Mailchimp SMS Pricing: The 2025 Guide to Cost, Value, and a Smarter Alternative

You’re here because you’re a forward-thinking marketer. You’ve mastered email, but you know that in today’s crowded digital world, the key to cutting through the noise is to meet your customers where they are—and very often, that’s on their phones. You’re asking about Mailchimp SMS pricing because you’re ready to add the power of instant, personal communication to your marketing strategy.

This is a smart move. You're looking to evolve from being an email marketer into a true multi-channel strategist. You understand that combining the deep relationship-building power of email with the immediate impact of SMS is a recipe for explosive growth.

This guide is designed to give you the clarity you need. We will start with a detailed breakdown of how Mailchimp’s SMS pricing works. But then, we will follow a logical path to a more strategic question: Is an "add-on" SMS feature the most powerful and cost-effective way to build your multi-channel system? We'll reveal a more integrated approach that can unlock a new level of automation and a better return on your investment.

The Core Strategy: Why Add SMS to Your Email Marketing?

Before we talk about price, let's quickly agree on the immense value you're trying to unlock. This is the first step in our journey. Why is SMS marketing so powerful when combined with email?

• Unbeatable Open Rates: While a good email open rate is 20-30%, SMS open rates are often cited as high as 98%. It’s a nearly guaranteed way to get your message seen.

• Immediacy and Urgency: Email is for conversation; SMS is for action. It’s perfect for time-sensitive announcements like flash sales, event reminders, or shipping notifications.

• A More Personal Connection: A text message feels more personal and direct than an email, allowing you to build a different kind of relationship with your most engaged subscribers.

Combining these two channels allows you to create a complete communication strategy. But how you combine them depends entirely on the platform you choose.

The Detailed Breakdown: How Mailchimp SMS Pricing Works

Let's deliver on the promise you came here for: a clear explanation of Mailchimp's SMS pricing. Understanding their model is crucial. The cost is not a single number; it’s a two-part investment.

Part 1: The Required Mailchimp Plan First, to use SMS marketing with Mailchimp, you must be subscribed to one of their paid plans (typically the Standard plan or higher). You cannot use the SMS feature on their Free plan. This is the foundational cost you must consider.

Part 2: The SMS Credit System On top of your monthly plan fee, you purchase SMS credits. This is a "pay-as-you-go" model for the texts themselves.

• How Credits Work: One SMS credit equals one standard text message sent to a single contact in the US. Sending to other countries may cost more credits per message.

• Purchasing Credits: You buy credits in blocks, and they are added to your account. For example, you might buy 1,000 credits for a set price. These credits roll over each month as long as your paid Mailchimp plan is active.

• The Cost: The cost per SMS credit decreases as you buy larger blocks. For example, buying 25,000 credits will have a lower per-message cost than buying just 1,000.

So, when you ask how much does SMS marketing cost on Mailchimp, the answer is: Your Monthly Plan Cost + The Cost of the SMS Credits you purchase.

This is a solid, functional system. But as a strategic marketer, you must now ask the next logical question.

The Strategic Dilemma: Is an 'Add-On' Approach the Best System?

You've now established that Mailchimp offers SMS as an "add-on" to its core email platform. This is better than having no SMS at all, but it creates a new, more sophisticated set of challenges that can limit your growth.

This is the pivotal "bridge" in our thinking.

1. Fragmented Automation: How seamlessly can you integrate SMS into your email automations? Can you create a workflow that says, "Send an email. If it's not opened in 24 hours, then send an SMS"? With an add-on system, this can sometimes be clunky or limited.

1. Complex Cost Management: You are now managing two separate billing models: a recurring subscription for email and a credit-based system for SMS. This can make it harder to predict your total marketing spend each month.

1. A Question of Value: Are you paying a premium for the convenience of having SMS inside a platform you already use? Or could you get more power and a better value from a platform where SMS is not an add-on, but a core, deeply integrated feature?

This is the question that separates good marketers from great ones. You don't just want features; you want a seamless, powerful, and cost-effective system.

The Superior Alternative: The Power of Truly Integrated Multi-Channel Automation

Now that we've identified the potential friction in an "add-on" model, let's explore the logical solution: an all-in-one marketing platform where email and SMS are equal citizens, designed from the ground up to work in perfect harmony.

This is where a platform like GetResponse emerges as a superior strategic choice.

Let's use the powerful contrast principle to see the difference in philosophy and capability:

• Deeply Integrated Workflows: When you're looking at alternatives to Mailchimp SMS, the biggest difference is in the automation. With GetResponse, SMS is not a separate feature; it's a native action within their powerful visual automation builder. You can simply drag and drop a "Send SMS" block into the same workflow as your emails. This allows you to effortlessly create sophisticated journeys like:

  
  

  • "When a user abandons their cart, send an email. Wait 6 hours. IF the cart is still abandoned, THEN send a follow-up SMS with a 10% off coupon."

  • "Two hours before our webinar starts, send an email reminder. THEN, 15 minutes before it starts, send an SMS reminder to all registrants."

• Unified and Predictable Pricing: The GetResponse SMS marketing pricing is often structured to be more straightforward. In many of their plans, SMS marketing capabilities are included as a core feature, leading to a more predictable and often lower total cost of ownership compared to managing a base plan plus a separate credit system.

• A Complete Growth Ecosystem: The true power becomes clear when you see that SMS and email are just two parts of a larger, integrated system. With GetResponse, you can use a landing page to capture a phone number, use a conversion funnel to guide them to a sale, use a webinar to engage them, and use email and SMS in concert to communicate with them at every step. It’s one seamless experience.

When you're looking for the best all-in-one email and SMS marketing platform, the key is to find one where the channels are not just available, but are deeply and intelligently interwoven.

From Adding a Feature to Building a System

You came here asking about the price of a single feature. But as a strategic business builder, you now have a much more powerful framework for your decision.

Adding SMS to your marketing is a brilliant move. But how you add it matters. Bolting it on as an extra feature is one approach. Integrating it as a core part of a unified communication system is another, far more powerful one.

• Mailchimp offers a solid, functional way to add SMS to your existing email strategy.

• However, for the marketer who wants to build truly seamless, automated, multi-channel customer journeys, GetResponse is the demonstrably superior platform. It provides deeper integration, more powerful automation, and often, a better overall value.

You are no longer just an email marketer. You are an architect of customer conversations. By choosing a platform that allows you to orchestrate those conversations across every channel from a single, intelligent command center, you are making the smartest possible investment in your business's future growth.