Campaign Monitor vs Drip
Trying to choose between Campaign Monitor vs Drip as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 4.6 TrustPilot
- 4.6 Capterra
- 4.1 G2
Average 4.4 / 5
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a global technology company that provides an email marketing platform that’s easy to use yet extremely powerful. It powers media moguls, tech giants, nonprofits, and other industries.
Pricing
From $9 to $989 a month depending on the tariff and the contact list size
Key features
- No-code email editor
- Automated sequence builder
- List management and segmentation
- Personalization
- Analytics
- A/B testing
Support
Online support with limited working hours, the Help center on the website, video tutorials, courses
- 4.4 GetApp
- 4.4 Capterra
- 4.4 G2
Average 4.4 / 5
Drip
Drip is a multi-channel marketing automation tool for e-commerce.
Pricing
Dynamic, depends on the contact list and email volume, starts from $39 for 1–2500 people in the list + unlimited sends
Key features
- Marketing automation
- Intuitive email builder
- Onsite campaigns
- Campaign analytics
- Smart segmentation
Support
Email and live chat, designated schedule, the availability of these channels depends on your pricing plan
General info about company
Campaign Monitor
Founded in 2004 by Ben Richardson, based in Nashville. Belongs to CM Group, along with other marketing software companies like Sailthru and LiveClicker.
Drip
Drip was founded in 2012 in Minneapolis, the US, and acquired by Leadpages in 2016. The company’s main goal is empowering small e-commerce businesses.
Difficulty
Campaign Monitor
The email editor is WYSIWYG and the platform provides users with a great choice of templates and an automated email builder for your brand — no coding or design skills are required. Campaign analytics come in the form of digestible graphs that are easy to interpret for junior marketers.
Drip
The main focus of Drip is sales funnel automation, and the automation UI is tricky, which makes the platform less beginner-friendly than its competitors
Best for
Campaign Monitor
Marketing agencies, small organizations, publishers
Drip
Community-focused DTC and e-commerce businesses
Free plan
Campaign Monitor
No free plan, free trial only.
The free trial only allows sending test campaigns to 5 people or less, importing contact lists, and creating customer journeys without sending them
Drip
Drip doesn’t offer a free plan but there’s a 14-day free trial with no credit card required for registration.
Pricing
Campaign Monitor
Dynamic, depends on the contact list size and the tariff type:
- Basic: $9–$299/month
- Unlimited: $30–$699/month
- Premier: $158–$989/month
All tariffs are limited to 50000 contacts.
Drip
Dynamic pricing depends on list size and sending volume.
$39–89/month: up to 5,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, full functionality, free migration, email support
$99–409/month: up to 30,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, full functionality, free migration, email and chat support
$489–1899/month: up to 170,000 contacts and up to 2,040,000 email sends, full functionality, free migration, email and chat support, dedicated Customer Success manager
Custom pricing: custom number of contacts, up to 120,000,000 email sends, all the product features, support, and a dedicated manager included in the previous tier
Support
Campaign Monitor
An in-app Digital Assistant tool. Support agents around the world are available in the following hours:
- America: Mon to Fri 6 am to 5 pm PST/PDT
- Australia and Asia: Mon to Fri 9 am to 5 pm AEST/AEDT
- Europe: Mon to Fri 9 am to 5 pm BST/GMT
Limited support (unspecified working hours) is available on weekends and during holidays. Support phone numbers are only available for Premier users.
Aside from online support, Campaign Monitor offers:
- Video tutorials for newbies and experienced users
- A 30-minute Getting Started course
- Email Academy — an email marketing course
- Resources for developers
- The in-app Help Center with documentation
Drip
Email support:
- Available for all paying customers
- 9 am to 5 pm CT, Monday through Friday
Live chat support:
- Available for Drip customers on the $99/mo + plans
- 9 am to 5 pm CT, Monday through Friday
Features
Campaign Monitor
- Supports SMS notifications
- Advanced segmentation — available for Premier users
- Link Review — checks for broken links
- Free email template builder
- Campaign analytics
- CAN-SPAM compliance checker
- Integrations with CRM systems and more
Drip
- Point-and-click email editor
- Dynamic content in emails
- A/B testing
- Email automation
- Free migration service
- List segmentation and contact tagging
- Pop-ups and signup forms
- Email analytics including conversion rates and revenue
- SMS marketing
Templates
Campaign Monitor
108 free mobile-friendly templates available without signing up, templates sorted by email types from announcements to transactional.
