Reaching a wide audience has NEVER been this easy yet hard at the same time for digital marketers.
Nowadays, we have a wide range of email automation tools to do so—but not all email marketing solutions suit your needs.
And you cannot expect them to since all have their own key features with their target audience in mind.
This doesn’t change when it comes to Mailchimp since it is quite a popular email marketing tool with ups and downs.
Providing you with Mailchimp alternatives, putting forth the reasons why it might (not) be the best tool for your business, giving you product recommendations, adding some reviews of the selected email marketing platforms and their billing plan, and presenting you with their best niche features is what this article does.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room:
What is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp is an email marketing software offering a long list of features from which every mid-size business can derive value when improving its email marketing campaigns.
Founded by Ben Chestnut, Mark Armstrong, and Dan Kurzius in 2001, Mailchimp came out on top as a marketing automation platform that is home to several advanced features.
These are the list of features that Mailchimp offers to its users:
- email builders,
- content optimizer,
- customer journey builder,
- email marketing automation,
- advanced reporting,
- transactional emails,
- surveys,
- classic integrations, and
- a mobile app.
With plenty of features, Mailchimp has succeeded in becoming a powerful email marketing platform that business owners hear of at least once when it comes to email campaigns. With a robust email marketing tool like Mailchimp, you can grow your eCommerce business and increase revenue by creating beautiful emails that engage the target audience, making use of advanced segmentation, spending your time on another task that needs your attention thanks to advanced automation, and quickly acting upon the decisions that you make based on the insight you get via email analytics.
Mailchimp Pricing
- Free Plan: $0
- Essentials Plan: $11/month (for 500 contacts)
- Standard Plan: $17/month (for 500 contacts)
- Premium Plan: $299/month (for 500 contacts)
*The pricing structure above is based on 500 contacts only. Mailchimp’s pricing plans alter according to the number of contacts you have—the more contacts you have, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
Mailchimp Reviews
👍Pros:
“Mailchimp is an excellent marketing tool for small businesses; you don’t even have to paid for your first 1000 contact base (it’s totally free). I definitely loved Mailchimp while I was using it to promote my personal blogs and contents as my contact base was very small. It also get easily link with most of the CRM interface as well.”
👎Cons:
“It’s very expensive if you have numerious contact base. It you want to export your contact base from Mailchimp to other platform, it’s very annoying. The emails send from Mailchimp usually deliver in the spam section of Gmail. You have to get the hang of their UX design to use it smoothly.”
Why you need a Mailchimp Alternative
Several Mailchimp users suffered from the items below since even complaints didn’t help overcome these problems. Here are a few:
1- Complex UI 📱
Mailchimp has a lot to offer, and there is no denying that. However, going down the road to pursue all of its offerings is hard because its UI is confusing and complicated. Even simple workflows, such as changing brand style across email campaigns become tough jobs somehow, making it hard not to shift to a more sustainable and user-friendly platform.
2- Expensive Pricing Structure 💰
No matter what one thinks of Mailchimp, one thing is certain: The pricing structure is definitely no joke—in a bad sense. Mailchimp offers custom pricing that changes depending on the number of contacts you have while proposing limited features for free as long as you have 500 contacts only.
Thus, if you’re a small business that is looking for a place to start sending marketing emails, this tool might be the one for you. BUT if that’s not you, this marketing automation platform will surely make things hard for you, especially scaling your business on the platform due to its expensive plans.
3- Very Little Customization 🔧
One of the downsides of Mailchimp is the lack of customization since it provides little to no room for the customization of items, such as lists, segments, and email campaigns. So, if you put importance on editing and personalization, forget it ’cause Mailchimp doesn’t let you do much on your own.
Top Mailchimp Alternatives
Here are the top 6 alternatives to Mailchimp:
I’ll go over each tool while highlighting its advantages over Mailchimp and talk about which cases they should be preferred. Without further ado, let’s start with our first product:
1- Moosend vs. Mailchimp – a cheaper alternative for plenty of features
Moosend is an email marketing automation software that is trusted by several major names, such as Gucci, TEDx, Vogue, and Domino’s.
Offering no-code email marketing to its users, Moosend helps send beautiful emails to your target audience—so beautiful that there is no way that they won’t cause conversions after.
Some of the top features that Moosend includes and proudly promotes are:
- drag-and-drop email builder,
- A/B testing,
- data analytics,
- email list segmentation,
- automated email templates,
- website and user tracking,
- advanced reporting,
- drag-and-drop automation editor,
- drag-and-drop landing page builder,
- premade templates, and
- drag-and-drop editor.
With the key features above, you can easily let your workflow flow with a special thanks to the advanced automation that Moosend provides you with. In addition to saving time and simplifying your daily or monthly plans regarding email newsletters, sign-up forms, and email sequence, Moosend guides you through creating a landing page so that you don’t spend any money on hiring web designers.
