An email marketing campaign is capable of significantly increasing your sales, assisting you in collecting feedback, and improving the image of your brand – all of this if your campaign is properly targeted and is designed well. However, before you start enjoying these and the many other advantages of email marketing, it’s extremely important to determine the email platform that suits your business the best.
One of the most popular email marketing tools out there is MailChimp. It is widely used because of its friendly user interface that eases sending of automated messages and newsletters for newbies. You do not need any technical knowledge or experience in order to use this platform. However, there is no surety that it will be an adequate platform for every business. There are numerous MailChimp competitors out there that you can try out as well. If you are looking for something that goes beyond the basics of email marketing, then MailChimp may not be the most appropriate choice for you which is when you need to look for MailChimp alternatives.
MailChimp Alternatives:
Fortunately, MailChimp isn’t the only available platform and there are MailChimp alternatives that can meet the needs of your business more efficiently. These MailChimp alternatives are services like MailChimp but have advanced functionalities and features that can be useful to a business. In this article, we have listed down nine of these MailChimp competitors that are better than MailChimp.
GetRespones is the first alternative to MailChimp in our list. This tool is full of features, which is absolutely worth the $15 that it charges per month initially. GetResponse is on this list especially because it’s less costly than the paid version of MailChimp. While it is scalable, GetResponse is better than MailChimp for small and mid-sized businesses.
Pros:
- Feature for creating a landing page.
- Drag-and-drop editor.
- User-friendly with an intuitive interface.
- Cost effective and value for money.
- Features to create around five split tests.
- Special features to develop marketing tracks for webinars.
Cons:
- Unresponsive customer service.
- It is a little difficult to manage lists.
If you are a small-scale business marketer and do not have much time to spend on email marketing campaigns, then AWeber is one of the best MailChimp alternatives for you. It costs around $19/mo for approximately 500 contacts.
Pros:
- It has over 700+ templates for customizing messages.
- Up to four split tests can be performed simultaneously.
- Ready-made templates make it suitable for time-strained marketers.
Cons:
- Data import is not as efficient. When you upload a list, customers will be required to reconfirm that they subscribed to your list.
When talking about MailChimp alternatives, we cannot forget ActiveCampaign. This tool is a great option, regardless of the size of your business. This is because their pricing plan is flexible. Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise, ActiveCampaign can serve you. Their prices begin from only $9/mo for 500 contacts. ActiveCampaign allows you to set special date-based campaigns, manage emails efficiently, split test campaigns, and upload contacts in a simple and easy manner. It is one of the very few platforms where you can sync your contact information from your company’s CRM or any other third-party program.
Pros:
- An incredibly easy to use drag-and-drop interface.
- Advanced remarketing and automation features.
- Easily scalable – suitable for all kinds of business.
Cons:
- The list building tool is difficult to use.
SimplyCast is a great website that works on a la carte basis. You can choose between either “contacts” or “e-mail sends”. In “contacts” there is no limit to the number of emails you can send. On the other hand, if you choose to go with “email sends” you can select the number of emails you need to send and then end up only paying for the resources you needed. So let’s assume, if in case you chose 1000 email sends, you pay 3$ per month. This helps in staying on a tight budget and keeping track of how much you spend.
Pros:
- A great tool with some of the best reporting functionality.
- Tremendously easy setup. Anyone can do it.
- SimplyCast is very intuitive and designed with someone unfamiliar to email marketing in mind.
Cons:
- The only potential downside to using SimplyCast is that the support is has been deemed unhelpful and not very reliable by some reviewers.
Mailerlite is one of the cheapest solutions when you consider MailChimp alternatives for email marketing campaigns. If you go for Mailerlite we recommend that you pay for the entire year, this way you can save a significant amount of money, approximately 1/3rd of what you would be paying if you pay monthly. You will be able to email about 5,000 subscribers with no restrictions on the number of emails you can send. Mailerlite’s also has a free plan that can be easily considered a steal when you realize it offers you unlimited emails to as many as 1,000 subscribers. The pricing plan starts from as little as $10 per month (or a package of $84 per year) for up to 1001 – 2500 subscribers.
Pros:
- The tool is intensely lightweight and focuses greatly on intuitiveness and user-friendliness.
- Creating and sending out emails is extremely easy.
- The editor features a drag-and-drop interface and also has an in built photo editor.
- It also features A/B testing as well as automatic response capabilities at a basic level.
- There also have an iPad app where you can sign-up and gather emails.
Cons:
- Lacks a lot of functionality present in more comprehensive email marketing campaign tools which is a trade-off for the tool being lightweight.
