In today’s digital realm, email marketing is being entrusted by startups, SMEs, and large enterprises to generate leads, make sales & improve revenue numbers.

However, email marketing is complicated, and deciding on the right tool plays a crucial role in managing to drive measurable results.

An email tool not only lets you track the key metrics, but also efficiently interacts with prospective customers.

Several key players are dominating the email marketing industry, and in this article, we will shed light on two such email marketing tools. Which are ‘Mailerlite‘ and ‘Mailchimp’.

Read on as we discuss the difference between the two email marketing tools in detail, in terms of features, pricing, reporting, and even reviews.

Difference 1: Free Plan Differences

Both Mailerlite and Mailchimp offer a FREE plan. On one end, Mailerlite provides support to up to 1000 subscribers per month in its free plan.

Also, Mailerlite’s free plan encapsulates features like advanced segmentation, automation, landing pages, etc. You’ll have to pay charges to Mailerlite if the contacts cross the mark of 1000 or if you have to send more than 12,000 emails in a month.

Whereas Mailchimp, on the other hand, in its free plan allows 2,000 contacts which is twice that of Mailerlite. It provides features such as simple automation, marketing CRM, behavior tagging, and templates.

If we compare the free plan of both Mailchimp and MailerLite, the majority of the marketers will say Mailchimp offers greater value. However, the downside is, that if the number of contacts increases, the pricing of Mailchimp’s email marketing tool increases considerably compared to MailerLite.

As a piece of advice, before you pick any of these based on the utility of its free plan, it is advised to thoroughly visit their website and know the details.

Difference 2: Email Deliverability

Email Deliverability is a popular term in the realm of email marketing. For those who don’t know, email deliverability is a metric that determines the number of emails that reach the recipient’s inboxes.

Often, the email deliverability is measured by determining the number of messages ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have accepted, regardless of the messages reaching the bulk folder or Inbox. In simple words, it is the percentage of emails that did not bounce.

Email Deliverability is of paramount importance that cannot be overlooked for devising an email marketing strategy. Delivering emails in the Inbox is imperative to improve the odds of getting your email read & then acted upon.

To check this metric of each tool, multiple email tool testers on the internet execute their own campaigns and monitor each tool’s results individually. EmailToolTester.com is one website that has been doing these email tests since 2017.

To date, MailerLite has seen to have better email deliverability compared to Mailchimp. In their recent test, MailerLite had impressive email deliverability of 95%, whereas Mailchimp’s email deliverability rate was 85%.

Hence, there is a massive 10% percentage gap between the two email marketing tools, and undoubtedly opting for MailerLite is a preferred option.

However being said, Mailerlite’s good deliverability depends upon a number of factors but anyhow it’s best to go with a tool that helps you get the job done.

Difference 3: Email Automation

With Mailchimp, you can create simple automated email workflows. The free plan of Mailchimp lets you automate the welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, order notifications, and other angle-step automation.

Whereas the standard plan of Mailchimp and above allows you to create multi-step custom workflows, including event-based automation for instant feedback, nurture campaigns, and onboarding series.

Compared to Mailchimp, Mailerlite offers a myriad of automation features within its free plan. With simple automation like the anniversary of a date, when a subscriber joins a group, clicks a form, exact matches of date, and updated subscriber field, there’s certainly a lot that one can do with MailerLite compared to MailChimp.

In a nutshell, MailerLite presents more automation features at a free price tag. However, Mailchimp is ready to offer more advanced automation features, if you are ready to upgrade your plan.

In the case of a free plan, you can go with MailerLite but if you’re upgrading to paid plans then both the tools will let you do the same with their automation features.

Difference 4: Lead Forms, Pop-ups, and Landing Pages

Mailchimp offers virtually every type of form you want. These forms can easily be embedded into the website with no coding knowledge needed.

Since Mailchimp is a popular brand in the world of email marketing, it has a wide range of integration with its forms and pop-up Apps such as MailOptin for WordPress.

However, marketers also do love the pop-ups and sign-up forms offered by Mailerlite, which cover a selection of visually-appealing templates that will look attractive on the website. Just like several other features of MailerLite, the forms are incredibly quick and easy to set up.

Coming to the landing pages is the most impactful component of any digital marketing strategy. You can use the landing pages to target your prospective audience effectively. Both Mailerlite and Mailchimp offer pre-made landing pages to choose from.

The landing page template of Mailchimp is user-friendly has clean typography, and presents a wealth of options to choose from. These landing pages can be hosted under your domain, establishing a cohesive brand experience for your potential customers. However, one thing you need to note here is that Mailchimp has only eight templates included in its free plan.

Whereas Mailerlite has an exclusive range of landing pages that are power-packed with features and assure a user-friendly interface. The landing page editor of Mailerlite is simple to use, you need not be a coder to create a landing page, as everything here is drag & drop.

Both the forms and the landing pages can be accessed through the same editor. Also, Mailerlite provides a much simpler approach to creating landing pages and editing them as needed.

