MailerLite vs Mailchimp: Which tool should you choose?

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Mailchimp and MailerLite are two of the top email marketing tools on the market. While you can’t go wrong with either option, the better choice depends on your needs and preferences.

To help you make an informed decision, we signed up for both platforms and tested them, exploring their features in-depth and how they stack up against each other. Additionally, we reviewed user feedback and ratings from various review sites to gauge other users’ experiences and how they rate them.

Here’s a summary:

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing hub with advanced email marketing features and support for other marketing channels like social media, ads, and postcards. Meanwhile, MailerLite is perfect for small businesses who need a dedicated email marketing tool that is user- and budget-friendly.

In this article, we look closely into MailerLite vs Mailchimp, so you can pick the right one for your business.

Comparison: MailerLite vs Mailchimp

Before we get into the meat of this MailerLite vs Mailchimp comparison, here’s an overview of the similarities and differences between the two tools:

	MailerLite	Mailchimp
Pricing	Generous free plan; paid plans start at $10/month	Restrictive free plan; paid plans start at $13/month
Ease of use	Clean interface and overall lower learning curve	Clunky interface can be overwhelming to new users
Templates	70+ customizable templates	100+ templates with more customization options
Forms	Embedded, popup, and promotional popup forms	Embedded and popup forms only
Automation	Basic triggers and actions for simple workflow automations	Create complex workflows with advanced triggers and actions
Deliverability	Has overall better deliverability	Deliverability is good but typically lower than MailerLite
CRM	Tracks basic user activity of each contact	Tracks basic user activity, predicted demographics, and sales data
Integrations	100+ integrations, including Zapier and Make	300+ integrations, including Zapier and Make
Analytics	View analytics on one page and export insights as a CSV file	Advanced analytics, including click maps and campaign benchmarking
Support	30-day access to email/chat support on the free plan and unlimited access on paid plans	30-day email support on free plan. Unlimited email/chat support on paid plans and phone support for Enterprise users

We’ll compare MailerLite vs Mailchimp in 10 key areas. You can jump to any of these sections to see exactly what each tool brings to the table:

• Pricing
• Ease of use
• Templates
• Forms
• Automation
• Deliverability
• CRM
• Integrations
• Analytics
• Support

Pricing

Mailchimp and MailerLite have free plans, though certain advanced features are restricted to their paid plans. Let’s take a closer look to understand these differences better.

MailerLite pricing

MailerLite’s free plan allows up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly email sends (with no daily limits). You also get access to automations, landing pages, websites, and A/B email tests.

There are also two paid plans: Growing Business, which starts at $10/month, and Advanced, which starts at $20/month for 500 subscribers and unlimited monthly emails. This increases to $25/month and $40/month for 2,500 subscribers.

The Growing Business plan includes removing the MailerLite logo, advanced A/B testing, and 24/7 email support, while the Advanced plan goes further with promotion popups, an AI writing assistant, and 24/7 live chat support.

Then there’s the Enterprise version for businesses looking for dedicated onboarding, training, and support, but you’ll need to contact the MailerLite team to get its price.

Mailchimp pricing

Mailchimp’s free plan allows up to 500 contacts and 1,000 monthly email sends, with a daily limit of 500 emails. Once you exceed 500 contacts, sending will be paused until you upgrade to a paid plan.

There are three paid plans: The Essentials and Standard plans start at $13/month and $20/month (for 500 contacts) and $45/month and $60/month (for 2,500 contacts). And the Premium plan starts at $350/month for up to 10,000 contacts.

Note: “Contacts” in Mailchimp include people who are subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed. They all count towards your monthly billing.

Mailchimp’s paid plans give you access to marketing channels like social media (Facebook, Instagram, and X), Google remarketing ads, and postcards. You also get access to advanced email customizations, automations, A/B testing, and analytics.

