EmailOctopus vs. Mailchimp, which email marketing platform is best for you?

Who do you think would be the winner in the EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp duel?

If you are struggling to decide which email marketing platform you should pick, this comparison will solve all your doubts once at for all.

• Note: if you want to read more in detail about these platforms, we also have an in-depth EmailOctopus review.

EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp – Pricing

Running a newsletter on your business has recurring costs associated, and as you are probably in the business for the long run, you must be careful with this point.

Grow the number of subscribers and/or your sends per month, multiply that over many months, and you’ll end up losing an important chunk of money.

Free tier

If you are starting out, you are lucky, as both platforms offer a free plan to start with.

But as with everything that it’s free, there are limitations.

Usually, when an email marketing platform offers you a free plan, those limitations are:

• A maximum number of subscribers.
• And a limit on the emails you can send per month.

You can see these differences in the following table:

Some considerations here:

• About lists:
  • Mailchimp only offers one audience (list), so you won’t be able to segment your contacts using that level, although you’ll be able to use tags and segments.
  • Emailoctopus allows you to create as many lists as you want, plus, also use tags and segments.
• About contact and sending limits:
  • The classic Emailoctopus and Mailchimp are really similar, but this last one also limits the sending to 2,000 per day, which means, if you have ~2,000 contacts and send one campaign with one mistake (you probably will at some point) you’ll have to wait 24h to fix it.
  • Emailoctopus Connect will allow you to send unlimited emails, and up to 62,000 per month will be free, which is awesome.
    • Read more about Emailoctopus Connect and Amazon SES here.

Besides those two limits, the free plans are very similar, but in my opinion, Emailoctopus wins the free tier battle.

If you use Amazon SES, (which will take you about 15min to configure), you’ll be able to send thousands of emails per month, to even more contacts (500 more) than Mailchimp.

But a better free tier isn’t everything, so hold on until you read the rest of the comparison 🙂

Paid Plans

if your business is doing well, at some point you’ll hit the contact limit of the free tier, and you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.

Usually, email marketing software offers different plans depending on your subscriber number/sendings per month.

Here’s another table where you’ll quickly see how these plans evolve regarding those numbers:

I could continue adding tiers, but I think you already know where this is going.

• EmailOctopus is always cheaper than Mailchimp, especially if you use the Connect Version.
• Basically, with Mailchimp you’ll be always paying x2/x3 the price you’ll pay with Emailoctopus.
• Important: I’m comparing the ESSENTIAL Mailchimp plan here, as is the most similar to the paid plan of Emailoctopus. if I were to compare prices with the standard plan, monthly prices will escalate quickly.

Besides that, EmailOctopus offers you more middle tiers.

For instance, if you have 6,000 subscribers, you’d have to pick the 10,000 plan on Mailchimp, but you’ll be able to choose a 7,500 plan on Emailoctopus.

This is far fairer for us, the users, double an email list from 5,000 to 10,000 is not an easy job, so with Mailchimp you’ll spend more weeks/months paying for a tier you are not really using.

As newsletters are made to be grown, picking Emailoctopus over Mailchimp, is the smartest decision economically speaking, especially in the long run.

But as I said before, pricing isn’t everything.

Let’s talk features.

EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp – Features

If you just want a simple and cheap email marketing tool to keep in touch with your audience, the comparison review ends here for you, but if you are worried about whether you are going to be able to do “this” or “that”, keep reading.

You’ve already seen the different limitations regarding contacts and sending limits on the pricing section, so we won’t talk about it here again.

Remember that we are comparing the Pro Plan of EmailOctopus with the Essentials one from Mailchimp, as they are the more similar in features and pricing.

Growing your list

So, let’s say you already have your account in any of those services, how will you be able to bring contacts to your lists?

• Remember that in Mailchimp Free plan you are only allowed to create 1 list (called audience there), and in the Essential plan, you’ll be able to create up to 3. You can create unlimited lists on EmailOctopus.

Landing Pages

Both services will allow you to create external landing pages.

This means, pages that will be accessible from a URL like:

• https://mailchi.mp/2ed2b8d/test if you use Mailchimp
• Or https://javiercristobal.eo.page/3rk if you use EmailOctopus

As you can see, the URL from EmailOctopus is kind of nicer, but Mailchimp allows you to use your custom domain for this kind of page.

This will look more professional, but if you are willing to put the effort, maybe would be better to host the landing pages on your own domain, where your website already is.

Both Landing Pages are connected to a list, and you can add tags to subscribers that sign up through them, and you can also use Google Analytics tracking or Facebook Pixel on them, and decide what happens after the form is submitted.

