Mailchimp and Convertkit are two of the most popular email marketing platforms for small businesses, startups, and bloggers. But which one should you choose? We hope this article on Mailchimp vs Convertkit can bring you a step closer to deciding!
Pricing
Mailchimp is priced so attractively that it becomes a no-brainer for small businesses and startups that operate with a shoestring budget. It has a forever free plan where you pay $0 and can send up to 12,000 emails to 2000 subscribers. More subscribers? No problem. Just hop on to the next level which is $10 per month.
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Convertkit offers a free trial for 14 days, and after that it is priced at $29 per month. If you are working on a tight budget, Mailchimp is the winner here, hands down. However, price isn’t the only thing that matters- so you need to consider other things before making a decision.
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Automation
Mailchimp offers basic automation such as triggering an autoresponder sequence when a subscriber joins the email list. There are pre-designed automations with defined triggers and timelines or you can build your own custom automations as well for abandoned carts, product retargeting, order notifications etc. The automation builder makes it easy to build the required automations.
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Convertkit offers some elaborate automations to make your marketing campaigns run on steroids. They have some prebuilt powerful automations that you can use to send timely and targeted content to your subscriber list. The drag and drop sequence builder and the simple workflows, which follow a logical if-this-then-that rule, make it easy to create complex automations even for beginners. An added benefit? It also integrates with multiple services in the market!
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Analytics
Mailchimp has some really powerful reporting and analytics features. You can easily get meaningful performance statistics for individual campaigns, or for all campaigns at once. Open/click through rates, revenues from campaigns, bounce rates, A/B testing results, multivariate campaign reports etc. are just a few of the many performance stats that are available on Mailchimp to tweak and improve your campaigns.
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Convertkit has good form statistics. You will be able to see the conversion rates of each form right within the dashboard itself, so you don’t need to use Google Analytics for this. The reporting is limited to the form and subscriber overviews, so if you need more data to fine-tune your campaigns Convertkit may fall short.
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Design
If you want your emails to look attractive and well-designed, then Mailchimp is a definite winner. It has hundreds of pre-designed templates and a very easy to use drag and drop interface to design your own. All sorts of customizations are possible to make your emails really stand out.
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Convertkit emails are plain and simple, and they focus more on functionality. The final emails can look a bit underwhelming. They don’t have a drag and drop template either, so to do any sort of customization, you will have to manually code it.
Which one to pick?
Well, it boils down to which features are important to you. If you want plenty of automations, pick Convertkit. For those who want beautifully designed emails at a very affordable price point (or even for free!), then Mailchimp is the clear winner. If you think Mailchimp is the right platform for you, click here to sign up now!
