ConvertKit vs MailChimp

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: 1-minute summary

Now:

Whether you should go for MailChimp, ConvertKit or another email marketing service depends on your needs.

Example 1: let’s say you have a global audience and find it extremely important to deliver your newsletters sharp at 9 am. In that case, MailChimp has this feature called Deliver by Time Zone that ConvertKit doesn’t offer.

Example 2: let’s say you have a hair salon and want to create an online presence. MailChimp has many functionalities to help you, e.g., creating a website, sending postcards, appointment scheduling, etcetera.

Example 3: if you love simplicity and ease of use and aren’t looking for features like website creation, sending postcards, or using surveys (see full list below), ConvertKit might be a better choice. ConvertKit is one of the most user-friendly email tools and can greatly help you grow your email list and send personalized emails to increase conversions.

In other words:

If you have a list of requirements I suggest you go through the list of functionalities in this MailChimp vs ConvertKit comparison to see what tool performs best on the parts you find most important.

Click here to sign up for ConvertKit.

Click here to sign up for MailChimp.

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ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Pricing

The conclusions below are based on MailChimp’s Marketing Platform pricing and ConvertKit’s pricing for up to 20,000 subscribers.

• ConvertKit’s Creator plan and MailChimp’s Essentials are pretty much alike in regards to their pricing
• Comparing ConvertKit’s Creator plan with MailChimp’s Standard plan, you’ll notice that MailChimp’s price is most often multiple hundreds of dollars more expensive annually
• Comparing ConvertKit’s Creator Pro plan with MailChimp’s Standard plan, you’ll notice that the prices are much alike. At some plans, you’ll find that ConvertKit is more expensive, and sometimes it is the other way around

The table below shows the annual prices of ConvertKit and Mailchimp + the other most popular email marketing companies, including discounts for purchasing annually. By scrolling to the right, you can find higher contact numbers up to 20,000. Click here for a full-width version if you’re on a laptop or PC.

	500	1,000	1,500	2,000	2500	3,000	4,000	5,000	6,000	7,000	8,000	10,000	15,000	20,000	20,000	50,000	100,000	200,000	300,000	500,000	700,000	900,000	1,200,000	1,500,000	2,000,000	2,500,000	3,000,000	4,000,000	5,000,000
MailerLite Growing Business	$10	$15	$25	$25	$25	$39	$39	$39	$59	$59	$59	$73	$109	$139	$139	$289
MailerLite Advanced	$20	$30	$40	$40	$40	$50	$50	$50	$80	$80	$80	$110	$150	$180	$180	$340	$440	$820	$1,200	$1,900
ConvertKit Creator	$29	$29	$49	$49	$49	$49	$79	$79	$99	$99	$99	$119	$149	$179	$179	$379	$679	$1,279	$1,879
ConvertKit Creator Pro	$59	$59	$79	$79	$79	$79	$111	$111	$139	$139	$139	$167	$209	$251	$251	$519	$879	$1,579	$2,179
Zoho Standard	$4	$7	$17	$17	$17	$18	$24	$31	$35	$38	$41	$49	$61	$74	$74	$138	$242
Zoho Professional	$6	$12	$29	$29	$29	$30	$40	$52	$58	$63	$69	$81	$101	$123	$123	$230	$403	$748	$1,035	$1,380
Sender Standard	$19	$19	$19	$19	$19	$33	$33	$33	$57	$57	$57	$57	$87	$107	$107	$227	$367	$697
Sender Professional	$35	$35	$35	$35	$35	$60	$60	$60	$120	$120	$120	$120	$200	$250	$250	$460	$860	$1,660
Constant Contact Lite	$12	$30	$50	$50	$50	$80	$80	$80	$120	$120	$120	$120	$180	$230	$230	$430
Constant Contact Standard	$35	$55	$75	$75	$75	$110	$110	$110	$160	$160	$160	$160	$210	$260	$260	$460
Constant Contact Premium	$80	$110	$150	$150	$150	$200	$200	$200	$275	$275	$275	$275	$325	$375	$375	$575
ActiveCampaign Marketing Lite	$39	$39	$61	$61	$61	$99	$99	$99	$174	$174	$174	$174	$286	$286	$286	$486
ActiveCampaign Marketing Plus	$70	$70	$125	$125	$125	$186	$186	$186	$287	$287	$287	$287	$474	$474	$474	$699
ActiveCampaign Marketing Professional	$187	$187	$187	$187	$187	$262	$262	$262	$424	$424	$424	$424	$686	$686	$686	$1,011
ActiveCampaign Bundles Plus	$116	$116	$171	$171	$171	$232	$232	$232	$333	$333	$333	$333	$520	$520	$520	$745
ActiveCampaign Bundles Professional	$482	$482	$482	$482	$482	$557	$557	$557	$719	$719	$719	$719	$981	$981	$981	$1,306
GetResponse Email Marketing	$19	$19	$29	$29	$29	$54	$54	$54	$79	$79	$79	$79	$174	$174	$174	$299	$539
GetResponse Marketing Automation	$59	$59	$69	$69	$69	$95	$95	$95	$114	$114	$114	$114	$215	$215	$215	$359	$599
GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing	$119	$119	$139	$139	$139	$169	$169	$169	$199	$199	$199	$199	$299	$299	$299	$444	$699
Mailchimp Essentials	$27	$45	$45	$75	$75	$110	$110	$110	$180	$180	$180	$180	$230	$270	$270
Mailchimp Standard	$20	$45	$45	$60	$60	$100	$100	$100	$135	$135	$135	$135	$230	$285	$285	$450	$800
Mailchimp Premium	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$465	$535	$535	$815	$1,025	$1,600
AWeber Lite	$15	$25	$25	$25	$25	$45	$45	$45	$65	$65	$65	$65	$145	$145	$145	$388	$788
AWeber Plus	$30	$40	$40	$40	$40	$60	$60	$60	$80	$80	$80	$80	$160	$160	$160	$403	$803
AWeber Unlimited	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899
Klaviyo Email	$20	$30	$45	$60	$60	$70	$100	$100	$130	$150	$150	$150	$350	$375	$375	$720	$1,380	$2,070
Klaviyo Email & SMS	$35	$45	$60	$75	$75	$85	$115	$115	$145	$165	$165	$165	$365	$390	$390	$735	$1,395	$2,085
Beehiiv Launch	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0
Beehiiv Grow	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49
Beehiiv Scale	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Starter	$20	$20	$40	$40	$60	$60	$78	$96	$112	$128	$144	$176	$256	$336	$336	$816	$1,616
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Professional	$890	$890	$890	$890	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,390	$1,390	$1,640	$1,890	$1,890	$3,190
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Enterprise	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,700	$3,700	$3,700	$4,000	$4,450	$5,250	$5,950	$7,350	$8,550	$9,750
Moosend Pro	$9	$16	$24	$24	$32	$32	$48	$48	$64	$64	$64	$88	$160	$160	$160	$315	$624	$1,216	$1,808	$2,896	$4,080	$5,840

