Omnisend vs. Mailchimp: Which is the better platform?

Reading Time: 15 minutes

Omnisend and Mailchimp are two prominent email marketing and automation platforms that can help businesses grow and get more sales.

Omnisend, as an email and SMS marketing platform, offers robust ecommerce marketing automation. Meanwhile, with a market share of 67.64%, Mailchimp caters to a wider client base and offer 300+ integrations.

Mailchimp has faced several setbacks in recent years. Some of the prominent reasons are the multiple price hikes and the public fallout with Shopify in 2019. These have led to a dip in their popularity which is also reflected in an average Shopify rating of 3.3 out of 5. Meanwhile, Omnisend has a score of 4.8 out of 5 on Shopify owing to their extensive features, ease of use, and award-winning customer support.

Even though both these are excellent choices, it’s good to know which one suits your business the most.

In this Omnisend vs Mailchimp comparison guide, we’ll break down the key features of both platforms to help you pick the right tool.

Omnisend vs Mailchimp: Overview

When comparing Omnisend vs Mailchimp, it’s important to know that each platform offers features tailored to different business needs. Here’s an overview of the key features of both tools.

If you’d prefer to watch a comparison instead of reading it, check out this video:

Feature	Omnisend	Mailchimp
Best for	Ecommerce marketing automation	All-around email marketing
Free plan	✅	✅
Email templates	Modern templates designed for ecommerce	Basic templates
List building	Gamified forms, popups, signup boxes, landing pages	Signup forms, landing pages (for paid plans)
Segmentation	Advanced segmentation options	Basic segmentation by tags
Integrations	Focuses on ecommerce platforms	More integrations with business tools
Marketing channels	Email, SMS, push notification	Email and SMS
Support	24/7 email and chat support on all plans, priority support for Pro plan customers	Email support on free plan for 30 days, 24/7 chat and phone support on paid plans

Who is each platform built for? 

Mailchimp is a generic email marketing platform, designed to be used by almost anyone. It can do most of the things you’d expect it to but it doesn’t have specialist tools to help users with more specific needs. Primarily targeting small businesses, Mailchimp may not scale with your company’s growth in the way you need it to.

Omnisend, on the other hand, is built for ecommerce users. In addition to the usual features required of an email marketing tool, it also has tools designed specifically for building an audience and increasing sales, such as a product picker that lets you pull products from your store (instead of manually inserting images and URLs) and native discount codes. 

Omnisend also has advanced, real-time reporting and analytics to help users better understand their audience.

Round 1: Email marketing features

Both platforms offer a range of features designed to help businesses create, send, and track their email campaigns.

However, they have differences that may make one a better fit for certain businesses over the other. 

Let’s take a look at the email marketing features of Mailchimp and Omnisend.

Ease of use

Both Omnisend and Mailchimp offer a user-friendly interface that streamlines email marketing.

Omnisend’s interface is particularly easy to navigate, with all the key features accessible from the main navigation menu bars.

A clean and modern dashboard with clear labeling and visual cues greets users when logging into the platform. This helps facilitate quick access to essential features.  

Similarly, Mailchimp prioritizes ease of use in their interface design. The interface is user-friendly, with features strategically placed for easy access. 

Whether you’re creating campaigns, managing subscriber lists, or analyzing campaign performance, Mailchimp’s interface provides a smooth and intuitive experience. 

Both Mailchimp and Omnisend offer a wealth of tutorials and resources on how to use the platform, making it ideal for those new to email marketing.

Drag-and-drop email builder

Both platforms include a drag-and-drop email builder. However, between Mailchimp vs Omnisend, which one is more powerful?

Omnisend’s builder includes drag-and-drop content blocks and elements specifically designed for online stores, such as product carousels, and personalized product recommendations. You can move elements freely and customize the content within each block.

