How to Migrate From Mailchimp in 2026 (Step-by-Step, Without Breaking Anything)

If you’re reading this, you probably just got the renewal email with the new Mailchimp pricing — or you saw the January free plan cuts and started looking for a way out. Either way, you’re not alone. (Full breakdown of what changed and what Mailchimp now costs at every list size: our Mailchimp pricing review →)

The good news: switching is genuinely doable in a weekend. The catch nobody warns you about: most “easy migration” promises skip the parts that actually break.

If you’ve decided to leave Mailchimp, the hard part isn’t choosing where to go. It’s making the move without losing subscribers, blowing up deliverability, or breaking automations you’ve forgotten you set up. We’ve migrated more than two dozen lists between platforms — agency clients, our own newsletters, friends’ projects — and the same gotchas keep biting people.

This is the playbook. Read it once before you do anything. Then follow it step by step.

What you’ll need. Admin access to your Mailchimp account. The login for the new platform you’ve chosen (MailerLite is the default recommendation if you haven’t picked yet). About 4-6 hours of focused work spread across 1-2 weeks. A spreadsheet to track what’s been moved.

Before you start: the prep that matters

Most people migrate badly because they skip the prep. Don’t.

1. Run a re-engagement campaign on Mailchimp first

Send one final “are you still reading?” campaign to your full list before you export. Anything like:

“Hey — we’re moving to a new email platform next week. If you’d like to keep getting these emails, just click below and I’ll keep you on the list. Otherwise, no hard feelings — you’ll be unsubscribed automatically.”

Wait 7-14 days. Anyone who didn’t engage gets cleaned out before you import. This single step alone often eliminates 10-30% of a list — subscribers you were paying to host but who weren’t reading.

The new platform charges by subscriber count too. Moving inactive subscribers means you pay for them twice.

2. Document what you have

Open a spreadsheet. Track every piece of your Mailchimp setup that needs to be rebuilt:

• All audiences/lists (most accounts have one; some have 3-5)
• All tags and segments
• All automations (welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, re-engagement, etc.)
• All signup forms and landing pages with their embed locations
• All integrations (Shopify, WordPress, Zapier, etc.)
• All custom fields beyond the standard email/first name/last name
• Your domain authentication status (SPF, DKIM, DMARC records)

This list takes 30 minutes. It saves a day of “wait, what about that thing?” later.

3. Set up domain authentication on the new platform first

Before you import a single subscriber, set up domain authentication on the new platform. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records need DNS changes — those propagate over hours, sometimes a day. Doing this first means you’re sending properly authenticated mail from day one.

Each platform has step-by-step instructions in their help docs. The records look like this:

TXT @ "v=spf1 include:_spf.platformname.com ~all"
CNAME mailo._domainkey "mailo.dkim.platformname.com"
TXT _dmarc "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com"

Don’t send any campaigns from the new platform until you see the green checkmark confirming all three records propagated correctly. This usually takes 1-24 hours after you add the records to your DNS host.

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Step 1: Export from Mailchimp

Frame from “How to Import Contacts to Mailchimp.” Mailchimp’s contact wizard breadcrumb gives you a sense of where Export, Audience, and Tag operations live. The Export Audience action you’ll use next is the inverse of the Upload step shown here.

In Mailchimp:

1. Audience → All contacts → Export Audience.
2. Choose “All contacts” — including unsubscribed contacts (you’ll suppress them on the new platform, not import them).
3. Wait for the email with your CSV download. This usually arrives within 5 minutes for lists under 50,000 subscribers; longer for bigger lists.
4. Download the CSV.

Open the file in a spreadsheet. Verify:

• Email addresses are in their own column.
• Names (first/last) are in their own columns.
• Tags are exported as a comma-separated string in one column.
• Custom fields you used in Mailchimp are present.
• Subscribe dates are preserved (this matters for deliverability — you want to keep the original dates, not have them all become “imported today”).

If any of those fields are missing, go back and re-export with the option to include them. You only get one good import on the new platform — make this CSV right.

Step 2: Clean the export

Before importing, do a final cleaning pass on the CSV:

1. Filter out unsubscribed contacts. Sort by status, delete every row where status isn’t “subscribed.”
2. Filter out cleaned/bounced contacts. Same idea — sort by status, remove anything that says “cleaned” or “bounced.” These are people Mailchimp already stopped sending to. The new platform will treat them as fresh and start sending again, which is bad for deliverability.
3. Spot-check tag formatting. If your tags use unusual characters (commas, quotes), make sure they’re escaped properly. Open in a real CSV viewer (Numbers, Google Sheets) to confirm.
4. Save as UTF-8. The default Excel save is sometimes not UTF-8 and breaks special characters. Use Google Sheets or “Save As → CSV UTF-8” in Excel.

You should now have a clean CSV with only active, engaged subscribers. This is the file you import.

