Sendinblue vs. Mailchimp

Comparing small business marketing tools

As a small business, you need to be able to connect with your audience, reach them with the right message in the right place at the right time, and then track your performance across all of your channels.

At Mailchimp, we’ve been focused on the needs of small businesses for 20 years. We started with email marketing, but we’ve grown to be an all-in-one Marketing Platform that offers everything from email marketing to automations, CRM tools to retargeting ads, and a lot more. And, like Sendinblue, we’re an award-winning marketing company. In 2020 alone, Mailchimp was awarded TrustRadius’s Top Rated awards for all-in-one marketing and email marketing and was named a G2 Fall 2020 leader for email marketing and marketing automation.

Sendinblue’s marketing platform offers tools for small businesses, too, including email marketing, automation, retargeting ads, Facebook ads, SMS marketing, and a website chat functionality that you can use to answer questions from leads and customers in real-time.

Mailchimp vs Sendinblue at a glance

Let’s take a closer look at how the two platforms compare.

Marketing CRM

Mailchimp understands that businesses need to put their customers front and center. That’s why we offer a fully-functional Marketing Customer Relationship Management feature (CRM) that not only helps you learn more about your customers, but also provides you with actionable insights that you can use to improve your marketing.

With Mailchimp’s CRM, you get an audience dashboard that gives you at-a-glance information about your customers’ needs and preferences. We’ll even create pre-built segments for you—based on subscriber engagement, customer behavior, and demographics—so you can start personalized marketing right away. As you grow and become more familiar with the platform, you can create your own segments and edit them to best serve your customers. And if you are looking to grow your audience with customers similar to the ones you already have, you can leverage Instagram, Facebook, and Google ads to help you reach even more potential customers.

Sendinblue also offers similar CRM features—you can store contact information, segment lists, and create tasks that can be assigned to your team or used for sending automated emails.

Marketing Automation

Mailchimp and Sendinblue both offer pre-built automations—like an annual “happy birthday” message to a customer, for example. Both platforms also give users the option to create event-based automation emails, like abandoned cart messages. In addition to email, Sendinblue gives users the option to send an SMS text message within its automated workflows.

For all of these automation capabilities, both also offer a visual automation builder. With Mailchimp’s Customer Journey builder, you can drag-and-drop starting points that bring your customers into a journey, branching points and delays that help you control relevant messaging, and customized actions so each of your contacts has a personalized experience. Our builder simplifies the workflow by providing pre-built multistep journeys and an easy-to-use visual interface so you can see how your customers are interacting along the whole journey, from start to finish. These flexible and adaptable journeys keep you connected with your customer base even when you’re dealing with other aspects of your business.

Sendinblue offers similar features with their Premium plan, starting at $66/month. Mailchimp offers all these features starting at only $14.99/month for the Standard plan.

While both companies tout robust marketing automation features, Mailchimp gets consistent feedback from its customers for its ease of use. In 2020, Mailchimp was ranked No. 1 for marketing automation on Capterra’s Top 20 report, scoring 96 points out of 100. Sendinblue was ranked No. 3, with a score of 86 out of 100. Mailchimp was also named by G2 as one of several Fall 2020 Leaders for the Marketing Automation category.

And, based on user reviews from Capterra, over 13,000 customers rate Mailchimp’s Marketing Automation offering 4.4 out of 5 stars for ease of use and 4.4 out of 5 stars for features and functionality. In comparison, 379 Sendinblue customers rated their Marketing Automation offering 4.3 out of 5 stars for ease of use and 4.2 out of 5 stars for features and functionality.

Cross-channel marketing

Sendinblue gives its users access to a number of different marketing channels, including email, text, chat, Facebook Ads, and landing pages.

With Mailchimp, you get:

• Email
• Instagram and Facebook ads
• Social posts on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
• Pop-up forms
• Postcards
• Google remarketing ads
• Websites
• Unlimited landing pages

That means you can create an integrated, multichannel experience for your audience directly through your Mailchimp account. And, thanks to our reporting tools and audience dashboard, you can view integrated campaign reports and aggregated response data—and then act on that information to improve your marketing.

How is your Instagram campaign doing compared to your last email campaign? Are your retargeting ads driving traffic back to your website? Which landing pages are people visiting? Mailchimp gives you all of this information (and more) and helps you use it to refine your next campaign.

Campaign optimization and reporting

Mailchimp and Sendinblue both provide detailed information about audience engagement, offer A/B testing, and allow you to download your campaign reports or share them with a colleague.

Mailchimp, however, goes a step further by giving you interpretations and insights based on the data—including audience demographic predictions and more—directly on your audience dashboard. You’ll also get automatically-generated audience segments, based on factors like engagement levels and likelihood to purchase. These smart recommendations are fully actionable; with just a few clicks, you can send a targeted email, ad, or postcard.

We’ll even use your audience data to teach you how to craft a more effective campaign; you’ll get feedback on creating great subject lines and suggestions for when to send messages, and you can follow the success of your campaign with mobile reporting.

Pricing and features: Mailchimp’s Standard plan vs. Sendinblue’s Premium plan

A lot of different things can come into play when you’re choosing a marketing platform, so let’s explore some other factors—besides just general marketing features—that might sway your decision.

But first, it’s important to clarify why we’re comparing a Standard plan with a Premium plan. Sendinblue offers a Free, Lite, and Essential pricing plan, but they all offer fewer features and options than the Mailchimp Standard plan. Therefore, based on features available for the price, their Premium plan is the closest comparison.

