If you want to build your brand and increase search traffic, you must use an email marketing tool like AWeber, Mailchimp, or Constant Contact. With these, you can increase conversions. You can also increase product sales or even book more clients.
Whether you run an e-commerce business or any other business type, email marketing should be your leading strategy for marketing. Choosing the appropriate email marketing solution for you can be a difficult task as there are so many options on the market out there. We have reviewed three options here:
Mailchimp: It is easy to use, has high deliverability rates, has a set of features that are robust, and also has a FREE PLAN.
Constant Contact: It has extremely high rates for deliverability, offers a unique coaching feature. Event registration can be managed on it
AWeber: It is easy to use, can be used to send unlimited emails, and has features that are robust.
Now let us go into the details.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact vs AWeber – Email Templates
When creating your ideal email, customization in MailChimp can be used. It can let the ideas that you have to go wild. You can use the drag-and-drop content in the editor easily.
Images in emails are important elements. An unlimited number of images can be stored by you on MailChimp, that too for free. For email creation, a lot of customization options are available on MailChimp. You can create whatever type of email that you want.
In Constant Contact, you can use a wide range of templates. This enables you to customize the style of text and edit it. These are grouped into different uses and industries. This makes it easy to select.
With the knowledge of HTML, you can also customize the templates a great deal. There is a provision for unlimited storage of images. This is free too.
There is also a stock image database that you can use to integrate into your emails. In Constant Contact there are a lot of different email templates that you can choose from. You can customize the email further to align them to your brand.
AWeber’s user interface is very intuitive. It has over 700 different templates that you could use for your emails. All the templates are mobile responsive. If the user is tech-savvy, you can also edit and create templates by using HTML.
However, AWeber’s templates though they are huge in number, a significant amount of them are old-fashioned. AWeber should consider updating their templates. There is a drag-and-drop feature too in their email editor.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact vs AWeber – Autoresponders
Autoresponders allow the sending of automated emails to subscribers in the email list. Many smart marketers make use of autoresponders to automatically send a sequence of emails to subscribers based on certain predefined rules. For example, you can collect email addresses on a “coming soon page”, after that you can send emails in a sequence to contacts when the website goes live.
Many bloggers use autoresponders to welcome new contacts who have signed up. E-commerce stores set up autoresponders to educate users regarding complementary products. Most of the popular and good email marketing companies have autoresponder options.
MailChimp is always mentioned when you discuss email marketing tools. It is the largest automation platform for email marketing in the world. It is not only the best but a very popular option too.
Small-medium businesses make use of MailChimp automation email software in a great way. Since autoresponders are a very integral part of email marketing solutions, Mailchimp gives autoresponders for their free plan. However, this is a very basic autoresponder function.
If you need advanced autoresponder options you will have to purchase a paid plan. The kit integrates with different other platforms.
These include Facebook, Shopify, Twitter, SurveyMonkey, Salesforce, and more. The free plan lets you use simple autoresponders and segmentation. It is fine if you want to use basic autoresponder features.
Constant Contact is among one of the best services for email marketing. It is best for creating autoresponder sequences. It offers a set of fairly robust features from list management to autoresponders.
Constant contact offers advanced features in their autoresponders. They can be used for a variety of campaigns. You can set it up to send promotions, coupons, set up reminders regarding appointments. You can also use it to promote a series of articles or posts.
You can use the drag-and-drop interface easily. This is helpful if the user is new to email marketing. Automation features are only available in the paid option. In order to use the automation feature after a free trial, you will have to purchase the Email Plus plan.
Like the rest of the email marketing services platforms in this article, AWeber offers autoresponders. The autoresponder offered by AWeber is easy to use and robust. It is excellent for Drip Campaigns.
You can automate email emails using a simple to use editor. You could learn how to use it in minutes. This is great for those who are new to email marketing. You just need to drag-and-drop action elements. Doing this you can set up a well designed automated sequence in a very short period.
AWeber has powerful segmentation and automation tools. Using them, you can create a detailed autoresponder series. AWeber can be integrated with a large number of services. These include Unbounce, PayPal, OptinMonster, and more.
There are support materials, masterclasses, and live webinars available on helping you with how to use the software while you are on the free plan.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact vs AWeber – Pricing
MailChimp has a forever free plan. It is free for an unlimited period. But there are some limitations in the free plan. In this plan you can have subscribers up to 2000 and you can send 12,000 monthly emails.
Next, the lowest paid option starts at a fee of $10 per month and goes upwards depending on the number of emails you need to send. The option for enterprises called Pro Marketer is $199 a month.
This plan has a lot of options and features such as tracking and targeting, split testing, monitoring metrics, and more.
MailChimp offers every plan with an option of Pay as you go. This feature means that you can pay for only the exact number of emails that you send. This is besides paying a monthly fee for a subscription that’s fixed.
This is an excellent option for businesses that are scaling up but do not know what their email marketing future needs would be exactly. This will give real peace of mind to you as then you don’t have to worry about downgrading or upgrading in the future.
Constant Contact offers a 30-day free trial to new clients. After that, you can purchase any plan based on the subscribers count. For example, for 0-500 subscribers, the monthly cost is $20. The plan that is most expensive is for 35000-50000 subscribers and the pricing for this is $335 a month.
The pricing model is simpler than MailChimp. But this pricing offers very little flexibility to the user. These pricing plans of Constant Contact are best suited for businesses that are already established having a steady number of subscribers
At AWeber, the pricing plans are simple. They too have a 30-day trial plan that’s free. Using this you can give them a try and see if they are suitable for you.
Regardless of subscribers numbers or the plan that you have purchased you get all their options and features in all their plans. Even the lower plans give all their features to users.
Features include email segmenting, automation, unlimited emails, templates, stock photos, and more. The number of subscribers determines which plan you have to purchase.
For 0-500 subscribers, you need to pay $19 a month, for 5001-10000 subscribers the price is $69 a month, and so on. If you already have an idea of your email marketing requirements, then you can have an amount fixed that is spent monthly for email marketing through AWeber. These pricing plans however lack the flexibility that smaller businesses require.
All three email marketing solutions are priced similarly. All of them offer free trials. However, the winner for pricing is MailChimp. It may take you some time to make the decision of how much you would really need to pay. But it is the most flexible of the lot.
With the pay as you go option, you need not worry about subscriber number fluctuations. If you have a small business maybe you could use the forever free plan.
Which is Better – Mailchimp vs Constant Contact vs AWeber
We have compared the prominent features of MailChimp vs Constant Contact vs AWeber. It is ultimately your decision to choose which one is best for you depending upon the features you need, your budget, and the technical abilities you have. However, out of the three, the best one is MailChimp. It has a free plan and a pay as you go option. The pay as you go option makes sure that you don’t pay for more that you require.
All three email marketing options are similar. They all are relatively easy to operate and all three have features you will want. However, the factor that makes MailChimp better is that it has a free plan. Any beginner would want to have this as well as need it. AWeber is good too due to its strong focus on marketing. So if marketing is your main focus, AWeber is the best option out of the three. You can check our detailed article on SendGrid vs AWeber.