Campaign Monitor vs. Mailchimp Comparison: Which is better?

Looking for software that uses AI to drive conversions? Try one of these and learn how it can help in this Campaign Monitor vs. Mailchimp comparison.

Struggling with personalization and automation of your email campaigns for higher conversions?

Try using one of these email marketing software. Campaign Monitor excels at personalization, while Mailchimp offers an all-rounded solution. 

However, what makes each one unique, and how do they compare?

Let’s find out in this Campaign Monitor vs. Mailchimp comparison.

Campaign Monitor vs Mailchimp: At a Glance

Criteria	Campaign Monitor	Mailchimp	Winner
SMB Guide’s Rating	8/10	8/10	Tie
Marketing Automation Capabilities	Cross-channel support	Basic automation	Mailchimp
Email Builder	250+ templates	Intuitive, easy-to-use	Campaign Monitor
Personalization & Customization	Dynamic fields	Basic personalization	Tie
Campaign Performance Tracking	Flexible segmentation options	Standard metrics	Mailchimp
Email Deliverability	✅	✅	Mailchimp
List Management	Standard targeting	Simple lists	Mailchimp
A/B Testing	✅	✅	Mailchimp
Advanced Reporting & Insights	Basic tracking	Basic reports	Mailchimp
Compliance & Security	✅	✅	Tie
User Experience and User Interface	Simple interface	User-friendly interface	Campaign Monitor
Integrations and Compatibility	100+ integrations	300+ integrations	Mailchimp
Customer Support	Email and phone	Phone, live chat, and email	Mailchimp
Pricing	Free – $999/mo	Free – $1,600/mo	Mailchimp
Scalability	✅	✅	Mailchimp

Campaign Monitor: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing software that excels at segmentation and hyper-personalization. It provides a feature called Marigold Liveclicker Express that helps users hyper-personalize campaign content. 

Campaign Monitor also provides users with an extensive library of 250+ pre-made templates customizable through a drag-and-drop editor.

The templates are professional, and the builder allows HTML editing. Its reasonable pricing suits SMBs struggling with subscriber segmentation and targeting.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

The pricing structure is straightforward. It offers three plans without a freemium. The plans are scalable, and signing up doesn’t require credit card information.

Pricing depends on the number of contacts, with free use capped at 5.

Here are the plans:

• Lite: $12 monthly
• Essentials: $29
• Premier: $159

Mailchimp: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Mailchimp is an email marketing pioneer and has evolved into an all-around solution. It now combines CRM, email marketing, and automation. 

One of its standout features is its integration with e-commerce, among other platforms. It enables marketers to track and collect customer data for improved targeting. 

A combination of these features, among others, makes it suitable for all business types looking for an all-around solution.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

Mailchimp pricing is straightforward, offering four plans and a forever-free package. The plans are scalable and don’t require credit card information to sign up.

The free plan is decent for startups and individuals with a smaller subscriber base. It’s also a good entry point for SMBs on a budget.

Here are the plans:

• Free: $0 monthly
• Essentials: $13 monthly
• Standard: $20 monthly
• Premium: $350 monthly

Marketing Automation Capabilities

Mailchimp excels here, offering more advanced workflow capabilities through conditional actions and branching logic.

Like Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp also supports a broad range of triggers for initiating automation sequences. These include time-based, user behavior, and external events. 

Mailchimp automation also extends beyond email, incorporating cross-channel support.

Unlike Campaign Monitor, which focuses on email and SMS, Mailchimp includes social media. It gives it an edge in providing a comprehensive marketing approach.

In dynamic personalization, Mailchimp also edges Campaign Monitor. It allows marketers to deliver targeted content to their email list by customizing the content more sophisticatedly based on more recipient attributes.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Email Builder

Campaign Monitor offers a more extensive library of 250+ pre-made templates, while Mailchimp offers 100.

However, both platform’s templates are visually appealing and professionally categorized for various industries and purposes.

Both platforms also offer an email builder with a drag-and-drop function to customize the templates. However, Mailchimp’s editor is more flexible and offers more customization options than Campaign Monitor’s.

Both platforms also prioritize optimization, ensuring their templates are mobile-responsive. It allows the emails to render seamlessly across various screens and devices.

Users will also find that both platforms offer preview and spam testing features. The features allow marketers to see how the emails look across clients.

Spam testing tools check for email deliverability.

