HubSpot vs. Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s all-in-one Marketing Platform vs. HubSpot: An overview

A good marketing platform should have plenty of functionality options for business owners, like email marketing, landing pages for products, and digital advertising. These services are especially important for small businesses trying to get off the ground and compete. Ideally, your marketing software will provide you with an all-in-one solution that puts multiple tools at your disposal and lets you manage them all from one place.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp was recently recognized as #8 on G2’s 2020 global list of Best Software Companies. We provide an all-in-one Marketing Platform for small businesses that includes everything from customer relationship management (CRM) features, to tagging and segmentation, to predictive demographics, and more. Our platform also includes a form builder, websites, and landing pages for customer signups or introducing new products.

With Mailchimp, you get the powerful features you want and need with less hassle than other marketing platforms. And since you’re able to store all of your audience data in the same place you’re doing all your marketing, you’ll be able to turn insights into action and create personalized, targeted campaigns.

HubSpot

HubSpot was recognized as #4 on G2’s 2020 global list of Best Software Companies. Their Marketing Hub provides customers with similar tools to Mailchimp, including CRM functionality, landing pages, and email marketing. It allows users to segment audiences and automate a range of features and workflows to help with marketing efforts.

HubSpot is a comprehensive service, but it can charge much higher prices than Mailchimp. For that reason, it tends to attract larger businesses that can justify the expense. HubSpot’s Marketing Hub offers a full suite of marketing tools at its paid tiers, organized into separate feature packages. Though HubSpot does offer some free marketing and CRM functions, they’re limited and may not have the versatility to meet most small business owners’ needs.

Mailchimp vs HubSpot: A comparison of features and tools

In this section, we’ll be comparing Mailchimp’s features to those of HubSpot’s Marketing Hub platform. Both Mailchimp and HubSpot offer:

• Contact management
• Marketing automation
• Digital advertising and social media management
• Landing pages and form options

Below is a comparison of Mailchimp’s Standard plan, which is recommended for small businesses, and HubSpot’s Starter and Professional Plans.

Mailchimp vs HubSpot at a glance

* Mailchimp’s Standard plan is comparable to two HubSpot plans—it is closest in price to HubSpot’s Starter plan and has more similar features to HubSpot’s Professional plan.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the breakdown of these key features for each platform.

Contact management

Mailchimp’s all-in-one Marketing Platform offers the same features as HubSpot and other digital marketing platforms. Our users have a number of options for managing customer information and connecting with their audience, including:

• Marketing CRM tools
• Audience dashboard
• Tagging
• Segmentation
• Personalization
• Predicted demographics

Our Marketing CRM tools can help you organize, analyze, and learn from all of your audience data in the same place you do all your marketing. That means you can get an in-depth look at your audience, and then segment and send relevant messages in just a few clicks.

In the audience dashboard, you can view which pages are performing best, identify recent sources of growth, view customer lifetime value, see commonly-used tags, and more. Mailchimp’s Marketing CRM gives you a truly holistic view of your audience so you can target people more effectively.

And with our detailed contact profiles, you can track how people interact with each campaign, then add notes to their profile to refer back to later. In just a few clicks, you’ll see who’s opening your emails, reading your blog post on mobile, or joining your email list. You can even see what your customers are buying to help improve future recommendations.

HubSpot offers similar contact management features to Mailchimp. HubSpot’s CRM system offers its users insights on their audience and allows for detailed customer profiles. Users can create custom properties and apply them to the rest of their platform, or combine them to create finely segmented customer groups to target.

Marketing automation

Mailchimp’s marketing automation features include:

• Welcome messages
• Date-based automations
• Behavior-based automations
• Abandoned cart messages
• Order or appointment notifications
• Product retargeting emails
• Re-engagement messages
• Customer Journey builder

Based on user reviews, Mailchimp ranked #1 in Capterra’s 2020 Top 20 report for Marketing Automation Software. Depending on the needs of your business, Mailchimp’s automations vary from simple operations to more complex, multi-step processes, and allow for customized workflows based on customer behavior.

Features like welcome messages and date-based or behavior-based automations help your business stand out from competitors and offer a simple way to build personalized communications with your customers. You can also follow up with potential clients by sending abandoned cart emails, product recommendations, and retargeting emails. You can even help prevent buyer’s remorse with a customized order confirmation email.

Automated re-engagement campaigns help you connect with customers who have drifted away and reward loyal, engaged customers with special coupons and sales. Mailchimp allows you to configure behavior-based automated workflows to execute at just the right time.

