Back in time (even still), Mailchimp came straight out of everybody’s mouth in email marketing. It is a great Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that provides email automation with a straightforward interface that takes hardly an hour to figure out. In this article, we are discussing the best Mailchimp Alternatives and competitors.
The story began to change when Mailchimp made a huge change in their pricing table, where the free plan was revamped, and people started finding a viable alternative to get more benefits at lower or zero cost.
Previously, Mailchimp used to provide 2,000 subscribers in their free plan. In the update, they reduced the contact size from 2,000 to only 500 with a limit of 2,500 email sends, meaning you can send emails five times a month to your 500 subscribers. In the old plan, the email-sending bucket size was 12,000, allowing you to send emails six times per month.
It is the reason people are now looking for a better alternative, and here in this article, you are about to explore the best free and paid Mailchimp alternatives, so keep on reading.
Table of Contents
Top 13 Free And Paid MailChimp Alternatives
The reason not to separate free and paid email marketing tools is that most email marketing platforms work on a freemium model; you can have a free and paid version simultaneously. So let’s get into the depth.
Mailer Lite – Best Free Alternative
The lite in the name stands for its pricing and user experience. Mailer Lite offers a free and paid plan, and compared to any other email marketing platform; Mailer Lite stands out completely.
Its free plan allows you to add 1,000 subscribers with a total email-sending capacity of 12,000/month. You can send 12 emails to your 1000 subscribers per month, which is currently the best in the segment.
Their free plans allow you to create email automation, sign-up, and pop-up forms and provide 10 landing pages. The downside of Mailer Lite’s free plan is the lack of live chat; however, their email assistance is reliable, but the waiting period can get longer than expected.
In email marketing, after the headline, how you represent your email matters to catch the user’s attention. The pre-built template of Mailer Lite is suitable for small e-commerce websites and sending newsletters.
Mailer Lite email templates are rigid, and you can not tweak the design much. The HTML code editor is not available in the free plan. Despite knowing its downside, Mailer Lite’s free offering is enough for beginner bloggers, e-commerce fashion websites, and people who want to start their personal branding with newsletters.
Compared to what Mailchimp offers, you can go beyond with the Mailer Lite plan to increase traffic and revenue at no cost.
Sendinblue – Good for Business Websites
Sendinblue could have been a top choice. However, in its free plan, the email-sending capacity is not high. You can store up to 2,000 subscribers in a free program, similar to what Mailchimp used to offer back in time. The bottleneck part is 300 emails/day.
It means you can import your existing 2,000 contact list and send emails to only 300 people/per day. Let’s do some basic maths, 300 emails/day. For 30 days of the month, you can send 9000 emails in total.
Suppose you have a promotional offer going on for 2-3 days. Reaching all your contacts will be impossible. Also, filtering emails is another daunting task, as you must be careful about who got an email already, so you have to segment your group into 300 beforehand.
Phew. That sounds like a lot of work, so why use Sendinblue? Sendinblue is excellent for people who publish content on their website twice or thrice a month and e-commerce website owners with frequent traffic of 100-200 per day to send transactional emails.
Moreover, the template Sendinblue provides is fantastic, and you can customize it for a better user experience. You can set SMS and Whatsapp campaigns in their free plan, not to mention there is a limit.
To use Sendinblue, you must identify your traffic size on the website. It does have a paid plan, where you can break the barriers and go all out.
Zoho Campaigns – Simple and Easy
Zoho has an enormous library of SaaS tools for the B2B sector. Zoho Campaigns is one of them that most digital marketers use to do email marketing. As an individual or a newbie marketer, you might not be familiar with Zoho, but it is popular amongst companies.
Zoho Campaigns has three plans, free, paid, and dedicated pricing for agency owners. Their free plan allows you to add up to 2,000 subscribers, similar to what Sendinblue has to offer; however, the outreach capacity is limited to up to 6,000 emails/month, whereas in Sendinblue, it is 9,000, as we counted.
The pricing of Zoho is very affordable, and what makes it attention-grabbing is its unlimited email delivery.
You might have thought, then why not place Zoho on number two? Well, Sendinblue allows more capacity in the free plan. In addition, the template design in Sendinblue is better. If you are okay with the fair design and want to spend none, Zoho Campaigns is the soundest.
Zoho Campaigns is most suitable for transactional email, blogger email opt-ins, and agencies to market their business. It is advisable to try its templates first, as you might like the email template simplicity.
Omnisend – Specifically for E-commerce
If you are running an e-commerce website like BigBasket or BlinkIt, the possibilities are people keep adding multiple things to a cart and then leave it as it is. With OmniSend, you can automate this process, and at a minimal cost (only if your contact size is large), you can set up an automatic reminder to improve the sales chart.
