If you’re trying to decide between AWeber vs ConvertKit for your email marketing, you’re in luck. When it comes to doing an unbiased, legitimate AWeber vs ConvertKit comparison and review, the first thing to keep in mind is that these two popular email marketing programs play in completely different fields. 

AWeber is one of the oldest email marketing software programs and was originally built on the unique (at the time) idea of sequential autoresponders or “drip content email marketing”.

On the other hand, ConvertKit is one of the newest players in the email marketing world but has focused its attention squarely on content marketers. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at how these two platforms compare when it comes to the email marketing metrics that matter.

Pricing

Both ConvertKit and AWeber have a free plan, with ConvertKit letting you have up to 1,000 subscribers and AWeber capping off their free plan at 500. If you’re just wondering which of the two give you most subscribers for free, ConvertKit wins. 

But there’s one other important point you should know about when it comes to number of subscribers and it has to do with how each of these email marketing services “count” subscribers respectively.

ConvertKit only charges you once per subscriber. That means if you have three lists and a subscriber is on all three, that subscriber only counts once. On AWeber, they count three times even though it’s the same person.

 Here’s a detailed breakdown of AWeber vs ConvertKit pricing: 

As you can see, ConvertKit starts to outpace Aweber in terms of monthly pricing when you hit over 3,000 subscribers. If pricing is what matters most to you, AWeber comes out on top, especially when paying annually, which can knock a nice chunk off of the total price. 

However, as you’ll read in this review, price shouldn’t be the only thing you base your decision on. 

Winner: AWeber

Email Deliverability 

Deliverability is one of those things that email marketing platforms don’t talk about often, but it’s critical when it comes to making sure that your email lands in the user’s inbox and not in their spam folder or even in their Gmail Promotions tab. You want eyes on your email, in the inbox — and for that, deliverability is the metric to measure. 

Not surprisingly, both companies claim to have deliverability in excess of 99%. But an independent test  showed otherwise, with ConvertKit leading the pack over its rival.

In a true AWeber vs ConvertKit comparison, it’s good to know which company has the edge when it comes to making sure emails end up where they’re supposed to go.

Winner: ConvertKit

Ease of Use

Both AWeber and ConvertKit are built around ease of use. With drag-and-drop simplicity in everything from template design to building custom marketing automations, both email marketing providers continue to stay on track with the latest trends and best practices in email marketing. 

However it’s worth noting that both ConvertKit and AWeber use their own vocabulary to refer to certain features, which may be confusing to beginners. For example, ConvertKit calls email automations “sequences”, and Automations are customizable workflows. Confused yet? Yeah, it takes some getting used to. But once you understand what each one is referring to, setting them up is a piece of cake. 

Winner: Tie! 

List Management

Here’s where the two email marketing software programs differ considerably. ConvertKit is built around segmenting your lists with tags, whereas AWeber is more list-based. To illustrate this, let’s say you have a site geared toward pets, and you want to send an email out to your dog owners and your cat owners.

In AWeber, the process is a bit less intuitive. You can tag your users only after they click a link in your email, for example, something expressly says “I own a cat” or “I own a dog”. 

In ConvertKit, you can even tag users into groups that overlap. Let’s say that when they signed up, they clicked “I own both a cat and a dog”. Rather than having to create a whole new list for this segment, as you’d have to do in AWeber, you can simply tag these users “cat and dog owners” in ConvertKit and still keep your list management nice, clean and targeted. 

Furthermore, using our previous example, if you wanted to create a list of both dog owners and cat owners in AWeber, you’d be charged for those subscribers again, even though they’re already on your dog and/or cat lists, causing your monthly fees to ratchet up more quickly than you might expect even though you haven’t actually added any “new” subscribers. 

In short, AWeber is quite a bit behind the times when it comes to detailed and personalizable list management, so this round goes to ConvertKit

Winner: ConvertKit

Design

In terms of sheer numbers, AWeber has by far the greatest number of customizable email templates: over 700. However, size isn’t everything, and their templates, much like ConvertKit’s, look somewhat dated. 

In terms of design and customizability, ConvertKit has embraced function over form, meaning that all of their email templates look very minimalist and clean. If you want an email designer that gives you all the bells and whistles, neither AWeber nor ConvertKit will really scratch that itch. 

However, to their credit, ConvertKit maintains its emphasis on just that: conversions. And simple emails tend to convert better than more complex ones, especially when viewed on mobile devices. Plus, their drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to do simple tasks like add your logo and customize your colors without touching a single line of code as you can see in the video below:

Winner: ConvertKit

Landing Pages

Both AWeber and ConvertKit have moved far beyond their initial email marketing roots and into landing pages and other integrations as well. From a strict landing page design, both services make it easy for you to drag and drop images, text, links, video and more to create beautiful, mobile-responsive landing pages .

Using AWeber vs ConvertKit landing pages also frees you up from having to pay for a separate landing page design program, since both are integrated with their respective email marketing services, providing beautiful and customizable opt-in forms that allow you to design code-free, or using CSS if you’d like a more hands-on approach. 

Winner: Tie! 

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation with ConvertKit is one of its strongest selling points, and rightfully so. But don’t let its simple click-and-drag interface fool you — there’s a lot of powerful stuff happening in the background. 