Additionally, Omnisend allows you to edit the HTML and CSS of your emails. This ensures better control over the designs, allowing for more precise customizations. You can also easily create professional-looking emails with customizable content blocks. 

Omnisend’s email builder can also automatically pull your store’s branding and add it to your emails. This includes your logo, brand colors, font, and social media links. You can even see these elements applied to some of the templates in the template library.

Omnisend offers a significant advantage by allowing every user, including the ones on a free plan, to have full access to the functionalities of its drag-and-drop builder.  

Mailchimp’s email builder offers a drag-and-drop functionality similar to Omnisend. However, their library of pre-built templates is less extensive as Mailchimp has a greater focus on general-purpose email marketing rather than ecommerce-specific features.

Users can choose from a wide range of templates or start from scratch. The builder features a collection of elements that can easily be added and rearranged. However, it can also limit the level of customization you can achieve.

Mailchimp’s access to templates and other design features is restricted only to paid plans and can’t be accessed with a free plan. 

The paid plans grant you access to the real-time preview functionality, which you can use to fine-tune the visuals of your campaigns.     

Email templates

Both Mailchimp and Omnisend include email templates. However, there are some major differences worth noting. Omnisend provides modern and professionally-made templates, while Mailchimp’s pre-built templates are more basic. The limited options provided by Mailchimp may also not offer the flexibility to create your desired emails.

Additionally, Mailchimp restricts the majority of their templates to paid plans, leaving users of the free plan with a limited number of choices.

Meanwhile, Omnisend provides 250+ email templates to all users, whether you’re on a paid plan or not. Plus, Omnisend’s native integration allows you to pull products directly from your online store, offer smart product recommendations, and automatically include discount codes within emails.

While both platforms allow you to create your templates, only Omnisend allows you to save individual blocks that you can easily reuse in future campaigns.

Landing page builder

Both Omnisend and Mailchimp offer a dedicated landing page and signup forms to capture leads. 

Mailchimp offers a library of pre-designed landing page templates, covering a wide range of marketing goals. Whether you’re promoting a new business, highlighting products, or offering free content downloads, you can find a template for your needs.

Since it integrates with popular ecommerce platforms, Mailchimp’s landing page builder allows you to pull product images directly into your landing pages.

This saves you time from manually uploading images and ensures your landing pages showcase your latest offerings.

With Omnisend, you can create unique and dedicated landing pages for each marketing campaign.

You can choose from pre-designed templates or customize existing ones with ease. With swappable text, you can replace default content with a custom message without compromising conversion-optimized elements.

Additionally, Omnisend allows you to change the theme and edit the displayed information when sharing the page on Facebook.

Popup forms

Both Omnisend and Mailchimp provide versatile signup forms that can be implemented in various ways, including:

• Embedded forms that you can integrate with specific pages on your website
• Popup forms that appear after a set time on a page or when a visitor shows intent to leave
• Inline forms that you can place in the header, footer, or within website content like blog posts

Omnisend comes with ready-to-use and high-converting popup templates that already include images, text, and styles. These forms go beyond the basic functionalities of a popup. They offer options like landing pages, signup boxes, and even gamification forms like wheel of fortune to incentivize signups.

You can tailor your popups according to specific visitor behavior. For instance, you can trigger popups based on exit intent after a certain number of page views or limit them to specific pages. Also, you can A/B test your forms, to find which one converts the most.

You’re able track the performance of your popups with insightful reports. Analyze signup rates by device and location, and compare different forms to see what resonates best with your audience.

Similarly, Mailchimp offers standard popup forms that allow you to customize design and appearance. You can also control when and where your popups appear on your website. However, advanced targeting based on visitor behavior isn’t available on the free plan.

You can also create standalone landing pages with signup forms to promote across various channels.

A/B testing

Omnisend lets you test various email components, including subject lines, sender names, offers, discounts, images, and text content.

You can choose your success metric based on what matters most for your campaign. Omnisend also allows you to set the duration for your A/B test, ensuring you gather enough data to make a statistically sound decision.