Omnisend offers the complete automation that an e-commerce site needs. In fact, their free plan is surprising in terms of features and not contact size.
It lets you utilize every feature for free with no time limit. The only problem is when you scale your e-commerce business, your contact size gets humongous, and after the 250 contact limit, you have to pay.
The platform offers two pricing models, Standard and Pro. And the pricing increases as your subscriber list grows. If your margin on a product is high, it is good to go for their Pro plan, as it offers a high SMS count and no capping on email-sending capacity.
Omnisend is not for everyone; if you own an e-commerce platform, consider Omnisend a necessity.
SendPulse – Value for Money
SendPulse is not a renowned name in the industry. It offers a good mix of features in its free plan, and speaking of its pricing, knowing its competition, the tool has a reasonable cost. Despite being a value-for-money email marketing tool, its subscriber limit in the free plan (i.e., 500) keeps it in the middle of this list.
Not to ignore, the email sending limit is 15,000 emails/month. Also, you get to set up five email automation. The basic offering of SendPulse is the second best after Mailer Lite; however, the bottleneck part is control over the email template. There is a mention in the free plan you get only 50 elements to play with, which increases in the paid plan.
The UI/UX of SendPulse is something that not everybody will love, especially if you are in the fashion or design niche. It is advisable to go for other options.
SendPulse uses two paid models, subscription and pay-as-you-go model. You will get options in a subscription model to decide how you want to bill it. The only differentiation it makes for paid models is the increased limit (this one is common) and A/B testing.
If you are a startup with limited lead generation, try SendPulse free for once. Its automation can help you nurture the lead to convert it into a potential customer.
Constant Contact – The Best Paid Solution
Constant Contact is like an Apple of email marketing. This SaaS marketing tool is 99.99% free; the 0.01% is where you get the one-month free trial (no credit card required). As a newbie or even as an expert marketer, if it’s your first time using Constant Contact, stay aware of its pricing, as the number of contacts you get is not displayed right away in the comparison table.
From the option given below pricing labeled as “View tiered pricing,” you can view the contact size. The starter kit includes a 0-500 contact list size with the price of Rs.644/month, and with more extra features, the same bucket size comes at Rs.2,900/month.
So, the question remains, is it worth paying this much money? The answer is an absolute yes. See the point below to know its benefits:
- Their support is super awesome
- The template library is like no other
- You can add custom-coded templates as many times as you like
- Automation with Constant Contact is a breeze
- Easy integration with CRM platforms like Zoho and Salesforce
- Click heatmap to improve your copy and conversion
Constant Contact has one downside, which is its email-sending capabilities. Based on your contact list, it allows you to send emails 24 times the contact list size; for example, if you have 1 subscriber, you can send 24 emails to that person with a per email charge fee of $0.002/email (500 emails = 1 Dollar).
Go for Constant Contact if you have an e-commerce store with a wide range of product catalogs or a product or service that gets consistently updated.
Mailjet – Economical Option
Mailjet differentiated its offering by removing the subscriber limit cap and taking money only for emails you send. Even in the free plan, Mailjet allows you to add unlimited subscribers. However, there is a limit of 6000 emails/per month. Digging more into it, you are limited to sending 200 emails/day in the free plan, so exceeding the number of subscribers is no good in the long run.
For starters, their free plan works like a charm. The paid plan is the second best to Mailer Lite. In premium plans, there is no per-day limit as well. Based on the size of your email-sending capacity, you can decide which one is best for you.
With higher plans, you get more features, and with a customized enterprise plan, you are free to ask your demand and get personalized treatment for your business.
The unique aspect of Mailjet is its control over its design, but for that, you need to hire a developer. The built-in templates are responsive, and you can customize them with a drag-and-drop editor to a specific limit. From starters to advanced users, Mailjet is like a near-perfect solution that you need.
HubSpot – An All-Rounder
Hubspot is one of the best free CRM tools with bundles of features. While Hubspot is indeed an excellent platform for marketers, it’s not for everyone considering its hefty pricing. The platform does have a free plan to get started and test things out.
In a free Hubspot account, you can load 1 million contacts with an email-sending capacity of 500 emails per day. Also, their free plan is free forever and not a trial. However, when it comes to taking your email marketing to the next level, once your business gets more leads, you need to have Hubspot paid plans, which are extremely expensive.
Hubspot paid is best for businesses that have higher cart values and operate on high-margin business with medium to large-scale audience. If you are a freelancer or a small blogger, the free plan of Hubspot is perfect for you.
Benchmark – Colorful and Decent
While Mailchimp does have a code editor to help you get what you need, Benchmark has its pre-built-in library, which you can use and customize according to your liking. Despite having attention-grabbing templates, Mailchimp still takes advantage as Benchmark does not have a code editor option in its free offering; you only get it in Pro plans and above.
