While OptinMonster and Mailchimp do have some features in common, they also differ in terms of core functionality. Read this OptinMonster vs Mailchimp comparison to discover their main characteristics. Check if using Mailchimp, OptinMonster, or both is the best decision for your business.
Written by Ria du Plessis - Digital Marketing Expert Updated 9/2/2021 |
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Score | 8/10 | 8.4/10 |
Summary | This platform focuses mainly on lead generation and form-building features. | This robust email marketing platform offers powerful automation, reporting, and email design features. |
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Pros |
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Cons |
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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 | Companies of any size looking for a powerful form builder | Beginners or experienced marketers alike, small companies |
Let’s start by analyzing the different email campaign options each platform offers.
While OptinMonster offers many handy features to help you grow your email list via forms, it doesn’t provide an in-built email editor. However, to send emails from this platform, you can integrate it with popular email marketing providers such as Constant Contact, Sendinblue, or even Mailchimp.
Mailchimp is an ideal tool for email marketing creation. The intuitive email builder allows you to build stunning emails in little time.
The platform offers plenty of email design options and the possibility to easily change different elements such as layouts, text blocks, videos, images, buttons, fonts, colors, shades. There are numerous themes and ready-made templates you can choose from. You can also start building templates from square one, using code.
Winner
Mailchimp is the best choice, as it offers an email builder with multiple design options.
Automation helps you create autoresponders and streamline your communication with customers.
OptinMonster allows you to set up automation for your campaigns by creating targeting conditions or using triggers. Some common targeting rules include customer behavior on your website, geo-locations, AdBlock detection, and sending relevant emails to customers accordingly. Powerful automation features that track user behavior can be leveraged to display the most personalized content in OptinMonster’s forms.
With Mailchimp, you can create automated email workflows based on different behavior triggers. There are numerous drip campaign templates you can use to speed up the process. Some of them include follow-up emails, order notifications, abandoned cart emails, re-engagement emails. The workflows work hand in hand with audience lists. If a customer is not responding to your email series, you can automatically eliminate them from the list.
Winner
Both tools offer numerous behavioral-based triggers.
Segmenting your audience will allow you to create more targeted campaigns that will bring better results.
With OptinMonster, you can accurately segment your audience chiefly based on their website behavior. For example, based on the pages that generate the highest traffic, or the forms they filled in. Other segmentation criteria include referral source, the devices your contacts use, or their location. OptinMonster's segmentation is also efficient because it is directly integrated into the platform's CRM, where all your customers can be managed.
To segment your audience with OptinMonster, apply tags in your CRM system, and contacts will be placed in different groups accordingly.
Mailchimp offers advanced list management and segmentation features that turn it into a good substitute for CRMs. First off, Mailchimp allows you to easily import your contacts list or add new contacts manually. One of the highlights of Mailchimp's segmentation feature is that it essentially builds the segments automatically through its machine learning capabilities that track customer behavior. Moreover, each segment is updated in real-time. You can also segment your audience based on the source they came from.
Winner
It’s a tie.
Discover what type of forms you can create with each platform.
OptinMonster is essentially a platform that focuses on lead capturing. Forms represent the central feature of this platform. You can easily create them by using a simple drag-and-drop editor. There are also more than 50 templates you can customize on the fly. They can conveniently adapt to different goals such as promotions, product launches, social campaigns, special offers, etc. Choosing and using a template from a drop-down menu is easy. Alternatively, you can create original forms from the platform’s Canvas menu. From this menu, you can change all the form elements such as buttons, videos, columns, texts, option fields, icons, countdown timers, images.
You can choose from different types of forms: pop-ups, floating bar, lightbox pop-in, fullscreen welcome mat, sidebar forms. All of them are responsive. An excellent automation feature is the Exit-intent Technology that predicts when a customer is about to leave a page and automatically launches personalized campaigns to prevent this.
Mailchimp also offers pop-up and embedded forms. The form builder is intuitive, and you also get a good selection of templates you can customize. You can add or remove fields, change background colors, and even translate the forms into more than 50 languages.
Winner
Forms are OptinMonster’s specialty.
| You may also like the following comparison: AWeber vs Constant Contact |
Testing features are a great addition that any robust email marketing platform should provide. Here are the tests you can perform with OptinMonster vs Mailchimp.
This platform allows you to A/B test using different elements such as headlines, different layouts, styles, or content. Multivariate testing is also available. You can split-test form campaigns with only one click. Based on the results, you can choose the content to display, as well as a correlated time and audience.
Mailchimp offers different testing capabilities to allow you to improve your email campaigns' open rates. You get advanced A/B testing features that enable you to test up to three different email variations. The elements you can focus your tests on include subject lines, email content, from names, or send times.
