Mailchimp at a Glance
- Mailchimp is an Atlanta-based email marketing and marketing automation platform.
- Since its launch in 2001, Mailchimp has become one of the most popular platforms for easily building automated email marketing campaigns and it is Forbes Advisor’s top-rated all-in-one email marketing platform.
- It offers a comprehensive and beginner-friendly email builder as well as a large number of features to help users more effectively communicate with their contacts and effectively convert leads into sales.
Pros
Mailchimp stands out for two main reasons―and two that do not often go together. First, it’s designed to be very modern and beginner-friendly. Its intuitive campaign builder and large library of prebuilt templates makes it fairly easy for just about anyone to use to create professional-quality email campaigns. Second, it has a very comprehensive set of features that make it a robust, all-in-one email marketing platform.
Cons
The downside of Mailchimp is that it is fairly limited when it comes to the number of emails users can send per month. Even with its top-tier plan, it has a maximum email send of 150,000 per month, which may not be worth the very expensive monthly fee of $1,325. Another drawback of Mailchimp is that it’s not known for offering top-notch support. Instead, users frequently note that support is slow to respond and lacks in terms of service quality.
How Mailchimp Works
Mailchimp has grown into an all-in-one email marketing and marketing automation platform that businesses can grow with. From the Mailchimp dashboard users have easy access to its email campaign builder, automation setup, audience creation and contact segment, performance insights and analytics and the ability to build landing pages and even a website. Since it offers all key components of running email marketing campaigns, from landing pages that trigger emails to behavioral targeting, it’s a full-service platform for those looking to leverage their online presence to land sales and build loyalty among existing customers.
Mailchimp Core Features
The core feature of Mailchimp is its Campaign Builder tool which is instrumental in the creation of professional business emails that don’t look like a standard text-based email from a friend or colleague. Every other feature it offers supports users in the ability to build and send email campaigns. For example, it has a quick contact import tool and contact generation tools to help users transfer and build their contact list. It has audience segmentation to help campaigns connect to their audience better and sign-up forms, landing pages and a website builder to integrate email triggers easily:
- Customized email design
- Campaign automations and journey creation
- Audience segmentation and behavioral targeting
- Signup forms, landing pages and websites
Featured Partners
1
Constant Contact
Yes
Yes
Advanced Automation (Abandon Cart Reminders, etc.)
2
Omnisend
Free for all customers
AI email content generator
Email marketing, SMS & Web Push Notifications
3
Brevo
Free; Unlimited contacts
Available
Yes
4
Campaigner
Starts at $59 / month
30 days
Email + SMS marketing, full code editor, geolocation, and more
What Sets Mailchimp Apart
Mailchimp stands out for being an all-in-one email marketing machine where users can build their website, landing pages and popups that trigger automated email campaigns―complete with robust audience segmentation and analytics for performance insights and optimizations. This makes it a centralized platform for building, launching and analyzing marketing campaigns and a key tool in converting sales leads into customers.
Mailchimp Pricing and Plans
Free Plan
The free plan is a great way for new users to test out Mailchimp and familiarize themselves with its offerings. Although limited, it does include up to 500 email sends per month and a contact list of up to 500 contacts consisting of one audience for one user. A limited number of email templates are available as well as all basic features. However, users cannot set up automations with the free plan and support is only available for the first 30 days via email. One other key difference is that the free plan also displays Mailchimp branding, so it may not be the best choice for professional use.
Essentials Plan
Those with more than 500 contacts will be required to upgrade to the Essentials plan, which includes up to three users and three audiences. Pricing varies depending on how many contacts you have. For example, the price for 500 contacts is $13 per month, 5,000 contacts is $75 per month and 25,000 contacts is $270 per month. Aside from contacts, this plan offers more features than the free plan, such as automations and full access to all of its email templates and A/B testing. However, it does not include some of the more advanced features such as send-time optimization, predictive segmentation or multivariate testing.
Standard Plan
The Standard plan is Mailchimp’s midtier plan that offers more advanced features than its Essentials plan, such as send-time optimization, predictive segmentation or multivariate testing as well as five users and five audiences. Pricing varies by the size of your contact list. For insight, it costs $20 per month for up to 500 contacts, $100 per month for 5,000 contacts and $310 per month for 25,000 contacts.
