You want to set up an e-mail marketing strategy and you are looking for a solution allowing you to send your e-mails at the best price? You have heard of Mailchimp but also of the competing solution Sendinblue? You are wondering which solution is the most adapted to your needs?

Good news, I have been working for many years with both solutions. Indeed, I help companies that need to improve their visibility on the Internet and emails are one of my expertises. But then Mailchimp or Sendinblue? Which solution is the most interesting according to your needs?

Discover quickly a comparison allowing you to choose between Sendinblue or Mailchimp.

Comparison: Mailchimp VS Sendinblue
Mailchimp is the American giant of email marketing with more than eight million users worldwide and more than 500 million emails sent each month! In comparison, Sendinblue, a French success story, has nearly 80,000 users and a hundred million emails sent every day.

Are these numbers making your head spin? Don’t panic, it’s normal! Email is a formidable weapon in the marketing strategy of a company.

Today, these marketing platforms have established themselves as the industry standard thanks to two different approaches. Let’s take a look at the differences between these two emailing solutions (and not only!).

Price level, Mailchimp or Sendinblue?
Both platforms offer a free version which is more than enough to start your email campaigns. When you are a self-employed or have a small business, the basic features are enough in both solutions.

These two solutions have set up what is called a freemium model: you can test their platform for free but if you want advanced features, you will have to pay a monthly subscription. This is exactly the same model that made the success of the Wix website creation solution.

How much does Mailchimp really cost?
Mailchimp has a paid plan at $9.99/month while Sendinblue starts at 19€/month.

But beware, the bill at Mailchimp can go up very quickly. Why? Mailchimp charges per added contact in addition to the number of emails sent.

Specifically, in the $9.99/month plan you can add 500 contacts in the Mailchimp CRM that is included in the package. If you want to add more contacts, you will have to add paid options in amount in the available packages.

For example, if you have 10,000 contacts to whom you would like to send a weekly newsletter, the subscription amount (with the essential plan) is $78.99/month!

As you can see, the more contacts you have, the higher the cost of Mailchimp.

How much does Sendinblue cost?
Sendinblue has the advantage of working quite differently. It offers several packages depending on the number of emails sent each month and is not based on billing by number of contacts.

Moreover, you can create as many audience lists as you want, even in the free version and this is not negligible when you want to do personalized marketing automation!

Let’s take our example of 10,000 contacts to whom you want to send 1 newsletter per week, that is to say 40,000 emails. The cost will be 39€ / month.

So Sendinblue or Mailchimp?
As you can see, whether it is Sendinblue or Mailchimp, you can send emails for free if you have a very small base of customers / subscribers to your newsletter.

However, and we hope you do, if your business grows, your contact base will also grow. And when we take the price comparison on a base of 10,000 contacts, Sendinblue is the winner.

Which solution has the best deliverability rate?
The deliverability rate is the key indicator to follow when you want to send an email. Indeed, it is estimated today that only 20% of the emails sent are opened by their recipient. Why so few?

One of the main reasons is the deliverability rate. But what is this rate? Simply put, this rate corresponds to the percentage of emails that actually arrive in the inbox of your recipients compared to the amount of emails sent.

Why is this? Simply because messaging systems (such as Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook… etc) can block your emails and put them in spam. Also, if the deliverability rate is low, then many emails will be sent as spam or in the “promotion” tab. The user will be warned that it is a commercial email.

Thus, it is important to know which solution has the best deliverability rate.

According to the latest studies, Mailchimp’s emails go more often in spam or in the “promotions” tab than Sendinblue. The study reveals that 11% of emails sent by Sendinblue are classified as spam by email providers like Gmail or Yahoo, while Mailchimp’s junk mail reached 14.2%.

Thus, the deliverability rate of Sendinblue is 89%. Mailchimp’s is 85.8%.

What does it look like in terms of handling?
What is the best service/quality/price ratio? Everything will depend on the features of the two platforms to make your choice. Which one is more complete: Mailchimp or Sendinblue? Let’s decipher in detail each of these two solutions.

Mailchimp and Sendinblue have both developed a very easy to understand user interface. However, Mailchimp has a lot of menus and subcategories and you can quickly get lost.

Sendinblue has created its menu horizontally in the header, each page corresponds to a feature, and on the left you have all the subcategories, it is easier to use and more intuitive than the Mailchimp platform.

Which solution offers the most comprehensive analytics?
SendinBlue offers reports you might need, such as a click-map, geographic tracking and Google Analytics integration.

Mailchimp also offers these same interesting statistics. On the analytics side, Sendinblue is, in my opinion, easier to understand visually while Mailchimp is more complex in terms of reading analytics.

But this is only a personal opinion, without any real basis because, knowing the platforms for many years, I am used to find the analysis quickly.

In terms of analysis, I thus consider it to be a tie.

Which solution to choose for marketing automation?
Marketing automation is the art of planning sequences of emails that will be sent automatically to each new person that will be added to your contact base.

For example, when a user subscribes to your newsletter, you could send him (automatically) an email presenting your solution. Then, some time later, you could send him the video of your last webinar or intervention in a trade show… etc. All this, in perfect automation without you having to do it yourself.

So, which solution is the most interesting for this type of operation?

Sendinblue allows you to create complex automation scenarios even in the free version. You can choose from a list of people who have done a certain action on your website and send them a personalized email based on whether they have made a purchase, put a product in the cart or visited a certain page of the site. The platform is very easy to use and the scenarios are easy to set up.

Mailchimp does not yet offer to take an action based on the customer’s behavior on your site. Moreover, the platform is not intuitive and you should switch to the paid plan before you can start an automation strategy with the American giant.

Which one to choose for A/B testing?
In both cases, you should switch to the paid plan. Neither platform offers A/B testing in the free plan. This is obvious because testing helps you understand your audience and boost your business.

Analysis tools are essential to increase your ROI. You will first test the subject of the email: short or long, punctuation, personalization with the first name, a question or a statement etc… A study shows that 68% of people open an email based on the subject alone. Depending on the results, you can then move on to testing the content.

So, Mailchimp or Sendinblue: has the best AB testing service?

Mailchimp offers more features like comparing its data to the market, you can test up to 8 campaigns at the same time and see which one is the most effective, for $299/month. This price may seem too expensive for startups who are just getting started.

Sendinblue offers a much more visual and understandable reading of the results at a much lower price than Mailchimp. Setting up an AB test campaign is very easy on the French platform.