8 Email Marketing Tools Alternatives to MailChimp

Before we jump into MailChimp alternatives, what exactly is email marketing? It’s a classic modern marketing strategy that works particularly well at lead generation and reaching out to current customers. It’s a fantastic way to share news about your business or announce a new product or service, and it’s proven to be effective at turning leads into paying customers.

Email marketing platforms, such as MailChimp, make an email campaign much simpler to create, implement, and manage. They offer a variety of tools to help offset the time and effort that’s involved in an email marketing campaign. These platforms track pertinent information about your email campaigns, including who’s opening your emails, how many users actually clicked something and more. Time is a business owner’s most valuable asset, and the purpose of these tools is to help you save it.

MailChimp competitors

When it comes to email marketing platforms, MailChimp is quite possibly the ranking king in popularity. If you’ve ever heard of email marketing, you’ve undoubtedly heard of MailChimp. While they do offer decent prices and excellent services, quite a few competitors are providing exceptional platforms too, and they’re worth checking out before deciding which to ultimately use.

We’ve narrowed down 8 excellent MailChimp alternatives that have similar services and features. Most email marketing platforms offer the same basic functionality, but there are still differences between them. All of these offer free trials, some for longer than others, so it can’t hurt to give them all a try!

1. AWeber

AWeber is the perfect email marketing platform for small budding or established businesses or entrepreneurs who don’t really need a fancy interface; for those who want a less complicated experience. Their platform provides a variety of different features, including email automation, auto-response email tool, subscriber info, topped off with a nice and straightforward interface for designing newsletters. They also offer customized newsletter templates that are generated using your website’s current aesthetic and layout.

AWeber doesn’t have any free option, but they do offer a 30-day trial, with all features available to test out. After the free trial is over, their first plan, which allows unlimited emails to 500 subscribers, is $19 per month. All their pricing plans are based on the number of subscribers you have.

2. Mailerlite

Mailerlite is specifically aimed at freelancers, writers, hobbyists, bloggers, or startup businesses. Their services are generally cheaper compared to other alternatives. Mailerlite features personalized campaign messages, subscriber lists, analytics, and more. The platform also has a drag-and-drop interface, which allows easy construction of both simple or complex emails. On the downside, their analytics tools aren’t the most comprehensive compared to other companies.

Unlike AWeber, Mailerlite does offer a free account, providing 12k emails to less than 1k subscribers each month. Once you reach 1,001 subscribers, the first plan starts at $10 monthly. Their final tier ends at 10,000 subscribers, so if you’re over that number, you’ll need to contact them for a quote. It’s debatable whether 12k emails to 1k subscribers is better than AWeber’s $19 per month for unlimited emails to 500 subscribers. We think Mailerlite’s free plan is clearly better than AWeber’s first plan, especially for smaller businesses or bloggers trying to find new prospects, but they don’t offer as many features, and their platform isn’t as sleek or sophisticated.

3. SendinBlue

SendinBlue is another good alternative to MailChimp. They offer email and SMS marketing tools—specifically for small businesses who don’t really know how the process works or budding entrepreneurs who don’t have the time to spare. SendinBlue isn’t all that different from other alternatives, offering near-identical features and tools.

Their pricing used to be based on the exact number of SMS and email messages you would send every month but has since changed to a fixed pricing model. Their first “Lite” plan offers 40,000 emails per month for $25, with no daily sending limit. They do have a free plan, which allows you to send up to 300 emails/day to as many subscribers as you want.

4. Drip

Drip is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform meant for eCommerce stores and shops. It’s a phenomenal tool for making customer-habit predictions. The platform actively studies customer behavior as they use your shop, and then uses that info to build a base of knowledge about them and make predictions. You can use this information to construct specialized newsletters and emails that target each customer’s different needs and potential wishes. Drip also provides a wealth of helpful analytics for your eCommerce store, including visitor counts, popular links, and much more.

Drip doesn’t offer a free account but does offer a free trial for 14 days, with access to premium plan features. Once the 14 days are up their first plan starts at $49 per month for unlimited emails to less than 2,500 subscribers.

5. Constant Contact

Constant Contact provides a bunch of marketing services, including email marketing, eCommerce, and social media advertising. Their platform is very beginner-friendly as well, with a vast library of custom desktop and mobile email templates. They also offer email automation, list-building, contact management, and a suite of analytics tools.

Constant Contact offers a more substantial trial than our previous entries, with 60 days of free access. They offer two starter plans, so after the trial period is over, you’ll need to choose either the basic email service or their email plus service. The basic plan is $20 per month to start, while their email plus option is $45 per month. Each option will vary in price, depending on how many contacts you have. Their maximum plan before requiring a custom quote covers unlimited emails for up to 50k contacts at $335 per month.

6. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is another customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Drip, except their tools aren’t just for eCommerce sites. ActiveCampaign is quite good at finding leads and turning them into long-time, paying customers. Their email automation tools are quite possibly the most powerful available. Similar to Drip, ActiveCampaign uses machine-learning software to study your customer’s habits and make predictions based on the info gathered. The platform also offers site tracking analytics, conversion tracking, lead scoring, and more topped off with an exceptional and intuitive interface.

ActiveCampaign is an additional MailChimp alternative that doesn’t have any sort of free option. They do have a trial that lasts 14 days and gives access to some of their higher-end plan features. Every tier of their service has the option of sending unlimited emails, but there is a total-contacts cap. An initial “Lite” plan begins at $9 per month for 500 subscribers or less.

7. EasySendy Drip

EasySendy Drip offers pretty much the same rundown of tools as our previous entries. They have customizable newsletters, an easy to use email construction tool, a contact management list, and analytics. The distinguishing aspect of EasySendy Drip is its helpful integration capabilities. If you’re already using another website or platform, it’s easy to integrate it with the EasySendy Drip interface. It also seamlessly integrates with Amazon’s SES email delivery system.

EasySendy’s pricing is based on how many subscribers you have, with the first 2k email subscribers completely free. An initial plan with the platform will cost $19 per month for up to 10,000 subscribers and with a max of 5 emails per second. EasySendy is perhaps the sole email marketing service to actually provide a concrete price for someone who has up to 5 million subscribers, which will cost you $849 each month.

8. GetResponse

GetResponse’s primary crowning feature is its “Autofunnel” tool. The Autofunnel collects information from your website and automatically builds optimized home and landing pages, emails, product and service endorsements, newsletters, and more. This tool effectively builds an entire email marketing campaign for you, where you still get the final decision on the design and overall content. Aside from their Autofunnel tool, GetResponse has social media integrations, a library of customizable email templates, and other features—all backed by an intuitive user interface.

Compared to MailChimp, GetResponse is the finest alternative. Similar to most email marketing platforms, unfortunately, GetResponse doesn’t have any sort of free-account available. They do have a limited 30-day trial, with limitless platform’s feature access. Their initial plan begins with a list size of 1k and unlimited emails for $15 monthly. If you have a massive website or around 100,000+ subscribers, their Enterprise plan costs $1,199 per month ($719 per month if you buy a 24-month annual plan).

Conclusion

MailChimp is one of the ranking kings in the email marketing world, but there are plenty of companies that offer similar services at better prices. All of them have their own distinguishing pros and cons. Overall, the choice mostly boils down to the aesthetics and practicality of each different platform. Everyone has a preference when it comes to these things, the trick is finding which one you prefer!

Which of these MailChimp alternatives do you think is the best? Have any experiences with any of them you’d like to share? Feel free to leave a comment below! Be sure to check back here at Concepts by Design frequently for regular marketing, SEO, and tech news!