Best offer on record: Free email plan ("free forever" tier, not a trial). 5 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Free email plan ("free forever" tier, not a trial) high confidence
Official free plan as of 2026-10-22: limit of 250 contacts, max 500 email sends/mo or 250/day; 1 audience, 1 seat; limited pre-built templates, 300+ integrations, popup forms included. Excludes: email scheduling, automation flows, custom/branded templates, dynamic content, role-based access, custom reports, remove-Mailchimp-branding. Email support for first 30 days. If contact or send limit is exceeded, sending is paused (no overage billing on free). The page is region-gated; US and EU variants both show 250/500.
Eligibility
Any new user, no .edu or age/funding requirements; account via mailchimp.com sign-up. Sign-up has not required a credit card for the free plan (site does not state CC explicitly for free; medium confidence on this sub-point). Region: available in standard Mailchimp-supported countries.
How to claim
Sign up at mailchimp.com/signup → Free plan is automatic; nothing to request. Upgrade to Essentials/Standard/Premium when you exceed 250 contacts or 500 sends/mo.
Expiry
No expiry — perpetual free tier. Trial support ends at 30 days.
Gotchas
This is a free tier, not a trial: no CC, no auto-upgrade. The 250-contact/500-send limit is the post-2025 reduction (older docs said 500 contacts/1,000 sends — that data is now stale). No email scheduling or A/B on free; over-limit sends are paused, not billed. Branding (Mailchimp footer) cannot be removed on free.
14-day free trial of paid Essentials / Standard plans high confidence
14-day free trial of Essentials (US entry $13/mo at 1,500 contacts) and Standard (US entry $20/mo) marketing plans. Eligibility: you must be a new Mailchimp customer OR an existing Free plan customer whose account was created within the last 90 days. Valid payment information (credit card) is required at enrollment. One trial per account; not stackable with other offers. After the trial the plan starts at the paid rate.
Eligibility
New customers or free-plan accounts <90 days old; one trial per account; card required up front — so this is NOT no-CC free usage, it is a trial. No education/age/funding caps.
How to claim
From mailchimp.com/pricing, start the Essentials or Standard trial, provide a card, cancel before day 14 to avoid charge.
Expiry
14 days, then auto-converts to paid subscription at the standard rate; cancel before trial ends to stay free.
Gotchas
Credit card mandatory — accounts that are new-eligible and cardless cannot use it. The 90-day age rule on existing free accounts is the main trap. Trial is not stackable; one per account. Marketing plan features (campaign sends, seats) apply; if you only want API/transactional access, Standard is the minimum plan that supports it.
Premium plan 1-month free trial (sales-assisted) medium confidence
Pricing page lists a "Free Trial of Premium for 1 Month" available to qualified new customers, obtained by contacting Sales (premium includes 15% off first 12 months for 10,000+ contacts, unlimited users/audiences, Enterprise SSO, dedicated onboarding specialist). This is separate from and not combinable with the self-serve 14-day Essentials/Standard trial.
Eligibility
"Qualified new customers" via Sales — implies new Mailchimp account; card required at conversion. No published eligibility thresholds beyond 'new customer'; region-limited to Sales coverage.
How to claim
Contact Mailchimp sales from mailchimp.com/pricing (or sales form) and request the 1-month Premium trial.
Expiry
1 month, then Premium at the standard rate (US entry ~$350/mo for the small-contact tier with 15% intro discount; much higher at scale).
Gotchas
Sales-gated, not self-serve; do not conflate with the 14-day Essentials/Standard trial; Premium is a large bill at conversion — only worth it if you need predictive segmentation, multivariate testing, SSO, or 200,000+ contact high-volume plan.
Transactional Email API (formerly Mandrill): free send credits — and SMS has no free tier medium confidence
Transactional Email (Mandrill successor): "New users receive up to 500 free email sends to their verified domain" (restrictions apply). Paid pricing is block-based: 25,000-email blocks at $20 (1-500k), $18 (500k-1M), $16 (1M-2M), $14 (2M-3M), $12 (3M-4M), $10 (4M+) — i.e. $0.80 down to $0.40 per 1,000 emails; 50% off 1M+ emails for first 12 months for qualifying new customers; dedicated IP +$29.95/mo. SMS: transactional SMS shares credits with SMS marketing in one pool, credits do not roll over, and a Mailchimp-approved phone number is required; no free SMS quota is listed. No push-notification or chat API product exists in the Mailchimp/Intuit suite reviewed.
Eligibility
Transactional Email is an add-on that requires a Mailchimp Standard or Premium marketing plan (or legacy Monthly Plan); Essentials is explicitly ineligible — so the 500 free sends are effectively gated behind a paid marketing plan, not a standalone no-CC free API tier. A verified domain is required for the free sends.
How to claim
Sign up at login.mailchimp.com/signup/?entrypoint=mandrill, verify your domain, and claim the free 500 transactional sends; purchase 25k blocks as volume grows.
Expiry
Free 500 sends are a one-time new-user allowance (per the page's wording); unused purchased blocks expire each billing cycle (no rollover). 50%-off promo: first 12 months.
Gotchas
Read 'add-on to Standard/Premium' carefully: you cannot run transactional email on the free marketing plan alone, so the 'free tier' is really 500 credits for new users who will pay for the hosting plan — treat as trial credits, not a permanent free API. SMS and transactional SMS draw from one shared credit pool. No push/chat equivalents to claim.
Nonprofit/charity 15% discount (adjacent, not free) medium confidence
Mailchimp offers a 15% discount to nonprofits and charities. It is a discount on paid plans, not a free tier: sign up free, then contact the Billing team with your username and a link to your organization's website. No .edu/student license or startup program (no /for/students/ or /startups/ page exists — both 404) was found on official pages. There is also a general 'Save 15% on 10,000+ contacts' intro discount for the first 12 months on Essentials/Standard/Premium for businesses at that scale.
Eligibility
Registered nonprofits/charities (typically 501(c)(3)-equivalent); applied after a free sign-up. No student or startup program exists to claim — if your goal is a .edu license, there is none.
How to claim
Create a free account, email Mailchimp's Billing team with username + org website; for the 10k+ intro discount it applies automatically at 10,000+ contacts on the plan's first 12 months.
Expiry
Nonprofit discount: ongoing while nonprofit status applies (per Billing team). 10k intro discount: first 12 months; can be kept when moving up a tier.
Gotchas
Do not cite Mailchimp as having a student or startup program — none exists on official pages as of 2026-10-22. The 15% figures are discounts, not free usage.
Major 2025 change: the free email plan's limits were reduced from the previously-known 500 contacts / up to 1,000 emails per month to 250 contacts / max 500 sends per month (250/day) — the live pricing page (US and EU variants) confirms the 250/500 limits as of 2026-10-22, so the "known so far" figure is stale. The Customer Journey Builder was rebranded to Marketing Automation Flows effective June 2025. No student/education (.edu) license program and no startup program exist on official pages (/for/students/ and /startups/ both 404; no program mentions on pricing, developer, or nonprofit pages). No free SMS allowance, and no push-notification or chat API product exists to claim. Transactional Email's free offering is a one-time 500-send new-user allowance gated behind a paid Standard/Premium plan, not a standalone free API tier. One verification gap: this session's web-search budget was exhausted, so corroboration beyond official Mailchimp pages (press posts about the 2025 free-plan reduction, third-party comparisons) was not possible; all facts above come from live official pages fetched today, with the Premium sales trial and the 500-free-sends transactional allowance the only medium-confidence items.