Similar to Omnisend, Mailchimp lets you test subject lines, content, sender names, and send times. It also offers multivariate testing, which is available on the premium plan. This allows you to test combinations of multiple elements simultaneously.

Mailchimp provides flexibility in choosing your success metric. You can pick clicks, opens, or even revenue generated as the deciding factor for your winning campaign.

Reporting and analytics

When it comes to marketing campaign reports, Mailchimp focuses on consolidating data across your marketing stack for informed decision-making. 

Since Mailchimp integrates with over 300 marketing tools, you can centralize data from several platforms with customizable metrics to get a detailed picture of your marketing efforts.

Additionally, Mailchimp’s AI tools analyze your marketing data and offer personalized recommendations. These insights can help you tailor future campaigns for better sales performance.

In comparison, Omnisend offers dedicated reporting dashboards. It highlights key performance metrics (KPIs), trends, and top-performing activities in a single, easy-to-access dashboard. This eliminates the need to jump between reports, saving you time and effort.

Since Omnisend caters to omnichannel marketing, its reporting reflects that. You can track and compare performance across various channels like email, SMS, and push notifications. With clear charts and graphs, it’s easier to spot patterns and opportunities.

Mailchimp vs Omnisend round 1 winner: Omnisend

Round 2: Pricing

	Omnisend	Omnisend	Mailchimp	Mailchimp	Mailchimp
Number of contacts	Standard	Pro	Essentials	Standard	Premium
500	$16	$59	$13	$20	$350
1,000	$20	$59	$13	$20	$350
5,000	$81	$90	$75	$100	$350
10,000	$132	$150	$110	$135	$350
50,000	$413	$715	$385	$450	$815
100,000	$900	$1,334	–	$800	$1,025
150,000+	Custom	Custom	–	–	$1,325

Does great email marketing really have to cost you an arm and a leg? Previously, both Omnisend and Mailchimp users would answer with a resounding ‘no’ to that question. Both were champions of affordable email marketing, with there being little price difference between the two.

Controversially, Mailchimp now considers unsubscribed contacts the same as active contacts — meaning if you had a list with 1,000 active subscribers and 500 people who had previously unsubscribed, Mailchimp would bill you as having 1,500 people in your list. Considering that Mailchimp’s pricing is based on the number of contacts you have, this can make a significant difference to your monthly bill.

Mailchimp has four tiers: Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium.

There’s significant overlap in pricing between each tier, so what you’ll really pay depends on how big your audience is. Mailchimp offers a pricing calculator to let you know exactly what it would cost you, and its features do mean it can offer good value for money. 

You’ll want to pay attention to the features of each tier too, because although the Essentials plan unlocks powerful features like pre-built templates and A/B testing, it still limits you to just three audiences and restricted automated workflows.

If your business is new then Mailchimp’s free plan may appeal because it’s more generous than some of its competitors, but be aware of its limitations:

• No A/B testing
• No dynamic content
• No send time optimization
• One audience and one automated email
• Limited access to email and landing page templates
• After 30 days, customer support is restricted to guides and tutorials

Omnisend has three tiers: Free, Standard, and Pro. Like Mailchimp, there’s a pricing calculator to help you figure out the exact costs.

The biggest difference between the two platforms is that the Omnisend free plan still offers all the features. You’ll have professional-looking templates, pre-built automations, audience segmentation, performance reports, A/B testing, and email support. 

The free plan allows you to send SMS and push notifications, create custom workflows, and use dynamic signup forms. There is no restriction on features, making it an ideal plan for new and smaller businesses.

For more information, use our email pricing calculator below to quickly compare price rates and features with Mailchimp. Simply input your desired number of contacts, select Mailchimp from the list, and see how Omnisend stacks up against it.

