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RSSMailChimp Vs Aweber – A Comparison Of Two Email Marketing Providers
As many of you who follow my email newsletter are aware, I recently switched my email marketing provider from Mailchimp over to Aweber and I thought that it would be interesting to compare the two services.
For all of you who are not doing email marketing for your business, you really should consider doing so. Having an email list or newsletter is the best way to mobilize your audience to take action. It’s also a great way to maintain an active community of readers/customers for your site. In any case, this post is not about trying to convince you to use an email marketing provider, but if you are in the market for one, this review may help you out.
High Level Comparison Between Aweber And MailChimp
For those of you who don’t like to read and just want to cut to the chase, I’ve summarized the distinguishing features between the 2 services in the table below. If you want the full version, feel free to read the entire article.
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 MailChimp Sign up for free up to 2000 subscribers. |
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What Initially Attracted Me To MailChimp
Honestly, what attracted me initially to Mailchimp was that they offer a trial period in which their service is free for up to 500 subscribers (Updated: You now get up to 2000 free subscribers but there’s a major limitation on the number of emails you are allowed to send).
I know, I’m cheap. I can’t help it. The Asian in me always prevails. Even though all of the top bloggers use Aweber, I opted for Mailchimp because of the free startup cost. That and my buddy Sid Savara was also using MailChimp and highly recommended the company. Anyways, in using both email providers extensively and having learned the ins and outs of both services, I discovered the pros and cons of each which I’ll enumerate below.
Who Has The Better Form Design Tools?
If you are a half decent web designer, you’ll definitely prefer Mailchimp over Aweber in terms of form design. Mail Chimp let’s you either design your forms entirely from scratch or use their GUI to design a professional looking form. They have many templates to choose from, but if you want to do everything yourself, they also give you the raw code and you have full control over the look and feel of everything. I found that the design freedom that MailChimp provides was especially useful when designing popup forms.
Aweber on the other hand, seems to steer you towards using one of their pre-baked form templates. If you stray from their template, then you have to do a little bit of hacking to get things looking the way you want. For example, getting the popup signup form working on Aweber the exact way I wanted it to look took me several hours.
I basically had to download the javascript from their site, figure out how their code was written and then tailor it to how I wanted it. Otherwise, I would have been limited to their templates which I didn’t really like. In addition, the Aweber popup code didn’t work properly across all web browsers and I had to fix this manually. (Updated: This problem has been rectified)
Mailchimp also offers a more flexible interface with which to design HTML emails and they’ll also host the images for you. Aweber does not offer an image hosting service as far as I can tell. Overall however, even though I like MailChimp’s interface better, their website is significantly slower than Aweber’s because of all of the graphical functionality baked into the UI.
Edge: MailChimp
Who Has Better Email Tracking?
When I first switched over from Mailchimp to Aweber, I immediately noticed how much better Aweber’s email tracking capabilities are compared to MailChimp. With Aweber, you can tell exactly who has opened your email and exactly which links that they have clicked on and when. With Mailchimp out of the box, you don’t have any of this information.
Instead, MailChimp puts stars next to each of your subscribers which provides a vague metric with which to measure the quality and interest of your readers. In addition, MailChimp does not track users who sign up for your newsletter but don’t confirm their email.
Aweber is also better when it comes to tracking clicks within an email. Whenever you use a link in an email with click tracking enabled, Aweber displays the link using the exact same URL from your domain. Mailchimp on the other hand, uses a super long and obscure link which is then redirected over to your site.
In general, readers are more hesitant to click on links with a super long and cryptic URL. With Aweber, the destination URL points straight to your domain and the click is still tracked. As a result, I’ve seen a dramatic increase in click throughs when I made the switch.
In addition to all of this, Aweber also provides conversion tracking if you sell products and you can also track how each reader traverses through your website from an email campaign. Overall, Aweber is much more powerful than MailChimp when it comes to tracking users.
Edge: Aweber
Who Has Better AutoResponders?
Both MailChimp and Aweber offer an easy way to set up a series of follow up emails. However, both have their pros and cons with the way their auto responders are implemented. What I like about Mailchimp is that you can setup autoresponders such that only a subset of your email list will receive your follow-up emails based on when they signed up for your newsletter. For example, if I only want recent subscribers from the last month to receive one of my autoresponders, I can simply specify this using MailChimp’s autoresponder interface.
