Mailchimp is a true legend in the email marketing industry. It stood at the origins of its emergence and developed synchronously with it. Today, there are many other equally worthy services for marketing mailings. In this article, we will talk about the 5 best Mailchimp alternatives.
Mailchimp: Features and Functions
Mailchimp is one of the top email marketing and mailing automation tools, trusted by over 12 million users. It appeared in 2001. Today, this platform offers a solid set of functions for creating and managing marketing campaigns, audience monitoring, content generation, reporting, and analytics.
Key features:
- The drag-and-drop builder provides a number of blocks, design templates, and styles for designing newsletters. Users can add images, videos, apps, and polls. Built-in AI tools generate text for letters and headers, check for errors, and improve the finished content.
- Marketing automation features offer automated sequences and follow-ups for your audience. You can design them from scratch or customize a ready-made template by setting rules and triggers. The catalog contains over 45 pre-installed automation templates.
- Mailchimp supports dynamic email personalization based on browsing and purchasing history, survey results, chat interactions, and technical support calls.
- Segmentation tools allow you to group your audience based on a number of criteria: demographics, location, and others. You can add leads to the database manually, by bulk uploading from a CSV file or spreadsheet, or by importing from another mailing platform.
- Built-in targeting features make it possible to send emails to the most relevant customers. They track and analyze their behavior, spending amounts, likelihood of making a purchase, and other predictable attributes.
- Smart forecasting optimizes your targeting strategy, drives repeat sales, and strengthens customer relationships.
- Users have access to more than 300 integrations with external systems, including Wix, Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, Stripe, LinkedIn, Canva, and more.
Mailchimp offers a free plan with limited functionality and three paid plans. The cost of subscribing to them depends on the number of contacts in your database. For 500 contacts, the prices are as follows:
- Essentials – from $6.50 per month.
- Standard – from $10 per month.
- Premium – from $175 per month.
The indicated prices are valid subject to payment for the year immediately. If you make monthly payments, the cost will be higher.
Check out the step-by-step instructions for setting up integration with Mailchimp using the SaveMyLeads service.
Brevo
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an all-in-one internet marketing platform that rightfully takes its place among the popular free alternatives to Mailchimp. It offers tools not only for email campaigns but also for sales management, client interaction, and data monitoring. Additionally, it integrates with over 150 systems.
Key features:
- The service provides three email newsletter designers: a drag-and-drop editor, a text editor (ideal for letters with a large amount of text), and an HTML/CSS editor (for maximum customization).
- The drag-and-drop editor includes more than 60 templates, categorized by theme: news, sales, congratulations, and more. Users can edit them individually or in bulk, replacing text, images, and other content.
- The Brevo form builder allows you to easily and quickly create various types of forms using a block interface and customize them flexibly.
- To automate email marketing campaigns, 8 newsletter templates are offered: welcome, abandoned cart, after checkout, and others. Moreover, users can independently develop automations from scratch.
- Mailing segmentation and personalization functions enable the addition of different attributes to group contacts and launch mailings with dynamic content based on rules and triggers.
- Apart from email newsletters, this platform supports SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, sales funnel management, automatic deal tracking, live chat, user data measurement and analytics, and Messaging API.
Brevo Marketing Platform is considered one of the most budget-friendly alternatives to Mailchimp. In addition to the free plan with a limit of 300 emails per day, it offers 3 paid plans:
- Starter – starting from $9 per month.
- Business – starting from $18 per month.
- Enterprise – the cost is calculated individually and is available upon request.
The prices shown are valid for monthly payments. If you pay for a year's subscription at once, you can save 10%.
MailerLite
The MailerLite platform is one of the best free alternatives to Mailchimp. Like Brevo, it offers an impressive range of digital marketing tools. With their help, you can create and launch email campaigns, build websites, online stores, and forms, as well as manage lead generation.
Key features:
- The service provides a catalog of professional templates for newsletters, landing pages, multi-page sites, and pop-ups, sorted by category.
- Users can create newsletters, sites, and forms from scratch or use templates, making changes to them using editors if necessary. The platform offers a drag-and-drop editor for blocks, an HTML/CSS editor with the ability to add and edit code, as well as a text editor with support for links, images, videos, tables, and other content.
- Campaign automation tools allow you to schedule the sending of emails based on specific triggers: dates (such as birthdays or registration on the site), actions (such as subscribing to a group or submitting a form), and more. You can add multiple triggers to one campaign.
- The reporting and analytics module offers a visual click map, sales performance monitoring, surveys, A/B tests, and much more. Using these features, marketers can gather data on audience size, number of new subscribers, returns, unsubscribes, spam complaints, and more.
- The platform supports sending transactional emails and offers over 200 integrations with third-party systems from various categories. There are forms, landing pages, reports, pop-ups, email verification, e-commerce, CRM, WordPress, and more.
MailerLite is considered a free alternative to Mailchimp because it offers a corresponding plan. This plan is limited to 1 user, 1000 contacts, and 12,000 emails per month. Additionally, there is a range of paid pricing plans. The cost of subscribing to these plans depends on the number of contacts in your database. For 500 contacts, the prices are as follows:
- Growing Business (3 users, unlimited emails) – $9 per month.
- Advanced (no restrictions on users and emails) – $18 per month.
- Enterprise – the cost is calculated individually and is available upon request.
The prices mentioned above are valid for monthly payment. If you choose to pay for a year's subscription upfront, you can save 10%.
Learn the step-by-step guide to setting up the integration for MailerLite to automate data transfer.
ActiveCampaign
The ActiveCampaign platform is considered one of the best alternatives to Mailchimp because it offers a wide range of powerful tools for online marketing. It includes designers for email/SMS mailings, forms, and landing pages, as well as functionality for lead segmentation and scoring, marketing automation, reporting, and analytics. Additionally, it has its own CRM and AI technologies.
