MailChimp is the market-leading email marketing platform for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). Established nearly twenty years ago, it is now widely trusted by users across the world. But alternative platforms may be cheaper or better suited to your business. Take a look below for the best five suggestions for 2020.
MailChimp’s Features
The primary service of MailChimp is as a mass-communication and marketing platform. It allows you to send out messages in bulk to your customers and subscribers.
It features pre-designed templates and designs for marketing campaigns and newsletters; automated workflow; and useful reporting functions that integrate with other software and services. Individual users can be targeted by personalisation tags. With all these features, MailChimp makes a good benchmark for competitors.
Alternative Platforms to MailChimp
Aweber
Aweber is one of the longest-running services available and, after MailChimp, is the most popular current platform for SMEs.
Aweber’s key selling points are its penetrating delivery success rate and automation features. Its charges are based on graduated fee packages that depend on the number of subscribers, with unlimited messages and features. It offers a 30-day free trial.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue includes many of MailChimp’s advanced features including automation, templates and social media integration. Additionally, it has the unusual feature of SMS communication, so it can be a good bet if you want to target customers on their mobiles.
Sendinblue charges are based on the number of emails sent rather than the number of subscribers, so might be cost-effective if you are interested in selecting smaller subsets of target customers.
Omnisend
Omnisend is a higher-end platform that integrates with the CRM system, Omnisend. It is aimed at e-commerce applications and as well as email, integrates with social media and SMS.
Omnisend is a more powerful and sophisticated platform than MailChimp and is aimed at more advanced marketers and businesses. Pricing is based on the number of emails sent.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is among the simplest of the email communication platforms. It is targeted primarily at bloggers and smaller purveyors of content. This makes it particularly easy to use, and very suitable if you’re looking for a no-fuss solution that’s easy to start with.
ConvertKit has two plans: Free, for up to 1000 subscribers, and Complete for over 1000. Complete also includes greater integrations, reporting features and visual automation funnels.
Getresponse
Getresponse offers good automation features including autoresponders, a platform for webinars and an easy landing page builder. It is designed mainly for automated marketing purposes.
Getresponse will be useful to you if you need to streamline operations with limited input, but the initial setup can be more involved. They offer a 30-day free trial. The Basic plan features a single sales funnel, and the Plus plan has five funnels.
