Mailchimp Free 250 contacts: when indies should upgrade

When an overseas indie sends product updates and cold-start campaigns from Mailchimp Free, the question becomes when 250 contacts and the monthly send caps stop working. This page is not a Mailchimp versus HubSpot CRM bake-off. It freezes Free marketing-plan limits from mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/ as of 2026-09-29 and lists when to evaluate Essentials or Standard. Re-check the live table before you pay.

What Free includes

The marketing pricing page summarizes the free entry with “Under 250 contacts? It's free.” The Free column in the comparison table lists monthly email sends at a maximum of 500 per month or 250 per day, 1 user seat, and 1 audience. Free includes popup forms and limited templates, but not email scheduling, Mailchimp-brand removal, branded templates, or custom reports. Paid tiers scale monthly send multiples with contact tiers—commonly figures such as 10x, 12x, or 15x contacts depending on plan—confirm on the live table. Official FAQ language describes overage and upgrade behavior when contact or send limits are hit; Free users should treat upgrade as the path to keep sending rather than hoping the system ignores caps forever.

For a cold-start product, 250 contacts is often enough. What blows up first is dirty imports, uncleaned unsubscribes and test addresses, and mixing transactional traffic into the same marketing audience. The 250/day and 500/month send ceilings also collide on campaign days when welcome mail and event mail ship together.

Stretching one audience

Free allows 1 audience and 1 seat. Keep the primary audience for people who explicitly want product updates. Park test addresses, press lists, and partner lists in an external sheet and dedupe before import. Collect only email plus minimal fields on signup forms. Popup forms are fine if you state email type and unsubscribe expectations. Use basic templates and accept Mailchimp branding early; spend effort on subject lines and factual body copy before paying to remove branding.

Ship on a cadence of one or two product updates per month plus necessary transactional notices. If transactional mail can move to a transactional provider, do not spend marketing quota on it. Before a campaign, draft the send math so you stay under 250 that day and 500 that month.

Hit signals and list hygiene

If you approach 250 contacts or 500 monthly sends for two consecutive weeks, schedule an upgrade review. Cleaning is also a Free strategy: remove obviously invalid addresses, merge duplicates, and pause long-dead imported names with no business relationship. Billing often counts multiple contact statuses toward audience size—read current help docs before mass deletes so you keep required compliance records. A single seat means no second editor; document password recovery so campaigns do not stall when the founder is away.

If growth comes from real users, the 250 wall is useful because it forces a high-intent list. If growth comes from paid landing pages, Free may fail quickly—inspect Essentials or Standard contact-tier prices before the first failed send. Keep HubSpot Free CRM contact growth on a separate ledger if you use both products; do not assume one number governs both tools.

When to upgrade—and when not to

Upgrade if contacts stably exceed 250, monthly send need stably exceeds 500, you require scheduling, brand removal, more seats or audiences, or automation flow depth becomes mainline. Stay on Free if the list is still cold-start, monthly sends stay well under 500, and you can accept basic templates plus manual send timing. After upgrading, back up the audience, verify sending-domain auth, then enable scheduling. Paid prices vary by contact tier; trust the live pricing page rather than a blog’s frozen dollar figure.

Also separate Free Trial of paid plans from the Free Marketing Plan. Trial send unlocks and card requirements follow official trial terms; do not treat trial headroom as permanent Free quota.

Keep this separate from comparison posts

Toolvori already publishes Mailchimp versus HubSpot selection guidance. This tutorial answers only Free quotas. Write audience admission rules, a cleanup day, and a monthly send budget into your handbook; re-verify pricing quarterly. If cleanup and lower frequency remove the pain, do not pay yet.

Before each send, spend one minute on domain and reply-to sanity. Free can still look professional: clear product name in the subject, conclusion first in the body, unsubscribe in the footer. Put “sends left this month” on a board sticky. Prefer a smaller clean list over a vanity list of low-intent addresses—otherwise a paid upgrade only buys a larger noise pool.

Pin the official numbers for mailchimp-free-indie-contact-limits with the observation date and URL. When debates turn absolute, open the pin and check 250 contacts, 500 monthly sends, and 250 daily sends. Limits change; discipline beats slogans. Use a checklist: two consecutive weeks at the wall, mainline reach blocked, cleanup and throttling exhausted, and paid-tier features map to the blocker.