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ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: The Ultimate Guide

Struggling with making the choice between ConvertKit vs Mailchimp? Both tools have a lot of value to offer if you’re trying to grow your online presence and convert more customers.

However, these tools do have some significant differences. For instance, ConvertKit defines itself as an all-in-one marketing solution for content creators. The solution comes with access to a landing page builder, dedicated email automation tools, and a range of other powerful features.

Mailchimp, on the other hand, is one of the world’s most popular email marketing tools for bloggers and store owners alike. However, it also comes with various analytics and insights, audience management features, and integrations.

So, how do you choose between the two?

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: An Introduction

On the surface, ConvertKit and Mailchimp have a lot in common. They both started life as email marketing tools, and both still focus heavily on email automation as a primary feature. Both also allow you to segment your audience, and handle various transactions on the web.

However, there are some major differences.

ConvertKit is a marketing solution built specifically for online creators, like YouTube stars, influencers, and graphic designers. It comes with a dedicated landing page builder, which you can use to build a simple single-page website, sell products online, or simply showcase all of your content. It’s easy to create comprehensive email campaigns with a range of features.

convertkit homepage

ConvertKit also has a wide number of marketing automation tools, a visual builder for organizing customer journeys, and a beautiful email template builder. There are solutions for ecommerce built-in, and a range of other bonus features, like “creator profiles”.

Mailchimp is an email marketing tool with a twist. The core of the solution is an easy-to-use drag and drop email marketing tool with tons of automation options. However, Mailchimp also allows you to build fully-featured websites, and online stores. You can purchase custom domains, set up booking feature with appointment scheduling, and access your own marketing CRM.

mailchimp homepage

Mailchimp also has access to a lot of the same features as ConvertKit, such as signup forms, tags and contact segmentation, and analytics. However, there are a lot more features for creating and sharing content online.

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Pros and Cons

Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit are highly-rated and powerful tools for advertising your business online. However, they have very different focus points. While Mailchimp can allow you to build advanced custom websites, ConvertKit focuses more on landing pages, forms, and automations. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each solution.

ConvertKit Pros:

  • Powerful creator profiles and one-page site building
  • Excellent landing pages and forms
  • Easy-to-use visual designer for automation funnels
  • Beautiful email marketing templates
  • Options for selling digital products in a range of ways
  • Integrations with a selection of great tools
  • Subject line testing

ConvertKit Cons:

  • You can only build one-page websites
  • Some of the ecommerce site integrations are limited
  • Can be quite expensive compared to some alternatives
  • A/B testing is a little limited in places

Mailchimp Pros:

  • Full website builder with domain name purchasing
  • Easy to sell products online or create appointments
  • Import your own email templates or use existing tools
  • Create dynamic content for email subscribers
  • Excellent segmentation with built-in CRM
  • Easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder
  • Multiple integration options
  • Smart insights and analytics

Mailchimp Cons:

  • Prices can get steep quite quickly
  • Limited features on the free plan
  • Not ideal for customer support
  • Limited list creation

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Core Features

As mentioned above, there are a lot of overlaps between the core features of ConvertKit and Mailchimp, as both are designed to help creators thrive online. Both of these tools will help you to improve your online presence, sell products, and connect with your audience.

However, there are areas where one product can outweigh the other in terms of features and functionality. Let’s take a look at some of the main differences to the core features of each product.

Website and Landing Page Builders

Perhaps the biggest difference between Mailchimp and ConvertKit is the options you’ll have for creating your online presence. While both solutions can help you to stand out online, Mailchimp is the only tool with a full website builder. You don’t need a plugin to create your own site.

mailchimp website builder pricing

ConvertKit has a fantastic, dedicated landing page builder, where you can access beautifully-designed templates which you can customize with drag-and-drop elements. There’s access to more than 100,000 stock images to enhance your page, and your designs are guaranteed to look good on every platform. Plus, you don’t need any coding knowledge, but you can dive into CSS if you like.

The freedom of the landing page builder does mean you can technically use the tool to create a one-page website for your company if you like. This page can connect to your automations for marketing, and come with forms implemented for collecting customer data.

If you do design a one-page website with ConvertKit, you can use it to give your customers access to various pieces of content and webinars, or you can design a custom ecommerce solution, with options for accepting payments or taking tips.

