All marketers would have heard of Mailchimp. After all, it is the first name that comes to mind when anyone’s into email newsletters.
Mailchimp is a top-rated email marketing service with great marketing and charming monkeyed aesthetics. However, due to Mailchimp’s steep subscription fees, many are looking towards its alternatives.
Mailchimp in a Nutshell
MailChimp is one of the biggest success stories in marketing software startups. After all, it is an all-around marketing software that is mature, well-featured, yet still easy to use. Thus, making this a great entry point for most businesses that are getting started with email marketing.
If all you want is email marketing, Mailchimp is a great option; the analytics are solid yet straightforward, and features are excellent at the outset and automation. That said, if you're an advanced digital marketer, you'll probably want to evaluate other tools. Also, with the high subscription prices and Mailchimp’s shocking breakup with Shopify, more and more are seeking alternatives to Mailchimp.
The following are some of the best Mailchimp alternatives you may want to explore.
1. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and was founded in 1995. Aka ‘The Helpful One’, Constant Contact spends a significant amount of time educating its clients via webinars and courses while working towards making the software easier to use.
A Quick Constant Contact Overview
It offers you list-building tools with a good variety of templates and images, contact management tools, tools you need for social media sharing and promotions, and plenty of functions to track your open and click-through rates. It works with popular WordPress plugins like OptinMonster, WPForms, and more.
Featuring an easy-to-use drag and drop editor, you can create professional email newsletters within minutes. You can also manage email lists, track email deliverability and open rates. Its email automation feature allows you to send welcome messages to new subscribers, trigger emails based on user behavior, and resend emails to non-openers automatically.
Find out more about Constant Contact here.
Why Constant Contact Over MailChimp?
Constant Contact allows you to create surveys and polls, donation pages for nonprofits, dynamic sign-up forms, and more. Unfortunately, there’s no free plan available, although there’s a one-month free trial available which you can cancel anytime within the month. Their paid plans are based on the number of contacts and allow unlimited emails a day.
Unlike Mailchimp, Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan. However, the best part about Constant Contact is their unmatched support with live chat, phone calls, email, community support, and a massive library of helpful resources. This feature alone makes it a worthy Mailchimp’s contender.
Starting Price: 30-day Free trial then $20/mo; unlimited monthly emails.
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2. Sendinblue
Founded in 2012, with its base in Paris, France, Sendinblue is a powerful email and SMS marketing service for businesses. It is a relatively newcomer on the newsletter scene yet is packed with powerful functionalities such as email newsletters, email marketing automation, SMS campaigns, a wide variety of integrations, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, social media ads, landing pages, live chat, and more.
A Quick Sendinblue Overview
Sendinblue shines in their personalized marketing automation feature that allows you to send unlimited emails to a targeted audience based on their behavior. Additionally, there are segmentation options available to help your business say the right thing to the right person and various templates to choose from for your transactional emails.
Overall, its email builder is easy to use and has excellent email deliverability performance to boost your marketing campaigns. Sendinblue has a free plan with unlimited contacts, which is fantastic but restricts you to send up to 300 emails per day, which can be frustrating for some. If you need more, you can look into their paid plans which are reasonably priced. Take note that all plans come with unlimited contacts storage which is impressive.
How Does Sendinblue Compare as a MailChimp Competitor?
Unlike Mailchimp, Sendinblue’s free plan allows you to send to unlimited contacts. Sendinblue excels in transactional emails and has a more advanced automation system in place. You can also send SMS at very reasonable rates, a feature not available with Mailchimp. That said, Mailchimp's template editor is still unbeatable.
All in all, if you’re looking for a simple interface with unique SMS marketing options, Sendinblue seems to be a solid choice for a MailChimp alternative.
Starting Price: Free; 300 emails per day, unlimited contacts.
3. Omnisend
Omnisend has been in the market since 2014. It’s a dedicated SMS and email marketing platform specialized in supporting eCommerce businesses. The company remains relatively lean, with offices only in the USA and Lithuania. Their goal isn’t global domination but rather to provide the right tool for the correct purpose.
A Quick Omnisend Overview
The key to understanding Omnisend is to keep in mind that they’re eCommerce-focused. That doesn’t mean selling a generic product to a niche segment. Everything about Omnisend showcases that, right down to templates and specialized features.
The basic system isn’t too different. You get the now-typical drag and drop features, mobile responsiveness, A/B testing, and more. However, Omnisend includes newer features that many competitors still lack. For example, gamification and reusable content blocks.
For a dedicated eCommerce supporting platform, you might be surprised that Omnisend does offer a free tier for businesses to try out. That makes it an attractive proposition, especially for smaller eCommerce outfits still feeling their way around.