Premium Plan
The Premium plan is geared towards meeting the needs of larger businesses. This is because the primary difference between the Premium plan and Standard plan is that the Premium plan includes unlimited users and unlimited audiences. It also includes role-based permissions for users, giving businesses with large teams the flexibility to manage various aspects of their email marketing campaigns and the platforms they use to generate leads. The premium plan starts at $350 per month. However, similar to all other Mailchimp plans, pricing increases based on the number of contacts you have.
Setup
To sign up, simply go to Mailchimp and select the free plan or sign up for a free 30-day trial of a premium plan. To do so, you will be required to input your name and email address. Mailchimp will then send an email to you where you can then activate your new account. Upon activation, you will be prompted to input your address (which due to anti-spam laws, will be displayed at the bottom of your emails), your goals, how many email contacts you have and your web address which then imports your brand, such as business name, logo, color scheme and fonts.
Once you have created your new account, the process of adding your existing contacts is simple. Navigate to the left-hand vertical menu and select “Audience.” Next, click the button to “Add your contacts” and select which method you would like to use: import from another service, upload a file (CSV or TXT) or copy and paste. For those that do not yet have contacts, you can create a signup form, a social post or a social media ad through the Mailchimp interface.
Emails can be created using the Campaign Builder using one of the many prebuilt templates or from scratch. The Campaign Builder is a simple, drag-and-drop editor, making the process of designing a professional email straightforward. For those that are looking to set up automations so that emails automatically send based on set triggers, such as subscribing via your website or making a purchase, there are prebuilt journeys created to make automation configuration simple―even for nontechnical users.
Ease Of Use
Mailchimp is a user-friendly platform that was built to help those with zero technical abilities create, deploy and manage professional email marketing campaigns. The interface generally does a good job of walking users through the process and it offers users the option to use prebuilt templates for emails, landing pages and web pages.
While it’s widely considered easy to use, it does involve a learning curve. As intuitive and streamlined as it is, there are many moving parts when it comes to email marketing. For example, there are contact lists and customer segmentation, email design, creating customer journeys and setting up deployment with automations and triggering emails to send based on actions that occur on your website, such as a newsletter signup or online purchase.
Security
Mailchimp has robust security measures built-in to help safeguard data. While it does not disclose all security measures (as another security measure), it does share that its data centers manage 24/7 security complete with biometric scanners and that it has distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) migration at all of its data centers. Additionally, it has numerous internal security measures in place and it is International Organization for Standardization 27001 (ISO 27001) certified. With its array of protections, users can feel confident that data is safe and protected against losses and corruption.
Mailchimp Customer Service & Support
Support channels vary by plan, giving different users different experiences and support quality. For example, the free plan comes with email support, but only for the first 30 days. After that, users on the free plan will not have access to support unless they upgrade to a paid plan. The entry-level Essentials plan and the midtier Standard plan both include 24/7 support via email and chat. Those with the top-tier Premium plan get access to priority phone support in addition to email and chat support.
In our experience, support via email was not responsive. Over three days after sending an inquiry, there was still no response from Mailchimp support. While I reached out with a basic question, the support quality with the free plan is not only limited to your first 30 days but also not particularly helpful.
Mailchimp Additional Features Worth Noting
There are a large number of additional Mailchimp features beyond its core feature set. For example, users can organize audiences and add custom tags for easy contact management, build out social media posts and ads, customize the unsubscribe page, create custom reports, easily design branded content with the Creative Assistant tool and build surveys. What is unique about the survey builder is that there are prebuilt surveys that are easy to customize and can use a 1-10 scale or emojis which is a fun way to get feedback quickly from customers and contacts. In return, this can increase the response rate of surveys.
The Fine Print
Its free plan is very limited―not only in terms of email sends but in features. Users on the free plan will quickly find that there are a number of features they do not have access to. For example, users on the free plan cannot set up automations and use certain templates. Another thing to note is that Mailchimp is notorious for frequent updates that often involve the further elimination of features for users on the free plan.
Mailchimp Alternatives and How They Compare
Mailchimp vs Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns is a very comparable email marketing platform to Mailchimp with a nearly identical feature set. Both offer a clean and modern user experience with a large number of email-related features, such as advanced audience segmentation, send-time optimization and lead generation tools such as a signup form builder and landing page builder. However, Zoho Campaigns is more affordable than Mailchimp.
