ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Which Is Better? [An Honest Comparison]

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp
ConvertKit vs Mailchimp

ConvertKit is an excellent email platform for online creators such as bloggers. Mailchimp targets almost every marketer. Here's our honest side by side comparison of these email marketing platforms.

Looking for an in-depth and honest ConvertKit vs Mailchimp comparison? You’re in the right place.

There are way too many email marketing platforms available online. Out of them, both ConvertKit and Mailchimp provide excellent value for money.

ConvertKit is exclusively designed for online creators and Mailchimp is designed for every marketer in the world.

So which is better: ConvertKit or Mailchimp? In this detailed comparison post, let’s find out;

  • What is ConvertKit along with its features and interface
  • What is Mailchimp along with its features and interface
  • Every major feature side by side comparison of both these platforms
  • Pros and cons of both
  • Pricing plans (along with their free plans comparison)
  • And many more

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get started without much ado.

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp [Side by Side Comparison]

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp

Which is Better?ConvertKitMailchimp
Pricing$29/Month$9.99/Month
Offers a FREE plan?YesYes
Landing pagesYesYes
Charges you extra for duplicate/redundant subscribers?NoYes
Suitable forBeginners, freelancers, bloggers, YouTubers and online creatorsAll kinds of marketers
Free Trial Link

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp Features Comparison

What is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit is an email marketing platform that was launched by Nathan Barry in 2013 as a side project. It offers all the essentials you need to build and grow an email list ranging from building landing pages to opt-in forms to segmentation.

Features of ConvertKit:

  • Access to landing page builder
  • Offers easy to customize opt-in forms
  • Visual automations
  • The ability to group your subscribers with tags and segments
  • Excellent reporting to track your email conversions
  • It is a subscriber-centric email marketing platform (you won’t get charged for duplicate or redundant subscribers)
  • Easy integrations with platforms like Shopify, Gumroad etc
  • Easy to switch to ConvertKit (they also offer free migrations)
  • Provides an excellent delivery rate of 99%

Click here to activate 14 days free trial of ConvertKit (No credit card required!)

Here’s how the interface of ConvertKit looks like;

convertkit user interface

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an email marketing and automation platform that was founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong. It is one of the widely used email marketing platforms that offers excellent features like easy to use interface, behavioral tagging, marketing CRM and so on.

Features of Mailchimp:

  • Marketing CRM
  • Audience Dashboard
  • Access to Tags & Segmentation to Manage Your Email Lists
  • Behavioral Targeting
  • Lookalike Audiences
  • Access to A/B testing
  • Custom branding
  • Provides 24/7 support

Here’s how the interface of Mailchimp looks like;

interface of Mailchimp

Who’s the winner?

Both ConvertKit and Mailchimp offer a plethora of useful features to rock your email marketing campaigns. Both have easy to use interfaces and it’s TIE between both of them when it comes to features and user interface.

Subscribers

Here’s a caveat for those who want to try Mailchimp. Mailchimp charges you for duplicate subscribers.

What does it mean?

For instance, if you have two lead magnets called “eBook A” and “eBook B”, and if a person signs up to get both those lead magnets, then you get charged twice for that one subscriber.

That means, Mailchimp treats them like two separate people, even though it’s the same subscriber on your list.

Mailchimp is list-centric whereas ConvertKit is subscriber-centric.

So what does it mean by subscriber-centric platform?

On the ConvertKit platform, each one of your subscribers is only counted once and you won’t be charged for duplicate subscribers.

So if we take the same above-mentioned example of having two lead magnets called “eBook A” and “eBook B”, and if a person signs up to get both those lead magnets, then you be counted as just one contact and you won’t be charged twice for that one subscriber.

Are you getting it?

Not only does it make it easy for you to manage your email list but it also eliminates redundant/duplicate subscribers from your list. The best part is that you will be charged for unique subscribers unlike Mailchimp which charges even for duplicate contacts.

So the clear winner here is ConvertKit over Mailchimp when it comes to managing your email subscribers.

Looking for a free trial of ConvertKit? Check out this amazing ConvertKit free trial post to find more details.

Here’s how the interface of “Subscribers” on ConvertKit looks like;

convertkit subscribers

Here’s how the interface of “Subscribers” on Mailchimp looks like;

mailchimp subscribers

Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit offer “tags” and “segments” to easily manage your list of email subscribers.

