Steve Lamattina
Oct. 4, 2018
MailChimp is often the first newsletter tool that springs to mind, possibly because they have great marketing and a charming monkey-fied aesthetic. But I guess I’m not the only one, as they claim to send more than 600 million emails every day over their platform.
They offer a free plan, with which you can send up to 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 subscribers. This is good news for personal and SMB accounts, as most of the tools and templates are accessible on this free account. They also have pay-as-you-go options, which work out to be cheaper for low-volume clients, whilst also giving you some included extras such as automation and integration options.
Now let’s have a look to see whether MailChimp really do let you ‘send better emails’:
Find our detailed analysis of Mailchimp’s pricing plans here.
Thorough reporting:
Basically everything you need to know, including clients, geo-tracking, social media and Google Analytics integration.
Generous freemium plan:
Most of the tools are available on their free plan, and you’re allowed 12,000 emails to 2,000 of your subscribers which isn’t a bad deal.
Great template editor:
MailChimp sports a clean interface and a simple, but powerful editor.
High-cost subscription plans:
Although they offer a generous freemium plan, the prices get steep pretty quickly once you start needing to increase your email, or subscriber, numbers.
Limited email automation:
Even though their autoresponders are solid, MailChimp disappoints when it comes to more advanced automation.
Integrations are important to you:
If having a newsletter service that integrates with other tools is essential for you – whether you’re an ecommerce, blogger, nonprofit, or business owner. It offers hundreds of integrations to both popular and niche applications (such as Zapier, WordPress and Shopify).
You need an all-in-one solution for inbound campaigns:
MailChimp have always emphasized the importance of running opt-in based lead capture campaigns. They make it easy to do so with features such as forms, landing pages and automated drip campaigns.
You want automations that are easy to manage:
While they promote themselves as a marketing automation platform, we have to say that MailChimp’s automations are not very intuitive to set up. Lacking a workflow editor, managing the steps in each automation can get a bit unwieldy. We think tools like MailerLite and Benchmark do a much better job here.
You’re an affiliate marketer:
MailChimp has a strict policy prohibiting affiliate marketing under its Terms of Use. The rules are a bit murky, but severe penalties apply (including account cancellation), so if you’re in this industry it’s best to steer clear.
| criterion | rating | comments |
|---|---|---|
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Ease of Use |
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Easy to use, with clear navigation and a clean interface. Although setting opt the initial opt-in process can be somewhat challenging as the menus are a little confusing. |
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Newsletter Creation |
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Editor |
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This editor is fast and simple, using a drag & drop interface. |
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Personalization |
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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. |
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Email types |
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All the standards that you need such as classic newsletters, autoresponders, A/B testing RSS to newsletter and recurring. |
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Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs |
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Lots of choice, relatively modern looking too. All of the drag & drop templates are responsive, but the classic templates are not. |
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Email Automation |
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This is relatively robust, with rules to send follow up emails based on certain conditions, such as clicks, opens etc. More complicated automations in regards to goals/page link actions are available, however, the usability isn’t great as there is no workflow view. |
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List Management |
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Mailchimp offer pretty good 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). |
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Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process |
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Simple drag & drop setup for forms, although a bit finicky to select colour options, only allowing you to add the colour 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. |
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Deliverability |
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MailChimp deliverability is acceptable, in our tests under 15% of their emails ended up in the spam folder. However, be aware that all their emails reached the Gmail ‘Promotions’ tab, which is less frequently checked. They also had a challenge reaching Outlook’s inbox, a really popular email provider. |
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Reports and Analysis |
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Pretty much all you need in regards to reporting is here, if not a little dull-looking. You have openers, Google Analytics integration (which allows for conversion tracking), as well as clients, geo-tracking and social media. |
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Languages |
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The site itself is only available in English, with the help section being available in Spanish also. The emails themselves can be auto-translated with Google Translate into many different languages, but of course it would be better if the site itself was more internationally accessible. |
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Further Features |
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Spam- and Design-Testing |
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Mailchimp use third-party run tool ‘Inbox Preview’ which is an extra cost for the bottom two plans ($3 for 25 tokens) and allows you to see what designs will look like for different clients, and on different devices. No spam testing is available. |
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Bounce Management |
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Hard bounces are immediately removed, while soft bounces are re-sent for three days. These will eventually be considered hard bounces if it occurs over multiple campaigns. |
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Blacklist |
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Storage available for data and images |
unlimited |
There seems to be no limit to the amount of files, just that they need to be under 10MB in size each. |
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Pro Features |
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Authentication |
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DKIM and SPF, SenderID and DomainKeys available. |
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Own Domain |
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Tracking links in your emails will use the domain “list-manage.com” |
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Different levels of account access |
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You have five different levels within Mailchimp: viewer, author, manager, admin & owner. |
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Integrations |
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Apparently 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. |
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Landing Page Editor |
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Create Sign-up or product pages via their new landing page creator. Be aware that at this stage it’s still very basic. You can use your own domain name (e.g. www.your-biz.com), but you’ll need to pay $100 extra per year. Also, there is no A/B testing feature. GetResponse offers a far superior alternative. |
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Support |
3.5/5 |
They have a thorough, and easy-to-search, knowledge base. Where Mailchimp loses points, though, is the fact that this is the only help that’s available unless you upgrade your account. The live chat option, on upgrade, was fine, but quite slow compared to other tools we tested. |
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Overall rating |
4.1/5 |
Extremely user-friendly; there’s a reason why this tool is so popular. They could be a little more internationally-friendly, though. |
MailChimp is a perfectly good tool for most English-speaking users, with its ease of use and range of features, as well as their free plans. Keep in mind, though, that their subscription plans are relatively expensive compared to similar newsletter tools.
There are a bucketload of integrations available for MailChimp, which could be due to the amount of active users they have. That, combined with relatively powerful tools (available on the higher tier plans) really do add up to a great tool.
Perhaps if you’re a business with specific needs, like powerful marketing automation, or use of your own tracking-domain, then you may need to look further afield for the correct newsletter tool. But there really is a lot to like from MailChimp.
ActiveCampaign: while they don’t feature a free plan, they have very affordable paid plans that are a little bit cheaper than similar MailChimp plans. Feature-wise they are the best email automation software and easily beat MailChimp.
MailerLite: we chose them as a MailChimp alternative because they have a very generous free plan that lets you use all their features (unlike MailChimp). Their feature set is pretty similar with a few extra gimmicks like the landing page creator.
GetResponse is a great alternative because of their great editor combined with a wide range of pro features such as the webinar tool and email automation. Find our Mailchimp vs. GetResponse comparison here.
Check out this blog post for our full list of Mailchimp alternatives. Or, use our Smart Finder to help you choose the best newsletter service for your needs.
It really isn’t a bad offer. They let you send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers every month. The catch is that they don’t let you use all the features (reporting and testing is limited, for example) and there will be a small MailChimp advert in your newsletters. Once you exceed the 2,000 subscriber limit it gets rather pricey.
Generally, you can add affiliate links in your newsletters, however, they have a list of certain domains that are banned. If your affiliate link is contained in this list, they won’t let you send the email.
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