MailCheap Explained: Pricing, Features and Recent Updates (2026–2027)
Affiliate disclosure: Critingo is reader-supported. If you sign up through links on this page we may earn a commission — it costs you nothing extra and never changes our verdicts. We verify pricing and terms regularly, but they change often: always confirm on the vendor's site before buying.
MailCheap is a newsletter platform that charges for the emails you send, not for how many subscribers sit on your list. It is open source (AGPL-3.0), so you can also run it yourself. We have not tested the product hands-on. Everything below comes from MailCheap’s own pricing page, help center, changelog and GitHub repository, checked on 31 October 2026.
What it costs
Every plan has every feature. Plans grow with emails sent per month:
| Plan | Emails a month | Active subscribers | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 20,000 | 10,000 | $19 |
| Growth | 75,000 | 40,000 | $39 |
| Pro | 200,000 | 100,000 | $79 |
| Scale | 500,000 | 250,000 | $149 |
| Max | 2,000,000 | 1,000,000 | $349 |
| Ultra | 5,000,000 | 2,500,000 | $799 |
Paying yearly costs ten months instead of twelve. There is no free trial. Welcome and confirmation emails count towards the monthly total, and only active contacts count as subscribers.
What is included
According to MailCheap, every plan includes campaigns, scheduling, a public website for your issues, your own sending domain, signup forms, welcome emails, imports, stats, an API with AI-agent support, and chat support. Imports are built for moving from beehiiv, Substack or Mailchimp. Deliverability features such as DKIM, SPF, DMARC, one-click unsubscribe and staged sending to new contacts are on by default. There is no “powered by” badge on any plan.
What it does not offer
It has no free plan, and in the feature set we verified it has no automations or paid subscriptions. It is also a young product from a small team. See our MailCheap review for the full pros and cons.
Recent updates
MailCheap publishes a public changelog. In the last week of October 2026 it added sections that only some readers see, a notifications bell, a recipients report showing who opened and clicked, a click map, copying a past campaign, and a way to bring back contacts left out of an import. We track these daily on our product updates page.
Who it fits
Newsletters with large lists where many subscribers no longer open, and technical creators who like self-hosting, are the clearest fit. If you want a free start, look at beehiiv, Substack or MailerLite, or run our tool finder with your list size and budget.
Prices and terms in this post were accurate when published — check the linked pages for today's numbers.