With ConvertKit, marketing automations are baked into the overall workflow, where you simply drag and drop the different steps you want to activate as they relate to your overall goals

Unfortunately, despite its simplicity and ease of use, it doesn’t allow much in the way of split testing. You can test different subject lines by sending out a one-off email, but split testing large campaigns is off the table. You also cannot view the granular details, such as optimizing for things like delivery time, type of email content and so on.

That means if you want to split test large campaigns, it’s better to look for a different email marketing service altogether (we recommend GetResponse for this type of campaign!) 

With AWeber, automation is extremely simple. Rather than being built into the workflow, you simply click a message and select from a drop-down menu what you want to have happen. So if a subscriber takes a certain action (like clicks a link), do this other thing (like tag them in a certain way). 

It’s simple and it gets the job done for the most basic of needs, but if you’re expecting things like branching paths and logic, AWeber isn’t the service for you. In this case though, ConvertKit is the better of the two in an AWeber vs ConvertKit comparison in terms of automation. 

Winner: ConvertKit

Reporting

Both AWeber and ConvertKit offer detailed reporting on the analytics that email marketers need to know, including: 

• Email opens over time
• Email clicks over time
• Email revenue over time
• New subscribers (per day, week, month) 
• Subscriber growth (per day, week, month) 

You can also view demographic details about your subscribers, such as their country, city, state and more. 

However, this is pretty much where AWeber’s reporting ends, whereas ConvertKit’s is just getting started. 

Although both services offer basic reporting on any paid plan, ConvertKit’s Creator Pro plan (at $59/month) truly takes reporting to a whole new level. 

For example, let’s say that you’ve been experiencing a decline in open rate on your emails, and you’re not sure what’s happening. With ConvertKit’s Creator Pro plan, you can dive right into the detailed analytics to get into the details. 

Through its intelligent filtering process, you can filter information for different subsets of subscribers. So if certain users aren’t receiving your email for example, you can filter those who are using Gmail, Yahoo and other free email providers to determine if that might be the cause. 

Winner: ConvertKit

Third Party Integrations

ConvertKit integrates with a handful of popular services, including Shopify, Wix and Zapier (and Zapier can be used to extend its functionality even more). However this is one area in which AWeber truly excels, offering dozens upon dozens of integrations with every popular tool you can imagine, including WordPress, PayPal, SalesForce, FreshBooks, HubSpot and many, many more.

Part of this can be attributed to the fact that Aweber has simply been around much, much longer, and if your staff is already accustomed to using certain tools, AWeber will be a welcome addition without uprooting them out of their comfort zone or slowing down productivity. 

Winner: AWeber

Customer Support

This is one area where both AWeber vs ConvertKit thrive. AWeber offers support by live chat, email and phone, so if you feel like you get better support speaking to an actual human on the phone, AWeber is one of the few email marketing services that offers this option.

Conversely, ConvertKit provides live chat and email support, as well as a forum community where you can get help from other users. Both AWeber and ConvertKit offer detailed knowledge bases that walk you through how to do various things in their respective programs. 

Winner: Tie! 

AWeber vs ConvertKit: Which One is Better? 

The bottom line is that although it’s a challenge to make an apples-to-apples comparison between AWeber vs ConvertKit, ConvertKit comes out on top for its ease of use, its focus on email conversions (simplicity in design always wins!) and its excellent marketing automations.

If you want something that just gives you the basics and does so at a good price point, AWeber is not a bad choice, especially if you’re just getting started with email marketing. However, once you grow and start to stretch your email marketing wings a bit, you’ll find that AWeber is lacking in some advanced features. However, if integration is a must, AWeber is going to make the process much more seamless and straightforward. 

The good news is that both AWeber vs ConvertKit offer a free trial that you can sign up for with no credit card required. This allows you to test out many of the features of both services (up until you reach 500 or 1,000 subscribers respectively) and although the free accounts are limited (you won’t get detailed reporting information, for example), you’ll be able to get a feel for how both email marketing services work and can decide from there which one is right for your needs.

So how does one of the web’s most popular email marketing services fare when it goes head-to-head with a service that bills itself as “the content creator’s email marketing software”? While it’s true that there are fervent fans on both sides of the debate, the truth is that although MailChimp vs ConvertKit comparisons may look similar on the surface, if you dig a ittle deeper, you’ll find out that there are quite a few differences, and those differences are crucial if you want to truly excel with email marketing.

In this detailed MailcChimp vs ConvertKit comparison, we’ll take a detailed look at what each platform does well, as well as where they can improve, so that you can decide with confidence.

If you’re only looking for a specific comparison of a certain feature, just click the table of contents below to go right to it.

Pricing

If you want to know which is cheaper, MailChimp vs ConvertKit, MailChimp is the leader here. For their service, you’ll pay $49.99/month for up to 5,000 contacts compared to ConvertKit’s $79 for the same number of contacts and other features. However, as with every comparison, don’t let price be your only deciding factor. There are several other points you’ll want to keep in mind as you make your MailChimp vs ConvertKit comparison.

Winner: MailChimp

Email Deliverability

According to the latest email deliverability report, of the top 19 leading email marketing providers, ConvertKit (#12) scored above MailChimp (#14), but both still scored below our persona favorite, GetResponse.

This report is continually updated every month with the latest information, so if making sure that the emails you send end up in the user’s inbox as they should, this is an important factor to consider as you evaluate MailChimp vs ConvertKit.

Winner: ConvertKit

Ease of Use

Both MailChimp and ConvertKit offer interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use, however their ease of use differs in a few surprising ways. For one, MailChimp allows you to drag and drop different elements in order to design your email. Keep in mind that as far as undoing any changes you’ve made, this feature only owrks with text.

