There are hundreds of email marketing software available on the internet and it can be a daunting task to choose the best out of them all. In this article, we are going to look at two of the most popular email marketing tool on the internet ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp, so you can select the best fit for your email marketing needs based on your budget.
Let’s start with a brief look at ActiveCampaign review and MailChimp review to give you the basic understanding. Thereafter, we will make a comparison between ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp (ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp) to compare the most useful features of the two tools.
Let’s get started.
ActiveCampaign review
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform that helps you to leverage marketing automation. With it, you can create efficient automated marketing processes that will increase your business income tremendously.
You can build email newsletters, create winning email campaigns and send them to your audience. It has a sophisticated follow-up feature that helps you to send perfect messages in line with your customer’s behaviour. This will make your audience more responsive to your messages and it will ultimately increase your conversions.
One good thing about ActiveCampaign is that it has integrated sales CRM tool to help you automate lead prioritization, contact management, and other sales processes. It saves time and keeps your processes organized.
This ActiveCampaign review is not complete without adding the pros and cons of ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign review: The Pros
- ActiveCampaign allows you to segment your list in different ways
- It has a powerful automation feature with a visual editor
- ActiveCampaign’s tags help you add snippets of information to your contacts
ActiveCampaign review: The Cons
- It is difficult to learn for non-techies
- It doesn’t use Time zone delivery.
MailChimp review
MailChimp is an email marketing automation platform that helps you to create, send, and track your emails and ad campaigns.
With it, you can create special campaigns and launch them to reach your business goals. It will help you grow your audience, sell more stuff and build your brand effectively. You can generate custom reports and manage your subscribers and unsubscribers. It has custom email templates you can use to create professional emails for your business.
You are on a budget? No problem. MailChimp has a free plan that allows you to send up to 12,000 emails to 2000 subscribers every month.
MailChimp has different integrations and web services that can help you connect your favorite tools to organize your workflow. You can connect your e-commerce store to help you get order information to use in creating email campaigns and send personalized order information to your customers. This will help you generate more revenue for your business and make it grow.
MailChimp review: The Pros
- It has a free option for small businesses that are just starting out.
- Its RSS to email feature helps you to quickly publish your blog post and send to your email subscribers automatically
- It has Send time optimization and Timewarp features to help you deliver your emails to your subscribers in their local time zone.
- It is easy to create segments and groups from a master’s list.
MailChimp review: The Cons
- MailChimp’s automation feature is not advanced
- It is impossible to send a campaign to multiple lists at once
Now, that you have an overview of the ActiveCampaign review and MailChimp review, the next thing is to compare the most important features of the two email marketing tools and see the winning one.
ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp: Comparing important features
1. ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp: Who is the software for?
The first feature that will help you when comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp is who the software is created for. This will help you know if you can use it for your business or not.
ActiveCampaign is designed for small businesses on a budget and larger companies (enterprise plan). This implies that both small and large companies can use the tool.
MailChimp is only suitable for small businesses. It may not meet the need of big companies.
This ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp feature is very important. It will help you to know the suitable email marketing tool for your business. So, if you operate a large enterprise, ActiveCampaign will be the best for you.
The second feature that will help you when comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp is the pricing.
2. ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp: Pricing
The second feature you need to look at when comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp is the pricing. It is very important to use an email marketing tool that your budget can cater for without breaking the bank. Now let’s consider the pricing for the two email marketing tools.
ActiveCampaign has four pricing plans: the Lite, the Plus, the Professional plan, and the Enterprise. This is shown in the table below.
The lite plan has six features and they are:
- Unlimited sending
- Email marketing
- Send Newsletter
- Marketing Automation
- Chat & Email support
- Up to 3 Users
The other plans have features like Custom domain, custom branding, Site messaging, In-depth onboarding, etc.
MailChimp, on the other hand, has pricing plans that start from $0 (Free), the Grow plan ($10)/month and up and the Pro Plan ($199/month) and up. The fees are based on the number of subscribers. The table is shown below:
The free plan gives you access to 12,000 emails per month to 2,000 subscribers, automation and time warp message scheduling. The rest of the plan is also charged based on the number of subscribers and the number of emails you can send per month as seen in the table below.
If you are a small business with few contacts and you send fewer email than 12,000 per month, MailChimp will be the best option as you can start free and upgrade as your business grows.
MailChimp has another plan for growing businesses that may want to transit between the free and the monthly subscription. It is called prepay. According to MailChimp if you’re not a frequent sender, you can purchase credits that work like stamps for email. This means you can buy credits and use it as the need arises.
See the rates below:
Pricing is one of the most important features in comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp. It will help you to choose an affordable email marketing tool for your business.
The third feature that will help you when considering ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp is automation.
3. ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp: Automation
The next feature you will want to consider when comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp is automation. ActiveCampaign has a very robust automation feature that is easy to use. It is a drag-and-drop automation building that helps you to set up your workflows based on triggers in minutes. It has a visual workflow for automation that makes it easier to know what you are doing as you work.
With it, you can automate your follow-up email, move contacts between lists, trim your lists and react to contact behavior and other things.
MailChimp also has an automation feature, but it’s not robust like ActiveCampaign’s. It does not have a visual workflow for automation like ActiveCampaign. However, MailChimp automation is better than what is obtainable with normal auto-responders like Aweber.
MailChimp allows you to set up email campaigns that can be triggered by a date, an event, or contact’s activity.
Automation is an important feature to consider when comparing ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp.
The fourth feature that will help you when comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp is Email delivery.
4. ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp: Email delivery
Email delivery is an important feature to consider when comparing ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp.
ActiveCampaign does not have a Time zone delivery like MailChimp. When you send or schedule your email campaign, it goes directly to your subscribers at the time you select. For instance, if you send an email to your contacts at 8.00am in London, your subscribers in the U.S will get it by 3.00am, which may not be the right time, thus reducing your open rate.
However, MailChimp has two email delivery options – the send time optimization and Timewarp. With send time optimization, you can choose the best time for open rate and clicks. Timewarp allows you to specify the delivery time in each contact’s local time zone. Like in the example above, when you send an email campaign to your contacts at 8.00am in London, other recipients will receive it at 8.00am in their local time zone.
Email delivery timing is an important feature to consider when comparing ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp so you can get the best open rate.
Conclusion
Above are ActiveCampaign review, Mailchimp review, and ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp which compares the features of the two tools. The features discussed above will help you choose the best email marketing tool that fits your business perfectly. If you are using for your business one of these tool check out our ad hoc integration with ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp!
Still struggling to chose the right one for your business? Check out our video on this topic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbgpudbb9cc