ConvertKit different plans

1. Free (forever free)
2. Creator (starting from $15/mo)
3. Creator Pro (starting from $29/mo)

MailChimp Marketing Platform’s different plans

1. Free plan (forever free)
2. Essentials (starting from $13/mo – no trial available) 
3. Standard (starting from $20/mo – no trial available) 
4. Premium (starting from $350/mo – no trial available) 

Note that MailChimp also has Website & Commerce and Transactional Email pricing plans. You need to subscribe to its Website & Commerce plans if you want to connect a custom domain for your landing pages, MailChimp website, or store.

Discounts

• ConvertKit offers two months (+- 17%) for free when paying yearly
• MailChimp offers a 15% discount to nonprofits and charities. You can contact their billing team once you sign up for a free plan. Furthermore, they offer a 10% discount for one month if you enable two-factor authentication.

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Free plan

Both tools provide a forever-free plan. The tool that provides the most valuable free plan depends on your needs. If you value having a custom domain over having a higher maximum subscriber number ConvertKit is the better option. But if you plan to create a simple website, MailChimp will be the better option.

Features	ConvertKit	MailChimp
Forever free plan	✔️	✔️
Maximum monthly emails	Unlimited	2,500
Maximum daily emails	Unlimited	500
Email automation	❌	❌
Maximum subscribers	1,000	500
Can add custom domain	✔️	❌
Remove branding	❌	❌
Deliver free ebook	✔️	✔️
Drag & drop builder	❌	✔️
Maximum forms/pop-ups	Unlimited	3
Maximum landing pages	Unlimited	Unlimited
Maximum traffic	Unlimited	Unlimited
Linktr.ee template	✔️	❌
Multiple users	❌	❌
Email design templates	9 templates	5 templates
HTML newsletter	✔️	❌
Email A/B testing	✔️	❌
Resend campaigns	✔️	❌
Timezone sending	❌	❌
Email support	❌	First 30 days
Live chat support	❌	❌
Email scheduling	✔️	❌
Create a website	❌	✔️
Sell product online	✔️	✔️
Appointment scheduling	❌	✔️

Winner: ConvertKit

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Email Marketing Functionalities

Maximum subscribers / Maximum contact count

ConvertKit

• Maximum 1,000 subscribers on the free plan
• There are no maximum subscriber limits on the Creator or Creator Pro plan

MailChimp

• Maximum 500 contacts on the free plan
• Can have up to 50,000 contacts on Essentials
• Can have up to 100,000 contacts on Standard
• No maximum contacts on Premium

Warning: it is annoying that MailChimp has a limit to how many contacts you can have on its different tiers. MailChimp doesn’t automatically upgrade you to its next tier when you reach the contact limit. Instead, you’ll see additional charges on your monthly MailChimp bill.

Winner: ConvertKit

Maximum Monthly Email Sends

ConvertKit

• ConvertKit offers unlimited email sending on every plan, including its free plan

MailChimp

• Sending limit on the free plan is 2,500 monthly emails and 500 daily
• Essentials has a 10X plan’s contact limit, i.e., if you have 1,000 contacts, you can send 10,000 emails monthly
• Standard has a 12X plan’s contact limit
• Premium has a 15X plan’s contact limit

Warning: Although MailChimp has a maximum monthly email sending limit, it doesn’t stop you from sending more emails when you reach that number. Instead, you’ll see additional charges on your monthly MailChimp bill.

Winner: ConvertKit

Email Templates

Both MailChimp and ConvertKit have prebuilt email templates, landing page templates, and signup form templates.

MailChimp has around 50 to 60 email templates. Besides its templates, you can also choose to start with a blank canvas and design your own by using its easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder. If you want to have a peek at MailChimp’s new builder, that’s still in beta, check out this YouTube video.