How Does Omnisend Compare as a MailChimp Competitor?
Doubtless, many will be more familiar with the MailChimp brand. The reason, however, isn’t what you might believe. MailChimp is targeted mainly at the small business segment. Omnisend, comparatively, is aimed at the eCommerce crowd – somewhat more niche than MailChimp.
The tools and features included are skewed to that purpose very directly, making Omnisend a formidable weapon in the eCommerce marketer’s arsenal. Some examples are the dedicated product picker and discount codes for recovering abandoned cart potential customers.
Starting Price: Free; 500 emails per month, 250 contacts, 60 SMS, and 500 Web Pushes.
4. MailerLite
MailerLite is a relatively young Lithuanian email marketing solution provider. Another robust email marketing service, MailerLite, gives you a beginner-friendly email editor and pre-made email templates for different campaigns. It is simple and easy to use. Also, it has one of the best sets of email newsletter templates and allows you to create PDF brochures to be shared with your customers.
A Quick MailerLite Overview
You can use landing pages, pop-ups, or embedded signup forms to empower your marketing campaigns too. Customization and personalization options are aplenty, including a powerful website builder, email automation, integrations, and segmentation. Its built-in real-time reporting tools furnish you with the necessary information to help improve your campaigns.
MailerLite also has a free plan that allows you to send 12,000 emails per month to up to 1,000 subscribers. This capacity is a good enough figure, especially for freelancers and small businesses. However, if you want to send to an unlimited number of contacts, you’ll have to opt for the higher plan at $10 a month (you are still limited to 12,000 emails a month, though).
How Does MailerLite Compare as a MailChimp Competitor?
Unlike Mailchimp’s free plan, which comes with limited features, MailerLite’s free plan allows you to use most of its awesome features. That said, Mailchimp does better when it comes to reporting and tracking tools. In short, MailerLite is still an excellent tool for those who are more into sending bulk email campaigns and needing great email and landing page designs.
Starting Price: Free; 12,000 emails per month, 1,000 subscribers.
5. GetResponse
GetResponse is another email marketing and automation tool with more than 15 years of experience based in Poland. Available in 27 different languages, GetResponse is one of the best value-for-money MailChimp alternatives out there, with lots of customization options.
A Quick GetResponse Overview
Equipped with powerful email and template builders, along with a landing page creator, GetResponse offers email marketing, automation builder, webinars, social media ads, advanced segmentation options, a lead-nurturing CRM, and others. What’s more, it comes with flexible and robust integrations that allow you to connect to your favorite apps like WordPress, Magento, Slack, etc.
While Mailchimp has a free plan, GetResponse, unfortunately, doesn’t have one, although it does offer a free trial of 30 days for all its plans except for the highest MAX plan. No credit card is required, and you can cancel anytime within these 30 days.
How Does GetResponse Compare as an Alternative to MailChimp?
GetResponse takes the trophy against Mailchimp regarding its powerful email marketing automation that triggers certain sale conditions. If you rely a lot on webinars, GetResponse gets this done with no sweat at all, unlike most others. Don’t forget their Conversion funnel feature, which is unique to GetResponse that facilitates sales funnel creation. All these are beneficial features.
Unfortunately, GetResponse’s analytics isn’t as powerful as Mailchimp’s. That said, if you’re an international team, you’ll come to appreciate the 27 languages available in GetResponse’s interface.
Starting Price: $15/mo; list size – 1,000.
6. Moosend
Sitecore, the global leader in digital experience management software, recently completed its acquisition of London headquartered Moosend, a Software as a Service (SaaS)-based marketing automation platform provider. Moosend is a Greek technology start-up.
A Quick Moosend Overview
It features a powerful drag-and-drop editor along with many email newsletter templates. It also offers list segmentation options, email marketing automation, a landing page builder, classic powerful integrations, real-time analytics, etc. Moosend is overall easy to use, making mastering list management and powering up your sales funnel for your online business, easy as A-B-C.
What makes Moosend attractive is that its free plan is not only forever free, it comes with the core features as well! You’ll be able to send unlimited emails, create forms, and automate workflows for up to 1,000 subscribers, though. Transactional emails are not included.
What Makes Moosend an Alternative to MailChimp?
Like Mailchimp, you can pay as you go, but Moosend will cost you less. Also, its automation builder is fast, reliable, and most of all, available even for the free plan. However, Moosend’s deliverability performance could be improved. All in all, Moosend is known as one of the most affordable and value-for-money Mailchimp alternatives.
Starting Price: Free; 1,000 subscribers.