Moosend Pricing
- Free Trial (for 30 days- no credit card required)
- Pro plan: $7/month when billed annually (up to 500 contacts)
- Enterprise plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*Pro plan above includes a 30-day free trial, making it possible to try it out before committing to an annual purchase.
**The pricing structure above is based on 500 contacts only. Moosend’s pricing plans alter according to the number of contacts you have—the more contacts you have, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
Moosend Reviews
👍Pros:
“It gives users details of every transaction they have made. It can also be used to track emails and business according to users’ preferences. Users can create contact lists rapidly and easily. This platform targets the required audience itself. This platform allows users to schedule different campaigns. It is quite a useful feature because the user does not have to remember the time and date for starting them.”
👎Cons:
“You can say the features that you might not like about Moosend. So, this tool lack optimization services and the performance may lag sometimes due to glitches that are so disillusioning.”
2- HubSpot vs. Mailchimp – offers great help to attract and convert customers
Known by each and every business owner, HubSpot is one of the tools that can offer one of its hubs as a solution for sure since it involves several products that can aid ANY process.
One of them is the Marketing Hub, which serves as a platform that includes all of your marketing tools and data. Apart from that, HubSpot involves ad tracking and management, live chat, social media management, landing page builder, lead tracking and management, drag-and-drop email editor, and marketing analytics.
With such features, you can achieve many things. For example, you can keep track of your ad spend to see which ads are helpful in converting your prospects, switch to live chat to connect with your visitors, and automate your workflow and cross-functional operations—ALL in one platform.
HubSpot Pricing
- Individual plan: 100% free (no credit card required)
- Starter plan: $50/per month for 1,000 contacts ($45/per month when billed annually)
- Professional plan: $890/per month for 2,000 contacts ($800/per month when billed annually)
- Enterprise plan: $3,200/per month for 10,000 contacts (starting price)
*To decide on a better plan that suits your needs, you can always get in touch with HubSpot’s Sales, as each plan has a button below leading you there.
**HubSpot’s pricing structure changes according to the number of contacts you have; however, the contact numbers given above are the minimum for each respective plan.
HubSpot Reviews
👍Pros:
“I like that the HubSpot Marketing Hub allows for our team to condense the number of tools required to run and track our campaigns while providing other utility to the campaign setup process such as form creation. The ability to link data from multiple sources such as Facebook and Google ads to have one centralized place to track campaign data has streamlined the process of monitoring the success of our campaigns.”
👎Cons:
“Because the system can do SO much, it’s often hard to know the full breadth of its capabilities, which can cause you to miss out on certain opportunities. One thing I do really dislike is the inability to make certain changes/updates to contact records in bulk. Not the end of the world, just frustrating and time-consuming.”
3- GetResponse vs. Mailchimp – empowers your business by serving all of your marketing needs
Offering a wide range of features, GetResponse is number two on our list for a reason: its advanced features.
GetResponse offers plenty of features that help out several cases, making it easy for everyone, from entrepreneurs to marketing managers, to make use of the platform. For email marketing, it offers several free email templates that you can choose from and customize while offering an AI wizard that can help you create your own website in a few minutes.
Of course, this is NOT all.
With GetResponse as your all-in-one marketing software, you can:
- take your email marketing service to the next level by making use of features like email creator, autoresponders, email analytics, bulk emails, transactional emails, and list management
- build an online place to promote your own business via website builder with the help of features like AI-powered creator, predesigned templates, drag-and-drop editor, forms and popups, and domain management
- automate your workflow, thanks to tags and scores, automation flows, abandoned cart emails, website visitor tracking, and product recommendations
- hold webinars to attract your target audience by using screen sharing, call-to-action button, on-demand webinars, whiteboard, and polls and surveys
- make use of paid ads that call for social media integrations, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google—all provided by GetResponse
- create landing pages that generate revenue, thanks to Facebook Pixel, signup forms, popups, countdown timer, and e-commerce tools
- be in constant contact with your audience to improve user experience by utilizing live chat that includes customization tools, chat availability, visitor capture forms, chat notifications, and chat analytics
- send automatic notifications to your visitors and keep track of the rates easily via custom prompts, unlimited notifications, web push analytics, and automated notifications
- get into SMS marketing and automate the whole process by using SMS editor, URL shortener, and SMS reports
SO you don’t have to select integrations in order to use any of these features since this marketing automation platform includes all FOR YOU.
What more could you ask for?
