Email marketing is a mature and competitive field. The tools that allow businesses to succeed are increasingly overlapping in features, making it challenging to decide on the best platform for your needs. This article clarifies the choice between AWeber and Mailchimp.
Find out how each performs in critical areas, and be sure to ask the community any questions that remain unanswered for you in the comments.
AWeber vs Mailchimp: A Brief Introduction
Both offer email marketing tools but extend into other useful areas, such as landing pages, digital marketing, and web push notifications.
What is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp, founded in Atlanta in 2001, is a widely used email marketing service provider. With over 11 million account users and 18 billion monthly emails sent, it offers features such as contact segmentation, opt-in forms, automation, and a digital marketing platform.
Additionally, its free tier makes it easy to integrate with WordPress sites and plugins, making it a popular choice among businesses of all sizes. Many WordPress themes and plugins, such as Divi and Bloom integrations, have built-in Mailchimp integrations.
However, Mailchimp has gotten bad press in recent months for social engineering hacks that could access and scrape the contact lists of individual accounts, even affecting an account owned by WooCommerce.
What is AWeber?
AWeber, founded in 1998, was started to address the needs of sales and support teams by creating autoresponders. AWeber’s name comes from its first big goal of being an “Automated Web Assistant.” It boasts the distinct honor of being the first autoresponder on the market for bulk email.
A long-standing history in email marketing has given AWeber a notable reputation that it has carried into the present. It has continued to iterate on its beloved toolset and fills a unique void in the email marketing industry today.
Mailchimp vs AWeber: Which is Easier to Use?
Ease of use comes down to the tools being easy to comprehend and use, regardless of sophistication. Next, we’ll see which is more user-friendly: AWeber or Mailchimp.
Mailchimp’s Ease of Use
Mailchimp’s user-friendly interface is easy to navigate. The platform’s naming conventions and labeling are primarily clear and intuitive.
It has a simple and logical flow, allowing users to easily create and manage their email campaigns. With its flexibility, the drag-and-drop email editor and the pre-designed templates make it easy for users to create professional emails. Additionally, it has feature-rich automation workflows that allow users to set up automated campaigns and trigger actions based on subscriber behavior.
Overall, Mailchimp’s ease of use is one of its key strengths.
That said, it offers a large platform with many tools baked in. Mailchimp can be incredibly daunting for marketers new to the field, particularly those just starting their careers or operating their own businesses. Mailchimp offers little hands-on support unless you are in the highest-paid tiers. The learning curve can be steep, but if you have a DIYer’s mentality, you can figure out every corner of Mailchimp.
Particular points of confusion revolve around contact management (how audiences work) and detailed performance reporting.
AWeber’s Ease of Use
AWeber is a very usable platform. It can do this by reigning in the number of secondary features it provides. It pretty much sticks to email, forms/landing pages, and web notifications. Because there isn’t bloat with social media marketing and other related tools, it can be easily navigated without clutter.
Fewer features aren’t always a good thing, but in this case, AWeber stays in its lane really well and offers a service that won’t overwhelm many new marketers.
AWeber vs Mailchimp: Email Editor and Automation
Email designing and complete automation setup are among the most essential aspects of these platforms. See how each stacks up in our comparison.
Mailchimp’s Email Templates
Mailchimp offers 100+ pre-designed email marketing templates. These templates cover use cases and industries, giving almost anyone a head start on their first campaigns.
If you use Mailchimp’s free plan, those hundred-plus templates are reduced to a handful of its most basic templates. The templates are customizable, so you’d still start with some efficiency.
Mailchimp’s Email Editor
Email rendering by ESPs is more strict and less innovative than web standards, meaning there is a lot less innovation happening with email editors across the board. At that, Mailchimp’s email editor seems par for the course.
It uses the standard drag-and-drop, block-based editing interface. It also has a familiar HTML editor for emails. We like the custom code, product, and image group blocks with its editor.
Automation in Mailchimp
Of the email marketing services that primarily cater to small businesses, Mailchimp does an excellent job with its email automations. To start, it features common starting points for automations (which it calls Contact Journeys) that allow email marketers to use prebuilt sequences.
