Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp: Which is the Best Marketing Tool for Your Business?

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Sendinblue and Mailchimp are email marketing platforms that help you generate leads, increase conversion rates, and boost sales.

With both platforms offering value and pre-built marketing automation capabilities, these 2 contenders are the key to breaking through the noise and connecting with your potential customers.

In this post, we pit both platforms against each other — comparing features and pricing options — to see who comes out on top.

Ready to see which one wins? Let’s begin.

1. What is Sendinblue?

Sendinblue’s homepage

Sendinblue is an all-in-one email marketing platform with advanced digital marketing and sales tools for growing your online business.

With Sendinblue’s feature set, you can:

Send personalized email campaigns
Automate your marketing and sales processes
Organize your team and track customer interactions
Improve your transactional emails with on-brand designs
Connect with your customers and leads in real-time

If you want to get personal with your customers and keep your growing audience engaged, Sendinblue is the perfect tool.

2. What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp’s homepage

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps you create and send engaging emails, reach customers, and drive sales.

With Mailchimp’s marketing tools, you can:

Create emails that reach your audience and build your brand
Drive more people to join your email list using unlimited landing pages
Find new fans for your business through digital ads
Create and publish organic social media posts and adverts
Turn audience insights into personalized marketing

If you want to create better marketing campaigns that help your online business launch, build, and grow — Mailchimp is the tool for you.

2.1. Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp: Pros and cons

While both email marketing platforms exude dominance in the marketing automation category, they also have a fair share of weaknesses to contend with.

Here are the pros and cons of both Sendinblue and Mailchimp, respectively.

Sendinblue:

Pros

Solid email automation

Offers transactional emails and SMS marketing campaign features

Affordable pricing options

Free CRM software

Cons

Email sending is limited

Steep learning curve

The platform is known to occasionally become slow to use

Mailchimp:

Pros

Intuitive user-interface

Offers A/B split-testing

Decent signup form builder

Supports third-party applications

“Forever-Free” pricing option

Premium priority phone support

Cons

Email lists get expensive after you grow past 2,000 subscribers

Complicated email grouping and segmentation options

Limited marketing automation capabilities

Basic automation workflow builder

Now let's go into full details of the platforms’ features to see how they compare and compete in the email marketing industry.

3. Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp — Feature comparison

Sendinblue and Mailchimp have similar feature sets.

Below we compare these two email marketing tools to help you find the right one for your business.

3.1. Email design and templates

To promote your brand and grow your online business, send customized marketing emails to take your campaigns to the next level.

Let’s see what these platforms can do.

3.1.1. Sendinblue’s email design and templates

Sendinblue’s email templates

Sendinblue boasts a library of email templates branded for different email marketing campaigns.

If you don’t feel like using the pre-made templates, Sendinblue’s drag-and-drop builder can help you build custom emails:

Sendiblue’s email editor

Here's how to create professional-looking email marketing campaigns on the Sendinblue platform:

Step 1: Campaign set up — On your dashboard, go to “Campaigns”, “Email”, and then click “Create an email campaign”
Step 2: Design — Next, use the editor to design your email until you are satisfied
Step 3: Choose recipients — Select the email list to send to and apply contact filters (if you want to) for a more targeted approach
Step 4: Send campaign — You can send your email now, schedule the email for a specific time, or send it at the best recommended time (this is only available for premium Sendinblue users)

Before sending, ensure to preview your email, either by device or email client, to ensure it meets your standards.

Sendinblue’s email design feature gets you access to the following:

A drag-and-drop builder (accessible by mobile)
Customizable email templates
Dynamic content
A/B testing capabilities for email subject lines

Sendinblue’s email templates are instrumental to increasing your email campaign performance, especially if you have a good marketing strategy.

3.1.2. Mailchimp’s email design and templates

Mailchimp’s email templates

Mailchimp equally boasts multiple email templates that you can filter by a category, making it easier to find exactly what you're looking for.

Unlike Sendinblue, Mailchimp comes with 2 email editors — a new inline email builder and a drag-and-drop classic email builder.

Both can help you build and design your email marketing campaigns:

Mailchimp’s email campaign builders

Here's how to build a regular email campaign using Mailchimp:

Step 1: Set up your email — First, select “Create” and then “Choose email”. Enter your campaign name and click “Begin” to start building your email campaign
Step 2: Add recipients and subject line — Go to “Add recipients” to choose your audience. Next click “Add subject” to create a subject line for your email
Step 3: Design email — Next, click “Design email” and choose an email template from the library of pre-built email templates. Then customize your email content in the builder with an irresistible offer
Step 4: Review and send email campaign — Preview your email and click “Save” to create your email campaign

With Mailchimp, you can cancel sending emails after you've begun sending — but only when sending emails to more than 10,000 recipients.

