MailChimp is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that helps businesses connect with their target audiences. With MailChimp, you can create and manage email lists, create custom email templates, and automate a marketing campaign. It is an ideal way to reach audiences, drive engagement, and connect with current and potential customers and is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools available.
As a web-based Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, MailChimp operates like a website on any web browser without the need to download software onto devices. You have access to your mail marketing platform whenever and wherever you are. MailChimp
MailChimp Features
Even with the explosion of social media, email marketing is still an effective and efficient way for business to reach their audiences, promote their brand and services, and acquire new customers. Email marketing is more than just spam emails and bulk advertisements.
Email Designer
MailChimp has a large variety of email templates that you can customize with your branding and message. It is easy to drag and drop photos and content where you want them to be and edit and resize photos, so your email looks the way you want. You can also test the email out before sending it to see how it looks on different platforms like different emails service, how it looks on a desktop and how it looks on a mobile device.
Custom Forms
Sign-up forms are the number one way of collecting email lists. With MailChimp, you can create and customize sign-up forms with your own logo and social media handles.
Automation
With default marketing automation settings, you can automate tasks easily with MailChimp. You can create an onboarding series to welcome new subscribers and a campaign designed to re-engage customers. If users connect with an eCommerce store, MailChimp has emails that can be automatically sent with information regarding cart recovery, follow-ups on purchases, and personalized product recommendations.
Customer Journeys
With MailChimp, you can create a unique customer journey that helps you chart out a path for your customer. The customer journey can have up to twenty starting points. Users can create rules and actions that correspond with the customer’s interaction with that journey. Also available is the ability to tag and measure customer interests and engagement to more easily send out targeted emails.
Targeted Emails
You can set targeting parameters based on geographical location or user history like click/open use with MailChimp. With this feature, you can send targeted emails to your subscriber list that they are more likely to interact and engage with.
Reports and Analytics
The user dashboard has a variety of easy-to-understand visual reports. With these reports, you can see which of your emails are being opened, have click-throughs, and reply rates. These reports are available on both desktop and mobile devices and can easily be shared with your team. MailChimp also has Google Analytic integrations so that you see how email campaigns affect website traffic.
Other Marketing Channels
MailChimp not only provides an email marketing platform but it also offers a variety of online marketing tools. They have made it easy to create targeted ads and integrate with Google, Facebook, and Instagram. With MailChimp, you can schedule and publish your marketing posts across social media platforms.
MailChimp makes it easy to broaden your audience reach with landing pages, a website builder, and a store builder. It is easy to curate the look and feel you want on your website, landing page, or store with MailChimp’s pre-designed themes and color palettes. MailChimp offers this for free and only charges when a sale is made.
MailChimp also can print, stamp, and send postcards that feature your customizations. This extra marketing service cost is $0.75 – $0.99 per postcard went within the United States.
MailChimp Pricing & Plans
#1 Free Plan – $0
MailChimp has a generous free plan to help get your email marketing plan started. The free plan offers features like single-step email automation, CRM, reporting and eCommerce features, a landing page builder, and scheduling apps. MailChimp provides some email templates but only allows for one audience or list with a limit to 2,000 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. Should you exceed the limit, you can upgrade to the next pricing tier or buy email credits with pay-as-you-go. There is no personal customer support offered with the free plan.
#2 Essentials Plans – $9.99 per month
With the Essentials Plan there is a lot more available over the free plan. The MailChimp Essential Plan removes all Mailchimp branding from emails and provides access to all their email templates with A/B testing. Also offered is their email previews that show how your email looks with different email services with 25 previews a month. You can also schedule emails to be delivered by Time Zone so that your emails arrive at the ideal time you set for your audience and marketing plan.
The Essentials Plan has a maximum of 50,000 contacts, 3 audience/lists, and a 500,000 emails per month limit. As with the Free plan, you either need to upgrade or buy credits should you exceed contacts or emails.
#3 Standard Plan – $14.99 per month
The Standard Plan offers more advanced options not provided in the Free or Essentials Plan. With more advanced CRM (Customer Relationship Management) features like demographic predictions and customer lifetime value, you can more accurately reach your audience. Users can import HTML email templates. Also provided are automated workflows like multi-email campaigns and an onboarding series. The Standard Plan also has retargeting ads for Instagram, Google, and Facebook.
