Mailchimp vs. Convertkit

Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit: Who's The Winner?

Many bloggers, influencers and business owners don’t see the importance of building an email list – until they understand the impact email lists can have on website traffic and revenue.

In the past few years, we’ve been focused on building our followers and subscribers on our social media platforms. But the truth is, we don’t “own” that collective list of information, on the individuals that follow our Instagram and Pinterest accounts. This means you’re putting yourself (and your business) at risk, if you’re just concerning yourself with your follower count.

And many of us don’t realize that email subscribers are more likely to become paying customers. If you choose to start diversifying your business (by selling additional products, coaching or services), you’ll have a list of potential buyers at your finger tips.

It’s also one of the easiest ways for us to keep in touch with our audience. Sending out an email newsletter is essentially sending content right into our readers’ inboxes, as opposed to waiting for them to come pay us a visit on our website.

Building an email list isn’t a difficult thing to do (Pst! We're got a few tips for growing an email list for fashion bloggers HERE).

With so many platforms on the market, dedicated to helping you collect your readers’ and customers’ emails, it’s easier than ever before. And you can repurpose content, so you don’t need to stress about churning out fresh ideas.

This week on IFB, we’re comparing two different email marketing platforms: Mailchimp and ConvertKit.

Mailchimp is probably the most well-known email marketing platform on the market. The company has been around since 2001 and by 2014, it was sending over 10 billion emails per month on behalf of its users.

Convert Kit, a newer platform, came onto the market in 2013. It promotes itself for ease of use and functionality, that professional bloggers need to get the most out of their email marketing efforts.

We’re going to look at difference between the two platforms when it comes to price, usability, functionality, support and general observations. Check out the below if you’re looking for our opinions on Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit…

Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit

Pricing: Which One Is More Affordable?

Mailchimp offers a free program for under 2,000 subscribers and less than 12,000 emails. ConvertKit, on the other hand, is free to trial. Plans for 0-1000 subscribers start at $29/month (or $24, if planning to pay for an annual subscription upfront).

Overall, Mailchimp is more affordable, but ConvertKit is a bit more user-friendly and has better functionality to justify its pricing.

Usability and Set-Up: Which One Is Better?

Spoiler alert: neither piece of software is difficult to set-up.

The question that begs to be is is “Which process is less tedious?”

Basic setup in Mailchimp looks like this:

1. Create a list and enter the details;
2. Optionally, create some groups within that list to segment your audience;
3. Set up an optin form;
4. Produce, or edit, your emails/pages for:
   1. double optin confirmation;
   2. thanks for subscribing and delivery of your optin magnet;
   3. unsubscribing.
5. Set up your email sequence to trigger on subscription using the marketing automation features.

The process isn't too intense, however, it requires you to hit refresh and go through multiple pages, multiple times. Creating your email autoresponder involves going through the same process for each email you want to set up.

Basic setup in ConvertKit looks like this:

1. Create a form.  Within the form creation process you will set up at the same time:
   1. the look of the form and when it appears;
   2. single/double optin settings;
   3. your confirmation email, if any;
   4. delivery of your optin incentive, if any;
   5. putting subscribers to that form into an autoresponder sequence.

That's it. You're done.

In particular, the process of creating emails in ConvertKit is faster, when compared to in Mailchimp.

It's tabbed out in ConvertKit, so you can click between different emails in your series, edit them, set all the timings, and then save.  In Mailchimp this process involves dozens of clicks and multiple reloads to edit your emails.

Bottom Line: ConvertKit wins for usability.

Who Has Better Features?

ConvertKit wins this one, yet again. But by how much?

Both ConvertKit and Mailchimp capture subscribers, use double or single opt-ins, segment your subscribers (within reason), send autoresponder emails, send broadcast emails, and connect to your RSS feed to automatically create a draft broadcast.

But ConvertKit does a few things a bit better…

However, here are some things that ConvertKit that a user can do easily, in comparison to Mailchimp.

For starters, you can tag and untag your subscribers. This includes when they join a list, buy a product, complete a course or click a link.  Basically if you have a need to include or exclude a subscriber from anything, you can easily tag them appropriately based on a huge range of options.

There are also multiple opt-in incentives .  In ConvertKit, all you need to do is create a form, change the incentive and you're done.  Because ConvertKit doesn't use “lists”, the additional form doesn't matter. A user can segment people later if required.  In Mailchimp you only have one signup form per list, so multiple incentives is really annoying to set up

Email autoresponders are also very easy to use in ConvertKit, especially in comparison to Mailchimp – and so are the automation features. The bottom line is it's a lot easier to keep track and sort through your subscribers, by tagging them in ConvertKit.

Support: They Both Get Back to User's In A Timely Manner

While ConvertKit is still a small business, they appear to have fairly good reviews with long time users of the platform.

Mailchimp also has good reviews when it comes to supporting its users. They can take a little longer to reply to a user, but they're still good at getting back to a user's query.

Bottom line: both do a decent job when it comes to supporting their users.

Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit: The Winner?

Yes, Mailchimp is the better known competitor in the email marketing world. It's been around for a while and many people trust the company.

ConvertKit, on the other hand, is newer and more expensive but it's a better bang for your buck. Overall, it does more when comparing the two platforms.

For IFB, ConvertKit is the clear winner of the “Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit” battle looking to take email marketing seriously. If you're a beginner and looking to start building your email list for your business or blog, we recommend it.

Click Here to Sign Up For ConvertKit

Have you tried ConvertKit? What about Mailchimp? Let us know your thoughts on each platform in the comments below…