ConvertKit’s email builder works very similar to using Google Docs; straightforward and fast pace. ConvertKit offers nine prebuilt templates, but I believe most ConvertKit users are using a text-only email.

Winner: MailChimp

Tags / Subscriber tagging

Both ConvertKit and MailChimp allow you to add tags to your contacts manually or automatically. You can then use these tags to trigger automations and segment your audience. Warning: some people feel they need to tag every single thing that happens. If you use too many tags, it becomes counterproductive. Great use of a tag is when you import new contacts to your list, and you want to tag those email addresses, so you know where they came from, e.g., a trade show, a different email tool, etcetera.

One tactic where ConvertKit differentiates itself from MailChimp is that you can automatically add a tag to the contact if they click a specific link in your email. You cannot do this with MailChimp. 

Winner: ConvertKit

Segmentation / Subscriber segmentation

ConvertKit and MailChimp both allow us to create segments of our subscribers. Both segmentation features look very similar. They allow us to create and save a filter of our current email list. Once you have created a new segment of your contacts, you can use that segment for new emails or advertisements. MailChimp does have an extra feature called Advanced Segmentation which is only available in its Premium plan. Although it’s called ‘advanced,’ I don’t feel it’s an extraordinary feature. For example, on its website, they give an example of an advanced segment case: You want to market to everyone who lives in Atlanta, has opened a campaign in the last 30 days, has a specific tag you applied, has purchased something from your store, and is of a certain age. An advanced segment makes it possible to find those people.

Winner: It’s a draw

Audiences / Email lists

MailChimp offers you to create multiple audiences, i.e., email lists. ConvertKit doesn’t allow you to create multiple email lists inside one account. A workaround with ConvertKit is to use custom fields or tags if you want to speak to an entirely different audience.

Winner: It’s a draw

Surveys / Automation Rules

MailChimp offers us to create surveys to get to know our audience better, e.g., you can ask them their gender, age, address, or any other (open or closed) question. MailChimp then stores that information so you can segment based on these criteria. You can also create a radio button question where you ask your audience, e.g., if they want to hear from you monthly or weekly. MailChimp has an auto-tagging feature where you tag the people that enter weekly or monthly.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a survey feature, but it does offer a similar feature where you can add a tag to the ones that click a link in an email. In some cases, this is even better because you skip 1 step: clicking the survey button or link to fill in the survey. Now you can send an email and ask your audience a simple question, e.g., would you like to hear from us monthly or weekly?

• Click here if you want to hear from us monthly
• Click here if you want to hear from us weekly

Your subscribers can click ‘click here,’ and immediately they are tagged with the weekly or monthly tag instead of first needing to click on the survey link.

One other thing is that ConvertKit also allows you to set a custom field when someone clicks a link instead of adding a tag. While many email marketers nowadays work with tags, it isn’t necessarily the best way. Because what if someone wants to reenter their survey results, and instead of choosing monthly, as they did before, they now select weekly? It means they are now tagged with both the monthly and weekly tags. With custom fields, there can only be one selected option. MailChimp doesn’t allow you to change or add new custom fields. It only allows you to work with tags.

Winner: It’s a draw

Content Studio

MailChimp’s content studio is where you can find all the images you uploaded to either email campaigns, landing pages, forms, product images, etcetera. You can also connect your social media to import images from there as well. It also lets you create beautiful designs for your newsletters with its tool, Creative Assistant. In this YouTube video, you can see an example of how I use the Creative Assistant tool when designing newsletters.

When you create a newsletter, form, or landing page with ConvertKit, it also stores your media uploads on its server. Uploading an image once allows you to use that same image later in other campaigns. ConvertKit isn’t heavily focused on newsletter designs, so don’t expect something similar like the MailChimp Creative Assistant tool.

Winner: MailChimp

Custom-coded email templates

Both tools have the option to create a custom coded email template.

Winner: It’s a draw

Email Scheduling

MailChimp and ConvertKit both have the option to schedule email campaigns. The two differences is that MailChimp also allow you to send your email in batches if you have a large audience and don’t want to potentially break the website you’re sending traffic to. The second difference is that MailChimp has a tool called Send Time Optimization which calculates the best send time for most engagement.

Winner: MailChimp

Subject line helper

MailChimp’s Subject Line Helper gives you feedback while typing your subject line. It sounds fancier than it is because it only checks four things: whether the subject line is no more than 9 words, has no more than 1 emoji, no more than 60 characters long, and no more than 3 punctuation marks. If I enter random letters it says my subject line is fine.

ConvertKit doesn’t give feedback on your subject line.

Winner: MailChimp

Recent subject line performance

MailChimp’s Recent subject line performance feature shows you the open-rate of your latest five campaigns. I do like this little feature but why not show a list of all campaigns? Only showing my latest five is a bit of a random number. I will be more useful if I can easily sort all my campaigns based on highest open rate and highest number of people opening the email.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a feature similar to this.

Winner: MailChimp

Postcards and address finder

MailChimp offers us to design and send a postcard to our contacts. If you don’t have your contact’s addresses you might still be able to send them a postcard by using MailChimp’s address finder feature. MailChimp isn’t fully transparent as to how this feature works but on its website, it says: Mailchimp’s mailing address finder matches address locations from our network of over 200 million to your contact list. 

