HubSpot and Mailchimp are two of the most popular and powerful email marketing platforms. Both solutions offer a variety of marketing tools and features including campaign automation, audience segmentation, A/B testing, and custom templates.
However, one of these platforms might be better suited for your business’s unique needs. Keep those in mind while comparing HubSpot and Mailchimp’s features and pricing.
Jump to:
- What is Mailchimp?
- What is HubSpot?
- Mailchimp vs HubSpot: Similarities
- Mailchimp vs Hubspot: Differences
- How to choose between HubSpot and Mailchimp
Also read: Top Email Marketing Software & Platforms
What is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp offers an all-in-one marketing solution that includes customer relationship management (CRM) features, tagging and segmentation, and predictive analytics.
This platform helps you build a website as well as static landing pages for customer sign-ups and digital ads. It also offers easy-to-use features like drag-and-drop templates, email personalization, basic list management, and email analytics.
Pricing
Mailchimp offers the following plans based on the number of contacts on your list:
- Free plan offers all basic multichannel tools for up to 2,000 contacts
- Essentials starts at $11 per month based on 500 contacts; great for email-only senders
- Standard starts at $17 per month based on 500 contacts; includes automation & optimization tools
- Premium starts at $299 per month based on 10,000 contacts; includes advanced customization features
What is HubSpot?
Hubspot integrates the capabilities and tools of marketing, sales, content management, and customer service. HubSpot’s Marketing Hub focuses on all aspects of inbound marketing via email marketing tools.
You can use HubSpot to segment audiences and automate a range of features and workflows that will support your marketing efforts. Hubspot offers a variety of tools to identify leads, set up sales funnels, and track analytical data to determine the performance of your campaigns.
Pricing
Compared to Mailchimp, Hubspot’s prices are a bit higher, so they may be better suited to established businesses rather than startups. HubSpot Marketing Hub comes in four pricing tiers:
- Free is a no-cost tier aimed at beginners and solopreneurs
- Starter is $45 per month and includes simple follow-up emails, ad retargeting, and landing page reporting
- Professional is $800 per month and includes marketing automation, blogging, and custom reporting
- Enterprise is $3,200 per month and includes adaptive testing, account-based marketing, and multi-touch revenue attribution
Also read: HubSpot Reviews, Pricing & Features
Mailchimp vs HubSpot: Similarities
The top features HubSpot and Mailchimp share are email creation and marketing automation.
Email creation
Both Mailchimp and HubSpot have drag and drop email editors that are easy to use. They also offer a variety of templates that can be tailored to your brand’s needs.
Both platforms offer customization options to improve your email engagement. Specifically, you can add personalization elements via merge tags, schedule the email to send according to the recipient’s time zone, and optimize those emails for various devices.
After you’ve launched a campaign, you can track its performance with post-send email analytics and comparative reports.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation maximizes the efficiency and impact of your email campaigns. With both platforms, you can trigger email campaigns based on the different actions your contacts take to identify the sales leads that are most likely to convert.
You can generate multi-step drip campaigns or create custom workflows through each platform’s API. For example, Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder enables you to automate email-based sales funnels based on different audience segments and their behavioral triggers.
HubSpot offers powerful automation capabilities for your entire business—not just your email marketing efforts. With its CRM platform, you can move leads across your sales staff, create tickets, add conditional logic to your workflows, and manage contact databases.
Mailchimp vs HubSpot: Differences
These platforms differ in some features and the approach they take for certain workflows.
CRM functionality
HubSpot is more than just an email and marketing automation platform. With live chat, contact management, SEO tools, sales playbooks, and help desk tools, HubSpot offers a variety of capabilities for a successful marketing campaign and frictionless customer experience.
Though Mailchimp doesn’t have a stand-alone CRM platform, it offers several CRM tools small businesses need. For more advanced needs, Mailchimp also integrates with other CRM platforms. With data consolidation from various sources, Mailchimp and HubSpot help you forecast your customer needs while focusing on your budget.
Read more: Best CRM Software for Small Business
Landing pages
If your landing page doesn’t convert, your email marketing efforts fail. Both Mailchimp and HubSpot offer drag-and-drop landing page builders so you don’t have to worry about coding.
Compared to Mailchimp, though, HubSpot offers comprehensive landing page solutions including tracking code, progressive profiling, and dependent fields. By installing HubSpot’s tracking code on your website, you can easily monitor traffic, and with progressive profiling options, you can optimize the content for your users.
Reporting and analytics
Reliable reporting and analytics are the only way to know whether your email marketing campaigns are effective. Mailchimp offers reports for individual email campaigns, automated email series, landing pages, and ads. It also provides recommendations for ways to improve your open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and more.
On the other hand, HubSpot provides you with more comprehensive and customizable reports. HubSpot has a single analyze tab that allows you to compare the most important metrics for your emails in one place. Additionally, the Marketing Hub provides you with actionable insights to make better business decisions.
Also read: Small Business Reporting Software & Platforms
How to choose between HubSpot and MailChimp
While choosing the best email marketing platform for your business, you need to consider the size of your team, your business’s goals, and your budget constraints.
Mailchimp provides opportunities to grow your business if it is in its early stages. If you’re looking for a more affordable option, Mailchimp gives you a variety of features and is a good value for your money.
However, if you want a comprehensive CRM with advanced automation capabilities and in-depth analytics, HubSpot may be the best option for you. It will require a larger investment than Mailchimp, but it’s especially effective to streamline your marketing, sales, and customer experience efforts.
If you’re still not sure which solution is right for you, compare Mailchimp and HubSpot with other options on our list of the Best Email Marketing Software & Platforms.
