---
title: "Import your Mailchimp lists and subscribers"
description: "Bring your Mailchimp lists, subscribers and unsubscribes across with one API key. Every list becomes an audience and every subscriber a contact."
url: "https://openemail.uk/features/switch-from-mailchimp"
---

[Developers](https://openemail.uk/developers/features.md#migration)

# Move from Mailchimp Your lists, brought across with one key.

Paste a Mailchimp API key under Migrations → From a provider. Every list becomes an audience, every subscribed member a contact, and unsubscribed addresses go on Blocked addresses.

[Open mail](https://openemail.uk/mail/inbox) [Get Started](https://openemail.uk/signup.md)[Developer features](https://openemail.uk/developers/features.md)

In short

## How does a Mailchimp import work?

OpenEmail reads your Mailchimp account with an API key and brings your lists across. Each list becomes an audience with its subscribed members as contacts, and unsubscribed and cleaned addresses go on Blocked addresses as unsubscribes and bounces.

How it works

## One key, erased afterwards

Use a Mailchimp API key, the kind that ends in its data centre, such as -us6. It is held encrypted only while the import runs, and erased when it finishes, fails or is cancelled.

## Templates arrive as drafts

The editable sections of your own Mailchimp templates arrive as unpublished drafts, ready for you to finish and publish.

## A report to work from

The report counts what was brought across, lists your domains to add here and is kept under History.

What you get

## In the product today

Unsubscribes kept

Unsubscribed addresses arrive on Blocked addresses as unsubscribes, and cleaned ones as bounces.

Safe to run twice

Running the import a second time duplicates nothing.

From code as well

The import runs over the REST API as POST /provider-imports, in the SDK as providerImports.create, and on the command line as openemail provider-imports create with --provider-key.

Good practice

## Getting the most out of it

1. 01
   
   Finish each draft
   
   Open each template draft, lay it out and give it a subject, then publish it.
2. 02
   
   Use the domain list as a checklist
   
   The report names each of your domains, ready to add here one at a time.
3. 03
   
   Revoke the key afterwards
   
   OpenEmail erases its copy when the import ends, so revoke the key at Mailchimp too once you are done.

Questions

## Asked often

Keep going

## Works well with

Audiences

Named lists of your contacts, filled by hand or from a CSV file, to send to and to watch grow.

Bring your old mailbox

Bring the mail you already have: a Google Takeout export from Gmail, or an .mbox file from Apple Mail, Thunderbird and most desktop apps, threaded and dated as it was.

Start

## Your domain, your mail.

Point a domain at OpenEmail and read it in a mailbox built around it. The free plan covers one domain.

[Open mail](https://openemail.uk/mail/inbox) [Get Started](https://openemail.uk/signup.md)[Read the reference](https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/developers/switch-from-mailchimp.md)