From there, editing the overall journey in a visual editor is very intuitive. Editing each email is just as easy as editing a single campaign or email blast just by clicking on a given email in the journey.
These automated journeys can start with several contact details or interactions, making them versatile tools. Your ability to fully utilize contact journeys may be subject to the features given in certain pricing plans.
AWeber’s Email Templates
AWeber boasts an impressive 700+ pre-designed email templates. Best of all, each template in its library is available on every plan, including its free plan.
The only downside to having so many templates is that many feel dated and old. But there are many that are modern and don’t require much work to use. We’ll take more options, rather than less, any day—especially when they are categorized.
AWeber’s Email Editor
Again, we shouldn’t expect anything revolutionary from email editors. ESPs limit what is allowed and make standards competitive. That means email marketing platforms must cater to the lowest common denominator. As such, AWeber’s email editor gets the job done and is par for the course.
We appreciate its easy-to-use article block for importing content published on the web. We also like the signature block, which seems nice (and simple) for B2B email marketers.
Automation in AWeber
AWeber has an older automation setup style. It isn’t so much a visual workflow/journey builder as it is a linear one. It gets the job done but is less customizable than others.
AWeber also has starting points that make creating automation based on certain interactions or data easy.
Aweber can pull specific eCommerce, course, or traditional email interactions as starting points for automation.
Mailchimp vs. AWeber: Forms and Lead Generation
Forms are the lifeblood of email marketing. Without them, your list will grow very slowly, if at all. Let’s see what each has in the bag regarding forms and landing pages.
Mailchimp’s Forms and Landing Pages
Mailchimp’s signup form has a streamlined and easy-to-manage UI. Design features are limited compared to AWeber or even the leading WordPress Opt-in Form plugins, but they are a simple way to create account connect forms.
Forms are embeddable through a provided code snippet and can include or turn off Javascript, which is a nice option for web admins. Mailchimp also has the option to create contact forms (which differ in function compared to opt-in forms) that still integrate with your account.
AWeber’s Forms and Landing Pages
AWeber has a streamlined solution for creating custom eCommerce sales pages. It comes with a landing page builder and a signup form builder with premade templates available for both. There are more templates for landing pages, but that is because AWeber’s landing pages are feature-rich.
AWeber landing pages offer a complete drag-and-drop builder with eCommerce capabilities.
Forms are a little bit more regimented in their creation but still offer plenty of flexibility.
AWeber forms and landing pages can assign tags to new contacts and are customizable to fit your business’ branding.
AWeber vs. Mailchimp: Email Deliverability
Both services have reliable email deliverability. You can trust to have good rates of your emails reaching all major ESP inboxes.
EmailDeliveryReport.com said both had middle-of-the-pack or lower delivery rates for 2024 deliverability tests. AWeber’s past test results have fluctuated more, giving Mailchimp a historical edge. However, both are quite a bit lower than some of the deliverability standouts like MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, and Constant Contact (per the same historical test data). The main culprit is the percentage of mail that lands in spam or promotional tabs, which could be better.
Mailchimp vs. AWeber: Reporting and Analytics
Once emails land in recipients’ inboxes, the rubber meets the road for email marketers. Data and being able to make informed decisions based on it becomes important. We’ll now look at how each platform handles email reporting and analytics.
Reporting in Mailchimp
Reporting in AWeber
AWeber vs. Mailchimp: Integrations
Integrations are incredibly important for a full or even omnichannel marketing approach. Integrations make data sharable across multiple platforms instead of getting siloed. Both Mailchimp and AWeber have many integrations and APIs to connect various web applications.
Mailchimp Intergrations
Mailchimp has several prominent native integrations, primarily with eCommerce and website platforms.
Some of the most popular integrations for Mailchimp are:
Mailchimp also has a healthy number of third-party integrations created by outside tools. Bloom and Divi, for instance, have Mailchimp integrations that help website creators build feature-rich marketing funnels.
AWeber Integrations
AWeber also has many native integrations with ecommerce and website platforms. One of those is an integration with Divi forms.