GetResponse Pricing
- Free plan: $0 (up to 500 contacts)
- Email marketing plan: $15.58/month when billed annually (up to 1,000 contacts)
- Marketing Automation plan: $48.38/month when billed annually (up to 1,000 contacts)
- Ecommerce Marketing plan: $97.58/month when billed annually (up to 1,000 contacts)
- Max plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 30-day-long free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
**The pricing structure above is based on 1,000 contacts only. GetResponse’s pricing plans alter according to the number of contacts you have—the more contacts you have, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
GetResponse Reviews
👍Pros:
“GetResponse is a very comprehensive, easy to use email marketing tool that has greatly boosted our online sales drastically. I like how this tool is able to deliver exceptional experience that convert online store visitors into returning customers. Enables us to interact with our audience and nurture leads with targeted online marketing communication that encourages long-term loyalty and engagement. I like how it’s able to find new customers and build our email list with lead generation tools that turn anonymous connection into loyal customers.”
👎Cons:
“Nothing. However, I hope that GetResponse will add more features, such as creating membership sites for online courses. That would be extremely helpful!”
4- Mailtrap vs Mailchimp – just-in-time email delivery
Mailtrap is an Email Delivery Platform for businesses and individuals to Test, Send, Control their email infrastructure in one place.
Email Testing
Mailtrap Email Testing gives you a chance to inspect and debug emails in staging, development, and QA environments without spamming recipients. Check the support for a template’s HTML and CSS with the most popular mailbox providers. Analyze emails’ Spam Scores and see if your IP appears in any blacklist reports. Then, automate testing flows with Mailtrap’s Email Testing API.
Email Sending
Send emails with Mailtrap’s Email API or SMTP service. The platform offers a smooth and secure setup where you don’t need to fill out lengthy forms or provide a lot of validation credentials. Mailtrap email delivery time averages about ~1 second.
In-depth Deliverability Tracking
Mailtrap has actionable in-depth analytics. With these, you get unique monitoring capabilities to control how your email infrastructure works and troubleshoot unexpected issues fast and easily.
Some of the most outstanding features include:
- Helicopter-view dashboard
- Drill-down reports
- Up to 60 days of email logs with email body preview
- Deliverability alerts – Weekly reports on Mondays and Critical alerts for sudden metrics drops
All platform customers can rely on fast and quality support from deliverability experts.
Mailtrap Pricing
There is separate pricing for Email Sending and Email Testing, but both have a free plan.
Mailtrap Testing Plans:
- Free (100 test emails/mo);
- Individual: $14,99/mo (5 000 test emails per month);
- Team: $34,99/mo (15 000 test emails per month);
- Business: $64,99 (50 000 test emails per month);
- Premium: $129,99 (100 000 test emails per month);
- Enterprise: $399,99 (10M test emails per month).
Mailtrap Sending Plans:
- Free (1 000 emails per month);
- Individual 10K: $10/mo (10 000 emails per month);
- Business 100K: $85/mo (100 000 emails per month);
- Enterprise 1,5M: $750/mo (1,5M emails per month);
- Custom: By request (over 5M emails per month).
Mailtrap Reviews
👍Pros:
“With Mailtrap email sending I can view the email content after it’s sent, including HTML and RAW data. Overall, I’m very happy and highly recommend the service to anyone who needs detailed information about their emails.”
👎Cons:
“Well, we didn’t like that our sending throughput was really limited until we verified our domains. On the bright side, their support was quick to lift the limit upon request.”
5- Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp – does better as an email automation tool
Sendinblue is a marketing software that is famous for its email marketing service ’cause it grants more than an email platform—it involves a CRM as well.
Sendinblue supports your email sequence by providing you with a wide variety of templates that you can choose and customize, letting you create personalized marketing emails and optimize the time you send emails per day, and allowing you to deliver your message to unlimited contacts.
With Sendinblue, you can effortlessly make use of:
email newsletter templates ✅
email personalization ✅
contact segmentation ✅
send time optimization ✅
Sendinblue Pricing
- Free plan: $0 (unlimited contacts)
- Lite plan: $25/month (20,000 emails per month)
- Premium plan: $65/month (20,000 emails per month)
- Enterprise plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*The pricing structure above is based on 20,000 emails per month only. Sendinblue’s pricing plans alter according to the number of emails per month you send—the more emails you send, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
Sendinblue Reviews
👍Pros:
“Sendinblue is one of the best and very popular email marketing tools. I liked Sendinblue for its very user-friendly user interface and very easy to manage campaigns. There are no contact limits, so many subscribers could be added to the contact list. Even on some other platforms, you have to pay extra for extra contacts list but not in the Sendinblue.”
👎Cons:
“When we started using Sendinblue the only drawback was that there was a daily sending limit of 300 emails per day in the free plan and marketing automation workflow feature is limited to a certain number of contacts only. Even the landing page builder and A/B testing are not available in the free plan. The premium plan is quite expensive when compared to other marketing tools.”
