Top Mailchimp Alternative Services in 2021 (Better Features & Cheaper to Use)

Why people are switching from Mailchimp

Mailchimp was among the first brands ​​to introduce email builders. They offered an easy-to-use drag & drop editor and a wide variety of templates to get started quickly. But in recent years dozens of new up-to-date email marketing services emerged, and Mailchimp failed to keep up with innovations. They have ​​very basic ready-made templates for subscription forms, lack autoresponders, and can hardly be integrated with WordPress and Paypal.

Their famous forever-free plan was one of the most attractive options. But recently the pricing plan has changed, and they started charging even for unsubscribed users in the list.

Mailchimp “live chat support 24/7” seems to be nominal –– it’s offline most of the time, even on workdays.

Instead, Mailchimp offers to contact their Helpbot. It understands only simple sentences and you’ll need to try a few different variations of one phrase each time.

Let’s sum it up with a table of Mailchimp’s pros and cons as an email marketing service.

Luckily, there are lots of modern Mailchimp competitors, with far better features and options, which offer quality service at affordable prices.

What makes a good Mailchimp alternative

Let’s see what to look out for, when seeking a reliable Mailchimp competitor.

Automation

Complex automation services help to improve email marketing efficiency. They help you target the right people at the right time –– and do all that with a minimum manual effort.

In Mailchimp, you can trigger email messages and personalize them based on specific actions customers take. But some options lack flexibility. For example, in this tool, email lists are separated from each other, and if one user belongs to two different lists, they appear as a subscriber twice. In some situations that’s inappropriate.

Create multiple lists in: Sendinblue, Omnisend.

Email analytics

With analytics, you are able to evaluate your marketing efforts and see what works for your customers best.

Mailchimp offers an opportunity to analyze your campaigns, but it looks a bit basic and lacks some advanced features like email surveys, opens by location, etc.

The following services are better: MailerLite, GetResponse.

Diverse channels

It’s nice when your email provider not only allows you to send emails, but also create SMS campaigns and push notifications. Even better, when it has options for managing clients and deals: keeping all this in one place saves tons of your time.

However, Mailchimp claims to offer SMS and CRM services, but they don’t include any pipeline management features.

Competitors with built-in CRMs: EngageBay, ActiveCampaign, Zoho.

Send SMS via: Sendinblue, ActiveCampaign.

Segmentation & Personalization

To make your customers more personalized offers, you’ll need to segment the audience. All modern email marketing services offer this option both in paid and free plans. Flexible segmentation features are important for the success of your email marketing campaign.

Mailchimp allows you to divide subscribers into segments, but the flexibility of this option depends on your pricing plan.

Mailchimp alternatives with advanced segmentation features: Omnisend, AWeber, Hubspot.

Support

Customer support helps to solve your issues with email marketing service, so that’s very important to choose the service with prompt managers available 24/7.

As we mentioned above, Mailchimp claims to have round-the-clock live support, but in fact, live chat is unavailable most of the time, and communication with the bot is not always helpful. Also, the quality of support depends a lot on the pricing plan. Some users claim that using basic pricing plans, it is hardly possible to get a reply earlier than one-two weeks of expectation.

The services with fast & friendly support: Selzy, MailerLite, Sendinblue.

Mobile app

Mobile apps help to get access to all features anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately, many email marketing services lack this option. Mailchimp has a mobile app to create beautiful user-friendly emails on the go.

Other email tools with convenient mobile apps: AWeber, Hubspot, MailerLite.

Affordable pricing

At first glance, Mailchimp offers quite generous payment options. They offer an in-built CRM, nice free pre-designed templates to create the best newsletters. But if you read the conditions till the end, an unwelcome surprise awaits you.

The thing is, as we’ve already mentioned, that you pay for a total number of customers, not just for subscribed ones. So, the final cost is not so straightforward.

Cheaper alternatives: Selzy, Sendinblue, MailerLite.

