Despite its use for decades, email remains the best way for business owners to reach their customers. Even with the introduction of apps, text, and the reimagination of direct calling, customers prefer being reached by email by the businesses they use and it has never been easier to send interesting, beautiful emails as a business owner. Two of the best ways for businesses to create and deliver emails to customers are the Mailchimp and SendInBlue marketing platforms. 

Mailchimp and SendInBlue offer easy-to-design email tools and templates, as well as intuitive list management and additional marketing tools which will help you better communicate with your user base. When choosing between these platforms you should know the differences in pricing, usability, design ability, and list management. This guide will walk you through each of these categories comparing Mailchimp vs SendInBlue. 

Get started by reading the pros and cons of both platforms or jump to the section that’s most applicable to your business situation comparing Mailchimp vs SendInBlue. 

Pros and Cons: 12 Key Differences of Mailchimp vs SendInBlue

While these pros and cons don’t cover every difference between Mailchimp and SendInBlue they will provide you with a high level overview of the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms. 

Now that you know the key differences between Mailchimp and SendInBlue read on for the key features that both platforms offer or are missing. 

Email Marketing Features: Mailchimp vs SendInBlue

The core competency of both Mailchimp and SendInBlue is email marketing but there are key differences between the offerings of both platforms you should know. This section will cover the differences in email delivery, pricing with contacts included, and marketing automation that users should evaluate if their primary use case for Mailchimp vs SendInBlue is email marketing. 

Both Mailchimp and SendInBlue make it simple to create and send emails to contact lists within campaigns. These platforms have similar deliverability scores of around 85% which can be increased with strong contact engagement and a reputable email marketing history. In addition, Mailchimp and SendInBlue make it easy to track your email sends with analytics for your campaigns and lists but Mailchimp edges out SendInBlue here with slightly more user-friendly numbers displays and tools like performance predictions. 

One key difference between the email plans offered by Mailchimp vs SendInBlue is that Mailchimp charges per contact while SendInBlue allows unlimited contacts from the free plan on. Instead SendInBlue charges, in part, by the number of emails you plan to send. This differentiator could affect your choice especially if you plan to have large email lists but send relatively few emails per month. 

Both Mailchimp and SendInBlue offer marketing automation for email campaigns. Mailchimp allows users to map out their automated campaigns and SendInBlue offers trigger automations to send emails to contacts when they perform certain actions. SendInBlue and Mailchimp both offer additional powerful features like sending emails based on best times for contact lists. 

This guide will cover in a later section the ease and difficulty of email design and list management for both Mailchimp vs SendInBlue, so read on for those comparative reviews. 

Key Takeaway: SendInBlue wins out for select email marketing features like automation abilities and not charging for contacts. Mailchimp has a lead when it comes to analytics data. 

Pricing: $0 to $299+ per month plans

While pricing isn’t the top consideration you should have when selecting an email marketing platform, it should be part of your choice framework. This section covers the pricing for both Mailchimp vs SendInBlue plans and the main offerings for these plans. 

When reviewing these options, pay special attention to the features included in the plans and the contact and audience limits you’ll access with the plans. 

Mailchimp Pricing and Plans

Definitions for Mailchimp Offerings

• Audiences, according to Mailchimp, are your collection of subscribed and unsubscribed contacts. 
• Creative Assistant is a Mailchimp tool which allows you to create marketing materials based on your brand inputs so your creations always match your creations. 
• Mailchimp customer journey is Mailchimp’s means of establishing automated workflows for contacts. 

Read more Mailchimp pricing information here. 

SendInBlue Pricing and Plans

Read more SendInBlue pricing information here. 

Key Takeaway: SendInBlue’s free plan is more attractive if you have a lot of contacts and few emails to send. Many of Mailchimp’s premium plans are cheaper than SendInBlue’s if you have less contacts and want more premium features. 

Email Design and Flexibility: Mailchimp vs SendInBlue

Mailchimp’s and SendInBlue’s main marketing products are their user-friendly email marketing tools and one of the top reasons to use these platforms is to design beautiful emails with ease. Rather than hiring an email design consultant, Mailchimp and SendInBlue allow the average business owner or freelancer to input their logo, choose a font and brand colors, and create good-looking emails with custom copy their customers will love. This section will break down the best parts of these platforms’ email design functionality and the areas that could use some work. 

Mailchimp is one of the gold standard platforms when it comes to creating beautiful emails from scratch. With Mailchimp’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop system, you can create new emails with a variety of elements from text, to images, to gifs, to variable rows that can best display the information you want to convey. Mailchimp also offers over a hundred templates that are sure to impress your customers or users while getting across the message you need to send for desktop, mobile, or tablet views. 

SendInBlue also offers an intuitive email builder with a drag-and-drop system which is easy-to-use and allows you to add blocks of text or images to a blank email canvas. Using text personalization pulled from lists, you can automatically have emails personalized for recipients regardless of list size. SendInBlue allows users to import templates from other sites or tools which is a huge plus and also offers over 60 beautiful templates so you don’t have to start from scratch. 

