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 & Commerce plan, check out Change your Websites & Commerce 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 maximum contact count to accommodate your new contacts. If you’re a legacy paid user, you aren’t charged overages and your billing plan organically grows or shrinks based on the highest count of billable audience during the billing period.
• To learn more about what features come with each plan type, check out About Mailchimp Pricing Plans.

Upgrade

As your business grows, you may need to store more contacts in your audience, or access more features. You can upgrade your Marketing plan or maximum contact count 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 or higher contact 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 Billing and choose Monthly plans or credits.
   

3. In the Marketing Plan section, click Change Plan.
   
4. Choose your plan and maximum contact count.
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 from package to package, tier to tier, and package and tier to another package and tier.

If you downgrade your maximum contact count tier or Marketing plan mid-cycle, your bill will include the maximum contact count or plan you chose for that month. The next billing cycle will reflect your changes.

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 Billing and choose Monthly plans or credits.
   

3. In the Marketing Plan section, click Change Plan.
   
4. Choose your plan and maximum contact count.
5. Click Downgrade.
   

6. Review your downgrade. If you are satisfied with your downgrade selection, click on the check box at the bottom of the screen to acknowledge that you understand the changes that will take place in your account.
   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. 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 Marketing plan billing

If you have a paid monthly plan and don't need to send campaigns for a while, you can pause billing your Marketing plan. You can keep your account paused as long as you need to, but you’re limited to two pauses each year.

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

When you're ready to send campaigns again, you’ll need to purchase a Marketing plan to unpause your account.

Pause billing

To pause billing on your account, follow these steps.

1. Click your profile icon and choose Account.
   

2. Click Settings and choose Pause or delete account.
   

3. Click the Temporarily pause billing on this account radio button.
   
4. Click Pause Account.
   
5. In the Pause Account pop-up modal, type PAUSE and click Pause Your Account.
   

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

Unpause billing

To unpause billing, you'll need to restart your account. In most cases, you'll automatically resume your previous plan. But if you've gained enough contacts while paused, you may be asked to choose a new pricing tier. After you unpause billing, be sure to reactivate any automated emails that you want to resume sending.

A payment is expected to be made automatically when an account’s billing is unpaused onto a paid plan.

To unpause billing on your account, log in to your Mailchimp account and click Restart Account in the alert banner.

On the Monthly plans or credits page, review the details of your paused Marketing plan and click Restart Account to confirm.

Or, if you've outgrown your previous plan, choose a new tier as needed.