Squarespace Email Campaigns vs Mailchimp: Which Should You Use?

Squarespace Email Campaigns vs Mailchimp comes down to how much email you actually send. Squarespace Email Campaigns lives inside your site, pulls your blog posts and products into a newsletter in two clicks, prices by emails sent per month with unlimited contacts, and does simple automations and segments well. Mailchimp is a separate product with a free tier, deeper automation, better reporting, and integrations with everything, priced by contacts, and it gets expensive as the list grows. For a Squarespace site sending a monthly newsletter and a welcome sequence, Email Campaigns is the simpler and usually cheaper choice; for a business that runs multi-step automations, sells through email, or needs its list to work with a CRM and other tools, Mailchimp. The comparison below is feature by feature, then the switch in either direction, then the honest version of pricing, which changes often enough that the live pages are the last word.

Squarespace Email Campaigns vs Mailchimp: feature comparison

Squarespace’s own migration guide lists Email Campaigns’ scope honestly: site integration, templates, automations for subscribers and customers, product and blog sections, blog-to-campaign conversion, analytics and segments. Everything in the Mailchimp column that is not in that list is where Mailchimp earns its price.

What does each cost?

Both change their tiers regularly, so the numbers here are the shape rather than a quote. Squarespace Email Campaigns is sold as an add-on to a site plan, priced in tiers by emails sent per month (starting at a few hundred sends for a few dollars, rising through 5,000, 10,000, 25,000 and beyond), with unlimited contacts on every tier; it can be bought with or without a website plan, though the blog and product sections need a site subscription. Mailchimp has a free plan capped at a few hundred contacts and a small monthly send limit with Mailchimp branding, then Essentials, Standard and Premium tiers priced per contact count, so a list of 5,000 costs many times a list of 500 whether or not you email them. The practical difference: on Squarespace a big quiet list is free and a busy month costs more; on Mailchimp the list itself is the bill. Incline Marketing’s comparison makes the same point that both add up as volume grows, from opposite directions.

When is Squarespace Email Campaigns the right choice?

• You send a monthly or fortnightly newsletter to a list under a few thousand, from a Squarespace site.
• You want the emails to look like the site without designing them; the templates inherit Site Styles.
• Your automations are simple: a welcome email or short series, abandoned cart, post-purchase thank-you.
• You publish on the Squarespace blog and want each post to go out as an email with a click.
• One login, one bill. The popup and newsletter blocks feed it natively, and the Contacts panel is the list.

When is Mailchimp the right choice?

• Email drives sales and you need branching journeys, resend-to-unopened, A/B tests and revenue reporting.
• The list is used elsewhere: a CRM, ad audiences, a course platform, Zapier flows.
• You might leave Squarespace. Mailchimp lists move with you; Email Campaigns lists export as CSV but the automations and templates do not.
• Deliverability matters at volume: domain authentication and reputation tools.
• You already have it working. Switching a functioning Mailchimp setup to save a few dollars is rarely worth the rebuild.

How do you switch from Mailchimp to Squarespace Email Campaigns?

1. In Mailchimp, export the audience as CSV (Audience, All contacts, Export).
2. In Squarespace, open Contacts (or Email Campaigns, Mailing Lists), create a list, and import the CSV, mapping email, first and last name.
3. Rebuild the welcome automation under Email Campaigns, Automations.
4. Re-point the Newsletter blocks on the site from Mailchimp storage to the new list (Storage tab of each block).
5. Send a test campaign to yourself, then send the first real one from Squarespace and pause Mailchimp; cancel Mailchimp after a month.

Squarespace’s guide recommends exploring Email Campaigns before subscribing: you can build lists and draft campaigns free and pay only to send. Going the other direction is the same steps mirrored, with the addition that Mailchimp asks you to confirm the contacts consented, which they did when they subscribed on your site.

Can you use both?

Yes, and some sites do for a while: Squarespace Newsletter blocks can store subscribers to Mailchimp, Squarespace Email Campaigns, or both at once, so a list can be grown in parallel during a switch. Long term, one tool, because two lists drift and unsubscribes stop syncing. Whichever you pick, the sign-up itself belongs on the site (a footer block, a delayed popup, an announcement bar link), and the coming soon page for a new business is where most lists start.

The decision in one line

If email is a newsletter that supports the site, Squarespace Email Campaigns; if email is a channel that runs alongside the site, Mailchimp. A useful second test is to imagine the list at ten times its current size: on Email Campaigns the bill only moves when you send more, on Mailchimp it moves with the list, so a business that collects far more addresses than it emails is cheaper on Squarespace, and a business that mails heavily to a small list is cheaper on Mailchimp. Most of the small businesses I build Squarespace sites for are in the first group, and the platform comparison covers the wider tool choices that come with the second.

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