Mailchimp Review (2025): Mail For the Masses?

It has a clean interface, and the tools are easy to use. However, the navigation could be clearer, as certain tools are slightly hidden. Setting up the initial opt-in process can be somewhat challenging as the menus are a little confusing.

There are two editors available. Both are fast and simple to use and have all the main content blocks (video, columns, social buttons, etc). We have a quick-start tutorial to help you get started with your first newsletter.

If/then/else logic isn’t very user-friendly, but available. Mailchimp at least offer a handy cheat sheet to help you grasp the concepts. Merge tags can be inserted in the email content to add the readers name or email address.

Classic newsletters, autoresponders, A/B testing, RSS and transactional emails.

Lots of choice, relatively modern looking too. All the drag & drop templates are responsive, but the classic templates are not. Bear in mind that the free plan only comes with the basic email templates, which look a bit outdated.

This is relatively robust, with rules to send follow-up emails based on certain conditions, such as clicks, opens, etc. More complicated automations related to goals/email link actions are also available, via the Customer Journeys feature, which allows workflow-based marketing automation.

Unfortunately, automation features aren’t available on the Free plan. A few features are also missing, such as the ability to split test automations, and automations triggered by webpage views.

Mailchimp offers decent segmentation methods, allowing you to combine up to five positive or negative conditional relationships (e.g. what email client they use, whether they’ve opened a particular campaign). Management across lists is not possible as each list is siloed.

Simple drag & drop setup for forms, although it’s a bit finicky to select color options, only allowing you to add the color code. You can add your own fields, and adding the form to your site is easy. They also offer pop-up registration forms to integrate with your website.

However, the form editor isn’t as visual or advanced as in other ESPs. You don’t get any templates to choose from, and it’s not possible to A/B test forms. Adding custom fields is also not as straightforward as it could be.

Mailchimp provides standard authentication tools and list compliance policies. They offer deliverability consultations and enforce bounce suppression. However, they don’t provide a deliverability dashboard, health score, or list validation service. Full SPF alignment isn’t supported either. It is the provider with the lowest rating when it comes to deliverability scores. 

Pretty much all you need regarding reporting is here. You have openers, Google Analytics integration (which allows for conversion tracking), as well as clients, geo-tracking, click mapping and social media.

Mailchimp’s website and interface are available in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. Mailchimp automatically displays the respective language for many features, depending on the browser settings.

Mailchimp use third-party run tool ‘Inbox Preview’ by Litmus. Monthly paid plans come with 25 tokens and allow you to see what designs will look like for different clients, and on different devices. No spam testing is available. If you need more tokens, you’ll need to purchase these through Litmus. Find out how to avoid spam filters here.

Hard bounces are immediately deactivated, while soft bounces are re-sent for three days. These will eventually be considered hard bounces if it occurs over multiple campaigns.

You can upload a suppression list of the contacts you don’t want to send to.

There seems to be no limit to the amount of files, just that they need to be under 10MB in size each.

DKIM and SPF, SenderID and DomainKeys available.

Tracking links in your emails will use the domain “list-manage.com”

You have five different levels within Mailchimp: viewer, author, manager, admin & owner.

There are over 800 integrations available for your account! From eCommerce, to social and website integrations, you’d be hard-pressed to find an area that’s not represented – they also recently reintroduced their integration with Shopify.

It’s pretty hard to find the landing page editor, which is accessible through the campaigns section. There are 10 modern templates, and you can use your own domain name (e.g. www.your-biz.com). Also, there is no A/B testing feature. GetResponse offers a far superior alternative in terms of combined page-building and email marketing features.

They have a thorough, and easy-to-search, knowledge base and more recently, a pretty handy AI assistant to help you with a number of queries. Where Mailchimp loses points, though, is the fact that you’ll only have access to a “live expert” (their words, not mine) if you upgrade your account to a paid one. The live chat option, on upgrade, was fine, but quite slow compared to other tools we tested.