Robly is a renowned name in the community because of the OpenGen technology. It is another one of the services like MailChimp. It sends the email campaign again after 10 days of the starting send date to the subscribers that did not preview the mail when you sent it first. It changes the subject to increase chances of opening. It features A/B testing, device responsive templates and specific to device reporting. They also have a built-in A.I that figures out the best times to send emails to achieve higher open rates.
This artificial intelligence feature is known as the Robly A.I. Additionally, they have an entire page on switching to Robly from Constant Contact, their main competitors. The pricing plan is divided into three categories: Premium Email (for $15 per month), Pro Marketer (for $49 per month), and Enterprise (for $149 per month).
Pros:
- Excellent customer service.
- Beautiful and intuitive interface that is user-friendly.
- Robly A.I. is a powerful feature that helps you figure out your email campaigning schedule.
Cons:
- Limited fonts and deigned templates.
If you are a small business that is looking to integrate different marketing tools in a single package then Infusionsoft might be what you need. This tool enables you to manage your eCommerce sales, capture leads, create e-mail newsletters, and even handle advanced marketing automation for you. The pricing starts at $99 per month and the user training package will cost you $999 as a one-time fee.
Pros:
- An all-round marketing automation and CRM platform.
- Eliminates the need for different business tools – it is a universal tracking tool.
- Excellent customer service that is available through various channels: Phone, live chat, and email.
Cons:
- Not as advanced in capability as other alternatives.
- The learning curve is steep – difficult to make use of the tool without training videos.
A simple and intuitive whiteboard layout sets Autopilot aside from the other MailChimp alternatives. With this powerful tool, you can create and distribute messages on multiple channels in the Autopilot canvas even before you publish them. This is one of the alternatives that incorporates real-time monitoring so that you can watch the results of your client journeys live. For automation, Autopilot also lets you connect sites, forms, and apps to make the communication process more efficient. Among all MailChimp alternatives, Autopilot has very good features to personalize the customer experience by sending messages, emails, postcards, and SMS from within Autopilot. The pricing plan for Autopilot is as follows: Base package ($20 per month) and Business package ($40 per month).
Pros:
- Multi-channel support ensures that you are not limited to email marketing only.
- The client journeys feature helps you track and visualize your business’ sales funnel easily.
Cons:
- The ‘client journey’ feature can be difficult to adapt to, especially when you use it after MailChimp.
- No auto-invoicing feature for the customers.
Drift makes use of messaging to help you communicate with customers and generate leads for your business. It is a powerful sales communication platform that is an excellent alternative to MailChimp. The tool is equipped with state of the art automation features. For instance, Drift has an automated chat option for your website known as Driftbot which makes use of artificial intelligence for answering the questions asked by website visitors. It promotes conversation and finds out the information that you need from your customers. The tool can also be customized to have certain questions and messages routed directly to a focal person or department. Though you can opt for the free plan, the pricing is divided into the following packages: Starter (for $50 per month), Pro (for $250 per month), and Enterprise (for $1000 per month).
Pros:
- Easy to install and customize according to your business needs.
- Can be integrated with workflow applications such as Slack and Salesforce.
- You can send customized messages to visitors on your website.
Cons:
- The free plan is very limited and the other plans for too pricy for a small business.
- Lacks essential features such as multi-channel messaging and user tracking.
A customer messaging platform that has specifically been designed for the product teams that are working in eCommerce and SaaS. You can send out information about a new product or feature to the customers right when they login into the app. You can also send out surveys to customers and segment the customer base according to their responses. All in all, intercom provides messaging products for marketing, support, and sales teams that are connected through one single platform. With Intercom, you can choose to pay for the entire package or particular feature only – the ‘All Intercom products’ package will cost you $155 per month.
Pros:
- A useful tool for engaging with customers and internal teams in real time.
- Efficient customer monitoring and tracking.
Cons:
- The vast number of features available makes the tool complex to use.
- The pricing structure is confusing especially when you are not sure what your exact requirements are.
Conclusion:
Among all of these MailChimp alternatives, the one that stands out is ActiveCampaign. It is our recommended tool because of its flexible pricing plans and advanced automation features that are essential for every email marketing campaign. The drag-and-drop interface is extremely easy to use and understand. With features such as split-testing, customized time-sensitive campaigns, and multi-channel messaging, ActiveCampaign is the ideal choice for any business. Not just this, but it also allows you to sync your contacts with other business management tools such as your Customer Relation Management system. These technical features combined with characteristics such as ease of use and scalability makes ActiveCampaign the perfect all-around tool for email marketing. It is indeed one of the best, if not the best, MailChimp competitors out there.