Technically, Landing Pages are very similar, but Mailchimp offers you not only more templates, but more elements to create what you have in mind.

You can easily spot the difference between the builders in the following picture (EmailOctopus is top, Mailchimp is bottom)

The only advantage of EmailOctopus at this point is that creating landing pages is a really easy step, whereas, with Mailchimp, you’ll have trouble even finding the “create landing page button”.

• Note: you can create as many landing pages as you want on both platforms.

Embedded Forms and popups

Forms are probably the main tool you’ll use to capture your reader’s information.

You can create inline and popup forms for your website (unlimited), they will be connected to the list you choose.

However, at this point only in Mailchimp is possible to add also tags to subscribers depending on the form the sign-up from, although I’m pretty sure EmailOctopus will add this feature soon.

Surprisingly, Mailchimp’s embedded form builder (bottom is less powerful compared to its own landing page builder, and even compared to the EmailOctopus builder (top).

However, the Mailchimp’s pop-up builder (that you’ll have to find in another place, making things more complicated for no reason, looks a bit nicer) EmailOctopus uses the same builder for both types of forms.

You’ll have to integrate the forms into your site using HTML tags, but you can use a WordPress plugin for making things easier.

List management and segmentation

Remember that contacts go into Lists (called Audiences con Mailchimp), you can create unlimited lists on EmailOctopus, but only 3 Audiences on the Essential plan of Mailchimp.

The contact cards of EmailOctopus are pretty basic, you’ll be able to see the custom fields you have configured (i.e.: name, surname, address, age…) a small activity feed, plus the tags added to the contact.

Meanwhile, the Mailchimp one shows you more data and adds an extra “engagement rate” using starts that could be very useful for writing to your most (or least) engaged subscribers.

Regarding the segmentation, you can also feel here that Mailchimp is way more powerful than EmailOctopus, as, besides tags, custom fields, signup source, or campaign activity (common segmentation options on both platforms), you can pick more “filters” on the chimp site, like automation activity, the amount of money spent in total, products purchased, the total number of orders, and many more “sales” related fields.

Automation

EmailOctopus lacks a bit of power here, as you can only create email sequences based on when contacts subscribe, while Mailchimp has many more options (based on subscriptions, tags, dates, pages visited on your site…)

There is not so much to discuss here, Mailchimp is clearly the winner regarding automation capabilities.

Integrations

In my opinion, this is one of the biggest cons of EmailOctopus.

Mailchimp has been in the market for many years and is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) players regarding Email Marketing, and that means that it has hundred of direct integrations with 3rd party apps and services: Memberpress and other LMS plugins, Woocommerce, Canva, Eventbrite, Magento, Stripe…

Whatever tool you are using on your business, probably has integrations with Mailchimp.

EmailOctopus doesn’t work out of the box with many services but Shopify, Carrd, and a bunch of other tools.

You can connect it to Zapier tough, so you can create almost endless indirect connections, but Zapier also has its own limitations on the free plan, and you’ll have to put the extra effort into creating additional automations.

Unfortunately, EmailOctopus is not working currently with Thrive Leads, one of my favorite plugins for Lead capturing.

Other features that might interest you

As you’re seeing EmailOctopus misses some features that could be important for you and your business, other ones that are also NOT available so far are:

• Reports with click maps to better understand your audience
• A/B Testing
• Surveys
• Or a website builder.

I don’t find the last two a basic feature for an email marketing tool, but click maps reports, or A/B testing, maybe are essential for you.

Bottom line – EmailOctopus vs Mailchimp, who’s the winner?

At this point, Mailchimp is more powerful than EmailOctopus, I think no one can deny that.

The thing is, those extra features come at a cost.

Not only monetary one, as you’ll pay more monthly for tools and integrations that maybe you won’t ever use, but also a cost in time and stress.

The interface of Mailchimp is getting more complicated one day at a time, and if you feel uncomfortable using it, you’ll use the app less and less, which will end up affecting your business.

 EmailOctopus (besides being the cheapest option) is simpler, and that’s its main advantage against Mailchimp.

You can start using it in less than 10min without any trouble as it’s 100% focused on email marketing, and nothing else.

Today I recommend it over Mailchimp, with only one exception, if you are going to create, or your business is an e-commerce, Mailchimp is a much better option.

But if you are a solo-preneur or a small company that values simplicity, and you need a reliable system to capture emails and send quality campaigns in a comfortable way, EmailOctopus is probably your best choice.

For me, EmailOctopus is ideal for Bloggers and Content Creators, so if you are part of this group, do not hesitate on trying it.