If you don’t like templates, you can build emails from scratch using blocks in the email builder.
Recently launched their own stock with free images.
Campaign Monitor also has an automated custom template builder where you fill in the questionnaire and get a bunch of email templates with the logo of your business and custom design.
Drip
- 51 ecommerce email templates for holidays, promotion, and other occasions
- 4 empty templates with different amount of columns
- 1 plain text email template
Video/screenshots
Campaign Monitor
Drip
Integrations
Campaign Monitor
- Data for marketing: Salesforce, WordPress, Shopify +
- List growth: Intercom, OptinMonster, Unbounce +
- CRM: Raiser’s Edge NXT, Lexer, Qgiv +
- Advertising: AdRoll, Facebook Lead Ads, Rungopher+
More than 100 integrations are available for CRM, list management, surveys, and more
Drip
150+ integrations with e-commerce platforms like Shopify, CRMs like Zoho CRM, other ESPs like MailerLite, numerous event management tools, sales software including TikTok Lead Generation, social media, SMS marketing tools, and more
Devices
Campaign Monitor
- A web app accessible from phones
- No mobile app
Drip
- Web app only but it’s optimized for mobile browsers
Languages
Campaign Monitor
English
Drip
English
Automation
Campaign Monitor
The drag-and-drop interface for creating automated email sequences that includes:
- Triggers — subscribers’ actions that start or continue the sequenc
- Yes/No rules for personalization
- Timers — for example, you can send emails 3 or more days after a certain subscriber’s action or the previous email in the sequence
The sequence is visualized like an activity diagram where every element is customizable.
Drip
39 automation templates from welcome to post-purchase designed for different e-commerce platforms: Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and BigCommerce. Drip also allows you to use the API of your custom e-commerce website built from scratch. The “Rules” feature allows users to create custom automation sequences with custom event triggers.
Pros
Campaign Monitor
- Good WYSIWYG email editor interface
- Easy and simple email automation
- Easy-to-understand campaign reports with good infographics
Drip
- Good tools for list management and targeted campaigns
- All the metrics in one place
- Designed with e-commerce in mind
- Powerful automation
Cons
Campaign Monitor
- No live chat support + no 24/7 support
- All of the tariffs are limited to 50000 contacts
- No functional free trial you can actually use for work
- Contact importing is difficult when matching custom fields
- Split testing only allows 2 email versions
- No landing page builder
Drip
- Complex learning curve for new users
- Expensive compared to other ESPs
- No drag-and-drop automation workflow builder
- Slightly convoluted for one-off or otherwise not behavior-based campaigns
Reviews from experts
Campaign Monitor
“Feature-wise, there’s not really much to fault it on, but ‘power’ email marketing users will find the A/B testing feature a bit basic and will notice the absence of a fully fledged landing page creator.”
“It’s easy to find all features, which means you can get up and running quickly and get the most out of the solution without having to spend days playing around with it. If you sell products online, you’ll love the focus on optimizing transactional emails and tracking their performance so you can understand what works in terms of customer engagement.”
Drip
If you're looking to take your email program to the next level with automation, you definitely need to consider Drip. Their support team is always timely and helpful whenever we've needed guidance on the platform or using the API.
They are constantly improving their tools. It never feels stagnant or lacking in critical features. Their prebuilt workflows make getting started very easy and you can start driving more revenue almost immediately.
One thing I’m really missing in the workflows is the ability to A/B test your emails.
Actually, you can set up A/B testing, but you have to hack your way with liquid language. While this is no problem for really advanced users, 90% of the users won’t know how to do this.
I personally prefer to build everything that is automation related inside workflows. Even with simple sequence emails I can do in campaigns, I prefer to do them in workflows. It just depends on how advanced you want to get with automation.
If you want simple email series, without any branching logic (like if the user does this, send this), use campaigns. If you want to go more advanced than this, use workflows.
*This information is current as of 09/28/2023. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
