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See FeaturesOmnisend vs MailerLite: Features, pricing & more
Email marketing, with its ability to deliver unmatched results, has become a key component of business growth. When looking for the most suitable email marketing platforms, Omnisend vs MailerLite is a worthy comparison.
Omnisend is tailored for ecommerce businesses seeking a comprehensive omnichannel marketing experience. MailerLite, on the other hand, is a user-friendly platform offering essential email marketing features at a competitive price. It caters to a wide range of businesses, with a focus on simplicity and efficiency.
In this post, we’ll review the essential email marketing capabilities of Omnisend vs MailerLite, including templates, email builder, automation workflows, and segmentation. This comparative analysis includes an in-depth understanding of each platform’s features.
Additionally, we’ll compare their pricing structures, breaking down the costs associated with different plans and the value offered at each tier.
By the end of this article, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how Omnisend and MailerLite stack up against each other. This should enable you to make a well-informed decision on which platform best suits your email marketing needs.
Omnisend vs MailerLite: Overview
Omnisend and MailerLite have both garnered impressive ratings from users. Omnisend boasts a 4.6 out of 5-star rating on G2, while Mailerlite holds a 4.7 rating.
While MailerLite is lauded for its user-friendly interface and budget-conscious plans, users praise Omnisend for its powerful automation capabilities.
Here’s an overview of their main features to help you decide which platform suits your marketing needs.
Feature | Omnisend | MailerLite |
Best for | Ecommerce businesses | Businesses of all sizes |
Free plan | ✅ | ✅ |
Pricing | Starts from $16/month | Starts from $10/month |
Email marketing features | Drag-and-drop builder, automation workflows, A/B testing | Drag-and-drop editor, basic automation |
Email list building features | Popups, forms, landing pages, teasers, Wheel of Fortune | Embedded forms, popups, landing pages |
Marketing channels | Email, SMS, push notifications, Google and Facebook retargeting | Email (with integration for SMS and push notifications) |
Ecommerce features | Discount codes, cart recovery, product recommendations, product reports | Product recommendations, automation, abandoned cart emails |
Segmentation | Advanced segmentation based on subscriber behavior and purchase history | Basic segmentation based on demographics and email activity |
Support | 24/7 email and chat support on all plans, priority support for Pro plan customers | 24/7 email and chat support only for paid plan users |
Pricing
Let’s get to the good stuff first: how do MailerLite pricing and Omnisend pricing compare?
The good news is that both MailerLite and Omnisend offer a free tier and paid plans, with pricing varying depending on the number of recipients you have.
The generosity of the free plans is heavily in Omnisend’s favor, as MailerLite’s free plan does not provide access to the following:
- Newsletter templates
- Custom HTML editor
- Clickmaps
- Sending a repeated email to recipients who didn’t open the first one
In comparison, Omnisend’s free plan does include all of the features that are available on its paid plans, such as:
- Email templates
- Pre-built workflows and automations
- Popups
- Clickmaps
- Sending a repeated email to recipients who didn’t open the first one
- Discount coupon codes
- Facebook Custom Audiences and Google Customer Match
- Gamification signup form Wheel of Fortune
In addition, Omnisend’s free plan includes 500 web push notifications each month, allowing you to message up to 250 contacts.
The Omnisend vs MailerLite differences continue with the paid plans, too. Notably, Omnisend offers 24/7 chat and live support on all plans, including the Free tier and the Standard plan, which starts at $16/month. The Pro plan offers a dedicated Customer Success Manager once your monthly bill reaches $400. MailerLite’s paid plans offer 24/7 email and live chat support, but a dedicated manager costs an additional $100/month regardless of your existing monthly spend.
Both MailerLite and Omnisend’s pricing depends on the number of subscribers you have. Although Omnisend’s Standard plan costs more at $44/month for 2,500 subscribers compared to MailerLite’s pricing of $25, it’s worth noting Omnisend’s additional features: SMS, web push notifications, retargeting, and gamification.
For more information, use our email pricing calculator below to quickly compare costs and features with MailerLite. Simply input your desired number of contacts, select MailerLite from the list, and see how Omnisend stacks up against it.
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Email marketing features
When comparing Omnisend vs MailerLite in terms of email marketing features, both tools offer robust options.
