ConvertKit vs Mailchimp – Bloggers’ Choice in 2024

This guide compares two popular email marketing tools, ConvertKit and Mailchimp, highlighting their features, usability, and suitability for different users. ConvertKit is praised for its user-friendly interface, excellent customer support, and features tailored for professional bloggers, such as automation and integration capabilities. Mailchimp, on the other hand, is recognized for its strong branding and appeal to eCommerce businesses, offering robust automation features and a user-friendly design. This guide aims to help buyers choose the right tool based on their specific needs.

Businesses use email marketing tools all the time to keep their customers informed and engaged. However, email marketing tools are not just for businesses.

Individual eCommerce store owners and even bloggers can use email templates to reach out to a larger audience base.

They need to get regular readers to subscribe and keep them coming back to the blog.

If you are a blogger, this ‘goal’ of getting repeat visits and decreasing the chances of users going dormant, can be achieved by smartly using automation tools for email to your advantage

There are a number of tools that you can pick from if you are thinking seriously about investing in email automation. 

However, in this post, we will discuss two of the most popular options – ConvertKit and MailChimp.

I’ve reviewed these two tools in depth, for you to be able to make a pick quickly. Let’s read through our detailed convertkit vs mailchimp comparison.

ConvertKit – Complete Review

A Complete Review for Bloggers

ConvertKit is the first drip email marketing tool that comes to mind for those bloggers who take their blogging business pretty seriously.

This is a ‘pro’s’ tool. Nevertheless, it has a simple and handy interface.

convertkit

What stands out about ConvertKit is their customer support and knowledge repository that can be accessed by anyone who needs help with email, at all times.

To find which is better convertkit or mailchimp let us explore more about Convertkit and see what it has to offer:

ConvertKit Features

The features that ConvertKit offers for marketing email are very well thought off.

From growing your audience, to understand who your users are and what they like/dislike, to get users to subscribe, ConvertKit’s smart users let you do all this and more:

  • Forms and Reporting: Convertkit helps you grow your business using smart forms and reports with easy drag and drop editor.
  • Use forms that can be easily embedded and are customizable, for converting readers to subscribers with the use of drag and drop editor. Similarly, you can use the reporting feature to keep track of how your website or blog is performing. Reporting gives you a quick glimpse into your subscriber data as well as opt-ins and A/B testing.
convertkit sign up form

Automation: Helps send emails at the right time, with the right messages targeted at the right audience. The best thing about ConvertKit automation is that your message is always on point. Because ConvertKit enables you to track how your content is performing and how your subscribers are reacting, you can target your audience with the right message. Visual automation helps you build custom paths for your funnels by connecting events, actions, and conditions.

Emails are triggered based on a certain predefined user action, and therefore always relevant and in-line with user behavior. We’ll talk about the automation feature in detail in a while, after explaining all the features useful for bloggers.

The workflows can also be easily edited. All you need to do to edit a sequence is to click on the workflow, open the item and make the required changes.

Segmentation and Broadcasting: ConvertKit helps you segment your users into specific segments and send them highly targeted messages. For example, new subscribers are always segmented under one email list and sent a welcome message.

Similarly, dormant readers can be grouped under a list and sent emails that can nudge them to become active again. ConvertKit also enables broadcasting, which means you can send one-off messages/emails to all your users. For example, if there is an announcement that you’ll not be posting for a week on social media, or need to send out a newsletter to all your users to their email address, this feature works pretty well.

ConvertKit Landing Pages

The whole point of using an email marketing tools for your blog is to be able to get the right audience to subscribe, engage, re-engage, and buy. You need your users’ email addresses to send them content in their email boxes and to keep targeting them with timely, relevant content. With ConvertKit, you can get these addresses with pop-ups, forms, etc. And then, this tool also allows you to create landing pages in a jiffy.

Creating landing pages using ConvertKit is a straightforward process. Click on the ‘Forms’ page on the homepage. Pick the option using which you want to gather leads – a) form b) landing pages.

