It seems that 2010 is the year where “content is king” for more businesses than I can shake a stick at. More clients are asking for newsletters to be set up and we’ve had our own reasons to have start looking at different services that offer autoresponders.
Currently, I use and recommend Mailchimp to everyone I see. I love the service. Their graphics knock me out. Their price for businesses building their list is the free-est I’ve ever seen. But. Their autoresponder leaves something to be desired and I need that autoresponder to sweet-talk the pants off a rockstar.
Last week I did a run down on Mailchimp vs. Aweber for a client and came to a dismal conclusion. I’m going to have to give up my illustrious Mailchimp for Aweber.
Here’s why.
Price. When you sign up with Mailchimp, your free account supports a whopping 500 subscribers and you can send a total of 3000 emails between those subscribers. Aweber doesn’t have a free account and their price starts at $19 per month and covers your first 500 subscribers. They don’t limit the number of emails you can send out. Once you pass the 500 subscriber mark, the prices are relatively the same.
Lists. Both Aweber and Mailchimp have the ability to create a number of lists. Lists can be used if you have several clients that you manage from one account or if you want to send out content to various audiences. I have multiple lists including my main content list, a soon-to-be affiliate list, and one for contractors. Mailchimp has a great ability to have one master list that has segments. For instance, when people sign up to our main list, they have the option to receive information on different segments including our blog posts and contractor calls.
Perk up. Here’s the determination factor of which service you should use.
While both services make it easy to send out your newsletters, the autoresponder in Mailchimp does not work well at all when you want to send to segments of your list. There’s an easy way around this and that is to create a new list.
Let’s say, like me, you have a master list, a contractor list and an affiliate list. When people sign up for each list I want to have an autoresponder fire based on their sign up date to provide information for the following month.
Here’s the problem.
Sally joins your affiliate list but no other list. When it comes to your monthly fee, Mailchimp will consider her one subscriber. But what if Sally is interested in receiving information from all your lists? Well, Sally is now considered 3 subscribers.
Ouch.
Grab a chair, kitten. Yes you - the business adventurer. 



{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Great news for me since I only have 1 type of list for my promotions and newsletters, so I wouldn’t be having problems with duplicate subscribers on my list. Mailchimp it is I’m choosing! Plus I really don’t mind paying once I’ve reached over 500 subscribers to my newsletters! That’s a sign of business going great!
Since that initial 500 subscribers is really what sets the two apart in pricing it makes a great choice for new businesses. Smart move MailChimp!
what about Mad Mimi??? or Emma?
Mailchimp and Aweber are the two that my clients ask most about. What do you love most about the other services?
Hmm… well when your list gets a bit bigger (25,000+) all of a sudden MailChimp starts getting WAY cheaper to deal with than Aweber.
In addition, Aweber treats a single email on multiple lists in exactly the same way MailChimp does, so that part is a wash.
Nice post, I just fwd it to some friends. We use Emma and have been satisfied with everything except for their templates. They are very limiting and really do not look as professional as our clientele demands. We have a list of 3000+ and Emma has an allotment of emails per month making it the other downfall.
Emma does allow us to send newsletters from different emails to designated groups/lists. Ie. an email from info@ or sales@ might go to different groups. Does Aweber allow for this?
This is a great post. I have been going back and forth of the pros and cons for Mailchimp and Aweber. I am a new biz and I like the zero cost factor of Mailchimp while I grow my list but I am not a fan of their autoresponder compared to Awebers. I believe that you offered me a solution and I will try it out. For now, I will stick with Mailchimp.
thanks!
Thanks for stopping in Angela! I have to admit, the more that I look at both options AND the more that Mailchimp comes out with – the more I love it.
Eeep Eeep. I think we’ll need to have a Mailchimp how-to post soon!
I did the comparison of MailChimp vs. Aweber and went with MailChimp. It seems a lot more flexible for customizing html templates and I really like the integration with Google Analytics for metrics.
How have you found the metrics on Aweber vs. MailChimp?
I haven’t run into that autoresponder problem yet though.
And of course, the initial pricing of MailChimp for a small business is hard to be beat.
Yes you cant really beat Free : )
But i find mail chimp more complected than the aweber interface.
I dont see my self Leaving aweber any time soon… The more i read in to the fine print on what mail chimp has to offer… the less i like it !
I love the Chimp! They have recently made some great changes. You get 1,000 subscribers and up to 6,000 emails for free. They also have great integrations with programs like Eventbrite, Google Analytics, Drupal, ZenCart, Surveygizmo and more. The iPhone app is nice and they are always coming up with new options.
You’re definitely right Robin and I have an updated version of this really popular post in the works!
Robin, you’re right. Mailchimp has done so many updates since I first posted this article. An updated edition is definitely in order!
Ashley – what do you like LEAST about Mailchimp?
@dawn: first of all, nice article! Second; I never worked with Aweber just MailChimp for me. In my opinion the ‘problem’ you indicate with the MailChimp lists can be solved easily. Have you tried using ‘Groups’ in your list? I use it al the time and have just two lists that are totally different from each other.
You can find more info here http://bit.ly/92xVOq.
Pim van der Linden: yes, I use groups all the time with Mailchimp. Unfortunately, the way their autoresponders work (at least for the moment) means they don’t fire in the way I really want them to. There are lots of work arounds that mean a little more manual labour but my love of the monkey outweighs any extra work that I have to do.
I have a re-work of this article in the coffer because SO MUCH has changed since the article was originally written. Everyone will have to keep their eyes open because I think I may ask for reader input (with credit of course) which should work out marvelously for everyone since this article is hit every single day.
I’m just staring to use Mailchimp, but VERY frustrated by one problem.
As they limit the Text Field to 256 characters, and there is no way to make the field more than one line high, it does not work as a way for people to leave meaningful comments. Do you see this changing anytime soon? Does Aweber or others have this capability?
Mailchimp is great for free but then if you violate their T&C’s they suspend you even if your entire list has been created using their own system.
They cut me off and I had to send them a request to allow me to get my legitimate lists created with their software back off them.
Be very careful of Mailchimps T&C’s as they cover more than you would think and you could find yourself cut off in full flight so to speak.
I use Alpha – http://alpha.76uk.com. Great looking, easy to use and best of all.. it’s much cheaper! JR