Text Example

The listings featured on this site are from companies from which this site receives compensation. you can review ours advertising disclosure and terms of use by clicking on this tab

Advertising Disclosure
Text Example

The listings featured on this site are from companies from which this site receives compensation.

Advertising Disclosure
Home » Blog » MailChimp Review 2024

MailChimp Review 2024

by Top Rated Ten

MailChimp Review (2024)

Price
Free; $13 per month
Free trial
30 days
Standout features
Beginner-friendly campaign builder, automations and A/B testing

Our Research

Mailchimp ranks consistently among the best email marketing platforms. It’s widely renowned for its easy-to-use software that makes building out automated email marketing campaigns easy and attractive. It’s also one of the most affordable platforms on the market with a free forever plan for one user and up to 1,000 email sends per month and competitively priced paid plans starting at 13 per month for up to 5,000 monthly email sends. Find out if it’s the best option for you with our Mailchimp review.

MailChimp Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Free forever plan
  • Very beginner-friendly
  • Set triggers from website and landing pages
  • Multivariate and A/B testing
  • Ability to segment contacts
  • Behavioral targeting
  • Built-in conversion tools to convert leads to sales
  • Import contacts from other platforms, such as Salesforce, Squarespace and Shopify

Cons

  • Limited email sends with every plan
  • Cannot schedule emails with the free plan
  • Not the most cost-effective for businesses with large contact lists
  • Not all templates are available with the free plan
  • The free plan includes Mailchimp branding
  • The website builder is too simplistic for many businesses

MailChimp at a Glance 9.8 Editor Score

Features & Integrations

9.8

Integrations including mail, social media, SEO, CRM and more
 
 

Analytics & Reporting

9.9

Solid analytics built-in, set real-time input about your emails, including open, click
 

Ease Of Use

9.8

Relatively easy to learn and use, it offers a user-friendly interface that’s easy to understand and master
 

Pricing & Packages

9.8

4 plans ranging from $0 to $955, tiered pricing.
 

Customer Service

9.5

Support during US business hours and on Saturday, phone, email and live chat available across the US, Canada and internationally
 

9.8 Editor Score

How do I know I can trust this MailChimp Review?

TopRatedTen.com authors, contributors, and editors are serious about research. We combine our own experience with the services we recommend, with reviews that come from verified users–just like you! Together, with reviews from industry experts, we find the Top 10 best products and services to make sure you can choose with confidence and ease.

MailChimp

Mailchimp-fav1.20220705104024

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 $350. 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

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 Essentials Standard Premium
Price for 500 Contacts $0 $13 per month $20 per month $350 per month
Price for 1,500 Contacts Not Available $26 per month $60 per month $350 per month
Price for 5,000 Contacts Not Available $69 per month $100 per month $350 per month
Price for 10,000 Contacts Not Available $100 per month $135 per month $350 per month
Price for 25,000 Contacts Not Available $260 per month $270 per month $620 per month
Price for 50,000 Contacts Not Available $350 per month $410 per month $815 per month
Price for 100,000 Contacts Not Available Not Available $700 per month $955 per month
Free Trial N/A One month One month One month
Number of Users One Three Five Unlimited
Number of Audiences One Three Five Unlimited
Prebuilt Email Templates Limited Yes Yes Yes
Reporting and Analytics Limited Yes Yes Yes
Build Forms and Landing Pages Yes Yes Yes Yes
Automations No Yes Yes Yes
A/B Testing No Yes Yes Yes
Send-time Optimization No No Yes Yes
Predictive Segmentation No No Yes Yes
Multivariate Testing No No Yes Yes
Support Email support for the first 30 days 24/7 email and chat support 24/7 email and chat support 24/7 priority phone, email and chat support

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 $69 per month and 25,000 contacts is $260 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 $270 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.

Mailchimp Alternatives and How They Compare

Mailchimp Zoho Campaigns Brevo Moosend
Ratings
Starting Price (500 Contacts) Free; $13 per month Free (up to 2,000 contacts); $3 per month Free; $25 per month (unlimited contacts) $7 per month (billed annually)
Starting Price (5,000 Contacts) $69 per month $23.25 per month $25 per month (unlimited contacts) $38 per month
Free Trial Length 30 days 14 days Not available 30 days
Drag and Drop Email Builder Yes Yes Yes Yes
Email Templates Yes Yes Yes Yes
Contact Management Yes Yes Yes Yes
Audience Segmentation Yes Yes Yes Yes
Automations Yes Yes Yes, although limited to 2,000 contacts on the Free and Starter plan Yes
Signup Form Builder Yes Yes Yes Yes
Landing Page Builder Yes Yes Available with Business and Enterprise plans Yes
Website Builder Yes Available via Zoho One No No

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.

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.

Bottom Line

MailChimp is a comprehensive email marketing platform that helps businesses create effective, targeted email campaigns, in order to improve their customer interaction, word of mouth, and overall revenue. 

It has a number of payment options – including free – and offers a host of features to help optimize email campaigns, inducing extensive automation, segmentation, and use of data to track and optimize email campaigns. It also has an easy-to-use interface, and should be a breeze for any user.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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.

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.

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. 

You may also like

Leave a Comment

topratedten.com logo

Topratedten.com is a comparison platform that offers users the10 best options across a wide variety of products and services. We’ve made it our mission to make decisions easier by helping you choose from the top options available.

 

TopRatedTen © 2024.  All Right Reserved

 

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More