Zoho Campaigns’ free plan includes up to 2,000 contacts while Mailchimp’s is limited to 500. Another difference is that Zoho Campaigns has a Pay as You Go plan for users that use email marketing campaigns sporadically and thus do not want to pay a monthly subscription fee for a product they don’t use monthly.
Mailchimp vs. Brevo
Mailchimp and Brevo differ greatly in terms of what their free plans offer users. Brevo is unique in that its free plan includes unlimited contacts, whereas Mailchimp’s plan has a maximum of 500 contacts. However, despite Brevo’s unlimited contacts, it is worth noting that it has a daily email send limit of 300. Brevo also limits access to automations and its landing page builder to its mid and top-tier plans.
While Mailchimp’s pricing is based on the number of contacts users have its far more straightforward than Brevo’s pricing, which involves a flat-rate monthly subscription fee, plus another monthly fee based on the number of emails users send per month, such as 20,000 emails per month costs an extra $16 per month, and there is a $12 monthly fee to remove the Brevo logo from emails. In total, Brevo’s starting price for a plan that does not display its branding is $37 per month.
That said, Brevo appears to be more affordable than Mailchimp at first glance but, depending on the features you need, the number of contacts you have and the number of emails you plan to send per month, Mailchimp may be the more budget-friendly option.
Mailchimp vs Moosend
When comparing Mailchimp to Moosend, it’s key to consider the number of contacts you have or plan to have as Mailchimp is more affordable for those with fewer than 500 contacts and Moosend is more affordable for those with more than 500 contacts. Both are generally considered to be very user-friendly, however, Moosend’s templates include dummy content which can be helpful for beginners who need assistance with visualizing what their email will look like.
Another difference is that while Mailchimp has more lead generation tools to help users build out contact lists, Moosend has more advanced tracking features. These are particularly helpful for data-driven businesses that will use the insights to optimize their email campaigns.
Featured Partners
1
Constant Contact
Yes
Yes
Advanced Automation (Abandon Cart Reminders, etc.)
2
Omnisend
Free for all customers
AI email content generator
Email marketing, SMS & Web Push Notifications
3
Brevo
Free; Unlimited contacts
Available
Yes
4
Campaigner
Starts at $59 / month
30 days
Email + SMS marketing, full code editor, geolocation, and more
Who is Mailchimp Best For?
Mailchimp is one of the best all-in-one email marketing platforms on the market. Its wide feature set means that users have a centralized platform for building contact lists, sending automated emails and optimizing campaigns. Users can design emails from within the user dashboard, eliminating the need for third-party graphic design tools or skills. Although it can be used for basic email marketing, it has advanced features that make it a good choice for those who plan to make email marketing part of their core marketing strategy and who want a platform that can grow with them.
Our Expert Opinion
Based on our first-hand experience using Mailchimp, it’s a quality email marketing platform that generally is easy to use. As with anything, it does involve a bit of a learning curve, but it tends to be pretty intuitive. Its template library can feel a bit sparse as it offers little by way of various styles and designs and, instead, templates center on choosing different layouts. For highly visual users who prefer more design inspiration, this can feel lackluster.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the best email marketing platform?
The top email marketing platforms include Mailchimp for its all-in-one platform, Brevo for unlimited contacts, Constant Contact for customer support, Moosend for email template design and Zoho Campaigns for affordability. Learn more about the best email marketing software.
Why should I use email marketing software?
Email marketing software makes it easy for you to create email campaigns and journeys and then automate the sending process. It’s an affordable way to create customer loyalty and thereby customer retention, and you get measurable results of your marketing efforts.
Which email marketing tool has the best plan for unlimited contacts?
Brevo stands out as one of the best platforms for businesses with a large volume of contacts as all of its plans include unlimited contacts―even its free plan. However, its free plan displays Brevo branding and has a daily send limit of 300 emails.
What are the best Mailchimp alternatives?
There are a number of high-quality Mailchimp alternatives, but which is best for you will depend on what you are looking for. For example, MailLite is the best alternative for ease of use, Moosend is the best for template design, Campaigner is the best for more advanced automations, Drip is the best for e-commerce and Zoho Campaigns is the best for businesses with large contact lists. Get the full breakdown of the best Mailchimp alternatives.