Conversely, ConvertKit requires you to specify sender details first and then moves on to the email builder. There aren’t any drag-and-drop elements so generally you’re limited to simply adding images and adding and formatting your text. This might seem more restrictive, but this approach allows you to have greater control over making sure that your emails load and appear in a uniform way no matter what email program or system is rendering them.

If things like mobile-responsive email designs are important to you (and they should be), then having a more rigid framework to work in might be the better option. It depends entirely on your specific needs.

Winner: Tie!

List Management

ConvertKit does the concept of lists a bit differently than you might be used to. Whenever you upload contacts, they all go into the same “pool” but you can assign them to a certain form, sequence or tag in order to organize them etter. You can also create segments of users no matter which form, sequence or tag they belong to.

MailChimp on the other hand, lets you create lists and keep your contacts separate from one another. This is helpful in cases where you have different websites or different types of lists (for example, a list for people who opted in to receive a free report vs. those who have upgraded to a paid membership). Just know that MailChimp charges you per contact so even if you have one contact across both lists, that counts as two.  It may seem like you have more options with MailChimp, but you have to be careful not to “muddy the waters” with too many different lists or else the result can become cumbersome and confusing, not to mention expensive.

In short, ConvertKit’s simpler, more streamlined and more efficient contact management provides a much simpler way to streamline your contact management without having to deal with the extra tedious layer of list management on top of that. Same principle, better execution.

Winner: ConvertKit

Design

Both MailChimp vs ConvertKit differ significantly in terms of how they approach design. The one you choose will likely depend heavily on your email marketing goals.

MailChimp has over 100 email design templates across many different industries and themes. You can create stunning email newsletters, announcements and more using their templates as a starting point.  Can you use your own template with MailChimp? Yes, but only if you have the Standard ($14.99/month) or Premium ($299/month) options.

MailChimp is also in the process of renovating their email builder, so as of this writing (February 2021), you can use their new, much more efficient and user friendly email builder only for emails versus having to use the classic builder (a clunkier interface) for broadcasts, newsletters and the like.

ConvertKit, on the other hand, has three design templates. Why only three? Because their own tests have shown that people prever minimal graphics in their emails and that plain-text tends to perform better than design-heavy messages. You can also bring in your own template design if you’d like.

As someone who is very much on the side of implementing things that lead to conversions over what “looks pretty”, I’ll have to side with ConvertKit in this case. Although it seems nice to have access to hundreds of design templates, the fact is, people don’t care much about newsletter design and less so if they’re browsing on mobile.

Winner: ConvertKit

Landing Pages

Both email marketing software programs offer the ability to create landing pages, but as you might expect in a MailChimp vs ConvertKit compariso, they both adhere to the same philosophies as with email design, meaning that MailChimp gives you a handful of templates (8 of them) and some blank options you can customize, and ConverKit gives you four.

MailChimp lets you design landing pages the same way you design forms, by dragging and dropping different “blocks” to create the page. Thankfully, the landing page designer is a lot more intuitive than MailChimp’s form designer. You can host your landing pages with MailChimp, and you’ll get reports on things like the number of visitors, clicks, conversions and subscribes, but you’ll need to pay $99/year for the “privilege” to host these landing pages with your own domain name.

ConvertKit has maintained their simple design perspective with landing pages too, so you can just as easily drag and drop to create landing pages using one of four templates as a starting point. There aren’t many options availale to make changes to the design, so if you want to do anything more advanced than changing colors or adding CSS, you’re out of luck. One bonus, however, is that you can host these landing pages on your own domain without paying extra.

Although ConvertKit has more limited options in terms of landing page building, the ability to host it on your own server without paying exorbitant fees is a definite bonus.

Winner: ConvertKit

Marketing Automation

Here, it really feels like MailChimp is having to play catch up. That’s because marketing automation is one of the major features that sets ConvertKit ahead of the pack. Through their Visual Automations, you’re given a sort of work-flow editor where you can choose how someone enters the sequence (for example, signing up for a free newsletter). Then, you can click and drag “steps” based on certain conditions, actions they take, or other events.

To illustrate what this means, if you were sending a gardening newsletter, you could set up an automation that if the user subscribed in the spring, (condition),  they’d get planting tips for spring. If the user clicked on a link, it could take them to a page on when to plant based on their geographic area (action). Or if you wanted to follow-up their subscription by announcing a sale on all vegetable seeds for the next week, that would be considered an event.

In addition, based on whatever actions the user takes, you can then have the system add them to other sequences. For example, if they placed an order for vegetable seeds based on your sales announcement, you could subscribe them to a list for the best tips for protecting vegetable gardens from pests and rodets.

In short, everything in ConvertKit is run and managed using tags. Once you get the hang of using tags to segment users, you can then direct what happens behind the scenes as they interact with your emails.

MailChimp is trying hard to catch-up in this regard, with its new Customer Journeys builder. It’s still fairly limited in terms of the automations it can do. They’re taking a page out of ConvertKit’s book by making workflows drag-and-drop simple, but much of the automations available are centered around e-commerce, which requires you to connect your store to MailChimp.