Mailchimp’s email design feature gets you additional access to the following:

Dynamic content
Built-in photo editor
Image gallery
A/B testing capabilities for email content, sender emails, subject lines, and email send time

Winner: Both email marketing platforms have a shallow learning curve when it comes to designing emails, thanks to a clear process. So it’s a tie!

3.2. Landing pages

To provide a more targeted experience for your site visitors and scale your business, build stunning landing pages to help steer your marketing efforts.

3.2.1. Sendinblue’s landing pages

Sendinblue’s drag-and-drop landing page builder helps you create targeted landing pages for your email marketing campaigns:

Sendinblue’s page builder

Once you create a landing page, Sendinblue allows you to link it to a Thank You page (or follow-up page) that you can send out once a contact submits a signup form.

How do you create landing pages using Sendinblue’s drag-and-drop builder?

Set up landing page — First, navigate to “Contacts”, then go to the “Landing pages” tab. Click “Create a landing page” to start setting up your landing page
Choose a template — Next, select a template from the gallery and click “Name your landing page”. Once you’ve named your page, select “Continue”
Design landing page — In the builder, visit Section > Rows > Columns > Elements and customize your page in each of these fields until you are satisfied
Publish — Once you’re done designing, click “Launch” and on the publication page, select “Publish Now” to launch your landing page

Also, Sendiblue integrates your landing pages with a shared inbox and its email and SMS marketing capabilities to spread your campaigns to a wider audience.

3.2.2. Mailchimp’s landing pages

Mailchimp not only helps you create landing pages but also optimizes them for conversions and enables retargeting to draw in existing customers.

Mailchimp’s landing page builder

Mailchimp lets you build unlimited custom landing pages for free, while Sendinblue allows you to only build up to 5 landing pages.

Want to streamline your campaigns using Mailchimp? Just do the following:

On Mailchimp’s landing builder, go to “Create” and click “Signup form”
Next, click “Signup landing page” to start building your landing page
Once complete, go to “Template” and begin designing your landing page by adding content, images, headline title, tags, etc.
Lastly, click “Publish” once you’re finished. Don't forget to choose “Preview” to look at the final product before going live

Mailchimp lets you link your landing pages to your digital ads to help promote them online.

Winner: Mailchimp bags a point for landing pages since you can create so many compared to Sendinblue.

3.3. Email automation

To reach the right audience, communicate the right message, and at the right time (without doing extra work), send automated email messages.

3.3.1. Sendinblue’s email automation

Sendinblue helps you automate the sending of emails and SMS campaigns using a series of automated actions (or automation workflows) triggered by a specific action taken by your site visitors.

A good case point is this basic Sendinblue automation workflow for sending welcome emails when a new contact signs up on your site:

Sendinblue’s welcome email workflow

Besides offering pre-built automation rules and event-based automation emails (such as abandoned cart messages), Sendinblue also allows you to send SMS text messages within its automated marketing workflow:

Sendinblue’s automated workflow

Here are some of the basic workflows you can build in Sendinblue:

Campaign interaction — Quickly interact with a contact who clicked or opened your email campaign using a series of automated emails
Anniversary date — Send a series of special offers on a contact’s anniversary or birthday after a subscription
Welcome message — Send a series of Welcome emails after a contact subscribes to your site
Inactivity reminder — After X days of inactivity, send a series of email reminders to your (seemingly inactive) contacts

Sendinblue’s Free plan also gives you access to its suite of marketing automation features that serve up to 2,000 contacts.

Does Mailchimp’s free plan offer the same email automation capabilities? Let’s find out.

3.3.2. Mailchimp’s email automation

Mailchimp offers several plug-and-play email marketing automation tools.

The platform also comes with a customer journey builder that helps you build workflows, complete with pre-built multi-step journeys — allowing you to see how your visitors interact with your marketing process:

Mailchimp’s customer journey builder

With their Free plan, Mailchimp offers one-click automation rules.

However, when you scale to Mailchimp’s Standard plan ($17/month), you can access many more email automation features, including the following:

Product retargeting
Product recommendation
Abandoned cart emails
Event or behavior-based automation
Pre-built automation
Welcome and birthday messages

Mailchimp also boasts transactional emails built with a scalable pricing option.

You can try transactional emails for free, but after a set period, you’ll need to pay for every 25,000 emails you send.

