Marketing is a tricky business. Among the many moving parts is email marketing, a central part of marketing automation software and a key pillar in your strategy. Once you’re sure that your business needs an email marketing solution, it’s time to start searching – and that’s where things can get complicated. With plenty of choices and the unique features of each product, it’s difficult to zero in on one. To make the process easier, we’ve put together a detailed study of two of the best-known email marketing platforms, AWeber vs Mailchimp.
Compare AWeber & Mailchimp Against Your Needs
Overview
Founded in 1998, AWeber has a proven track record of more than 20 years aiding clients with prospect and customer management. It helps users load and manage contacts, build responsive landing pages, analyze results and send top-notch emails.
Mailchimp’s marketing platform offers AI-powered, user-friendly tools that help businesses grow. With it, users can send marketing emails and automated messages, build landing pages, create targeted ad campaigns, facilitate reporting and analytics, send postcards and sell online.
What can you achieve with these marketing automation solutions?
- Import and host mailing lists and capture data using sign-up forms.
- Create newsletters to send to your subscribers.
- Automate messaging to subscribers using email autoresponders.
- Review campaign statistics such as open rate, click through, forwards and more.
Who’s the Target Audience?
Stability makes AWeber a safe, sensible choice for small businesses, bloggers and entrepreneurs. While its user interface is a bit outdated and the navigation can be confusing, you can easily learn how to use the program. The contact management functionality makes it a good option for niche businesses that need to collect specific data on customers.
Mailchimp targets users of all levels. The combination of usability and data-driven features make it a good choice for those trying to take a scientific approach to their marketing campaigns. And although it offers an impressive suite of marketing tools, it began as an email marketing solution, so you know you’ll be getting that expertise built in. It’s ideal for small businesses.
Compare AWeber & Mailchimp Against Your Needs
Features Comparison
Here’s a list of features that are covered in this comparative study:
- Integration
- Email Testing
- Automation
- Reports and Analytics
- Audience/Subscriber Management
- Social Media Campaigns
- Email Templates
- RSS-to-Email
- Landing Pages
- Email Preview
- AMP for Email
- Email Deliverability Support
- Sign-up Forms
- Image Storage
- Language Support
- Customer Support and Service
- Website Builder
- Send Time Optimization
Integrations
Mailchimp offers more than 255 native integrations, including HootSuite, WordPress, Power BI and Magneto, across different categories such as analytics, productivity, social media, payments and more. It also supports integrations with other apps through Zapier and Tray.io, extending capabilities further.
AWeber offers more than 820 native integrations and services across different categories such as content management, CRM, surveys, e-commerce, video, webinar, lead generation, social and more. It also integrates with Zapier and PieSync for more flexibility.
Winner: With so many integration options, AWeber is the clear winner here.
Email Testing
Mailchimp offers A/B testing that can test campaign variables such as subject lines, content, names and send times. You can test any one of these variables at a time and create up to three variations. A multivariate campaign lets you test up to eight campaign variations, and three variables at once.
AWeber’s split testing feature helps you test subject lines, preheader and preview text, send times, message design, and content. You can put up to three email variants to the test, choose segments and segment percentages for a test, and view live test results.
Winner: With its multivariate testing option, Mailchimp wins.
Automation
Mailchimp allows you to create targeted emails, triggered by a specific date, event or contact’s activity. You can create a custom automation from scratch, trigger automations based on tags, dates, subscriber and purchase activity, API calls, and more, as well as create email series for unique business needs.
It includes a range of predefined workflows and the option to create your own using defined goals. You can also convert an autoresponder to automation, save that as a template, edit a legacy autoresponder and convert a single autoresponder into a custom automation.
AWeber helps automate emails based on audience behavior. You can create automated sequences using a drag-and-drop campaign builder, deliver custom drip campaigns, send triggered email campaigns and tag subscribers based on their actions.
It’s possible to build campaigns using actions such as trigger, wait, apply tag and more, as well as configure multiple entries. You can access automation templates, leverage professional automation and create multiple autoresponder campaigns in the account.
Automated campaigns in AWeber.
Winner: Mailchimp wins here thanks to more trigger options.
Reports and Analytics
Mailchimp’s built-in and third-party tracking options such as Google Analytics and ClickTale help you track email conversion and contacts. There are also website performance reports that include metrics like views, clicks, signups and revenue to monitor trends and performance.
You can compare and identify patterns in subscriber engagement through comparative reports based on campaign data and find patterns in contact activity. Other tools include preset segments, an audience dashboard, predicted demographics, a subject line helper and an address finder.
