MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress

by Danny van Kooten

Description

Allowing your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter should be easy. With this plugin, it finally is.

This plugins helps you grow your email list in Mailchimp. You can use it to create good looking and accessible sign-up forms or integrate with any other existing form on your WordPress site, like your contact, comment or checkout form.

Some (but not all) features

Connect with your Mailchimp account in seconds.
Sign-up forms which are good looking, user-friendly and mobile optimized. You have complete control over the form fields and can build your forms using native HTML.
Seamless integration with the following plugins:
- WordPress Comment Form
- WordPress Registration Form
- Contact Form 7
- WooCommerce
- Gravity Forms
- Ninja Forms 3
- WPForms
- BuddyPress
- MemberPress
- Events Manager
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Give
- UltimateMember
- HTML Forms
- AffiliateWP
Is the plugin you want to integrate with not listed above? You can probably still use our custom integration feature. Alternatively, the plugin comes with a PHP API to programmatically add a new subscriber to Mailchimp.
Mailchimp for WordPress Premium: Send your WooCommerce orders to Mailchimp so you can see exactly what each subscriber purchased and how much revenue your email campaigns are generating.
A multitude of available add-on plugins and integrations:
Well documented through our knowledge base.
Developer friendly. For some inspiration, check out our repository of example code snippets.
Ready for PHP 8.5, but backwards-compatible all the way down to PHP 7.4.

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is a newsletter service that allows you to send out email campaigns to a list of email subscribers. It is free for lists with up to 500 email subscribers, which is why it is the newsletter-service of choice for thousands of small businesses across the globe.

If you are not yet using Mailchimp, creating an account is 100% free and only takes you about 30 seconds.

Support

If you need some help in setting up the plugin, you have various options:

Search through our knowledge base.
Open a topic in the WordPress.org plugin support forums
If you’re a premium user, send an email to the email address listed inside the plugin.

Translations

You can help translate this plugin into your language using your WordPress.org account.

Development

This plugin is being developed on GitHub. If you want to collaborate, please look at ibericode/mailchimp-for-wordpress.

Customizing the plugin

The plugin provides various filter and action hooks that allow you to modify or extend the default behavior. We’re also maintaining a collection of sample code snippets.

Installation

Installing the plugin

In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > New Plugin, search for Mailchimp for WordPress and click “Install now“
Alternatively, download the plugin and upload the contents of mailchimp-for-wp.zip to your plugins directory, which usually is /wp-content/plugins/.
Activate the plugin
Set your API key in the plugin settings.

Configuring Sign-Up Form(s)

Go to Mailchimp for WP > Forms
Select at least one list to subscribe people to.
(Optional) Add more fields to your form.
Embed a sign-up form in pages or posts using the [mc4wp_form] shortcode or Gutenberg block.
Show a sign-up form in your widget areas using the “Mailchimp Sign-Up Form” widget.
Show a sign-up form from your theme files by using the mc4wp_show_form() PHP function.

Need help?

Please take a look at the MC4WP knowledge base first.

If you can’t find an answer there, please look through the plugin support forums or start your own topic.

Screenshots

Example sign-up form in the TwentyTwenty theme.
Example sign-up integration with a contact form.
Settings page to connect with your Mailchimp account.
Overview of sign-up integrations.
Overview of sign-up forms.
Settings page to configure an integration.
Page where you edit your sign-up forms.
Page where you modify your form messages.
Settings page for e-commerce integration with Mailchimp. Requires Mailchimp for WordPress Premium.

Faq

Where can I find my Mailchimp API key?

You can find your API key here

How to display a form in posts or pages?

Use the [mc4wp_form] shortcode or the Gutenberg block.

How to display a form in widget areas like the sidebar or footer?

Go to Appearance > Widgets and use the Mailchimp for WP Form widget that comes with the plugin.

How to add a sign-up checkbox to my Contact Form 7 form?

Use the following shortcode in your CF7 form to display a newsletter sign-up checkbox.

[mc4wp_checkbox "Subscribe to our newsletter?"]

Our knowledge base has more information on connecting Contact Form 7 and Mailchimp.

The form shows a success message but subscribers are not added to my list(s)?

If the form shows a success message, there is no doubt that the sign-up request succeeded. Mailchimp could have a slight delay sending the confirmation email though. Please check again in a few minutes (sometimes hours) and don’t forget to check your junk folder too.

When you have double opt-in disabled, new subscribers will be seen as imports by Mailchimp. They will not show up in your daily digest emails or statistics. We always recommend leaving double opt-in enabled.

How can I style the sign-up form?

You can use custom CSS to style the sign-up form if you do not like the themes that come with the plugin. The following selectors can be used to target the various form elements.

.mc4wp-form { ... } /* the form element */
.mc4wp-form p { ... } /* form paragraphs */
.mc4wp-form label { ... } /* labels */
.mc4wp-form input { ... } /* input fields */
.mc4wp-form input[type="checkbox"] { ... } /* checkboxes */
.mc4wp-form input[type="submit"] { ... } /* submit button */
.mc4wp-alert { ... } /* success & error messages */
.mc4wp-success { ... } /* success message */
.mc4wp-error { ... } /* error messages */

You can add your custom CSS to your theme stylesheet or (easier) by using a plugin like Simple Custom CSS

How do I show a sign-up form in a pop-up?