In terms of Pop-ups, both the email marketing tools are weighted similarly. The signup form can be customized, and then add it to the website with a few clicks for Mailchimp and Mailerlite. Mailerlite offers the biggest selection of pop-up templates, and you can choose one that fits your brand personality. However, both the tools have hundreds of form fields and labels as needed.

Till now, in this section both the tools have gonna neck-to-neck interms of matching the features but if there is one thing that makes a difference for any user, it’s the user experience and user interface.

As the user interface is the deciding aspect in terms of a tool. The design of MailerLite its drag-and-drop editor is much simpler than Mailchimp and ensures a convenient experience when making changes to the landing pages.

Difference 5: Lists and Segmentation

One of the most important features of an email marketing tool is lists and segmentation. And, there is one difference that separates Mailchimp and Mailerlite. With Mailchimp, you cannot keep the same contact in more than one list, and if you do so, you will be charged extra for those contacts.

Because you will have to pay multiple times for the same contact. So, this is going to cost you more compared to MailerLite.

Further, the issues with the interface of Mailchimp creep here, there is a lot of complexity in setting up such contacts as naming conventions can get confusing.

Whereas Mailerlite list management is way better than Mailchimp. The segmentation of Mailerlite feels real, and there won’t be any mutually exclusive contacts. Thus, no extra charges, if you have the same contact in more than one list.

Also, the automation of Mailerlite helps with efficient list management, and moving subscribers from one list to another based on interactions or behavior is easy.

List management is one of the most essential aspects of email marketing, and both the platforms offer this feature but Mailerlite’s automation makes it a clear winner.

Difference 6: Reporting

Mailerlite comes with a comprehensive reporting dashboard, including the fundamental metrics for email campaign activity, devices, opens by location, click maps, subscriber engagement, and popular links.

On the other hand, Mailchimp provides much more in-depth analytics, especially with the paid packages. This includes the conversion data that let you effectively ROI as well as smart recommendations & send-time optimization.

Both can use Google Analytics integration for better reporting. Using these metrics, you can evaluate whether it is worth proceeding with the email marketing campaign or making necessary modifications to drive improved results.

Due to extensive reporting capabilities, Mailchimp holds the edge.

Difference 7: Pricing

Pricing factors cannot be underpinner when deciding on an email marketing tool. As far as freemium plans are considered, both Mailerlite and Mailchimp have value-for-money features at zero costs.

However, the major difference between the two comes when we compare the contacts & number of emails every month. Mailchimp allows 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails per month. On the flip side, Mailite has 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails per month.

If you’re not satisfied with the freemium plan of Mailchimp, you can upgrade, and pick any of the pro plans.

Mailerlite also lets you expand the contact count with a little increment in pricing.

In simple words, if the same contact is more than one list, then you won’t be charged multiple times for the same mail.

One of the biggest advantages of MailLite is that it does not charge for duplicate emails.

Difference 8: Support

Both Mailerlite and Mailchimp offer excellent support. Mailerlite provides 24*7 email support forever with all plans, whereas for Mailchimp you get this feature with Essentials and above.

Mailerlite does not provide any phone support, but Mailchimp does have phone support, but only with paid plans.

If you have a paid plan, you will get 24*7 live chat support with both these email marketing tools. Languages supported by Mailerlite for technical support are English, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, French, and more. Mailchimp gives technical assistance in only the English language.

Mailerlite provides access to a knowledge base(documentation) and email-based technical assistance in its free plan.

A live agent will answer all your queries promptly if you have a paid plan.

On the other hand, Mailchimp provides email-based assistance for the first 30 days of the trial plan.

After that, you turn to documentation consultation for any doubts. Reading the documentation could be time-consuming. But, you can invest time into it, and resolve all your problems.

When it comes to agent-based help, Mailerlite is the quickest to respond. Mailchimp will first point you to the knowledge base to see if the question is covered or not.

Difference 9: Reviews

Mailerlite has received 243 customer reviews on Trustpilot — A Danish Consumer Review Website. The overall rating score is 4.3.

“Could be better

Updating this review. While Mailerlite has a lot of problems that seem to pop up, perhaps one of them isn’t their overall customer service.

Overall, you will deal with server outages, random errors (payment options even disappearing) and other things that are just plain weird. Their front line customer service, along with their primary technical support, while quite friendly, really needs better training. Anything that is spread out over several computers, individuals, and/or browsers is likely not on a single users’ end – no matter the difficulty in finding the culprit.” said – Stephen Reeves.

“Fast and helpful support. Problem solved.

I had issues finding the right features to use. Support responded incredibly fast and not only solved my problem but helped my understand some of the functionality in YouTube.” said- Darren Herbold.

Mailchimp has bagged 376 reviews, and the overall customer rating is poor, just 1.6.

