Alternatives to Mailchimp: These are the best email marketing platforms and email campaign services

Mailchimp is one of the most well-known solutions on the market when it comes to sending newsletters and creating email marketing campaigns. A service where all the tools work in unison so that we can meet our objectives and which stands out with its renowned drag-and-drop editor and more than 300 integrations with other services.

Despite its popularity, sometimes we find ourselves looking for alternatives to Mailchimp for various reasons. One of the main ones is that Mailchimp prices quickly increase after exceeding certain thresholds and can disrupt the budgets that SMEs allocate to email marketing.

In specialized pages and forums, names of competitors like Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) often come up. And this is where we discover very different pricing models: one based on contacts and another on sending volume. Prices are not the only reasons for seeking alternatives, of course. Features, analytics, automation, interface, or integration with the systems we already use in the company also play their role.

Speaking of alternatives to Mailchimp, let's cover here the main options that address specific needs. From generous free plans in terms of sends to truly advanced automations, let's delve into each alternative so we can make the best decision when choosing how to send our newsletters.

Alternatives to Mailchimp: A Quick Overview

Before going into details, let's make a quick comparison among the main ones within email marketing software. Let's focus on three key points: what the tool is ideal for, the price it represents, and the most outstanding feature of the service.

As we can see, there are a large number of email marketing tools for everyone for whom Mailchimp has become too limited. But... Which is the best for our business? To answer that, it’s best to analyze their features, functions, whether they have an easy-to-use user interface, or if, for example, they offer a free version.

1. MailerLite: Ideal for Small Businesses with a Tight Budget

MailerLite is a very clean, simple, and, above all, affordable option for small businesses and early-stage projects. It offers a free plan that allows us to store up to 1,000 contacts and send 12,000 emails per month. Without any unexpected price hikes, it allows us to grow our strategy with peace of mind.

Compared to Mailchimp's free plan, MailerLite offers us automations, although basic, and good segmentation in the free plan, while Mailchimp removed those automations from its free tier a little over a year ago. This makes it easier to start automated campaigns from the very beginning.

Key Features of MailerLite

• The drag-and-drop email editor is very well designed and allows us to make any adjustments easily and quickly with just a few clicks.
• Landing page builder for your website.
• Great customization of embeddable forms.
• Ecommerce module ready to integrate your online store.
• All features, with different limitations, are accessible on all tiers.

Pros and Cons

Its greatest advantage is the cleanliness of its interface and minimal learning curve, while its main disadvantage lies in having a more limited template library than other platforms.

Plans and Pricing

• Freemium: up to 1,000 contacts and 12,000 monthly sends.
• Growth: from €9/month for 1,000 contacts with unlimited sends.
• Advanced: from €18/month with additional features like A/B testing and premium support.

Ideal Use Case

We recommend MailerLite for small businesses and startups looking for a simple solution, ready to start sending quickly, without a complex initial setup. It is, ultimately, an email marketing software that offers peace of mind to businesses, as it allows you to increase sending volume without budget surprises.

2. Brevo (Sendinblue): Ideal for flexible sending, pay per volume

Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, offers something that few other alternatives consider: unlimited contacts. We can store our entire address book even on the free plan and only pay for the volume of emails sent.

This monetization model is a great ally if we manage large lists but send campaigns with moderate intervals or simply want to have total control over the budget of each campaign.

Key features of Brevo

• With the free Brevo plan, we have 300 daily sends.
• The tool offers us an integrated CRM and efficient management of unlimited contacts.
• In higher plans, we can use SMS and WhatsApp message sending to support campaigns.
• Live chat support to address doubts and questions.
• Also highlight the efficiency of segmentation tools and templates for campaign generation.

Pros and Cons

The main strength of Brevo is the flexibility of costs and the breadth of integrations, while its biggest drawback is that the Brevo logo always appears on the Starter plan if an add-on to remove it is not contracted.

Plans and Pricing

• Free: unlimited contacts, 300 daily sends.
• Starter: from €6/month for 5,000 emails.
• Business: from €48/month for 20,000 emails.

Ideal use case

Companies with very large lists that send periodic campaigns, or reduced send frequency, and value paying only for the sends they make instead of for the total size of the list they manage.

3. ConvertKit: The Preferred Choice of Creators and Bloggers

ConvertKit, which we often simply call “Kit,” is a tool specifically designed for content creators, social media, and bloggers. Its main focus and greatest strength lie in the simplicity of its automations. 