In this case, you’ll have to select option B. Next, select a style from the landing pages template options that ConvertKit offers. There are four basic template style options that can be customized and edited as per your requirement.

In ConvertKit, you can efficiently manage landing page settings.

What this means is that you have the option to save your landing page with a specific name and display your landing page in a way you like.

Convertkit offers page

For example, you can either publish the landing page as an individual page or choose to display it as a form on your current website.

Landing page settings also allow you to embed Twitter cards on your landing page, edit inline success messages, or redirect subscribers to thank you page.

Make sure you save the settings that you make. All the options that you can explore in the Landing Page Setting options have been explained here in this link.

This feature wouldn’t have been of much use, or you could say that it would be incomplete without reporting capabilities.

After you have a convertkit account signup you will be able to track the number of subscribers or visitors who made it to your landing page, how many of those visitors became subscribers, and the conversion rate. The section that allows you to view your subscriber report also allows you to see traffic sources from where users landed up on the landing page.

ConvertKit for Professional Bloggers

Now here is something that every blogger must understand – there is a difference between those who just blog and those who consider blogging as a profession.

The latter is the set of people who don’t just write but earn real money from it.

They are successfully able to understand who their audience is, what their potential reader base prefers reading, and how to get them interested enough in subscribing.

For ConvertKit, the ultimate goal for professional bloggers, which is increasing subscriptions, matters.

convertkit review on qoura

It is one tool that knows how to make things easy for professional bloggers who want to attract a large audience of readers and keep it growing.

Now, the thing that makes ConvertKit the best tool for bloggers is that it has been created by bloggers for bloggers.

That’s how ConvertKit understands all the pain points and all the plus points of those in the blogging business and addresses them so well.

Some ConvertKit features that make life much simpler for professional bloggers are:

Lead Magnet Opt-ins: This works like a double opt-in for users. So, as soon as a user downloads a lead magnet, they will become a part of your Email Address list management.

WordPress Integration: Most bloggers – those who have just started out and those who are quite popular professionals, use WordPress as their content management system.

The good news is that ConvertKit integrates easily with WordPress. Simply embed the code on any area of the site or use their plugin to integrate with your WordPress blog.

Resend Unopened Emails: Not everyone opens an email at the time they receive it. Some people even miss out an email sent for the first time.

ConvertKit tracks opens and unopens. It then re-sends unopened emails after a specific duration to make sure that users don’t miss out on any communication.

My vote is undoubtedly for ConvertKit when it comes to selecting anemail marketing tool for bloggers.

Apart from being extremely user-friendly and easy to use with the tool, ConvertKit as a company is focused entirely on helping bloggers with enormous reading material to learn from.

To put in a nutshell, ConvertKit is the smartest choice who is looking for a tool to monetize their list management.

ConvertKit Automation

As promised, I’ll be delving deeper into this ConvertKit feature. The reason – email marketing is a pretty ordinary deal without sensible automation.

And, being built by bloggers for bloggers, the ConvertKit team understands automation quite well.

convertkit automation

The first thing that they understand about bloggers is that they need a tool that makes automation look like a simple task.

Therefore, they created what is known as a visual automation builder.

ConvertKit with their automation feature ensures that when a subscriber joins their Email Address list, they are sent a series of well-timed, relevant emails to convert them into long-term subscribers/loyal customers.

Key Benefits of ConvertKit Automation

Allows you to send targeted, highly relevant content to users. Visual automation allows you to always track what’s happening at each level of the funnel.

You can, in one glance, get to know the number of users who have completed each step and converted from one phase to another.

Ultimately, this tells you how your content is performing and if it needs to be optimized for better results.

key benefits of convertkit automation

Makes it simple for you to edit content as per your requirement. If conversions on your funnel are below satisfactory or even average, you must think about making some edits to your content or to the way you are presenting it.

With ConvertKit’s simple and seamless editor you can edit forms, sequences, and even entire workflows.

Helps trigger emails based on specific predefined actions and conditions. Trigger based email marketing is key to sending highly relevant and personalized communication.

