Every Wix site hits the same fork in the road. You've started collecting emails — from a signup form, a checkout, a booking — and now you need somewhere to send things. Wix offers a native Email Marketing app that lives inside the same dashboard as your site. The default alternative is Mailchimp, the best-known third-party email tool on the internet. Do you really need a second service when email is one click away in the dashboard you already use?
This article looks at what the built-in tool actually gives you, where it gives up ground to a dedicated platform, how Mailchimp's free plan math really works, and a decision guide so you can pick one without paying twice for the same job.
What Wix Email Marketing actually is
Wix Email Marketing is an app built by Wix and wired into your site. There's a free tier with a limited number of sends per month, and paid tiers that scale primarily with monthly email volume — current figures live on Wix's own pricing pages, since these numbers have shifted before. Crucially, it is a separate subscription from your website plan: you don't get it by upgrading hosting, and you don't need a hosting upgrade to use it.
The tool's real strength is the data plumbing. Your audience builds itself: signup forms feed the contact list automatically, and if you run a Wix Store or take bookings through Wix, your customers are already in there too. No CSV exports, no import mishaps, no reconciliation between two systems that should agree.
On top of that sits a campaign builder that pulls your logo, colors and fonts from the site so emails look like your brand without setup, plus AI-assisted copy for subject lines and body text. Campaign reports live next to your site analytics, which sounds trivial and is actually one of the most-used conveniences: you see email and site behavior in one place, in one login.
Where the built-in tool gives up ground
Honest review of the native app — including Wix's own documentation and third-party testing — shows the same shape: capable at the basics, thin at the edges.
- Automation depth. You can set up simple triggered emails, but multi-step journeys — the kind that react to what a subscriber clicks, browses or abandons — are limited compared to what dedicated platforms offer. Reviewers consistently flag this as the tool's biggest gap.
- No A/B testing. If you want to test two subject lines on half your list, that's a staple feature of dedicated email platforms and, historically, something Wix's native tool doesn't offer.
- Simpler segmentation. Tags and basic filters exist; behavioral and multi-condition segments — "visited pricing twice in seven days" — are where the tool's model stops.
- Ecosystem lock-in. The app only works with a Wix site. Your contacts can be exported if you ever move, but your campaigns and any automations get rebuilt somewhere else.
None of these are disqualifying for a small list that sends a newsletter and occasional promotions. They become real the moment email turns into a revenue system you depend on.
What Mailchimp brings to the table
Mailchimp is a mature, standalone email platform, and its free plan is the usual starting point. As of our most recent check, the free tier caps out at a few hundred contacts and around 1,000 email sends per month, with a single user seat, Mailchimp branding on your emails, basic templates and single-step automations. Mailchimp has tightened and adjusted those limits more than once over the years, so verify the current numbers on the Mailchimp pricing page before you rely on them.
The other structural difference is how price scales: Mailchimp charges primarily by contact count. A steady sending habit over a growing list can push your bill up even if nothing about your emails changes. Paid tiers start affordably — Essentials began around $13/mo at last check — but the curve bends upward as your audience grows.
What you get for that: multi-step journey automation with behavioral triggers, advanced segmentation, A/B testing on paid plans, landing pages, ad integrations, and a very long integrations catalog — including an official Mailchimp app in the Wix App Market, because the two are expected to be used together.
The two tools, side by side
| Wix Email Marketing | Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Inside your Wix dashboard | Separate app, connects to Wix |
| Contact sync | Automatic — forms, customers, bookings | Via the Wix app and synced forms |
| Free tier | Yes — limited monthly sends | Yes — a few hundred contacts, ~1,000 sends/mo |
| Pricing scales by | Monthly email volume | Contact count |
| Automation | Basic triggered emails | Multi-step behavioral journeys |
| A/B testing | Not offered | Yes (paid plans) |
| Works outside Wix | No — Wix only | Yes — portable to any platform |
Wix website pricing verified September 2026 — see the pricing breakdown. Email tool limits and prices are approximate as of our latest check; confirm with each provider before committing.
Which one should you pick?
The honest dividing line is what email has to do for you.
Stay built-in if your list is small-to-medium, your sending is a regular newsletter plus occasional promotions, and you have no revenue-critical automations yet. For most Wix sites, the native tool covers the first couple of years of email at effectively zero extra cost, with none of the setup friction — and "it's already here" is a legitimate feature. A tool you actually use beats a more powerful tool you configure once and abandon.
Reach for Mailchimp (or another dedicated platform) if automations make you money: welcome sequences, post-purchase follow-ups, browse-abandonment emails, segmented offers that differ by customer behavior. Ecommerce is the clearest case — a store whose emails drive a meaningful share of sales will outgrow Wix's native automation quickly. It's also the right call if you're already paying for Mailchimp for another channel, or if you want your email system to survive a future move away from Wix.
If email marketing is part of why you're evaluating Wix at all, the related question is which website plan you need — our free vs paid comparison covers what actually changes when you upgrade.
If you use both — or change your mind
Plenty of Wix owners run the native tool for newsletters and Mailchimp for automations. That's workable, with one rule: pick a single source of truth for contacts and install Mailchimp through the official Wix app so forms feed one list, not two half-updated ones. Two lists that drift apart is the failure mode to avoid.
And starting native is not a commitment. Contacts export as CSV from both tools, campaigns are easy to recreate, and migrating from the built-in app to a dedicated platform is a Saturday-morning job, not a rebuild. The cheap mistake is paying for advanced automation before you have anything that needs it.
Whatever you choose, the website side of the bill doesn't change — and it's the bigger fixed cost. The deals hub tracks every verified way to pay less for Wix this month, updated weekly.