Each of these tiers has restrictions for your monthly email sends. For example, with the starter plan (aka Essentials), the monthly email send is limited to 10x the plan’s contact limit. And if you exceed this limit, Mailchimp bills you for the excesses, at a starting rate of $6.50 for an additional 2,500 email sends.

Use our email pricing calculator below to quickly compare costs and features with other top platforms. Input your desired number of contacts, choose up to two other email marketing providers from the list, and see how Omnisend stacks up against them.

Ease of use

MailerLite’s interface is clean and easy to navigate. The menu on the left is simple, too — you can quickly spot the features you need and get started with them right away. And as you start using the different features, you’ll find text and video guides that explain how to use them.

For example, you can access MailerLite’s Forms from the left menu. The Forms page is neatly sectioned into the types of forms you can create. And for first-time users, there is a guide detailing how to set up forms in MailerLite.

Once you review MailerLite, you’ll notice a clean interface in forms, landing pages, and automations.

On the other hand, logging into Mailchimp for the first time can be overwhelming. The default home page is packed with buttons and tables, and it can be confusing to understand the purpose they serve, especially if you aren’t an ecommerce business owner.

Plus, the left menu is packed with sub-pages, which makes it hard to figure out where everything is and how the insights on different pages fit together.

Templates

Create emails from scratch in MailerLite or choose from any of its 74 newsletter templates to get started. You can customize these templates with images, videos, surveys, social links, and CTAs (calls to action).

Thanks to the native AI writing assistant, you can optimize your subject lines and email content in only a few minutes. Just enter a prompt, select a tone, and choose an output type (like title, short paragraph, long paragraph, or CTA).

Mailchimp has even more templates — 137 to be exact — grouped by purpose, industry, and style, so you can quickly find what you need without much hassle.

It packs the same customization tools as MailerLite with additional ones like adding your latest Instagram posts and product recommendations from your ecommerce store.

Mailchimp also has AI-powered tools like “Creative Assistant” for generating on-brand design elements for your emails and “Optimize” for suggesting email improvements. However, these are currently very basic. While they provide a starting point, they don’t yet offer the depth to use their final outputs as is — you’ll still need to make heavy edits on your part.

Forms

Mailchimp lets you create hosted forms that collect information from visitors. You design the form, and then Mailchimp gives you a URL and QR code that you can share via email, on social media, or on printouts.

You can also design embedded and popup forms in Mailchimp. Unlike the hosted forms, these only give you an HTML code to embed on your website, so that site visitors can sign up to your mailing list from there.

Both Mailchimp and MailerLite let you build landing pages and websites where you can embed these signup forms.

Like Mailchimp, you can also create embedded and popup forms in MailerLite, but MailerLite’s experience is simpler and smoother. Share these forms via URLs or embed them in your website with HTML code.

What sets MailerLite apart are its promotional popup forms. Unlike the regular popup form, this isn’t used to capture information from site visitors. Instead, it’s used to display important announcements like special offers, countdowns, and upcoming events.

Automation

MailerLite’s email automation is easy to set up and accessible, even on the free plan. Pick from 15 ready-made automation templates or create a custom one from scratch with triggers like:

• When a subscriber completes a form or clicks a link
• An anniversary date or exact match of a date
• Product purchase or abandoned cart

And actions like:

• Send email
• Update a subscriber’s custom field
• Move/remove subscriber from group

Mailchimp steps this up with more automation options, especially for ecommerce businesses. Its triggers track customer behavior like product searches, product views, purchases, cart abandonment, and time since last purchase.

Plus, there are over 100 automation templates to choose from. But keep in mind, these features aren’t on the free plan and figuring out how to set them up takes a while.

Deliverability

When your email automation tool has low email deliverability, there’s a high chance of your emails landing in the spam folder. Nobody wants that — your emails won’t be read, and your efforts have gone to waste.

For about seven years now (from 2017 to 2024), Email Tooltester has been testing and documenting the deliverability rates of top email marketing tools, including MailerLite and Mailchimp. They use GlockApps, an email deliverability tester, which also provides a contact list for the test. They send five rounds of emails to this list (over a period of five weeks) and calculate the average of the deliverability rates provided by GlockApps.

