How to Switch From Mailchimp to MailerLite — Step-by-Step Migration Guide

Why People Are Making This Switch

Since Intuit acquired Mailchimp in 2021, the platform has gotten more expensive and less generous every year. The free plan dropped from 2,000 contacts to 250. Standard pricing at 2,500 subscribers is now $60/mo. Mailchimp charges for unsubscribed contacts — people who explicitly told you they do not want your emails still count toward your bill.

MailerLite charges $25/mo for the same 2,500 subscribers. It only bills for active contacts. That is a 58% saving before you factor in the unsubscribed-contact surcharge Mailchimp hits you with.

Here is the full pricing comparison at every tier:

All prices verified March 2026. Mailchimp Standard plan (monthly billing). MailerLite Growing Business plan (monthly billing).

Deliverability is not a reason to stay. EmailToolTester's January 2024 round — the last before they deprecated percentage-based testing — showed MailerLite at 89.8% and Mailchimp at 89.5%. EmailDeliverabilityReport's current data has them nearly identical: MailerLite 78.24% inbox, Mailchimp 78.35%. The deliverability gap does not exist.

Trustpilot tells the rest of the story. Mailchimp: 2.7/5 from 1,365 reviews, dominated by billing complaints and cancellation difficulties. MailerLite: 4.3/5 from 455 reviews on G2, with Capterra naming it #1 for ease of use every year from 2023-2026.

The case for switching is straightforward. The question is how to do it without losing subscribers or breaking your email operation.

What Transfers and What Doesn't

This is the part most migration guides gloss over. MailerLite has a built-in Mailchimp import tool, but it only imports contacts. Everything else stays behind.

The subscriber import itself takes minutes — MailerLite's help documentation and migration blogs (Storylane, GroupMail) report anywhere from seconds to under 3 minutes regardless of list size. The actual migration work is everything around it: rebuilding automations, recreating templates, hunting down every embedded form on your website, and reconnecting integrations.

Before You Start: The MailerLite Approval Process

This is the single biggest gotcha that catches Mailchimp switchers off guard. MailerLite requires manual account approval before you can send a single email. Mailchimp does not.

What happens: you sign up, fill out your business details, describe how you collect subscribers, and wait. MailerLite's team reviews your application. This can take up to one business day, sometimes longer.

If you are rejected, you get a generic email saying your account "didn't pass their tests" with no specific reason. You can appeal to support, but approval is not guaranteed. According to Capterra, 60% of reviews mentioning the approval process are negative — mostly because of the opaque rejection process.

Content restrictions to check first: MailerLite does not allow emails about affiliate marketing, gambling, cryptocurrency, MLM, weight loss products, or adult content. This is stricter than Mailchimp. If your business touches any of these areas, MailerLite will likely reject your application.

Suspension thresholds are also tighter than Mailchimp: MailerLite may suspend your account if you exceed a 0.2% spam complaint rate, 5% bounce rate, 1% unsubscribe rate, or fall below 3% open rate. If you are importing a list you have not emailed in months, you need to clean it first or you risk suspension on your very first send.

Start the approval process before you do anything else. There is no point exporting from Mailchimp if you cannot send from MailerLite.

Step 1: Audit and Clean Your Mailchimp List

Do not import your full Mailchimp list into MailerLite. This is the most common mistake, and it can get your brand new account suspended.

Mailchimp has probably been letting dead weight accumulate. Contacts who have not opened an email in a year. Bounced addresses that Mailchimp keeps counting (and billing you for). Unsubscribed contacts that serve no purpose.

Before exporting, run this audit in Mailchimp:

This forced list hygiene is actually one of the hidden benefits of switching platforms. Most Mailchimp users are paying for thousands of contacts who will never open another email. Cutting them saves money on MailerLite and improves deliverability from day one.

Step 2: Export From Mailchimp

Export everything you might need before you do anything else. Once you downgrade or cancel Mailchimp, access to historical data disappears.

Step 3: Set Up MailerLite (Before Importing Anyone)

Set up your entire MailerLite account before you import a single contact. Everything should be working and tested before subscribers arrive.

Step 4: Import Your Subscribers

You have two options: MailerLite's built-in Mailchimp integration, or manual CSV import. Both work. The choice depends on your situation.

Import in phases, not all at once:

Week 1: Import only your engaged segment (opened or clicked in last 90 days). These are your best subscribers — they will open, click, and signal to MailerLite's infrastructure that you are a legitimate sender. Send your first campaign to this group.

Week 2: Import contacts who engaged in the last 90-180 days. Send a campaign. Monitor bounce rates and spam complaints.

Week 3-4: Gradually add the rest of your active list. If bounce rates spike above 5% or complaints above 0.2%, pause and clean.

This phased approach protects your sender reputation on MailerLite's infrastructure. It is the same warm-up process you would follow on any new platform.

Step 5: Replace Every Mailchimp Form and Link

This is the step people underestimate. Every Mailchimp form embed, popup script, and signup link on your website, social profiles, and link-in-bio pages needs to be replaced with MailerLite equivalents.

Miss even one, and new subscribers will keep flowing into your abandoned Mailchimp account. One blogger who documented their migration specifically warned about this "stray forms" problem — months later, they discovered a sidebar form on an old blog post was still sending subscribers to Mailchimp.

Tip: Search your website's source code for "mailchimp" or "list-manage.com" to find every embed you might have forgotten.

Step 6: Monitor and Adjust (First 30 Days)

Expect a temporary dip in your metrics after switching. This is normal and not a sign that something is wrong.

After 30 days: Your metrics should stabilize at or above your Mailchimp levels. If deliverability is consistently lower, check that SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all correctly configured — a missing DNS record is the most common cause of post-migration deliverability issues.

Don't Cancel Mailchimp Yet

Keep your Mailchimp account open for at least 30 days after completing the migration. Here is why:

Stray form insurance. If you missed a form somewhere, subscribers will keep arriving in Mailchimp. Check it weekly for new signups — if any appear, track down and replace the source form.

Historical data access. Campaign reports, A/B test results, automation performance data — all of this disappears when you close the account. Export anything you want to keep.

Unsubscribe handling. Old emails in recipients' inboxes still contain your Mailchimp unsubscribe links. If someone clicks one, that unsubscribe needs to be captured. Cross-reference Mailchimp unsubscribes with your MailerLite list weekly.

Downgrade, do not cancel. Mailchimp's free plan covers 250 contacts. Downgrade to free so you can keep monitoring without paying. This buys you time without cost.

Once you are confident all forms are replaced, all data is exported, and no new subscribers are arriving in Mailchimp, you can close the account. For most people, that takes 30-60 days.

Feature Mapping: Mailchimp to MailerLite Equivalents

If you are used to Mailchimp's feature names, here is where to find the equivalent in MailerLite:

What MailerLite does not have: Mailchimp's deeper analytics (heatmaps, custom reports, revenue attribution beyond basic ecommerce), the breadth of native integrations (Mailchimp has 300+, MailerLite has fewer and may require Zapier as middleware), and Mailchimp's Content Optimizer and Predicted Demographics AI tools.

What MailerLite does better: G2 and Capterra have named MailerLite #1 for ease of use every year from 2023-2026 (G2: 4.3/5 from 455 reviews; Capterra: 4.7/5 from 1,900+ reviews). The pricing only charges for active subscribers — no billing for unsubscribed contacts. And the free plan includes automation, which Mailchimp's free plan does not.