It does make me wonder what they mean by our network …

Anyhow, ConvertKit doesn’t have a postcard or address finder feature.

Winner: MailChimp

Send Time Optimization

When scheduling your MailChimp newsletter you can choose a specific time yourself or use MailChimp’s Send Time Optimization feature. MailChimp determines what the best time is to send your email campaign that results in the most engagement. Although it’s a cool feature I can’t say whether it works or not.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a feature like this.

Winner: MailChimp

Delivery by Time Zone

Delivery by Time Zone or also called Timewarp inside MailChimp is available for users with a Standard plan or higher. An example where this tool might come in handy is when your audience lives in different timezones and you want to send your newsletter at 6am in the morning.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a feature like this so if you schedule a ConvertKit email it uses your selected timezone. If, for example, I want to schedule a ConvertKit email at 9am people in the US will receive that same email in the night since I’m from The Netherlands and I selected my timezone in ConvertKit. Obviously, I can change the timezone settings inside ConvertKit but that doesn’t solves the issue when I have a global audience and want to send my email in the morning.

Winner: MailChimp

Personalized Product Recommendations

MailChimp’s email editor allows you to add a Product Recommendation block to your email. This block showcases your best sellers or new arrivals. The bottom line is that I’m not a fan of this feature since it shows the best selling products or new arrivals to anyone. There’s no personalization, i.e., my best selling products probably aren’t relevant for all contacts.

ConvertKit’s doesn’t have a feature similar to this.

Winner: No winner

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Email marketing automation

Pricing in regards to their automation features

Understand that an automated workflow is the same as an automation sequence, or a customer journey as MailChimp calls it.

MailChimp

• Free plan users cannot use Customer Journey Builder (What is this?)
• Free & Essentials plan don’t have access to multi-step in the classic automations builder
• Essentials plan users can only create a maximum of 4 journey points (What is this?)
• Want to access all its automation features you need the Standard plan

ConvertKit

• Free plan users don’t have access to email automation
• First paid tier gives you access to all its email automation features

The bottom line is that MailChimp’s standard plan is multiple hundred of dollars more expensive than the ConvertKit Creator plan.

Winner: ConvertKit

Adding emails to an automated workflow

Obviously, both tools allow you to create an automated workflow with unlimited emails. The difference is that ConvertKit’s tool is more user-friendly. Why is that? Well:

• With MailChimp it’ll cost more mouseclicks to accomplish the same thing
• ConvertKit reduces options, i.e., making the process faster and easier to understand
• ConvertKit’s email editor is easier to use

Winner: ConvertKit

Jump to here when X happens

ConvertKit allows you to jump to a specific part in your workflow when something happens such as the contact purchases a product, a tag is added/removed, a custom field changes, etcetera. This is a neat feature because it allows you to, e.g., stop sending promotional emails if the subscriber already purchased the product. MailChimp doesn’t offer such a feature. However, there’s a workaround with Mailchimp but it means you need to create a separate workflow. In other words, ConvertKit is more user-friendly in this case.

Winner: ConvertKit

Swap emails in an automated workflow

When you create your workflow and you’re almost ready to publish you change your mind and want to swap emails 4 and 5. MailChimp doesn’t allow you to swap emails in a workflow while ConvertKit does. There’s a workaround with MailChimp and for that, you need to add a new email and choose the same email design. The thing is, it is just more user-friendly with ConvertKit.

Winner: ConvertKit

Multiple Starting Points / Multiple automation triggers

A trigger is how the automation starts. For example, you can trigger an automation when a subscriber is added to a tag, when a subscriber enters a form, when a subscriber purchases one of your products, etcetera. Both tools offer dozens, if not hundreds of ways to automatically start an automation. ConvertKit offers multiple triggers in its first paid plan, Creator. However, to use multiple starting points with MailChimp you need its second paid plan, Standard. 

Winner: ConvertKit

Email automation conditions / If/Else settings

Both tools offer you to add a condition, i.e. an if/then statement, in an automated workflow. With MailChimp there are more if/else options than with ConvertKit. MailChimp also allow you to create an if/else statement based on ecommerce stuff, e.g., amount spent on a single order, total number of orders, etcetera.

Winner: MailChimp

Add a journey point / Choose an action

Inside your automated workflows, you can choose what you want to happen next. For example, you can add a wait period, send an email, unsubscribe the contact, update a custom field, etcetera. Both tools offer pretty much the same functionality.

The big difference between the actions or journey points you can choose is that MailChimp allows you to split your audience in a 50/50 split. It means that you can split test your automated workflow to see what emails perform best. This is a great feature that I would definitely use. It isn’t available with ConvertKit, though.

Winner: MailChimp

Prebuilt automation templates / journey templates

MailChimp has 25 automation journey templates to copy and use, without email copy. Most automation templates are focused on ecommerce

ConvertKit has 28 automation templates to copy and use, including email copy. Having email copy included helps you big time because it gives you inspiration. One other cool thing that’s possible with ConvertKit and that is that you have the option to share your automation templates with others.

Winner: ConvertKit

Dynamic content

MailChimp offers dynamic content for users with a Standard plan or higher. Let’s say for example you want to show a discount code to only a specific part of your audience. With dynamic content you can send a newsletter to your entire list and only show a specific text block or image and to a specific part of your audience. MailChimp’s dynamic content feature works straightforward and is easy to use.

