Emails offer a way to personalize your communications to customers, unlike other digital marketing strategies like ads, social media and blog posts. ConvertKit and MailChimp allow you to send your emails directly to customers’ inboxes. This allows for one-to-one communication.

No matter how many customers a company has, it will require reliable, scalable email marketing software. A solution that allows for personalization and powerful reporting will be essential to ensure you reach the right audience.

This article will cover all details about ConvertKit (and MailChimp) – two popular email newsletter apps. You can compare their features to find the best one for your business.

What is ConvertKit?

Nathan Barry founded ConvertKit, a high-quality email service provider. With its simplicity, automation and other incredible features, ConvertKit is one of the most rapidly-developing email marketing businesses in the world. It also comes with landing pages and customizable sign-up forms to increase your email subscribers.

ConvertKit allows you to create responsive opt-in forms that can be added to your website. The forms adjust their location automatically, such as at the ends of posts or sidebars. There are many forms you can create, each offering an incentive to sign-up.

You can also set opt-in forms and CTAs for specific posts. You can modify text, patterns, colors and textures on the platform’s three landing pages templates.

MailChimp: What’s it all about?

MailChimp is a leading email marketing service. It offers both large and small businesses generous plans and handles huge volumes of emails for large organizations.

MailChimp offers low-cost plans that are affordable for startups and provides robust technology tools as well as analytical features to improve business performance. This allows users to use email to stay in touch with customers and leads, promote products, and convert prospects into sales.

This platform allows you to create, execute, analyze, and report on email campaigns and ads. You can manage your subscribers, create custom reports and monitor click-through rates and success rates. You can also track your emails and ensure full transparency. You can also choose from pre-made templates, or create your own.

Start-ups and small businesses can take advantage of the freemium plan. This allows you to send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 2000 subscribers. The main features of the free plan include the ability to create ad campaigns as well as the ability to automate marketing workflows. You can even track and send campaigns from your mobile phone via the app. 

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: The Battle between Email Marketing Apps

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: User Interface Comparison

ConvertKit User Interface

ConvertKit’s interface is somewhere in between confusing and intuitive. Some tasks, such as building workflows, are easy thanks to the bold buttons that guide you. Some features, like segmentation and reporting, are hidden. You will need to go to Broadcasts for any email metrics. Reporting is not available on the navigation. Segments are located in the lower part of the Subscribers page. They can be found in a small column on the right.

ConvertKit has its own vocabulary which makes it harder for new users to understand. “Sequences”, which refers to automated emails, and “Automations”, which refers to customized workflows. ConvertKit uses Broadcasts rather than email.

MailChimp User Interface

MailChimp’s interface is intuitive. The top navigation displays the various functions. MailChimp’s word choices, which include templates, audience and campaigns, are easier to comprehend. The platform is easy to use, with most editing experiences having a drag-and drop feature.

MailChimp’s improvements, which go beyond email marketing and include landing pages, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram remarketing ads, social posts, and printed postcards have all impacted the user interface. The Campaigns tab displays all marketing assets currently available, while the Templates tab shows only email templates. 

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Support Comparison

ConvertKit Support

You can contact the solution via its dashboard’s sticky help button. Any plan customer can contact the live chat or email support anytime between Monday and Friday, 8 AM – 8 PM. These support options are not available on weekends.

You can also get peer-to-peer support from ConvertKit users via the online support forum. ConvertKit also has a Knowledge Base with tons of articles that will help you solve your problem. Demo videos are available on every main feature page. These demo videos will help you make the most of its functionality.

MailChimp Support

MailChimp offers self-service support.

You will not have access to the Knowledge Center or the ability to submit tickets if you select the free plan. You can get 24/7 email support if you choose the paid plan. Only the most expensive pricing plan offers phone support.

MailChimp’s Knowledge Center contains a variety of useful articles that are packed with screenshots, videos and other information to assist you in solving your problem.