Top-rated Mailchimp competitors offering a free plan

We have hand-picked the best Mailchimp alternatives among hundreds of other services. They are definitely appealing for small businesses, e-commerce, non-profit organizations, startups, etc.

Here are Mailchimp competitors with a free plan available.

SELZY

The first comes Selzy –– a simple and very email marketing-focused tool. It has a convenient email builder with different blocks for the most sophisticated designs. You can add a discount timer, menu, or image carousel to your emails.

Selzy is more flexible when compared to Mailchimp: you can finely tune the parameters of each block. Also, it is possible to create another version of your email for mobile devices. There is an option of adding other buttons or text to your mobile newsletters.

As for email marketing options available in Selzy, it has:

• Standard features like automation, segmentation, personalization, and A/B testing.
• A variety of tools to make newsletters better. “Recommendations” gives tips on how to correct a newsletter to avoid getting spammed. “Marketing checkup” evaluates email marketing and helps to improve your campaign’s results.
• Unlimited subscriber lists. As for Mailchimp, it allows you to create up to 3 lists on the Light plan and 5 on the Standard plan.
• Detailed reports. Selzy reports not only include basic indicators and click maps, but also represent the dynamics of monthly openings and analysis of devices.
• Live chat and email support 24/7 ready to solve all issues with your campaigns.

Pricing: starting at $12/month for 1000 subscribers.

Hubspot

Same as Mailchimp, Hubspot is an all-in-one marketing platform that includes email marketing, landing pages builder, automation, sales tools, and many other features. They have an advanced CRM system integrated with email marketing, which allows you to make personalized offers to your customers.

Also, the platform lets you do A/B testing, create autoresponders, and drip email campaigns. They have friendly live chat support ready to answer your questions 24/7.

If you are looking for an all-inclusive marketing solution, try out Hubspot. It is suitable both for small businesses and enterprise companies.

Pricing: free plan or from $45/month depending on the number of subscribers.

Mailjet

In Mailjet, tracking real-time analytics becomes easier than ever. You’ll see how the customers respond to your emails and manage your mailing lists.

Customizable drag & drop editor allows you to create good-looking emails, which makes the service a very popular choice among beginners. It also has a gallery of cute pre-designed templates for any case.

Mailjet offers not only classic email features like email automation and analytics but also an opportunity to track user behavior and compare campaigns results. It also provides users with SMS marketing.

Pricing: forever-free access and paid subscription plans starting at $15/month.

Moosend

Moosend allows creating personalized campaigns due to unlimited customer segmentation even for free users. The automation builder is also available for any pricing plan. Moosend is on average 30% cheaper than Mailchimp, which makes it a good alternative for companies with a limited budget.

It also provides users with email templates and numerous marketing tools: automation, landing pages, integrations with popular apps and services.

Pricing: forever-free plan available with paid pricing plan starting at $8/month.

Sendinblue

Sendinblue is a tool that, same as Mailchimp, encompasses many aspects of marketing. They offer a wide range of services: from SMS campaigns to CRM tools. A forever-free plan is available, but it limits you to 300 emails per day.

Paid plans include advanced statistics, social media ads, landing page builder, and plenty of other options. Also, the users can have a live chat with support to solve any issues quickly.

Pricing: free plan with paid options starting at $25/month.

Omnisend

Omnisend makes a perfect tool for e-commerce: it has conversion-focused automation and convenient segmentation options. It integrates well with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop.

Omnisend has a wide range of features for online stores like the ability to browse abandonment and cart recovery. It also goes beyond with some advanced options like unique signup forms, automated product recommendations, and interactive gift boxes.

Another Omnisend’s advantage is a beautiful gallery of templates for landing pages.

Pricing: free plan/paid options start at $20/month.

AWeber

Same as Mailchimp, AWeber has plenty of integrations and features. It allows users to build long-lasting relationships with their customers to boost conversion rates.

AWeber is great for e-commerce, as it can be easily integrated with shopping platforms like Magento or Shopify.