You’re also limited in terms of the kinds of customer journeys you can build in MailChimp based on the pricing package you have, whereas ConvertKit gives you access to all the tools right from the start. You can learn more about how marketing automation works in ConvertKit by watching their official video below:

Winner: ConvertKit

Reporting

This is one area where ConvertKit is the one playing catch-up. That’s because although they do offer basic reporting, for a site that focuses on conversion optimization, the reports leave a lot to be desired. Open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, links clicked. Period. You don’t get any detailed, granular information that could help you improve, like heatmaps, geographic data or even bounce rates.

MailChimp gives you everything you could want in a report, and even things you may not have thought you wanted (but once you see them, couldn’t possibly live without). You get the basic opens, clicks, subscribes and bounces but also things like:

• Hourly performance
• Social statistics
• Numer of opens y location
• Performance by domain
• Number of e-commerce sales
• Click maps

And you can click on any one of the reporting topics for a deep-dive. You can also see how your campaigns compare against the industry average.

Winner: MailChimp, by far

Third Party Integration

Among MailChimp vs ConvertKit, who has the most integrations? MailChimp and ConvertKit offer a great number of them and both let developers have access to their APIs for more thorough integration. As of this writing, ConvertKit has nearly 90 different integrations with well-known sites and services including WordPress, Shopify and even Zapier, which in turn connects to several other apps.

The downside is that ConvertKit doesn’t really integrate with well-known CRMs like Salesforce, Zoho or HubSpot. Considering that this tool is all about marketing to artists and bloggers, it’s rather surprising.

It may look like 90 integrations plus the ability to extend that numer even more through Zapier is a LOT of integrations, but MailChimp has nearly double that number. But there’s one big integration missing from MailChimp, and that’s well-known e-commerce store Shopify.

Why? You can read all about their nasty breakup here. but in short, MailChimp won’t sync customer data with Shopify, which means if a user unsubscribed via the Shopify app for example, any other service that uses that same data also has to keep that informaiton in sync. It seems like a common-sense practice, since you wouldn’t want to keep emailing customers that have opted out (not only is it spamming, but in some places it’s illegal). MailChimp refused to allow this to happen, so Shopify understandably kicked them to the curb over it.

However, with that being said, having the freedom to integrate more apps is better than less, which is why it’s hard to beat MailChimp at this, (unless you also have a Shopify store and if you do, we recommend GetResponse), so with that being said, this round goes to the Chimp.

Winner: MailChimp

Customer Support

Both options for support when it comes to MailChimp vs ConvertKit are pretty robust. You can contact both email marketing services via email or live chat. Both services also offer very thorough knowledge bases and video and walkthrough tutorials. MailChimp does offer live chat and email support for the first 30 days of its free plan, whereas ConvertKit has no limits, but overall both services are fairly tied in this regard.

Winner: Tie!

Which is Better, MailChimp or ConvertKit?

The real answer to which is better, MailChimp or ConvertKit is that MailChimp is better if you need more freedom with your app integrations, more design flexibility, detailed reporting or you’re concerned about price above all else. ConvertKit is better if you want easier marketing automation, simpler design, access to all the features on one plan and streamlined list management.

To be fair, MailChimp is trying to attract anyone and everyone whereas ConvertKit has decided to focus squarely on content creators, artists, e-commerce and bloggers. Although that’s a pretty large swath of users, if that doesn’t cover you, you may find that MailChimp is a more well-rounded option. Still, you can’t discount the fact that ConvertKit has poured a lot of resources into making things much more user-friendly and, well, designed to convert.

The good news is that both services offer a free plan, so you can try them both out to get a feel for how they work and then decide accordingly.

Trying to decide between MailChimp vs MailerLite? Both of these email marketing software solutions are highly popular — mostly for being free in some form. But if you’re wondering which one is better for the long-term growth of your business, you’ll want to read this detailed review.

In this article, we’ll look at MailChimp vs MailerLite as well as the pros and cons of each one so that you can decide with confidence which one is right for you.

Subscriber Management

With MailChimp, subscriber management is simply a matter if creating an audience (previously known as a list), and then using tags and segmentation to break it down into specific sub-sets. From here, you can then send relevant messages to each group of subscribers.

MailerLIte, on the other hand, follows a similar principle but with a slightly different naming style. Instead of managing subscribers with tags, they’re simply divided into groups. The process is the same, just with a different name.

Keep in mind that both MailChimp and MailerLite charge you based on the total number of subscribers on your account — even if people unsubscribe.

Winner: Tie!

Deliverability

MailChimp boasts a deliverability rate of over 80%, which, when you consider it, is neither great nor terrible. Oftentimes when sending mail with MailChimp, your messages will land in the Promotions tab of Google’s Gmail, and it’s likely that your recipients will never see them.

MailerLite takes deliverability very seriously and leverages more intelligent email sending practices to help more of your messages end up in the inbox where they belong. However, it still lags behind industry leaders GetResponse and AWeber. Still, as part of our apples-to-apples comparison, MailerLite is ahead of MailChimp as far as deliverability goes.

Winner: MailerLite (but not by much!)

Creating Emails, Newsletters and Landing Pages

Both MailChimp and MailerLite have features beyond email marketing, including landing pages and pop-ups. But how easy are they to use and work with?

MailChimp offers a number of quality templates for you to use in order to embed on your site. You can also use similar templates for your landing pages and newsletters. The service also allows you to customize them but if you want to code your own, you’ll need to pay for the Premium package which can set you back several hundred dollars per month!

They do, however, offer you the ability to customize their existing templates using the drag-and-drop editor, so no coding or design experience is necessary.

