Migrate from Mailchimp to your own Amazon SES

Before you start

What this migration actually involves

Leaving Mailchimp for your own SES is a bigger structural change than switching between two hosted providers: you take ownership of the sending infrastructure. That's the point — it's why the per-contact meter disappears — but it comes with two prerequisites worth naming up front. You need an AWS account with SES production access (SendOps automates the request, AWS approval takes a day or two), and you'll be sending from your own domain on a fresh SES path, so volume needs a warm-up ramp rather than a day-one blast.

In exchange, the math changes permanently. Mailchimp's pricing scales with your contact count; SendOps plans are flat and SES delivery is $0.10 per 1,000 emails. For the full side-by-side, see our Mailchimp comparison and how SendOps turns SES into a marketing platform.

Using Mandrill for transactional email? The same SES pipeline replaces it — transactional sends go through the SendOps API and your SES account alongside your marketing email, so you retire both Mailchimp subscriptions in one move.

The migration path

Seven honest steps — no magic importer

There is no one-click Mailchimp importer, from us or anyone. What there is: a CSV contact import, a clean concept mapping, and segment and workflow formats designed to be rebuilt fast. Contacts move in minutes; segments, journeys, and templates are rebuilds — honest ones, made quick by text-based formats a coding agent can draft.

1. 1

   Get an AWS account with SES production access

   This is the prerequisite Mailchimp never asked of you. SendOps sends through your own Amazon SES, so you need an AWS account, a verified sending domain, and SES production access (new SES accounts start in a sandbox limited to verified recipients). SendOps automates the production access request, but AWS approval can take a day or two — start here. Our step-by-step SES setup guide covers the whole thing. Amazon SES setup guide .

2. 2

   Provision SendOps in your AWS account

   Run the CloudFormation template. It takes about two minutes, provisions SendOps inside your AWS account, and picks up any existing SES configuration non-destructively. SendOps never holds your AWS keys — access works through STS and a scoped IAM role you control.

3. 3

   Export your audiences, import your contacts

   In Mailchimp, export each audience as CSV — including unsubscribed and cleaned contacts, so consent history and suppressions carry over. Import the CSVs into SendOps or push contacts through the API. Merge fields map to typed attributes on each contact. How contacts and segments work .

4. 4

   Rebuild tags and segments in SendQL

   Mailchimp tags and saved segments don't transfer automatically. Each one is rewritten as a SendQL segment — a query over contact attributes, events, and activities. Most Mailchimp segments are a handful of conditions and translate line for line; the ones built on engagement data can be rebuilt once SendOps starts collecting your send activity.

5. 5

   Rebuild Customer Journeys in SendFlow

   Journeys are rebuilt, not imported — no tool we know of imports them, and we won't claim ours does. SendFlow workflows are defined in a text DSL with a visual canvas, which makes the rebuild mostly transcription: welcome series, abandoned-flow follow-ups, and re-engagement journeys each map step for step. A coding agent can draft the SendFlow definitions from your journey descriptions for you to review. SendFlow workflows .

6. 6

   Rebuild your templates

   Mailchimp's drag-and-drop templates don't export to anything portable, so templates are rebuilt — either as React Email components (which SendOps compiles to SES-native Handlebars) or directly in Handlebars. Merge tags like *|FNAME|* become attribute references. Most teams use the move to consolidate years of near-duplicate campaign templates into a few well-structured ones.

7. 7

   Warm up, then cut over

   You're moving from Mailchimp's shared sending infrastructure to your own domain on SES, so mailbox providers see a new sending path. Ramp volume gradually — start with your most engaged subscribers and grow sends over a couple of weeks while watching bounce and complaint rates in SendOps. Keep Mailchimp active for the tail of the ramp, then cancel it. SES deliverability guide .

The win

Why the rebuild is worth it

The migration takes real work — a weekend for most setups, longer for journey-heavy ones. What you get back is permanent: