The best al­tern­at­ives to MailChimp

When it comes to the price, GetRe­sponse is slightly more expensive than its com­pet­it­ors. In addition, the company doesn’t offer a free starter trial. There is a one-month trial version, but customers are lead straight to the checkout where packages cost from $15 (£12) to $1,199 (£940) per month.

Emma was found in 2003 and offers, for example, special deals for non-profit or­gan­is­sa­tions or uni­ver­sit­ies. Emma is similar to the com­pet­it­ors, GetRe­sponse and MailChimp, regarding the range of functions and the program’s operation. The platform focuses on automatic dispatch: the perfect time for sending out the news­let­ter can be de­term­ined by eval­u­at­ing user behaviour. Even beginners can implement pro­fes­sion­al e-mail marketing. It’s es­pe­cially useful to create a lightbox form to install on your website. Visitors can enter their e-mail addresses to receive the news­let­ter. You should, however, take the steep price into con­sid­er­a­tion. The cheapest option starts at $89 (£70) per month and increases up to $839 (£650) per month. In­di­vidu­al deals can prove even more costly.

The US-based provider, Constant Contact, has been on the market for more than 20 years and is mainly aimed at smaller companies. In addition to sending news­let­ters, this MailChimp al­tern­at­ive offers a lot of learning material for pro­spect­ive e-mail marketers, although much of it is well-known in­form­a­tion. Many of the online seminars on the topic of online marketing are very US-based, which isn’t much use to UK users. The useful features are those that you can use to create a WordPress plugin or a custom app for your Facebook page. This opens up a lot of op­por­tun­it­ies, es­pe­cially for small busi­nesses, to receive e-mail addresses from potential customers.

Constant Contact does not offer anything ex­cep­tion­al, but nev­er­the­less, it doesn’t come cheap: for $20 (£15) a month you can write to 500 re­cip­i­ents. Other providers have a better price-per­form­ance ratio.

Already more than 200,000 customers use this German al­tern­at­ive to MailChimp. The operation is very intuitive and offers similar features to the com­pet­i­tion. What’s quite special about Clev­er­Reach is THEA: behind the acronym you’ll find a planning tool for auto­mat­ing news­let­ter dispatch. Like on a drawing board, actions, waiting times, and events can be aligned to create the perfect sequence. Being a member of the CSA (Certified Senders Alliance) means that a global whitelist is guar­an­teed: e-mail providers won’t classify news­let­ters as spam. Just like with MailChimp, the in­tro­duc­tion part is free with Clev­er­Reach. Each user can send 1,000 e-mails to 250 re­cip­i­ents. If you need more, you can upgrade bit by bit. The deluxe packet costs around $5500 (£4300) and enables you to send 5 million e-mails to more than 75,000 re­cip­i­ents.

The news­let­ter service, Send­In­Blue, has been im­press­ing customers with its extremely low prices since it was founded in 2012. The free model allows you to send 9,000 e-mails (with a daily limit of 300) to an unlimited number of re­cip­i­ents – this much isn’t offered by any other provider. The feature for creating SMS news­let­ters is also not found in many MailChimp al­tern­at­ives. This option costs extra, but rather than having a flat rate, the cost depends on the number of SMS you want to send. Send­In­Blue has no other extras, but that’s to be expected at such a low price. Send­In­Blue (just like Clev­er­Reach) also possesses the CSA cer­ti­fic­ate, which ensures that the carefully prepared news­let­ters are actually sent to the recipient’s inbox.