Mailchimp, alternatively, has its own website builder which works similarly to the email designer on the platform. You can create and customize a range of themes and templates to suit your needs, and use drag-and-drop elements to bring your creation to life.

The experience is very easy to use, and it comes with access to more than 2 million professional-quality photos and images. You can also transform your website into an ecommerce store, where you can sell and manage orders in a back-end environment.

Mailchimp even has tools for offering appointments online in case you’re a service provider trying to earn bookings. The website builder comes with access to Google Workspace integrations, the ability to add your own domain name, and SEO tools. You can also access SSL certificates, and ensure your website is responsive on all platforms.

If you want to create a landing page with Mailchimp, your options are a little more limited. There are only a handful of templates to choose from, but you can customize them however you like. The options for adding custom form fields for a landing page are a little complex, however.

Built-in forms for your pages and websites are available from both Mailchimp and ConvertKit. You can add forms to ConvertKit as an embedded, pop-up, or slide-in form, and even hide forms from return visitors. Mailchimp gives you similar options for embedding and pop-ups.

Email Marketing And Marketing Automation

Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit are excellent for promotional purposes. They both come with built-in email marketing automation tools which are very easy to use.

Mailchimp makes it quick and simple to design stunning emails with drag-and-drop functionality. There are more than 100 themed templates to choose from, and 14 blank layouts you can apply your designs too. For marketing automation, Mailchimp offers a convenient visual builder where you can design full customer journeys from scratch, or use a pre-built template.

You can set up rules like branching points and delays to help deliver the most relevant messages to your customers at any given time. There’s also the option to implement dynamic content suggestions to chance what customers see based on their segment.

The built in CRM environment also makes it extremely easy to design more personalized experiences for your audience based on their interests and tags.

ConvertKit prides itself on its fantastic email marketing tools. There’s a convenient email designer to help you breeze through the process of creating professional-looking content. Plus, you can add personalization headers, dividers, buttons, clickable CTAs, and even code if you like.

There’s no limit on the number of templates you can create with ConvertKit, and you can even check the deliverability rate of your content at any time. Of course, where ConvertKit really shines is with its automation features.

The visual automation builder is similar to the one you get from Mailchimp, though a little more advanced. You can create powerful automated funnels and customize the messages sent to your audience based on their actions. You’ll also be able to send specific messages at certain times, to improve your chances of higher open rates.

ConvertKit allows you to set up universal automation rules, where you can add and remove contact tags or assign specific users to a sequence when they perform certain actions. Unfortunately, ConvertKit doesn’t offer any of the additional marketing tools you get with Mailchimp, like SEO, and you can’t push emails straight to your customer’s phones like you can with Mailchimp either.

One thing ConvertKit does offer that you don’t get from Mailchimp is a Creator Profile, where you can list all of your social media information and content. You can also create custom RSS feeds to keep customers up-to-date on your blog posts from your integrated site.

Audience Management and Reporting

Audience management features and reports are often important elements in making sure you can grow rapidly online. ConvertKit is a little unusual in this regard, as it doesn’t have specific content “lists”. When you upload contacts, they all go into the same place, but you can assign contacts to separate segments, sequences, and tags, to help with personalization.

Mailchimp is a lot more advanced when it comes to customer management, with a built-in CRM solution and a ton of options for segmentation. You can create custom lists which separate your audience from eachother, which is great if you’re managing emails for different streams of your business. However, you will be charged for contacts duplicated across lists.

From a reporting perspective, Mailchimp wins out again. ConvertKit’s reporting features are relatively basic. You can track open rates, unsubscribes, and link clicks, but that’s about it. You can also integrate your sales reports from other applications, but this will require additional work.

Mailchimp gives users a far more varied selection of reports, including hourly insights, opens by location, click maps, social stats, performance by domain, and even ecommerce sales information. You can even check how your campaigns perform against industry standard benchmarks.

Ecommerce Features

As mentioned above, both Mailchimp and ConvertKit will allow you to sell products online. With Mailchimp, you’ll tackle this process by creating your own website, where you can implement payment processing tools, track sales, and manage your inventory.

