Top 5 Best Mailchimp Alternatives

If email marketing remains one of the most relevant acquisition channels even today, choosing the right email marketing software according to the size and type of your business has become a complex task due to the vast number of options available. With factors such as offered features, customer support, pricing plans, and ease of use to consider, many criteria must be taken into account.

Mailchimp is one of the pioneering software in the field of email marketing and marketing automation. However, with the rapid development of the market in recent years, many Mailchimp alternatives have emerged. These alternatives are often cheaper, more comprehensive, more efficient, or multilingual, offering new and better-suited value propositions to meet the needs of each business.

To help you see more clearly and assist you as best as possible, in this article, we present our top 6 best Mailchimp alternatives, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as detailed pricing and plans offered.

Mailchimp alternatives

Mailchimp – An Effective Tool… But Limited!

Before diving into the details of our top 6 Mailchimp alternatives, let’s briefly review the factors that contributed to the success of this leading email marketing software, as well as its limitations.

Founded in 2001 in Atlanta, Mailchimp quickly established itself as the go-to solution for email marketing. The software stood out by offering a simple, intuitive interface and fairly generalist features, aimed primarily at small businesses and freelancers new to email marketing. While this differentiation factor fueled the rise of the solution, it has gradually shown its limitations in the face of the growing digital landscape and the rise of “data marketing.”

Since most of its customers are located in the United States, the platform itself is only available in English, as is its customer support. This can make campaign management more challenging for some users, particularly if you are new to email marketing and not yet familiar with all the terms, or not fluent in English.

Then, the solution can quickly become costly if you have a large contact base. While the free plan (only the 1st month is free) covers up to 500 contacts and 6,000 emails per month, the costs increase significantly as your database expands. For example, sending a monthly newsletter to 6,000 contacts will cost you $20 per month after the 1st month, and this price rises to $450 for 50,000 contacts after the 1st month free. All this for a plan with basic and relatively limited features. Finally, Mailchimp’s automation features are also somewhat limited when it comes to implementing advanced marketing strategies. Although it is possible to configure simple campaigns and set up automation systems, the tool lacks more complex functionalities (integrations, multichannel options, segmentation options, additional channels, etc.).

Thus, Mailchimp is better suited for small businesses or beginners (bloggers/content creators…) with basic automation needs.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the different alternatives to Mailchimp available in the email marketing software market.

Tool

Sending limits

Contacts

Price

ActiveTrail

100 000 emails

500

$8/month

Mailjet

16 000 emails

Illimited

$17/month

Sendgrid

15 000 emails

7 000

$15/month

Mailerlite

Illimited emails

500

$9/month

Hubspot

2 000 emails

1 000

$15/month

Top 5 Best Mailchimp alternatives

  1. ActiveTrail

Activetrail.com

The first Mailchimp alternative that is rapidly gaining popularity is ActiveTrail. ActiveTrail is an email marketing and marketing automation solution designed for businesses of all sizes, addressing many of the limitations previously mentioned.

With its new email editor, ActiveTrail offers an intuitive and user-friendly software, allowing users to create personalized and highly automated campaigns without any technical skills or knowledge, as well as to create custom pop-ups on your website.

Additionally, ActiveTrail provides excellent multichannel scenario management through its advanced Marketing Automation, including email, SMS, WhatsApp Marketing, mobile push notifications, and even retargeting on your various social media platforms. All of this can be personalized according to your contact base and individual behavior. Regarding integrations, ActiveTrail offers a wide range of integrations with various applications such as your CRM (Salesforce…) or e-commerce platforms, ensuring real-time synchronization and making it easier to launch and manage your email campaigns.

Finally, ActiveTrail offers valuable advantages, such as:

  • Responsive customer support via chat, phone, or email with english-speaking representatives,
    • A multilingual interface, including English, French, Spanish
  • A training center with regular content
  • GDPR compliance.

Pricing: Unlike other solutions, ActiveTrail does not offer a free plan but provides a 30-day free trial to test all the features. However, the solution stands out with more affordable prices and plans starting from $8 per month for 500 contacts (with unlimited email sends), with scalable options based on the number of contacts and required features, such as the plan for 60,000 contacts at $195/month.

Conclusion: ActiveTrail is an ideal alternative and stands out as one of the leading solutions, with responsive support and a comprehensive editor for all needs, regardless of the business’s size or industry. Additionally, ActiveTrail’s Marketing Automation is very complete and allows you to create automated and effective multichannel scenarios.

2. Mailjet

mailjet

The second alternative is the email marketing software Mailjet. This platform is particularly known for its transactional email service, API accessibility, and collaborative features, especially for developers and startups. One of Mailjet’s key strengths is its ability to enable real-time collaboration between multiple users within the email editor, allowing teams to work simultaneously on the same campaign. This feature is especially useful for marketing teams working on complex projects that require close coordination with near real-time monitoring.

Additionally, Mailjet offers its users a dedicated IP address, allowing them to maintain full control over their sender reputation, which is crucial for sensitive marketing campaigns. For example, when a newsletter subscriber no longer wishes to receive your emails, the tool automatically removes them from your list to prevent you from being perceived as an undesirable sender. This strength, however, can also be a limitation if stakeholders are not familiar with managing the features and contacts.

