Mailchimp vs SendGrid - Which One Is Better For You? (2021)

When doing my research on the best email marketing tools for my business I came across two platforms that immediately caught my attention, Mailchimp and SendGrid.

After carefully reviewing both of these platforms I knew that I had to compare the two.

In this Mailchimp vs SendGrid comparison, I will be taking an in-depth look at both of these platforms and revealing which one is better!

So without further ado, let’s dive straight into the article.

Table of Contents

The Main Difference between Mailchimp and SendGrid
What is Mailchimp?
What is SendGrid?
Pricing
Ease of Use
Email Design & Templates
Main Features
Deliverability
Integrations
Customer Support
What I like and don’t like about Mailchimp and SendGrid
Mailchimp vs SendGrid: Which one is right for you?
Best SendGrid and Mailchimp Alternatives

The Main Difference between Mailchimp and SendGrid

Mailchimp focuses on everything that you need in order to build successful marketing campaigns and SendGrid focuses on improving your email deliverability rates.

What is Mailchimp?

If you have heard of email marketing then you have probably heard of Mailchimp. Mailchimp is one of the fastest-growing and largest email marketing software in the world!

Founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius, Mailchimp started as strictly an email marketing platform designed for small businesses. However, after tons of requests from customers, Mailchimp expanded to include a Marketing CRM, shoppable landing pages, advanced automation, websites, and much more.

Thanks to their dedication to the industry they quickly grew and today they have over 20 million customers worldwide and over 700 employees.

All in all, Mailchimp provides efficient tools that help businesses grow and become successful in the long-term.

What is SendGrid?

SendGrid is an email delivery service designed for developers and marketers who want scalable ways that drive business growth.

SendGrid is one of the industry leaders when it comes to email deliverability and the platform boasts of successfully sending out over 70 billion emails every month from over 80,000 customers.

They have even helped some of your favorite brands like Airbnb, Pandora, Hubspot, Uber, and FourSquare.

SendGrid has some amazing products that make it stand out against its competitors like email automation, email validation, and email test. (More on these features later down)

Pricing

Pricing is a major factor when it comes to choosing the right email marketing tool for your business.

So before I dive into the different features of each of these email marketing tools and what makes them unique let’s take a look at the pricing options that they have to offer.

Mailchimp Pricing

Mailchimp has a very simple pricing structure that varies depending on the size of your contact list. There are 4 different plans that you can choose from, the Free plan, the Essentials plan, the Standard plan and the Premium plan.

The Free plan is of course free for up to 2000 contacts and includes:

7 marketing channels
1 – Step Automations
Basic Templates
Marketing CRM
Surveys
Websites
Custom domains
1 Audience

The Essentials plan starts at $9.99 per month and includes everything in the Free plan as well as:

All email templates
Multi-step journeys
A/B testing
Custom Branding
24/7 Customer support
3 Audiences

The Standard plan starts at $14.99 per month and includes everything in the Essentials plan as well as:

Customer Journey Builder + Branching points
Advanced audience insights
Retargeting ads
Custom templates
Behavioral targeting automation series
Dynamic Content
5 Audiences

The Premium plan starts at $299 per month and includes everything in the Standard plan as well as:

Advanced Segmentation
Multivariate Testing
Comparative Reporting
Unlimited Seats & Role-based access
Phone support
Unlimited Audiences

If you know you don’t send out emails on a regular basis then you can always choose to buy email credits through the Pay As You Go plan.

Moreover, Mailchimp is a big believer in security, in fact, they give a 10% discount for 3 months when you add two-factor authentication to your Mailchimp account.

They also give a 15% discount to non-profit organizations and charities.

SendGrid Pricing

SendGrid has 4 different price plans that you can choose from, the Free plan, the Essentials plan, the Pro plan, and the Premier plan. The price of these plans varies depending on the number of emails that you want to send out every month.

The Free plan is free and allows you to send out 40,000 emails for 30 days and includes:

APIs, SMTP Relay, and Webhooks
Delivery Optimization Tools
Dynamic Template Editor
Insightful Analytics
Ticket Support

The Essentials plan starts at $14.95 per month and includes everything in the Free plan as well as chat support.

