The Instagram & Facebook outage a few weeks ago proved why email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to connect with customers, build relationships and sell your services.
In order to share your message with existing customers or new prospects, you need an email marketing tool that will help you effectively manage your lists, segment your audience based on interest & behaviour and track the stats.
But, with a dozen tools out there, picking the right email marketing platform is not an easy decision.
In this blog post, I’ll explain the advantages & disadvantages of two different email marketing platforms that are most common and that I have both used personally – MailChimp and ConvertKit.
If you’re looking to set up your email marketing platform or you think about switching to a different provider, then I hope this helps you to make your decision.
Personally, I started with MailChimp but I’m a big ConvertKit fan and recommend it to most of my clients. Here’s why.
MAILCHIMP VS CONVERTKIT
MailChimp is arguably one of the most popular entry level marketing platforms. Their customizable & fully-responsive templates allow you to build beautiful email templates in no time and the platform integrates with all major applications.
And the best of all: It’s free to get started.
However, the navigation can be rather difficult and confusing when you are used to the clean and intuitive interface of ConvertKit.
MailChimp became really popular as there are not many email marketing platforms out there offering a free plan. MailChimp is free up until the first 2,000 subscribers. But here’s the catch: MailChimp double or even triple counts email addresses.
I’ll give you an example of how this works.
On my website you’ll find two different signup forms. One Newsletter signup form and one opt-in form to download my free toolbox. If a subscriber, let’s call her Ella, subscribes to my newsletter and then decides that she also wants access to my freebie, she counts as two subscribers because she is on two different lists (the newsletter and the freebie).
This means that once I hit 2,000 subscribers, I will pay for Ella twice (or even more, depending on how often Ella opts in to one of my forms).
MailChimp obviously is interested in you reaching 2,000 subscribers so they can start charging you for their services and once they do, your cost will be much higher than with ConvertKit or other platforms.
With ConvertKit, you pay per subscriber.
1 email address counts as 1 subscriber.
Instead of having different lists, ConvertKit has one master list everyone will be subscribed to and then tagged or segmented based on any information you collected on them (i.e. the freebie they downloaded, the link they clicked, etc.)
Another advantage of ConvertKit is that I find it way easier to segment your subscribers based on interest, creating landing pages and set up automations.
So to summarize, here’s my suggestion.
If you are just getting started, you want to keep your business expenses low, you don’t intend to have a huge list in the future (because you’re offering 1:1 services instead of 1: many) or you don’t have multiple lists (because you have only one opt-in form on your website) MailChimp is your friend. It is free until you hit 2,000 subscribers and their customizable templates are easy to use.
Once you hit 2,000 subscribers, you still have the chance to move over to ConvertKit.
If your budget allows paying for an email marketing platform from the start, you have multiple opt-ins, or you intend to grow your subscribers base very quickly, I’d highly recommend ConvertKit.
The downside to starting with MailChimp and then switching to ConvertKit once your number of subscribers exceeds 2,000 is that you have to move your email list with all the opt-ins, email sequences, tags and automations which can be frustrating and time-consuming.
My Tip: I’d consider calculating how likely it is that you will outgrow MailChimp’s free plan rather sooner than later.
I hope this comparison was useful in making your decision. If you have any questions, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you.
P.S. Need help in setting it all up or moving your subscribers? Book a free call to see how I can help you in doing so, saving you tons of hours and frustration 😉
*This post includes affiliate links. When you click on these links and try out the tools, I’ll receive a small commission, so thank you!
