Email marketing is still one of the key elements of a successful marketing strategy. Many companies rely on it to gather and convert leads and the following Mailjet vs MailChimp comparison will provide you two reliable tools that can help you take your email marketing to the next level. Discover their features, pricing plans, pros, and cons.
Written By Henry Walden - Digital Marketing Expert Updated: 09/01/2021 |
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Score | 8/10 | 8.4/10 |
Summary | Mailjet is a complex platform that allows you to create email campaigns, transactional emails, and easily track your results. | Mailchimp is an intuitive platform that provides you templates, landing pages, powerful tracking, and analysis features. |
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Key Features |
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Pricing |
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Support |
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Ease of Use |
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Best fit for | Small or medium companies, internet, SaaS companies. | Small to medium companies, freelancers |
Email templates are a great addition to any email marketing platform, they’ll allow you to create beautiful, engaging campaigns. Let’s explore Mailjet vs MailChimp from this perspective.
Mailjet features several in-built templates you can customize pretty easily. You can change various elements such as images, links, text, or social media buttons. They call this feature ‘Passport’, and it enables you to create good-looking templates within minutes. Mailjet’s templates vary from simple newsletters to more complex interactive marketing options. With Passport, you can also test your emails to see how they will look on different devices.
MailChimp also provides templates and a flexible approach when it comes to their personalization and implementation. In fact, the platform’s templates are one of the main reasons why it is suitable for beginners as it allows them to easily create campaigns.
There are 23 base templates you can start from, but also 100+ themed templates that are particularly crafted for specific industries and occasions (sales, announcements, events, etc) and can be accessed even with the Essential plan. Moreover, the drag-and-drop designer helps you get started easily and you can also create original templates from scratch.
Both platforms offer a great selection of templates, however, with Mailjet’s free plan, they are branded. MailChimp is the winner in this first round.
The primary reason why you would buy one of these platforms is to create emails. Here are a few insights into this process.
Passport also plays an important part in helping you create your emails easily. This is a straightforward editor that virtually enables you with limitless design possibilities. You’ve got all the main email elements within easy reach: social buttons, text blocks, links, images. You can eliminate or add them within seconds.
Custom-made emails are also available through HTML coding. Overall, you can create newsletters, auto-responders, transactional, or marketing emails in minutes and they’ll automatically have a responsive format. Another advantage is that this tool allows real-time collaboration so you can see exactly what changes have been made by other team members and exchange comments.
One of the first things we noticed while testing this platform is that it really streamlines the entire email building process. In the Campaigns section, you’ll find all the tools you need to design, schedule, and track email campaigns. Thanks to the platform’s wizard, it’s easy to go from point A to point B. You can see all the steps of the process upfront and the platform provides generous flexibility in terms of design. Any type of email (sequences, individual emails, or even long-term campaigns) is managed from the same location.
For the tech-savvy, a good option is to create emails by using HTML code. This way, it is possible to add content blocks and unique email bodies in order to create personalized campaigns.
Again, both platforms do a great job, but we choose Mailjet this time for its real-time collaboration tools.
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Forms are an easy and effective way to collect valuable customer data. Both these platforms provide form-building capabilities. Learn more.
Mailjet’s package includes the possibility to create forms and, as far as we’ve seen, they’re quite good-looking and easy to manage. You don’t need a lot of experience to configure and embed them and you can choose different formats such as inline, or pop-ups.
Mailjet integrates with Poptin or Gravity Forms to help you create forms. The first integration also helps you conduct surveys, use ready-made templates, easily remove and add fields with no coding skills. The integration with Gravity Forms brings along built-in functions and features for WordPress.
MailChimp allows you to create forms directly from its Audience dashboard. You can create them from scratch within minutes, and easily embed them within your website or another website, or share them via social media or email.
If you don’t have a website, you can use the platform’s landing pages and custom URLs to post these forms. The form builder is pretty simple, featuring three tabs: build, design, or translate. You can easily add, remove, and edit elements.
In this round, MailChimp is the winner since it allows you to create forms easily without installing other apps.
To increase your open rates, you should perform split testing, which allows you to experiment with different variations. Here are Mailjet vs MailChimp’s split testing features.
Mailjet enables you to access the split testing functionality even with its basic plan. You can’t use it with the free one, however. Some of the typical elements you can test include senders’ names, subject line, email designs, texts.