With Aweber however, this is not that easy to do. With Aweber, each and every one of your subscribers is tagged with a message number which indicates which followup emails they have received already. To prevent a subscriber from receiving a specific followup email, you must set the subscriber’s message number to be higher than the email sequence number.
For example, if a particular subscriber’s message number is 4, that means that that subscriber has already received follow-up emails 1,2 and 3. So if I have a 7 part follow up message sequence and I write a brand new followup email (message 8 in the sequence), there is no real way for me to prevent this subscriber from receiving message 8 unless I make his or her message number higher than 8. But if I do this, then that subscriber will never receive messages 4,5,6 or 7.
On the flip side, Aweber’s method of managing followup emails allows me to know exactly which subscriber has received which follow up emails and when. With MailChimp, I really have no clue who has or hasn’t received a particular email. Overall, I kind of prefer Aweber’s method of managing follow-ups but it is basically a wash depending on your preference.
Edge: Even
Who Has Better Support?
There is no contest here. Aweber has the better support hands down! Aweber offers both phone and email support during regular business hours. Mailchimp however, only offers email support. As a result, if you have a pressing issue or question, you will have to wait up to 24 hours to get a response from MailChimp. This is the #1 reason I made the switch from MailChimp to Aweber. Usually support doesn’t come into play unless something goes wrong. Here is my tale of woe.
One day, MailChimp decided to arbitrarily suspend my blog from using its service. I received a cryptic email out of the blue telling me that my email service had been suspended and they didn’t give me a reason. Since MailChimp doesn’t have phone support, I had to wait a day to receive a response. In fact, because I couldn’t get a human on the phone, it took me 2 days just to find out why I was suspended.
In the end, they told me that I had violated their terms of service because they classified my website as a get rich quick scheme. Long time readers of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com know that this blog is certainly not about getting rich quick. Plus, I don’t sell anything on my blog either so Mail Chimp’s reason for banning me was completely uncalled for.
In any case after a few emails back and forth, I found out that they basically didn’t like the title of my free ebook. Sure, I could have changed the title but I was not willing to make changes based on my email provider. As a result, I had to make a mad scramble to switch email providers right away. Thankfully, transitioning to Aweber was quick and easy.
Edge:Aweber
Conclusion
There are a few good things about MailChimp that I didn’t mention and should be considered as well even though most people probably won’t take advantage of these features. MailChimp has an interface that allows you to access your entire database of subscribers from an API.
If you do a lot of coding or database manipulation, their API will allow you to easily manage your subscriber database in PHP or any popular scripting language. Overall, when it comes to design and programmability, Mailchimp is more powerful than Aweber.
However, once I switched over to Aweber, I realized how much more powerful their tracking and email management features were compared to Mailchimp. You only have to design your forms once but tracking is something you’ll be doing all the time. In addition, the delivery rate of emails was better with Aweber as well which is extremely important.
In addition, having phone support is priceless. That and getting suspended without warning by MailChimp left a really bad taste in my mouth. If they simply gave me an early heads up, it would have made my life much easier. Trust me. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to get someone on the phone when something goes wrong.
In any case, I highly recommend Aweber overall. If you do decide to go with Mailchimp however, I would read their terms of service extremely carefully before signing up.
One particular thing I want to highlight is that if you do any sort of affiliate marketing on your site, then I would stay away from MailChimp. After all, affiliate marketing appears to be against their terms of service. Any violation and you could be suspended without warning. It’s just not worth the risk.
Give Aweber a try for just a dollar
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[...] vs. Aweber – A Comparison Of Two Email Marketing Providers MyWifeQuitHerJob As many of you who follow my email newsletter are aware, I recently switched my email marketing [...]
Great comparison! I almost signed up with MailChimp but luckily found out that they don’t allow affiliate marketers. I bet many people don’t bother to read the TOS and lost their account. Scary if you think about it.
Aweber is the most reliable it seems, but the price can be a hindrance for those just starting to build their list with no guarantee of ROI.