7. Mailjet
Established in 2010 in Paris, Mailjet is a French email service provider and admittedly is one of the more affordable newsletter software providers out there. Mailjet offers tons of advanced features that can help marketers reach their end goal, and to top things off, it is easy to use even among most beginners.
A Quick Mailjet Overview
Apart from the usual email automation and email templates, Mailjet features excellent tracking tools, allowing you to track user behavior and compare campaigns to help determine the success or failure of each campaign. You can also use this real-time analytics tool to track and trace your mailing lists and determine how your clients respond to your emails.
Also, it has an SMS marketing function and its newsletter editor that allows you to do a real-time collaboration with other team members.
Their pricing plans are based on a pay-as-you-grow basis. So, if you’re a startup, you’ll probably find the free plan more than sufficient, allowing you to send 6,000 emails per month to unlimited contacts. However, the offered features are pretty basic, so you’ll need to upgrade to the higher plans if you need more. Take note that segmentation and marketing automation are only available in the Premium plan and above.
Why Mailjet Over MailChimp?
Mailjet has the edge over Mailchimp when ensuring high email deliverability, and its plans are more affordable. However, although it has been said that Mailjet is a simple email marketing and automation application even for beginners, some have commented that its features feel hidden, and the language can be hard to comprehend.
That said, Mailjet is still a strong Mailchimp alternative, especially if you need fundamental marketing features.
Starting Price: Free; 6,000 emails per month, unlimited contacts.
8. Hubspot
First opening its doors in 2005, Hubspot has its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
HubSpot is typically a reliable and feature-packed email marketing tool that’s suited for growing businesses. Simply put, it is a platform that combines marketing automation, email, list segmentation, and a suite of other marketing tools with CRM power.
A Quick HubSpot Overview
You can create detailed email campaigns that give a tailored experience to each contact based on the information obtained from the CRM. Aside from having an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor and customizable templates, HubSpot also comes with many optimization features.
Also, HubSpot’s in-app quality assurance tools allow you to preview and check your email across multiple devices and send test emails. Additionally, its analytics dashboard helps you optimize your campaigns with user-friendly charts and click maps. HubSpot has numerous integrations, including WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and more.
You can sign up for its free plan; send 2,000 emails a month, and the plan covers a span of marketing tools (email marketing, forms, CRM, ads management, etc.) that are sufficient for small business owners or anyone on a budget. For growth and scaling up, you may need to upgrade to one of the paid tiers.
What Makes Hubspot the Better Option?
Hubspot’s free plan limits you on the number of emails sent rather than the number of contacts, unlike Mailchimp. Also, HubSpot email marketing supports Japanese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, while Mailchimp only supports English. If you need integration with Shopify and a plethora of inbound marketing tools, Hubspot can be a great Mailchimp alternative.
Starting Price: Free; 2,000 emails per month.
9. AWeber
AWeber, based in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, has been in the market for over 20 years. It is another great email marketing solution to help you connect with your users on a long-term basis along with accelerating business growth. It is known for “playing well with others” as it offers plenty of integrations (with eCommerce platforms/software like Magento or Shopify, along with many testing options) and features.
A Quick AWeber Overview
It comes with a pretty impressive set of features like auto-fetch articles to create automated blog newsletter emails (helps maximize user engagement), attractive email templates for HyperText Markup Language (HTML) newsletters, email marketing analytics, and segmentation. You can easily design and personalize your email marketing campaigns targeting who you want and enjoy smart unsubscribe management functions along with automation tools.
AWeber excels in its visual campaign builder; it offers many templates, and each is customizable with several different palettes for even easier creation.
It does have a free forever plan, although it limits you to 3,000 emails per month to up to 500 subscribers, which isn’t much to shout about. But if you wish to gain access to the full suite of features with unlimited email sends and subscribers, you’ll need to upgrade your plan.
Why AWeber?
AWeber’s list management features that help you keep your contacts organized beats that of Mailchimp. However, Mailchimp’s free plan is more generous than that of AWeber’s. Admittedly, AWeber hasn’t that many customization options, so this might work as a general email marketing tool for most. Still, if you need much more advanced functions, you may need to look elsewhere.
Starting Price: Free; 3,000 emails per month, 500 subscribers.
Conclusion
Mailchimp has been the household name when it comes to email marketing, but while it’s the top choice, its number one position has been rocky as of late; its steep pricing, amongst other reasons, has forced many to look around for alternatives. Fortunately, other competitors work perfectly for you, depending on your needs.
Especially if you’re a startup or a small business, the above contains a list of Mailchimp’s alternatives that can help you. As to which solution you end up with, it would highly depend on your budget and business needs.