Scroll down to the bottom to find contact information if you wish to submit a ticket.

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: A/B Testing Comparison

ConvertKit A/B testing

ConvertKit offers simple and straightforward A/B testing of subject lines. You’ll see A/B right below your first subject line field when you create an email. Click on it to expand and add a second field for your second subject line. ConvertKits will take care of everything else. Each version is sent to 15% of the recipients. The winning version will then be sent to 70% within two hours. You cannot control the testing time or percentages.

Once you have sent the email, you will be able to monitor metrics and the results of the A/B testing by clicking on the email to view the report.

MailChimp A/B Test

A/B Testing is not available in MailChimp’s free plan. You can A/B-test one of the following variables if you pay for this platform: subject line (from), name, sending time and content. You can use the “content” variable to test different email templates and blocks of content using the drag-and drop editor of MailChimp.

Only one type of variable can be selected, but you can create up to three variations. MailChimp creates separate email campaigns that are sent to different subscribers. If you have an e-commerce company connected to your account, you can track open rate, click through rate and total revenue to determine which email is the winner.

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Email Creation Comparison

ConvertKit Email Creation

ConvertKit embeds all content and formatting through a WYSIWYG. You can only edit the font size, color and alignments or add photos and files to ConvertKit.

You can customize the email or add more formatting. ConvertKit offers three templates that will help you get started with HTML if you don’t have much knowledge.

MailChimp Email Creation

MailChimp offers more flexibility and visual aesthetics for users to create emails. There are 14 templates available that include pre-positioned text, photos and headline blocks. You can also add content and modify colors, fonts and images.

You can also choose from over 80 themes. These templates are supercharged with fonts, colors and background images.

MailChimp’s drag and drop editor can be used to create an email from scratch or choose a template. The editor has a few blocks that allow non-designers to quickly modify the layout and customize the overall look.

MailChimp also allows you to collect feedback as you create your emails. All your comments from friends will be displayed in the Comment section of the email editor.

ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Segmentation Comparison

ConvertKit Segmentation

ConvertKit’s segmentation tools are intuitive and powerful. There are 10 filters you can choose from, including first name, subscription date and distance from a specific city. You can also create a custom field. You can also combine filters using the Boolean operators “and”, “or”, or “not”. You could create a segment of subscribers who live in Canada and have subscribed for certain days.

ConvertKit’s segmentation allows you to capitalize on tags to make your list clearer. To monitor any subscriber activity, you can create a tag. You can, for example, tag subscribers who click on a particular link or download a certain file. You can then use the segment builder for combining tags into a list, or to communicate with a particular group of subscribers.

MailChimp Segmentation

MailChimp allows you to select conditions from a dropdown list to filter contacts based on the information about your audience. ConvertKit doesn’t limit the number of filters that you can use in each segment. Each segment can contain up to five conditions.

Segmentation can be done in many ways. This depends on how much data you have in MailChimp. MailChimp will give you all details about your customers who have purchased from an online store you have integrated.

MailChimp also offers advanced tools that can be used to improve segmentation options. Social Profiles can be used to group contacts based on the websites they visit and what social media platforms they use. MailChimp Pro also helps you manage large audiences that combine “any” or “all” logic into one segment.

MailChimp vs ConvertKit – Forms and Landing Pages Comparison

ConvertKit forms and landing pages

ConvertKits offers many ways to create forms and landing pages. ConvertKit allows you to host landing pages on your domain or in WordPress. You can also insert forms on your website or landing page.

It’s easy to create a form. Select the display format you want (inline, slide-in, modal or slide-in), then customize the font, colors, fields, buttons, success message, and other details. You can then copy the code into HTML or Javascript and get a shareable URL or embed using Unbounce.

You can use the same steps to create a landing webpage and put a ConvertKit Form on it. There are 24 templates available. You can also customize the text, image, color, font, and form fields. ConvertKit hosts the page automatically for you and provides you with a shareable link. You can also use ConvertKit’s WordPress plugin to host the landing pages.