Conversely, MailerLite carries over its clean, straightforward approach to its email, newsletter and landing page templates too. You can also use their templates or code your own, but you’ll need to upgrade to the paid plan to do so. As with MailChimp, MailerLite features an intuitive drag-and-drop editor to give you greater customization over their default newsletter and email templates.

Winner: Tie!

Integration with Third Party Programs

MailChimp’s 200+ integrations with third party programs far surpasses MailerLite’s, however, MailerLite also has several integration options in addition to letting developers access their API, which is a programming interface that lets you integrate the service with other apps beyond those integrations that are officially supported.

What’s more, both MailChimp and MailerLite work with Zapier, which lets you “hook” in other apps to extend the functionality of each respective platform.

Winner: MailChimp

Marketing Automation

This is understandably a BIG consideration when deciding between MailChimp vs MailerLite. It’s one thing to design an email campaign every now and then, but what if you could automate much of the process? Both email marketing services allow you to do so, but MailChimp makes it extraordinarily and unnecessarily complicated.

MailerLite, on the other hand, has taken a much simpler approach. Its automations follow a more familiar “workflow” format, where you simply add triggers in an “if this happens, do this” style.

With the ability to create clear paths and branches, MailerLite has taken the confusion and frustration out of marketing automation. MailChimp isn’t far behind though, especially with its new take on the process, which they call Customer Journeys. Still, as of this writing there are still some wrinkles in the system that need to be ironed out, and until that happens, MailerLite is the clear winner here.

Winner: MailerLite

Reporting and Analytics

Both MailChimp vs MailerLite have solid reporting and analytics, and both services offer e-commerce reporting as well, however MailerLite is limited to online Shopify and WooCommerce whereas MailChimp has a much greater selection of e-commerce vendors to report from. Both services can also tie into Google Analytics, giving you a fuller picture of how your marketing campaigns are doing.

Winner: Tie

Pricing

This is the biggest question we receive. If you just want to know which service lets you have the most subscribers for the least amount of money starting out, MailChimp is the answer.

However, if you’re looking into the future as far as growing your business and you want a fuller picture of your options, it’s a good idea to dig deeper in to MailChimp pricing and MailerLite pricing to have as close of a comparison as possible.

Both MailChimp and MailerLite have a free plan. With MailChimp, you get 2,000 suscribers with the ability to send up to 10,000 emails per month. With MailerLite, you get 1,000 subscribers with the ability to send up to 12,000 emails per month. Don’t forget that even if they unsubscribe, these users count toward your subscriber totals.

However, once your business starts to grow and you get more and more subscribers, MailerLite becomes the cheapest option, giving you a larger number of subscribers and an email sending allowance per month that’s cheaper than MailChimp for a similar plan. With this in mind, although MailChimp is the cheapest starting out, MailerLite is better for long-term growth, making it a clear winner.

Winner: MailerLite

Support

We can’t realistically do a  MailChimp vs MailerLite comparison without talking about support. Even if you’re a pro at crafting campaigns, creating landing pages and designing newsletters, you’re going to need a helping hand every once in awhile. So how responsive is their support?  With free plans in any case, support is going to be lacking, so don’t let that cloud your judgment.

With MailChimp, you’ll get access to a knowledge base and tutorials, as well as 30 days of support on the free plan, but after that, you’re on your own. Contextual help is available at any time. The paid plans offer different tiers of support depending on which one you choose, with Premium (at $250/month) giving you access the phone support.

MailerLite offers an extensive knowledge base and video tutorials as well as support in multiple languages via email. If you have a paid plan, you can access support via live chat. If you need even faster support options as well as GDPR support, custom landing pages and emails, a dedicated account manager and priority support, consider MailerLIte’s “MailerPro” option which costs $100/month.

As you can see, both companies offer a wide variety of support options. However, in terms of priority support and the value that comes with it, MailerLite wins again. At $100/month, you get more features and more one-on-one support than with MailChimp at double the price.

Winner: MailerLite

MailChimp vs MailerLite: When Should You Use Each One?

Every business’ needs are different, however, you likely value certain features more than others, in which case it becomes much easier to choose between MailChimp vs MailerLite as your email marketing service of choice.  With that being said:

You should use MailChimp if:

• You need a solution that’s more than just email marketing – MailChimp offers comprehensive features including landing pages, a basic CRM, social media post scheduling and other ad features. The CRM itself is especially impressive if you don’t want to invest a huge chunk of money on bigger solutions or on extras you don’t need. With the MailChimp CRM, you can take advantage of advanced options like behavioral targeting based on purchasing behavior, calculate customer lifetime value and see how engaged your users are with your marketing initiatives.
• You need advanced reporting options – MailChimp holds nothing back from its data or reporting. With a beefy analytics and reporting suite, it combines the normal email metrics (number of opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes) as well as audience analytics and more so that you can confidently calculate the ROI of your email marketing campaigns.

  You want a solution that scales, hassle-free – MailChimp scales amazingly well, but this hassle-free functionality comes at a high price tag. As your subscriber list grows and you start tapping into new features, expect your bill to make considerable leaps and bounds.

