9 Best Mailchimp Alternatives – Is the Chimp still the Champ?

For a long time, Mailchimp has been the king of the email marketing world – or at the very least, a serious frontrunner. However, other email marketing platforms have sprung up over time, turning the world of email marketing into more of a competitive landscape.

Mailchimp now have plenty of alternatives, including both Sendinblue and ActiveCampaign, which offer lower price points and pick up Mailchimp’s weak points.

Each email platform has its own weaknesses however – so it’s worth looking further into each platform to see what works best for your business, and what features are most important to you. Fortunately, we’ve done all the research on your behalf, so you won’t have to spend hours looking at each Mailchimp alternative individually – simply scroll down to compare.

The best Mailchimp alternatives are:

1. ActiveCampaign – Best for automation
   
2. GetResponse – Best value for core email marketing features
3. MailerLite – Best for analytical features
4. Campaign Monitor – Best value for transactional emails
5. Sendinblue – Best for CRM
   
6. Zoho – Best overall value for money
7. Moosend – Best pure email marketing platform
8. HubSpot – Best for large businesses
9. Constant Contact – Best for small businesses

Why should you consider Mailchimp alternatives?

Mailchimp sure used to be at the top of the heap when it came to email marketing, but due to some changes in both the product and the industry as a whole, it has slipped down the ladder a bit.

For example, a lot of email marketing platforms now offer built-in customer relationship management software (CRM). While Mailchimp does offer CRM, it’s extremely bare-bones when compared to most of its competitors – so if that’s something you’re looking for in email marketing, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Another possible limitation of Mailchimp is the amount of contacts that it allows you to have. Without engaging with Mailchimp’s bespoke plans, Mailchimp offers 200,000 contacts at its top level. This is a decent amount, but a lot of competitors offer far larger limits, or even no limits at all – which can be more enticing for larger businesses.

Email marketing can result in a very high return on investment, with potential ROI being as high as 4,400%. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't look for cheaper options if they supply the same service.

In terms of pricing, MailChimp is on the cheaper side when compared to its competitors. Indeed, $9.99 a month is a cheaper paid plan than every other alternative except for Zoho. However, MailChimp’s most expensive plan is quite steep, at $1,190 per month.

One thing to note when comparing between Mailchimp and alternative providers for key features is that Mailchimp is the only software we rate five stars for “transactional emails.” This is because it's the only service to include reputation monitoring, allowing you to track the impression your business is having on people. So that’s one reason to stick with Mailchimp.

It's also Tech.co’s top recommended choice for ecommerce, standing out for its massive amount of ecommerce app integration options. But if this isn’t an important aspect of your business, an alternative will likely be better suited to you.

On this page:

• Why Consider Mailchimp Alternatives?
• How We Compare Email Marketing Platforms
• Verdict: The Best Mailchimp Alternative
• Frequently Asked Questions

Mailchimp Comparisons

Let’s have a look at some of Mailchimp’s top competitors and how they stack up against one another. We’ll let you know who we think comes out on top, and which alternatives pip Mailchimp to the post.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp

ActiveCampaign highlights:

• Overall cheaper than Mailchimp
• Great CRM and automation
• A/B testing

ActiveCampaign beats Mailchimp on price, at least in its higher tiers. This is further improved by its offering of unlimited emails, although the max amount of 100,000 contacts is a bit slim. ActiveCampaign excels in CRM and automation, but falls completely flat when looking at social media or transactional emails.

Starting off, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer any transactional emails or social media support. On top of this, its analytics don’t offer platform tracking or an email click map, which can leave you in the dark a bit if you’re trying to get a sense of what’s working in your campaign.

However, if you’re looking for a Mailchimp replacement due to its weakness in the area of CRM, ActiveCampaign happens to offer one of the best CRM systems on the market. It provides contact profiles and interaction history, like Mailchimp, but also add-on task tracking, task automation, and lead scoring, which can all help you optimize your relationships with your customers.

While ActiveCampaign’s analytics fall short when compared to Mailchimp – they don’t have a click map, while their platform tracking is limited – it does excel in its automation features. It offers every feature that Mailchimp does, as well as automation A/B testing, allowing you to experiment and optimize your workflow.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign bases its price on the amount of contacts you have registered, as well as a standard tier system. For example, these prices are all for a business sending to 500 customers.

Their Lite plan is $15 per month, the Plus plan is $70 per month, the Professional plan is $159 per month, and the Enterprise plan costs $279 per month.

GetResponse vs Mailchimp

GetResponse highlights:

• Cheaper than Mailchimp
• Higher email limits
• Click map

GetResponse’s top tier is cheaper than Mailchimp by almost 50%, which – when coupled with its unlimited emails – makes it a great platform for smaller companies looking to find their footing. However, when it comes to specific features, GetResponse doesn’t beat MailChimp in any categories.

However, the price and email limit is pretty much the only place where GetResponse excels. It doesn’t offer any CRM, and its social media features are restricted to ad builders on Facebook and Instagram.

While GetResponse does offer good analytics, transactional emails, and automation features, none of these categories trump Mailchimp’s offerings. The platform also lacks a click map in its analytics, and doesn't offer transactional email templates.

