Mailchimp just halved its free plan again—250 contacts left
The screen glow at 7 a.m. in a Shoreditch co-working space. Coffee still too hot to drink. Three browser tabs open: Mailchimp dashboard, pricing comparison spreadsheet, migration checklist. Another platform squeeze, another decision you didn’t budget time to make this week.
Mailchimp cut its free plan to 250 contacts and zero automation in January
The tier that once covered 2,000 subscribers now stops most operators before they finish onboarding.
Mailchimp reduced its free plan from 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly sends to 250 contacts and 500 sends in January 2026, the second cut this year and the fourth reduction since Intuit acquired the platform in 2021. Before 2022, the free tier covered 2,000 contacts—making the current limit a 96 per cent reduction in five years. Automation was removed entirely from the free plan in June 2025, which means welcome sequences, event reminders, and basic drip workflows now require the Essentials tier at $13 per month for 500 contacts.
Mailchimp’s free plan now allows 500 contacts, down from 2,000, according to multiple independent reviews published in March 2026. The platform still counts unsubscribed contacts towards your billing tier unless you manually archive them, and duplicates across audiences count separately—nonprofits lose roughly 485 people per year to unsubscribes at typical churn rates, all of whom stay on the bill. At 5,000 contacts, Mailchimp Essentials costs approximately $75 per month, while MailerLite charges $10, Sender offers 2,500 free subscribers, and Brevo prices by send volume rather than contact count. Mailchimp’s 250-contact cap means most senders hit the paywall before they can properly evaluate the platform, making the free tier effectively a trial rather than a tool.
See the full pricing breakdown
INFRASTRUCTURE
WordPress 7.0 launches 20 May with PHP 8.3 baseline and new TTFB targets
WordPress 7.0 is scheduled for release on 20 May 2026, following a rescheduled launch from 9 April to allow additional architectural improvements focused on stability and performance. The release recommends PHP 8.3 or greater, and benchmarks show WordPress runs 30–40 per cent faster on PHP 8.3 compared to 7.4. Google recommends TTFB under 800ms, but competitive SEO targets under 300ms—managed hosts like Kinsta achieve 182ms and Liquid Web 215ms. If your current host defaults to PHP 7.x or delivers TTFB over 500ms, the 7.0 update is the moment to benchmark whether your infrastructure still fits your traffic goals.
TACTIC
Solo operators save 5.6 hours per week with three-tool AI stacks
McKinsey research shows knowledge workers using AI tools save an average of 5.6 hours per week, with founders and managers saving closer to 7–8 hours, and those recovered hours translate directly into revenue-generating activities. In 2026, free and low-cost AI automation options now match features that required $99+ monthly subscriptions two years ago, shifting from chat-based assistants to autonomous platforms that manage core business functions. Start with free tiers of ChatGPT, NotebookLM, and Canva, and content creator solopreneurs report cutting video editing time by 70 per cent using text-based editing tools like Descript. The competitive gap is real: solopreneurs automating intelligently now operate at the efficiency of five- to ten-person teams without payroll or management overhead.
WORTH READING
Beehiiv vs Kit vs MailerLite for newsletter-first revenue models
Beehiiv suits operators building towards paid subscriber bases where the revenue split math favors a flat fee, plus the referral network and ad monetisation tools Beehiiv offers. Kit’s monetisation feature lets you sell digital products and subscriptions directly through the platform, a unique offering included even in the free Newsletter plan, though you can’t remove Kit’s branding and are required to display other recommended newsletters when subscribers sign up. MailerLite‘s free plan covers 500 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month with automation included, reduced from 1,000 contacts in September 2025. If subscriptions or sponsorships are your primary model rather than lead-gen, the platform choice determines whether you pay a revenue percentage or a fixed monthly fee as you scale—a decision that compounds every month after your first thousand paying readers.
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