AWeber vs Mailchimp: Ultimate Showdown

AWeber and Mailchimp – undoubtedly two of the most well-known email marketing solutions out there.

Which is best?

And much more importantly…which is best for you and your online business?

I've used both AWeber and Mailchimp extensively over the last five years, so I have a pretty good feel for their strengths and weaknesses.

In this article I'm going to try and share with you a bit of what I know about both of them.

So that hopefully, you can make a better informed decision than maybe you would have otherwise.

AWeber vs Mailchimp: A Bit of Background

Neither of these providers are ‘Jonny come lately's' who have just arrived on the scene to make a quick buck.

AWeber was started way back in 1998.

Both were founded with a similar goal of making email marketing accessible and manageable for small businesses.

And Mailchimp was founded way back in 2001.

They've both been pretty successful in pursuit of their goals.

They each have sizeable global client bases made up of small to medium sized businesses, as well as sole traders and online entrepreneurs.

What Does An Email Marketing Service Provider Actually Do?

Basic functions almost always include the following:

In addition to these basic functions, any online marketer should make sure that their email service provider offers:

Both AWeber and Mailchimp provide all of the above features plus more.

They are both feature rich as well as being competitively priced.

So which one should you choose for your email marketing needs?

Let's take closer look inside each of these leading email marketing service providers.

This seems like a good place to start…

Interfaces

Without doubt, the clutter-free interface of Mailchimp is easy on the eye.

But, at times this minimalist approach actually makes it quite difficult to find your way around.

The small primary menu, and lack of drop-down menus, tend to leave you scrabbling about for the function that you're looking for.

Of course you get used to it over time, but it is pretty annoying for new users.

AWeber, on the other hand, doesn't have the same slick looks.

But, it's primary navigation menu clearly shows all the important options, and hovering over any menu item reveals related secondary options.

Bottom line…

Mailchimp’s interface is aesthetically pleasing but less intuitive.

AWeber's interface is less beautiful but actually easier to navigate.

Importing A Subscriber List

If you're looking to switch email marketing services, you probably already have an existing email list that you'll want to import.

You can of course do this with both AWeber and Mailchimp.

And they both allow you to do this using CSV files or simply copy and pasting.

While it was pretty simple do carry out the import task with both, I found it a little easier with Mailchimp.

Message Types

AWeber offers five different types of email options from its main menu:

Mailchimp refers to all email messages as campaigns and they have four main campaign types available:

I've always been pretty happy with the different types of message options available with both providers.

They both cover everything you need and both do it well.

I'll call this one a draw.

Email Templates

On the face of it, you would think that the sheer number of email templates AWeber put at your disposal would knock anything Mailchimp can do into a cocked hat.

AWeber have an enormous 700 templates while Mailchimp offer 100 templates.

Both provide responsive design so all of their templates resize for different devices.

The thing though, is this…

Mailchimp allows you much greater design flexibility, even enabling you to build your templates from scratch.

Sign-Up Forms

If you want to grow your email list to a decent size, you'll need some well designed, good looking sign-up forms to entice your visitors with.

With AWeber, you can either design your own, or use one of their templates before connecting them to your site or landing page.

Creating sign-up forms with Mailchimp requires some HTML expertise.

And I don't have much/any HTML knowledge.

So…this in my book is a big win for AWeber.

Email Newsletter Editing

If you're not doing this already, you should seriously consider making email newsletters a part of your e-marketing strategy.

An email newsletter will help you in further developing your existing subscriber list.

You can use them to push put informative content of all types.

If you going to go down this road, you will want your email service provider to have an easy-to-use email newsletter editing function.

Fortunately, both AWeber and Mailchimp are strong in this area.

They both use an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, making it very easy to change just about any element of your newsletter.

The decider for me here, is that AWeber has a visual builder, allowing for quick changes on the fly that are immediately visible.

The Mailchimp builder is slightly more clunky as you will need to keep switching from edit, to save, to view etc.

A/B Testing

Also known as split testing.

A/B testing is simply comparing two versions of the same thing, to find out which performs better.

You create a control version, and a variation, and then you compare their respective conversion rates.

A/B testing enables you to do more with your existing traffic.

You can A/B test just about any element of your content, but you should only ever test one element at a time.

In Mailchimp's Standard Plan you can test subject lines, content, from names, send times, and what percentage of people on your list will receive your test emails.

Mailchimp Premium Plan offers A/B testing that's a lot more sophisticated. Enabling you to test up to eight variations of your emails and e-newsletters.

Until recently AWeber's split testing capability was a little weak.

But not any more.

Now all of AWeber's membership levels let you A/B test all of these different elements:

I prefer the new AWeber split testing capability over Mailchimp's.

