Keila vs Mailchimp: The Open Source Alternative
Mailchimp is probably the most popular email newsletter tool in the world. You’ve heard their podcast ads. Mailchimp is packed with features - but that comes at a cost: it’s pretty expensive and the overloaded interface can get confusing. Here’s why Keila might be a good alternative to Mailchimp for you.
100% Open Source with No Vendor Lock-In
Mailchimp is proprietary software. Your templates, your contact data, and your sending reputation are locked inside their platform. If you want to leave, you can export your contact list, but that’s about it.
Keila is different. You can move away from Keila Cloud at any time - and even self-host the exact same software on your own infrastructure. Your data is fully exportable, your templates are portable, and there’s no proprietary format holding you back. Your data is always yours.
Keila is 100% open source and all code is publicly available on GitHub. You can inspect it, audit it, and contribute to it.
Fully EU-Hosted, Privacy-Friendly, and Ethical
Keila Cloud runs entirely on European infrastructure in Germany and France. Your data and your subscribers’ data is subject to European privacy law only.
Keila gives you all the email analytics you expect, with click and open tracking - but unlike Mailchimp, it only takes a single click to turn tracking off entirely. You decide how much data you collect.
Mailchimp is owned by Intuit, a US corporation that has been accused of “using lobbying and dark pattern customer tricks” by ProPublica. Even with data processing agreements in place, using Mailchimp means sending your subscribers’ personal data to the United States. If ethical business practices, data sovereignty, and user privacy are important to you, Keila is the safer choice.
Read more about Keila’s analytics and privacy options.
The More Affordable Option
Mailchimp can quickly get expensive and their pricing can be confusing. Their Standard plan starts at €18/month - and that’s for just 500 contacts. Costs increase steeply as your list grows.
Keila’s pricing is straightforward: you pay for how many emails you send. If you have 2,000 contacts and send one newsletter per month, Mailchimp charges you €53. Keila? €8.
Every Keila plan includes all features. There are no surprise costs. Segmentation, custom fields, the API, Liquid templating, MJML support - it’s all included from the start.
Here is a price comparison between Keila and Mailchimp Standard for someone who sends one newsletter per month (data from April 2026):
| Contacts | Keila | Mailchimp | Savings with Keila |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | €8 | €18 | 55% |
| 1,000 | €8 | €40 | 80% |
| 2,000 | €8 | €53 | 85% |
| 5,000 | €16 | €87 | 82% |
| 10,000 | €32 | €118 | 73% |
| 50,000 | €64 | €391 | 84% |
Even if you send multiple newsletters per month, Keila remains significantly cheaper at every tier.
Why Does Keila Cost Money When Mailchimp Has a Free Plan?
Mailchimp’s free plan exists to get you in the door. It comes with Mailchimp branding on your emails, limited support, and feature restrictions that push you toward the more expensive options.
Keila is built by a small team with no outside investors. Subscriptions are how we fund development, pay for infrastructure, and keep the project sustainable. And while we don’t have a free plan, we have something even better: because Keila is open source, you can always run Keila yourself. That’s something Mailchimp cannot offer.
Powerful Features Without the Complexity
Keila is built to do email newsletters well, without trying to be an all-in-one marketing platform. You get everything you need to run a professional newsletter:
- Multiple email editors - Mailchimp pushes you toward their one
drag-and-drop builder. Keila lets you work the way you prefer:
- A visual block editor with multi-column layouts
- A Markdown editor, with or without WYSIWYG
- Full MJML support for pixel-perfect responsive designs
- Plain text for newsletters that don’t need HTML
- Emails that just work - No matter which editor you choose, Keila’s base templates ensure your emails render correctly across Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, mobile, and desktop.
- Powerful segmentation - A visual segment editor and a segment query language for complex cases. Mailchimp locks advanced segmentation behind their more expensive plans.
- A form builder with custom fields, captcha protection, and double opt-in to protect your list from bots.
- Liquid templates - The same template language used by Shopify, for dynamic personalization with custom data.
- A fully-featured API for integrating Keila with your existing tools.
Read more about Keila’s editor options.
Support from Real Humans
Mailchimp’s support quality depends heavily on how much you pay. With Keila, you get personal support regardless of your plan. We’ll help you set up your template, embed forms into your website, debug deliverability issues, or troubleshoot your MJML layout. We respond quickly and we actually care about solving your problem. And if you prefer, we’re always happy to hop on a quick call with you to make sure things go smoothly.
Where Mailchimp (Still) Has More
We believe in being honest, so let’s be clear: there are some areas where Mailchimp currently has an edge over Keila.
- Marketing automations - Mailchimp has mature automation workflows (welcome series, abandoned cart emails, etc.). Keila’s automation features are still in development.
- A/B testing - Mailchimp offers subject line and content A/B tests. This is on Keila’s roadmap but not yet available.
- Ready-to-use third-party integrations - Mailchimp integrates natively with hundreds of tools. Keila offers a full API and supports Zapier, but the integration ecosystem is smaller.
If you need these features, Mailchimp may still be the right choice for you today - but not for long! We’re constantly working on bringing new features to Keila. See what’s coming next on our public roadmap.