ConvertKit tags and segments

As you can see above, “Tags” help you easily organize people whereas the “Segments” help you filter contacts that meet a certain criteria such as buying a product, subscribing to a particular email list, opening an email etc.

If you want to easily manage your lists using tags and segments, you can use either of them as both ConvertKit and Mailchimp offer you these features.

So who’s the winner?

ConvertKit is clearly the winner as it is a subscriber-centric email marketing platform and offers much better features to effectively manage your list.

Email Automation

Email marketing is all about automation. Automate everything from broadcasts to email sequences to sales newsletters. That’s how you set up an email funnel that helps you generate more traffic, leads and sales on autopilot.

Email automation is available in both Mailchimp and ConvertKit and both of them offer you solid automation features.

We REALLY liked visual automations from ConvertKit over Mailchimp automations.

Here’s how the interface of “Automations” look like in ConvertKit;

automations from ConvertKit

As you can see above, we already have set up multiple email courses on our site and created automations using ConvertKit. It shows you visual automations so you can easily understand your subscriber’s journey.

With ConvertKit’s visual automations, you can do a ton of useful things to take your email marketing to the next level including;

  • Create automated email funnels including sales funnels
  • Create rules based on your subscribers actions
  • Easily customize a subscriber’s path based on their actions such as clicking a link, buying a product etc
  • Find out exactly what’s next for your subscriber (so you’ll have the full control over your subscribers’ path and you can add/delete or edit your emails anytime you want effortlessly)
  • Segment your subscribers based on their actions such as completing a course, buying something from you etc

If you’re new to visual automations, don’t worry as ConvertKit offers you pre-made visual automation templates so you can pick any of them to create automations.

Here’s how it looks like;

automations from ConvertKit

Okay, let’s now talk about Mailchimp’s automations.

Here’s how the interface of Automations on Mailchimp looks like;

automations from mailchimp

As you can see above, you can create four types of email automations with Mailchimp which are;

  • Emails (you can use them to set up an email that sends automatically based on the triggers you choose)
  • Transactional Email (you can send triggered emails to your customers via API)
  • Retargeting ads (you can bring people back to your site with Facebook, Instagram, or Google ads)
  • Postcards (you can easily schedule a recurring postcard campaign to send people reminders, coupons, and more)

One best part about using Mailchimp for email automation is that you can retarget ads so you can bring people back to your site from Facebook, Instagram and Google ads.

Here’s how its looks like;

retargeting ads

So who’s the winner?

As mentioned above, we really liked email automations from ConvertKit but if you’re someone who’s looking to use retargeted ads to bring specific contacts or visitors to your site, Mailchimp is for you.

So it’s a tie!

Landing Pages

Email marketing is NOT just about sending emails to your subscribers. You need to create landing pages as they often help you with better conversions.

It’s always better to pick an email marketing platform that offers landing pages by default so you don’t have to spend extra money on landing page builders. Fortunately, both ConvertKit and Mailchimp help you easily create landing pages.

Let’s talk about how they look like in both these email platforms.

Here’s how the interface of ConvertKit landing pages look like;

landing pages convertkit

As you can see above, ConvertKit shows you all the data from one place where you’ll find everything from landing pages to email opt-in forms along with the information including;

  • Number of visitors
  • Number of people subscribed
  • Total conversion rate

To create a landing page on ConvertKit, go to “Landing Pages & Forms” tab and click on Landing Pages. Then, it will show you a list of landing page templates that you can use to build your landing pages.

Quick note: You can either host these landing pages on ConvertKit’s platform or you can host them on your own website. The choice is yours!

Here’s how their landing page templates look like;

landing page templates

As you can see above, there are a wide range of templates available ranging from eBook-specific landing pages to webinar based landing pages. Pick the one that suits your needs and then host your landing pages either on ConvertKit or your website.

Once you pick any of your preferred template, you’ll then be redirected to ConvertKit’s in-built landing page builder where you can easily customize each element on the page by clicking on it.

Here’s how it looks like;

landing page builder

See that? You can easily customize every element on your landing page including title, image, background, and you can also add new buttons or fields such as name, email address etc.

You can also use custom CSS elements if you want to give a unique design to your landing pages.

Once you’re done with the content creation of your landing pages, you can save and publish.

