Both tools have been around since the early 2000s, and both pitch themselves as one platform for your whole marketing setup. They've drifted apart since. GetResponse has piled on webinars, funnels, and course tools. Mailchimp has stayed closer to email and design while getting pricier at the top. Here's how the two compare in 2026 on the things that actually decide it: price, automation, ease of use, deliverability, and what you get for free. The prices below come from each company's own pricing pages, checked in July 2026.
Pricing compared
Start with the money, because that's where these two split hardest.
| Plan | GetResponse | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Up to 500 contacts, 2,500 emails/month, GetResponse branding | Up to 250 contacts, 500 emails per month, Mailchimp branding |
| Entry paid | Starter, $19/mo for 1,000 contacts, unlimited sends | Essentials, from $13/mo for 500 contacts, sends capped at 10x contacts |
| Mid paid | Marketer, $59/mo for 1,000 contacts, unlimited automation | Standard, from $20/mo for 500 contacts, sends capped at 12x contacts |
| Higher | Creator, $69/mo for 1,000 contacts, webinars and courses | Premium, for large senders, sends capped at 15x contacts |
| Custom | Enterprise (GetResponse MAX), custom quote | Premium is the top self-serve tier |
A few things the table can't show. GetResponse quotes its plans at 1,000 contacts and lets you send as many emails as you like on every paid tier. Mailchimp quotes its starting prices at 500 contacts, caps your monthly sends at a multiple of your contact count, and raises the price at each contact tier above that. Mailchimp also counts subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed people toward your limit unless you archive them by hand, per its own pricing documentation, so a list you never clean can quietly push you into a higher bracket. GetResponse's annual plan takes 18 percent off, which drops Starter to $15.58 a month. Mailchimp runs 14-day trials on its paid plans, no card required.
For a like-for-like read, picture a 1,000-contact list. On GetResponse that's the published Starter price of $19 a month, or $59 if you want the full automation suite on Marketer. On Mailchimp, 1,000 contacts sits above the 500-contact starting tier, so you'll pay more than the $13 and $20 headline figures, and the number keeps climbing as the list grows. GetResponse raises price in fixed contact bands. Mailchimp raises it more granularly and stacks a send cap on top. For how Mailchimp's meter compares with a subscriber-based tool, see our MailerLite vs Mailchimp comparison.
Free plans: what you actually get
If you're not ready to pay, the gap is real. GetResponse's free plan holds up to 500 contacts and lets you send newsletters with its drag-and-drop editor, with GetResponse branding on what goes out. Mailchimp's free plan got thinner after an early-2026 cut: 250 contacts and 500 emails a month, down from the 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends it used to give. Both stamp branding on free emails.
Mailchimp's 500-emails-a-month ceiling is easy to hit. A list of 250 people emailed twice a month is already at the cap. GetResponse's free tier allows 2,500 emails a month, five times as many, so a small, active list can run there longer before anything forces an upgrade.
Automation and features
This is where GetResponse has quietly pulled ahead for small teams. Its Marketer plan at $59 a month opens up unlimited automation workflows, advanced segmentation, abandoned-cart recovery, and sales funnels. The Creator plan at $69 adds a website builder, online courses for up to 500 students, webinars, and paid newsletters, which is a lot of separate products folded into one bill. Starter, the $19 entry plan, is deliberately basic: one automation workflow and three uses of the AI content generator.
Mailchimp's automation lives in what it calls Customer Journeys. Essentials covers simple, single-step automations. The deeper branching versions, the generative AI features, and custom-coded templates sit on Standard at $20 a month and up, where Mailchimp allows up to around 200 of them. Mailchimp doesn't try to be a webinar or course platform, so on that front the comparison is short.
A practical example. Say someone abandons a cart. On GetResponse's Marketer plan you can build the recovery flow, tag the person, wait a day, and send a follow-up with a promo code, all inside one workflow with no per-flow limit. On Mailchimp you can build the same automation, but the branching version and the AI-assisted content sit on Standard, and Essentials users are held to simpler triggers. For automation depth at a given price, GetResponse generally gives you more. If your needs are pure email plus polish, that advantage matters less.
Ease of use and templates
Mailchimp's reputation was built on design, and it still shows. The template library is larger and more polished, the reporting is cleaner to read, and the first-campaign onboarding is gentle. It also connects to a very large catalogue of third-party apps, which counts for a lot if your store or CRM already speaks Mailchimp.
GetResponse covers more ground, and that cuts both ways. Because the dashboard holds email, automation, funnels, webinars, and a site builder, there's more to learn and more menu to move through. The email editor is capable without being the prettiest in the category. Someone who only wants to send a clean newsletter may find Mailchimp quicker to warm up to. Someone building funnels and multi-step sequences will grow into GetResponse and use what they're paying for.
Deliverability
Neither platform will sink your emails on its own. Your own setup matters more than the logo on the dashboard. Independent testing gives a rough read: EmailToolTester's recent rounds have placed GetResponse near the top of the field at roughly 90 to 91 percent inbox placement, with Mailchimp a few spots back around 89 to 90 percent. Both sit in the band testers call good, which starts at 89 percent, short of the 95 percent they call excellent. Scores move between test rounds, and at least one comparison has put Mailchimp slightly higher, so read this as a lean rather than a settled result.
Both support SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication, and both suppress bounces and complaints automatically. Where you land comes down mostly to your own habits: authenticating your domain, and keeping a clean list of people who actually asked to hear from you.
What they have in common
For all the differences, the basics overlap. Both run a free plan, a drag-and-drop email editor, and a set of templates. Automation, segmentation, and signup forms come standard on each. Both support SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, so you can authenticate your sending domain on either one. Reporting covers opens, clicks, and unsubscribes, with the usual caveat since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection that open rates read higher than reality. And both price by contact count, so a bigger list costs more whichever you pick.
What separates them is narrower than the feature lists suggest. It comes down to the price at your list size, how far you need automation to go, and whether the extra products GetResponse folds in matter more to you than the design polish and integration catalogue Mailchimp is known for. For most small businesses and creators who email regularly, GetResponse is the stronger default: more automation and more included products at a flat price per contact band. Mailchimp earns the pick when design, reporting, or a required integration is what you care about most, or when your list is small enough to sit on its cheapest tiers.
Pick GetResponse if
You want more than email on one subscription. Webinars, courses, and funnels come included on the higher plans. You have or expect around 1,000 contacts and you email often, so unlimited sends and a flat 1,000-contact price beat a plan that meters your volume. You care about deliverability tooling that works without much fiddling. If that sounds like you, you can start with GetResponse on the free plan or the $19 Starter tier and move up only when a feature you need forces it.
Pick Mailchimp if
Design and reporting are your priority, and you want the largest template library and the cleanest analytics of the two. You depend on a specific integration that Mailchimp supports and GetResponse doesn't. You're starting genuinely small, and the $13 Essentials tier at 500 contacts fits until your list grows into the higher brackets. For straightforward email marketing with a friendly interface, Mailchimp is still easy to recommend.
GetResponse also goes head to head with another automation-first tool in our ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse comparison, and you can see how both land against the rest of the field in our email marketing reviews.