MailChimp forms and landing pages

MailChimp’s process for creating forms is more difficult than ConvertKit. If you want to create an embedded form, click on Embedded Forms in the form creation process. This will take you to a page that contains the code you need to insert on your website. To make any changes to this form you will need to visit the form builder on a different page.

Pop-up forms allow you to customize the design, form fields and code.

Good news: The process of creating a landing page is much simpler. There are eight different templates that you can choose from and you can then modify the page using the drag-and drop feature. You can modify the form and fields of a template layout that has a form in the landing page editor.

MailChimp vs ConvertKit: Reporting Comparison

ConvertKit Reporting

ConvertKit’s Subscribers tab shows you a graph of total subscribers over time. Below is a row that displays lifetime totals, average open rate and average click-through rates, as well as the number of emails delivered.

You need to visit the appropriate tabs to view specific metrics for landing pages or email. To view email metrics, click on the Broadcasts tab to see an overview of all emails’ metrics. Or click into each email to see the detailed metrics. You can have automated emails sent to you by analyzing reports. To do this, navigate to the Sequences Tab.

MailChimp Reporting

MailChimp Reporting is more organized, with four reports available in the Reports tab. Basic metrics can be found at campaign level, including subscribers with the highest open rates, click-through rates, top links accessed and bounce rate. 

MailChimp will connect your online store to MailChimp. Your report will show the number of orders, average order revenues, and total revenue from the email.

Premium accounts have access to comparative reporting that allows you to combine data from different emails into one shareable report. This allows you to identify patterns in subscriber engagement, and improve and target your campaign content.

MailChimp offers another report to help you create landing pages. It displays clicks, views, sign-ups and conversion rates as well as orders and revenue.

MailChimp vs ConvertKit – Integrations Comparison

ConvertKit Integrations

ConvertKit provides native integration to many solutions. This allows data flow to be smooth and facilitates collaboration between departments. These native integrations are:

• Shopify
• Unbounce
• WordPress
• WooCommerce
• Squarespace
• Stripe
• Acuity Scheduling

ConvertKit does not have integrations with popular software like PayPal, SurveyMonkey and Canva. ConvertKit provides an API and lots of documentation to help you create integrations with other software.

MailChimp Integrations

MailChimp offers more than 200 integrations to a variety of categories including e-commerce and payments. These integrations are available with popular software:

• WordPress
• Chargify
• Xero
• Google Analytics
• Canva
• PayPal
• ClickFunnels

MailChimp, just like ConvertKit offers an API. MailChimp doesn’t offer support for integrations created using the API. If you have any questions, please contact a MailChimp Integration Expert.

MailChimp and ConvertKit: Pricing Comparison

ConvertKit Pricing

ConvertKit offers a free 2-week trial so you can see if it is right for your business. Pricing depends on how many subscribers you have, and not the features. All plans will have the same features. ConvertKit can be quite expensive. For 1 to 1000 subscribers, the cheapest pricing plan costs around $29 per month.

MailChimp Pricing

MailChimp offers a free plan. This plan includes email support and allows you to send 10,000 emails per month. You can also manage a contact list of up 2,000 people. It does not provide basic email templates and there is no A/B testing.

There are three pricing options:

• For up to 500 contacts, $9.99 per month
• $29.99/month for up to 2500 contacts
• $49.99/month for up to 5K contacts
• For up to 10,000 contacts, $74.99/month

ConvertKit or MailChimp Which is better, ConvertKit or MailChimp?

ConvertKit vs MailChimp: ConvertKit is the best tool for bloggers in email marketing. MailChimp is perfect for eCommerce store owners who require site and user tracking.

These two platforms are great options for email marketing tools that can help you expand your reach and increase conversion rates.

If you have any experience with ConvertKit, MailChimp or both, please leave a comment. We would love to hear from you!