Mailjet allows you to test 10 email variations with different groups of recipients. The tool even helps you test call-to-actions based on reply statistics. Moreover, there are different metrics available for these tests (hard or soft bounces, click rates, open rates).
MailChimp also features A/B testing functionality. With this platform, you can test up to 3 different email variations. The elements you can test are subject lines, from name, content. Based on your campaign’s specific goal, the platform allows you to choose the best criteria according to which the winning email will be chosen, for example, open rates, click rates, total revenue, etc.
MailChimp’s multivariate testing feature is easy to use but it’s only available for the paid plans.
This time, we choose Mailjet because it allows you to perform tests with more email variants.
To streamline your email campaigns and be able to truly focus on improving their results, you need a tool that offers easy list management features. Let’s see how our two platforms behave.
Mailjet’s list management feature helps you divide your audience into lists or groups. The segmentation process is based on different criteria such as gender, age, behavior, or interests.
Another feature their segmentation tool provides is the campaign comparison that allows you to measure your current campaign’s results with previous ones and make future forecasts.
However, with this tool, you can’t remove contacts from the campaign activity page. To do this, you need to go to the Contacts section or the exclusion list and eliminate a subscriber manually, which is time-consuming. Moreover, the segmentation criteria are pretty basic and don’t include survey results, geolocation, or a multitude of interests.
MailChimp’s list management tool enables you to divide your contacts either into groups or segments. Groups mean subscribers with common interests that can be divided into multiple sub-categories. Segments refer to a filtered group of contacts.
There are different filters you can use such as recent purchases, opened emails, forms they completed, etc. The easiest and fastest option to manage contacts is creating one Master list and include several groups within this list in order to avoid sending the same email to the same contacts several times, which is a pitfall if you’re barely getting started on Mailchimp.
The lists can be imported or exported in Excel or CSV format. It is also possible to import contacts directly from CRM systems or other marketing tools. Keep in mind that the platform charges for each subscriber so including the same contact on multiple lists can increase your costs.
Although MailChimp might not be the most user-friendly platform for segmentation, it does provide more advanced features than Mailjet.
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Ease of use is one of the main factors to consider when purchasing email marketing software, especially if you’re not a very technical person. Find out which one of the platforms we’re focusing on is more intuitive.
Although Mailjet provides a multitude of useful features, its interface is not necessarily the easiest one we’ve tested. The dashboard does try to provide you with a series of useful info, due to how it is organized, it looks and feels less welcoming than other platforms.
However, the advantage is that you get full setup guidance when you log in for the first time, which shows you how to create campaigns, use tests, and manage your contacts. The short product tours are also quite useful in helping you leverage the advanced features.
MailChimp has a very efficient and friendly approach that will get you started in no time. The platform guides you through all the steps of the process easier, using a welcoming and fun language. The checklist-style user interface makes it easy even for newbies to get used to this software.
Mailchimp offers personalized tips and assistance based on your specific goals. Once you access a new feature for the first time, you get prompt suggestions on how to leverage it and clear explanations. For example, when you start creating emails, the platform explains why you should use segmented lists to deliver them.
MailChimp not only outperforms Mailjet, but several other big names as well thanks to its user-oriented approach.
Here is a quick Mailjet vs Mailchimp pricing comparison that will help you understand what each platform offers and for how much.
Mailjet’s free plan can be used for unlimited contacts and includes statistics, the email editor functionality, integrations, webhooks, SMTP relay. The basic plan allows you to send 30,000 emails per month, costs $9.65, and also includes templates and online customer support.
The Premium plan costs $20.95, its expanded features package comprises segmentation, A/B tests, automation, dynamic sections, multi-user collaboration. The Enterprise plan has custom prices and brings extras such as a dedicated technical account manager, deliverability service, inbox preview, and plenty more.
Mailchimp offers a free plan you can use for a maximum of 2,000 contacts. It includes 7 marketing channels, basic templates, behavioral tagging, and marketing CRM. All pricing plans are calculated based on the number of contacts. The Essential plan starts at $9.99 per month and brings additional templates, A/B test, 27/7 support, custom branding, a contact limit of 50,000 subscribers.
The Standard plan costs $14.99 and also includes event-based automation, custom templates, advanced analytics, and ad retargeting. The Premium plan, which costs $299, offers phone support, multivariate testing, and role-based access, among others.