The introduction of our Customer Journey builder takes automations one step further by giving you the control and flexibility to easily create adaptable automated journeys for your customers—all in a visual interface designed to help you see how your customers interact with you throughout their entire journey. For both the new and experienced marketer, the builder helps you gain confidence in using advanced automation features by giving you drag-and-drop functionality and pre-built, multi-step customer journey templates as a starting point. The journeys that you customize for your customers help you expand your marketing capacity and send the right messages to the right audience at the right time.

HubSpot’s offerings are similar to Mailchimp’s, allowing you to automate workflows and target customers by their behavior. In 2020, they won the top spot on G2’s Best Products for Marketers for the Marketing Automation category, however, Mailchimp had impressive user satisfaction ratings in comparison. HubSpot’s automation products, including their workflows tool, are available at the Professional pricing tier, which starts at $800/month, while Mailchimp offers automation features for all users, including single-step automations for those on the Free plan.

For more detailed user satisfaction ratings, please check out this direct comparison on G2. Although the Customer Journey builder is a paid feature, you can try it out on the Free plan to see if it’s the right automation solution for you before upgrading to a paid plan.

Ads and social media

Mailchimp gives you the tools you need to grow your business via social media, from organic posts to your social feed to targeted ads that help you reach new audiences or sell your stuff. You’ll also be able to:

• Schedule posts across major social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
• Configure targeted ads across Google, Facebook, and Instagram

Our Marketing CRM provides the information you need to hone in on regular customers, specific demographics, site visitors that need to be retargeted, and more. You can set up Google remarketing campaigns that run in the background and reach more than two million sites in just a few clicks. You can publish retargeting ads across Google, Facebook, and Instagram to bring interested customers back to your store. You even have the option to target people that are similar to your existing audience and bring in even more viable leads. And all of it—from designing the campaign to buying and running the ads—can be done directly within Mailchimp.

HubSpot closely matches Mailchimp in its social media and ad offerings. It allows users to create and post across social media channels from within the HubSpot marketing platform, then track analytics, schedule ads, and use data from their CRM network to finely-target their campaigns.

Social media marketing is part of HubSpot’s Professional tier, while ad management is available at the Starter level. Mailchimp offers basic social media marketing services for all users, with an upgrade for social post scheduling and ad retargeting available for folks on our Standard plan.

Websites and landing pages

When you build a website with Mailchimp, you get more than just landing pages and website design templates. Not only can you sell stuff directly from your site with a Stripe buy button, you also get access to a broad suite of online marketing services, including social media posts, paid ads, and email campaigns, all of which can be fully integrated and connected.

Mailchimp’s landing pages makes it easy to:

• Generate anticipation for a new business
• Grow your audience with new email subscribers
• Highlight a new feature or product
• Give potential customers a free download

You can publish your website and unlimited landing pages at no cost, and if you buy a custom domain through Mailchimp, you’ll be able to bring your website and landing pages together in one unified, branded location. Our websites and landing pages are optimized to look great on any device, and our drag-and-drop editor makes them quick and easy to build, no matter your marketing goals.

You could, for instance, set up a lead generation landing page that automatically tags new contacts based on their interests when they fill out your signup form. Not only will it help you keep your contacts organized, but it will make it easier to send them targeted messages later on.

HubSpot makes basic landing pages available to users at the $40+ per month Starter tier, but full-service landing pages require an upgrade to the Professional tier, starting at $800 per month. HubSpot’s options for users include intuitive forms that import data you might’ve collected from other signup locations and forms that can change based on which user is visiting your site.

Why Mailchimp is the best choice for small business marketing

Mailchimp currently has around 12 million customers and our clients range from one-person freelance businesses to enterprise-level companies. TrustRadius placed Mailchimp as one of its top-rated companies for 2020 in the Email Marketing Software category, scoring high in social media marketing, campaign management, performance, and more.

In 2020, we received awards from G2.com, Inc. for Email Marketing and All-in-One Marketing product offerings, and we were named the G2 Fall 2020 Leader in the Email Marketing Software and Marketing Automation Software categories, respectively.

Still not convinced? Here's what one small business owner had to say about Mailchimp:

"Mailchimp is my best partner! I love the tracking tools and how easy is to build a campaign on Mailchimp. Thanks to the automated emails I can reach my audiences in 2 different languages.

I really like to be able to replicate campaigns and emails, saving me lots of time :) The landing pages are great tools too! With themes and many features available to add, such as discount coupons, payment options, etc.