  Click Here to Set Up a FREE MailChimp Account

You should use MailerLite if:

• You want great value for the money – MailerLite doesn’t nickel-and-dime you to death by making you pay more each time you want to add a new feature to your account. With landing pages, pop-up forms and even auto-resend of failed emails baked into the system, it’s a great deal for startup businesses or those who are looking for a simple solution to “get their feet wet” with email marketing.
• You want speed and simplicity – MailerLite shines when it comes to sending emails in a way that won’t get you relegated to the user’s spam folder or promotions tab. It even lets you schedule your messages to send within a certain timeframe or time zone. If you just want an email marketing solution that works, without being complicated, MailerLite is an excellent choice.Now, that’s not to say that it’s bland or boring. it’s just that MailerLite has done a great job of cutting out the complicated steps of getting an email campaign up and running. We even use it ourselves here at MailFocus!
• Support is a priority for you – MailerLite’s customer support is available in multiple languages, and customer service is even available for free plans, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Which is Better, MailChimp or MailerLite?

As you can see, both of these email marketing services do a great job when it comes to helping small businesses or solo entrepreneurs get up and running quickly and efficiently. However, beyond their free plan features, the solutions start to vary considerably. You’ll want to consider which priorities you truly value and what you really want out of an email marketing tool before you make your choice.

The good news is that both offer free plans that have no time limit, so you can take them both for a spin and see which one fits your needs!

Whether you’re looking at MailChimp vs AWeber or AWeber vs MailChimp, the truth is that both of these hugely popular email marketing services offer a number of benefits for marketing your online business. In this detailed comparison, we’ll look at both email marketing software programs and see if one truly outshines the other.

Which is better, MailChimp or AWeber? Let’s take a closer look:

MailChimp vs AWeber Free

MailChimp’s free plan, with its ability to host up to 2,000 subscribers at no charge is one of the reasons this email marketing service quickly found itself at the top of the list. However, don’t let the number of subscribers be your only consideration when deciding between Mailchimp vs AWeber. It’s important to look at the full picture when comparing these two email marketing services in order to choose the one that’s right for your specific needs.

MailChimp and Aweber Pricing – Which One is Cheaper?

AWeber offers two plans: Free and Pro. Their free plan lets you have up to 500 subscribers but also allows you to use most of the features the service has to offer.

In other words, you don’t need to pay for a higher level plan in order to access more features.

If you have more than 500 subscribers, you’ll pay:

• 0-500: $19/month
• 501-2,500: $29/month
• 2501-5,000: $49/month
• 5,001-10,000: $69/month
• 10,001-25,000: $149/month

If you’re wondering why the free plan lets you have up to 500 subscribers, but the lowest level of the pro plan charges you $19/month for the same amount, you can see the differences between AWeber Pro and Free here.

Conversely, MailChimp has four plans, but each level unlocks more features. MailChimp charges based on the number of subscribers you have. So if you have:

• Up to 2,000 subscribers: FREE
• Up to 50,000 subscribers: $9.99/month
• Up to 100,000 subscribers: $14.99/month
• Over 200,000 subscribers: $299/month (no, that’s not a typo!)

Winner: MailChimp

In terms of sheer list size, MailChimp clearly beats AWeber. Paying just $14.99/month for up to 100,000 subscribers on MailChimp versus needing to get a custom quote from AWeber (but paying over $149/month for the same list size) seems like a no-brainer.

As an added bonus, if you don’t want to use autoresponders or any other features that MailChimp has to offer, and you just want to send out a newsletter every now and then, you may be interested in knowing that MailChimp has a pay-as you-go plan that charges you a set fee per email sent. The amount you pay depends on where you live, and you get the same feature-set as in the Essentials Plan.

But don’t let that be the only criteria you use to evaluate MailChimp vs. AWeber!

Send Limits: How Many Messages Can You Send Per Day?

It’s no use having hundreds of thousands of subscribers if you’re limited to how many messages you can send them in a given day or month, and how often you can send those messages.

For example, on MailChimp’s Free plan, you can send up to 10,000 emails per month, with a limit of 2,000 per day. Those send limits are multiplied based on the tier you have:

• Essentials Plan Send Limits: 500,000 emails/month to up to 50,000 subscribers
• Standard Plan Send Limits: 1,200,000 emails/month to up to 100,000 subscribers
• Premium Plan Send Limits: 3,00,000 emails/month to up to 200,000+ subscribers

AWeber has no such sending restrictions, making it the clear winner when you don’t want to think about whether or not you’ll reach your send limit if you have a large number of subscribers.

Winner: AWeber

Marketing Automation with Mailchip and AWeber

Both MailChimp and AWeber started out as basic autoresponders, allowing users to schedule sequential emails that went out at certain times over the course of several weeks or months automatically. Since then, they’ve expanded their features to offer a larger suite of marketing automation tools.

However, in order to properly compare Aweber and Mailchimp’s autoresponder functionality, we need to look beyond traditional ‘drip’ style autoresponders and explore the idea of ‘marketing automation’ a feature that has been introduced into several leading email marketing solutions over the past few years.

Marketing Automation in MailChimp

MailChimp offers a wide variety of automations which are based on certain “triggers”. At their simplest, a trigger is something that simply happens over the course of time, like mailing the customer a Happy Birthday email on their birthday or something that happens as a result of the customer doing something (like visiting a product page or adding an item to their cart).

The list of Marketing Automation triggers in MailChimp is fairly long, but you can see them all here (opens in a new window).

Marketing Automation in AWeber

Compared to MailChimp, AWeber’s automations are much more basic. With AWeber, you can tag users based on the actions they take with regard to an email, such as opening it or clicking a link.

And that’s it…really.