You also get flexibility in choosing the criteria that determine the winning email, such as open rates or click-throughs. Mailchimp also enables you to send test emails to grasp a better understanding of how your emails look.
Winner
Both tools provide good split testing capabilities, each one for its core function: email marketing (Mailchimp) and form building (OptinMonster).
Let’s find out how these two platforms perform in terms of usability.
OptinMonster features a modern and pretty intuitive cloud-based interface. All the main features are displayed in the menu bar and the side menu, once you access one of them. The support button is accessible at any time in the upper right corner. The split-tests are easy to carry out and the reports show data at a glance.
Mailchimp offers easy-to-follow recommendations as soon as you start using the platform. The in-app messages are coherent and even fun, and they allow you to understand each main feature and its purpose. You can customize the navigation experience based on your business needs.
Winner
Mailchimp offers a more personalized experience.
Here are the different price options you can access with each provider.
OptinMonster has four different price plans and a 14-day money-back guarantee. It is something you don't get with most platforms. The first plan is the Basic one: it costs $9 per month. The Plus plan costs $19 per month. The highest tier is the Pro plan, costing $29 per month.
Mailchimp offers a free plan and four paid plans. The free plan enables you to send up to 10,000 emails per month. The Essential plan costs $9.99 and allows you to send 500,000 emails per month. The Standard plan is $14.99. The highest tier is the Premium plan, which costs $299 per month.
Winner
Mailchimp, because it also offers a free plan.
Without tracking your campaigns’ results, you can’t know how efficient they are and what aspects you can improve. Here are some of the reports you get with OptinMonster vs Mailchimp.
OptinMonster collects different insights based on customer preferences and how they interact with your content. With this platform, you can see exactly how many people have viewed your forms, what conversion rates the forms manage to get, or what website pages generate the highest traffic. You can also integrate the platform with Google Analytics to gain more insights.
This platform offers advanced reporting. Besides basic email campaign metrics (open rates, clicked links, etc.), Mailchimp also provides in-depth analysis on each campaign's ROI (e.g. order revenues, the number of orders generated, total revenue). Click maps, comparative reports, social media reports are also available.
Winner
Mailchimp offers more robust email marketing reporting.
| You may also like the following comparison: MailerLite vs Sendinblue |
Integrations allow you to connect your email marketing platform with different third-party apps to make it easier to carry out your marketing activity.
OptinMonster offers several powerful native integrations, such as WordPress, Marketo, InfusionSoft, Shopify, WooCommerce, Drupal, Blogger, Weebly, Magento, Squarespace, or HubSpot. Moreover, the integration with Zapier allows you to create connections with more than 500 other tools.
Mailchimp integrates with more than 200 third-party apps. Some of the most helpful and popular integrations include Google Analytics, PayPal, Drupal, Stripe, WooCommerce, Facebook.
Winner
OptinMonster offers more integrations.
Let’s see the support options you can enjoy with OptinMonster vs Mailchimp.
This platform offers support via email and live chat, as well as through an extensive knowledge base (with articles). You can access the support button right from the dashboard. OptinMonster also offers priority support for the Pro plan.
Mailchimp offers support 24/7, but only for paying customers. Email and live chat support are the main options. Phone support is only available for the highest plan. Mailchimp also provides a vast knowledge base in different languages.
Winner
Mailchimp offers more options.
Here are the main reasons why to choose one of these two platforms for your marketing strategy.
OptinMonster is one of the best choices you can make if you are looking for a powerful lead generation and list management tool. It helps you build noteworthy forms that will enable you to grow your subscriber list. However, if what you are truly looking for is a comprehensive email marketing tool that allows you to create, track, and optimize email campaigns, OptinMonster can’t cover all your needs for the moment.
Mailchimp is suitable for marketers of any level, even absolute beginners, due to its intuitive user interface. Its powerful analytics make it an excellent choice for companies that focus on numbers when making marketing decisions.
Each one of these platforms has its pros and cons.
OptinMonster offers outstanding form-building and tracking capabilities. It also has remarkable reporting features and allows you to segment your audience in detail, based on their behavior. However, OptinMonster’s core focus is building forms, not email campaigns.
Mailchimp offers excellent reporting and automation capabilities, as well as numerous email design options. This platform is user-friendly and provides plenty of in-app suggestions. However, it grants limited support for the lower tiers, and its premium plan is expensive.
Two good alternatives you might also want to consider are:
This is a great choice for small companies. It provides numerous integration, event invitation management tools, and robust list management features.
This all-in-one solution is a terrific choice for automated funnels, lead generation features, and it even has a webinar tool.
Since our main focus was establishing which one of these platforms can help you with your email marketing strategy, MailChimp is the evident winner as email marketing is its core function. OptinMonster is also an efficient platform, but it focuses mainly on building forms.
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