By default, all your landing pages & forms will be hosted on ConvertKit’s platform. But if you want to host them on your website, you can easily do that too. You can do that easily by embedding your landing page or form onto your site with one line of JavaScript.

Here’s how the interface of Mailchimp landing pages look like;

landing page mailchimp

As you can see above, it’s extremely easy to build and design landing pages on Mailchimp as it offers you a free landing page builder.

Mailchimp also offers a wide range of templates that you can use to build your landing pages.

Have a look at their landing page templates;

landing page mailchimp

When you pick any template, you’ll see blocks to edit and customize your landing pages.

So who’s the winner?

Although Mailchimp offers a free landing page builder along with the templates, ConvertKit has an edge when it comes to creating landing pages as it’s extremely easy to use and you can host your landing pages either on ConvertKit’s platform or your website.

Newsletters & Email Deliverability

ConvertKit calls your regular newsletters as “Broadcasts” whereas you can create and send newsletters from Mailchimp’s “Create Email” section.

Here’s how the Broadcasts interface looks like in ConvertKit.

convertkit broadcasts

As you can see above, we regularly use ConvertKit to send frequent newsletters to our subscribers and its interface shows you all the data including;

  • Number of recipients the email was sent to
  • Overall email open rate
  • Overall click rate
  • Number of clicks
  • Number of unsubscribed people from a particular newsletter

So you can quickly have a look at that important data to see and analyse what’s working well for you and what’s not.

To create a newsletter, you just need to click on the “New Broadcast” button and you’re ready to go.

Have a look;

new emails

As you can see above, you’ll see a plain and simple editor to create your newsletter (it works very similar to the WordPress editor where you can edit anything from using bold letters to bullet points to hyperlinks).

You’ll also have the ability to personalize your newsletters by using subscriber’s name, email address, tags etc.

Here’s how the newsletters interface looks like in Mailchimp.

mailchimp emails

As you can see above, to create and send an email newsletter to your subscribers, you need to visit the Create section > click on Email to create an email (as shown above).

Then, you can simply enter a campaign name to begin creating newsletters. Mailchimp also offers a wide range of email templates to choose from (ranging from featured templates to basic templates).

Once you pick any template, you can start creating content for your newsletter.

Mailchimp also offers a ton of blocks in their Campaign Builder so you can add or modify everything from;

  • Body text
  • Footer
  • Video
  • Social follows
  • Buttons
  • Share and so on

Have a look;

email design

So who’s the winner? Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit provide you an easy way to create and schedule your broadcasts or newsletters.

But ConvertKit makes it even simpler as you don’t have to play with anything. Just create a newsletter and schedule or publish without having to play with a ton of blocks unlike Mailchimp.

Now, let’s talk about the email deliverability of both these email marketing platforms.

Email deliverability is the ability to deliver emails to your subscribers’ inboxes vs their spam folders.

Higher email deliverability means your emails will be sent to a maximum number of people in your lists which ultimately helps you with better open rates, more traffic and sales.

ConvertKit claims to provide an email deliverability rate of more than 99% which means, 99% of your subscribers are going to get your emails. ConvertKit also sent over a billion messages with a delivery rate of 99%.

The major reason for such a high email deliverability rate is because ConvertKit uses the best email practices such as plain and simple email templates.

Mailchimp doesn’t exclusively share any data regarding the email deliverability rates but their deliverability rate will be comparatively lesser because they provide email templates with a lot of customizations (to put it simply, fancy emails).

So the winner is ConvertKit when it comes to email deliverability as it focuses MORE on content and LESS on those elements that might lead your emails reaching to the spam folders.

Pricing Plans

ConvertKit pricing: ConvertKit recently introduced a FREE plan so it now has two pricing packages which are listed below.

  1. Free plan (free for up to 1000 subscribers but with limited features)
  2. Complete plan

Free plan doesn’t offer ConvertKit’s exclusive features like visual automation funnels, email sequences, premium support and integrations

So if you want to grab those features with unlimited limits, you should go with their “Complete plan” and the pricing structure depends on the number of subscribers you’ve.

Here’s how it works;

  • $29 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers
  • $49 per month For up to 3,000 subscribers
  • $79 per month For up to 5,000 subscribers
  • $99 per month For up to 8,000 subscribers
  • $119 per month For up to 10,000 subscribers
  • The pricing goes up according to your email list

So what are you waiting for? Use the following link to grab their FREE trial.