Step 3: Import to the new platform

Each platform has slightly different mechanics, but the basic flow is the same:

1. Subscribers → Import → Upload CSV.
2. Map the columns. The platform will guess “email goes to email,” “first name goes to first name.” Verify those guesses; adjust if wrong. Pay particular attention to tags column mapping.

Source: Mailchimp import tutorial. The field-mapping UI looks essentially identical across platforms — Email → Email, First Name → First Name, with a preview column on the right. This is the step where most migration mistakes happen: a Tags column accidentally mapped to a custom field, or merge fields ignored entirely. Verify every guess before clicking Continue. 3. Choose how to handle duplicates. Default behavior is correct: skip rows where the email already exists in your account. 4. Confirm consent. Most platforms ask: “Do you confirm these subscribers actively opted in?” Yes — that’s why you exported only active subscribers in step 2. 5. Start the import. Smaller lists (under 5k) finish in minutes; larger lists (50k+) can take an hour.

After import, verify three things:

• The total count matches your cleaned CSV.
• A spot-check of 5-10 random subscribers shows their tags imported correctly.
• A few subscribers’ subscribe dates show the original date (not today’s date).

If any of these are wrong, stop and fix the import before continuing. The rest of this tutorial assumes you have a clean, properly-tagged subscriber base on the new platform.

Platform shortcut — Kit (ConvertKit). Kit takes a slightly different path than the CSV-first flow above: its native Mailchimp importer pulls subscribers via the Mailchimp API directly, skipping the CSV export/import altogether. Same end state, fewer steps. You generate a Mailchimp API key in Account → Extras → API keys, then paste it into Kit’s Import modal:

Frame from “How to Set Up ConvertKit from Mailchimp” by Best Online Tutorials. Kit’s Mailchimp import modal — paste the API key generated in Mailchimp’s Account → Extras → API keys to start the migration. The verification checklist above still applies after import completes.

Step 4: Rebuild your automations

This is the biggest single time-sink. Plan 30-60 minutes per automation.

For each automation in your spreadsheet from step 1.2:

1. Note the trigger. Was it triggered by signup? By tag application? By date? By behavior?
2. Note the steps. What emails sent in what order, with what delays, with what conditions?
3. Build it on the new platform. Use the new platform’s automation builder. Most are visual — drag triggers, drag emails, drag delays, drag conditions.
4. Use the email content from Mailchimp. You can copy-paste the HTML or use a “compose new” approach if you want to refresh the design.
5. Test the automation. Trigger it with a test email address. Verify each step fires as expected with the right delays.

If your platform offers a free migration team (MailerLite, ConvertKit, Beehiiv all do on paid plans), use them. They’ll rebuild the automations for you. Worth it for the time savings alone.

Step 5: Set up your forms and landing pages

Find every place your old Mailchimp signup forms live:

• Your website footer
• Blog posts (often linked to a Mailchimp landing page)
• Your homepage hero section
• Any third-party tools (Zapier, etc.) sending leads to Mailchimp

Source: Mailchimp import tutorial. The integration list is a useful audit reference — every tool here is a potential leak point during migration. If you have any of these connected, they’re either still pushing contacts into Mailchimp or holding contacts that haven’t synced yet. Disconnect or re-point each one before you cancel Mailchimp.

For each location:

1. Build the equivalent form on the new platform. Match the fields exactly.
2. Get the new embed code or URL.
3. Replace the old code with the new one. This is usually a 5-minute change per location.
4. Test by signing up yourself with a test address. Verify the new subscriber appears on the new platform.

While you’re updating forms, leave the old Mailchimp forms active for a few days. New signups from forms you’ve updated will go to the new platform; new signups from forms you haven’t updated yet will continue going to Mailchimp. You’ll do a final sync of any Mailchimp signups from this period at the end of the migration.

Step 6: Warm up your sending reputation

This is the step everyone skips and regrets.

The new platform is using a sending IP pool that has its own reputation. Email providers (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) need to see that your domain is sending from this pool consistently and that recipients are engaging. Sudden full-list sends from a brand-new platform can trip spam filters even when the content is perfectly fine.

The warm-up:

• Days 1-3: Send a small campaign to your most engaged segment (people who’ve opened in the last 30 days). Aim for 1,000-5,000 sends per day if your list is large.
• Days 4-7: Send a slightly larger campaign to your engaged-30-days segment. Watch the open and click rates.
• Days 8-14: Increase to your engaged-90-days segment, with one campaign per day at most.
• Day 15+: You’re warmed up. You can now send full-list campaigns at your normal cadence.

If your platform offers automated warm-up (some do), use it. Otherwise, follow the schedule above manually.

During the warm-up period, do not send to inactive subscribers. Those are most likely to mark you as spam, and a few spam reports during warm-up can ruin your deliverability for weeks.

Step 7: Run in parallel for 2 weeks

For 14 days after the warm-up, run both platforms in parallel:

• Send your main campaigns from the new platform.
• Keep Mailchimp active but pause all automated sending.
• Watch the new platfo