Change or Pause Your Marketing Plan

Mailchimp's flexible pricing plans work with you as your business needs change over time. You can adjust your contact limit, switch plans to access new features, or do both at the same time. You also have the option to pause your account and stop payments for a while.

In this article, you'll learn how to change or pause your pricing plan.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• If you joined Mailchimp before May 15, 2019, and want to change or upgrade your legacy plan, check out Change or Pause Your Legacy Pricing Plan.
• If you want to learn how to change or pause your Websites plan, check out Change your Websites Plan.
• You can downgrade from a paid Marketing plan to a Free Marketing plan only once over the life of your account.
• When you upgrade to a paid Marketing plan from a Free Marketing plan, the upgrade is immediate and you lose any remaining sends that you had on the Free plan.
• If your audience grows more than expected, or you go over your monthly send limit, we won’t interrupt your service. Instead, you’ll see an additional charge on your bill. If this happens, upgrade your contact limit to accommodate your new contacts.
• To learn more about what features come with each plan type, check out About Mailchimp Pricing Plans.

Upgrade

As your business grows, your marketing needs will change. You can upgrade your Marketing plan at any time to access more features, increase your sending limit, or store more contacts in your audience. You can upgrade your Marketing plan or contact limit at any time. To learn more about Mailchimp plans and contact limits, check out About Mailchimp Pricing Plans.

If you upgrade your plan or contact tier mid-cycle, you’ll have access to the new features, higher contact limit, or higher send limit immediately.

When you upgrade to a higher plan, it results in an immediate charge that is prorated based on the plan you're upgrading to. You'll be billed in full for the upgraded plan on the next billing date, even if it starts the next day.

When you upgrade to a higher contact tier, it results in an immediate charge that is the difference in cost between your current tier and the upgraded tier.

If you upgrade from a Pay As You Go plan to a monthly Marketing plan, the monthly billing process starts immediately. If you have remaining Pay As You Go credits, they'll be converted into Referral credits and applied to your purchase. If any credits remain after the initial purchase of the monthly plan, we’ll apply the credits to the next monthly bill.

To upgrade your Marketing plan, follow these steps.

1. Click your profile icon and choose Account.

2. Click the Billing drop-down and choose Monthly plans or credits.
   

3. In the Marketing Plan section, click Change Plan.
   
4. Choose your plan and contact limit.
5. Click Upgrade.
   
6. Enter your payment information.
7. Update your tax settings and click Save.
8. Click Pay Now.
   

Nice job! You’ve upgraded your Marketing plan. To exit back to the Billing page from the confirmation screen, click Close.

Downgrade

If you're on a paid Marketing plan that doesn’t fit your needs, you can downgrade your feature plan or contact limit at any time. To learn more about Mailchimp plans and contact limits, check out About Mailchimp Pricing Plans.

If you downgrade your contact tier or Marketing plan mid-cycle, you’ll still have access to your current plan for the remainder of the billing cycle. The downgrade will take effect at the start of your next billing cycle.

If you downgrade from a Pay As You Go plan to a Free Marketing plan, any remaining credits will be lost.

To downgrade your Marketing plan, follow these steps.

1. Click your profile icon and choose Account.

2. Click the Billing drop-down and choose Monthly plans or credits.
   

3. In the Marketing Plan section, click Change Plan.
   
4. Choose your plan and contact limit.
5. Click Downgrade.
   
6. Review your downgrade. We’ll show you which features you will and won’t have access to after your downgrade. We’ll also let you know if there are any changes you need to make in your account before you downgrade to free. Changes could include deleting contacts, seats, or audiences.

7. If you're satisfied with your downgrade selection, click on the confirmation checkbox (you may need to scroll down to see this) to acknowledge that you understand the changes that will take place in your account.

8. In the Estimate for your future plan sidebar (you may need to scroll up to see this), click Downgrade.
   

The downgrade will take effect at the beginning of the next billing cycle. If your account still has conflicts after the downgrade is complete, sending will be paused until the changes are made.

To review your downgrade again, or cancel your pending downgrade, return to the Monthly plans or credits page in your account.

Switch to Pay As You Go

If you're on a monthly Marketing plan and purchase Pay As You Go credits, we'll move you to a Pay As You Go plan and stop monthly billing. On the Pay As You Go plan, credits are like postage stamps and can only be applied to emails. You’ll need one credit for each email you send. Make sure you have enough credits in your account before you send emails.

When you switch to the Pay As You Go plan, the change will occur immediately. We recommend switching from monthly to Pay As You Go toward the end of your billing period.

About the Pay As You Go Plan

Pause or unpause

If you don't need to send emails or publish content for a while, you can pause your Marketing plan. You can keep your plan paused as long as you need to, but you’re limited to two pauses every 12 months.

When you pause your plan, we immediately end the current billing cycle and suspend sending functionality. You can still use Mailchimp to create and edit emails and templates, view reports, and make changes to your audience. We’ll even continue to manage new signups for you. Your Websites plan will remain active.

When you're ready to send emails again or publish new content, restart your plan.

Pause

To pause your Marketing plan, follow these steps.

1. Click your profile icon and choose Account & billing or Account, depending on your user type.
2. Click the Settings drop-down and choose Manage my plan.
   
3. Click Pause my account.
4. In the Temporarily pause account pop-up modal, review the changes that will happen in your account.
5. Type PAUSE and click Pause my plan.
   

You'll see a success message when your account has been paused.

Unpause

To unpause, you'll need to restart your plan. After you restart your plan, be sure to reactivate any automated emails that you want to resume sending.

To restart your plan, log in to your Mailchimp account and click restart your plan in the alert banner. In most cases, you'll be charged automatically and resume your previous plan. If you've gained enough contacts while paused, you may be asked to choose a new pricing tier.

To see or change your plan before restarting, navigate to the Monthly plans and credits page in your account. Review your plan selection and click Restart Plan.