Click here to activate 14 days free trial of ConvertKit (No credit card required!)

Mailchimp pricing: Mailchimp currently has the following FOUR pricing packages.

  1. Free
  2. Essentials
  3. Standard
  4. Premium

1. Free plan is free to use and you can manage up to 2k subscribers with the following features.

  • 7 marketing channels
  • 1-click automations
  • Basic templates
  • Marketing CRM

2. Essentials plan is where you’ll get all the premium features from Mailchimp and its pricing starts at $9.99 per month where you can manage up to 500 contacts. You’ll get the following features;

  • All email templates
  • A/B testing
  • Custom branding
  • 24/7 g support

3. Standard plan costs you $14.99 per month and you’ll get all the features plan from Essential plan plus;

  • Advanced audience insights
  • Retargeting ads
  • Custom templates
  • Behavioral targeting automation series

4. Premium plan costs you $299 per month and you’ll get all the features plan from Premium plan plus;

  • Advanced segmentation
  • Multivariate testing
  • Unlimited seats and role-based access
  • Phone support

Click here to try Mailchimp today

Free Plans Comparison In Detail

Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit offer free plans to their users. So we’ll now compare their free plans in detail so you can understand their “catch”.

Mailchimp Free Plan

One major reason to consider Mailchimp over ConvertKit is that their free plan allows you to add up to 2000 subscribers. So if you’re just getting started with email marketing and don’t have the budget to build an email list, you can try Mailchimp’s free plan.

With their free plan, you can send up to 10,000 emails per month. You will get 30-days email support access with Mailchimp’s free plan.

Read: GetResponse vs MailChimp: Which Is Better?

ConvertKit Free Plan

With ConvertKit’s free plan, you can manage up to 1000 contacts.

With their free plan, you can create unlimited landing pages and email opt-in forms and it allows you to send unlimited email broadcasts to 1000 subscribers.

You don’t get any customer support with ConvertKit’s free plan. With their free plan, you can try their “Refer a Friend” program to get access to more features such as;

  • Each successful referral lets both you and your friend add 100 subscribers to manage for free
  • The more friends you refer to creating a ConvertKit account, the more subscribers you can add in your own account (Limit is: 1000 subscribers)

Pros and Cons

ConvertKit Pros & Cons:

Pros:

  • ConvertKit offers you free migrations so you can easily migrate from your existing email software without losing any data
  • Offers you a free plan which allows you to manage up to 1k subscribers for free
  • You can send unlimited email newsletters with all the plans (whereas Mailchimp has limits as you can send a certain amount of emails with their plans)
  • We REALLY like ConvertKit’s seamless visual automation editor
  • You can easily manage your email list using tags and segments
  • The ability to build unlimited landing pages even with their free plan
  • They give you access to a huge knowledgebase where you can find a ton of tutorials and videos on using ConvertKit
  • The ability to auto resend broadcasts to un-opens which ultimately helps you with better better email open rates and conversions
  • Gives you access to their Facebook group called “The ConvertKit Family” which is a great place to get your questions answered by others
  • ConvertKit is intuitive and extremely easy to use

Cons:

  • ConvertKit premium plan “Complete” starts at $29 per month where you can manage up to 1k contacts and it’s expensive when compared to Mailchimp

Click here to activate 14 days free trial of ConvertKit (No credit card required!)

Mailchimp Pros & Cons:

Pros:

  • Just like ConvertKit, Mailchimp also offers a free plan where you can manage up to 2k contacts (so you can manage a bigger list with their free plan when compared to ConvertKit)
  • Mailchimp premium plan called “Essentials plan” costs you just $9.99 per month (much cheaper than ConvertKit) where you can manage up to 500 contacts
  • You can integrate Mailchimp with up to 300 apps
  • Offers you marketing CRM which gives you a holistic view of your email subscribers
  • Provides you pre-built templates, ready-made segments and 1-click automations
  • Offers you built‑in analytics that provide you real-time reports
  • Access to 24/7 customer support (email and chat support) and phone support is also available with their high-end plan which is “Premium plan”
  • You can create and run Facebook ads targeting your subscribers
  • You can perform A/B testing with your email newsletters
  • Offers a free Mailchimp domain with all the plans (including their Free plan)
  • Mailchimp offers a 15% SPECIAL discount to nonprofits and charities

Cons:

  • Mailchimp doesn’t offer any free migrations from other email marketing services like ConvertKit does

Read: ActiveCampaign Pricing Plans: Which Plan is Worth Your Money?