6- Omnisend vs. Mailchimp – provides an omnichannel look to your eCommerce marketing
Omnisend is an ecommerce-tailored email and SMS marketing automation platform that made the list, thanks to its on-brand email campaigns, drag-and-drop workflow and landing page editor, and reporting tool.
Trusted by 70,000+ ecommerce businesses, Omnisend manages your sales process as well as your email and SMS marketing on the very same platform via its key features. These key features include:
- email and SMS marketing automations,
- omnichannel workflows which includes welcome series, product abandonment, cart abandonment, order confirmation, cross-sell, and shipping confirmation
- optimization features, including automation splits and A/B split testing,
- 50+ integrations to manage your data,
- email templates to create beautiful emails,
- bulk email campaigns,
- email personalization with drag-and-drop content creator,
- campaign targeting with your audience in mind to increase your conversion rates,
- campaign reports to track your sales funnel,
- SMS in automation to provide your customers with a customized experience, and so much more.
Omnisend Pricing
- Free plan: $0 (up to 500 contacts)
- Standard plan: $16/month when billed annually (up to 500 contacts)
- Pro plan: $59/month when billed annually (up to 500 contacts + unlimited emails)
*The pricing structure above is based on 500 contacts only. Omnisend’s pricing plans alter according to the number of contacts you have—the more contacts you have, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
Omnisend Reviews
👍Pros:
“Pre-built email marketing automation workflows are great to use. I’d definitely appreciate more of these! Audience tagging is easy and we used that to exclude segments from some campaigns. The Product Picker is a great feature which allows you to pick the products to add to the email directly form the website. A bit slow sometimes in loading but it works well and saves time.”
👎Cons:
“The ability to gather data and reporting on customers and emails is difficult at times and complicated. My biggest issue though is the amount of work that goes into sending an A/B test for an email. This should be built into the segments or something so that I can simply send two emails to one segment and it’ll divide it automatically. Creating a workflow and adding/deleting people from segments is far more complicated than it should and something I’ve never seen done. Also, you should be able to combine multiple segments into one for testing purposes instead of relying on tags.”
7- ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp – ease of use, fast assistance, especially as a segmentation tool
ActiveCampaign is an automation platform that excels at many advanced features like email drip campaigns according to its users—top of its game, email service.
ActiveCampaign gives you full control over your emails. For example, you can broadcast them, trigger them, target them, schedule them, and use email autoresponders, transactional emails, and follow-ups with ease.
What’s more is that you can make use of marketing automation via automating your email follow-up, identifying the most engaged contacts from your list, and utilizing native integrations and other third-party integrations.
PLUS this email marketing software with a user-friendly UI is home to advanced segmentation options since one of the most used and appreciated features among the users is email list segmentation, which helps you create more personalized marketing emails, get better results at building a highly-engaged contact base, and see the end results in your sales funnel.
ActiveCampaign Pricing
- Lite plan: $9/month when billed annually (up to 500 contacts)
- Plus plan: $49/month when billed annually (up to 500 contacts)
- Professional plan: $149/month when billed annually (up to 500 contacts)
- Enterprise plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 14-day free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
**The pricing structure above is based on 500 contacts only. ActiveCampaign’s pricing plans alter according to the number of contacts you have—the more contacts you have, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
ActiveCampaign Reviews
👍Pros:
“I love the automation, they’ve been so helpful in segmenting our subscribers and sending targeted information directly. I also love how easy it was to move over to the platform – they handled moving all of my information and even created my templates within the platform for me. This blows my previous service out of the water – I was able to archive a ton of contacts that were not interacting with our emails SO easily + now I have a super-engaged list of subscribers to work with.”
👎Cons:
“There are a few minor things that don’t work as well for us, including the nonautomatic sizing of photos within campaign templates, and sometimes the design goes a little funky – but it’s honestly nothing compared to the benefits the service has provided!”
In Conclusion
Not a big fan of Mailchimp’s landing page editor, native integrations, or drip campaigns?
Looking for a cheaper alternative?
Or limited sign-up forms are not your thing?
This article purely focuses on presenting you with great email marketing software that you can use instead of Mailchimp.
From monthly plans to emails per month, each popular email marketing tool that makes the list is explained with their strengths and weaknesses, including features such as, email workflow, email tags, email marketing analytics, SMS personalization options, and email deliverability for digital marketers to see an increase in the conversion funnel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a better service than Mailchimp?
For marketing purposes, GetResponse’s service is more fitting to the needs of digital marketers as well as its user-friendly UI that leaves no room for confusion.
What is the free alternative of Mailchimp?
GetResponse, Sendinblue, and Omnisend are the free alternatives to Mailchimp.
Does Google have a Mailchimp alternative?
Yes, Google has a Mailchimp alternative called Google Marketing Platform; however, it doesn’t have all the features that Mailchimp has.
