In this post, we want to look at MailChimp Vs MailerLite. These are both excellent email marketing platforms for bloggers and small businesses. They both offer free accounts for starters but with some interesting differences.
I hope by the end of this short comparative post, you are going to be able to make an informed decision. If you are just starting blogging and working on a low budget, I recommend not spending unwisely on any email marketing platform. The reason is that these two (and many others) offer incredible free features to allow you grow your business.
-> Take a quick move to MailerLite here and MailChimp here
MailChimp Vs MailerLite ~ Free Email Marketing Tools for small businesses!
1) MailChimp
MailChimp has been around and gaining the attention of many bloggers. One of the reasons is the free account of 2000 subscribers with 12,000 emails sent per month. No expiring trial, contract, or credit card required.
If all you do is publish blog posts and email your subscribers about the new post, this may be your choice to start with.
As a matter of fact, MailChimp has all you need to create and send beautiful mails and track subscriber activities (Open and Click Rates).
With MailChimp’s built-in signup forms, you are able to design your signup form so it suits your brand and matches your newsletter. It also allows you to create forms and collect subscribers on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress.
But here are some important limitations!
No Automation or Autoresponder: If you are doing email marketing, you know that Automation and Autoresponders are key factors. These make transactional emailing possible. Well, some platforms I have used separate both terms into different features. But MailerLite as we will see below use both to mean the same.
If you are using MailChimp free, you don’t have access to Autoresponders. That means once someone signs up to your list, nothing happens. You can’t send an automated mail instantly or days after. You won’t even be able to shift subscribers from one list to the other automatically based on certain actions.
Affiliate Links and Affiliate Marketing
MailChimp treats these two different. Affiliate marketing is prohibited under their Terms of Use, but affiliate links are usually fine to use. So if you are into affiliate marketing, you’ll have to think again before taking on this choice. For more on how they work with this, check out this post
MailChimp Vs MailerLite ~ For Bloggers
2) MailerLite?
Remember in this Mailchimp Vs MailerLite post, I’m just looking at some key differences on the surface. All things being equal, they both have powerful tools to ease your marketing.
MailerLite also has the free account option, no expiring trial, contract, or credit card required. The only key differences are with the number of subscribers and emails sent per month.
Basic Free account differences
| MailerLite | MailChimp | |
| Number of subscribers | 1,000 | 2,000 |
| Number of emails per month | Unlimited | 12,000 |
| Automation/Autoresponders | YES | NO |
| Auto Resend | YES | NO |
From this simple table, you notice MailerLite gives you more room to grow your business. Considering Automation to be a key email marketing feature, this makes them more attractive and can be considered a good alternative to MailChimp.
But don’t celebrate yet…
If you want to send affiliate links in your emails, MailerLite may not be your choice. According to their terms of service, they don’t accept affiliate materials.
The best way to do affiliate marketing with MailerLite and MailChimp
We all know affiliate marketing is interesting but these tools don’t allow you to send swipe mails (for instance). If you use them however, I recommend you check out this post I wrote on three foolproof steps to succeed in Affiliate marketing:
- Get a copy of the product to promote.
- Share your results on your blog
- Create tutorial posts to educate your audience
Once you have done this, send mails to your list driving traffic to your affiliate product blog posts. Experience has proven this to convert better than driving traffic straight to sales pages.
MailerLite Vs MailChimp – Support Services
One of the things that attract customers to a company is their support services. No matter how great and stable your services/products are, your customers are often going to be facing issues.
How quick and qualified are your support staff?
That matters a lot.
MailChimp uses Emails and Phones
MailerLite uses Emails, Phones and Live chat, which makes a difference!
MailChimp Vs MailerLite ~ Price differences
Everyone starting a business hopes to grow. So while you begin on free account, one day you will expand over the limits. There will be need to upgrade. So which of these platforms allows you more flexible options that allows your growth?
Before I move on, note that with MailerLite, all pro features are available with the free account. The only difference is at the level of the size of your lists put together.
I think MailerLite has more friendly prices from the table above. And you have up to 30% OFF is you are paying yearly.
MailerLite’s Auto Resend Feature
This is a wonderful unique feature with MailerLite I will be giving details about soon (probably upcoming MailerLite Reviews) but I just want to mention it here as a core feature that makes it different from MailChimp. Most of the email marketing platforms I have used don’t even have this either. It’s a premium feature available with MailerLite Free Account.
This feature allows you to create two versions of a single campaign. The first version is sent to everyone on the list. The second is sent at a specific time to members who didn’t open the first version or who open but didn’t click.
It’s a unique and remarkable feature that can highly increase open rate and boost business. You will notice that it doesn’t just resend a carbon copy of the first campaign. The resent version can be different. You have options to change the subject line and even the message content.
Check out this example
Ok like I said, this is just a short post on MailChimp Vs MailerLite. I wanted to bring out just the core differences and allow you to make a choice. To be quite frank, they are all great free newsletter email software.
I tried both but currently going with MailerLite. It’s cheaper and has all I need to grow my business. The customer service is great, with support always available on live chat.
Let me know what you think about these two platforms in the comment box below.
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