People don’t like to be bombarded with random information look like out of context and is of no use to them.

Trigger-based email addresses this flaw. Emails hit the inbox only when a user has completed a certain action or meets a specific predefined condition.

Allows simple ‘if this then that’ based automation workflow. For those who don’t want to run complete automation sequences, Convertkit allows automation based on simple ‘if this then that’ based rules. This still helps keep communication that is being sent out relevant for users.

Makes automatic broadcasting simple. Every time a new post is published, or in case you are changing the look like and feel of your website, you might want to send out this important information to all your users.

This is why ConvertKit helps automate broadcast emails as well. You can select a time (you could pick the time slot when email open rates are highest) to send out broadcast emails.

ConvertKit Pricing

To most of us, pricing is a critical deciding factor when it comes to finalizing a product, such as a marketing tool for email. That’s how it is with investment in SaaS tools as well.

You will not buy something that is priced too heavily for your requirements. Let’s see if ConvertKit is a good fit for your budget.

convertkit pricing

You can create a free convertkit account and check their performance through using free plan and free trials too. Convertkit offer a free plan to help users get started.

The good thing about convertkit pricing is that it is based on the number of subscribers that your blog has. They bill you either monthly or annually based on your preference. You have a calculator to estimate the total cost for your subscribers.

The starting price is $0.00 for 1000 subscribers,  further the pricing depends on what their calculator estimates. Check out all their pricing options here.

ConvertKit Integration

There is no dearth of integrations that ConvertKit offers.

From Zapier to Wix to WP Engine, Demio, LeadsBridge, Teachable, Shopify, OptinMonster, LeadPages, GetSiteControl, ClickFunnels, Gumroad  List goal to Wishlist, you name the tool and ConvertKit seems to work well with the platform.

Most of these tools that ConvertKit integrates with are very useful for bloggers. Depending on which tool your integration requirement you can use the search feature and get all options filtered.

convertkit g2 review

GDPR and CCPA Update: ConvertKit has overhauled its infrastructure to become compliant with GDPR and CCPA.

They have introduced several new features to make GDPR and CCPA compliance easy and transparent.  Some of them are:

  • Find EU subscribers: You can quickly filter your EU customers so that you can find which subscribers need consent.
  • Add checkboxes inside the forms to get consent from new subscribers. The text for the checkboxes is easily customizable so the users can make changes as per their specific needs.
  • Right to erasure where on request all the data of an individual will be deleted from the database.

MailChimp As An Email Marketing Automation Tool

MailChimp as an Email Marketing Automation Tool

Moving on to the next part of our convertkit vs mailchimp comparison and discuss the second tool. 

MailChimp is a popular alternative to ConvertKit for those who are thinking about investing in an email marketing tool. In fact, MailChimp is the first name that strikes anyone who is considering email marketing seriously.

And that’s not without reason. MailChimp’s branding has been class apart and therefore extremely successful in creating a high recall rate.

Everyone knows MailChimp! But, is it the best email marketing automation tool for all businesses?

mailchimp

MailChimp Introduction:  For bloggers or for eCommerce businesses?

The next part of our convertkit and mailchimp comparison is reviewing MailChimp that will help us understand which is better convertkit or mailchimp.

While I won’t say that if you are a blogger, you can’t opt for MailChimp, I’d definitely say that it is a better option if you are in the eCommerce business instead. 

Even MailChimp focuses its website on the benefits that it offers to eCommerce stores. Its feature page is on point for eCommerce merchants and how they can sell more stuff using MailChimp.

The tool provides powerful email marketing for online sellers, about which we shall discuss in detail in another section.

mailchimp engagement chart

It also helps streamline your marketing efforts and help run ads on social media platforms to gain a wider reach.

Creating landing pages with MailChimp is easy to use as pie. As an eCommerce merchant, the look and feel of your landing pages matters. Your landing page design can attract or repel users. MailChimp offers you email templates to pick from.