From Email Tooltester’s January 2024 report, Mailchimp has a deliverability rate of 89.5%, while MailerLite is slightly better at 89.8%. Also, it’s worth mentioning that Email Tooltester has conducted 12 email deliverability tests from August 2017 to January 2024. In these tests, MailerLite outperformed Mailchimp in 8 out of 12 rounds.

CRM

Neither email platform has advanced ecommerce CRM tools like lead scoring and pipeline management, but they still track key subscriber data.

MailerLite keeps tabs on basic details like name, email, and location, along with tracking email opens and clicks. You can also add personalized notes to each subscriber profile to remember important details about their preferences, past interactions, and feedback.

Mailchimp takes it a step further by providing the predicted age, gender, and location of your subscribers. If you’ve connected your ecommerce store, Mailchimp also monitors the revenue each contact generates. These insights are useful for creating targeted segments and sending them personalized email campaigns that are more likely to resonate and convert.

Integrations

Both tools have an integrations’ library, so it’s easy to connect with third party apps.

MailerLite has over 100 ecommerce, project management, CRM, and payment integrations. This includes popular tools like Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, PayPal, and Stripe. And if you don’t find the app you want, MailerLite directly connects with automation apps like Make and Zapier to make this process seamless (no pun intended). Developers can also use MailerLite’s API to build custom connections with other apps.

Meanwhile, Mailchimp has 300+ native integrations with apps like Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce, Square, and Stripe. It also connects with Zapier and Make and gives you access to its API for connecting with apps that aren’t available natively.

Analytics

MailerLite’s dashboard summarizes subscriber, campaign, automations, forms, site, and landing page insights. It also shows total orders and revenue from your connected ecommerce shops.

You can customize the time period for these insights and compare them with a previous period to identify any underlying trends. And if you need the data for later, you can export it as a CSV file.

Besides the basics, Mailchimp provides email marketing metrics like:

• Click maps: A summary of the links readers are clicking
• Conversion funnel graphs: A visual overview of how readers convert from emails received to email opens to clicks to orders
• Campaign benchmarking: Compares an email campaign’s performance — like open rates, click rates, and unsubscribes — to your own average and that of your industry peers

Support

From the many reviews we read, users report that MailerLite and Mailchimp’s support teams are responsive and helpful. But exactly what kind of support do you get at each pricing tier? Here’s the breakdown:

Mailchimp provides extensive self-help resources like knowledge base articles and YouTube video tutorials. They also have email and live chat support on all paid plans (Essentials, Standard, and Premium). And if you’re on the free plan, you’ll get 30-day access to this after signup. Plus, users on the Standard and Premium plans get access to personalized onboarding. And there’s phone support which is exclusively available to Premium users.

MailerLite also offers guides and tutorials for understanding their features and troubleshooting issues. Email support is available on its Starter and Advanced plans and its 24/7 live chat support is only available on the Advanced plan. Free plan users get access to both email and live chat support for 30 days after signup.

Mailchimp vs MailerLite: Who’s the winner?

Choosing between MailerLite and Mailchimp boils down to your specific business needs. Based on our experience researching and testing both tools, here’s what we’ll recommend:

Go with MailerLite if you’re a small business looking for an easy-to-use and affordable email marketing tool. It’s also the better option if you’re just starting out and need a free plan that’ll do the job until you’re ready to pay for an upgrade.

But if you’re a medium to large business with a bigger budget, then Mailchimp might be a better fit. It’s packed with features for managing emails, social media, ads, and postcards, and it offers advanced automations and analytics.

And if you’re an ecommerce business owner wondering if there’s a better MailerLite alternative or Mailchimp alternative, check out Omnisend. You can connect it with all your ecommerce shops and set up highly targeted email and SMS campaigns that resonate with your customers and boost sales.