we wanted to launch a promotional t-shirt giveaway. Free email marketing, free t-shirts.. makes [...]
Hi I only realised this was a recent feature while looking around your site.
I signed up a client to Mailchimp (free version) and we did have to think carefully about the Mailchimp logo, so that was a consideration. Who’s the monkey? But very pleased with the service, so thanks.
[...] September 1st, 2009, after 10 years of building up a profitable business, MailChimp launched its first freemium plan. One year later, we reported on how that drastically altered our bottom [...]
[...] announced two projects that we thought would have great impact on our deliverability. One was our Freemium plan, which could potentially cause perverse incentives for spammers to use our system if we [...]
Just logged back into my account and now it seems that 0-500 users is a 10.00 a month charge? Wow! I take some time off and everything changes.
I used to love suggesting that people get started with you and use the service. Even dumped another great Launch/membership site cause it didn’t integrate with the awesome Chimp. Please tell me I somehow misread the site.
The freemium plan is free up to 2000 subscribers now.
Quick query:
Due to our short duration course, we have a continuous inflow of new students and an outflow of old ones from our academy. So although at one time may not have more than 500 students, but in a year our total number exceeds 3000.
My question is, once I touch 2000 and if I delete my older set of subscribers to allow new subscribers, will I still be part of the free plan?
Thanks.
Though you have what sounds like a valid scenario, in general, uploading-then-deleting lists over and over again looks like someone trying to “game the system.” So our algorithms would probably end up blocking your account. Same thing happened to ourselves (we have a webinar training course for new MailChimp users, and the list changes frequently). We had to go with our own PAYG plan, IIRC.
[...] has grown organically and profitably since 2001. We didn’t launch our freemium plan until 2009 (here’s the old announcement), and so far it’s done very well for us, because we’re adding about 3,000 users per day right [...]
[...] has grown organically and profitably since 2001. We didn’t launch our freemium plan until 2009 (here’s the old announcement), and so far it’s done very well for us, because we’re adding about 3,000 users per day right [...]
[...] above. Super flexible.If your event is free, then you use Eventbrite free. And as you know by now, we like free.2. Design Awesome Invitation in MailChimpAfter your event is all setup in Eventbrite, you go to [...]
[...] MailChimp stats:We have 1.2 million users in 158 countries. That’s quite a growth curve since going freemium in 2009 w/100k users.Those MailChimp users upload an average 472,000 images per day.We serve about [...]