GetResponse Pricing

GetResponse's price hinges on how many contacts you need to contact. It starts at $15 per month for 1,000 customers, then scales upwards.

MailerLite vs Mailchimp

MailerLite highlights:

• Higher email limits
• Higher contact limits

MailerLite and Mailchimp have similar costs, but MailerLite offers higher limits on both emails and contacts, meaning it may be a better choice for large businesses. On the other hand, Mailchimp offers both social media and CRM features, which MailerLite doesn’t, so it depends what’s more important to you. Their automation and analytics features are identical.

MailerLite and Mailchimp have almost identical payment options, so if you’re using one and are thinking about moving to the other, you won’t have to worry about adjusting your accounting too much.

One of the only reasons you’d want to move from Mailchimp to MailerLite is the latter's higher limits on both emails and contacts. MailerLite’s highest tier offers triple the amount of contacts as Mailchimp, and its email limit is over double. So if you’re a larger business looking to escape Mailchimp’s relatively low limits, MailerLite could work for you.

However, MailerLite offers absolutely no social media support, which is a definite negative. And while a lot of the other platforms on this list will beat Mailchimp’s weaker CRM, MailerLite falls short here as well, as it doesn’t have any CRM software within its email marketing software.

The two platforms' automation and analytics offer the exact same services, so it’ll really come down to whether you prefer email/contact volume to social media and CRM.

MailerLite Pricing

MailerLite's pricing depends on how many contacts you need in your plan. There's a free option for those with under 1,000 contacts, which only allows for 12,000 emails per month.

For unlimited emails, it'll cost $10 per month for up to 1,000 customers, $15 per month for between 1,000 and 2,500 customers, $30 per month for between 2,500 and 5,000 customers, and $50 per month for between 5,000 and 10,000 customers.

Campaign Monitor vs Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor highlights:

• Unlimited monthly emails
• Good analytics features

With very similar price points, Campaign Monitor initially stands to be a fitting rival for Mailchimp, especially due to its unlimited emails. However, its drastically lower amount of contacts is a harbinger for further shortcomings.

While both services have identical analytics, Campaign Monitor starts to fall short in every other category, as it doesn’t offer any CRM or social media functionality.

Its transactional emails are good when looked at in a vacuum, but transactional emails are where Mailchimp does some of its best work – so this can only take Campaign Monitor so far.

Add to this that Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer behavior based automation or automation A/B testing, and there aren’t many areas where Campaign Monitor trumps Mailchimp.

Campaign Monitor Pricing

Campaign Monitor has three pricing tiers. The Basic plan costs $9 per month, and offers a monthly allowance of 2,500 emails. The Unlimited plan costs $29 per month, and the Premier plan costs $149 per month. Both offer unlimited emails.

Sendinblue vs Mailchimp

Sendinblue highlights:

• High plan has unlimited contacts
• Great automation and CRM features

Sendinblue won top billing in our ranking of the best email marketing platforms, so it won't be surprising to hear that we consider them an upgrade from Mailchimp – at least in some categories. Most notably, Sendinblue has some of the best automation and CRM services on the market.

Sendinblue’s most basic plan is slightly more expensive than Mailchimp's, but this is somewhat offset by the cheapness of its highest paid plan. This higher plan does offer fewer monthly emails than Mailchimp’s, but comes with unlimited contacts. That means that if you’re planning to send the occasional email to a wider audience, Sendinblue can work for you.

Sendinblue’s social media options aren’t great, only supporting Facebook ads, but that’s really the only place where it falls drastically short compared to Mailchimp. And while its social media may fall short, its CRM more than compensates, offering task tracking, task automation, and lead scoring. This is on top of contact profiles and interaction history, which are the only things offered by Mailchimp.

And while both platforms do well in terms of both analytics and automation, Mailchimp doesn’t allow for A/B testing in its automation software, while Sendinblue doesn’t support list growth in its analytics. All in all, they’re both great pieces of software, but there are some considerable differences.

Sendinblue Pricing

Sendinblue offers a free plan, as well as two paid plans, which depend on the amount of customers you're sending to. These plans can range from between $25 per month to $755 per month.

Zoho vs Mailchimp

Zoho highlights:

• Unlimited monthly emails
• Much cheaper than Mailchimp
• Automation A/B testing

Zoho’s biggest appeal is its affordability. All of its tiers are far cheaper than their Mailchimp counterparts, which is extra impressive due to the fact that they offer unlimited emails and 50,000 more contacts than Mailchimp.

This price tag does have to be offset somewhere, and Zoho indeed falls a bit short of Mailchimp in a few departments. Firstly, it doesn’t offer any kind of CRM within its software. There is separate Zoho CRM software that can be implemented into the Zoho email marketing platform, but it will set you back an extra $12 to $45 per month.

Zoho’s transactional emails don’t have any templates, and its social media features could use an ad builder and audience interaction. Its analytics are missing an engagement segmentation feature that can be found in its CRM software, but again, we’re simply looking at Zoho's email marketing platform.