Integrations

Both of these email service providers integrate with all of the major e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify etc.

They've both got all of the big social media platforms covered.

Mailchimp has a a few more integration partners albeit they are the lesser known names.

Mailchimp takes this one.

Segmentation

Segmentation is all about how you sort your subscriber list into related subsets.

Segmenting your email list means you can send your emails to the subscribers who are most interested in the topic.

This means you don't end up bugging the subscribers who you know are not interested in certain topics.

If you segment your list properly, you will get less unsubscribes and better open rates.

Both AWeber and Mailchimp provide extensive segmentation options and they are both pretty easy to put in place.

In my book, this one has to be a draw.

Autoresponders

An Autoresponder is a pre-set series of emails.

You set up your autoresponder to send the emails in your series to your mailing list subscribers at pre-defined intervals.

This saves you loads of time in the long-run and means you can fully automate your marketing campaigns.

AWeber have massively ramped up their autoresponder functionality over the last year or so.

Before this big upgrade I would have put Mailchimp ahead of AWeber on this one, but not anymore.

I make this one another win for AWeber.

Email Deliverability

Deliverability is about making sure that your carefully crafted emails make it into your subscriber’s inboxes.

Email deliverability can be effected by all sorts of factors, including the spammy-ness  of your subject lines, quality and nature of your emails content etc.

Both AWeber and Mailchimp have a zero tolerance approach to the sending of spammy emails, as well as to the sending of unsolicited emails.

Because of this you will find that they both have very high delivery rates, in the region of 99%, which as exactly what you want as a legit marketer.

Both AWeber and Mailchimp are leading the pack in this area, so  this round can can only be called a draw.

Landing Pages

The addition of the landing page feature is a pretty new one to AWeber.

Mailchimp have had theirs running for a little longer.

And they are both okay, straightforward use and stable when building.

Both also have quite a few starter templates that you can use to get you going.

I do think though, that if you're really serious about putting together some outstanding landing pages, you'll probably be best served going with one of these dedicated landing page builders.

Both okay to get you out of the blocks, so this one too is a draw.

Pricing

AWeber:

All very straightforward and easy to understand.

There are 6 plans available all offering identical features.

With AWeber it's the number of subscribers on your list that determines which plan you fall into.

For those of you lucky enough to have a list of more than 25,000 subscribers, you'll need to give AWeber a call for for a price quote.

Mailchimp:

There are 4 Mailchimp plans.

Less plans than Aweber but a lot more confusing as to what you're getting with each one.

Each plan has a different feature set to the next, and the cost of each is dependant on how many subscribers you have.

Here are some of the differences between the Mailchimp plans:

AWeber vs Mailchimp – The Free Plans

Both AWeber and MailChimp offer free plans. Here's a bit of background as to how each of them works:

AWeber Free Plan

Aweber's free plan allows you to use most of the features of AWeber while your subscriber list remains below 500.

So you will get access to most of AWeber’s functionality with paying a single dollar.

Mailchimp Free Plan

Mailchimp's free plan runs for as long as you want it…but it is very restrictive as to the features available, so you won't get a true feel for what's on offer inside the paid plans.

Also, Mailchimp's free plan is ad-supported, which means that the Mailchimp logo will be added to your footer.

I love the simplicity of AWeber's pricing structure and I hate the complexity of Mailchimp's. So this one is a straight up win for AWeber.

Who Might AWeber Be Best For?

AWeber is ideal for small, medium and large enterprises with email marketing in their sites, just as much as it is for solopreneurs just getting started with their online business.

A few reasons to go with AWeber rather than Mailchimp:

Who Might Mailchimp Be Best For?

Mailchimp is great for anyone just getting out of the blocks with online marketing, and who might be on a tight budget.

Here are a few good reason why you might want to go with Mailchimp:

AWeber vs Mailchimp…Which Is Best?

In truth, both of these email marketing service providers are excellent.

The round-for-round results above indicate that AWeber is the best.

And I guess if I simply went with my gut feeling as to which I prefer using, it would be AWeber again, so these results stack up in my view.

But that's not to say it's the best option for you.

These are both well-established tools that you can use to seriously advance your email marketing onto the next level.

Used well, they can both help you grow your business.

Have I Made This Worse For You?

Yeah okay.

You clicked through to this post thinking I was going to give you some huge clarity in your buying decision.

Tell you that one of these options is great and one really bad.

But instead of that, what I've done is make your head pop.

How's this for an attempt to offer a little bit of guidance:

If I had to give up one, never to use it again, I would go with AWeber.

Get In Touch

Drop me a line if there's something that you really want to ask about my user experience with either AWeber or Mailchimp.

You can either use the contact form on this site, which will send an email into my inbox.

Or you can leave it in the comments section directly below.