The Standard Plan offers up to 100,000 contacts, 5 audiences, and 1.2 million emails per month. There is a maximum of five users on the plan.
#4 Premium Plan – $299 per month
The Premium Plan offers all of the best features and tools that MailChimp has to offer. MailChimp has advanced segmentation of their Premium Plan users, allowing you to create complex segmentation based on email activity, demographics, and purchase history. There are also comparative reports available that provide statistic reports on a variety of metrics. Multivariate testing, which is a step over A/B testing, is available with the Premium Plan, which allows you to test subject lines as well as body messages. Customer support for the Premium customer includes phone support in addition to email and chat services.
The Premium plan is based on 10,000 contacts
| Free | Essential | Standard | Premium | |
| Price | Free | $9.99/month | $14.99/month | $299/month |
| Number of Lists | 1 | 3 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Monthly email | 10,000 | 500,000 | 1.2 million | 3 million |
| Users | 1 | 3 | 5 | Unlimited |
Hidden and Extra Costs
MailChimp’s pricing plans are based on the number of contacts and emails sent and have a monthly limit.
Pay As You Go Plan offers users the ability to pay for credits. The credit block pricing starts at $150 for 500 credits, and credits are good for 12 months and cannot be used with any of MailChimp’s pricing plans and are non-refundable. Every email sent is worth one credit, so 100 emails sent costs 100 credits.
The monthly subscription plans are based on the number of contacts that are added to an account. The base price reflects up. MailChimp charges extra for any overages. Overages are billed directly to your account. Bills not paid on time can cause a pause or stop of email campaigns and accounts.
MailChimp Competitors
MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms out there. It is appealing to small businesses and entrepreneurs, though it does not scale cost-effectively for larger companies or organizations that need to send out a large amount of emails. Many email services provides competitive features, tools, and pricing to MailChimp.
| MailChimp | Moosend | Sendinblue | GetResponse | |
| Price | $20/month | $10/month | $25/month | $15/month |
| Free Plan | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Support | Email and chat | Email, chat, phone | Email and chat | |
| Best Features | Email testing | Automation Options | Send time optimization | Email designs across devices |
| Cons | Pricing | Lack of integrations | Poor Customer support | No phone support |
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens if I upgrade or downgrade plans?
If you choose to upgrade a plan in the middle of the billing cycle, all the perks of the higher-priced plans are available immediately. You are given access to the new features and higher limits right away. If you choose to downgrade your plan, your access will reflect what you already paid for that month. The decreased counts and features will reflect in the next billing cycle.
Do I get charged for unsubscribed or duplicate subscribers?
MailChimp charges by all the contacts that are in your contacts. As MailChimp’s goal is to encourage users to get contacts reactivated, they continue to change all listed email addresses. The only contacts they do not charge for are cleaned, pending, reconfirmed, deleted, and archived contacts.
When someone unsubscribes from a mailing list it is critical for your pricing and count limits to archive them, or you will be charged for having that email listed in your audience list.
What emails lists can I use with MailChimp?
MailChimp’s terms of services are very clear that the only email you can add to your lists are emails that you have collected yourself. Third-party lists, harvesting lists, or bought lists violate MailChimp’s terms of service.
If you rightfully collected and obtained an email from a willing customer, you are able to use those emails in your marketing campaigns.
How do I import customers and data to MailChimp?
There are many ways to import and integrate your information into MailChimp. You can manually enter data or upload CSV files and spreadsheets. MailChimp has a large variety of built-in integrations that share data from over 250 third-party integrations. They also have an open API for businesses to create custom integrations. With sign-up forms, it is easy to capture emails and customer data easily integrated with your MailChimp platform.
Do MailChimp emails go to the Spam folder?
MailChimp is required by law to enforce spam laws. If you sending out commercial emails which contain sales and promotional content, it is crucial to be familiar with the requirements of CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
It is vital that your email marketing is effective and reaches your intended audience. Understanding how spam works and ensuring that your emails follow the critical points of the law like not using deceptive headers, from names, reply-to addresses, or subject lines. You must always provide an unsubscribe link that is good for at least 30 days after being sent. And your emails must include your physical email address.
As spam negatively affects your deliverability rates, being aware, informed, and compliant with the spam filter function will make your content stays out of spam filters and reaches your audience.