The plus point is that there is a clear call-to-action for users to move from the landing page to a path closer to converting. Giving a brand appeal to emails is also something that MailChimp takes care of. Designing need not require you to have any coding knowledge. You can use their drag and drop editor to customize your email templates as per your brand’s requirement.

MailChimp’s email marketing analytics feature is a boon. You can access the advanced reporting feature from any device and keep track of your website conversions.

mailchimp analytics page

Having an idea about how your campaigns are performing help you figure out the flaws and optimize for improved performance.

Mailchimp Generative AI tools

Mailchimp has introduced Generative AI tools, such as Email Content Generator, Send Day and Send Time Optimization, Content Optimizer, Creative Assistant, Purchase Likelihood and Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Journey Builder Next Action Recommendations, Subject Line / Header / Preview Text Generation with GPT, Alt-text Generation, Stock Image Suggestion, and Campaign Performance Benchmarking.

These AI tools leverage a combination of in-house models and third-party AI products, including Intuit’s AI infrastructure, to assist small businesses and marketers in generating, optimizing, and benchmarking their email marketing campaigns, with detailed insights and recommendations to enhance campaign performance.

MailChimp Pricing

MailChimp’s pricing is uncomplicated, and that is another reason why it is so popular amongst people from all walks of online businesses.

What’s even better is that they don’t seem like a splurge. All their plans are intelligently priced. Mailchimp offers a Forever Free plan too!

However, this free plan is for only those businesses that have 2000 contacts or less. And, you can’t send more than 12000 emails per month if you are opting for it’s free plan.

Their plans for growing businesses are priced starting at $6.91 per month.

The pro plan is priced starting at $138/month. Check out their pricing details and the features offered in each plan here.

mailchimp pricing

MailChimp Automation for eCommerce websites

There are a number of email marketing use cases for eCommerce merchants who are planning to invest in MailChimp due to its ease of use.

For example, using their marketing automation, eCommerce store owners can build segments and apply custom rules to send out trigger-based emails. They could automate email with mailchimp to send out free gifts to the new subscriber list spreading some love and joy to the new set of customers and run social media ads.

As an eCommerce merchant, you can also send out retargeting emails to dormant users who haven’t added anything to their cart for the past few months. Or, you could send reminder emails to those users who have added products to cart but not checked out.

Another reason why eCommerce website owners love MailChimp is that emails created using MailChimp are beautiful irrespective of the device that the user opens them on. Also, emails can be created on MailChimp mobile app too! Which means ease and convenience for the merchant working with MailChimp. How much more flexible could any tool get?

MailChimp update:  With the introduction of GDPR and CCPA customers need to take care of how they are using the personal data of the EU citizens. For all the customers who are using MailChimp can continue using it without any GDPR and CCPA concerns. You can build .forms that are GDPR and CCPA ready and can use it for everything ranging from hosted to pop-ups to every other form.

ConvertKit vs MailChimp

ConvertKit vs MailChimp

I’ve compared both ConvertKit and Mailchimp in depth, and the only point of comparison between ConvertKit that I’d like to re-emphasize is that both these tools are for different users. The major takeaway in this Convertkit and Mailchimp comparison is that while ConvertKit is a great tool for bloggers with A/B testing, MailChimp is the best option for eCommerce merchants. Both these tools are priced in a way that both beginners and professionals can consider to invest in them. However, when you compare Convertkit and Mailchimp there are certain specific features that you might want to read about in detail if you are still confused between the two.

For example, while MailChimp offers excellent design flexibility, automation workflows in ConvertKit are unbeatable. Also, MailChimp has advanced functionalities for eCommerce businesses that might not be of any use to a blogger. For example, their email delivery messages such as abandoned cart emails, order notification emails, product recommendation emails, etc.

mailchimp design capability

MailChimp users can also send Direct Mail Postcards, which are personalized printed postcards for your global audience. This is a great branding exercise that they undertake to build better relations with their users to keep them loyal and make them feel special. Opting for a free trial of both these tools makes sense if you are delving too deep and want absolutely the best for your business.