Reports about contacts and Subscribers in Mailchimp.
AWeber tracks subscriber activities with graphs that show clicked links, generated revenue, number of unsubscribed contacts, and more. Its Quick Stats feature provides performance analytics of a broadcast message. Adding code to your website lets you track subscriber visits and sales tied to purchases made. Best-practice dashboards and reports deliver insights into email and campaign performance.
Reports about campaigns in AWeber.
Winner: Advanced reporting with industry benchmarks, comparative reports, audience insights and recommendations help Mailchimp win over AWeber.
Audience/Subscriber Management
Mailchimp’s centralized data storage offers a holistic view of the audience and helps you identify data patterns. An audience finder shows people similar to existing contacts, using marketing CRM data and audience network. You can segment contacts using options such as e-commerce purchase, email marketing status, customer lifetime value, subscriber data, demographics and more. It’s also possible to target campaigns for specific regions or timezones using geolocation, and use contact rating for segmentation.
Predicted Demographics in Mailchimp.
AWeber allows you to create dynamic subscriber segments based on activity such as tags, clicks, opens, purchases, website visits, demographics and more. Tags can be used on multiple subscribers through a bulk tagging tool, on the entire form or on custom fields.
Winner: Mailchimp is the clear winner with its advanced audience segmentation capability.
Social Media Campaigns
Mailchimp allows you to schedule or instantly publish posts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can also design and create ads for Facebook and Instagram within the platform.
Campaigns to track Sessions in Mailchimp.
Facebook and Twitter.
AWeber allows you to automatically post broadcasts to Facebook and Twitter.
Winner: Mailchimp wins over AWeber, as it supports direct ad creation and supports publishing posts on Instagram,
Email Templates
Mailchimp provides more than 100 mobile-friendly, customizable templates. You can customize layouts, fonts, colors and design templates using raw code or leverage a GUI to design a form.
AWeber provides more than 700 mobile-responsive email templates. You can choose HTML templates and customize color schemes, layouts, designs and more to match company branding.
Winner: With more than 700 email templates, AWeber claims this round.
RSS-to-Email
With Mailchimp, you can create an RSS campaign from any of the available templates, use RSS content blocks to pull content from the user’s feed, merge multiple RSS feeds to one campaign or use a feed aggregator like RSSUnify or RSS Mix. It’s possible to schedule campaigns and resize feed images. Mailchimp generates a campaign report for each child RSS campaign.
AWeber’s Blog Broadcast feature pulls content from your blog and reformats it into a template. You can choose from templates, scroll through the list to view previews and edit appearance. Blog Broadcast can be scheduled with send time and triggers, and can be sent both manually or automatically.
Winner: Mailchimp’s advanced features help it claim the win this round.
Compare AWeber & Mailchimp Against Your Needs
Landing Pages
With Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop landing page creator, you can host websites and landing pages under one domain. It offers prebuilt templates to showcase products or promote special offers, landing pages that can tag contacts based on interests, unlimited subdomains and videos. It’s also possible to access reports on visitors, clicks, conversions and revenue, as well as connect Square payments to sell items right from a landing page.
AWeber has a no-code landing page builder with a drag-and-drop interface that provides access to predesigned landing page templates. It includes support for videos and automatic image sharing. You can track traffic across landing pages using Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, and subscribers are automatically tagged so that you can segment and manage lists.
Landing pages in AWeber.
Winner: It’s a tie between Mailchimp and AWeber for this feature, as both offer similar functionalities.
Email Preview
Mailchimp offers Litmus-powered inbox preview of emails and generates campaign screenshots. Supported clients include Apple, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, HCL Notes and more for different devices. Paid subscribers can test 25 inbox previews a month.
AWeber lets you preview messages and send test copies before scheduling campaigns. You can preview a message in the drag-and-drop email builder and with AMP content.
Winner: Mailchimp wins for this feature as it offers a preview option for multiple email clients and includes a color-blind view.
AMP for Email
Mailchimp doesn’t support AMP templates yet.
AWeber’s API helps you personalize messages by embedding AMP components within Gmail messages. With interactive message content, you can let recipients sign up for a newsletter, leave product reviews, book appointments, answer questionnaires, RSVP to events and view live package shipping statuses without ever leaving their inbox.
Winner: AWeber is the clear winner here.
Email Deliverability Support
Mailchimp is a member of industry-wide organizations such as ESPC, AOTA, MAAWG and EEC that are dedicated to deliverability and maintenance of the email ecosystem.