One thing that one must not forget is also integration with your existing website. If your running on Joomla, WordPress, Drupal or such likes, better you find how the user integration will go with your CMS and one of those email services. You don’t want the client to have to register for your autoresponder on one form and then have to register a second time for your website! You may find that plug-ins to do such things might restrict your choice, check it out first or consult with your webmaster!
In aweber, can I create an email to send to 1 client, and then reuse that email for another client without having to duplicate it and start all over.
For example, in my current email marketing program (officeautopilot.com), I can create emails and then in the contact’s file, I can select any previously made email and send it to that client – editing it as I wish.
I use this to confirm appointments set by phone after they opt in to try my program.
Thanks!
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Thanks, this is just what I was looking for. Signing up for aweber right now!
I am planning to switch from Mailchimp to Aweber. This post has helped me.
I’m so glad I stumbled upon this article, I’ve always used mail chimp because of it’s design flexibility, I sold my own products so I didn’t have any issues but now that I’m getting ready to launch a marketing blog, I’m sure going to make the switch to awebber. Thanks for writing such a good an honest article. I like your blog, let’s keep in touch.
When switching from one service provider to another, do you have to send out another opt-in email to your list? For example, I have a list I use, and if I wanted to start using Aweber, I can’t use it until I send out an opt-in email to my existing list.
Do all companies require that every time you switch providers? Is there a way to by-pass that. I don’t want my clients to have to opt-in over and over again.
Hello,
Nice comparison.
Could you explain the email import possibilities ?
Thanks
Dimitri
Hey Dimitri,
In order to import your emails from another email provider, you simply need to tell Aweber, give them the password to your existing email marketing account and they will do the import for you. It’s pretty painless.
In all fairness the title and cover of your book is fairly suspect. Actually when it popped up on the page I immediately cringed. Dude higher a designer (and a brand manager) to work on that. It’s a turn off and I can understand Mailchimp’s response. Good design is good communication, case closed.
Hey Evan,
Thanks for bringing that up. It’s about time I redid that book cover as it was the first ebook I ever wrote. But when it comes to email marketing, you shouldn’t have to look over your shoulder wondering if you are going to get banned or not. Some of my other blogging colleagues have noticed higher delivery rates with Aweber over Mailchimp which I didn’t include in the article either. Ultimately, if you are going to do any sort of affiliate marketing, Aweber is the way to go. It’s not worth taking the chance of getting banned.
Hi Steve
This is a really great and fair comparison of both auto responders.
I have two businesses and use Mailchimp for my offline business and you’re right the templates are funky and easy to set up.
I’ve just signed up with Aweber for my Internet Marketing business as they are perfect for the stuff you describe.
I’m starting with a clean slate so have no-one on my list, I wonder how you got on with Aweber migrating your existing people to their database.
They used to be really narky about that…
Great post either way – thanks for publishing it!
Hey Debbie,
All you have to do is give aweber your Mailchimp password so they can verify that all of your contacts have been double-opted in. Then, they’ll move all of your contacts over for you. It’s pretty seamless.
Great article comparison and review! Man I wished I had read this before getting in bed with mailchimp.com – You are correct they have the WORST customer service there is… I have been waiting for more than 24 hours now for a resolution as to why they suspend my account – turns out I didnt answer some questions in a lengthy email they send out. I could not call them because they do not have a phone number.
The usability of most of the site is actually not bad; I even like the design look and feel. However, the signup process is where I had (and am still having) trouble with. Just simply getting a reply from them on anything takes hours and hours, but when you look search usability and mailchimp.com, they are all kinds of busy writing blogs about their mobile usability testing and how great they are. So they are so focused on their mobile they forgot that the #1 focus should be getting new users fast, and keeping them with good support… what a JOKE! Mailchimp.com is usability and customer support FAIL!
In closing I signed up with verticalresponse.com and in 2 sec I had an email from the CEO with her photo and a phone number to call if I had any support related issues, and no joke, in literally 10 min I had built my mailer and sent it out to 8500 customers – they did not hold it for a while, or send just a few test mails; it was done and sent and reported on in less than 30 min! MailChimp.com take note: That is how you do it! (reports not bad either)
Great timing. My billing info on mailchimp needs updating so now is a good time to switch to aweber. When I had to decide between the two a few years ago I picked mailchimp because their template system is way cooler. Aweber’s stuff looks like teenagers’ homework assignments in the 90′s. In contrast to an all male engineering team mailchimp seems to have a few girls on board to spruce things up. But as you said the functionality behind the email is more important than the look so I’m jumping ship. Oh, I’ll also be saving $20 pm.
