Drip vs. Mailchimp: Which is best for marketing automation?

Struggling to build on-brand emails that stand out in every inbox? Try using one of these and learn how each can help in this Drip vs. Mailchimp Comparison.

Tired of seeing a revenue slump in your Shopify store after running email campaigns? Start using one of these email marketing software. Drip and Mailchimp excel at it. 

Drip focuses on email automation for e-commerce, while Mailchimp delivers an all-rounded solution.

However, what makes each unique, and do they offer value for money?

Let’s find out in this Drip vs. MailChimp comparison.

Drip vs Mailchimp: At a Glance

Criteria	Drip	Mailchimp	Winner
SMB Guide’s Rating	8.2/10	8/10	Drip
Marketing Automation Capabilities	Advanced segmentation	Basic automation	Drip
Email Builder	Library of 50 templates	Intuitive, easy-to-use	Mailchimp
Personalization & Customization	Extensive segmentation	Basic personalization	Drip
Campaign Performance Tracking	Advanced goal tracking	Standard metrics	Drip
Email Deliverability	✅	✅	Mailchimp
List Management	Advanced list management	Simple lists	Drip
A/B Testing	✅	✅	Mailchimp
Advanced Reporting & Insights	Multi-touch attribution	Basic reports	Drip
Compliance & Security	✅	✅	Tie
User Experience and User Interface	Simple interface	User-friendly interface	Mailchimp
Integrations and Compatibility	100+ integrations	300+ integrations	Mailchimp
Customer Support	Email and live chat	Phone, live chat, and email	Mailchimp
Pricing	$39/mo – $1,999/mo	Free – $1,600/mo	Mailchimp
Scalability	✅	✅	Mailchimp

Drip: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Drip is email marketing software built for e-commerce. It provides tools for creating sophisticated email strategies and enhancing them with automation. 

Drip shines in creating complex automation and offering marketers a visual workflow builder. Through it, they can customize conditional actions or use branching logic within the workflows.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

Drip does not offer tiered plans. Instead, it provides a sliding-scale model where pricing depends on the number of contacts. 

Drip’s pricing model includes a two-week free trial period, and signing up doesn’t require credit card information. 

While Drip is feature-rich, it can scale with businesses with growing subscriber bases. The starting price is $39, and it supports up to 2500 contacts.

Mailchimp: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Mailchimp is still one of the leading email marketing software going on now for over a decade. With a foundation in email, it has grown to include native CRM and automation features, among other capabilities. 

Mailchimp is also well-known for its powerful e-commerce integration options and automation tools. These capabilities combine to make it ideal multichannel email marketing software.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

Mailchimp’s pricing plan is straightforward, offering four plans, including a freemium. The free plan has feature limitations compared to competitors, but paid plans provide better tools.

Currently, Mailchimp has a promo of 50% off on all annual subscriptions.

Here are the plans:

• Free: $0
• Essentials: $13 monthly ($78 yearly)
• Standard: $20 monthly ($120 annually)
• Premium: $350 monthly ($2100 yearly)

Marketing Automation Capabilities

Drip excels here, providing a visual automation builder for intricate workflows. Marketers can create workflows via branching logic and conditional actions.

Its intuitive visual builder offers an overview of various actions and their connection to different conditions.

Mailchimp offers powerful automation features, but its workflow builder can’t match Drip’s. While the builder supports branching logic and conditional actions, it lacks flexibility.

Drip edges Mailchimp in terms of trigger range. It provides more extensive triggers besides time-based, user behavior, and external events.

While Mailchimp offers similar triggers, it lacks those tied to complex user behavior.

Regarding cross-channel automation, Drip shines. Its support extends to direct email, SMS, and social media. Drip also integrates these channels more deeply than Mailchimp. 

Mailchimp supports email, social media, and postcards. While it has improved over the years, it still lacks deep integration, like on Drip.

Both software also offer dynamic content personalization. However, Mailchimp limits it to the top plans for advanced segmentation functionality.

✅ Winner: Drip

Email Builder

Mailchimp shines here, providing a more extensive template library of 100+ compared to Drip’s 50. While Drip has a smaller library, its templates are professional, modern, and customizable.

Mailchimp’s templates are decent and customizable but lack the aesthetic appeal of Drip.

Both software provide an email builder with drag-and-drop functionality. However, the Mailchimp editor offers extensive customization options, such as adding promo codes.