Winner: It’s 6x cheaper to send bulk emails with Sendiblue than Mailchimp. As such, Sendinblue takes the win for email automation.

3.4. Email signup forms

To send your customers more personalized content that helps scale your email list, you need a great email signup form.

3.4.1. Sendinblue’s email signup forms

Sendinblue signup forms come with a multi-list subscription feature that allows you to separate your contacts into lists based on their interests, industry, etc.

For example, users who want promotional offers are added to a “Promotional Offers” list, and those signing up for your newsletter are added to your “Newsletter” list, and so on.

If the user wants to receive both newsletters and promotional offers, they can easily be added on both lists.

That way you’re sure everyone on your email list has consented to receiving specific content from you.

Before you select an email list and send your campaigns, ensure your signup forms are irresistible.

You can design customizable email signup forms on Sendinblue’s subscription form builder with ease:

Sendinblue’s subscription form builder

Besides boasting an easy-to-use form builder, Sendinblue also helps you send double opt-in emails to your new subscribers with a link confirming their subscription.

Sendinblue also lets you place email signup forms as a widget to your content management system (CMS) using a WordPress plugin.

Mailchimp’s signup form feature is the polar opposite. Read on to find out.

3.4.2. Mailchimp’s email signup forms

Unlike Sendinblue, Mailchimp charges per every contact stored.

This means if you want to separate your contacts on multiple email lists you’ll incur an extra cost with Mailchimp.

Another thing, you can create customizable signup forms on a free account with Mailchimp, but for only up to 2,000 contacts.

With Sendinblue, there’s no limit to the number of contacts per plan.

So, unless you can afford it, you’re limited to the number of signup forms you can create on Mailchimp’s platform.

On top of that, Mailchimp’s form builder has a steep learning curve and offers very little by way of features because most of them require coding experience.

Mailchimp’s embedded forms

This explains why setting up signup forms (Mailchimp’s “Embedded forms”) is a complicated process.

Winner: Sendinblue bags another point since you can create unlimited custom signup forms and have contacts on multiple lists for free.

3.5. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

To understand customers better, you need an effective CRM tool that’ll help you engage audiences, capture leads, and automate your messages.

3.5.1. Sendinblue’s CRM tools

Sendinblue’s CRM tool is free to use.

That said, it isn’t a basic freebie. It tracks every customer's interaction point and also helps you organize your team members.

On top of that, Sendinblue’s CRM works as a contact management tool and assigns contacts to different users.

Users can also set deadlines and tasks within the customer’s CRM profile:

Sendinblue CRM customer profile

The benefits of using Sendinblue’s CRM tool?

Helps you focus on high-level tasks — Sendinblue’s CRM tool keeps your marketing workflows in one place while strengthening team collaborations
Manages contacts — Manage your contacts through one portal where you have complete control
Saves time with automation — Take care of all essential tasks that eat up on your time, such as planning, lead tracking, marketing automation, and sales processing

With the CRM tool in place, Sendinblue also lets you see additional information such as all the web pages your contacts visited.

Can Mailchimp’s CRM tool interpret customer data to better understand who your customers are and how best to market to them?

Read on to find out.

3.5.2. Mailchimp’s CRM tools

Mailchimp boasts multiple CRM tools.

These tools allow you to build lasting relationships with your customers, as well as gain valuable insights into their behavior and interests.

By using Mailchimp’s CRM tools (which lets you bring all your customer's data into one place), you’ll start to:

Target new customers likely to love your brand — Use data to find new customers for your online business
Find new ways to talk to people with common traits — Improve customer relationships by discovering the likes and dislikes of your customers, where they live or come from, etc.
Send valuable content that matters to customers — Send targeted messages to keep customers engaged with your brand and products

Mailchimp CRM customer profile

Unlike Sendinblue, Mailchimp integrates with specialized CRM solutions for larger business-to-business (B2B) enterprises in dire need of this solution.

Winner: Both Sendinblue and Mailchimp have a fair share of the good and the bad. As such, both platforms get a point each. It’s another tie!

Keep reading to discover other Sendinblue and Mailchimp features that lie beneath the surface.

3.6. Other features

Let’s compare other Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp features:

Now that you know which features each platform offers, let’s look at how their prices compare.

4. Pricing

Oftentimes, it’s the price that determines which platform a user chooses.

Will it be Sendinblue that attracts you most, or Mailchimp? — Or is there another more attractive alternative on the horizon . . .