Now, it may not seem like much, but unlike MailChimp, Aweber has stayed true to what it does best: managing emails. That’s why, if you want to build an advanced workflow, such as sending certain messages if a customer buys a specific product, you’ll likely be better off with MailChimp, although it can feel overwhelming to slog through all the options it gives you.

If you want to keep it simple, AWeber is a better option. But with regard to sheer flexibility between the two, MailChimp covers more options.

Winner: MailChimp

User Interface and Ease of Use

Both AWeber and MailChimp have tried to make their user interfaces as simple and as straightforward to use as possible. MailChimp has gone with a cleaner, clearer interface with a lot of white space, versus AWeber’s more traditional approach of putting relevant actions all in one spot.

Although they might look similar from the images above, AWeber’s step-by-step guidance (shown by the progress bar above for each step) is much more welcoming, especially for first-time users. No matter what you want to accomplish, AWeber’s easily-recognizable progress bars will walk you through it, and as you become more comfortable wtih the platform, you’ll come to know exactly how many steps a certain process will take — be it customizing your newsletter design or sending out your first email campaign.

Conversely, MailChimp may look neat and organized, but there are a lot of steps involved in taking the actions you want to take, and a lot of frustrating back and forth without any clear guidance on where you need to go in order to do what you want. For a service that prides itself on being “chimp-simple”, MailChimp has a long way to go in terms of user-friendliness.

Winner: AWeber

Newsletter Design and Mobile Responsive Email Templates

Both MailChimp and AWeber let you drag and drop different elements in order to create or edit your emails or newsletters. From text and logos to images and links, the process is incredibly streamlined and easy to follow, even if you’ve never designed an email before.

Traditionally, MailChimp’s process has been much more clunky in this regard. You had to essentially drag and drop different elements (like headlines separate from paragraphs) and you couldn’t Undo or Redo any steps. However, they’re currently working on a beta feature called the New Builder which lets you type directly inside of an email — something that Aweber has always let you do.

When it comes to newsletter design and mobile responsive emails, MailChimp is playing catch-up with AWeber in terms of ease of the use and functionality of designing an email from scratch.

As far as mobile responsive email templates go, MailChimp offers over 100 mobile-friendly templates for nearly any email marketing goal. In contrast, AWeber offers over 700. You can also code your own template with AWeber, whereas with MailChimp, you’ll need to pay for the Standard plan to open up this option.

If you’re sorely lacking for inspiration, you’ll be glad to know that AWeber also allows you to choose from its library of over 6,000 stock photos and images which is a helpful touch for those who consider themselves “design-challenged.” This way, you won’t be starting completely from zero!

Winner: AWeber

List Segmentation with MailChimp vs AWeber

Segmenting your audience into smaller groups is a smart tactic to improve your email marketing response rate and engage with those users who have specific interests and reasons for subscribing to your list in the first place.

It’s important to note that neither MailChimp’s Essentials plan nor Aweber’s Pro Plan lets you email multiple segments at once. Even if you have an offer that’s relevant to one group that falls into two different segments, you’ll need to create a new segment for them that combines the folks in Segment 1 and/or Segment 2.

If you really want to be able to get granular with your list segmentation, GetResponse is a solid option that allows you the freedom to do so. MailChimp also offers this functionality, but with a much higher $299/month price tag.

And although it’s better to have a single list and just segment your users, AWeber does allow you to send the same email message across multiple lists, whereas MailChimp does not. That gives AWeber a slight edge here but this is an area where both MailChimp vs AWeber could stand to improve overall.

Winner: AWeber (barely!)

Reporting and Analytics

Fortunately, both MailChimp and AWeber give you access to detailed statistics all about your email lists and subscribers. MailChimp wins in this regard, since you can click on any part of your report and drill down to get the details. For example, you can view:

• Emails opened
• Links clicked
• Social media activity
• Inbox (formerly known as Conversations)
• Google Analytics

MailChimp Inbox requires a bit of an explanation:

MailChimp Inbox, which used to be known as Conversations, allows a more open, back-and-forth two way communication between you and your subscribers. In your MailChimp Inbox, you can see whether or not a subscriber has sent you a message, and from it, you can respond back.

What’s neat about this feature is that MailChimp automatically creates a unique  “reply-to” email address for every conversation, so that you essentially have a log of conversations with your subscribers. MailChimp also compares your email subscribers’ engagement levels with standard engagement levels in your specific industry.

Meanwhile, AWeber does not currently have this kind of functionality, but it does offer something else of benefit, and that’s the ability to create segments based on analytics reports. For example, if you want to send an email only ot those who opened your last email message, you can do so directly from the Reporting area, without the need to back out and go through the process of creating an individual segment again.

MailChimp will let you know, in its Audience dashboard, which subscribers engage often, occasionally and seldom with you, so you can retarget them directly from that area if you wish.

In terms of who wins this round, it’s more of a tie, since both services offer interesting features in addition to robust reporting that helps you better understand your mailing list metrics and subscribers.

Winner: Tie!

Landing Page Design

Both AWeber and MailChimp have recently rolled out landing page design as part of their suite of products. However, compared to standalone landing page design platforms like Unbounce and Instapage, both MailChimp landing pages and AWeber landing pages don’t go much beyond the basics.

Just like with emails, you can click and drag to create mobile-responsive landing pages and use them to entice users to sign up to your mailing list. However, unlike emails, you can’t split test your landing pages with either service, which you won’t know which of your landing pages converts more visitors to subscribers; the landing page design options of both AWeber vs MailChimp simply aren’t extensive enough to want to use them over more full-featured options.