We recommend the Boxzilla pop-up plugin for this. You can use the form shortcode in your pop-up box to show a sign-up form.

How do I subscribe from my WooCommerce checkout form?

You can use our WooCommerce integration for that. How to subscribe to Mailchimp from the WooCommerce checkout form.

How to connect my WooCommerce store with Mailchimp?

You can find instructions for connecting your WooCommerce store with Mailchimp on our website.

I’m getting an “HTTP Error” when trying to connect to Mailchimp.

the “HTTP Error” type is usually because of a firewall configuration issue or outdated software on your web server.

Please contact your webhost and ask them to check the following:

Whether remote HTTP requests to https://api.mailchimp.com are allowed.
Whether cURL and the PHP-cURL extension are installed and updated to a recent version.

My question is not listed here.

Please search through our knowledge base.

Reviews

Excellent Mailchimp Integration Plugin for WordPress Websites

By singhamritwp on May 21, 2026

Mailchimp for WordPress is a powerful and user-friendly plugin that makes email marketing integration seamless for WordPress websites. It offers easy Mailchimp connectivity, customizable subscription forms, and smooth integration with popular plugins like WooCommerce and Contact Form 7. The plugin is lightweight, beginner-friendly, and highly effective for growing email subscriber lists professionally.

Great Plugin & Support

By James (James Feaver) on April 16, 2026

I've been using this for a long time to add subscribers to Mailchimp both on a form and in the Woocommerce checkout. I recently encountered a problem experimenting with the Woocommerce block-based checkout and M4CWP support were great.

Highly recommended plugin.

Not Bad Option

By Reyna (reyna20) on April 8, 2026

Tried Mailchimp for WordPress for my forms. It connects fine and does the basic job. But the setup felt a bit confusing at times. Works ok overall, but could be simpler and smoother.

Exactly does What we needed

By Clark W (clarkkwilliams) on April 6, 2026

Simple, powerful, and exactly what we needed. Solved our problem without the usual headaches.

Good but Limited

By jesushillman on March 31, 2026

Works well for basic email setup & easy to connect with Mailchimp. UI is simple. But needs more flexibility in forms. Overall, a good plugin. tnx 👍

Simple Mailchimp Connect

By Bentomen (bentomen) on March 6, 2026

Good plugin for connecting Mailchimp with WP. Setup was pretty easy and forms started collecting emails without much hassle. UI is clean too. A few more design options would be nice, but overall works well.

Just Started Using This API

By 4mifix on February 28, 2026

I like it so far and will update this review as time goes on.

Great Customer Service

By psfcomunicacion on January 28, 2026

I talk with them and they help me adding functionalities to the plugin 🙂

Does What Says It Does

By queviaje on January 21, 2026

Like the title says, it does what it says it does and that is just what i need. Up to the moment, have had no issues and still working out what else I can do.
The plugin came with the template I bought and started using and it works.

Simple Email Connection

By Klarissa (klarissa3) on January 19, 2026

MC4WP makes connecting Mailchimp with WordPress very easy. It helps collect emails smoothly and works well without any setup hassle.

Changelog

4.12.6

Release date: May 26, 2026

Fix integrations losing runtime options like double opt-in when sign-up attempts are processed asynchronously. Thanks Jon Parker!
Fix Site Tracking Pixel setting not being saved when disabling it.
Improve accessibility of generated form fields by wrapping inputs in labels and using fieldsets for checkbox and radio fields.
Improve validation and sanitization of submitted form data.
Improve debug log safety by truncating overly long messages and improving email address obfuscation.

4.12.5

Release date: May 8, 2026

Fix fatal error on plugin activation in some cases when wp_rand() returns a value below 10 for the minute part. Thanks Tim Carr!

4.12.3

Release date: May 5, 2026

Improved Mailchimp Site Tracking Pixel support. Site is now automatically discovered or registered in Mailchimp when feature is enabled.
Sign-up attempts for integrations are now processed asynchronously (via a scheduled event).
Ensure mc4wp_refresh_mailchimp_lists is scheduled in site’s local timezone.
Added missing translator comments to all translatable strings.
General code hardening and minor improvements as reported by the Plugin Check tool.

4.12.2

Release date: Apr 20, 2026

Add Mailchimp Campaign Archive block and [mc4wp_campaigns] shortcode to show an archive Mailchimp email campaigns. Thanks to Faisal Ahammad!
WooCommerce: Allow “after email” position for sign-up checkbox when using Checkout Block.
WooCommerce: Detect use of Checkout Block and only show available positions.
Show warning when cron is behind schedule. Thanks to Faisal Ahammad!
Add preliminary support for Mailchimp Site Tracking Pixel. Thanks to Faisal Ahammad!

4.12.1

Release date: Mar 26, 2026

Supply a custom capability type to register_post_type for the mc4wp-form post type.
Limit allowed HTML in the various form messages to a safe subset on load (versus only on update).

View the full changelog on GitHub