Its visual setup interface is based on ease of use, so we can very easily support the sale of subscriptions or digital products, all from a single platform — a key benefit to monetize our audience —.

Key Features of ConvertKit

• Visual automation flows that allow us to drag and drop blocks to guide subscribers and achieve sales.
• Integrated checkout to launch paid newsletters, with payment and subscription management in the same interface and without third-party tools.
• Customizable and optimized forms and landing pages to capture leads.
• Dynamic segmentation based on tags we assign, customizable events, and completed purchases.

Pros and Cons

ConvertKit stands out for its great ease in creating email sequences focused on building loyalty among followers and selling digital products. Although the email template library is smaller compared to Mailchimp, the simplicity of the editor is ideal if we prioritize speed and ease.

Plans and Pricing

• Newsletter: Free for up to 10,000 subscribers.
• Creator: €25/month for up to 1,000 subscribers, with basic automations and capture pages.
• Creator Pro: €50/month, adds A/B testing, advanced segmentation, and campaign reporting.

Ideal Use Case

ConvertKit is ideal and fully designed for selling subscription newsletters, ebooks, or online courses without having to resort to multiple platforms. Its focus on the needs of creative professionals and bloggers allows managing campaigns and processing purchases in a single flow.

4. GetResponse: Ideal for comprehensive marketing with a focus on webinars

GetResponse is a benchmark in the email marketing market. It combines newsletters with sales funnel creation and webinar management. This convergence of functionalities makes the platform an option that, if these are our needs, goes far beyond Mailchimp when it comes to centralizing our promotion tools.

Key Features of GetResponse

• Webinar hosting and webinar marketing tools with its own virtual room, integrated recordings, and live chat for doubts and questions.
• Funnel builder with optimized templates to achieve the necessary conversions from sales funnels that we can customize.
• Complex automations with support for conditions, detailed segmentation, and custom event tracking.
• Integrations with Shopify, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads to synchronize our email campaigns and ads automatically.

Pros and Cons

GetResponse stands out above many other alternatives for the completeness of its functionalities, which go far beyond sending emails. The learning curve can be moderate at first, though it is a manageable challenge to unify processes.

Plans and Pricing

• Starter: €16/month for 1,000 contacts, includes email campaigns and autoresponders.
• Marketer: €49/month, adds webinars, funnels, and A/B tests.
• Creator: €57/month, adds creator profile, AI course creator.
• Enterprise: customized plan with dedicated support and extended limits.

Ideal Use Case

GetResponse is the choice if we want to combine newsletter sending with live sessions and conversion funnels without multiplying the tools we rely on. Being able to manage webinars with up to 100 participants, it is a benchmark for online trainers and similar professionals.

5. Moosend: Automations at the Best Price

Moosend offers us unlimited automations and excellent transactional SMTP from the first plans. Its strong point revolves around maximizing the return on investment in the campaigns we launch without this meaning a large increase in costs as the subscriber list grows.

Key Features of Moosend

• Event-based workflows (subscription, click, purchase, cart abandonment) that allow us to design very specific sequences of emails and messages.
• Weather triggers and behavioral conditions to further personalize sends according to the exact context of the user.
• Email templates and landing pages, with a very well-designed drag-and-drop editor that allows us to integrate images and content blocks very quickly.
• Transactional SMTP, included by default in the Pro plan, to automatically manage the sending of order notifications and password resets.

Pros and Cons

The Pro plan starts at 9 euros per month for 500 contacts, with unlimited sends and automation support. At this price, the cost per subscriber is one of the lowest, while the speed in configuring flows is among the best. It is worth noting, on the other hand, that the variety of templates is more limited than in other platforms.

Plans and Prices

• Pro: from €9/month for 500 contacts, unlimited sends.
• Moosend+: customized plan with selection of add-ons according to our needs.
• Enterprise: customized plan with SLA and dedicated account management.

Moosend also offers a 30-day free trial version, with which it is possible to test its functions and see if it is the perfect marketing automation software for your business.

Ideal Use Case

Small companies and ecommerce projects that need drip campaigns and transactional notifications without having to pay extra for old or inactive subscribers.

6. AWeber: The best for classic integrations and for WordPress

AWeber is widely recognized for its excellent WordPress plugin and its extensive list of integrations with services like WooCommerce, Zapier, Salesforce, and many more. In focus, it is a simple tool that does not aim to do more than what it is designed for, which grants it great simplicity and stability. 