Registered with all major ISPs to receive alerts for junk campaigns, it automatically removes recipients who have filed complaints. Its abuse-detection technology analyzes campaign data and user activity to predict and prevent bad behavior and abuse. Automatic DKIM and SPF authentication as well as custom authentication are supported.
AWeber’s in-house reputation management system runs 24/7 and monitors email activities. This helps the deliverability team detect attempted email abuse in real time and remove accounts with low quality or suspicious sending patterns. They work closely with customers, educating them on industry best practices.
It helps maintain personal contact at major ISPs and manages only opt-in emails. It also authenticates automatically sent messages and recommends creating custom DKIM and SPF records.
Winner: It’s a tie between Mailchimp and AWeber for this feature.
Compare AWeber & Mailchimp Against Your Needs
Sign-up Forms
Mailchimp offers four embedded signup form design options: classic, condensed, horizontal, and unstyled. You can modify the form code to match the form’s visual elements to the exact design of a website. From pop-ups to sign-ups and more, the tools let you design, build, translate and share forms. You can customize forms for providing alerts, reCAPTCHA confirmation and more.
Using AWeber’s sign-up form builder, you can modify forms for branding and publish them on a website with a sign-up HTML code. It supports inline, pop-up, lightbox and popover sign-up forms. You can split test the sign-up forms with different offers or copy.
Signup forms in AWeber.
Winner: AWeber wins for this feature as it allows split testing.
Image Storage
Mailchimp offers unlimited storage space for images and provides a native integration with Giphy to insert GIFs into marketing campaigns. A vast library of animated GIFS is available to choose from.
AWeber provides access to a gallery of over 6,000 free stock images to which you can add buttons, photos and logos. You can upload images and GIFs, and AWeber will host them for free. You can hand-code images, which are automatically shared between the email message editor and landing page builder.
Winner: With a gallery of stock images AWeber wins for this feature.
Language Support
Although Mailchimp’s website is available only in English, their support is available in English and Spanish. How-to articles are available in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
In terms of marketing, you can translate sign-up forms and campaigns into more than 50 languages with the auto-translate option. There’s also the option to translate campaign content by inserting conditional merge tags or designing a custom-translated campaign for each language.
AWeber provides multiple languages for sending confirmed opt-in messages such as Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese and more. However, all aspects of the account, including web forms, contact information and notifications are available only in English.
Winner: With better language support, Mailchimp wins over AWeber for this feature.
Compare AWeber & Mailchimp Against Your Needs
Customer Support and Service
Mailchimp offers 24/7 email and chat support. The free plan includes email support for the first 30 days. Phone support is limited to premium subscribers.
AWeber’s support is available by email and live chat 24/7, and phone support is available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday. It’s possible to migrate data free of cost and you can move lists, tags, subscribers, up to three email templates, sign-up forms and landing pages, campaigns and automations.
Winner: With 12 hours of phone support and free migration service, AWeber is the winner here.
Website Builder
Mailchimp lets you build a no-code website for free, with the option to register a custom domain name. With fonts, colors, drag-and-drop content blocks and more, there are plenty of design and layout options. You can preview the website before publishing and enable website tracking. However, custom HTML, iframe tags and audience features like merge tags aren’t compatible with Mailchimp.
AWeber integrates with Weblium, a mobile-friendly website builder with an AI-driven design supervisor feature, enabling you to integrate signup forms to AWeber lists. You can also tag subscribers when they sign up to automate email marketing programs.
Winner: Mailchimp wins over AWeber thanks to its drag-and-drop website builder and custom domains.
Send Time Optimization
Mailchimp lets you look at data patterns and send emails when people are most likely to engage. You can schedule emails at the same time across timezones using a paid feature called Timewarp.
Send time optimization in Mailchimp.
AWeber captures users’ geographic information when they opt-in through a form or by autoresponder. In order to achieve this, you need to ensure send windows are applied in a way that can account for subscriber geography.
Winner: Mailchimp wins over AWeber for this feature.
Who is the Winner?
Mailchimp is the winner of this comparison. It had the advantage for 10 features, including key areas such as email testing, automation, reports and analytics, audience/subscriber management, and social media campaigns.
That said, AWeber can still be a good choice depending on what you’re looking for. It won in the categories of integrations, email templates, AMP for email, sign-up forms, image storage and customer support.
For deeper analysis of these tools and other products for marketing automation, check out our free comparison guide. Or dig into price considerations with our marketing automation pricing guide.
Which of these platforms sounds like a better choice for you? And why? Do you have anything to add to this AWeber vs Mailchimp study? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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