Mailgun vs Mailchimp
Trying to choose between Mailgun vs Mailchimp as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 4.2 TrustPilot
- 4.3 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 4.3 / 5
Mailgun
An email marketing platform equipped with dedicated delivery and validation tools. Features include transactional emails, email APIs, and SMTP relays.
Pricing
Starts at $35 a month for 50,000 emails/month
Key features
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Personalization
- Analytics
- Email validations
- Transactional emails
- Integrations with various services via APIs
Support
Ticket support on all plans, chat and phone on weekdays for higher plans.
- 1.4 TrustPilot
- 4.5 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 3.4 / 5
Mailchimp
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.
General info about company
Mailgun
Founded in 2010 by Ev Kontsevoy and Taylor Wakefield. In 2021, Mailgun was acquired by Sinch. Company headquarters are in San Antonio, Texas.
Mailchimp
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.
Difficulty
Mailgun
The service is aimed at developers and people with advanced coding knowledge, so it’s not easy to use for the general public.
Mailchimp
Creating emails doesn’t require design or coding skills. However, the interface can be confusing to novices.
Best for
Mailgun
Large companies with extensive mailing lists that require both marketing and transactional emails, deliverability monitoring, and a stable technological solution.
Mailchimp
Small to medium e-commerce companies that want email marketing together with their website hosting.
Free plan
Mailgun
No free plan, only a 30-day free trial paid plans.
Mailchimp
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.
Pricing
Mailgun
Billed monthly:
- Foundation starting at $35 for 50,000 emails a month. Includes APIs, webhooks, ticket support.
- Scale starting at $90 for 100,000 emails a month. Includes everything from the previous plan and 5,000 email validations, live chat and phone support, dedicated IP pools.
- Enterprise with custom pricing. Includes everything from the other plans and dedicated support, comprehensive onboarding, early access to new features.
Extra emails and email validations available for additional price
Mailchimp
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
Support
Mailgun
Ticket support with 24-hour response time, Knowledge Center, Comprehensive SDKs, Customer Feedback Forum, and Documentation available on all plans.
Chat and phone support are available on the Scale and Enterprise plans. Chat support is available Monday through Friday from 7 am to 7 pm CST. Phone support is available Monday through Friday from 8 am to 5 pm CST.
On the Enterprise plan, users also have access to managed support.
Mailchimp
- 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)
Features
Mailgun
- Drag-and-drop email builder and templates
- SMTP services for sending transactional emails
- Email validations
- Email previews on 100+ devices and clients
- Inbox placement testing
- Send time optimization
- Email analytics
- Integrations with various services via APIs
- Additional email optimization services for monitoring
Mailchimp
- 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.
Templates
Mailgun
- Basic 7 templates with different layouts.
- Mailgun Templates API allows to integrate other templates into the service and manage the existing ones.
Mailchimp
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
Video/screenshots
Mailgun
Mailchimp
Integrations
Mailgun
64 integrations including WordPress, Zendesk, Webflow, Airtable, Google Sheets, Jotform, and more.
Mailchimp
315 integrations including WordPress, Shopify, Facebook, Stripe, LiveChat, Canva, Unsplash, and more.
Devices
Mailgun
- Available only on the web.
- No installable solution.
Mailchimp
- Website
- A mobile app for iOS and Android to create and send emails, add clients, check analytics, etc.
No installable solution.
Languages
Mailgun
English
Mailchimp
English
Spanish
Portuguese
Automation
Mailgun
Basic automations using API (requires coding)
Mailchimp
Many pre-built automations (called customer journeys):
- Welcome series
- Abandoned cart
- Product retargeting
- Lead generation
- Order notifications, and more
Pros
Mailgun
- Useful API that easily integrates into other services
- Deliverability features
- Reliability and data protection
- Helpful support
Mailchimp
- Essential features for small businesses
- 315 integrations
- Website hosting
- A mobile app
- Stylish design and built reputation
- Landing page builder
Cons
Mailgun
- Learning curve for beginners
- Interface is not very intuitive
- Stiff pricing structure
Mailchimp
- 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
Reviews from experts
Mailgun
What do you like best about Mailgun?
Easy to use and reliable. The reporting features are very helpful too. The option for dedicated IP is great for businesses sending lots of emails. The email verification API also helps us protect our domain reputation.
What do you dislike about Mailgun?
Only one API key. I wish we could generate multiple ones with different access levels so we could easily revoke them if anything goes wrong. I wanted to have one key for email verification only, and one key for each application that uses the email API.
What do you like best about Mailgun?
You can integrate it to almost anything. The way that it manages the stream of emails it must send out is what makes this tool almost irreplaceable.
What do you dislike about Mailgun?
Hard to find something to not like about this. It is a very useful tool, it's not for novices. You need to know about email campaigns to know how to make best of it.
What problems is Mailgun solving and how is that benefiting you?
Keeping me out of spam list for the most part. Keeping our email in the green zone when it comes to spam detectors. It makes it easy to remove any bad emails, dnc's, and gauge things correctly.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a perfectly good tool for most English-speaking users, with its ease of use and range of features, as well as their free and pay-as-you-go plans.
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.
The interface is simple and intuitive, and you don't need to be technically savvy to get up and running with email campaigns. I have easily trained non-technical colleagues and elderly clients on how to use Mailchimp to send newsletters. It's easy to add contacts on the go using the Mailchimp mobile app.
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 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