Key features of AWeber

• Generous free plan with up to 500 subscribers. Reliable sends and excellent segmentation.
• Drag-and-drop editor that, together with a considerable collection of responsive templates optimized for different devices, allows very good results quickly.
• Behavior-based and custom event automations, with segmentation by clicks or email opens.
• Perfect integration with WordPress, where it offers embeddable forms and automatic synchronization of subscribers and users.

Pros and Cons

AWeber is an almost unbeatable benchmark in stability and technical support, with 24/7 assistance on all paid plans. Its interface has been recently modernized, although we might want greater flexibility in automation design.

Plans and pricing

• Free: up to 500 subscribers, unlimited sends.
• Lite: from €12.50/month for 3 automations, 3 landing pages, and 24/7 support.
• Plus: from €20/month for 500 subscribers, adds A/B testing and form carousels.
• Unlimited: from €899/month for a truly unlimited plan.

Ideal use case

WordPress-based sites looking for a direct and reliable integration to deploy email marketing strategies with ease and at an attractive cost for projects that are just starting.

7. Campaign Monitor: Ideal for Design-Focused Agencies

Campaign Monitor focuses on campaigns that need to be visually impactful and well-segmented. Its design tools, based on a strong collection of templates and A/B testing, make it a benchmark for agencies and marketing teams demanding high standards in appearance and design.

Key Features of Campaign Monitor

• Template-based builder fully customizable, with reusable content blocks between newsletters and Retina image support.
• Dynamic segmentation based on demographics, subscriber behavior, and individual user engagement scoring.
• Integrated A/B testing available for subject lines, content, and designs.
• Detailed reports on the performance of each send and variable, with metrics on opens, clicks, and precise heat maps.

Pros and Cons

The best thing about Campaign Monitor is that it is extremely versatile in terms of design, although some small projects might find the options more complex than necessary. Agencies, for their part, appreciate the ability to manage multiple accounts and brands in a unified and organized way.

Plans and Pricing

• Lite: from €12/month for 500 contacts, unlimited sends.
• Essentials: from €29/month with segmentation tools, free image gallery, and branded templates.
• Premier: from €159/month, includes A/B testing and advanced analytics.

Ideal Use Case

Agencies and marketing teams that require total control over the design and segmentation of their newsletters. A platform that allows combining creativity and analytical data in every send.

8. ActiveCampaign: Powerful Automation and Integrated CRM

ActiveCampaign focuses on combining email marketing itself, excellent automations, and an internal CRM to manage customer relationships without leaving the tool. Its proposition is designed for teams looking to merge marketing and sales into a single workflow.

Key Features of ActiveCampaign

• Automations with conditional logic and multiple triggers (tags, scoring, site visits, etc.).
• Built-in CRM, with opportunity management, task management, and good lead tracking.
• Deep segmentation and lead scoring to identify contacts with the highest conversion potential.
• Integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, and Zapier by default.

Pros and Cons

The power of ActiveCampaign in automation allows us to design highly personalized workflows, although the learning curve to fully leverage this capability can be steep. Its greatest strength is probably in its automations, the reports generated from them, and the collaboration capabilities between teams within the tool.

Plans and Pricing

• Starter: from €15/month with basic automations and unlimited emails.
• Plus: from €49/month, adds CRM and email scheduling.
• Pro: from €79/month, offers lead scoring and behavior predictions.
• Enterprise: from €145/month, full power for the largest companies.

Ideal Use Case

Companies looking to optimize sales and marketing processes, and simultaneously looking for an integrated CRM here that allows automating follow-up emails and segmenting communications according to different stages of the buying cycle.

9. SendGrid: A benchmark in transactional emails

SendGrid is a leading platform for transactional sending. Its strength lies in its enormous stability and its ability to handle millions of emails daily without the slightest incident. With SendGrid we can integrate all the necessary email flows into our applications — registration confirmations, password resets, or order notifications, among others —. The system manages everything with minimal latency and an outstanding delivery rate.

Key Features

• A scalable RESTful API with endpoints for both campaign and transactional sending.
• Dynamic templates that accept custom variables in the message body to automatically tailor the communication.
• Webhooks to receive notifications of deliveries, opens, clicks, and bounces in any service or app we want.
• Alternative SMTP for compatibility with legacy systems or specific frameworks without needing external integrations.

Pros and Cons

SendGrid’s greatest strength is undoubtedly its flexibility for developers and extensive documentation to tailor the service precisely to the project’s needs. It stands out for the speed with which we can send emails from Node.js or Python environments, although less technical users may quickly miss a more capable visual editor.