The built-in marketing tools make it easy to improve your chances of getting sales, and you can even set up abandoned cart emails in a few clicks. Plus, there’s a free appointment scheduling option to help you generate more customers if you’re a service provider.

ConvertKit allows users to add ecommerce functionality to their landing pages and profiles. You can implement integrations with market-leading services, and add a buy-now button to existing websites. You can also choose from a range of pricing structure options, like one-time purchases, recurring subscriptions, tip jars, and custom donations.

Both tools will also allow you to capture information about your top customers and products, so you can improve your chances of making more sales long-term.

To boost your sales and marketing opportunities, both of these tools also come with a range of integration options to choose from. ConvertKit has around 90 integrations with leading ecommerce stores and payment providers, although they don’t offer a lot of integrations with CRM tools. You can also connect to Zapier to create more app links.

Mailchimp has hundreds of integrations to access, as well as a wider selection of built-in tools for tracking and managing your audience, like an embedded CRM.

Customer Support

Customer service options from Mailchimp and ConvertKit are both relatively decent. When it comes to options for accessing customer support, you can choose between email and chat with both providers, although chat is generally only available during business hours.

Both solutions also offer excellent knowledge bases and tutorials to get you started, though Mailchimp does produce a larger selection of blog posts.

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Pricing

While there’s certainly a lot more to choosing the right marketing tool than simply considering your budget, you probably have a limit on how much you can reasonably spend.

ConvertKit can be a little complex for beginners to understand in regard to pricing. ConvertKit pricing packages start with a free plan which allows you to create unlimited landing pages and forms, sell digital products, and send unlimited emails to up to 1,000 subscribers. However, you won’t get any support from the ConvertKit team, and you’ll still have to deal with branding on all of your landing pages and emails.

The Premium plans from ConvertKit come in the form of a Creator and Creator Pro plan. The Creator plan starts at $9 per month when paid annually, and the Pro plan is $25 per month (paid annually). The more expensive option offers a wider range of features like subscriber scoring and a newsletter referral system. However, as you gain more subscribers, your prices will increase substantially.

convertkit pricing comparison

The initial pricing options only cover up to 1,000 subscribers. After that, your prices will increase with every 500-1000 subscribers you add. For 5,000 subscribers on Mailchimp’s base plan, you’ll pay around $79, while 10,000 will cost you $119.

Mailchimp pricing is quite a bit cheaper. There’s a free package with access to the marketing CRM, creative assistant, website builder, and all the forms and landing pages you could need. However, this is only available for up to 1,500 subscribers.

Paid plans include:

  • Essentials: $11 per month with a custom journey builder, custom branding, A/B testing and more email and landing page templates
  • Standard: $17 per month for send time optimization, behavioral targeting, custom templates, dynamic content and branching points for your journey builder.
  • Premium: $299 per month for advanced segmentation, comparative reporting, multivariate testing, and priority support.

As with ConvertKit, the amount you pay for your email marketing software varies according to the number of subscribers you have. The Essentials package will cost around $59 for 5000 subscribers, and $87 for 10,000 subscribers.

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Final Thoughts

If you’re looking to grow your email list with a powerful email marketing platform, both ConvertKit and MailChimp are great choices. Both solutions make it easy to create opt-in pages for small businesses, as well as landing pages and automation flows.

Mailchimp and ConvertKit are also excellent from an ease-of-use perspective. Mailchimp has a great drag-and-drop editor, while ConvertKit makes everything as visual as possible with your email marketing service. Email support and chat support are also available from both tools, although you’ll be limited in phone support.

However, though these user-friendly platforms have a lot of similarities, they also have some major differences. The essentials plan from Mailchimp is much cheaper for an online business with limited funds. Plus, it allows you to build your own website, so you don’t have to integrate with Shopify or WordPress. Mailchimp also allows you to create multiple lists for your audience, so you can create custom email sequences for each group.

ConvertKit is less suited to an ecommerce business owner in search of a full website builder, as you can only create single page sites and landing pages. However, you still get an excellent email editor, and some fantastic workflow tools with advanced automation.

Ultimately, ConvertKit is likely to be best for creators in search of simple list management, automation, and support. Mailchimp is better suited to those in search of a range of site-building and email marketing tools.

 

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Catalin is a blogger and a big fan of ecommerce. He also loves mindfulness and matcha tea!

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