Congrats for the article, even if at the end it semms like you’re trying to sell their service as an affiliate. I had one question, did you manage to migrate all the subscribers from mailchimp to aweber without issues?
Thanks
Migrating is not a big deal. You just give the Aweber rep your Mailchimp password and they’ll take care of the rest. Process took about 24 hours.
Migration can actually be a major pain in the ass. Although according to aWeber my list was “substantially clean” but I still needed to get all my readers to reconfirm their subscriptions. After a week I’m still waiting for 70% of them to reconfirm. NOT happy. If I stuck to mailchimp I wouldn’t have had these problems. (Their support guys are good though.)
Corbett Barr of ThinkTraffic migrated over thousands of subs relatively recently as well from Mailchimp with no issues. I’m guess you must have acquired some of your subs without double opt in.
I find that really strange. Why would your list not be clean? I moved from Mailchimp to Aweber with no problems at all. Did you not do double opt in for some of your subscribers?
I don’t know. I’ve been building it for 5 years and only ever added an address when a reader expressly asked me by email to add him (I kept the proof). Gave aWeber my login details and apparently that wasn’t good enough. They waffled that their spam rate is below 0.1% industry standard and mine is slightly above. All I can think is that a handful of readers have been too dumb, lazy or spiteful to just unsubscribe and instead just report me for spam.
All I know is that my conscience is clear.
Michelle,
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have my unsubscribe link way up high in the email before all of the content now. As a result, my spam rate is almost non-existent.
Thanks for writing a comparison between Aweber and Mailchimp. I surely will go for Aweber..
Its harding finding niche directories for any sector other than SEO, guess there isn’t that many UK small business owners who are on the web
Thanks for the information, will be very important to me!
Hi Steve,
Thanks for a great website.
I tossed up between Mailchimp and Aweber. Prefer Awebers tracking. Prefer Mailchimps forms.
Signed up with Aweber (trial), and found that they couldn’t cater for one of my core goals: I (will) have a suggestion box asking readers what topics they would like to see researched and ‘unpacked’, etc.
Readers leave a suggestion, name and email. I explain in the opt-in box that they may hear from me individually, and that they will receive an update on where site is going (newsletter).
Aweber uses double-optin which I accept but the related LETTER thanking them form confirming their “subscription” is totally off-track –and jarring.
I contacted their support who were fantastic but confirmed that the middle section couldnt be re-scripted for a ‘suggestion’ thankyou.
Have I missed something here???
PS. thanks for a great site
Thank You soo much for the excellent comparison. Now I’m going to signup for an aweber account..
Thanks for this awesome comparison!!
Hi I have recently been looking into them both trying to decide which one to go for. Am I right in saying that Aweber offer more services than mailchimp or are they just openly advertising more? I am really confused about which one to go for. I like the look of aweber more however I am trying to figure out if it is worth the price difference. Thank you in advance. Found your comparison very helpful.
Hi, Steve. Thanks so much for writing for writing such an information article. I was leaning towards MailChimp because I’ve used their free email service in the past. Now that I’m about to start an email marketing campaign, I will go with Aweber, as one of my advisors already recommended. Guess I needed to hear it from someone else.
Thanks, again.
Yvette
Glad you found it useful!
The disadvantage with using free services like Mailchimp is they’ll usually suspend your account without warning, it’s kind of like setting up a blog with wordpress.com or blogger.com. Since it’s a free service it’s kind of like they have this “one and your done” attitude which I guess is understandable since you’re getting the service for free, but sometimes I wonder. Now on to Aweber.
I’ve been using Aweber for over a year now and have nothing but good things to say, they deliver their emails like no other email solution out there and their customer support is second to none. I guess the only drawback to aweber is their email editor.
Thanks for the helpful tips.
Hey Tyronne,
THanks for the comment. THese days, I tend to stay away from free services that are critical to my business. There are usually certain shortcomings that are worth paying for.