Key features:
- The email builder allows you to create various types of campaigns, such as standard emails, RSS emails, autoresponder emails, and emails with multiple options for A/B testing.
- The drag-and-drop editor provides over 250 adaptive newsletter templates that can be easily customized and allows for the addition of new blocks. These templates are divided into thematic categories, including reviews, events, holidays, news, and more.
- ActiveCampaign offers over 750 ready-made automations, organized by field of activity, such as e-commerce, finance, consulting, media, and real estate. It also allows users to create automations from scratch using a visual editor with a variety of triggers.
- The service helps segment subscribers based on various criteria, including geolocation, purchases, website visits, profession, position, lifetime value, and more.
- With reporting and analytics functions, marketers can track a wide range of campaign metrics, including opens, clicks, click-to-opens, bounces, unsubscribes, and more. There are also reports available for transactions, chat conversions, contact trends, and other metrics.
When comparing the top alternatives to Mailchimp in terms of cost, ActiveCampaign can be classified as mid-priced. It does not offer a free plan. The paid plans consist of four tariffs:
- Lite (1 user, 1000 contacts in the database) – starting from $29 per month.
- Plus (3 users, 1000 contacts in the database) – starting from $49 per month.
- Professional (5 users, 2500 contacts in the database) – starting from $149 per month.
- Enterprise (10 users, 2500 contacts in the database) – starting from $259 per month.
The indicated prices are valid for annual payments. If you choose to pay monthly, the cost will be higher. Each plan includes a 14-day free trial.
Set up ActiveCampaign integrations to automate workflows and eliminate routine tasks.
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best free alternatives to Mailchimp. The platform offers a solid set of tools for marketing, sales, and customer service. In addition, it provides functionality for content creation, business process management, and online commerce.
Key features:
- The service allows you to create professional email newsletters based on an extensive catalog of paid and free templates. In the built-in drag-and-drop editor, you can customize their design, add corporate identity and CTA elements.
- Email personalization options make them more relevant to your target audience. With them, you can flexibly customize the content of email newsletters (headers, CTAs, links, attachments, etc.) based on available subscriber data.
- A/B testing tools help increase conversion rates by choosing the most effective email options.
- Generative AI technologies automate the processes of writing letters and subject lines. By managing them using simple text prompts, users can easily and quickly create original content from scratch, as well as rewrite and improve ready-made texts.
- The built-in HubSpot CRM supports integrations with 1,400+ third-party systems, including Facebook Ads, Slack, Zoom, Stripe, Shopify, Gmail, and many more.
HubSpot offers free use (Free Tools plan), but with significant limitations. The range of paid tariffs is represented by the following plans:
- Marketing Hub Starter (1000 contacts) – starting from $15 per month per user.
- Marketing Hub Professional (up to 3 users, 2000 contacts) – starting from $800 per month.
- Marketing Hub Enterprise (up to 5 users, 10,000 contacts) – starting from $3,600 per month.
The indicated prices are valid subject to payment for the year immediately. If you make payments every month, the cost will be higher. It should be noted that among the Mailchimp alternatives listed in the article, this platform has the most expensive paid plans. However, the high prices are fully justified by the functionality provided.
Set up HubSpot integrations to automate workflows and eliminate routine tasks.
AWeber
Our review of alternatives for Mailchimp ends with one of the oldest platforms for preparing and automating email campaigns – AWeber. It entered the market in 1998 and is still in demand among companies of different types, sizes, and areas of activity.
Key features:
- A clear drag-and-drop interface allows you to create a newsletter from scratch or based on a template. The editor's capabilities are expanded by a catalog of design templates, an AI text generator, and a library of stock images.
- Users can automatically develop newsletter templates based on a link to a website or Facebook page. Integration with the Canva image editor allows you to add images to your emails or create them directly on the platform.
- AWeber supports the automation of a number of processes. With it, you can automatically add new contacts to the database, as well as send letters to subscribers based on specified triggers (checkout, greeting, abandoned cart).
- Segmentation tools help group contacts in the database according to a number of criteria: opens, transitions, purchases, and other actions.
- The service provides tracking and A/B testing functions for mailings, as well as numerous report templates.
AWeber is one of Mailchimp's free alternatives. However, its Free plan has some limitations. In this case, it is similar to other platforms. If your database contains more than 500 contacts, you will not be able to use it. The range of paid plans is represented by the following tariffs:
- Lite – $12.5 per month.
- Plus – $20 per month.
- Unlimited (unlimited number of contacts) – $899 per month.
The indicated cost of the Lite and Plus plans is relevant provided that there are no more than 500 contacts in the database and payment for the year is made immediately. If you have a larger database or want to pay monthly, the price will be higher. The Unlimited plan offers a monthly payment plan.
Learn the step-by-step guide to setting up the integration for AWeber to automate data transfer.
Final Thoughts
The best alternatives to Mailchimp discussed in this article provide many useful tools not only for email campaigns but also for other areas of internet marketing. Many of them allow you to create websites, forms, and sales funnels, and contain built-in CRM systems, as well as functions for collecting and processing user data. Almost all the services from our selection give you the opportunity to familiarize yourself with their potential for free. Their standard plans average $10–$15 per month. The most budget-friendly plans are offered by Brevo and MailerLite (starting from $9 per month). The most expensive options are HubSpot (starting from $15 per month) and ActiveCampaign (starting from $29 per month).
Would you like your employees to receive real-time data on new Facebook leads, and automatically send a welcome email or SMS to users who have responded to your social media ad? All this and more can be implemented using the SaveMyLeads system. Connect the necessary services to your Facebook advertising account and automate data transfer and routine work. Let your employees focus on what really matters, rather than wasting time manually transferring data or sending out template emails.