Comparing pricing, automation, and deliverability to find the best email marketing tool for creators and small businesses.
Mailchimp and ConvertKit (now rebranded as Kit) sit at opposite ends of the email marketing spectrum, even though they compete for much of the same audience. Mailchimp is the legacy player — founded in 2001, it has grown into a full marketing platform with email, landing pages, social posting, a basic CRM, and even a website builder. ConvertKit, launched in 2013, was built specifically for creators: bloggers, podcasters, course creators, and anyone who monetizes an audience.
That difference in philosophy matters. Mailchimp gives you more features out of the box but can feel bloated if all you need is solid email. ConvertKit gives you fewer features but executes them with a clarity and focus that many users find refreshing. The question is which approach matches what you actually need.
We have managed lists on both platforms across newsletters, course launches, and ecommerce stores. Here's what we found.
Both platforms offer free plans, which makes entry easy. The differences emerge as your list grows.
ConvertKit's free plan is dramatically more generous — 10,000 subscribers vs Mailchimp's 500. For someone just starting a newsletter, that's potentially years of free usage. However, Mailchimp's paid plans start lower ($13 vs $25), and at higher subscriber counts the pricing gap narrows.
At 10,000 subscribers, Mailchimp Standard runs about $135/month while ConvertKit Creator costs about $119/month. At 50,000 subscribers, Mailchimp jumps to roughly $385/month versus ConvertKit at $259/month. ConvertKit gets meaningfully cheaper as your list scales.
One important note: Mailchimp charges for unsubscribed contacts unless you archive or delete them. ConvertKit only counts active subscribers. This billing difference can add up significantly over time.
Free plan supports up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited sends.
This is where the two platforms diverge most visibly.
Mailchimp offers a drag-and-drop email builder with dozens of pre-designed templates. You can create highly visual, branded emails with images, buttons, social icons, columns, and product blocks. For ecommerce businesses or brands that rely on visual storytelling, Mailchimp's editor is significantly more capable. The template library covers everything from product announcements to event invitations.
ConvertKit takes the opposite approach. Its email editor is deliberately minimal — plain text with optional inline images and buttons. The philosophy is that simple, text-forward emails land in the primary inbox more often and feel more personal. ConvertKit does offer a visual email template editor, but it is basic compared to Mailchimp's.
Which approach is better? It depends on your brand. If you sell physical products and need rich visual layouts, Mailchimp's editor is clearly superior. If you're a creator sending weekly newsletters that read like personal letters, ConvertKit's simplicity is a feature, not a limitation. Plain-text-style emails consistently achieve higher open rates across most creator niches.
Edge: Mailchimp for visual design. ConvertKit for text-first newsletters that feel personal.
Email automation is where ConvertKit punches well above its weight.
ConvertKit's visual automation builder is one of the best in the industry at any price point. You build workflows by connecting triggers (subscriber joins a form, clicks a link, gets tagged) to actions (send email, add tag, move to sequence, set custom field) with conditional logic. The visual canvas is intuitive and easy to modify. Creating a multi-branch welcome sequence or a product launch funnel takes minutes, not hours.
ConvertKit also uses a tag-based subscriber system rather than separate lists. A single subscriber can have multiple tags and belong to multiple sequences without being counted (or billed) twice. This makes segmentation flexible and affordable.
Mailchimp's automation has improved substantially but still feels more rigid. The Customer Journey builder supports branching logic and multiple triggers, but the interface is less intuitive than ConvertKit's. Setting up conditional sequences requires more clicks and more careful planning. Mailchimp still defaults to a list-based model (called "Audiences"), and moving subscribers between audiences or avoiding duplicates requires deliberate management.
For advanced automation use cases — like tagging subscribers based on link clicks, then triggering targeted sequences based on those tags — ConvertKit is faster to set up and easier to maintain.
Edge: ConvertKit, clearly. Its automation builder is best-in-class for the price.
Deliverability — the percentage of emails that actually reach the inbox — is arguably the most important metric for any email platform. Unfortunately, it's also the hardest to measure objectively because it depends on list hygiene, content quality, and sending patterns as much as the platform itself.
That said, independent deliverability tests from EmailToolTester and others consistently place both Mailchimp and ConvertKit in the upper tier, typically between 85-95% inbox placement. ConvertKit has a slight edge in recent tests, likely because its user base tends to send text-heavy emails that spam filters treat more favorably.
ConvertKit also offers built-in tools for list hygiene: cold subscriber identification, re-engagement sequences, and easy bulk cleanup. Mailchimp has similar tools but they are spread across different sections of the interface.
Both platforms support DKIM, SPF, and DMARC authentication. Both allow custom sending domains. Neither platform has a reputation problem.
Edge: Slight edge to ConvertKit, though both are strong.
ConvertKit was designed for non-technical creators, and it shows. The interface is clean, the navigation is shallow (most features are one or two clicks from the dashboard), and the terminology avoids marketing jargon. A blogger with no email marketing experience can set up a lead magnet, create a welcome sequence, and start collecting subscribers within an hour.
Mailchimp is more complex because it does more. The dashboard has accumulated features over two decades, and while Intuit (which acquired Mailchimp in 2021) has invested in simplifying the UX, there is still a learning curve. Terminology like "Audiences" vs "Tags" vs "Segments" vs "Groups" can confuse new users. The integration with Intuit's broader ecosystem adds useful commerce features but also more menus to navigate.
For ecommerce users already in the Intuit/Shopify ecosystem, Mailchimp's deeper integrations may actually make it easier to use in context. For everyone else, ConvertKit's simplicity wins.
Edge: ConvertKit for most users. Mailchimp for ecommerce-focused teams.
Get started with 500 contacts and 1,000 sends per month at no cost.
For creators, bloggers, podcasters, and anyone building an audience-first business, ConvertKit is the better email platform. Its automation builder is genuinely excellent, the tag-based system makes segmentation painless, and the free plan gives you room to grow without pressure. The text-forward email philosophy produces better engagement for most creator niches, and the pricing stays reasonable as your list scales.
For ecommerce brands, agencies, or businesses that need rich visual emails alongside broader marketing tools, Mailchimp remains a solid choice. Its template library, ecommerce integrations, and all-in-one feature set make it practical for teams that don't want to manage multiple tools.
Our overall recommendation: if you are starting a newsletter or building a creator business, start with ConvertKit's free plan. You can always switch later, and ConvertKit's free tier is generous enough that you won't need to pay anything until you're well established. If your primary need is ecommerce email marketing with rich visual design, Mailchimp is the more capable option.