The Pro plan starts at $89.95 per month and includes everything in the Essentials plan as well as :

2500 Email validations
Dedicated IP Included
Subuser Management

The Premier plan varies in price depending on your needs. In order to get a quote tailored specifically to you and your business, you need to contact one of the experts at SendGrid. This plan includes everything in the Pro plan as well as 5000 email validations.

Who has better pricing?

When it comes to the cheaper price Mailchimp definitely comes out on top. So if you are looking for an inexpensive option then Mailchimp would be your best bet.

Ease of Use

What good is an email marketing tool if it isn’t easy to use?

Let’s take a look at the usability of Mailchimp and SendGrid.

Mailchimp Ease of Use

It’s no secret that Mailchimp was made with the beginner in mind. The dashboard is clean and has clear directions on how to navigate.

I personally had to trouble to find my way around Mailchimp despite the fact that that was my first time using the email marketing tool.

Moreover, when it comes to creating an email Mailchimp makes this process incredibly simple and straight-forward.

I love that they use fun language on the platform which adds to the unique experience and really makes you feel at home.

All in all, it’s clear that this marketing tool was designed for individuals who are perhaps now being introduced to email marketing.

SendGrid Ease of Use

On the other hand, SendGrid is not as easy to use as Mailchimp since it was designed with developers and marketers in mind.

Despite the platform not being as beginner-friendly as Mailchimp, once you start navigating the dashboard you will begin to get the hang of it in no time.

That being said, SendGrid has a wide range of resources and a solid customer support team that will be there to hold your hand and guide you through your journey on the platform.

Which one is easier to use?

I have to say that Mailchimp wins this round thanks to it’s easy to use and intuitive user-interface.

Email Design & Templates

The email design and templates are the backbones of any successful email marketing campaign.

Let’s take a look at the email design & templates at Mailchimp and SendGrid.

Mailchimp Email Design

Mailchimp has over 100 different templates that you can choose from to build out well-designed and modern looking email campaigns.

Designing your email is also made easy thanks to the ability to customize your templates using the intuitive drag and drop editor.

Moreover, you are also given the option to import your HTML template if the pre-designed templates aren’t holding up to your standards.

SendGrid Email Design

I must say that I was shocked when I saw the email design and templates offered at SendGrid.

SendGrid provides you with a full library of pre-built templates while still giving you the full creative freedom to fully customize these templates through their Design Editor.

There are also built-in Call-To-Actions that will help you boost the engagement in your emails.

Needless to say, these templates are responsive across any device so they look great regardless of the device you’re using.

For the developers out there you can also import your custom templates by pasting the HTML code into the code editor.

Who has a better email design?

I have to say this round is a tie since both software tools proved that they know what they’re doing when it comes to email design.

Main Features

Let’s take a look at the main features offered at Mailchimp and SendGrid.

Mailchimp Main Features

Segmentation
Marketing CRM
Automation
Landing Pages
Transactional Emails
Website Creation
Behavioral Targeting
Look-a-like audiences

SendGrid Main Features

Email API
Email Automation
Signup Forms
Email Validation
Email Deliverability
SMTP Service
Email Testing

All in all, both of these email marketing tools have unique features that cater to their own individual niches.

Deliverability

Deliverability determines whether or not your email actually makes it into your subscriber’s inbox so it’s incredibly important that you choose an email delivery tool that has consistent high deliverability rates.

When it comes to deliverability Mailchimp has gone above and beyond to ensure it has high deliverability rates. Mailchimp is a member of industry-leading organizations that are dedicated to maintaining high deliverability. These organizations include ESPC, AOTA, and EEC.

They have even developed their own abuse-detection technology which analyses campaigns and user data to prevent “bad behavior” within campaigns.

Moreover, a recent test run by Email Tool Tester showed that Mailchimp produced a deliverability rate of 85%.

On the other hand, SendGrid is an advocate for high deliverability and they have done an excellent job in that space.

SendGrid uses artificial intelligence that continually adapts to changing Internet Service Provider rules. Also, thanks to their Adaptive Communication Engine businesses both large and small can begin to see an increase in their delivery rates in no time.

They also offer expert services that help you optimize email campaigns with the goal of improving email deliverability and subscriber engagement.