Drip and Mailchimp emphasize template optimization for mobile. It allows the email templates to render quickly across different screens.

Marketers will also find that both software provides an option for HTML editing. The feature is ideal for users looking to gain design control and granular customization. 

After creating and customizing the templates, users will find preview and spam testing features on both platforms.

The features allow marketers to view how the emails render across devices and optimize for deliverability.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Personalization & Customization

Drip excels in dynamic content insertion based on segmentation criteria, recipient attributes, and behavior. 

Its powerful merge tags allow marketers to personalize the email content with recipient-specific info. The segmentation options are broader, allowing better targeting with custom messages.

Mailchimp provides decent personalization features. It supports dynamic content personalization based on segmentation criteria and recipient attributes.

Like Drip, it provides easy-to-use merge tags for personalizing email content using recipient-specific information. However, its segmentation options aren’t extensive compared to Drip’s.

Both software also allow the insertion of recipient details in emails using personalization tokens. However, the process on Mailchimp is more complex than that on Drip.

✅ Winner: Drip

Campaign Performance Tracking

Drip provides its users with in-depth analytics on their campaigns, giving insight into revenue attribution and customer engagement.

Its focus on e-commerce makes it edge Mailchimp in tracking purchase-related metrics.

Mailchimp also provides in-depth analytics on marketing campaigns using metrics like CTR, ROI, and open rates. The best part is that it offers comparative reports for benchmarking.

Both platforms also provide real-time reporting dashboards for tracking campaign performances. Both platforms’ dashboards are intuitive, but Drip’s e-commerce focus offers granular revenue insights, giving it an edge.

Each software offers a unique approach to setting and tracking campaign goals. Drip goal tracking is more advanced and integrated with automation and e-commerce features.

Mailchimp’s goal tracking focuses on basic metrics like open rates, engagement, and clicks.

Both software provide a/b testing tools to run tests on various email elements. However, Mailchimp offers more comprehensive analytics and insights on each test result than on Drip.

Both platforms also integrate with third-party analytics platforms like Google Analytics.

✅ Winner: Drip

Email Deliverability

Mailchimp excels here, providing more powerful built-in tools for spam testing. The tools are integrated into the email creation process, simplifying deliverability optimization.

Drip, on the other hand, lacks built-in spam testing tools. In most cases, users will rely on third-party tools or manual checks to assess spam risks. 

Both platforms also provide tools for monitoring and maintaining the sender’s reputation. The tools allow users to track bounce rates, spam complaints, unsubscribes, and more.

Marketers will also find that both platforms allow users to revoke or modify emergency access.

However, Mailchimp’s user control features are more intuitive, with clear options for assigning permissions and roles.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

List Management

Drip excels in list segmentation, providing marketers with advanced options regardless of the number of contacts.

These include custom criteria, behavior, and demographics. Through its ‘liquid’ tool, users can create dynamic content broadcast to different subscribers based on tags.

Mailchimp also provides powerful segmentation capabilities. However, accessing advanced segmentation requires upgrading to the top plans.

Both software provide tools capable of cleaning and maintaining email lists. Users can use the tools to remove duplicates, invalid addresses, and inactive subscribers.

Both platforms also provide features for managing subscriber preferences. These include subscription confirmation processes, opt-in/out, and more.

✅ Winner: Drip

A/B Testing

Mailchimp excels here, allowing marketers to run multivariate tests on more email elements than on Drip. These include send times, audience segments, body copy, and subject lines. 

Setting the A/B tests on both platforms is straightforward. Mailchimp provides guidelines for quick launch tests.

On reporting, Drip’s in-depth analytics of the test results help marketers understand why some variations perform better.

Mailchimp’s reporting features are more advanced, providing granular insights on each variation and assisting marketers in making decisions.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Advanced Reporting & Insights

Drip provides marketers with detailed reporting functionality to analyze campaign performance metrics for different segments.

It breaks down the metrics into open rates, CTR, and conversions for each segment. It makes it ideal for businesses with complex customer journeys.

Mailchimp offers marketers powerful reporting capabilities for segmented email campaigns. It allows businesses to analyze different metrics for different audience segments. 

Drip edges Mailchimp on conversion tracking and attribution. The Drip platform follows the customer journey across multiple touchpoints.

It gives a more granular analysis of the campaign’s impact, and unlike Mailchimp, it supports multi-touch attribution.

Mailchimp also provides in-depth tracking and attribution on campaign conversions. Its tool tracks conversions across different stages of the customer journey.

