MailPoet vs. Mailchimp. Should you be using MailPoet? Or should you use Mailchimp instead regardless of what people say about it?

If you want to build an email list, I’m sure the MailPoet vs. Mailchimp argument is on your mind right now.

Well, at least if you’re trying to pick between MailPoet and Mailchimp.

As someone who has been using Mailchimp for a long time, I certainly would recommend Mailchimp for sure.

One of the reasons is that it has a free tier.

Yes, many email marketing platforms these days now offer a free tier.

But it wasn’t the case at all back in early 2010 when I started.

Many well-known email marketing platforms such as AWeber and Constant Contact didn’t even have a free tier.

It’s because of this reason Mailchimp seems to be the go-to email marketing platform if you’re just getting started.

As much as I love the Chimp mascot, it’s sad that Mailchimp is no longer like it used to be.

And it’s all because of this one little change they made regarding the email subscriber count.

MailPoet vs. Mailchimp argument: why the farewell?

Believe it or not, I actually did stop using Mailchimp for a moment to test out Mailerlite.

But funnily enough, I ended up coming back to Mailchimp once again.

The reason? Mailerlite doesn’t have some features that I used in Mailchimp.

And let’s not forget that I can’t seem to make the DMARC work in Mailerlite.

Of course, I can always stick to using Mailchimp like I always have.

But nope, I switched to MailPoet instead since it has the same features as Mailchimp but better.

Thankfully, I have no issues with setting the DMARC in MailPoet.

But even if I have, I still won’t come back to using Mailchimp because of this very reason.

My beef with Mailchimp

Some of you will say that the recent changes on Mailchimp may have to do with its acquisition by Intuit.

But the thing is, those changes were already in place way before Intuit acquired them.

And it makes sense why many authors are making a fuss about it since it sure is odd from the email marketing standpoint.

So, what is it that makes the changes in Mailchimp a strange one, you ask?

Well, it’s the way they treat the people who unsubscribe from your email list.

Like it or not, people who already unsubscribe from your email list still count in your plan.

Let’s say you have 1000 people in your email list. But suddenly you have 10 people unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Now that you have 10 people unsubscribed from your email list, your email subscribers are now down to 990 people.

In other email marketing platforms, they will only consider your total email subscribers to be 990 people.

But not in Mailchimp.

Those 10 people who unsubscribe from your email list still count towards your total email subscribers.

In other words, your email subscribers are still 1000 despite 10 people already unsubscribing from your email list.

The only way you can exclude those ten people who already unsubscribe from your email list is to delete them yourself.

So, why does Mailchimp still include people who already unsubscribed from your email list in your total subscribers?

You can use Mailchimp to reach your audience through other means such as social media and postal mail.

As you can tell, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

People unsubscribe because they don’t want to hear from you anymore. They won’t come back to engage with you even if you reach them through other means.

The design is clunky too

Just be honest here, we all want a beautiful and professionally- designed email newsletter that won’t cost an arm and leg

While you can do that easily with Beehiiv, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Mailchimp, though.

Not only that you can’t do much if you create your own design template from scratch. But the font choices are limited too, making it harder for you to customize the design according to your author branding.

It’s because of this reason people who use Mailchimp tend to have an image-based email rather than emails with long-form text.

There’s no other way to make your marketing campaign cohesive with your website branding.

Sure, it’s doable if you rarely send emails to your audience.

But I’m sure you’ll take it if there’s a shortcut to building a beautiful, professional-looking email template, right?

Maybe we should all avoid using Mailchimp then?

To be honest, I won’t go as far as saying that Mailchimp is a total dud and you should avoid using it altogether.

Yes, Mailchimp isn’t the right fit for you if you want to send a beautiful email newsletter or the latest post notification with zero design skills needed.

But if you’re a business owner with a physical location, have an e-commerce store and you’re a SaaS company, then Mailchimp works best for you.

These types of businesses usually don’t revolve around emails with a huge chunk of text and tend to rely more on visual appeal.

So, Mailchimp tends to work better for these types of email campaigns.

If you’re an author who has an e-commerce store as the main website and you don’t do any content marketing, then Mailchimp will suit you.

But if you’re someone who does content marketing and selling directly, then MailPoet will suit you better than Mailchimp since it can do both.

To put it simply, MailPoet can do both email campaigns that are long-form and product-focused.

But Mailchimp is better suited for product-focused email campaigns rather than long-form content such as an email newsletter.

Will I see myself coming back to Mailchimp again?

Not going to lie that I do have a track record of coming back to Mailchimp when my switch to Mailerlite doesn’t pan out.

But I don’t see myself coming back to using Mailchimp for the time being considering that I can do so much more with MailPoet.

I’ll let you know more about MailPoet in my upcoming post.

And if you want me to notify you about my MailPoet post plus my future blog posts, you can sign up here to receive my latest post as soon as it gets published.