✅ Winner: Campaign Monitor

Personalization & Customization

Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp both offer powerful support for dynamic content insertion. The platforms also provide a broad range of merge tags for marketers and even support custom ones.

The difference comes when Campaign Monitor offers conditional logic for displaying content based on specific criteria.

Mailchimp, on the other hand, offers a visual builder for creating dynamic content blocks.

Both offer deep and flexible segmentation options, enabling marketers to create targeted messages. Marketers can also create segments based on various criteria, such as behavior, demographics, and more. 

Campaign Monitor goes beyond to support advanced options like predictive segmentation. On the other hand, Mailchimp includes a visual segmentation builder for creating complex segments.

The use of personalization tokens is straightforward on both platforms. It makes it easy to insert subscriber details into the emails.

✅ Winner: Tie

Campaign Performance Tracking

Mailchimp excels here, providing campaign metrics beyond the basics, such as e-commerce tracking and CLV analysis.

It enables businesses to gain deeper insights into their campaigns, going beyond traditional metrics like clicks, open rates, ROI, and CTR.

Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp offer a real-time reporting dashboard for tracking campaign performance. The dashboards are customizable and allow marketers to drill down into specific metrics.

On campaign goal setting and tracking, Mailchimp edges Campaign Monitor. Mailchimp offers tools that allow users to track specific goals, whether engagement or lead gen.

MailChimp also shines in A/B testing, allowing users to run multivariate tests of different email elements simultaneously. 

It also breaks down the test results so that marketers can see what is working. Marketers will also find that both platforms support third-party analytics tools, including Google Analytics.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Email Deliverability

Mailchimp excels here and is well-regarded for its stellar email deliverability. Like Campaign Monitor, it offers spam filter tests to identify and solve spam issues.

Mailchimp goes on to offer reports with actionable suggestions on ways to improve the email content.

Both software offer tools for monitoring and maintaining the sender’s reputation, such as spam complaints and bounce rates. For high-volume senders, Mailchimp includes dedicated IPs that can enhance deliverability.

Both platforms also offer robust controls regarding emergency access management. They allow account owners to revoke or modify user access in an emergency easily.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

List Management

Mailchimp excels in list segmentation, offering deeper and more flexible options than Campaign Monitor. Marketers can segment their subscribers based on a wider range of criteria. 

It allows marketers to have granular control over their targeting, where they can combine multiple conditions to create highly specific segments.

Now, both platforms provide tools for list cleaning and maintenance. It helps remove duplicate, inactive, and invalid addresses.

Mailchimp goes on to include automated re-engagement campaigns for inactive subscribers.

Regarding managing subscriber preferences, both platforms offer opt-in/out and unsubscribe options.

Mailchimp includes subscription preference centers and automated confirmation processes. Campaign Monitor offers double opt-in, which is handy.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

A/B Testing

Mailchimp shines here, allowing users to simultaneously run tests on multiple email elements. These include send times, subject lines, body copy, and more.

Campaign Monitor only allows A/B tests on key email elements like subject lines and content.

Setting up the tests on both platforms is straightforward. The platforms provide a user-friendly interface for setting the parameters and conducting the tests.

Regarding reporting, Mailchimp edges Campaign Monitor. It offers more granular analytics on each test, allowing users to understand the impact of every element.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Advanced Reporting & Insights

Mailchimp excels in offering in-depth reports on segmented campaigns. Marketers can analyze data with granularity from across different segments, unlike Campaign Monitor. 

On tracking and attribution, Campaign Monitor offers basic tools but attributes to specific campaigns. Mailchimp, on the other hand, provides sophisticated tools for tracking and attributing conversions.

It allows marketers to track conversions across multiple customer touch points in the sales funnel. Unlike Campaign Monitor, it also gives marketers an in-depth overview of their campaign performance.

Regarding predictive analysis, Campaign Monitor doesn’t emphasize it in the reporting suite. However, Mailchimp incorporates it, offering algos to forecast future campaign performances.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Compliance and Security

Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp offer tools to facilitate GDPR compliance, such as data access requests, consent management, and more.

The sign-up forms and double opt-in ensure consent gets managed and documented well.

Both platforms use standard encryption protocols SSL/TLS to protect customer data.

Marketers will also find that both softwares adhere to strict permission-based marketing principles. The software ensures emails get sent to subscribers who have opted to receive them.