The integration of Google Analytics enhances attribution capabilities. Both platforms also provide predictive analytics and optimization.

Drip uses ML algos to analyze historical data and predict future campaign performance. Mailchimp integrates predictive analytics into the platform, focusing on broader marketing insights.

✅ Winner: Drip

Compliance and Security

Drip and Mailchimp provide powerful consent management tools to facilitate GDPR compliance. These include features like data processing agreements and access requests.

Both platforms also use standard SSL/TLS encryption to safeguard customer data.

Marketers will also find that both software adheres to permission-based marketing. They provide features that ensure emails are sent to subscribers who have opted in.

Both platforms also include tools for managing subscription preferences and opt-in/opt-out.

✅ Winner: Tie

User Interface and User Experience

The Drip interface is minimalistic, with a well-placed menu and features. It makes creating, sending, and managing emails easy for beginners.

Mailchimp’s interface is modern and feature-rich, with a well-placed menu and features. However, the extensive features can overwhelm first-time users.

Both platforms also provide a library of premade customizable templates. Mailchimp’s library is extensive, with 100+, while Drip only provides 50+.

Both also have an email builder with a drag-and-drop function. However, the MailChimp editor offers more customization options.

After creating and customizing the email templates, users will find preview and spam testing tools on both platforms.

However, Drip lacks a built-in spam testing tool, relying on third-party apps or manual checks.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Integrations and Compatibility

Mailchimp excels here, providing a more extensive integration stack of 250+ systems than Drip’s 100. Among them are popular CRMs such as Salesforce, Zoho, and HubSpot.

The CRM integration is handy on both platforms, supporting bi-directional data syncing.

Both platforms also provide powerful APIs for custom integrations and data scraping. However, Drip’s webhooks and API are more flexible than Mailchimp’s.

Both platforms also provide comprehensive documentation on the use and maintenance of APIs.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Customer Support

Mailchimp edges Drip here, providing more support channels like phone, live chat, and email 24/7. Drip’s primary support option is email for users with less than 5K contacts.

Then, after reaching 5K+ subscribers, users access the live chat support option. Mailchimp support is decent.

Live chat takes 3-5 minutes, while email and phone can take up to 6 hours. Drip support is lackluster, with email taking up to 24 hours and live chat under 10 minutes.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Pricing

Mailchimp shines here, providing tiered pricing plans with a forever-free plan. The free plan provides basic email marketing features but offers a good entry point for startups and SMBs.

Drip lacks tiered plans, but uses a scaling model where pricing depends on the number of contacts. Its plans are pricey but offer comprehensive features, unlike Mailchimp’s entry plans.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Scalability

Drips’ pricing model doesn’t offer much flexibility in plan customization. However, the software supports scaling businesses with advanced features, especially those focused on e-commerce.

Mailchimp’s tiered pricing offers flexibility in scaling or customizing a plan with add-ons. It allows businesses to adapt to changing needs more efficiently than on Drip.

✅ Winner: Mailchimp

Standout Features of Drip

Drip excels in efficiently running complex campaign automation, especially for e-commerce businesses.

During our evaluation, we found two features that stood out, and they include:

Onsite

Drip allows marketers to meet their customers beyond the inbox through the Onsite feature.

Users can drag and drop their onsite campaigns, where they can collect, guide, and connect with visitors in a way emails can’t.

Segmentation

Drip offers its users dynamic segmentation, allowing them to deliver spot-on messages to their subscribers. The segmentation combines several factors, including visitor, store, and marketing data.

Standout Features of Mailchimp

Besides being an automation software for boosting clicks and sales, Mailchimp still excels as an email marketing software.

During our evaluation, we found two features that stood out, they include:

Generative AI

It is a newly added feature that helps marketers simplify their marketing processes. It analyzes data, turns it into actionable insights, and helps create bulk content.

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 correct prospects and turn the replies into successful marketing strategies.

Drip vs. Mailchimp: SMB Guide’s Verdict

Mailchimp edges Drip in this comparison by a whisker. Here is why.

Mailchimp offers more comprehensive software with better automation tools, integrations, and reporting.

It has added generative AI to its packages to help marketers create bulk content and analyze data. These impressive features, among others, are why it wins this duel.

Choose Drip If:

You run an e-commerce business and need a solution with powerful automation and tracking capability.

Choose Mailchimp If:

You need an all-rounded email marketing software with a CRM and powerful automation.