In free sign-up, you can raise your email list to 500 contacts, and after that, you need to opt for a paid subscription to continue. It’s an easy-to–set-up email marketing tool with colorful templates and decent free plans and pricing models.
If you own an online stationary platform or gift shop, or you want to greet your audience on their special day as a bank does, Benchmark is a ready-to-go option.
Aweber – Feature-rich Email Marketing Tool
Aweber brand itself is a simplistic solution, but when you actually use it and see the pricing table, the story is a bit different. Moreover, their paid pricing model is expensive compared to Sendinblue and Benchmark. Aweber is not a bad email marketing platform. The problem is a load of features they added to distinguish themselves from the market.
For a minimalistic user base of 500 or lower, their free plan is good enough with 3000 emails/month, which translates to 6 emails per month to your 500 contacts. The issue with free sign-up is you can use that other features except for the most important ones, such as split A/B testing, link tracking, etc.
You might think, why should I even use it? See, while their free offering has a lot of limitations, their paid subscription actually has benefits, such as no cap on how many emails you can send to a person, or let’s say, an opposite concept of Mailerjet.
Of course, the price is on the higher side but they do not have multiple plans with tables to confuse you. It’s take-it-or-leave-it style marketing.
Convert Kit – Best for Starters
ConvertKit is a popular name amongst marketers, affiliates, and bloggers. Thankfully, ConvertKit now works on a freemium model, where users can test its basic functionality for free. Previously, there was no free plan; now, in the free plan, you can add up to 1000 subscribers with no email-sending limit. Yes, you read that right. There is no limit to how many emails you can send to your 1000 contacts.
If you want to take advantage of extra features for the same contact size of 1,000, you need to upgrade to their paid plans. The pricing increases as your email list grows. You can toggle a bar provided below their pricing table to see the pricing for a specific range.
The best thing about Convert Kit is its email opt-in forms. It improves lead generation. However, the email templates are not so delightful to look at.
In email marketing, the main goal is to capture the lead first. With Convert Kit’s catchy forms, you can do it. Export your subscriber list and add them to another tool such as Mailer Lite or anything that suits your design taste best (Benchmark has good design). Now send your customer emails from there to maximize the opening rates and conversion.
If you want to improve efficiency, going for a Convert Kit paid subscription is the best deal.
Get Response – Popular with Complex Pricing
GetResponse is one of the best-paid Mailchimp alternatives. The tool is known for its conversion funnel and ability to move subscribers between the list with no hassle. Their free plan is okay if you are a LinkedIn social media influencer and want to grow your email list to send the newsletter to your followers; then GetResponse is for you.
The free plan is limited to 500 contact size and 2,500 emails/month, and you can create one website on their server for free that has 5GB bandwidth, and all other features are locked.
GetResponse is excellent for any profitable business wanting to nurture its leads from time to time at a lower cost compared to Mailchimp alternatives.
The free plan of GetResponse is not so attractive. Speaking of its downside in their pro pricing model: the analytics dashboard does not provide a simple and sharp report like Mailchimp. There are no heatmaps either to improve the position of the clickable elements.
It is best for conducting webinars and setting up a funnel that helps you capture emails, and automation will do its work so you can stay relaxed.
Klaviyo – Expensive
Klaviyo free is of no use. It provides a capacity of up to 250 subscribers and a monthly email-sending limit of 500 emails. Every market has its own differentiator; it could be price, features, or branding. In Klaviyo’s case, its premium-ness, i.e., branding. The company never markets itself as try once or get a free lifetime package.
They specifically targeted the e-commerce industry. And in their paid pricing, one feature is useful. It’s called personalized product recommendation; the platform suggests an end-user a few recommendations from your e-commerce platform to help you upsell at no extra cost.
A few basic features are A/B testing, text messaging, and integration are there for you to help you grow your e-commerce business. Klaviyo is a competitor of Omnisend; however, Omnisend wins by the pricing game. If you don’t mind the money, go for the Klaviyo.
Conclusion
The above 13 are the best Mailchimp alternatives email marketing tools with free and paid plans. One thing here to understand is no tool is complete; to get more features, you have to enroll in their premium plans. However, there is a way to filter your choice by defining a few factors.
Define who you are:
- Blogger
- E-commerce store
- B2B brand – It could be service or product based
- Personal branding
Define your traffic-to-sign-up ratio. The number of visitors you get per month is divided by the percentage or number of subscribers you see in your current email provider.
At the start of any website or blog, you won’t get any traffic right away, so use a free plan. Once your list grows with good email opening rates and clicks, you can upgrade to a paid subscription. Also, if you’re an e-commerce platform and provide a transaction receipt via email, the opening rates and clicks do not apply to you.