Some of the most popular AWeber Integrations are:
- BigCommerce
- ClickBank
- Ecwid
- Easy Digital Downloads
- Etsy
- Gumroad
- Patreon
- Shopify
- ThriveCart
- and WooCommerce
Since AWeber has existed since the 1990s, many third-party developers have integrated it into their apps and services.
Mailchimp vs. AWeber: Who has Better Pricing
It all comes down to pricing, doesn’t it? Both email marketing platforms offer competitive pricing. However, one will likely fit you better than the other. Both have free plans. Aweber provides more features per plan than Mailchimp but at slightly higher prices. Mailchimp’s feature and limit mix per plan is harder to understand, making it likely that you’ll reach a limit unknowingly.
Mailchimp Prices
Mailchimp’s pricing structure is more complicated, with four levels of distinctive features (Free, Essential, Standard, and Premium). The options range from $0 to $350 per month.
Other than feature tiers, Mailchimp’s pricing structure also correlates with subscriber counts—meaning that more subscribers past determined thresholds will cost higher monthly rates. This is true for each plan. If you start with the $13 per month Essentials plan but go above 500 subscribers, your plan rate will increase.
Assuming that each plan’s ‘feature spread’ matches your business’s growth trajectory, Mailchimp could be a very affordable email marketing service that still allows you to pay for more features as you grow.
What is included with Mailchimp’s Free Plan?
Mailchimp seems to offer a little of everything in its free plan, making it a comprehensive solution for the budget-conscious. But, with any one feature, you will soon hit the ceiling of what comes offered in the plan.
Mailchimp allows 500 contacts (including unsubscribed contacts), 1000 email sends (down from 2500 in 2022), simple automations, and digital marketing tools for social posting and running ads.
AWeber Prices
AWeber used to have one of the simplest pricing models of email marketing providers. Now, it’s more like Mailchimps. It offers a generous Free plan with multiple paid plans.
Almost all the plans, including the free tier, have access to almost all the features, which is very different from Mailchimp. However, some very important features, such as emails, landing pages, and reporting, are only available to users on the Plus plan.
Aweber has contact variable pricing set at contact thresholds that will increase the service’s monthly price. Note that unsubscribed contacts count towards the pricing threshold for both Mailchimp and AWeber.
What is included with AWeber’s Free Plan?
AWeber’s free plan is also generous and maybe a little more so than Mailchimp’s. It also includes a 500 contact limit but allows 3000 monthly sends (500 more sends than the Chimp).
AWeber includes the ability to create one landing page (which can be eCommerce enabled) and, interestingly enough, website push notifications. It also has live support, which is rare for free email marketing providers.
AI Tools For Email Marketing: Aweber vs. Mailchimp
Recently, Mailchimp introduced Intuit Assist, it’s generative AI solution for email optimization and automation. The technology seems like it can significantly speed up the grind of manual marketing tasks. Currently in beta, the AI-powered features are included in its Standard and Premium plans.
AWeber also recently added AWeber AI, an AI-powered email generator that can quickly write and optimize emails for your campaign. Like other AI writers, the tool can generate drafts using simple text prompts and make changes with a single click.
Mailchimp offers more innovative AI solutions than AWeber’s AI email generator, so MailChimp is probably worth checking out if you are looking for more help from AI.
If interested, you can check out other top AI email assistants to boost your productivity with writing and sending emails.
Which One Is Better? Aweber vs. Mailchimp
There we have it, a comprehensive comparison between AWeber vs. Mailchimp. Mailchimp remains the more popular choice among beginning email marketers (view our guide on how to use MailChimp for email marketing). Its competitive edge has faded in recent years, but it now has more powerful automation features, with promising AI solutions already integrated into the platform. So, if you are just starting, Mailchimp is a clear winner.
That said, AWeber has a solid mix of advanced features that should command much attention. We think these two services are pretty similar in many ways. However, their differences lend to them being an obvious choice for different subsets of users.
Which of these two email marketing services are you leaning toward? Have you tried either one? What do you think about them?
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