For email templates, MailerLite and Omnisend offer a wide range of pre-designed, mobile-responsive templates. They’re suitable for various email campaigns, including welcome emails, newsletters, and promotional offers.
You can customize these templates with their branding and messaging. However, Omnisend allows for more extensive customization within the templates, enabling you to build unique layouts with dynamic content blocks.
When it comes to building emails from scratch, both tools offer drag-and-drop email builders that make it easy to create professional-looking emails. Both platforms offer a wide range of layout options and content blocks to personalize emails based on customer data.
Omnisend’s email builder supports A/B testing, enabling you to experiment with different designs and content to optimize your campaigns. Additionally, the Product Listing feature allows you to add products from your store directly to your emails.
Meanwhile, MailerLite’s email editor includes a range of advanced features, such as custom HTML for creating complex email designs and AI suggestions for email content.
In terms of email automation, Omnisend’s options are highly focused on ecommerce. It offers pre-built workflows for common ecommerce tasks, such as cart recovery and order confirmation. Because these options are highly customizable, you can create complex workflows tailored to their specific business needs.
MailerLite’s automation options are more general-focused. You can set up automated workflows triggered by various actions, such as subscribing to a list, making a purchase, or clicking a link.
Marketing channels
The names of the platforms give an insight into what they offer: Omnisend offers omnichannel features, whereas MailerLite is focused on mail.
That’s not to say that MailerLite features are lacking. It packs most of what you’d expect an email marketing platform to offer, such as automations, landing pages, and signup forms — although in a generally basic way.
Omnisend goes multiple steps further, though. It’s the Swiss army knife of email marketing platforms, offering not only the usual features noted above but additional features, including:
- Push notifications
- SMS
- Advanced features for growing your email and SMS list
- Dynamic syncing of your contacts with your Facebook and Google ad accounts to retarget potential buyers
While MailerLite focuses primarily on email marketing, Facebook retargeting is available on the advanced plan.
Ecommerce features
Omnisend and MailerLite both support ecommerce stores, integrating directly with other platforms (including Shopify and WooCommerce) in addition to dozens of third-party apps, including Zapier — enabling users to sync with additional platforms or create their own automations.
They’re also both capable of adding products from your store into your campaigns. This makes building emails a breeze, especially when you need to quickly make a campaign — such as for the upcoming holidays. With your email marketing platform linked to your ecommerce store, you can simply import your products, complete with images, descriptions, and prices.
Omnisend, on the other hand, offers up its unique Product Picker, which makes it very easy for merchants to add their products (and all related info) to their campaign newsletters:
This feature also enables you to send tailored emails to segments of your audience, such as sending products related to purchase or browsing history to particular people, increasing the likelihood of new sales.
One of the main features required of an ecommerce-focused email marketing platform is the ability to send cart abandonment emails. MailerLite features include ecommerce automation triggers when the account is linked to WooCommerce or Shopify, giving users the ability to send emails to site visitors who added items to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase.
Omnisend also offers automated cart abandonment emails, but whereas MailerLite will only send them to subscribed contacts, Omnisend will deliver to subscribed and non-subscribed contacts. Both platforms have premade emails to choose from, but Omnisend also offers a selection of full workflows:
As a final consideration, Omnisend can send automated SMS and push notifications as well, which allows you to reach people even when they’re not checking their email inboxes.
? Check out the detailed Mailerlite alternatives article to make the right choice.
Email list building features
Having great campaigns is one thing, but they’re not going to drive any sales if you don’t have anybody to send them to. That’s why the best email marketing platforms also have tools to help you build your email list.
Neither Omnisend nor MailerLite are slouches in this department, with both packing a variety of popups, landing pages and forms. The popups can be deployed in multiple ways: taking up minimal screen space or the entire page, and appearing when the visitor scrolls to a certain point on the page or as they’re about to leave the site.
Both platforms offer advanced customization options for popups, including adding your own logos and images, choosing from an expansive color palette, adding GDPR-compliant permissions boxes, and segmenting subscribers depending on which popup they subscribe through.
That’s where the audience-building features end for MailerLite and where Omnisend really comes into its own. In addition to the above, Omnisend has a Wheel of Fortune.
