MailerLite vs Drip
Trying to choose between MailerLite vs Drip as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 4.4 TrustPilot
- 4.7 Capterra
- 4.7 G2
Average 4.6 / 5
MailerLite
MailerLite is an all-in-one email marketing platform that allows you to create newsletters, landing pages, and even websites using pre-made templates. It has 100+ integrations with other platforms and a recurring payment feature for paid newsletters.
Pricing
Free plan, dynamic paid plans depending on the features and the contact list size start from $9/month billed yearly.
Key features
- Drag-and-drop email editor with an AI writing assistant
- No-code website, blog, and landing page builder
- iPad subscriber app for generating leads on offline events
- Paid newsletter subscription
- Automated sequences
- Integrations with online stores
- Email verifier
Support
24/7 email and live chat support
- 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
MailerLite
MailerLite was founded in 2005 as a web design agency but then switched to email marketing. The company is remote-first, with employees in 40 countries.
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
MailerLite
No coding or design skills are required to create emails and web pages. The platform also offers an extensive knowledge base with tutorials, which makes it beginner-friendly.
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
MailerLite
E-commerce, freelancers, small businesses
Drip
Community-focused DTC and e-commerce businesses
Free plan
MailerLite
A generous forever free plan with a limit of 1 user, 1,000 contacts, and 12,000 monthly emails. The free plan includes:
- Email editor and automation builder
- Website builder and 10 templates for landing pages
- Sign-up forms and pop-ups
- 24/7 email and chat support for the first 30 days
Drip
Drip doesn’t offer a free plan but there’s a 14-day free trial with no credit card required for registration.
Pricing
MailerLite
Growing business:
- $9-205/month billed yearly, depending on the number of subscribers, with a limit of 50k contacts at the highest price
- Unlimited emails and 24/7 support
- Includes extra features like dynamic emails, selling digital products, blogs, and an unsubscribe page builder
- 3 users available
Advanced:
- $19-1,600/month billed yearly, with a limit of 500k contacts at the highest price
- An email limit if you have more than 50k subscribers, up to 6 million, depending on the number
- Includes features like custom HTML editor, AI writing assistant, Facebook integration, promotion pop-ups, and more
- Unlimited users
Entreprise:
- Depends on the scope of work
- Only available for businesses with 100k and more subscribers
- Includes the services of a dedicated success manager, onboarding, account audit, and dedicated IP and deliverability consultation
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
MailerLite
Customer support is available 24/7 via email and live chat — however, it’s only available for 30 days on the free plan. Users can also hire experts in email marketing, copywriting, no code development, and more.
MailerLite also offers an extensive Customer Self-Service Center. It includes:
- A large categorized knowledge base, that includes articles about troubleshooting most common issues
- Video tutorials
- A Circle community where users can communicate with each other
- A free ML Academy with 5 free online courses about MailerLite and email marketing
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
MailerLite
- Email marketing automation
- Sign-up forms
- Landing pages
- Website builder
- Blog builder
- Email verifier
- Transactional emails
- Click maps
- The ability to sell digital products like e-books and online courses
- Setting up a paid subscription for emails
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
MailerLite
70+ templates for newsletters:
- Blog digests
- Events
- Holiday emails
- Featured product
- Notifications
- Surveys and quizzes
- Deals and offers
- Emails for creative professionals
40+ templates for landing pages:
- For bloggers
- For creative professionals
- Events
- Surveys and quizzes
- Coming soon
- Celebrations
- Books
- Non-profits
18 website templates for different industries and purposes:
- Business
- E-commerce
- Education
- Events
- Food and drinks
- Portfolio
- Wellness
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
MailerLite
Drip
Integrations
MailerLite
139 integrations with services for CRM, loyalty programs, e-commerce, project 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
MailerLite
-
MailerLite has a web app, an iOS app, and an iPad app only for subscribing leads on offline events.
Drip
- Web app only but it’s optimized for mobile browsers
Languages
MailerLite
English
Drip
English
Automation
MailerLite
- 15 automation recipes for welcome emails, abandoned cart, membership renewal, online courses, and more.
- Paid versions include an AI writing assistant powered by OpenAI that allows users to write marketing copies faster.
- Automated A/B testing for up to 3 workflow variations.
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
MailerLite
- A very simple and minimalist product that is good for beginners
- Many unique features like paid newsletters and selling digital goods
- Great customer support
- A lot of integrations available
- Easy migrations from other services
- Extensive video tutorial library for new users
Drip
- Good tools for list management and targeted campaigns
- All the metrics in one place
- Designed with e-commerce in mind
- Powerful automation
Cons
MailerLite
- May come off as too simple for experienced marketers
- You need to get approval to start working with the service
- 2FA requires a third-party app instead of a phone number
- Stripe integration can be troublesome
- Confusing categories in the interface
- Outdated documentation at times
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
MailerLite
Great level of satisfaction in terms of the results we are obtaining in our campaigns, as well as how it is to work with MailerLite on a daily-basis. Also, very important to mention the amazing customer service provided. Always very quick, detailed and helpful. Message Factory couldn’t be any happier by working with MailerLite!
On the down side, MailerLite felt a bit unpolished at times. Things like the odd feature that was incomplete, or a tab that seemed to be in the wrong place – small things that slowly added up, resulting in a bittersweet experience.
MailerLite is great, and I’m sure it will only get better with time. It just fails to deliver an exceptional email marketing experience right now
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.