With ConvertKit you can also send dynamic emails since it allows you to use Liquid while writing your emails. Liquid is an open-source template language that is created by Shopify. In in a nutshell, it is more similar to coding your newsletter instead of just writing it. As you can imagine, it is far more difficult to do so and takes you more time.

On the upside, though, you can do many more (dynamic) things than MailChimp can.

For example, if you have an email list where you collect email addresses and first names you probably want to use a merge tag, e.g., *|FNAME|*, in the header of the email, right? That way you address everyone in your list by their first name when sending an email. The issue is, when someone writes their first name in all CAPS when subscribing to your email list your email also shows their first name in CAPS when you send it, e.g., Hello ROBBIN. As you see this looks a bit weird.

Liquid can solve this problem by using this Liquid code when creating your email:

Hello {{ subscriber.first_name

| downcase

| capitalize }}

The above Liquid code will first downcase the subscriber first name from ROBBIN to robbin and then capitalize it to Robbin. And this is just one of the hundreds if not thousands of things you can do with Liquid.

Another useful thing would be:

{% if subscriber.tags

contains “Customer” %}

Show this text

{% endif %}

The above Liquid code will output the words: Show this text to only the subscribers that contain the tag Customer.

The drawback is that using Liquid has a steep learning curve and there isn’t that much ConvertKit documentation or tutorials for using Liquid available. In other words, if you’re not already familiar with using Liquid it will take you lots of time to understand and use it to its fullest extend.

Winner: It’s a draw

A/B testing

With MailChimp you can test one of four variables: subject line, from name, content, and send time. You can create up to three different variations, i.e., you can test three different from names with one email campaign. The next step is to select how you want to determine a winning combination, e.g., by click rate, open rate, total revenue. The third step is to select after how many hours or days you want to determine a winner. It’s a very user friendly A/B test feature.

ConvertKit’s A/B test feature is way less fancy. You can only test the subject line and can enter a maximum of 2 different subject lines. Furthermore, it will automatically select a winning subject line based on open rate. There’s no option to determine a winning subject line based on other criteria, i.e., total revenue or click rate.

There’s no option to A/B test landing pages and signup forms in both tools.

Winner: MailChimp

Multivariate Testing

Multivariate Testing is a feature that’s included in the most expensive MailChimp plan, Premium. In a nutshell, it uses the same functionalities as the A/B testing feature above but you can test multiple variables at the same time, i.e., when you use the basic A/B testing you can choose to test on From Name, Content, or Send time. You can’t choose multiple. If you want to test multiple variables at once you have to use Multivariate Testing. A very cool feature!

ConvertKit doesn’t have anything similar to this.

Winner: ConvertKit

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Landing pages, Opt-in Forms

Landing page templates

MailChimp has 9 prebuilt landing page templates whereas ConvertKit has 53 landing page templates. The big difference between the two tools is that ConvertKit’s landing page tool is 100% focused on email marketing, i.e., every landing page template has an email opt-in form, easy way to add a thank you page, etcetera. MailChimp on the other hand isn’t. Some landing page templates don’t even have an opt-in form.

Winner: ConvertKit 

Opt-in form templates

Both tools allow you to create pop-ups and embedded forms. ConvertKit has around 8 pop-up templates whereas MailChimp only has 1. What is more, MailChimp’s embedded form has a very basic look and the only way to change it is to use CSS coding. ConvertKit on the other hand let you easily choose 1 of its 8 embedded form designs.

Winner: ConvertKit

Pop-up forms & embedded forms

Creating an opt-in form or embedded form with ConvertKit is way more user-friendly than with MailChimp. Especially the process of creating an embedded MailChimp form is cumbersome.

What is even worse, you can only create a maximum of 3 forms with MailChimp, i.e., you can only create 1 pop-up form, 1 embedded form, and 1 form builder form.

Winner: ConvertKit

Custom domain

Having a custom domain isn’t mandatory but it does look way more professional than using a default URL of the tool you’re using, e.g., creatoregg.mailchimpsites.com/234234 or creatoregg.ck.page/a33920ddab for ConvertKit.

MailChimp doesn’t allow users to connect (sub)domain without subscribing to Website & Commerce Core or Plus. To clarify, when visiting MailChimp’s pricing page at the top you can select Marketing Platform, Website & Commerce, and Transactional email. So, if you don’t want to use MailChimp’s default URL for landing pages and websites you have to upgrade to the Core or Plus Website & Commerce plan, which is a big drawback in my opinion.

ConvertKit on the other hand allows its free users and higher to connect a custom domain.

Winner: ConvertKit

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Reporting

Google Analtyics

Both ConvertKit and MailChimp automatically add Google Analytics (GA) UTM tracking codes to your website links if you enable the GA setting. Using Google Analytics is an absolute must if you’re serious about your online marketing game.