Email marketing services market radar

Our Experience

Our Experience

When you compare convertkit and mailchimp then you realise that ConvertKit is the best tool for bloggers when it comes to email marketing software; MailChimp is more for eCommerce merchants who need website and user tracking. Both ConvertKit and Mailchimp are popular amongst their respective user bases. So, if you are looking for an email management tool to increase your reach or to improve conversions on your blog or website, consider these two options for sure.

MailChimp focuses a lot on branding; therefore, eCommerce merchants can indeed benefit a lot from using this email management tool.

ConvertKit focuses on ease of use and making the best of your email list, which is why it is the perfect choice for bloggers. All in all, if you’ve taken a free demo of both these tools, you’ll need no further convincing on why you should look no further.

I hope I’ve been able to review these two tools in the best manner and helped you make a choice. Happy blogging! And, happy selling for eCommerce merchants.

An Overview

An overview of ConvertKit vs Mailchimp

FactorsMailchimpConvertkit
What We LikeReporting and analytics are well detailed.
Integrations have always been a strong asset for Mailchimp
Their free plan is really good.
Marketing automation of Convertkit is really good.
Contact management is very easy to implement.
What We don’t LikeList management is not very easy to do.
Automation lacks visual workflow making things slightly complicated.
Reporting is very basic.
Email templates do not have several design options. As they believe that simple text-based emails perform better.
Value for MoneyWhen you have fewer contacts Mailchimp is good.
But it is not that value for money when you scale up.
Good list management and automation features are helpful for bloggers.
Not certainly the cheapest option available.
Who should use it?Small to medium-sized businesses.Professional bloggers.
Our Score4.4/54.2/5

FAQs

Questions related to comparison of ConvertKit vs MailChimp:

What is ConvertKit and what does it do?

ConvertKit is an email marketing tool that helps you with your sales and send emails. It offers integrations with more than 50 platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify and many more.

Is ConvertKit better than MailChimp?

ConvertKit is specifically designed email marketing software for professional bloggers while MailChimp works well for small businesses. So, both have their benefits depending on the purpose you have them for.

Is ConvertKit good for email marketing?

Yes, Convertkit offers some great features like impressive landing pages , automate email , integration with WordPress , lead magnet opt-ins. It works well for professional bloggers who want to know their audience and convince them to subscribe.

How much does ConvertKit cost? Is it cheaper than MailChimp?

0-1k subscribers- $29
1-3k subscribers-$49
3-5k subscribers-$79
No, it is not cheaper than MailChimp.

What are some good alternatives to MailChimp?

Some good alternatives to MailChimp for small businesses are MailerLite, Brevo, Aweber, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign.

Pritha Bose
Pritha Bose

I am an accomplished content marketing and communications expert with over 10 years of experience in the EdTech and SaaS industries. In my current role as a content marketer, I create engaging stories and campaigns focused on #marketingb2b, #contentdesign, #marketingdesign, #contentmarketing, and #marketingautomation. I have deep expertise in marketing automation, ecommerce tools, email marketing, project management, and content strategy. I have a proven track record of working cross-functionally to build brand awareness and promote products through immersive storytelling and campaigns. Previously, I have led content and communications initiatives for various EdTech businesses and internet products. I am skilled at developing content that resonates with key stakeholders while positioning brands strategically. With my passion for team collaboration and hands-on approach, I thrive at managing freelancers, designers, and engineers to deliver impactful campaigns across digital channels and domains. My breadth of experience allows me to be a trusted advisor to companies seeking to amplify their message and connect authentically with target audiences.

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  1. Gloria Mitchell April 22, 2019 at 10:13 AM

    Coming from a non-techy background initially I was intimidated while using ConvertKit but when I started using it I was quite surprised by how easy it is.Also, it has a number of dedicated videos to help people understand on how to use it. A little bit of graphics and more visual faces will help make this software a lot more intuitive.

  2. MailChimp is pretty popular but convertKit also has certain features that makes it worth a try. I am really impressed with their email automation where the email are superbly personalized.

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