Looking for a Mailchimp alternative?
Campaigns and a real developer API, priced by emails rather than contacts.
Why people move from Mailchimp
Mailchimp prices mainly by the number of contacts you store, so a large list that you email occasionally costs the same as one you email daily. The other common reason is the developer experience: Mailchimp's transactional product is a separate purchase, so teams end up running two vendors to send a newsletter and a password reset.
Where Mailchimp is better
Mailchimp's campaign builder, template gallery and audience reporting are more polished than ours, and its brand recognition means non-technical colleagues already know how to use it. For a marketing team with no engineering support, that matters more than an API.
Pigeonify vs Mailchimp
Prices read from Mailchimp's own published pricing on 4 October 2026. We win 4 of these rows and they win 3.
| Pigeonify | Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Priced by | Emails sent | Contacts stored |
| Transactional email | Same account | Separate purchase |
| Developer API | First class | Marketing-oriented |
| SMTP relay | Included | Via separate product |
| Campaign builder | HTML editor and library | Full drag and drop |
| Template gallery | 70 templates | Extensive |
| Audience segmentation | Lists | Advanced |
| Free tier | 5,000 emails/month | Limited contacts |
What the code change looks like
For a transactional integration this is usually the whole job: swap the SDK, change the key, verify the domain.
import mailchimp from "@mailchimp/mailchimp_transactional"
const client = mailchimp(process.env.MANDRILL_API_KEY)
await client.messages.send({
message: {
from_email: "you@yourdomain.com",
to: [{ email: "customer@example.com" }],
subject: "Welcome aboard",
html: "<p>Thanks for signing up.</p>",
},
})import { Pigeonify } from "pigeonify"
const pigeonify = new Pigeonify(process.env.PIGEONIFY_API_KEY)
await pigeonify.emails.send({
from: "you@yourdomain.com",
to: "customer@example.com",
subject: "Welcome aboard",
html: "<p>Thanks for signing up.</p>",
})You can run both providers at once while you move. Publishing our DNS records alongside your existing ones does not stop Mailchimp sending, so there is no cutover moment to get wrong.
Switching from Mailchimp
- Can I import my Mailchimp audience?
- Yes. Export your audience from Mailchimp as CSV and import it directly — the columns Mailchimp exports map to ours. Addresses that have unsubscribed or bounced should be imported as such so they stay suppressed.
- Does Pigeonify have a drag-and-drop builder?
- Not yet. We ship 70 tested HTML templates you can edit, and an HTML editor with live preview. If a drag-and-drop builder is essential for your team, Mailchimp is the better tool today and we would rather say that than lose you later.
Try it before you move anything
5,000 emails a month free, no card. Send a real message through both and compare what arrives.
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