Mailchimp → Klaviyo

Catalog plan outline

General guidance from the Afterstack catalog for Mailchimp → Klaviyo. Not Mailchimp or Klaviyo vendor documentation.

Migration friendliness

Mailchimp 6/10 · Klaviyo 6/10

Speed to live

Mailchimp 8/10 · Klaviyo 7/10

Catalog migration difficulty

Mailchimp low · Klaviyo medium

Data to export from Mailchimp

• synced email and calendar links
• workflow rules
• saved reports
• campaign and automation records
• AI assistant configuration
• records for the catalog use cases: automation, lifecycle

How the catalogs differ

• Neither product is flagged for custom objects. Keep the object list short.
• Klaviyo adds catalog flags Mailchimp does not have: installed marketplace apps.
• Mailchimp is flagged with an open API, which is the export path to test.
• Klaviyo is flagged with an open API for the load.
• Mailchimp is cataloged as a fit for: SMB email.
• Klaviyo is cataloged as a fit for: Ecommerce and retail.

Phases

1. Export

   Take Mailchimp as the source of truth for this pair. Export synced email and calendar links; workflow rules; saved reports; campaign and automation records; AI assistant configuration; records for the catalog use cases: automation, lifecycle. The SMB email incumbent — audiences, campaigns, and a friendly on-ramp.

2. Map

   Load into Klaviyo only after the field map is written down. Commerce-native email and SMS — the Mailchimp successor for stores. Neither product is flagged for custom objects. Keep the object list short.

3. Prove a sample

   Klaviyo scores 7/10 on speed to live and 6/10 on migration friendliness. Run one sample load and one report the team already uses in Mailchimp before a full cutover.

4. Cut over

   Mailchimp scores 6/10 on migration friendliness and is marked low difficulty in the catalog. Keep Mailchimp readable until the team is working in Klaviyo. Mailchimp is how millions of SMBs still send email. It is an incumbent at a different altitude than Marketo. AI writing exists; the product is still campaigns and audiences. Teams leave it for Klaviyo-style commerce or AI-native content ops.

Mailchimp to Klaviyo: what the vendor docs actually cover

Linked sentences come from vendor documentation opened for this page. Everything else is general guidance, not Mailchimp or Klaviyo vendor documentation. This section does not move data and does not change the catalog outline above.

What to export from Mailchimp

Mailchimp's paid Essentials, Standard, and Premium dollar amounts did not render on the marketing pricing page opened on 2026-10-12. A stray 'starts at 0' was a render failure, not a price, and it is not used. What did render: a free plan for audiences under 250 contacts. Free caps sends at 500 emails a month or 250 a day, with 1 seat, 1 audience, and email support for the first 30 days. A feature table, read as Premium, Standard, Essentials, then Free, shows monthly sends at 15 times, 12 times, and 10 times contacts versus the free cap, users at unlimited, 5, 3, and 1, audiences at unlimited, 5, 3, and 1, and flows at up to 200 steps, 200 steps, 4 steps, and not included. A 14-day trial of Standard or Essentials requires a card, according to the trial footnote. A nonprofit discount of 15 percent is stated. Pay-as-you-go email credits exist. Above 200,000 contacts the page points at a high-volume conversation. A sentence about customer success for custom plans spending at least $299 a month is a service threshold, not a plan price. ROI lines and rank claims on the page are not used. The catalog's free plan matches the free row. The export article that was actually read is the per-contact export: from a profile, Actions, Export. It produces a CSV folder for that person, covering emails, opens, clicks, list fields, SMS, events, surveys, appointments, and inbox, scoped to an audience. It is a GDPR-style contact export, not a one-shot dump of the whole audience. The URLs for exporting an audience and for exporting a list or segment returned 404 and are not sources.

• Mailchimp marketing pricing — checked 2026-10-12
• Mailchimp export a contact — checked 2026-10-12

How Klaviyo imports

A Klaviyo article that describes importing a Mailchimp audience was not opened. Searches landed on unrelated help, including list IDs, a never-engaged segment, and a segments overview. Those are not import docs and are not cited. What was opened is Klaviyo's pricing page. It shows a free plan up to 250 profiles, 500 emails a month, five dollars of mobile messages a month, and five dollars of Composer usage a month. A calculator-style total of one dollar appeared in the capture. That one dollar is not treated as a plan price. The catalog's free plan and zero starting price match the free row's existence, not a $1 tier. Because the import article is missing, this pair does not claim Klaviyo maps Mailchimp merge tags, automations, or templates.

• Klaviyo pricing — checked 2026-10-12

Object and field mapping

• A Mailchimp audience is the conceptual source for a Klaviyo list or set of profiles. No Klaviyo import article was opened, so the button is unnamed.
• Mailchimp contacts under the per-profile export are one person at a time. That job does not scale to a cutover by itself.
• Mailchimp merge fields would become Klaviyo profile properties only if an import article says so. None was read.
• Mailchimp flows, including the four-step Essentials cap versus the 200-step higher rows, are automation design. They are not rows in the contact CSV.
• Mailchimp campaigns and templates have no landing object in the Klaviyo pricing page.
• Klaviyo's 250-profile free plan is a destination limit for a test, similar in headcount to Mailchimp's 250-contact free plan, and it is not a mapping.

What will not carry over

• A full-audience Mailchimp file from the article that 404'd. Only the per-contact export was read.
• Paid Mailchimp dollar amounts. They did not render.
• The $299 customer-success threshold, which is not a list price.
• Flow steps, templates, and brand settings.
• A documented Klaviyo importer for Mailchimp. The likely articles were the wrong ones.
• A one-dollar Klaviyo plan. The figure looked like a calculator total.

Cutover checklist

1. Quote Mailchimp's free caps and the feature multiples. Do not invent Essentials, Standard, or Premium dollars.
2. Use the per-contact export only for a GDPR-style sample, and say that is what the article is.
3. Do not cite the 404 audience-export URLs.
4. On Klaviyo, record the free plan's 250 profiles, 500 emails, and the two five-dollar usage allowances.
5. Discard the one-dollar calculator total.
6. Keep Mailchimp sending until a real import article is in hand.
7. Ignore ROI and rank slogans on the pricing page.
8. Tell stakeholders this pair has a price-page read and a per-contact export, not a migration guide.

Common pitfalls

• Filling in Mailchimp's missing paid prices from memory or from a third-party blog.
• Running the per-contact export hundreds of times and calling it an audience export.
• Citing a Klaviyo segment article as the import.
• Treating $299 a month of spend as the Premium price.
• Treating $1 as Klaviyo's price.

Related catalog pages

• What should replace Mailchimp? — Switch narrative
• Klaviyo product page — Commerce-native email and SMS — the Mailchimp successor for stores.
• Klaviyo vs Mailchimp — Head-to-head already in the catalog
• Marketing category — Catalog hub for this category