Instead of asking visitors to give you their email address in a text box, Wheel of Fortune adds an element of fun and rewards visitors with prizes that you choose – it could be free shipping, a discount, or anything else you want to offer. The Wheel of Fortune form can also appear only when you want it to, whether that’s on specific product pages or when visitors are about to leave the site.
This helps to give Omnisend the edge when it comes to tools for growing your list, but it has another show-stopping feature up its sleeve: letting visitors sign up with just their phone number. You can ask for both an email address and phone number, or one or the other. The advantage is that you can send marketing campaigns to subscribers who have only provided their phone number, whereas other email marketing platforms, like MailerLite, rely on having an email address.
Segmentation
Segmentation is the process of dividing a customer base into distinct groups based on specific criteria. This is an essential feature in email marketing platforms. Both platforms offer segmentation capabilities, but what differences exist between them?
In terms of segment creation, Omnisend offers a head start with 30 pre-built segments while also allowing the creation of segments from scratch. Meanwhile, MailerLite requires the manual creation of every segment.
Both platforms allow segmenting based on basic criteria like interests, demographics, and subscriber actions like email opens and clicks. However, Omnisend offers more options for segmentation, including shopping behavior and web browsing activity.
One of the key strengths of Omnisend’s segmentation is its customer lifecycle-based approach. This feature dynamically assigns each customer a lifecycle stage, providing an easy-to-read lifecycle stage map that helps businesses prioritize and personalize their retention strategies. This allows you to send targeted messages to your most valuable shoppers, driving repeat purchases and maintaining brand loyalty.
When it comes to customization, Omnisend allows the addition of custom data to customer profiles, enabling highly personalized messages. On the other hand, MailerLite’s segmentation is more straightforward and doesn’t provide the same level of ecommerce integration as Omnisend.
Deliverability
Having an email campaign with low deliverability is like having a Ferrari with no wheels: useless.
The reason you put time and effort into building campaigns is for your audience to find them appealing, open them, and visit your store. In order for that to happen, they first need to see the emails.
It’s important to remember that deliverability is influenced by multiple factors, including the reputation of your sending domain and the content of your email. Nonetheless, an email marketing platform’s deliverability score is an important consideration when choosing who to sign up with.
Online reviews can vary, in part because of the multiple factors that influence deliverability. MailerLite doesn’t disclose its deliverability rates, so its users have to monitor their campaigns and track metrics such as the hard and soft bounce rate, unsubscribes, and the number of emails being marked as spam. Conversely, Omnisend provides a full breakdown of your campaign’s deliverability stats, including blocked messages and dead email addresses.
Omnisend also has a useful feature called Safe Send Volume Program, which helps you to ‘warm up’ your contacts lists. When migrating to a new email service provider or starting an account from scratch, you have no service reputation. As a result of this, you’re more likely to land in the spam folder. By warming up your list, you’re establishing a positive reputation and proving to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that you can be trusted, which improves your deliverability.
The Safe Send Volume Program works by limiting the number of emails that you can send each day. This is one of the most effective methods for building a strong reputation, and the program automates the process for you. As a bonus, Omnisend recommends specific segments to send emails to, which will inform you which are the most engaged parts of your audience. This should lead to better performing campaigns in the future.
Conclusion
MailerLite and Omnisend are both popular email marketing platforms for good reason. Each offers a free tier with no time restrictions, making it straightforward to put them through their paces. They also both have reputations for ease of use and intuitive interfaces.
What makes it easier to decide between them is their focus: MailerLite is a very capable email marketing platform, whereas Omnisend is equally capable in that department but also goes further by offering omnichannel features with capabilities to scale.
Marketers looking for a straightforward platform for email only will find MailerLite a worthy option. In fact, based on the relatively light email marketing features it has, it might be better to compare MailterLite vs Mailchimp, rather than a more serious (but easy to use) ecommerce-focused email marketing tool like Omnisend or Klaviyo.
Compare the top email marketing providers so you can find the best platform for your ecommerce store needs.
For the ecommerce store owner looking for integrated marketing options, an automated contacts warm-up process, serious automation workflow and segmentation powers, deep reporting, and gamification designed to boost signup rates, Omnisend is the clear winner.
If you want to try Omnisend for yourself, you can start using all features for free.
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