However, Zoho does beat Mailchimp when it comes to automation, offering automation A/B testing where Mailchimp does not.

Zoho Pricing

Zoho includes a free plan, as well as a paid plan that can be as cheap as $3 per month. Depending on what you choose to include, this can range all the way up to $375 per month.

Moosend vs Mailchimp

Moosend highlights:

• Unlimited emails
• Cheaper than Mailchimp

In most categories, Moosend either matches Mailchimp, or falls short. It is a cheaper platform, and does offer unlimited emails, but in every other department it doesn’t quite stack up next to Mailchimp.

Firstly, it doesn’t have any kind of CRM or social media integration. Its transactional email templates are also curiously only limited to “abandoned cart” emails, which appear when a customer loads up a shopping cart then doesn’t check out.

Both platforms offer identical automation features, but Moosend doesn’t offer any list growth within its analytics category. Moosend is still a good platform, but when compared to Mailchimp, it doesn’t shine quite as much.

Moosend Pricing

On top of a free plan, Moosend offers a paid plan that ranges from $10 to $760 per month.

HubSpot vs Mailchimp

HubSpot highlights:

• CRM task tracing
• Good transactional emails
• Good automation features

HubSpot is the most expensive software on this list by far, intended for massive companies. This is emphasized by its 20 million email limit and 1 million contact limit. It has great features across the board, but you’d need them to justify the price tag.

HubSpot's CRM is better than Mailchimp's, as it offers task tracking on top of the contact profiles and interaction history offered by Mailchimp. Its transactional emails, while not as good when compared to Mailchimp, are still worthy of similar praise.

HubSpot is tied with Mailchimp in terms of social media, with the only difference being the tradeoff of Mailchimp’s ad building for HubSpot’s audience interaction. Their analytic functions are also practically identical.

HubSpot offers every automation service boasted by Mailchimp, while also tacking on automation A/B testing, thus allowing you to optimize your automated workflow.

The comparison between these two is truly neck and neck, and boils down to the amount you’re willing to pay for more emails and contacts.

HubSpot Pricing

HubSpot offers a free plan, as well as three paid plans:

• Starter tier starts at $45 per month for the first 1,000 contacts
• Professional tier starts at $800 per month for the first 2,000 contacts
• Enterprise tier starts at $3,200 per month for the first 10,000 contacts

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp

Constant Contact highlights:

• Cheaper high tier
• Unlimited monthly emails
• Good analytics and social media

Constant Contact is a great platform for small businesses, as its highest tier is far cheaper than Mailchimp's. However, despite this low cost, it still offers unlimited emails to an admittedly small number of contacts.

Constant Contact doesn’t offer any CRM, and its transactional emails are very much bare bones, only giving you transactional email templates. Its automation could also use some work – it only provides custom workflows, workflow templates, and date based automation, while Mailchimp offers all of these on top of user segmentation and behavior base automation.

Both software platforms have the same analytics offerings, allowing you to get a full sense of how your emails are being received – but where Constant Contact does come out on top is with its social media.

Constant Contact allows you to create and schedule posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You can also make ads on Facebook and Instagram, engage with your audiences, and get very comprehensive analytics on everything. Mailchimp doesn’t support LinkedIn or audience interaction, so this is a clear win for Constant Contact.

Constant Contact Pricing

Constant Contact has two paid tiers. The first, Email tier, starts at $20 per month. The second, Email Plus, starts at $45 per month. Both prices range based on how many subscribers you want.

Free Alternatives to Mailchimp

Despite Mailchimp's affordability, you might be looking to save every penny you can. If that's the case, here are some free alternatives to Mailchimp.

Mailerlite offers a free plan that can sustain up to 1,000 customers and 12,000 monthly emails. Not only that, but it offers a wide range of features, including a drag and drop email editor, a built-in photo editor, and landing pages. You'll have to keep Mailerlite's logo on your emails, however.

Sendinblue offers a pretty standard free plan, but it allows for unlimited contacts as well as a maximum of 300 emails a day, which is actually quite substantial.

Moosend's free tier offers unlimited emails, which is a lovely amenity for a free plan. It also comes with almost all of Moosend's reporting and analytics features. As a plus, it doesn't require a credit card to sign up, which is always nice.

Should You Use a Free Emailing Marketing Platform?

Free trials or plans are a great way to get started with email marketing software. You can learn all the ins and outs of the software, without being concerned that you're burning money. However, they're not the ideal permanent fixture of a small business.

Many times, free plans and trials will be intended just for that – a trial session of the software. This means that these plans might be quite barebones, with very slim limits on the amount of contacts you can save or emails you can send out.

One of the reasons email marketing software can have such a high return on investment is due to the sheer amount of emails that you can send to a massive amount of customers. If you sent three monthly emails to 10,000 customers (totalling 30,000 emails), and got even a minute fraction of those customers to engage with the email, you would make back more than you're spending. However, with the restrictive limits on free plans, this would likely not be possible.

If your business is small but planning to grow, you can always start out on a free tier and then advance to a paid plan once the limits get a bit too restrictive for you.

How We Compare Email Marketing Platforms

Frequently Asked Questions