Winner: It’s a draw

Email Campaign Reports

MailChimp gives you insights into the following data for every email campaign:

• Number of unique contacts that opened your email
• Number of unique contacts that clicked a link in your email
• Percentage of unique contacts that clicked a link in your email
• Number of unique contacts where the email bounced
• Number of unique contacts that unsubscribed from your newsletter
• How many successful deliveries as a number and as a percentage
• Total number of contacts that opened your email
• Last time your email was opened
• Number of times your email was forwarded
• Last time someone clicked a link in the email
• Number of abuse reports
• Number of orders the email campaign generated
• Average order value the email campaign generated
• Total revenue the email campaign generated
• Social performance of the email
• 24-hour performance
• Top locations by opens
• Subscribers with the most opens
• Predicated demographics
• Click performance and click map for desktop and mobile (see where people clicked in the email)
• Products sold in the email
• Manage one-to-one conversations from this email campaign in MailChimp’s inbox
• Email domain performance (see the performance of Gmail, Outlook, etcetera)

ConvertKit gives you insights into the following data for every email campaign:

• Number of subscribers you’ve sent the email campaign to
• Open rate percentage
• Click rate percentage
• Number of total contacts that unsubscribed
• An overview of the different links in your email
• The number of subscribers that clicked what link in the email

The bottom line is that MailChimp’s campaign reports are more extensive than ConvertKit’s. ConvertKit also doesn’t share any ecommerce data.

Winner: MailChimp 

Automation reports

ConvertKit’s automation reports are the same as the regular email campaign reports, see above. The only addition is, you see:

• The average open rate and click rate percentage of all the emails in a particular sequence
• The total number of subscribers that went through a particular sequence
• The total number of subscribers that completed a particular sequence
• The total number of subscribers that were removed from a particular sequence
• The total number of subscribers that unsubscribed during a particular sequence

What is more, you also have a nice overview at what step your subscribers are located in a particular automation.

MailChimp on the other hand doesn’t show averages for a journey, i.e., automation. It only shows how many contacts started the journey, how many are in progress, and how many completed it. You can also see the reports of individual emails like you can with the reports for individual email campaigns. What MailChimp doesn’t show you is at what step they are in the journey. 

In a nutshel, ConvertKit’s report for automations gives me a quicker and better performance overview at a glance. 

Winner: ConvertKit

Landing page reports

MailChimp gives you insights into the following data for every landing page:

• Number of total visits
• Number of unique visits
• Number of total clicks
• Number of subscribers
• Conversion rate

ConvertKit gives you insights into the following data for every landing page:

• Number of total visits
• Number of subscribers
• Conversion rate
• Top referrers, e.g., YouTube, Facebook, your website, etcetera

Note that ConvertKit also allows you to sort all your landing pages and forms on number of visitors and conversion rate. MailCimp on the other hand doesn’t allow you to create a clean overview of your best performing landing pages.

Winner: ConvertKit

Signup form reports

I have asked MailChimp support where to find signup form reports in my dashboard. Weird enough, there are no reports for your MailChimp signup forms. So ,you can’t see how your signup forms perform.

ConvertKit has the exact same reporting features as to its landing page reports. See above.

Winner: ConvertKit

Comparative Reports

MailChimp’s feature Comparative Reports is only accessible if you’re on the Premium plan. This feature allows you to create a report of a custom data range of your email campaigns. Instead of viewing email campaigns individually you can now see at a glance the total sends, average open rate, average click rate, unsubscribers, bounces, abuses. What is more interesting is that you also see the result of your segments. You can now compare your segments with your average campaign numbers to see what segments overperform and what segments underperform. Although this is a cool feature it comes at a high cost, since MailChimp’s Premium plan is one of the most expensive email marketing plans on the market.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a similar feature to MailChimp’s Comparative Reports.

Deliverability reporting

Deliverability reporting is a ConvertKit Creator Pro plan feature. It shows two graphs; one graph shows your regular email performance, e.g., it shows your open rate, click rate, number of subscribers the email campaign is sent to. The second graph shows similar data but then for your automated campaigns, i.e., sequences.

I think the idea of this graph is to show you the performance of your email campaigns at a glance because this data is also available in the individual campaigns. If you send lots of emails and have lots of automated sequences running this feature might come in handy to see if there are any under- or overperformers.

MailChimp doesn’t have a feature similar to this where you can see at a glance the performance of all your regular email campaigns and automated campaigns.

Winner: ConvertKit

Audience dashboard / List growth reporting

In MailChimp, it’s called Audience dashboard, whereas ConvertKit calls it List growth reporting. In MailChimp’s dashboard, you have access to the following:

• Growth of your campaigns
• Tags
• Customer lifetime value
• Purchasing likelihood
• Predicted demographics
• Email engagement
• Top locations.

Although some of these things are good to know, it doesn’t come close to a tool like, e.g., Google Analytics. In my opinion, most email marketing tools lack reporting features. Just a few basic examples of what’s possible with Google Analytics that isn’t with MailChimp or ConvertKit:

• Compare last month’s data with the same month the previous year
• Seeing at a glance what campaign generated the highest order value
• Seeing how many new eyeballs you’ve reached versus returning subs

Although I feel MailChimp’s is a bit better than ConvertKit’s I still feel it’s too basic.

Winner: MailChimp

Customer Lifetime Value & Purchase likelihood

Customer Lifetime Value is a MailChimp feature for users on the Standard plan or above with a connected ecommerce store.

The moment you have an active integration with your ecommerce store and imported all the data you’ll see an added ecommerce section to your Audience dashboard. The customer lifetime value and Likelihood to purchase again sections are split up in 3 categories: high, moderate and low. High means predicted future value is high and these contacts are likely to purchase again whereas low is the opposite. You can create segments to target these categories with campaigns.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a similar feature.