4.1. Sendinblue’s pricing

Sendiblue’s pricing plans

All Sendinblue’s pricing options come with unlimited contact storage.

This means, you only pay for what you send and not to how many you send it to.

Sendinblue comes with 4 pricing plans:

Free — $0/month for up to 9,000 emails/month and a chat window for 1 user
Lite — $25/month for up to 20,000 emails/month, email support, and A/B testing features
Premium — $65/month for up to 20,000 emails/month and access to marketing automation tools, landing pages, Facebook Ads, etc.
Enterprise — Contact the sales team for a quote

To unlock marketing automation features (such as workflows page tracking, and workflow editor), you’ll need to sign up for the Premium plan.

With Sendinblue, you can also send transactional emails and SMSes as part of your monthly plan via its SMTP server, free of charge.

Now let’s look at how Mailchimp compares in terms of pricing.

4.2. Mailchimp’s pricing

Mailchimp’s pricing options

Mailchimp bases its marketing platform pricing plans on the number of contacts you need and emails you send.

This means you have to select your audience size to calculate your price.

Mailchimp marketing platform has 4 pricing plans:

Free — $0/month for up to 10,000 emails/month and access to marketing CRM, website builder, forms, and landing pages
Essentials — $11/month for up to 100,000 emails/month and access to A/B testing, their customer journey builder, and landing page templates
Standard — $17/month for up to 120,000 emails/month and access to custom templates, behavioral targeting, and dynamic content
Premium — $299/month for up to 150,000 emails/month and access to advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, comparative reporting

Here’s everything that comes with the Free plan:

Signup forms and landing pages
1 Mailchimp domain
Mailchimp’s website builder
Creative assistant (creates on-brand designs for campaigns)
Marketing CRM

Unlike Sendinblue, Mailchimp charges for transactional emails as a paid add-on on top of your monthly plan.

Winner: Sendinblue is by far a cheaper alternative to Mailchimp!

If Sendinblue or Mailchimp don’t look like the best marketing platform for you, let’s look at one final alternative.

5. Systeme.io — The best email marketing tool

systeme.io logo

Despite Sendinblue and Mailchimp’s marketing automation authority, there are other, more affordable and easy-to-use email marketing tools out there that can scale your campaigns to the next level.

One of them is systeme.io.

Systeme.io is a free all-in-one marketing automation tool with unlimited email sends and more features that give your online business room to grow.

You can save at least $320/month with systeme.io!

Here’s why we stand above the other 2 contenders:

You get more for free — Sendinblue’s 300 emails/day isn’t enough to run your email campaigns. With systeme.io, you can send unlimited emails, every day, at no extra cost
You save time — Sendinblue and Mailchimp connect with numerous other tools to help run your online business. Being an all-in-one marketing tool, systeme.io gives you everything you need in one place
You save more money — Sending bulk emails using Sendinblue will cost you approximately $2,748/year. Mailchimp up to $7,260/year, especially after announcing an 11%+ price increase

But it only costs $828/year to send bulk email campaigns (up to 250k emails) and manage unlimited contacts with systeme.io.

So, is our all-in-one marketing platform worth the money?

5.1. Systeme.io’s pricing

systeme.io’s pricing plans

Systeme.io comes with 4 pricing options:

Free — $0/month for up to 2,000 contacts, create 1 email campaign, and 24/7 email support
Startup — $27/month for up to 5,000 contacts, access 10 automation rules, and email campaigns
Webinar — $47/month for up to 10,000 contacts, send 100 email campaigns, and create 50 sales funnels
Unlimited — $97/month for unlimited contacts, and get unlimited access to all other systeme.io features

Compared to other marketing tools, our Free plan gives you the freedom to do the following:

Set up automated email sequences
Keep track of your emails with in-depth statistics
Categorize customers and send tailored emails to specific contacts
Send unlimited emails to all of your contacts

And more.

Not only is our Free plan 100% free forever, but you also don’t have to provide your credit card details when you sign up!

6. Conclusion

So, which email marketing platform is the ultimate winner?

If you want in-depth analytics, marketing data, and multiple native integrations — Mailchimp is your go-to email automation marketing tool.

If you're price conscious but need to send transactional emails to your contacts — Sendinblue is the right tool for you.

However, if you need an all-in-one email marketing solution that provides you with so much more than just marketing features (such as sales funnels, webinars, online courses, or a blog space) — we strongly recommend systeme.io.

Our platform stands above Sendinblue and Mailchimp as the best email marketing solution, and it comes with no hidden fees or extra integrations.

Want to see what we can do? Sign up here and find out!