All in all, both Mailchimp and SendGrid guarantee premium deliverability so this is not something you will have to worry about with either tool.

Integrations

Regardless of if this is your first online business or you have been building online businesses for years, I can guarantee that you will be using other tools to assist in the growth of your business.

Both Mailchimp and SendGrid are equipped with a wide range of integrations.

Mailchimp integrates with over 800 different apps including some of my favorite apps like Calendly and WooCommerce. However, it should be noted that they do not integrate with Shopify which can be seen as a major disadvantage especially if you are running an e-commerce store.

Mailchimp also integrates with Zapier which provides even more access to different apps.

Although I lost count of the number of integrations that come with SendGrid I can confidently say that it seamlessly integrates with the major and most popular apps like Klaviyo and Oracle. It also integrates with Zapier which gives you access to even more apps and integrations.

Both tools provide great integrations so I wouldn’t base my buying decision on which one has more integrations.

Customer Support

Customer support is a huge factor that I take into consideration when choosing the right email marketing tool for my business.

Let’s take a look at the customer support options offered at Mailchimp and SendGrid.

Mailchimp customer support

It’s no secret that Mailchimp has award-winning customer service. They have won 4 Stevie awards in 2020 for their exceptional customer support. Moreover, they even have a 92% customer satisfaction rate.

The best part? The customer support is available 24/7.

You can get in contact with support through live support, phone support, or email support. However, keep in mind that if you are on the free plan you will have limited support. You won’t have access to the phone or live chat and the email support will only be available to you for 30 days.

That being said, if you are on the Premium plan you will be given priority support via phone or email.

Mailchimp also offers an extensive knowledge base that is packed with topics that were designed to help you solve any problem that you may have. They cover a wide range of topics from “How to send your first email” to “Importing contacts into Mailchimp”.

SendGrid customer support

SendGrid does a pretty solid job when it comes to customer support as well. They have a wide variety of resources that were built to help make your SendGrid journey a smooth one. These resources include guides, blogs, videos, podcasts, and webcasts.

There is also a huge knowledge center that is filled with topics, these topics include everything from Understanding the Marketing API to how to view your stats.

SendGrid offers ticket support, live chat support, phone support, prioritized support, and a customer support manager. They also give access to expert services for an additional small fee.

That being said, you must take into consideration that with the free plan you only get access to ticket support. If you want access to phone support, prioritized support, and the customer service manager then you have to be on the Premier plan.

Who has better customer support?

I have to say this round is a tie since both platforms provide amazing customer support options and they both get the job done.

What I like and don’t like about Mailchimp and SendGrid

Like every email marketing tool on the market, Mailchimp and SendGrid have their fair share of pros and cons.

Here’s what I like and don’t like about Mailchimp and SendGrid.

What I like about Mailchimp

They offer a forever free plan
The plans are reasonably priced
The platform is beginner-friendly
Offer great customer service
They have good automation capabilities

What I don’t like about Mailchimp

You have to be on the Premium plan if you want access to phone support
They don’t integrate with Shopify

What I like about SendGrid

They have excellent deliverability rates
They offer a forever free plan
They offer a ton of resources and guides as well as access to a customer success manager
They have comprehensive reporting & analytics

What I don’t like about SendGrid

It’s not beginner-friendly

Mailchimp vs SendGrid: Which one is right for you?

In my opinion, this was a hard decision since both of these tools clearly cater to two separate industries.

So instead of stating which one is better than the other let’s take a look at who these email marketing tools are for.

Who is Mailchimp for? Mailchimp is for the small business that wants a solid way to send out emails to their audience. It’s also perfect for the beginner who wants an introduction to the world of email marketing.

Who is SendGrid for? SendGrid is for the developer and marketer who wants to increase their deliverability rate through scalable and proven methods. It’s not for the beginner who knows nothing about email marketing.

Best SendGrid and Mailchimp Alternatives

If you are a blogger then I would highly recommend that you check out our review on ConvertKit.

If you are looking for an email marketing tool that has great automation features then check out our review on ActiveCampaign.

If you are looking for an in-expensive email marketing tool then check out our review on MailerLite.

If you are looking for an email marketing tool designed for e-commerce then check out our review on Omnisend.

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Mailchimp vs SendGrid – Which One Is Better For You? (2021)