I also use the subscription forms integrated to my website with an automated welcome message. And I check the stats of my emails from my mobile app when I need to.

Using Mailchimp can't be easier!"

There are 3 main benefits that put Mailchimp above HubSpot when it comes to marketing for small businesses: price, ease of use, and value.

Price

One thing customers notice immediately is that Mailchimp is generally less expensive than HubSpot, though it shares a similar multi-tier pricing structure. With Mailchimp, pricing is based on the number of contacts you have in your list and the features you’re looking to access.

Smaller business owners may not need all of the bells and whistles, but with Mailchimp, they can still get access to professional marketing software that lets them compete in the marketplace. Our Free plan, for example, allows for up to 2,000 contacts and offers multiple marketing channels, one-click automation, a CRM system, and more—all at no cost.

Each Mailchimp pricing plan includes a generous selection of functions and features, plus all the features of the tiers below it. If you’re not quite sure if Mailchimp is a fit for your business, you can set up a free account in minutes and give it a try before upgrading to a paid tier.

Ease of use

Our selection of customizable templates makes it easy to quickly create and send beautiful, branded campaigns and automations. Our drag-and-drop builder gives you the power to design professional-looking campaigns without the need for a developer, and our predesigned options take a lot of the guesswork out of assembling a marketing email.

With Mailchimp, you’re able to get started at your own pace, without the need for expensive specialists and lengthy training. The platform is intuitive and makes it easy for everyone to start achieving their marketing goals.

Value

Mailchimp gives you a lot for the price. Even if you’ve got more than the 2,000 contacts that the Free plan allows, the next tier up—the Essentials plan—starts at just $9.99/month, compared to $40+/month for the lowest HubSpot tier.

The Essentials plan gives you access to features like A/B testing, custom branding, and 24/7 support. Or, if you opt for our Standard plan, starting at $14.99/month, you’ll get access to custom templates, multi-step automations, advanced data insights, and more. With Mailchimp, you can configure email send times based on the highest open rates, send messages based on a specific trigger, and manage ad retargeting across social media and Google. Mailchimp also connects with 250+ different apps and web services to help you get the most out of the software.

Most small business owners, especially when they’re just starting out, don’t have a very large marketing budget. Mailchimp’s pricing tiers were designed to be accessible to businesses of all sizes and lower the barrier of entry to quality small business marketing tools.

Choosing the best marketing platform for your business

Before deciding on a marketing platform for your business, you’ll want to think about your marketing goals and how you hope to achieve them. Consider your budget, the features you need, and your plans for the future. The best platform will be one that aligns with your business’s needs and your existing strategy.

Make sure you have answers to each of these questions:

• How many contacts do you have in your email list? The number of subscribers you have will determine what pricing tier you’ll need for both Mailchimp and HubSpot.
• How many emails will you be sending out? Think about how often you’ll be in touch with subscribers. Different plans will have different caps on how many emails you can send out monthly.
• What marketing channels are you most interested in? Whether you prefer to stick to email marketing or you feel most at home on social media, think about what channels you’ll be using in your marketing strategy.
• Will you need a website? A website or landing page will help your business look more professional and close sales once you bring new customers in. If you don’t already have a website, Mailchimp lets you build one for free—and you can buy a custom domain through Mailchimp (if you don’t have one already).
• How complex will your campaigns be? Whether you have an entire marketing team at your disposal or you plan to manage your own marketing efforts, it’s important to think about how involved your marketing strategy will be. Some businesses will want custom automations, robust customer data, and top-of-the-line features like customer journey maps, while others can get by with basic email marketing and landing pages.
• Are you satisfied with the CRM you’re using? If your customer relationship management (CRM) software doesn’t deliver enough data or let you do enough to reach your audience, it could be time for a change.
• How are you segmenting your audience? Choose software that can separate users by the demographics important to you (age, gender, location, income, etc). That way, you can send targeted messages to the people who will find them most relevant.

Both HubSpot and Mailchimp are powerful platforms and can be an asset to a business. Mailchimp’s combination of useful features, flexibility, and affordability, however, can be particularly beneficial to small businesses. Even at the Essentials plan pricing tier, Mailchimp is a competitive solution for your day-to-day digital marketing needs (if you have less than 50,000 contacts and send less than 500,000 emails per month).

Larger businesses that have the funds to invest in a pricier platform and dedicated specialists might want to take advantage of the professional services HubSpot can offer, but even established businesses might be surprised at the quality Mailchimp can provide—sometimes at a fraction of the cost.

Ready to sign up and see what Mailchimp can do for you?

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