When it comes to managing and reaching your subscribers, a newsletter can be a great way to communicate with your subscribers. Currently there are lots of different email marketing tools on the market, in this article we will compare two of the most popular tools. So which of these two popular newsletter tools is right for your needs – MailChimp or Mad Mimi?
We will compare them in these areas:
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- Price
- Control
- Templates and design
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So what are Mad Mimi and MailChimp?
The short answer is that Mad Mimi and MailChimp are newsletter/email marketing services that allow you send e-newsletters.
The long answer is that they enable you to easily manage and store large contacts lists online, automate your mailouts using autoresponders and monitor and analyze the details of how your users are interacting with your newsletter.
Price
Pricing Comparison
The prices of these systems generally vary depending on how many contacts you will be sending emails to, so the more contacts, the more the cost.
Overall Mad Mimi is generally cheaper compared to MailChimp. For example if you had 2,500 contacts, it would cost you $16 (around £10) a month to use Mad Mimi to store, manage and send unlimited emails. For Mailchimp using the same features, it’s around $30 (around £19) – almost double the price of Mad Mimi. So throughout the year Mad Mimi would be the cheapest option and in turn be less of a strain on your pocket. So Mad Mimi is the winner here since it does offer the cheaper price plan out of the two systems.
By no means does this make MailChimp a system you shouldn’t use due it prices. As will be discussed below, MailChimp is a more sophisticated tool, so you are paying for the more complex functionality. The final decision is really whether you would need or even use these features.
Free Plans
Both Mad Mimi and MailChimp offer free plans.
The Mad Mimi free plan is pretty basic. With it, you can only host a mailing list of 100 addresses but send unlimited emails. MailChimp on the other hand allows you to host a mailing list of 2,000 addresses but only allows you to send 12,000 emails, so if you had 2,000 addresses you can send them around 6 emails a month. For most businesses, this is fine, with an average of around 1-2 newsletters a month. This makes MailChimp the better option when it comes to the free plan (but bear in mind that the free plan does not allow use of autoresponders and some other features).
Control
Interface
Both systems offer quite simple interfaces with clear text and prominent buttons.They are both pretty easy to use, although it can be said that the MailChimp interface can sometimes be over whelming with the amount of variation and customisation that it offers, since it does offer more customisation options and statistics about the different email campaigns that you have run.
Templates and Design
Both systems do offer some form of template designs.
The templates (‘Themes’) in Mad Mimi are basically color schemes, allowing you to adapt the colours of certain elements to your needs. MailChimp on the other hand offers a hundreds of templates, each having different layouts and styles, which some users like because they can find a template that fits their requirements and make any changes they need. If you don’t fancy using a template you could also start with a blank template, allowing you to build the design from scratch.
Both of the tools have easy to use drag-and-drop design editors, allowing for easy customisation of content. Mad Mimi does offer the simplest customisation, making your design simpler to create, but it doesn’t offer much variation of layout styles compared to MailChimp. MailChimp gives you much more flexibility and control over the content. Allowing you to create buttons, image groups and boxed text, (which is something that would be useful in Mad Mimi). But as mentioned before, the added flexibility can be a bit fiddly and awkward especially for those who are new to the tool.
Summary
Out of both services Mad Mimi is the simpler and easier to use, along with this, it does offer nice editor and colour themes, making newsletter creation faster and simpler. Although its simplicity is great for new users or for someone who needs to create a quick and simple campaign, it can often feel restrictive as it doesn’t allow for much flexibility and variations to your layouts and designs.
MailChimp is generally better for the advanced user/complex newsletters, although MailChimp can sometimes seem a bit daunting to navigate and use, it offers a vast amount of templates to help you begin your email campaign journey. It also has a great customisation in its editor that allows you create unique and impressive designs.
The verdict – Best email marketing service
Well, it’s really up to you and what you need.
I would say for basic newsletters, with less technical design and features, Mad Mimi is probably the easier service to navigate and use; so if you’re happy to have a simple template and simple control, this option is probably more appealing.
For more technical and design focused users, MailChimp offers great statistics, tracking and newsletter management. Also with it’s flexible design customisation, you can create stunning newsletter templates.
Here are some question that might help you decide:
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- How powerful and flexible does your email marketing need to be?
- What are you aiming to do with your email marketing?
- What should your design look like?
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So the decision is up to you. If you not sure which one is better for you, why not sign up for the free plans and try them out. This way you can test and try them out for yourself, so you can see which one is the best email marketing service for you.
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