“Unhelpful

I have used them for a few years but have recently restarted post Covid. They are so time consuming and unhelpful I want to use another company but don’t know who. We are a small user with 1000 – 2000 contacts’ ‘ said Mike.

“Pleasantly Surprised, thank you!

I’ve been using Mailchimp for around 5 years now, and just had to deal with technical help and customer service for the first time. I was actually very pleasantly surprised with how simple it was, especially after reading some of these reviews!

We had to gain access to the owner/admin part of the account that a previous member set up and after answering a million security questions and waiting the needed timescale to prove that we didn’t have access, they were able to get us back in control of the account. It was a little slow going, due to timezones but a massive thank you to Jo for their dedication.

So thank you from a very small charity run by volunteers for helping solve our tech issues and empowering us to get full autonomy over our data again.” said Joe.

Summarizing MailerLite Reviews on Capterra:-

Pros:-

• “I love the landing pages feature. They have beautiful designs and my subscribers love them.”
• “I’m new to MailerLite, but so far so good – and with top-notch CS I’m confident I will continue to be pleased with it.”
• “I was amazed at how easy it was to resolve and my own personal oversight of not seeing the obvious. I really do recommend MailerLite.”
• “I love all the features you get on the free plan and I also like the generous free trial.”

Cons:-

• “Pathetic; my account was approved and suddenly unapproved. After contacting the useless customer support, all they could do is ask me to use another service provider.”
• “When I first started using MailerLite I had a problem with putting email forms on my website. The embedding and hyperlinks were not working.”
• “The big downside for me is the lack of a Polish language version. The landing page builder comes with very few templates.”
• “It’s just a minor thing but can still be a little frustrating.”

Summarizing MailChimp Reviews on Capterra:-

Pros:-

• “We are having an amazing experience with it and will suggest it to you as well because they offer excellent paid plans which depend on your subscribers.”
• “All in all, Mailchimp is an amazing solution that just keeps on giving. I would highly recommend automating your marketing through them.”
• “Our audience has loved our transition to Mailchimp (especially better-formatted email on mobile) and our email senders have loved the transition too.”
• “With MailChimp the marketing team can work on emails they like to go with in-house with help of a designer and iterate which is a big win.”

Cons:-

• “You are restricted to specific designs and formats only, which can be a little frustrating when your business doesn’t match those categories.”
• “But there is a problem, when I wanted to link any picture or a sentence with a new window that is available online, I couldn’t get where to I do.”
• “They have a really strange billing system that is designed in such a way that it sucks money out of you.”
• “I don’t like the merge tags functionality. Almost always it ends up not working and it looks awkward and embarrasses in front of your customers.”

Which is Best for Businesses?

Mailchimp is best-suited for any eCommerce business as it provides reporting suitable for such businesses.

Also, businesses are looking to expand. Mailerlite, on the other hand, is a small business owner tool, so it is not widely preferred by big brands.

Both are good for beginners, but Mailerlite is a more affordable option. They have a generous free plan.

Mailerlite outscores MailChimp in terms of ease of use. List management is much less of a headache with Mailchimp.

Overall, both have a tough fought battle with immense difficulty to pick one. Mailchimp still has some gaps to fulfill to be the real champ of the industry.

Which is Best for Bloggers?

MailerLite is simple & cost-efficient, therefore the best for bloggers, freelancers, and growing entrepreneurs.

It offers an intuitive landing page builder with an array of pre-made templates to choose from.

MailerLite gives click mapping, Google Analytics reports, and eCommerce tracking.

What Do I Like About Mailerlite Over Mailchimp?

1. A super-easy user interface.
2. Get 24*7 responsive email support.
3. A robust landing page builder with HTML/CSS available.
4. They have a selection of sleek form templates to embed on the website.
5. The automation builder is easy to use, add items, and delete with great convenience.
6. The pricing is affordable with regards to the features and functionalities.
7. It has a drag-and-drop email builder, allowing you to set up and run campaigns within minutes.

What Do I Like About Mailchimp Over Mailerlite?

1. It has an intuitive interface with a fast loading time.
2. Mailchimp has numerous newsletter templates with a simple drag and drop builder.
3. It has advanced reporting and analytics insights.
4. You can create complex automation workflows.
5. Mailchimp has a wide array of integrations.
6. The pre-made eCommerce workflows let store owners reach out to their customers.

Conclusion

Choosing between Mailerlite and Mailchimp is not a matter of black & white, it is about weighing the key attributes such as features, pricing, email deliverability, and more.

Both the email management tools have their set of pros and cons, that you need to visualize before making a well-informed decision.

We suggest you browse the official websites of both Mailerlite and Mailchimp, garner as much knowledge as possible because then you will be able to pick the right tool.

Don’t forget to check out online customer testimonials to have a fair idea of the tool’s market reputation. In case someone in your business circle has been using any email management tool, take their advice on what sort of features & functionalities the tool must-have. Did we miss something or have anything to add from your personal experience, share with us in the comment section below, our readers would love to hear from you.