(If you’re looking for comparable plans to the Sendinblue Free, Lite, and Essential options based on price, check out Mailchimp’s Free and Essential plans.)

Price per volume

Sendinblue has two versions of its Premium plan, one costs $66/month (it drops to $59.40/month if you opt to pay annually) and allows for up to 120,000 email sends each month. The other Premium plan option allows for up to 350,000 email sends each month and costs $173/month (or $155.70/month if paid annually).

The Mailchimp Standard plan up to 1.2 million monthly email sends and starts at just $14.99/month for up to 500 contacts. The Standard plan is tiered based on the number of contacts you have and the number of emails you need to send, so you can pick the option that best fits your needs.

Transactional emails

Mailchimp and Sendinblue both support transactional emails. Transactional by Mailchimp sends billions of transactional emails every month.Users can purchase a Transactional Plan starting at $19.95/month for up to 20K transactional emails. New users can send up to 500 free demo emails to their verified domain.

Sendinblue does not charge additional fees for transactional email sends, but it does subtract any transactional emails you send from your plan’s overall send allowance, just as it would with a regular marketing email. Therefore, depending on which version of the Premium plan you’ve selected, you’d have either 120,000 or 350,000 total marketing and transactional emails available each month.

Integrations

Sendinblue has 50+ apps and services that integrate with its platform, including popular options like WordPress, Salesforce, and Shopify.

Mailchimp connects with WordPress, Salesforce, and Shopify, too. In fact, we have more than 250 different app integrations across 20 categories, ranging from analytics to content and design.

Customer support

Sendinblue and Mailchimp both offer 24/7 support access. Sendinblue’s support team is available via phone and email, and they offer a collection of articles and online tutorials in English, Español, Français, Português, Italiano, and Deutsch.

Mailchimp provides email and live chat support in both English and Spanish for all users with a paid monthly plan. Users who are on our Premium plan also receive phone support, while users on our Free plan receive 24/7 email and chatbot support included for their first 30 days after creating their account.

Our customer support team has a 92% customer satisfaction rating and won 4 Gold Stevie Awards in 2020 in the Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories. Plus, they do a lot more than just problem-solving. They focus on finding solutions and helping folks reach the next level in their growth with advice on tooling optimization, email personalization, audience insights, and more.

Mailchimp users also get unlimited access to our collection of feature-based and topic-based online tutorials. All articles are available in English, and many are also available in Español, Français, Português do Brasil, and Deutsch.

Domain hosting

While Sendinblue offers a number of the tools a small business might need, they don’t offer website services.

At Mailchimp, we know that a professional website is important for the growth of any small business. That’s why our customers can purchase a custom domain, get unlimited subdomains, and build them all for free with our easy drag-and-drop website builder. And Mailchimp is offering custom domains that includes an SSL certificate that will encrypt data to and from browsers accessing your website to Mailchimp server hosting your domain.

Your Mailchimp site even includes an optional “coming soon” page with information about your company and built-in signup forms so visitors can subscribe to receive your marketing emails.

Security and compliance

Mailchimp takes security seriously. Several members of Mailchimp's legal team hold active membership in the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). Mailchimp has certified with the EU-U.S./Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks to enable transfers of data from the EEA and Switzerland to the United States. You can view our Privacy Shield certification here. We also provide our customers with GDPR-ready terms in our Data Processing Addendum.

Mailchimp holds a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard certification, more commonly known as PCI DSS. Mailchimp's credit card processing vendor uses security measures to protect your information both during the transaction and after it is complete. Our vendor is certified as compliant with card association security initiatives, including the Visa Cardholder Information Security and Compliance (CISP), MasterCard® Site Data Protection Program (SDP), and Discovery Information Security and Compliance (DISC).

Mailchimp's small business marketing tools can help you comply with the GDPR

If you know the GDPR as Europe’s data privacy regulation, you might be tempted to believe that it doesn’t apply to you. But, it might. The GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, governs how companies collect, process, or use the personal data of EU residents. That means, if you sell to people in the EU or market to an EU audience, you are subject to GDPR.

Fines for GDPR non-compliance can be steep. Fines can cost upwards of €20 million or 4% of your annual revenue, whichever is higher.

To help you avoid these penalties, Mailchimp provides you with some helpful tools that make it easier for you to comply with the GDPR. Mailchimp users receive tools and support for building GDPR-friendly consent forms that feature editable language. Unlike cookie-cutter GDPR forms, Mailchimp’s let you maintain your brand identity.

Attach these forms to your audience signups in whatever way works best for you, from embedded checkboxes to pop-ups. (Using Mailchimp does not guarantee GDPR compliance, but we can help you comply with the GDPR more easily. If you have questions about the GDPR and your compliance, please consult an attorney).

Sendinblue states it is compliant with the GDPR.

Why Mailchimp is the best solution for your business

Whether you’re a brand new business or an established company looking ahead to your next expansion, you need a marketing platform that can grow with you. Mailchimp supports millions of customers across every stage of their own business journeys, and our all-in-one Marketing Platform has the tools you need to build an audience and market to them in a smarter, more personalized way. You can create a website, connect with folks through email, landing pages, social media, get detailed analytics data to see how you’re doing, and more—all in one convenient place.

Ready to learn what Mailchimp can do for you? Sign up today and test our marketing platform out for yourself.

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