Winner: MailChimp

Purchase Behavior

After someone purchases a product in your store you can automatically send them new emails IF they agreed to receive more emails from you. MailChimp has 25 prebuilt automation templates or customer journeys you can use for your business. You can use these templates for inspiration. One of the most popular and common automation is the abandoned cart email where you send one or more emails when a visitor abandons the checkout before purchasing the product.

ConvertKit also offers integrations with popular ecommerce websites, e.g., Shopify or WooCommerce. ConvertKit doesn’t have that many prebuilt automation templates though. This doesn’t mean you can build your own ecommerce automation sequence but it does mean that there aren’t that many examples you can use and take inspiration from.

In regards to ecommerce, MailChimp has just more features that are also more user-friendly.

Winner: MailChimp

Campaign Engagement / Subscriber engagement scoring

MailChimp automatically calculates your contact’s email marketing engagement and you can use this engagement score to segment your audience and send targeted campaigns. It calculates this score based on how often your contact opens an email and clicks on a link in an email. This feature is available in all MailChimp plans, including its free plan.

ConvertKit has a similar feature called Subscriber engagement scoring. ConvertKit’s feature is very similar to MailChimp’s Campaign Engagement. It also automatically calculates the scoring based on whether or not the subscriber has engaged with your content. The only difference is that it also takes into account signup forms, landing pages, and product purchases instead of only email marketing.

The drawback of both tools is that you can’t change the way it calculates the scoring. Some email tools allow you to create your own scoring, like the email marketing tool ActiveCampaign.

Winner: It’s a draw

App Engagement

MailChimp allows you to connect your app data to MailChimp, e.g., when you have a running app you can create an automation to send an email when the event trigger “run_complete” activates.

ConvertKit does offer API access but there isn’t a common template to integrate a mobile app with ConvertKit. I also feel app owners aren’t ConvertKit’s target audience.

Winner: MailChimp

Website Engagement

When you create a MailChimp website you can send automatic emails when one of your contacts visits your website or clicks a link. Note that the requirement for this feature to work is that you build your website with MailChimp’s software and not, e.g., Shopify or WordPress. The only way to trigger an automation is when a contact visits a page on your MailChimp website or clicks a link on your website making this feature far less valuable, i.e., you can’t trigger an automation based on a specific page viewed or a specific link clicked. 

ConvertKit doesn’t have a feature similar to this.

Winner: MailChimp

Predicted Demographics

MailChimp has this feature called Predicted Demographics. To quote MailChimp: Mailchimp uses data science to predict the gender and age of your contacts with predicted demographics. I asked one of MailChimp’s support employees what data they use but he was unable to answer my question, i.e., he didn’t know either. If I understand it correctly this feature guesses whether contact X is a female or male and it guesses the age range. You can then create a campaign to target a specific segment. Note that I can’t tell how accurate its predictions are.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a feature where it predicts demographics. You can only create segments of your audience based on what your audience shares with you.

Winner: MailChimp

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Account Management

Account team members / Seats

When you plan to outsource your email marketing, you don’t want to share your owner’s login details and therefore need an extra user login. ConvertKit calls this feature Account team members, and MailChimp calls it Seats.

ConvertKit

• Free plan doesn’t allow to add extra team members with their own login
• Creator plan allows one extra team member
• Creator Pro plan allows unlimited team members with their own login
• It only allows for two different roles: Admin and Editor

MailChimp

• Free plan doesn’t allow to add extra team members with their own login
• Essentials plan allows you to have 3 seats, including your owner login
• Standard plan allows you to create 5 seats
• Premium plan allows you to to create unlimited seats
• MailChimp has various user roles: owner, admin, author, viewer, manager

Winner: It’s a draw

Contact Profiles

MailChimp listed a feature called Contact Profiles on its pricing page. It sounds fancy, but it’s possible to click on a contact’s email address and check their profile, what emails they opened, what automations they subscribed to, what they purchased, etcetera. ConvertKit doesn’t list this on its pricing page, but it is possible in their tool too. In my opinion, just a basic feature that it even would be weird if it weren’t possible to click on a person’s email address to see how they interacted with your brand. Every email marketing tool I have tested has this option.

Winner: It’s a draw

Inbox

MailChimp offers an Inbox feature similar to a Gmail or Outlook inbox, where you can have 1-to-1 communication with your contacts. If you don’t have a Gmail account yet for your brand, using MailChimp for this can save a few dollars.

Furthermore, it is nice that you now have all your communication with a contact inside one tool instead of all email marketing activities inside your email marketing tool and all 1-to-1 communication inside another.

ConvertKit doesn’t offer a feature like this.

Winner: MailChimp

Mobile App

MailChimp has a mobile app, whereas ConvertKit doesn’t. With MailChimp’s app, you can easily import new contacts, e.g., by scanning a business card. You can also send campaigns with the app. If you search in Google on mobile app ConvertKit, you’ll find some people asking for an app a few years ago.

Winner: MailChimp

Support

MailChimp has three different layers of support: email support, chat, and phone support. Free MailChimp users get access to email support during the first 30 days after creating an account. After that there’s no support any longer. Users subscribed to Essentials or Standard receive email and chat support. Only Premium plan users receive phone support.

ConvertKit has three layers of support: email support, chat, and priority email and chat support. It doesn’t offer any support to its free plan users. Creator plan users receive live chat and email support. To receive priority support you have to subscribe to the Creator Pro plan.

Both companies offer 24/7 live chat support, which would be a requirement for me when choosing an email marketing platform.

