AWeber vs. Mailchimp: The Battle of the Email Marketing Platforms

While email marketing has been around for some time, it is still one of the most powerful digital marketing techniques that can increase your conversion rates and help you generate more sales leads.

Email marketing is an extremely cost-efficient way to start a conversation with your target audience. It can be even more effective than social media in converting potential customers into paying ones when done professionally. By sending emails to people who want to hear from you, you can position your business as a thought leader in your industry.

But when it comes to email marketing, you’ve got a lot of options. There are countless email marketing software companies these days, but there are two with decent-sized market share: AWeber and MailChimp. These companies were on the rise around the same time years ago and have been neck and neck ever since.

Suppose you consider which of these two email marketing services might be best for growing your business. In that case, this review will look at performance, features, ease of use, and extra benefits eCommerce businesses can get from using either service.

AWeber vs Mailchimp – Summary

When comparing AWeber vs. Mailchimp, we’re looking at two solid email marketing options. If the free plan is any indication of what’s to come, then both services offer a lot of value for your money.

AWeber and MailChimp offer email marketing solutions aimed at small businesses and digital marketers. Both have grown in recent years to cover a range of services and integrations for their users, with each being preferred by different audiences. The two platforms are amongst the most well-known in the email marketing biz.

Ease of Use

Working with either email marketing provider is a daunting task. Both MailChimp and AWeber are incredibly powerful tools that help you create a remarkable presence for you and your business online. Don’t let their complex interfaces fool you, though. 

They provide you with the resources needed that will give you a great start in getting your business off on the right foot. It’s all about where you go from there, which would be more of managing your subscribers while figuring out the strategy to attract others so your email marketing campaign won’t be in vain.

MailChimp is the easier platform to use out of the two. Not to say AWeber is better or worse, but its interface simply takes getting used to. It has multiple menu options under Campaigns and lists them differently from List Sources (e.g., Broadcast vs. Automation).

The simplicity of the tools and their interactive elements should be a selling point that makes you feel more comfortable when working with the platform. It’s not that MailChimp doesn’t have these things; it’s just that AWeber has more.

Design and Flexibility

Once you decide to use MailChimp, it’s time to create your first campaign. This is also where the program offers some notable flexibility. You can start off with an email-only broadcast or choose to create a sign-up form using Facebook, Twitter, Google, or LinkedIn.

From there, you can add the list of recipients and start to create a template for your newsletter message. You get 80 different templates to use. The design aspect doesn’t feel constrained at all. In fact, many are quite inspiring and unique in their own way.

The design of AWeber’s templates, on the other hand, is less impressive. They range from very clean and simple to somewhat cluttered and overly colorful. The sheer number of templates is far behind MailChimp’s, but most are still attractive enough.

You can also take your time and use various layouts, fonts, and colors to spice things up until you find the perfect fit. Once you’re done customizing the template, you can either use a theme option to create a newsletter for you or a shareable image you can post on your blog or social media pages.

Unlike MailChimp, AWeber (in my experience) seems geared more towards the novice marketer. They have fewer templates but seem to be better designed. The drag and drop feature was so easy to use that I created beautiful newsletters in no time.

Email automation

AWeber also has a ton of email automation. You can have 3rd party integrations like Zapier or trigger emails off sales or when a product is added. You can set up workflows for when subscribers land on specific pages – both on your site and on third-party sites like Amazon, etc.

You can have the funnel send users to multiple email lists based on how they respond at different stages. In comparison, autoresponders in AWeber are not as sophisticated. You can send emails to subscribers after they have opened your emails or clicked on certain links and use trigger-based sequences. But that’s about it. And most popular autoresponder providers offer these features (MailChimp, GetResponse, even Constant Contact).

However, MailChimp doesn’t provide an official conditional logic engine. Instead, it uses dozens of different triggers and actions that means you have to be a programmer to implement them correctly.

If you’re looking for email automation, segmentation, and a larger team of experts to coach you along the way, then Aweber is probably the better choice. They also have extremely detailed reporting and analytics, unlike Mailchimp, where you’ll need a third-party tool like ConvertKit to add additional functionality.

Registration forms

When it comes to registering for your email list, you have a few options. You can ask people to fill out three fields: name, email, and optional field that says “tell us why you signed up.” You can go a little further with some checkboxes or select from a set of answers.

With AWeber, there is a choice of different kinds of registration forms. The simplest is a Choice form, where users select from choices given. It gives you 65 questions you can choose from to create your form. Many of the forms are multiple-choice such as age or marital status, which makes it easier than if you had to type in answers.

MailChimp is one of the easiest platforms to build your subscription form. If you are not tech-savvy, no problem! This tool is very user-friendly and easy to understand. Your visitor will be able to subscribe by selecting their interests and entering their email address.

There are hundreds of email marketing services that can make you choose – what criteria to consider when choosing one? If you’re looking for a simple drag-and-drop interface, AWeber will suit you.

If you’re looking for a more extensive set of features and greater international reach, MailChimp is the way to go. Either way, it’s easy to build your lists, send newsletters and track their performance using both these email marketing tools.

Reporting

MailChimp reports are easy to set up and can be displayed for an unselected group, a segment of your contacts, or an individual subscriber. You can either print out your reports to create a static record of your marketing efforts or embed them on your blog.

There’s even an RSS feed that allows you to display up-to-date reports on the go (at least as far as major website and blog platforms are concerned). The WOW factor with MailChimp reporting is an excellent support team – who will personally help you integrate the plug-in with Google Analytics.

What makes Mailchimp so good is it allows you to track your user’s performance and analyze their behavior. If your user doesn’t open or click your messages, then that message is not doing its job, and you should work on making it more enticing.

On the other hand, AWeber offers data-rich e-commerce reports tailored to the needs of your business. You get reports that monitor goals achieved, sales performance and trends, and customer and prospect behavior reports.

There’s even a map based on customer geolocation and search volume. AWeber also has e-commerce tracking within their email marketing software, showing how customers engage with your brand throughout the sales lifecycle.

AWeber integrates with Google Analytics as well. However, these metrics are only available to the superuser, whereas they’re available to users at all levels in MailChimp.

Furthermore, you can analyze more precise data like bounce rate and click-through rate for each mail campaign. Both are excellent choices if you’re looking for a comprehensive and easy-to-understand analytics report for your email marketing campaigns.

Support

MailChimp and AWeber have marketed themselves in similar ways. Both offer affordable pricing, integrations, and a decent amount of list management features. One key differentiator comes down to support.

According to the website, the average response time for Aweber support requests is under 16 minutes. To get support, you can either use your AWeber dashboard, which has a live chat box at the bottom right that connects you directly with someone, or select “request support” from the bottom right drop-down menu on the AWeber website. Depending on where you are located, you’ll then be connected with a representative from one of the five-time zones.

When it comes to providing support, there are no winners. It’s a matter of preference and what channels you prefer to communicate through. While AWeber and MailChimp are both strong options for those choosing a provider, AWeber is simply better.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to send marketing campaigns to your list and design more advanced email templates, then Aweber might be the better option. It also has a great welcome email builder for those that are just starting with email marketing.

If you’re wondering whether one is right for you, give Aweber or Mailchimp a trial by signing up for free. This way, you can try them both out risk-free and see which one works out best for your business.

However, Mailchimp’s email templates are simple to create, well documented, and easy to use. And their Social Profiles add-on makes it easy to display your social profiles in a way that will get more clicks if someone shares your emails on social media.