As for the other benefits and perks:

• AWeber allows the usage of autoresponders, which maximizes user engagement.
• A tool has a wide template library and offers detailed analytics for every email.
• You can use AWeber’s mobile app and access all the features at any time.
• AWeber is a nice Mailchimp alternative, when it comes to bulk emailing and segmentation options.

Data importing in AWeber can be a bit complicated, so this feature is not its strong suit.

Pricing: starts at $26,15/month, and a free plan with 3000 emails per month is also available.

ConvertKit

Mailchimp is a more mature tool than ConvertKit, but small businesses should definitely give this alternative a try.

ConvertKit has more flexibility in managing lists and contacts –– it allows you to create better-targeted campaigns. They also offer a convenient landing page builder: you can create an unlimited number of pages and use a custom domain name. There is also a beautiful gallery of landing page templates that can be customized to your taste.

An advanced segmentation feature allows you to make the process of targeting campaigns more accurate and create better-personalized offers for your subscribers.

The platform also integrates with popular CRM systems and e-commerce systems like WooCommerce and Shopify.

Pricing: free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers with paid plans starting at $29/month.

GetResponse

GetResponse is great for automation. It lets you trigger sale conditions, do A/B tests, and remove conditions. The tool also makes it simple to move subscribers from one list to another.

The platform is available in 25 languages, which is very convenient for international teams. Also, GetResponse offers a set of unique PRO features, like a landing page creator and a webinar tool. Their multimedia center, which gives you access to stock photos and generation of QR codes is also a nice extra.

But unfortunately, GetResponse lacks heatmaps and has no free plan. Additionally, it limits the number of uploaded images that you can store in their media center to 1 GB, while Mailchimp doesn’t.

Pricing: Basic plan starts at $12,30 for 1000 subscribers.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a nice choice for small businesses or non-profit organizations. It has a simple and convenient drag & drop editor, which requires no knowledge of HTML, and helps you to create professional emails. The platform also has such basic essential options as an ability to manage email lists, track email deliverability, and open rates. You can track the results of your campaign, and see how they perform using clear visual reports.

Built-in tools for e-commerce solutions help online shops reach their customers. It is easy to create surveys and polls, donation pages, or dynamic sign-up forms.

Constant Contact is perfect for WordPress and easily integrates with its most popular plugins like OptinMonster, WPForms, and others.

Pricing: starting at $20/month with a 30 days trial period.

MailerLite

This platform has a convenient beginner-friendly email builder and lots of ready-made customizable templates. You can also add polls and surveys to your campaigns to track user experience.

Besides, there are lots of other tools to capture leads like popup forms, marketing automation, and segmentation of contacts. All these options let you target the right users at the right time.

MailerLite also offers built-in real-time reporting tools to analyze your marketing campaigns and an A/B testing feature.

Pricing: send up to 12 000 emails/month for free or buy an unlimited amount for $10/month.

Campaign Monitor

The peculiarity of Campaign Monitor is two separate email marketing platforms. One of them –– CM Commerce –– is perfect for e-commerce, and the other can be used in other businesses.

CM Commerce integrates with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Shopify, has smart customer segmentation, pre-made customer journey automation templates, and more. It also includes behavioral targeting features, pre-made customer journey automation recipes, smart customer segmentation, and reviews & user-generated content.

Campaign Monitor for other businesses provides you with marketing automation workflows, advanced analytics, A/B testing, and segmentation. You can also create SMS campaigns, but for separate pricing.

Pricing: basic pricing plan starts at $29/month for 1000 subscribers.

The bottom line

Let’s sum up everything about the most successful Mailchimp alternatives:

When you are looking for a reliable Mailchimp alternative, consider more factors than just a price. Although Mailchimp is a platform with a stable reputation, that doesn’t mean it’s the best option for any business.

Nowadays, there are plenty of Mailchimp alternatives to look for. You can choose the one that suits the needs of your business –– there is no ready-made formula on what is the best email marketing service. So, learn more about all the existing alternatives, try them out, and get optimal results.