Leave the contact tax behind. Keep everything that matters.
Audiences, tags, custom fields and unsubscribes all export cleanly from Mailchimp. Journeys are rebuilt — as they are on any platform move — and the common ones are templated. Most teams are fully switched inside a week.
25,000 contacts, 100,000 emails/month · Typical migration: 3–5 days of work, over 1–2 weeks
Migrating from Mailchimp to Bluey takes most teams three to five working days of actual effort spread over a week or two. Contacts, tags, custom fields, groups and your unsubscribe list all export as CSV and import directly. Customer Journeys have to be rebuilt because no two platforms model branching identically, but the standard ones — welcome, abandoned cart, win-back — are templated. The order matters more than the speed: authenticate your domain first, import suppressions before contacts, run both platforms in parallel on split audiences for a week, then ramp volume starting with your most engaged segment. At 25,000 contacts sending 100,000 emails a month, that is about $270 on Mailchimp Standard against $36 on Bluey Grow.
What transfers, and what you rebuild
Stated up front, because finding out mid-migration is how a two-day job becomes a two-week one.
| What | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts & email addresses | Transfers | Standard CSV export from Mailchimp's audience screen imports directly. |
| Tags & groups | Transfers | Tags map to Bluey tags; groups become segments on the same underlying fields. |
| Custom fields (merge tags) | Transfers | Merge fields map to Bluey custom fields. Check date formats after import. |
| Unsubscribes & bounces | Transfers | Export from the Unsubscribed and Cleaned views. Import these first, before contacts. |
| Signup forms | Rebuild | Rebuilt in Bluey, which usually takes minutes. Update the embed code on your site. |
| Email templates | Partial | Export HTML and import into Bluey's composer. Re-check mobile rendering afterwards. |
| Customer Journeys | Rebuild | No automation transfers between platforms. Welcome, cart and win-back flows are templated in Bluey. |
| Campaign reports | Rebuild | Historical reporting stays in Mailchimp. Export any numbers you need for the record before you cancel. |
| Landing pages | Rebuild | Rebuild in Bluey, or keep them on your own site and point the forms at Bluey. |
The migration plan, in order
- 1Day 1 — before any sendAuthenticate your sending domainPublish SPF, DKIM and, if you use one, DMARC records for the domain you will send from. Gmail and Yahoo have required authentication and one-click unsubscribe from bulk senders since February 2024, and an unauthenticated first send from a new platform is the fastest route to the spam folder. This is a DNS change and takes about fifteen minutes; allow up to a few hours for propagation.
- 2Day 1Export everything from Mailchimp firstExport your audience, then separately export the Unsubscribed and Cleaned views — those are your suppressions and they do not come with the main audience export. Also export any campaign reports you want to keep, because access ends when the account closes.
- 3Day 1Import suppressions, then contactsImport unsubscribes and bounces into Bluey before you import subscribers. Doing it in this order means an opted-out contact is suppressed the moment they arrive, rather than briefly mailable.
- 4Day 2Rebuild your two or three flows that matterMost Mailchimp accounts have a handful of journeys and one or two doing nearly all the work. Rebuild those first and set them live; the long tail can wait or be dropped entirely. Bluey templates the welcome series, abandoned cart and win-back flows.
- 5Day 2–3Move forms and templatesRebuild signup forms in Bluey and swap the embed code on your site. Export template HTML from Mailchimp and import it, then send yourself a test and check rendering on mobile — Mailchimp templates often carry markup that needs a tidy after import.
- 6Week 1–2Run Bluey and Mailchimp in parallelSplit the audience rather than duplicating it: send to one segment from Bluey and leave the rest on Mailchimp. You get a like-for-like comparison of delivery, engagement and cost on your own data, and nobody receives the same campaign twice. Do not run both against the same contacts — that is the one way to make a careful migration look sloppy to your readers.
- 7Week 2 — graduallyRamp volume rather than switching itStart with your most engaged segment — people who opened or clicked in the last 30 days — and increase volume over several days. Receiving servers judge a new sending pattern partly on engagement, so leading with your best contacts builds reputation, while leading with your whole list including two-year-dormant addresses damages it. If you were on a dedicated IP, treat the new one as cold and warm it deliberately.
- 8Week 3Downgrade before you cancelDo not cancel Mailchimp the day you finish. Downgrade to the free tier so you keep access to historical reports for a month while you confirm everything is running, then close the account.
Mistakes people make leaving Mailchimp
Each of these is recoverable, and each is much cheaper to avoid than to fix.
Migration FAQ
How long does migrating from Mailchimp actually take?
Three to five days of real work for most teams, spread across a week or two so the deliverability ramp is not rushed. The export and import are quick — usually an afternoon. Rebuilding journeys and forms is the bulk of it, and running in parallel is what stretches the calendar, deliberately.
Will I lose my automations?
You will rebuild them. No platform imports another platform's automations, because branching, timing and conditions are modelled differently everywhere. In practice most accounts have two or three flows carrying nearly all the value, and Bluey templates the common ones, so this is usually a day rather than a week.
Will my deliverability suffer?
Not if you sequence it properly. Authenticate the domain before sending anything, import suppressions before contacts, drop long-dormant addresses rather than carrying them across, and ramp volume starting with your most engaged segment. Migrations that damage reputation almost always skipped one of those four.
Can I keep my Mailchimp templates?
Export the HTML and import it into Bluey's composer. It generally comes across, but Mailchimp templates carry a fair amount of platform-specific markup, so send yourself a test and check it on a phone before you send to anyone else.
How much will I save?
At 25,000 contacts sending 100,000 emails a month, roughly $270 on Mailchimp Standard against $36 on Bluey Grow. The gap widens with list size, because Mailchimp bills for stored contacts and Bluey bills for emails sent — so a large list you email occasionally is where the difference is largest.
Should I cancel Mailchimp straight away?
No. Downgrade to free and keep it for a month so you retain historical reports and have somewhere to fall back to if something is not right. Cancel once you have run a full billing cycle on Bluey without surprises.
Keep exploring
Run both in parallel. Then decide.
Seven days of full access, no credit card. Import a segment, send from Bluey while Mailchimp handles the rest, and compare delivery and cost on your own data before you move the domain.