Plans and Pricing

• Free: up to 100 daily free sends for initial testing.
• Essentials: from €19.95/month for 50,000 monthly sends, no branding.
• Pro: from €89.95/month for higher volume and priority support.
• Premier: custom solution for extreme volumes and advanced SLA.

Ideal Use Case

SendGrid is essential if we develop applications that require a high volume of sends and need full control of the process from the code itself. With access to real-time statistics and integration capacity with every conceivable microservice, flexibility is total.

10. HubSpot: An All-in-One Marketing Software

HubSpot offers us a CRM that works in conjunction with automation and email tools. From a single platform, we can have a complete view of our contacts and, from the first click on a landing page to the last interaction with email campaigns, we can track processes and optimize a unique workflow to our liking. 

Key Features

• Free CRM that stores the entire history of interactions and conversations for each subscriber and user.
• Marketing workflows to send emails based on conditions and scoring across various metrics.
• Drag-and-drop editor to design emails and landing pages in minutes thanks to template customization.
• Comprehensive reports with attribution analysis and ROI directly in the dashboard from which we control the rest of the strategy.

Pros and Cons

The biggest advantages of HubSpot are its interface and a unified ecosystem for all management tasks. It is impressive how easy it is to create complete and truly complex workflows without writing a single line of code — a great benefit for multidisciplinary teams that require automation without always having the knowledge to implement it through code. The main challenge of the tool lies in the price increase when scaling to higher plans.

Plans and Pricing

• Free: CRM, email marketing, and forms with no user limit.
• Starter: from €15/month for up to 1,000 contacts, with live chat.
• Professional: from €792/month, adds advanced automations and A/B testing.
• Enterprise: from €3300/month, with unlimited customization and dedicated support.

Ideal Use Case

HubSpot fits perfectly any company looking to align its marketing and sales departments with a single data repository. Management that, although it may require planning and some time, allows optimizing time and resources without relying on multiple applications and services.

11. Drip: Ecommerce with dynamic segmentation

Drip specializes in automating emails and communications for online stores. Thanks to its integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, among others, we can segment our audiences according to purchasing behavior and launch abandoned cart flows that recover the majority of sales with great efficiency.

Key features

• Segmentation based on ecommerce events and customizable by average order value.
• Automations for abandoned cart, post-purchase follow-up, and cross-selling from a single platform.
• Visual builder to design all marketing emails in a matter of seconds.
• SMS sending capability and integration with Facebook Custom Audiences for multichannel campaigns.

Pros and Cons

Drip excels in its ability to analyze simple data to provide personality in communications. It allows us to quickly identify the highest value segments and create personalized emails based on recipients' purchasing habits. Its biggest drawback? The price can be high for very small lists.

Plans and pricing

• From €39/month for 2500 contacts, includes automations and unlimited sends.
• Progressive scaling based on the number of subscribers, with personalized plans available.

Ideal use case

Drip is aimed at any ecommerce seeking to maximize customer retention and automate different sales processes through flows based on buyer behavior.

12. Klaviyo: The Solution for High-Volume Online Stores

Klaviyo offers us an email marketing platform designed and optimized for e-commerce. One of its greatest strengths lies in predictive segmentation and personalized purchase flows, which allow us to anticipate customer needs and increase repeat purchases.

Key Features

• Predictive segmentation that calculates customer lifetime value (CLV) as a key reference metric.
• Fully automated flows for welcome, cart, and cart recovery.
• Direct integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce.
• Analytics dashboard with heatmaps and sales data correlation to optimize campaigns.

Pros and Cons

Klaviyo stands out, without a doubt, for its accuracy in segmentation and strong reporting capabilities. Besides working with the data itself, it offers insights that help us optimize messages and improve conversion rates with just a few clicks. The price, while very competitive for large volumes, can be high for projects in their initial stages.

Plans and Pricing

• Free up to 250 contacts with unlimited sends.
• From €45/month for 1,000 contacts, price scales according to list size.

Ideal Use Case

Klaviyo is the ideal choice for online stores with recurring sales that require good segmentation. It allows us to tailor and personalize the marketing we send and thereby build customer loyalty.

13. Mailjet: The Choice for Collaborative Teams, Version Control

Mailjet focuses on providing us real-time collaboration tools for our marketing teams. It stands out for its version control system and in-editor comments, which are key for joint campaign review before sending — essential for organizations with multiple content managers —.