How to Switch from Mailchimp to ConvertKit?

There are two ways to switch from Mailchimp to ConvertKit. One is to import manually (by yourself) and the other is to avail FREE migration service from ConvertKit.

1. Free migration: First, let’s talk about the easy way which is FREE migration.

Here’s how ConvertKit’s free migration works.

convertkit migration

As you can see above, their free migration works in the following simple steps.

  • Give their customer support staff your migration details
  • They will assign someone to do the FREE migration for you (they’ll also give you a date)
  • That’s it, once it’s done, you’re ready to use ConvertKit

2. Manual method: If you want to get your hands dirty and have little technical skills, here’s a simple tutorial on switching from Mailchimp to ConvertKit.

Once you’ve created an account with ConvertKit, click on the Add Subscribers button.

It will instantly show you a popup where you need to select “Import from another provider” as shown below.

import settings

Luckily, ConvertKit already offers seamless integrations from a few email marketing providers and Mailchimp as one of them.

Once you click on the “Import from another provider”, you’ll instantly see the Mailchimp option as shown in below.

import from mailchimp

Now, you can easily import with just a click using their MailChimp importer!

api key

As you can see above, enter your MailChimp API key, click to continue the import, and all your Subscribers will be imported to ConvertKit.

That’s it, you’re done!

Note: You can also import lists individually from Mailchimp. You can find more in-depth information on how to do that from ConvertKit’s website.

Read: 6 Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives With Pros & Cons
Read: 10 ActiveCampaign Tips to Improve Email Performance in 2024


Final Thoughts on Mailchimp vs ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a favorite email marketing platform for most of the online creators including bloggers whereas Mailchimp is one of the widely used email platforms in the world.

From email deliverability to managing your subscribers and creating landing pages to email opt-in forms, ConvertKit is way better than Mailchimp.

Mailchimp excels in affordable pricing and retargeting ads. If you’re an online creator such as a blogger or a product creator, you should definitely try ConvertKit as it provides you every email marketing feature you need.

So what are your thoughts? Which one are you going to try among ConvertKit vs Mailchimp? If you have any questions, do let us know in the comments.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (8)

  1. Hello Anil Sir,

    This is a great article and fantastic reviews about Converkit and Mailchimp, I think Mailchimp will good for me. Earlier i was planning to go for Convertkit, had I not been to this article.

    Thanks for sharing great content!

    Reply
  2. Hey Anil ,

    You clearly mention the purpose of these tool. Most of the new blogger struggle to find best tool in internet. This article help me to understand why to use converkit and mailchimp .
    Thanx

    Reply
  3. I am still a MailChimp user. But after reading this article I think I should give it a try. Convert kit plans are also really good so I hope that convert kit would a great choice.

    Anyway thanks for this in detail guide as you always do.

    Reply
  4. Hi Anil,

    It’s an amazing and really in-depth comparison article. I personally like Convertkit and I think it’s a best choice for bloggers and small businesses owners. Though if any wants to learn email marketing then Mailchimp would be good option since Mailchimp has better free version and easy to use.

    Either way, Thanks for writing this amazing comparison post.

    Cheers.

    Reply
  5. The article is well written and concise. I believe when beginners are in like two moods on whether they’ve to work on this or that, the article showcases perfectly what is needed. For me personally Mailchimp helps my business but I guess, Convertkit is not that bad too.

    Reply
  6. Thank you Anil. The thing with MailChimp is that they can be funny at times as it seems part of their terms do not allow using the service to promote make money and related affiliate marketing content via email marketing.

    And talking about Convertkit, apart from price I think it’s more flexible as compared to MailChimp.

    Reply
  7. Great Stuff!
    I have tried Mailchimp and its pretty easy to operate. But after reading your article I would definitely like to try Converterkit too.

    Reply
  8. Hello Anil Bro,

    Mailchimp is an ideal choice for newbies to learn more about email marketing tools as it offers free account for upto 2k subscribers. Whilst Convert is a great option for experienced and professional bloggers and Marketers. It comes with some decent tools and features that help you increase conversion and gain more leads. Thanks for sharing this awesome review post

    Regards,
    Vishwajeet Kumar

    Reply

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