Both platforms allow users to use code for their email creation or use non-technical-friendly tools for building email templates. 

Key Takeaway: Mailchimp wins this category as they offer over 40 more templates than SendInBlue and their templates are slightly more impressive as email design is a core competency. 

Which is better Mailchimp or SendInblue?

Both Mailchimp and SendInBlue offer impressive features and similar prices. Mailchimp is a better choice if you want better email design and analytics. SendInBlue is a better choice if you want more control over your contacts and to offer customer support from your email platform. 

List Management: Campaign Control and Automation 

When choosing an email marketing platform for your business, one of the key needs is user-friendly list management. When subscribers join your email lists, managing their contact information should be user-friendly and with the introduction of more automation tools, it’s essential that email platforms help users manage lists, especially when considering how large these lists can grow. 

Despite its dominance in the email marketing space, Mailchimp is not known for its user-friendliness when it comes to list management. When managing campaigns, you can’t have contacts on multiple lists within these campaigns which can come as a hindrance. As Email Tool Tester points out, you’ll need to manually move these contacts between lists in the same campaign, and you can’t automate this process.

In addition, because Mailchimp charges you per contact, if you have the same contact in multiple campaigns, you’ll end up paying per instance. 

SendInBlue makes the process easier, allowing you to save contacts to multiple lists within campaigns. In addition, you can use automation processes to filter contacts and add them to lists based on their engagement with your email marketing. For example, if contacts across lists aren’t opening emails, you can add them to another list to try to reengage them. 

Key Takeaway: In this category, SendInBlue wins out, offering a more user-friendly experience and easier list management, especially for large lists. 

Marketing Tools: Mailchimp vs SendInBlue

While both Mailchimp and SendInBlue are email marketing platforms first, they both offer additional marketing tools you should be aware of before making your final decision. From landing page creators to support tools to CRMs, this section will cover the additional features offered by Mailchimp vs SendInBlue. 

To allow users to easily subscribe to email lists, Mailchimp offers an advanced system to create and embed landing pages for individual lists. The setup for these pages is relatively simple and will work seamlessly once setup to get contacts added. SendInBlue offers a more elaborate landing page builder system, allowing you to create beautiful pages for subscribers and allow them to even choose the lists they’d like to join. 

While Mailchimp doesn’t have a CRM system, it does offer social profiles which offer the ability to have information added to contact profiles from their ecommerce activity with your store or their social media presence. SendInBlue offers more of a CRM experience by offering the ability to oversee where on your website they’ve visited and to assign contacts to other users for followup actions like sales calls. 

One of SendInBlue’s key differentiators from Mailchimp is support tools for your website like live chat and a ticket system to manage customer support requests. If you’re a business owner interested in these features for your website to manage support tickets, SendInBlue should be your choice of marketing platform so you can handle your support needs from one system. If you prefer Mailchimp’s other features, you could opt for an additional platform for your website that’s support-focused and may have more advanced features. 

Key Takeaway: SendInBlue is a good choice for additional marketing tools if you need support tools and a more advanced CRM. 

Support: Live Chat, Phone Support, and FAQs

Both Mailchimp and SendInBlue offer customer support to customers in the form of helpful guides, email support, and live chat but there are a few key differences you should know before making your decision. Support will likely be one of your needs as a new email marketer and knowing how you’ll be supported by your email platform is important.

Mailchimp offers a knowledge base, and live chat and email support but only for paying customers. If you’re on the free plan, you won’t receive support assistance apart from available guides for different issues. Mailchimp does offer useful teaching content including articles and videos to walk users through email setup and marketing. Mailchimp also offers phone support to premium users which is a useful feature if you opt for a more expensive plan. 

SendInBlue offers support via email and phone support to users, starting at the lite and premium tiers. This is useful, especially if you’re just starting out and need some additional help as you build your email list. SendInBlue also offers guides and FAQs which are useful and are available to all users including the free tier. 

Key Takeaway: Mailchimp has better support between their more extensive guides and videos, and offering of live chat, in addition to email and phone support. 

Final Takeaway: Mailchimp vs SendInBlue

Both Mailchimp and SendInBlue offer impressive email marketing features and would be great choices as your new email platform but your final decision should rest in the offered features that would best support your business. 

If you prioritize beautiful email design and value analytics insights for your campaigns, you should choose Mailchimp. This email marketing platform is one of the world’s leading options for good reason as it’s supremely user-friendly and is a reliable choice for email delivery, regardless of audience size. 

If you’d prefer a free plan without caps on contacts or you want to add support functionality within your email marketing platform, you should choose SendInBlue. SendInBlue is also an excellent choice for managing contacts across lists and boasts impressive automation features if you want to map out email sends or actions when contacts make an action. 

While both platforms come with unique offerings, you would be hard-pressed to go wrong with either of these platforms. Email marketing is an essential part of expanding your business and Mailchimp and SendInBlue are both excellent platforms to enable this expansion.