SendGrid and MailChimp are the most popular email marketing tools in the market. While they’re the two biggest email platforms for higher volume senders and offer tons of useful features, you need to understand how they compare to pick the right tool for your business.
Both MailChimp and SendGrid are designed with different types of businesses in mind. This post will help you decide which is the better tool for your business.
What Is MailChimp?
MailChimp is a powerful email marketing tool that specializes in making sure that your emails reach the right people at the right time. It enables you to formulate an easy design, build, launch, monitor, optimized, targeted email or ad campaigns by targeting your customers based on behavior, preferences, previous purchases and also sends a series of emails with just a single API request.
With 11 million active customers and a total audience of 4 billion users, Mailchimp comes with a feature that helps you lock down your leads and gives them an expected service that grabs their attention.
If you are looking for an email software that gives you an advanced reporting feature which lets you access your sales, revenue or any other report from anywhere, anytime—– Mailchimp is the one for you.
Plug: TeamWave is an integrated CRM, Project Management & HR platform for small business. TeamWave has deep integration with Mailchimp.
Features
- Automation
- Blasts And Targeted Emails
- Reports and Analytics
- A/B Testing
- Abandoned Cart Email
- Auto-Responders
- Click Map
- Click-through Tracking
For a more detailed list of features offered by MailChimp, Click Here
Benefits
- MailChimp can be used for free for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month
- It packs with a lot of functionality in a clean, usability-focused user interface.
- You can automate this by sending out a newsletter that’s populated by content from your RSS feed. All you need to do is create a template and control how much of that content and how often it is sent out.
- It allows delivering mail based on where the recipient resides.
- It offers detailed tracking reports to let you know how well your newsletter fared.
Pricing Plans
Mailchimp’s most popular plan is their free plan. It allows you to store up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month.
Paid Plans:
- Essentials:$9.99—– Includes contacts with up to 50,000 users. All email templates, A/B testing, Custom branding, 24/7 support
- Standard:$14.99 —- Includes Everything in Essentials, plus: Contacts for up to 100,000 users, Automation series, Retargeting ads, Custom templates, Advanced audience insights
- Premium:$299 —– Includes Everything in Standards, plus: contacts with up to 200,000 users, Advanced segmentation, Multivariate testing, Unlimited seats, and role-based access, Phone support
When to choose Mailchimp
- You want simplicity
- You love a good brand experience
- You only need an email solution for marketing
- You want great automation features
- You’re a small business and price is a factor
Cons
- Customer support via phone is available only for premium.
- Awful sign-up/login process
What Is Sendgrid?
Founded in 2009 and acquired by Twilio for $3 billion, Sendgrid is a trusted and powerful email delivery tool that offers tools and features to empower your email marketing campaigns. By using its simple and easy-to-use interface, you can create and design emails the way you want to.
You can send over 4,000 emails per second using Sendgrid. You can also keep a track of emails sent, delivery rates, spam reports, bounces, link clicks and a lot more. SendGrid’s is a transactional email API which simplifies the way you engage your customers and helps you in sending relevant and targeted emails.
With advanced real-time analytics tools, Sendgrid offers world-class deliverability expertise, detailed insights, and reports on various key metrics. Lastly, It supports all major platforms such as Python, PHP, java nodejs, etc.
Features
- Empowered Deliverability
- Gigantic Scalability
- Excellent Customer Service and Support
- SMTP Service
- Custom API Integration
- Open & Click Tracking
- Email Template Engine
- Unsubscribe Tracking
- Reputation Monitoring
- SPAM Filter Testing
Here’s the full list of features
Benefits
- It offers world-class analytics and reports. You can check which messages are delivered, which are marked as spam and more. It also lets you download data to look through it locally.
- If you are getting started or learning about email marketing and transactional emails, SendGrid includes wonderful videos and guides to help you work out any problems you may have. What’s more, it also has a phone, chat and email support available for 24/7.
- When choosing a service to send your application’s emails to, generally you need two. One is to send the newsletter and promotions from the marketing and the other to send your application’s automatic emails and messages. But you need one here.
- The API is very simple to use. Also, the documentation for the API is complete and very useful, covering everything you need to know.
- 12,000 free e-mails per month.
Pricing Plans
In SendGrid’s pricing plans, you can choose whether you want their Email API, Marketing Campaigns, or Email API + Marketing Campaigns. Across these three options, there’s a free plan with 40,000 emails for your first 30 days, then you can send 100/day, forever.
Paid Plans:
- Essentials — Starting: $14.95 — Ideal for teams sending up to 100000 Emails per Month. Includes Core Email API Features and Core Marketing Campaigns Features
- Pro — Starting: $79.95 — Ideal for businesses sending from 100000 to 1.5 Million Emails per Month. Includes features of Essentials plan, plus Data rich email activity feed, Dedicated IP included, Subuser management
- Premium — Custom pricing — Ideal for businesses sending 1.5 Million plus Emails per Month. Includes features of the Pro plan, plus a dedicated customer success manager and Prioritized support.
When to choose Sendgrid
- You’re a developer with complex requirements
- You’re operating at scale
- You need an e-commerce or transactional email solution
- If you want more data
- You need better deliverability
Cons:
- Sendgrid does not support test keys that can be used to check integration with SendGrid and that cannot be used to send a real e-mail out.
- They do not capture the sent emails. It means you cannot check whether the email was sent correctly, and it makes it harder to debug issues that arise.
Summary
Features
| MailChimp | SendGrid |
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Price
| Sendgrid | MailChimp |
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| Premium |
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When to use
| When Sendgrid is the best | When MailChimp is the best |
| You’re a developer with complex requirements | You want simplicity |
| You’re operating at scale | You love a good brand experience |
| You need an e-commerce or transactional email solution | You only need an email solution for marketing |
| You want more data | You want great automation features |
| You need stellar deliverability | You’re a small business and price is a factor |