MailChimp Review - Mail For the Masses?
MailChimp is often the first newsletter tool that springs to mind, possibly because they have great marketing and a charming monkey-fied aesthetic. But I guess I’m not the only one, as they claim to send more than 600 million emails every day over their platform.
They offer a free plan, with which you can send up to 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 subscribers. This is good news for personal and SMB accounts, as most of the tools and templates are accessible on this free account. They also have pay-as-you-go options, which work out to be cheaper for low-volume clients, whilst also giving you some included extras such as automation and integration options.
Now let’s have a look to see whether MailChimp really do let you ‘send better emails’:
MailChimp in Detail
| Criterion | Rating/Info | Notes |
| Ease of Use |  |
Easy to use, with clear navigation and a clean interface. Although setting opt the initial opt-in process can be somewhat challenging as the menus are a little confusing. |
| Newsletter Creation | ||
 -Editor |
 |
This editor is fast and simple, using a drag & drop interface. |
| -Personalization | yes | If/then/else logic isn’t very user friendly, but available. MailChimp at least offer a handy cheat sheet to help you grasp the concepts. |
| -Types of Emails |
|
All the standards that you need such as classic newsletters, autoresponders, A/B testing RSS to newsletter and recurring. |
| Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs |
|
Lots of choice, relatively modern looking too. All of the drag & drop templates are responsive, but the classic templates are not. |
| Marketing Automation |
 |
This is relatively robust, with rules to send follow up emails based on certain conditions, such as clicks, opens etc. There are also some more complicated automations you can do in regards to goals/page link actions. |
| List Management | |
Mailchimp offer pretty good segmentation methods, allowing you to combine up to five positive or negative conditional relationships (e.g. what email client they use, whether they’ve opened a particular campaign). Management across lists is not possible as each list is siloed. |
| Registration Forms/Opt-in & Opt-out- Process |
 |
Simple drag & drop setup for forms, although a bit finicky to select colour options, only allowing you to add the colour code. You can add your own fields, and adding the form to your site is easy. |
| Reports and Analysis | |
Pretty much all you need in regards to reporting is here, if not a little dull-looking. You have openers, Google Analytics integration (which allows for conversion tracking), as well as clients, geo-tracking and social media. |
| Languages |  |
The site itself is only available in English, with the help section being available in Spanish also. The emails themselves can be auto-translated with Google Translate into many different languages, but of course it would be better if the site itself was more internationally accessible. |
| Further Features | ||
| -Spam- and Design-Testing |
|
Mailchimp use third-party run tool ‘Inbox Preview’ which is an extra cost for the bottom two plans ($3 for 25 tokens) and allows you to see what designs will look like for different clients, and on different devices. No spam testing is available. |
| -Bounce Management |
yes | Hard bounces are immediately removed, while soft bounces are re-sent for three days. These will eventually be considered hard bounces if it occurs over multiple campaigns. |
| -Blacklist |
no | |
| -Storage Available for Data and Images | unlimited | There seems to be no limit to the amount of files, just that they need to be under 10MB in size each. |
| -Social Media Integration |
|
Auto-posting to Facebook and Twitter available, as well as social buttons available within emails. |
| -Newsletter Archive |
yes | You can create an archive generator code and embed this on your site. |
| Pro Features | ||
| -Authentication |
yes | DKIM and SPF, SenderID and DomainKeys available. |
| -Own Domain? |
no | Tracking links in your emails will use the domain "list-manage.com" |
| -Different Access Levels |
yes | You have five different levels within Mailchimp: viewer, author, manager, admin & owner. |
| -Integrations | yes | Apparently there are over 800 integrations available for your account! From eCommerce, to social and website integrations, you’d be hard pressed to find an area that’s not represented. |
| -Landing Page Editor |
no | |
| Support | |
They have a thorough, and easy-to-search, knowledge base. Where Mailchimp loses points, though, is the fact that this is the only help that’s available unless you upgrade your account. The live chat option, on upgrade, was fine, but quite slow compared to other tools we tested. |
| Overall Rating |  |
Extremely user-friendly; there’s a reason why this tool is so popular. They could be a little more internationally-friendly, though. |
© EmailToolTester Matrix
Conclusion:
MailChimp is a perfectly good tool for most English-speaking users, with its ease of use and range of features, as well as their free plans. Keep in mind, though, that their subscription plans are relatively expensive compared to similar newsletter tools.
There are a bucketload of integrations available for MailChimp, which could be seen either as due to, or because of, the amount of active users they have. That, combined with relatively powerful tools (available on the higher tier plans) really do add up to a great tool.
Perhaps if you’re a business with specific needs, like powerful marketing automation, or use of your own tracking-domain, then you may need to look further afield for the correct newsletter tool. But there really is a lot to like from MailChimp.
> Try MailChimp now for free for up to 2,000 recipients.
Updates
14.03.2107 - Video Review Added.
23.02.2016 - Initial Tests.
Last Update: 29 February 2016 | Steve Lamattina
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The Company
Product: MailChimp
(The Rocket Science Group)
Country: USA
Headquarters: Atlanta, Georgia
Server Location: Outside of the EU
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