We choose Mailjet this time as Mailchimp can easily get expensive for large contact lists.
Reports and analytics will help you improve your email marketing strategy. Here are the main reporting features you get with Mailchimp and Mailjet.
Mailjet offers a set of basic reports that can be divided into 2 main groups: email performance and individual contact. The first group contains spam, unsubscribes, open rates, clicks, and bounces reports. These are real-time reports you can easily access. The contact reports allow you to see how many emails have been opened by a certain subscriber, either in numbers or percentages. You also get a breakdown of deliverability rates, heat maps reports, campaign comparison reports.
MailChimp offers basic reports such as open rates, clicks, bounce, and it also provides you with a suite of complex analyses that will help you understand the ROI of each campaign. This platform allows you to track your orders by number, see the average order revenue or total revenue. Each campaign’s revenue is tracked based on the most suitable metric. MailChimp also offers comparative reports, open rates based on location, social media share, and reports.
MailChimp is the clear winner for this comparison criteria thanks to its advanced reporting.
Email marketing platforms need to connect to a variety of apps and tools to receive and send data. Learn more about each platform’s third-party connectivity.
Mailjet provides around 80 integrations including WordPress, Magento, Wisepops, Google Cloud, Cloud Elements, Zapier, PrestaShop, Microsoft Azure, HubSpot, WooCommerce, Livestorms, PipelineDeals, Clevertim, Capsule, Meetup, Podio, Evernote, Freshdesk, and plenty others. This software also has an API that allows you to create other integrations.
MailChimp integrates with more than 200 applications. Some of the most useful integrations include Google Analytics, Zoho, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Linkedin, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Canva, Xero. Moreover, the platform’s API can help you connect different other tools.
The two platforms connect to similar third parties. However, Mailchimp provides more app integrations.
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Now that we’ve compared some of their main features, let’s take a look at what customer support options each platform offers.
The most accessible support option of this platform is the Support Center where you can find FAQs, whitepapers, guides, and other resources. You can contact the support team by opening a ticket. At the moment, there is no chat or phone support for the lower plans. Live chat is only available with the premium plan.
This platform is available in five different languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian), which is a plus for international teams. There is a dedicated support team that can help you monitor and improve your deliverability rates. You need to pay for the upper plans to gain this benefit.
MailChimp offers customer support through email, live chat, and phone. You can benefit from their support services 24/7 but only if you access one of their paid plans. Moreover, the phone support option is only available for the upper tier. However, if you’re only using the free plan for 30 days, you can also benefit from email support within that period.
A vast knowledge base is also available, and it contains articles, videos, and links to other information sources.
MailChimp takes the lead in this final round too, given that it also provides live chat and phone support.
Here is a quick summary of the main pros and cons of the two email marketing platforms we’ve compared in this comparison.
Mailjet is an affordable platform that can work perfectly well for beginners or small companies. It offers all the basic tools you need to create email campaigns. The email builder is pretty intuitive, and there are multiple design options you can rely on. There are also numerous integrations and great tracking features.
However, this platform lags behind others in terms of list management, segmentation features, or customer service.
MailChimp is a powerful and comprehensive email marketing platform. It boasts great reports and a straightforward interface that will easily guide you through its functions providing custom tips. Its email templates and testing features are also good.
However, the platform could provide an easier segmentation process and its pricing plans are more expensive compared to some of its competitors.
Both these platforms share a lot of features in common. Yet, only one of them might be more suitable for your particular needs.
Mailjet doesn’t necessarily target a particular audience. Marketers of any level might find this platform useful, especially given its relatively affordable price. This tool is good for anyone who wants to quickly design simple emails. Moreover, the free plan, which you can use for as long as you want to, can be a good option for anyone new to email marketing.
MailChimp can prove useful for marketers of any experience level. This platform provides a step-by-step guided onboarding process which makes it ideal even for absolute beginners. There are also numerous knowledge sources you can access for free. Those who use a data-driven approach for their marketing strategy will love this platform’s insightful reports.
If neither of these two tools seems to meet your expectations, here are two valuable alternatives:
After carefully going through some of the main features, we concluded that MailChimp is a better alternative than Mailjet. MailChimp provides a wider array of reports and tracking features, more integrations, and customer support options and is generally easier to use.
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