HubSpot vs Mailchimp
Trying to choose between HubSpot vs Mailchimp as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
HubSpot
- 3.4/5 on TrustPilot
- 4.5/5 on Capterra
- 4.4/5 on G2
A CRM platform that offers email marketing, content management, marketing automation, and customer service capabilities.
Pricing
Marketing tools only start at $18 a month for 1,000 marketing contacts
Key features
- Email automation, reporting, etc.
- Landing pages and forms
- Marketing automation
- Website builder and hosting
- CRM platform
- B2B commerce tools
- Customer service software
- Sales and operations software
- Integrations with various services
Support
24/7 support via email and chat on paid plans, phone support on professional and Enterprise plans. Community support only on the Free plan.
Mailchimp
- 1.4/5 on TrustPilot
- 4.5/5 on Capterra
- 4.3/5 on G2
An email marketing software with automations and integrations. Plus, a hosting and website and landing pages builder.
Pricing
Starts at $13 a month for 500 contacts
Key features
- Email automation
- Hosting, websites, and online stores
- Landing page builder
- Marketing CRM
- Integrations with various services
- Drag-and-drop email builder
Support
24/7 support via email and chat on paid plans, phone support on Premium. Email support for the first 30 days on the Free plan.
HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006. Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mailchimp was founded in Atlanta in 2001 by Ben Chestnut, Mark Armstrong, and Dan Kurzius. Headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Was acquired by Intuit in 2021.
The software may seem complex and even overwhelming. However, newcomers get service demos and tutorials for a smooth start. Overall, the interface is user-friendly and approachable.
Creating emails doesn’t require design or coding skills. However, the interface can be confusing to novices.
Medium to big e-commerce companies that want an integrated software package with marketing, CRM, customer service, and website hosting all in one.
Small to medium e-commerce companies that want email marketing together with their website hosting.
A free plan for 2,000 email sends per month. Available email templates and features are limited. No customer support, only the access to HubSpot Community.
Has a free plan for up to 500 subscribers and 1,000 emails a month and a daily send limit of 500. It has a lot fewer features than paid plans, fewer available templates, and customer support for 30 days only.
Billed monthly:
- Starter: $20 for up to 1,000 marketing contacts
- Professional: $890 for up to 2,000 marketing contacts (the starting price is $3,890 with a mandatory paid onboarding)
- Enterprise: $3,600 for up to 10,000 marketing contacts (the starting price is $6,000 with a mandatory paid onboarding)
Other pricing features:
- Users are only billed for their “marketing” contacts (actively in use) and can have many more inactive contacts
- Even if a user cancels the subscriptions, they will be billed for the rest of their commitment period duration
For up to 500 contacts, billed monthly:
- Essentials $13
- Standard $20
- Premium $350
Other pricing features:
- 1-month free trial for Essentials and Standard
- A Pay As You Go plan
- Two possible pauses of the account’s billing every 12 months
- 15% discount for nonprofit organizations
- Service demo for new users
- Technical support is available on paid plans only
- Access to the HubSpot Community on the Free plan
- Chat and email support on all paid plans
- Phone support only on Professional and Enterprise plans
- Mandatory paid assisted onboarding on Professional and Enterprise plans
- Advanced and Premier additional onboarding options
- Customer training
- Various courses with certifications
- HubSpot user groups
- Email support on paid plans and 30-day only on a Free plan
- 24/7 chat support on paid plans
- Support phone line for the Premium plan: Mon-Fri 6:30 am — 6:00 pm ET (UTC-5)
- Email automation
- Dynamic list segmentation based on various criteria
- Email reputation reporting and tracking
- Custom reporting dashboards
- Integrations with popular services
- Drag-and-drop email builder and pre-made templates
- Landing pages
- Live chat with website visitors
- A CRM app for iOS and Android
- Email automation with pre-made customer journeys
- Hosting, websites, and landing pages builder
- Online store creator
- Marketing CRM
- Integrations with popular services
- Drag-and-drop email builder and pre-made templates
- A mobile app for iOS and Android to create and send emails, add clients, check analytics, etc.
15+ email templates
Only 5 email templates on the free plan
Templates for:
- Welcome messages
- Sales
- Newsletter
- Event invitations
- Announcements
- Ebook emails
100+ templates for emails and landing pages
AI assistant for designing
The free plan has a limited number of pre-built templates
Templates for:
- Welcome messages
- Sales
- Newsletter
- Events
- Announcements
- Win-back
1,495 integrations including WordPress, Zapier, Canva, Facebook, Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe, and more.
315 integrations including WordPress, Shopify, Facebook, Stripe, LiveChat, Canva, Unsplash, and more.
- Website
- A mobile app for iOS and Android to manage the CRM
- Chrome extension for Gmail or G Suite
- Office 365 add-in and desktop add-in for Office 365
- No installable solution.
- Website
- A mobile app for iOS and Android to create and send emails, add clients, check analytics, etc.
No installable solution.
English
Chinese (traditional)
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Italian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazil)
Spanish
Swedish
English
Spanish
Portuguese
Many pre-built automations (called workflows) triggered by:
- Contacts
- Companies
- Deals
- Tickets (for support purposes)
- Quotes
- Conversations
- Feedback submissions
Many pre-built automations (called customer journeys):
- Welcome series
- Abandoned cart
- Product retargeting
- Lead generation
- Order notifications, and more
- An all-in-one solution for e-commerce businesses: email marketing, CRM, CMS, and more
- 1,482 integrations
- Thorough onboarding and courses
- A strong global community
- Ability to store many contacts for free
- Essential features for small businesses
- 315 integrations
- Website hosting
- A mobile app
- Stylish design and built reputation
- Landing page builder
- Steep prices
- Complicated feature system may cause additional spendings
- Overwhelming amount of functions
- Support isn’t accessible enough
- Email templates aren’t sophisticated
- Relatively high prices
- Free and Standard plans are very limited
- Limited customization
- Customer support is hard to reach and isn’t very helpful
- Many people find the interface not user-friendly
- Unsubscribed and inactive accounts are still included in sending limits
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Anything above Starter gets very expensive and requires you to pay a high onboarding fee. In the case of the HubSpot Marketing Professional plan, this is $3,000 on top of the $890/month.
Surprisingly, HubSpot’s templates aren’t quite what you’d expect from such a popular, modern tool. I’d like to see some more design options for email and landing pages.
Pros: HubSpot is a good solution for organizations at their early steps. It provides all the necessary tools for website management and marketing activities. The contacts' management is good too.
Cons: It doesn't go in-depth on anything. For everything that HubSpot does there is a platform that does it better. But we would need many different tools so we stay with all in one but shallow approach (for now). It is also very expensive for what it is.
Keep in mind, though, that their subscription plans are relatively expensive compared to similar newsletter tools.
Perhaps if you’re a business with specific needs, like multilingual software, or use of your own tracking domain, then you may need to look further afield for the correct newsletter tool. But there really is a lot to like from Mailchimp.
Cons: The biggest downside is that the free plan is very limited now compared to when I first started. The free option is really only good for very small lists and basic emails. To do anything more sophisticated with segmentation, automations, or larger lists, you need to pay for one of the monthly subscription plans.
*This information is current as of 01/20/2025. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