✅ Winner: Tie

User Interface and User Experience

The Campaign Monitor interface is simple, with a well-organized menu and features. Navigating through it is easy, making it easy to create, send, and manage emails.

Mailchimp is modern and features-rich, but in some cases, it can overwhelm, especially beginners.

Both software offers pre-made email templates, with Campaign Monitor providing 250+ compared to Mailchimp 100.

Users will also find capable email builders with drag-and-drop functionality.

However, Mailchimp’s editor is more flexible and offers advanced customization options.

Both platforms also offer preview and spam testing features. Marketers can view how their emails appear across devices and clients.

The spam testing tools help optimize the email for better deliverability.

Users will also find that both platforms’ dashboards are customizable and allow the creation of shortcuts to frequently used functions.

✅ Winner: Campaign Monitor

Integrations and Compatibility

Mailchimp shines here, offering more integration options with popular CRMs, including Pipedrive, HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, and more. 

Unlike Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp integrations are more comprehensive. It allows for deeper syncing and more advanced audience segmentation.

Both software also provide a powerful API to facilitate custom integrations. MailChimp’s API offers a wider range of operations than Campaign Monitor. 

Users can use it to scrape data and get real-time analytics, automate workflows, and more. The good thing is that both platforms offer in-depth documentation on their APIs.

Both platforms also offer native integrations with popular e-commerce and analytics platforms. Mailchimp’s e-commerce integration is deeper, unlike Campaign Monitor’s. 

It allows users to sync more data, such as purchase behavior and product data. Users can also integrate Google Analytics for a more granular analysis of their email campaigns.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Customer Support

Mailchimp shines here, offering more support channels than Campaign Monitor. Users can reach out through email, live chat, and phone (Premium plan), while Campaign Monitor only offers email and phone (Premier plan). 

Mailchimp’s live chat provides quick responses within 3-5 minutes. However, email and phone calls can take 6-12 hours. Campaign Monitor response is poor, with email taking up to 24 hours.

The feedback from both platform agents is helpful, as they offer solutions even for technical issues.

Both platforms offer self-help resources, with Campaign Monitor including a blog, knowledge base, webinars, and tutorials. Mailchimp resources are more comprehensive and include guides, a help center, and an FAQ section.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Pricing

Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor offer scalable plans that can suit various businesses. However, Mailchimp’s free plan gives it an edge here. 

The free plan supports up to 300 contacts and has decent features ideal for startups and solo marketers.

Campaign Monitor’s free trial only supports up to five subscribers.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Scalability

Both platforms provide businesses with scalable pricing structures. Mailchimp accommodates businesses with growing subscriber bases. 

However, Mailchimp’s free plan gives it an edge since it offers a suitable entry point for SMBs. It allows them to grow, and once they exceed the plan limits, they can upgrade to paid tiers.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Standout Features of Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor excels with its simplicity and powerful personalization capability. However, during our evaluation, we found two other features that make it unique.

SMS marketing

Combining email and SMS marketing is an excellent way to amplify your marketing strategies. Campaign Monitor offers SMS marketing, which adds a different dynamic and impacts the overall campaign.

Marigold livecliker express

It’s a newly added feature that helps marketers hyper-personalize their emails without adding integrations or tech.

Through it, marketers can view real-time insights like device type, location, individual preferences, and more.

Standout Features of Mailchimp

Besides being one of the pioneer email and automation software, MailChimp offers two unique features.

Marketing CRM

It is one of Mailchimp’s core features that helps businesses build better customer relationships. It allows companies to find new ways to market to their audiences.

Surveys

Mailchimp provides a free survey tool for SMBs to integrate with the CRM, customer journey builder, and email.

It allows marketers to send questions to the right prospects and turn the replies into successful marketing strategies.

Campaign Monitor vs MailChimp: SMB Guide’s Verdict

Mailchimp wins hands down in this comprehensive comparison against Campaign Monitor. 

It offers an all-inclusive solution with advanced features for email marketing. Some of its selling points are advanced reporting, CRM, surveys, deep e-commerce integrations, and a free plan.

Campaign Monitor is a decent alternative with its user-friendly interface and focus on personalization. However, the lack of a free plan and limited customization options make it lose.

Choose Campaign Monitor If:

You are a medium-sized business looking for software focused on segmentation and personalization.

Choose Mailchimp If:

You need an all-rounded email marketing software offering advanced tools.