Mailchimp vs Omnisend round 2 winner: Omnisend

Round 3: Segmentation

As your list grows, it’s important to be able to put different members into different groups. This is known as segmentation and it allows you to send relevant information to your audience — and avoid sending messages they don’t need, like recommending a product they’ve already purchased from you. Compared to unsegmented email campaigns, segmented campaigns result in 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs. That’s why it’s worth implementing if you haven’t already.

Both Omnisend and Mailchimp offer segmentation based on:

• Profile data: language, location, age, income, gender, education, occupation etc
• Campaign activity: whether the person has opened your emails, clicked certain links, or shown interest in particular campaigns
• Purchases: products they’ve viewed, purchased, or abandoned from their cart

Omnisend offers one of the most flexible segment builders in the ecommerce industry, allowing you to use up to 500 data points in your segments. You can also have an unlimited number of segments. And, of course, there’s a library of pre-built segments for you to choose from if you don’t want to build from scratch yet.

On the other hand, Mailchimp offers a decent set of segmentation options, but they aren’t as comprehensive as Omnisend’s. You can segment based on customer data like demographics, signup source, and location. 

Additionally, you can segment based on campaign interactions and ecommerce data like purchase activity and abandoned carts.

Omnisend vs Mailchimp round 3 winner: Omnisend

Round 4: Integrations

Omnisend integrates with 130+ trusted technology partners and has a dedicated app market. There are integrations for everything from advertising and customer support to back-in-stock alerts and reviews. It has a one-click integration process for major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, and more. If you primarily use a popular ecommerce platform, Omnisend’s native integrations might be a better fit. 

However, as the email marketing platform with the largest market share, it’s no surprise that Mailchimp offers more in this category. It integrates with 300+ business apps and web services, catering to a wider range of business needs beyond ecommerce. 

This includes integrations for social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram), customer relationship management (Salesforce, Zoho, HubSpot), and accounting software.

Mailchimp also integrates with many popular business tools like Canva for graphic design and Zapier for app connectivity.

Mailchimp vs Omnisend round 4 winner: Mailchimp

Round 5: Automation

Automations empower you to scale your business further, faster. Instead of having to manually send every message, you can automate them. 

Best of all, you can create a series of advanced workflows that send specific messages when an action is taken (or not taken, like leaving the store without completing a purchase). This puts your sales on autopilot and reminders, follow-ups, and even retargeting ads all happen whether you’re at your computer or fast asleep.

While Mailchimp does offer automation, it’s limited to basic actions. Workflows are limited in complexity, with fewer trigger options and personalization capabilities. Additionally, Mailchimp primarily focuses on email automation rather than other communication channels, which Omnisend integrates seamlessly.

The interface also makes it difficult to understand everything that’s happening at a glance. You can see the emails and their trigger in the journey:

In comparison, Omnisend offers more advanced automation and the visual interface shows a clearer breakdown:

You can see whether an SMS or email is being sent, how many recipients are in each stage of the workflow, as well as where your delays are. 

Because Omnisend is an omnichannel platform, its automation allows you to incorporate additional channels than just email, such as Facebook Messenger, SMS, and push notifications. Omnisend even suggests which channel to use in each automation sequence.

With this functionality, you can create an advanced workflow using the channels that your audience engages with the most, without the need to break everything into different sequences. You can also use conditional splits to tailor your workflow around your customers’ demographics, engagement, and shopping behavior.

Omnisend offers up to 20 conditional split blocks per workflow, and you can add up to five rules to each split. This not only simplifies the process but also allows you to hyper target your messages. To create something similar in Mailchimp, you’d need to make several workflows.

Omnisend’s automation features include custom events, send time optimization, post-purchase transactional emails, workflows, splits and A/B testing, even on the free plan. 

Omnisend vs Mailchimp round 5 winner: Omnisend

Round 6: Channels

Although they’re email marketing platforms, Mailchimp and Omnisend both offer additional channels so you can reach people in other ways.

