Thinking about AWeber vs Mailchimp for your email marketing? All things being equal, and between AWeber and Mailchimp they are pretty darn close, Mailchimp offers a free account for up to 2,000 subscribers and AWeber’s pricing starts at $19.99/month (for up to 500 subscribers).
Both Mailchimp and AWeber are great companies that offer award-winning software to run a mailing list. So in all honesty, you can’t go wrong either way. That said, let’s look at some side-by-side comparisons of the most important feature you’d need to run a mailing list for your business.
In all fairness, I think Mailchimp is better than AWeber, and Mailchimp is what I use to run my own business—and I own several software companies, run 3 courses with over 10,000 students, and create content for a popular weekly newsletter that has over 30,000 subscribers. I also generate more than 95% of my revenue from my mailing list and it’s Mailchimp, not AWeber that powers it.
Let’s look at why myself and so many others believe that in a Mailchimp vs AWeber fight, Mailchimp comes out on top.
Mailchimp vs AWeber, features compared
Autoresponders – AWeber wins
Looking at an AWeber autoresponder review, theirs can be more straightforward than Mailchimp because they have a drag and drop editor. But still, creating more complex tasks for their drip sequences requires digging deep into their settings. Whereas Mailchimp automations have no drag and drop editor for triggers, their settings are fairly easy to set up for delays and triggers.
PS: You can learn how to use simple and advanced automations for Mailchimp in my Chimp Essentials course.
Design – Mailchimp wins
Mailchimp comes with 100s of templates which are easy to customize and style to match your brand with their best-in-class drag and drop template editor. AWeber, on the other hand, charges for custom templates. That said, fancy and heavily designed HTML templates might seem like a good idea, but plain-text emails always perform best.
Reporting – Mailchimp wins
While both Mailchimp and AWeber built-in reporting to show you open rates, click rates and engagement, AWeber doesn’t directly integrate with Google Analytics for views or ecommerce. To use Google Analytics in AWeber you’d have to use the Google URL builder every single time you link to anything, which would be tedious.
Integrations – Mailchimp wins
Both Mailchimp and AWeber connect to a lot of other systems, but Mailchimp does integrates directly for things like ecommerce through Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento, whereas AWeber requires a lot of zaps from Zapier. Where Mailchimp really pulls ahead is ecommerce, since their ecommerce360 features are massive—showing you what subscriber bought what, when, for how much, and a lot more. AWeber simply lets you “tag” customers as customers, and not much else.
Surveys – Mailchimp wins
AWeber doesn’t have simple polls or surveys built it, and Mailchimp does—making it much easier to track, see reporting and then segment based on results. For AWeber you have to use a third-party survey tool, and then use a third party tool to connect the survey to your list—which takes time and costs more.
Send times – Mailchimp wins
Mailchimp is better than AWeber here because you can schedule send times based on the subscriber’s timezone in Mailchimp. Mailchimp also lets you send your campaigns out a few at a time, so your website isn’t taken down by a huge surge of traffic (you can set it to send 100 emails every 10 minutes, for example). You can’t do this in AWeber.
Deliverability – tie!
Both AWeber and Mailchimp have approximately the same deliverability rates based on tests from EmailToolTester.
Support – AWeber wins
AWeber has phone and chat, and they win awards for their customer service. Mailchimp only has email support, and while it’s great (I use it on a weekly basis), nothing beats being able to pick up the phone and talk to a human sometimes.
Payments – Mailchimp wins!
While AWeber accepts credit cards to pay for your account, Mailchimp also accepts Paypal, which comes in handy, since most online business owners (like myself) always have money kicking around in their Paypal account, so it’s great to use it to pay for services like newsletter software (and doesn’t cost us extra).
Culture – tie!
As a consumer, I like to believe I can “vote with my wallet” and support companies that align with my world views. AWeber does this by offering 3 months for free + 25% off for life if you’re a non-profit, and 20% off if you’re a student. Which is awfully nice of them. Mailchimp only has a 15% discount for non-profits, but they donate millions of dollars to local organizations around Atlanta to promote arts, diversity and inclusiveness across genders, races and sexuality. They also actively work to recruit talented people from diverse backgrounds, partnering with organizations from historically black colleges and universities to LGBTQIA associations. There’s no winner here, both companies do a good job at being good companies.
Mailchimp vs AWeber conclusion, Mailchimp is better than AWeber
Even if I was to start over from scratch, I’d still use Mailchimp over AWeber (or Constant Contact, or ConvertKit). While they have very similar features, Mailchimp edges AWeber out for almost all of them in terms of ease of use and advanced functionality.
There are a lot of articles online that talk about awful Mailchimp is or there are disadvantages to Mailchimp so it can’t do certain things, when that’s not the case—and some people just like spreading misinformation (like saying Mailchimp doesn’t let you use affiliate links, which isn’t true).
While no piece of software is the best answer for everyone, in every business, at all times, let’s look at why would agree with the review of Mailchimp vs AWeber above.
Why choose Mailchimp over AWeber?
- You want a free account, up to 2,000 subscribers.
- You want newsletter software that’s fast and easy.
- You want Google Analytics and ecommerce integrations.
- You want native surveys and polls.
- You want sending delays and time-zone-based sending.
You can learn more about why you should love Mailchimp in my Mailchimp review.
Why choose AWeber instead of Mailchimp?
- You want phone support.
- You don’t care about Google Analytics or ecommerce.
- You don’t mind using Zapier or extra steps for integrations.
- You don’t want to pay for your account using Paypal.
As I said at the start, both companies are great and offer amazing software products to their customers. Mailchimp just squeaks out ahead of AWeber for several reasons. I’m not alone in thinking this either, Mailchimp has 15+ million customers (AWeber 50,000 or so), so a lot of people agree with me.
If you’d like to learn more about how to use Mailchimp to run your online business, check out Chimp Essentials, my how-to course for using Mailchimp to drive subscribers and revenue in your business.
