Outsend and Mailchimp
Mailchimp taught a generation of small businesses how to send email, and it is still the fastest way to build a campaign that looks right without hiring anyone. The differences worth your time are about how you are billed, and whether a newsletter unsubscribe can stop an invoice arriving.
The best builder in the category
The drag-and-drop editor and the template gallery are excellent, and nothing we ship competes with them. If you want a campaign that looks designed by this afternoon, without a designer, that is a real reason to stay.
Automations a non-technical person can build
Journeys and automations are set up visually, by the person who owns the business, without an engineer in the room. A welcome series or a follow-up sequence is an afternoon's work rather than a ticket.
The integration ecosystem, and knowing it already
Shopify, WooCommerce, the CRMs, and hundreds more connect to Mailchimp out of the box. Your staff already know where the buttons are. Familiarity is an underrated feature and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Priced per send, not per contact
Mailchimp's pricing is structured around how many contacts you store. Ours is structured around how many emails you actually send, so an address sitting in your list that you have not mailed in a year does not cost you anything. Their current numbers are on their own pricing page — we would rather link it than quote a figure that goes stale.
Receipts and campaigns, separated properly
Transactional and broadcast mail run on the same platform on separate streams with separate suppression, so a newsletter unsubscribe never stops an invoice arriving. Reputation is scored per domain rather than drawn from a shared pool, so your sending history is yours.
Every feature on every plan
Campaigns, warm-up ramps, list hygiene, and unlimited teammates are on the free plan. Plans differ only in how many emails they include, so you never upgrade to unlock a feature.
A bounce you can read
When an email does not arrive, you see the actual reason the other mail server gave, word for word, not just a red "failed" label. That tells you whether the address had a typo or the recipient's provider blocked the message.
If the visual builder and the integration ecosystem are what you are buying, Mailchimp is the right answer and we would rather say so than talk you out of it. Choose us if you are paying for contacts you are not emailing, or if you need to read the real reason a message did not arrive.
We quote competitor prices in one place only. The price calculator shows each one with its source and the date we checked it. Confirm it on Mailchimp's pricing page before you decide.
Think something on this page is unfair or out of date? Tell us — corrections get published.
Switching from Mailchimp?
The migration guide has the field map, the event map, and the checklist — including the suppression-list import everybody forgets.
Never venture-backed · operated by Martin Business Consultants