If you just want to be able to create basic, simple landing pages, though, the options that both companies offer are decent enough to get you up and running, just not much else.

Winner: Neither!

MailChimp and AWeber Split Testing

And speaking of split testing, both MailChimp and AWeber offer this option with their emails. If you’re new to split testing, in short, it lets you experiment with different options and split the messages between you subscribers.

Let’s say you wanted to know which subject line would convince more of your users to check out your latest sale, so you send one email to half of your subscribers with the subject line “50% off Sale Happening Now”.  With the other half, you send out the same email, with the only difference being the changed subject line: “Get 50% Off Until February 1st”.  You then send them out at the same time.

Over time, you can then see which of the subject lines encouraged more users to open the email or click through to the page with the sale items. Continuing to do this over time will help you learn what spurs your readers to take action, and in turn, helps you improve the quality of your list.

Of course, you don’t have to send out your emails in a 50/50 split. It can be whatever percentage you choose. AWeber lets you split test up to three different groups. MailChimp lets you split test starting with their Essentials plan and also lets you choose among three different groups. MailChimp has a slight edge here in that they also allow for Multivariate Testing, which means testing different individual pieces of an email campaign simultaneously.

Going back to our previous example, rather than testing just the subject line, you could use Multivariate testing to test the subject line, the sender name and the time of day the email is sent. However, you’ll pay a hefty price for this feature, since it’s only available in MailChimp’s $299/month Premium plan.

Winner: MailChimp (but only if you’re prepared to pay the price!)

Integrations with Third Party Apps and Services

Both MailChimp and AWeber’s own core functionality can be further extended thanks to their integrations with other popular third party apps and services. Want to integrate MailChimp with WordPress? What about AWeber integration with Shopify? There are third party plugins (both official and unofficial) that can help you do just that.

Much of the integrations that are available for MailChimp are only possible through third party programs like Zapier, so you may incur an additional fee depending on the integration you want to use with MailChimp and how extensive you want it to be.

Conversely, AWeber offers hundreds of official integrations with apps and other services. Those that need a third party tool are marked with a symbol in the upper left corner of their integrations page.

Winner: AWeber

We’ve covered a lot of options in this head-to-head review of MailChimp vs AWeber, but the bottom line is that there are going to be some areas where one email service clearly wins over the other. With that being said:

Why Choose MailChimp over AWeber?

It’s free to get started: MailChimp’s popularity is solidly rooted in its free plan. If you’re on a shoestring budget and you don’t mind having MailChimp’s branding attached to every email you send, it’s a good option for those just starting out. However, keep in mind that many of MailChimp’s more advanced options are locked behind its paid plans.

It offers a great blog-to-email feature: If you just want to keep your subscribers updated by automatically sending emails whenever you publish a new blog post (or at any other timeframe you choose), MailChimp has a number of professional-looking RSS to email options that you can customize. This lets you do a sort of “post roundup” digest of your latest blog posts and email your subscribers every week, for instance,with links to the articles. In this respect, AWeber’s own RSS to email templates are very dated-looking and there are few to choose from.

You can have one-on-one conversations with your subscribers: If a subscriber has a question, MailChimp Inbox has the ability to turn your email list into more of a support ticket-style interface without making you ever leave the dashboard area. This is a great way to build a relationship with your readers and keep the conversation going beyond the messages you send.

Why Choose AWeber over MailChimp?

It offers far more design options: With hundreds of mobile-responsive templates to use as your starting point, you can create nearly any type of newsletter or email campaign design you want, and can be sure it will look flawless in any device.  You can also code your own design if you’d like.

Support is second-to-none: AWeber is one of the few email marketing services that offers support via phone, 24/7 live chat and 24/7 email support. That means you can reach someone virtually any time you need help. Support isn’t one of those things we often think about until we need it, and AWeber has gone above and beyond to make sure that you can get the answers you need from an actual human, whenever you need them.

It offers an easier setup process: AWeber is excellent about walking you through processes step by step. Whether you’re setting up your first autoresponder or launching your first campaign, AWeber guides you through it in stages, so you can get comfortable with what you’re doing, making it more familiar and easier each time.

MailChimp vs AWeber: The Final Round — Who Wins?

The question of which is better, MailChimp vs AWeber depends on what you plan to use it for. If you only care about the cheapest service that lets you have the most subscribers but doesn’t really give you tools to go deeper than sending a basic newsletter, MailChimp’s free plan will suit your needs just fine. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Some people only need the basics, and if that’s you, then there’s no need to pay for stuff you don’t need and won’t use.

MailChimp’s pay-as-you go option is also ideal if you’d rather pay per email sent without being locked into paying a monthly fee.

However, if you want access to all of the features right from the start, you’ll feel MailChimp start to nickel-and-dime you as you’re suddenly required to pay to access a higher tier of services if you want, for example, the ability to use your own custom template. You’ll pay even more to access phone support — both things that AWeber offers right out of the box with its Pro plan.

Overall, MailChimp may excel in pricing for the sheer sending power per number of subscribers that you get, but that’s not the be-all-end-all of email marketing. If you’re serious about choosing a mailing list provider that gives you greater freedom to grow your list as well as tap into the features and options that help you do that, AWeber is a far better option. You can start with their free plan or try out the Pro plan for 30 days. They’ll even move over your account from another email service (like MailChimp) for free.