Key Features of Mailjet

• Collaborative drag-and-drop editor with comments and approvals module in all sections.
• SMTP and RESTful APIs for integrations with other business tools.
• A/B testing for both subject lines and email designs.
• Deliverability and reputation dashboard with deliverability metrics to give us a clear view of our reach.

Pros and Cons

Mailjet’s greatest Pro is its focus on collaboration and workflow. It allows designers, writers, and product managers to work simultaneously, greatly reducing review times, repetitions, and potential errors. Some small projects, however, might find its interface somewhat complex if they do not need all the options Mailjet offers.

Plans and Pricing

• Free: 6,000 monthly sends, 200 daily sends.
• Essential: from €16/month for 15,000 monthly sends.
• Premium: from €25/month, adds collaboration and dedicated IP addresses.

Ideal Use Case

Mailjet is designed especially for internal teams or agencies that require a uniform workflow with reviews and approvals. Real-time comments are key for real-time work.

Comparison by categories

To shed more light on the comparison of these alternatives and to form a more complete picture, let’s look at them from another perspective. Let’s talk about them from the point of view of security, ease of implementation, hosting type, stability, and more. This is how the different services stand.

Security and compliance

In this section, all platforms comply with GDPR and use TLS encryption, which guarantees the protection of our clients’ data. In this section, HubSpot and ActiveCampaign also stand out, as they offer us access audits and activity logs for corporate environments.

Ease of implementation

MailerLite and Brevo stand out in this section for their plugins for WordPress and Shopify that simplify installation on websites to just a few clicks without needing developers. SendGrid and Mailjet, on the other hand, require more technical setup, although they subsequently offer us total flexibility for customizations through their API.

Customization and integrations

ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo lead in integrations with CRMs and ecommerce platforms, allowing them to connect sales and behavior data with email sending workflows. Mailchimp has an extensive catalog of extensions, while Brevo and GetResponse include a CRM and funnel management within the same tool.

Self-hosted vs managed hosting

Most of the options we have seen are fully managed SaaS solutions, which reduces IT team maintenance load to practically zero. SendGrid, however, offers us the possibility of deploying SMTP on own infrastructure, giving us much greater control for projects with stricter internal policies.

Scalability

Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, and HubSpot are designed to handle databases of hundreds of thousands of addresses from minute one. Meanwhile, Moosend, MailerLite, and Brevo are more suitable for small or medium lists, with plans that scale gradually and predictably in terms of pricing.

Price

For tight budgets, MailerLite has a free tier, and Brevo has a freemium plan, while Moosend Pro offers a very economical starter plan. At the opposite end, Klaviyo and HubSpot require a higher economic commitment from the start, although this is justified by their automation and CRM features.

Among the best alternatives to Mailchimp, which one to choose?

With all the data in hand, which alternative should we choose? The answer depends a lot on our needs, so according to our situation, the recommendations are as follows. 

• Teams with limited budgets: MailerLite or Moosend Pro offer us all their full features from free plans or the most affordable ones. Although with limitations, they are the best options for startups and projects in early stages.
• Large or fast-growing companies: ActiveCampaign or HubSpot focus on the automations typical of a mature project, while their CRM goes beyond sending. Tools that can align marketing and sales teams to quickly achieve our goals.
• Teams that prioritize privacy and compliance: Brevo and HubSpot offer us audit and compliance tools which greatly facilitate data management according to GDPR and similar regulations.
• Ecommerce and online stores: Drip and Klaviyo focus on abandoned cart flows and predictive segmentation based on purchases. They specialize in online stores and aim to maximize conversions and retain customers automatically.

Distributed teams or agencies working collaboratively: Mailjet and Campaign Monitor make real-time collaboration easier through comments and version control. All their tools focus on collaborative work, reducing the cost of approval processes.

13 alternatives to have successful campaigns from day one

We have presented thirteen alternatives to Mailchimp that cover everything from the needs of creators and trainers to the ecommerce projects of multinational companies. Each platform focuses on specific challenges: MailerLite and Brevo stand out for their low initial cost, ConvertKit and Drip for their creator-centered approach, while ActiveCampaign and HubSpot for the CRM integrated into their tools.

The final choice will depend on our budget, volume of sends, and automation requirements, so here we recommend trying several options, perhaps in their free plans, before deciding.

Ultimately, finding the right tool to send our newsletters effectively, keep segmentation well optimized, and maximize the return on our email marketing investment requires some research. Here, we have done much of that research so we can make a well-informed decision and select the best alternative to Mailchimp and succeed in our campaigns from day one.