In addition to email and SMS, users of either platform have the ability to sync their audience list with their Facebook and Google ad accounts. This is an effective way to keep your ad costs down while increasing sales — instead of running ads to a cold audience and trying to generate interest, the syncing allows you to run retargeting ads, which show relevant products to people who have already been on your site. You can show them products they’ve looked at, left in their cart, or similar items to what they’ve viewed.

Omnisend channels revolve around omnichannel marketing. It allows you to leverage multiple channels like email, SMS, web push notifications, and social media channels to reach your customers.

You can also trigger automated workflows across the channels for a more impactful approach.

Omnisend offers retargeting ads on all of its tiers, including the free plan. And unlike Mailchimp, Omnisend natively allows users to send SMS and push notifications as part of their campaigns. When you’re reading to use a paid plan, Omnisend starts at just $16 per month for up to 500 contacts.

Mailchimp offers a selection of standalone marketing channels, providing numerous options so you can choose the ones that best suit your needs. While they don’t have built-in automation for combining channels, you can integrate it with third-party tools to achieve a similar omnichannel experience. 

However, it’s worth noting that while Mailchimp allows Facebook and Instagram ads to be run from any of its plans, retargeting is limited to its higher tiers, Standard and Premium. Pricing for the Standard plan starts at $20 per month for 500 contacts, shooting up to $100 for 5,000 contacts. Meanwhile, the Premium plan starts at $350 per month for 500 contacts.

While Mailchimp offers a variety of channels, they function more independently. However, you can build and manage campaigns across multiple channels from one unified point through Mailchimp’s Campaign Manager.

Mailchimp vs Omnisend round 6 winner: Omnisend

Round 7: Customer support

Many people believe that getting great customer support from a SaaS email marketing platform is as likely as finding a needle in a haystack. Especially if you’re on a free plan. Unfortunately, in Mailchimp’s case, it’s more true than not.

Users of Mailchimp’s free plan have email support for the first 30 days, then they’ll have to rely on the guides and tutorials. While this does mean the information they need is likely available, it’s also time-consuming and can require a lot of digging to find the appropriate articles.

Ongoing email support begins with the Essentials plan, which also includes live chat. Once on a paid plan, Mailchimp’s customer support is 24/7 and the team can communicate in English, Spanish, or French. Phone support is only available on the Premium plan, which starts at $350 per month for 500 contacts. Here’s a user review on GetApp about Mailchimp’s customer support.

So, what about Omnisend? Surprisingly, it actually bucks the lackluster support trend that is prevalent among ESPs. Omnisend reviews often mention its support: it offers 24/7 customer support on each plan including the free tier. Every customer has access to human assistance. The average response time is under three minutes. Take a look at this user review on GetApp.

Omnisend vs Mailchimp round 7 winner: Omnisend

Verdict

This Omnisend vs Mailchimp comparison reveals key distinctions between both tools to help you select the best one for your specific needs and budget. Although you can migrate to Omnisend from another platform, it can be time-saving to pick the most appropriate platform from the get-go.

Mailchimp may be the best for people who only want basic features, whereas Omnisend is built to help ecommerce stores scale and increase their revenue with better email marketing ROI. The key takeaways from each round are:

• Omnisend is built for ecommerce stores and offers a more robust drag-and-drop builder, superior email templates, and landing page creation functionalities
• Omnisend provides a free plan with valuable features, while Mailchimp’s free plan has significant limitations
• Compared to Mailchimp, Omnisend provides more options and flexibility for segmentation
• Mailchimp integrates with more business apps and web services than Omnisend
• Omnisend’s automation is far more sophisticated while, at the same time, easier to use than Mailchimp’s
• Omnisend embraces omnichannel marketing, while Mailchimp offers a wider range of overall integrations that function more independently
• Omnisend offers 24/7 email and chat support for all users, including those on a free plan, while Mailchimp offers only email support on its free plan for 30 days