Question 1

What is a Mailchimp alternative?

Accepted Answer

Any other route to getting your marketing email out. That covers rival platforms such as Klaviyo, Constant Contact and MailerLite, and it also covers managed services like this one, where somebody plans, writes and sends the campaigns for you rather than handing you an account and a template gallery.

Question 2

How is Cascadia different from Mailchimp?

Accepted Answer

Mailchimp sells you software and a contact tier, and the software is good. We sell you the month of work that has to happen inside software like it. The calendar, the copy, the build, the segmentation, the send and the report are ours to get right and ours to explain when they slip. Nobody on your side logs into anything.

Question 3

How does the pricing compare?

Accepted Answer

Not closely, and not in our favour. Mailchimp prices four marketing plans on how many contacts you store, and for a list of a few thousand that is a small monthly software bill. We start at $700 a month. The difference is not the software. It is that ours includes somebody writing and sending two campaigns a month. If you already have that person, our price will look absurd and you should believe your own arithmetic.

Question 4

Is Mailchimp cheaper than this?

Accepted Answer

Yes, at every list size either of us serves, and it is not close. They also run a free plan carrying 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. We have no answer to that and would tell you so before you asked. What we are actually priced against is the cost of a person spending a day a month on your email, not the cost of a software subscription.

Question 5

What is not included in a Mailchimp plan?

Accepted Answer

The work, mostly. Their professional services are listed separately as Hire an Expert, personalized onboarding and customer success management, and their own documentation puts Customer Success on custom plans spending at least $299 a month. Phone support sits on Premium. Transactional email is a paid add-on available on Standard and Premium. None of it is hidden. It is simply priced apart from the plan.

Question 6

How does billing on sends differ from billing on contacts?

Accepted Answer

Mailchimp sets your price from your stored contact total and then caps monthly sending at a multiple of it: ten times on Essentials, twelve on Standard, fifteen on Premium. Pass your contact limit and an additional charge appears on the bill. We price the emails you actually send, so a list that doubles does not double the invoice and nothing in our pricing quietly discourages you from growing it.

Question 7

Do I need a dedicated IP?

Accepted Answer

On the Growth plan you get one, warmed properly rather than simply switched on. On the standard plan your mail is still isolated behind your own authenticated sending domain with a reputation record of its own. In our view most senders under a few hundred thousand emails a month do not need a dedicated IP, because one without enough volume behind it warms slowly and can perform worse than a well run shared pool.

Question 8

Can you move me off Mailchimp without losing anything?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The new sending path gets built and tested while your Mailchimp account is still running, and nothing switches until campaigns are landing. Contacts, templates and reporting history all come across. Your account stays open until you are satisfied, and then you close it.

Question 9

Will campaigns go out during warmup?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Warming governs how fast volume climbs on the new domain, not whether anything sends. The first campaign normally goes out in week three, at a size the domain can carry, and you will be told where you are in the ramp rather than left to work it out.

Question 10

What if my list has gone stale?

Accepted Answer

Then a re-engagement send goes first and you will be told so plainly. Mailing a list that has not heard from you in two years is one of the fastest ways to damage a domain that was perfectly healthy. We screen what came across, take out what is likely to bounce or complain, file delisting requests anywhere you have been flagged, and build volume back from there. Weeks rather than days, and moving to different software does not fix it on its own.

Question 11

Does this replace Mailchimp or sit on top of it?

Accepted Answer

It replaces it. We run the sending on our own managed stack rather than a reseller account on somebody else's, which leaves no subscription in your name, no seat count to watch and no second invoice to reconcile against the first.

Question 12

Can I keep my existing templates?

Accepted Answer

The design, yes. Templates get rebuilt on the new path to match your site rather than exported wholesale, and every one is previewed on phone and desktop, in light mode and dark, before anything is scheduled. The ones that break in that check are usually the oldest.

Question 13

Who owns my subscriber list?

Accepted Answer

You do. Ask for a full export whenever you want one and it comes back the same week, in a standard format, at no cost. Unsubscribes and complaint records come with it, which matters more than people expect: a list that starts fresh somewhere else and mails addresses it already knew were dead spends the warmup it just paid for.

Question 14

Do you write the copy, or do I?

Accepted Answer

We write it, and it is included at both tiers. What we need from you is the offer, the date, and anything you know you want said. The subject line, the body and the call to action come from us as a draft, and nothing in it is fixed. Some clients prefer to supply their own copy, and that works perfectly well too.

Question 15

How quickly can the first campaign go out?

Accepted Answer

Two to three weeks is typical. Most of the first week goes on authenticating and warming the domain, which is not a stage worth rushing to save a few days. The template build and the list import run alongside it, and week three is normally the first send.

Question 16

What if I want to leave?

Accepted Answer

Thirty days notice ends it and everything is portable. The DNS records sat on your own domain throughout, because they were always yours. Contacts, templates and reporting history come back in a standard format, and we will tell you what to point things at next so the sending does not simply stop. If the honest answer is a Mailchimp account, we will say so.

A Mailchimp Alternative For People Who Want The Campaigns Sent For Them

The account is open and the sending stopped

You are billed for contacts, not for sending

The help is real, and it is sold separately

Cascadia

Without Cascadia

Campaigns planned, written and built for you

Authentication records published and rechecked when DNS changes

The send goes out whether or not your week allowed for it

Priced on emails sent, not on contacts stored

Segments built for each campaign by somebody who read the numbers

Subject lines written for you and tested against your own history

Inbox placement tested with seed sends before the full list

Stale and unengaged addresses removed on a schedule

A written monthly report, not a dashboard to go and read

One invoice covering the software, the sending and the work

Where Mailchimp fits

Where Cascadia goes further

Where Mailchimp is strong

Where our service is stronger

Moving your email marketing off Mailchimp in four steps

We read the account and the list before touching either

We publish the records and stand up your sending domain

The list comes across and the templates get built

The first campaign goes out and the rhythm starts

Don't Take Our Word For It

Four campaigns, then nine months of nothing

The bill grew with the list and the sending did not

Campaigns written and sent each month

Thousand emails inside the standard monthly price

Weeks before your first campaign

Mailchimp alternative and managed email marketing FAQs

Ask Us Anything