Furthermore, like Mailchimp, Mailjet’s customer support is relatively limited (and nonexistent for the free plan). Users must submit a ticket and wait patiently for a response. The marketing automation aspect is also quite general and does not allow for the creation of advanced scenarios.

Pricing: In terms of pricing, Mailjet offers a free plan for up to 6,000 emails per month, with a daily limit of 200 emails. Paid plans start at $17 per month for 15,000 emails per month, with options for higher volumes. To access all advanced features, such as marketing automation, A/B testing, segmentation, and real-time collaboration, a user may need to pay up to $470 per month.

Conclusion: Mailjet is well-suited for strategies focused on transactional emails and for technical users who primarily want to utilize the platform’s API. However, its marketing automation is quite basic, and customer support is rather limited.

3. Sendgrid

sendgrid

Also well-known for its transactional email services, SendGrid is an email platform well-suited for tech companies and developers, thanks to its powerful API and high deliverability rates.

One of SendGrid’s main strengths is its ability to handle large volumes of emails while maintaining a high deliverability rate, a crucial advantage for large companies that send millions of emails in a short period. SendGrid’s API offers maximum flexibility, allowing developers to easily customize and integrate the platform into their existing systems (CRM, etc.). Additionally, SendGrid offers a marketing automation tool, with free access to try it out.

However, the complexity of SendGrid can be a barrier for non-technical users and businesses. The platform is primarily geared towards a technical and specific audience, which can make it difficult to use for those without development knowledge. Furthermore, customer support is mainly available in English, which can be problematic for the foreign users.

Pricing: SendGrid offers a free plan that allows sending up to 100 emails per day. Paid plans start at $19.95 per month for higher email volumes and advanced features, going up to $1099/month for the plan with 2.5 million contacts.

Conclusion: SendGrid is an ideal solution for transactional email strategies, and it is more suited to individuals and businesses with a technical background to fully benefit from its features.

4. Mailerlite

Mailerlite

The fourth alternative to Mailchimp is the software MailerLite. As its name suggests, it is a simple and relatively lightweight email marketing solution, particularly suited for small businesses and beginners. It combines an intuitive user interface with essential features at a very affordable cost.

MailerLite’s user interface is designed to be intuitive, with a drag-and-drop functionality that makes it easy to create attractive emails without requiring technical skills. Additionally, MailerLite offers a range of essential tools, such as list segmentation, automation, and performance tracking, to name a few.

Moreover, this email marketing tool provides integrated real-time reporting features, allowing you to monitor and analyze your performance, as well as A/B testing options to test and optimize your campaigns.

However, MailerLite has certain limitations, starting with the fact that support is only offered for paid plans. This can be a drawback for individuals and businesses that are not fluent in English, as the vocabulary can be quite technical depending on the features and campaign scenarios being implemented.

Pricing: MailerLite offers a free plan for users with up to 1,000 contacts and a monthly send limit of 12,000 emails. Paid plans start at $9 per month, going up to $1,710/month for 500,000 contacts.

Conclusion: Despite its simple and lightweight nature, MailerLite remains a highly relevant solution for beginners, startups, and small businesses looking for an intuitive interface to launch their first email campaigns. However, the platform is only available in English, and customer support is limited to paid plans.

5. Hubspot

hubspot

HubSpot needs no introduction—it’s much more than just an email marketing tool; it’s a comprehensive platform for managing marketing, sales, and customer service. For businesses looking to centralize all their marketing operations, HubSpot is a highly relevant and powerful alternative.

The platform offers an all-in-one, very comprehensive suite of marketing tools, including email marketing, social media management, and sales automation. One of HubSpot’s main advantages is undoubtedly its integrated CRM, which is free and seamlessly integrates with the other tools in the suite, making it easier to manage contacts and campaigns. Additionally, HubSpot’s user interface is known for being intuitive, with an abundance of training resources to help users get the most out of the platform. HubSpot Academy also offers an advanced learning center with content and training modules to deepen your marketing skills.

However, it’s important to note that HubSpot can quickly become expensive if you have a large number of contacts, making it primarily suited for larger enterprises. Small and medium-sized businesses might find this option too costly and “heavy” given the vast number of features. Using HubSpot also requires some time for onboarding and/or training to fully utilize its capabilities.

Pricing: The base rate starts at $15 per month for 1,000 contacts. However, when you add additional features such as Marketing Automation or Lead Scoring, the cost can rise to as much as $3,600 per month for 10,000 contacts.

Conclusion: With tools like forms, pop-ups, live chat, chatbots, ad management, and landing pages, HubSpot offers a comprehensive solution for launching and growing your marketing strategy. Nevertheless, given the pricing, the solution might be too complex if you only intend to use the email marketing component.

 

Conclusion on Mailchimp Alternatives

Despite the rise of other communication channels, email marketing remains one of the most relevant strategies in 2024. It is simple and quick to automate with the right tools, while also allowing for personalization and strengthening relationships with your current customers and prospects. As you can see, there are many Mailchimp alternatives, each offering its own features and specific packages.

While the American software has long been the go-to email marketing solution on the market, other tools are now more comprehensive and better suited to your needs, whether you are a startup, a content creator, an SME, or even a large corporation! Beyond cost, many factors need to be considered, such as customer support in French, advanced marketing automation features, or integration with other information systems like your CRM, for example.

You can also read Constant Contact vs ActiveCampaign vs ActiveTrail.