Thank you for such a comprehensive and honest review Steve. For someone who’s been seeing Mailchimp turn up everywhere, I was tempted and hence the reason I looked for an honest review … I need look no further.
I’ve been using Aweber almost since day 1 except when I used 1 shopping cart, but the one thing that makes me remain a loyal customer is that so far, I’ve yet to see a service with such a high email deliverability. Maybe Infusionsoft might be better, but at this price point, Aweber email deliverability is second to none.
Trish
I just set up my newsletter a couple of days back with Mail Chimp but I am now thinking of switching to AWeber. After reading your review, Steve, I must say, both have their own pros and cons. Perhaps I’ll stick first with Mail Chimp since I am just on the first steps of my blogging journey. Thanks for this nice post!
Do remember Regine, that if you switch to Aweber later on, you’ll have to get people to resubscribe since Aweber will not allow you to import your list.
All the best. Trish
I would like to read the full version of your Aweber vs. MailChimp comparison, but I do not see a link or a table. Please send me the link
Thank you
Roman
hey thanks for this review!! I’ve used AWeber about 3 years ago & had no problem with it and my sister is currently using Mailchimp (she’s asian & suffers from the same cheap tendencies) and she’s highly recommending it so I was torn. But after this, definitely going with AWeber.
thx!
Kris from loveyouduh.com
Very helpful. Thanks!
Excellent and informative post. I’m curious though if you have tested either with WordPress plugins. I’m in the middle of a project where I’m going to need to narrow my consideration based on WordPress interaction.
J
First of all, thanks for providing such a detailed comparison. I had just started searching for a good mailing list manager for my blog. I think I can start up with Mail Chimp for it’s free (like you did
), and later switch to Aweber.
There is one thing that I want to ask though. How did the switching process go for you?
Don’t even think about opening an auto responder account with MailChimp. Today they’ve decided to shut down my autoreponder account. Why ? For what reason ? All I could get was an auto generated email about Spam filters getting more and more sophisticated.
I was diligently serving my small (but growing) list with useful advice, information and excellent articles. I had great response from people in my list and I was extremely careful to send useful information related to my niche. Why do they think I am a risk ? I don’t know as the Chimp wouldn’t say ! Maybe they are doing too well and they need to cut down the number of their customers
I read some terrible stories about Mailchimp before I joined but I didn’t believe them until now. So do yourself a big favour and stay away from Mailchimp. If you have an account with MailChimp then I strongly suggest you to look for alternative auto responder.
Another distinguishing point last time I checked MailChimp could NOT automate list management.
eg if someone is a prospect on your prospects list and they buy a product and you want to automatically move them to a buyers list
AWeber CAN do this but at the time i last checked MailChimp could NOT.
If you want to automate this sort of thing so you don’t have to worry about it once it is set up that is a big feature you probably will want.
hope that helps
(again was a while back I last checked MailChimp and posted a Q to them which they confirmed they couldn’t do it – may have changed?)
cheers
Nick
Wow! Thank you for your awesome review. I wanted to get some information and reviews about these two services and Google had me land here. You have some awesome details shared in this article. You added value to me with this post. Thank you again.
If I start with MailChimp and eventually go to aWeber, how hard is the transition?
You are very likely to lose the people within your database. Aweber will not allow you to transfer your contacts from mailchimp to Aweber.
My suggestion is just to start with the database you intend sticking with in the first place
I transfered my subs from MailChimp over to Aweber without a problem. However, I do know a fellow blogging friend who recently had problems in making the transition. I agree with Trish. Why take the chance? You should start with the platform you ultimately want to use.
Great review. I’ve tried MailChimp for a while, after three months I realized Mailchimp don’t allow affiliate marketing (deliverability was also a issue) and before my account get closed I switched to Aweber. What I liked about MailChimp is their good support.
Switching autoresponders was a little complicated but I managed to get my list imported to aweber.
Thank you very much for the information.
I followed the exact same path. Anytime there’s an interface change, things are going to be more complicated but it’s a breeze once you get used to a new system. Thanks for the comment!
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I agree with you. For our ethical rings website, Aweber was slightly better than Mailchimp. Can’t go wrong with either though!