Winner: MailChimp

Marketing calendar

Inside MailChimp you can see an overview of your campaigns in a list or you can view them on a calendar. In this calendar you can see the email campaigns, ads, and social media posts. The thing is, since its ad features and social media features aren’t the best I feel not that many customers are using the calendar.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a calendar feature.

Winner: MailChimp

Guides, Instructions & Tutorials

Both ConvertKit and MailChimp have detailed instructions for every feature they list on their pricing pages. Furthermore, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials available from third-parties you can use to better understand both products.

Winner: It’s a draw

Integrations

ConvertKit states on its pricing page it has 70+ integrations. MailChimp has 200+ integrations.

Although MailChimp offers more integrations this shouldn’t be a deal breaker for ConvertKit, I believe. Always test the integration you need to see whether you like it or not.

Please refer to their integration pages if you’re looking for a specific integration.

Winner: MailChimp

Lookalike audience finder / Facebook custom audiences

Both MailChimp and ConvertKit have a Facebook/Instagram ad integration. The difference is that ConvertKit’s integration is only used for syncing a specific segment of your email list with a custom audience you created inside Facebook Business Manager. If a new contact is automatically or manually added to that segment of ConvertKit it automatically syncs with Facebook’s custom audience. This saves you the manual labor of downloading your email list and uploading it to Facebook to sync them. In other words, using this feature inside ConvertKit requires you to have an understanding of Facebook Business Manager.

MailChimp on the other hand is more user friendly for marketing beginners. MailChimp recreated Facebook’s ad builder so you won’t have to leave MailChimp’s software and you can create the ads inside MailChimp. Note that this luxury does come with a drawback which is you won’t have the full capability of Facebook ad manager, e.g., you can only use images inside your ad and not videos despite that video might perform better. 

Moreover, there’s no option to use Facebook ad manager instead. You can’t sync your MailChimp segments with Facebook like you can with ConvertKit if you choose to use Facebook ad manager.

Winner: ConvertKit

Social posting

MailChimp allows you to create a social media post for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Cons

• Cannot post more than 1 image on Instagram 
• You can only schedule posts when you’re on the Standard plan
• You can’t upload videos
• Navigating to MailChimp social posts is confusing

ConvertKit doesn’t have a social media scheduling tool.

Winner: MailChimp

Retargeting ads (Google, Facebook, Instagram)

MailChimp allows you to create a retargeting ad with Google, Facebook, and Instagram inside its dashboard. Although it might be fun to create an ad directly from your MailChimp dashboard it does lack lots of features that are available inside the native Google’s and Meta’s advertising tools. Because you won’t have all advertising tools available I feel it’ll be extremely difficult to set up a profitable ad campaign by just using MailChimp’s tools. The bottom line is that I’m not a big fan of MailChimp’s advertising tools.

ConvertKit doesn’t have a similar feature like MailChimp’s. What ConvertKit does offer is to sync a segment of your email list to a Facebook custom audience.

Winner: ConvertKit

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Website & Ecommerce

Booking and Appointment Scheduling

Let’s say you’re a hair salon owner and want your customers to easily book an appointment online. In that case, 

MailChimp has this feature where you can add services to your MailChimp website, e.g., a main’s hair cut service to your hair salon website. The feature works straightforward, i.e., you can add a price, the duration, whether it’s in person, virtual, or a phone call, and your availability. 

Its appointment feature is available from the free plan and up. But there’s a big limitation to MailChimp’s appointment feature, which is you cannot add more than one service making it far less valuable. To add more (or unlimited) services you need to subscribe to its Advanced Scheduling feature, which will cost $8 per month.

Note that this MailChimp’s appointment feature is VERY basic compared to software tools that 100% focused on creating the best appointment booking software. 

Winner: MailChimp

Ecommerce Store

• In Q1 of 2021 MailChimp launched its store feature in beta
• MailChimp’s store feature is only available for businesses registered in the US and UK
• MailChimp users need to have a paid Websites & Commerce plan to add a custom domain
• ConvertKit launched its ecommerce functionalities in Q4 of 2020

MailChimp’s and ConvertKit’s store and ecommerce functionalities are very basic. Don’t except fancy ecommerce functionalities like you’ll have with the Shopify or WooCommerce software. When ecommerce is your core business you should look elsewhere.

Winner: n.a.

Transactional emails

A few examples of how businesses use transactional emails: 

• Account creation emails
• Password reset emails
• Purchase receipt emails
• Account notification emails
• Social media updates
• Verification emails

MailChimp offers a transactional emails add-on to its Standard plan users and higher. To send Transactional emails with MailChimp you have to purchase credits. You can’t use the normal plan for this. Each credit, also called block, equals 25,000 emails. When purchasing more blocks/credits at once you’ll receive a discount.

ConvertKit doesn’t offer transactional email services.

Winner: MailChimp

MailChimp & ConvertKit alternatives

• HubSpot
• Sendinblue
• GetResponse
• Constant Contact
• ActiveCampaign
• AWeber
• MailerLite

Also, make sure to check out our MailChimp review as well as our ConvertKit review for a list of the pros and cons of both tools before making your decision.

Please see the links below if you already made up your mind:

Click here to sign up for ConvertKit.

Click here to sign up for MailChimp.

What is the best email marketing software? I’ve thoroughly tested the 10 most popular email marketing tools. Read out my FULL roundup review here or watch the video below.