Migrate from Mailchimp to utobo Email
Your audience, your templates and your transactional email — moved in an afternoon, with unsubscribes preserved. Contacts are billed per contact with unlimited sends, and transactional email is part of the same platform instead of a separate add-on.
About an afternoon for a typical list; longer if you have many automations to rebuild.
What stays the same
- Your sending domain and from addresses
- Your email content — paste your HTML into the code editor
- Your contacts, lists, tags and unsubscribes (CSV import)
- Your reporting history — it stays in Mailchimp, so keep read-only access
The steps, from Mailchimp to utobo Email
- 1
Export your audience from Mailchimp
Export each audience as a CSV. Include the fields you use (name, custom fields, tags) and export unsubscribed and cleaned (bounced) addresses too — you want those preserved, not re-mailed.
- 2
Create your utobo Email account and verify your domain
Sign up at email.utobo.com, then go to Account → Domains and add the one DKIM record utobo gives you at your DNS provider. utobo verifies it automatically and keeps SPF, DKIM and DMARC aligned — no MX change is needed just to send.
- 3
Import contacts
Go to Contacts → Import and upload the CSV. The only required column is email; name and custom fields come along. Duplicates and invalid addresses are skipped automatically, and imported unsubscribes stay unsubscribed. Then create your lists (Lists → New List) and add the imported contacts.
- 4
Rebuild templates
In the template editor, choose Code Editor and paste your existing HTML, or let the AI writer draft fresh versions. Personalize with merge tags such as {{name}} and {{email}}. A compliant unsubscribe link is added to every marketing campaign automatically.
- 5
Recreate automations
Rebuild welcome series and follow-ups as drip sequences. Describe the goal and the AI drafts the sequence, including different follow-ups for openers and non-openers, then edit and enable it.
- 6
Move transactional email (if you used Mailchimp Transactional / Mandrill)
Send through the REST API with the Node.js SDK, or keep your existing mailer and change only the SMTP settings:
Host: smtp.mail.utobo.com Port: 587 (STARTTLS) or 465 (implicit TLS) Username: apikey (the literal word "apikey") Password: your utobo Email API key (av_live_…) - 7
Send a test, warm up, cut over
Send test campaigns and transactional messages, check the delivery logs, then move volume over in steps — warm up your sending rather than switching everything on day one. Keep Mailchimp read-only for its reporting history.
What does not migrate
So there are no surprises on cut-over day.
- Campaign reports and analytics history (they stay in Mailchimp)
- Mailchimp-specific features such as its landing pages, websites and Creative Assistant
- Automations move as rebuilt sequences, not as an import
Common questions
Ready to leave Mailchimp?
Migration help is free — tell us your list size and setup and we will plan the move with you.