Email marketing is now an integral part of marketing strategy for most companies and organizations.
Many of them also look for a full-service marketing platform that helps save time, manage projects and tasks, and allows them to focus on the most important part of running any business – increasing sales and profits.
Companies now use CRM tools as well, an important tool in maximizing leads and customers.
When companies and individuals are shopping around for all-in sales and marketing platforms, Mailchimp and Infusionsoft by Keap are two among those often considered.
Mailchimp is the more popular brand, with a whopping 11 million active customers. It has become one of the most well-known brands in email marketing all over the world and it would be hard to find a marketer who has not heard of Mailchimp.
Infusionsoft has also been around for a number of years, with its own following (23,000 small business owners) and its own share of promoters. Although not as well-known as Mailchimp, it offers superb email marketing and CRM tools.
Compared to Mailchimp, it’s safe to say that it offers a more advanced sales and marketing platform.
Which one is the right fit for your company? Let’s take a closer look at Infusionsoft vs. Mailchimp.
About Mailchimp
If you’ve done your research on email marketing, we’re sure you’re familiar with Mailchimp. Founded in 2001, it is one of the world’s leading email marketing tools. Mailchimp targets small businesses and organizations with less than 100 employees.
It offers complete email marketing features and emphasizes ease of use and design. Even users without any background or training in email marketing can get on the platform and start running an email marketing campaign immediately.
One distinct trait of Mailchimp is that it puts emphasis on branding, with its fun brand personality shining through from the moment you visit its website, to creating an account, all the way to working on your email campaigns. The whole Mailchimp website puts emphasis on design, including artsy images and witty copy, in every step of its user experience.
If you are looking for an email marketing system that’s easy to use, offers extensive tutorials, and has all the features needed to set up an effective email marketing campaign, Mailchimp might be the right one for you.
Recently, Mailchimp added a number of new features to their platform. Among them is Dynamic Content which allows users to make more highly personalized emails.
Another new feature is Creative Assistant, an AI-powered design tool. Both features are designed to make more personal and attractive email campaigns and contribute to Mailchimp’s goal of becoming a complete marketing solution.
Mailchimp offers 4 plans – Free, Essentials, Standard and Premium. Here are the pricing plans of Mailchimp:
- Free – $0 per month
- Essentials – Starts at $9.99 per month
- Standard – Starts at $14.99 per month
- Premium – Starts at $299 per month
Each plan offers different features. Some email marketing platforms increase in cost only when contacts are added while maintaining the same features. However, Mailchimp offers different features per plan.
The Free Plan is applicable for up to 2,000 contacts and one audience. It includes Marketing CRM, Creative Assistant, Website Builder, Mailchimp Domain, and Forms & Landing Pages. The next plan is the Essentials Plan and includes everything in the free plan, plus more features like A/B Testing, 24/7 Email and Chat, and All Email Templates. This can be used by accounts with up to 50,000 contacts and three audiences. Next is the Standard plan for up to 100,000 contacts and five audiences. It adds more features like Send Time Optimization, Behavioral Targeting, and Customer Journey Builder + Branching Points.
The last, and most expensive, plan available is Premium which is for larger organizations that have up to 200,000 contacts and unlimited audiences. It adds Advanced Segmentation and Phone Support. As you can see, the jump in pricing from Standard to Premium is quite high. We’ll discuss more of this later.
When you sign up for a Mailchimp account, an easy process using just your email address and other basic information, it asks what products you are offering – either physical goods, original content, services, or technology. You can import an existing contact list or start adding contacts and then you’re ready to start your email marketing campaigns.
One great thing about Mailchimp is that it doesn’t have a steep learning curve and is very user-friendly. When you log in to your dashboard, you’ll see all your options on the left. For example, the Create section lets you make exactly what you need – whether its an email, a customer journey, an email template, a social post, or a signup form, among others.
It’s a great time-saver, because you don’t need to go through the whole dashboard to get started. If you already know what you need to do, you can just go online, jump to the section you need (even without any help or training) and get started on your campaign.
Aside from Create, you can also go to other Mailchimp features available. You can start on Automations , where you can map and automate how you want a contact to interact with your business. Maybe you want to work on Content Studio that designs and creates sample social media posts on your behalf. These are just a couple of features that Mailchimp offers its customers.
When you explore the Mailchimp dashboard, you’ll see that it has become more than just a website that helps manage email marketing campaigns and send emails.
With features like Website that allows you to create pop-up forms for your site and Customer Journeys that gives the ability to create Facebook or Instagram social media ads, it has truly transformed into a complete marketing platform that will help any business grow.
About Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft has been a market leader and pioneer in CRM and marketing automation for small businesses. After the company rebranded in 2019, it became Infusionsoft by Keap.
Similar to Mailchimp, its clients are composed of small businesses and organizations. While Mailchimp is best known for email marketing, Infusionsoft is known as an email marketing solution combined with CRM.
Infusionsoft offers advanced sales and marketing automations, app integrations, and customizable campaigns. It also includes other important features like lead scoring, A/B testing, order forms, and landing pages.
Infusionsoft by Keap offers a 14-day free trial. After your free trial, Infusionsoft costs $199/month for 500 contacts and 1 user. They offer a special promo of 20% off for the first 6 months. Instead of $199/month, you pay $160/month. It goes up to its regular price after. A small business would definitely benefit from this service. It includes the following:
- Client Management (CRM)
- Marketing and Sales Automations
- Lead Scoring and Company Records
- Advanced Reporting, Analytics, and eCommerce
- Advanced Sales and Marketing Automation
Infusionsoft requires that all Keap users enroll in their coaching program with an additional one time-payment. This is separate from the pricing of their There are three packages to choose from.
- Keep Grow Coaching – $99
- Keep Pro Coaching – $499
- Expert Coaching – $999
The main difference among the 3 packages are the number of designated calls with a Keap Expert. The lowest package offers 1 call, the Pro offers 3 calls, while the Expert offers 5 calls. All packages offer access daily training webinars, free tech support, and integration assistance with Gmail, Outlook, and Quickbooks Online.
If you want to add additional users and contacts to your plan, pricing is as follows:
- Additional user – $30/month
- 1000 contacts – $30/month
- 5,000 contacts – $130
- 10,000 contacts – $200
- 25,000 contacts – $300
- 50,000 contacts – $350
When you sign up for Infusionsoft, there are guided tours and tutorials you can watch to learn how to use the main features. The Infusionsoft dashboard is customizable via drag and drop to display what you want to see the most, such as tasks, usage stats, contacts or the status of leads.
Using Infusionsoft is easy to use and intuitive. Contacts can be added by clicking the Plus button on the dashboard.
A Quick Action bar allows you to work on a specific contact, like send an email to the contact, add a task to remind you to give him a call, or see their Lead Score without having to enter the contact details.
Infusionsoft also allows you to get organized, build landing pages, offers integrations with other platforms like Vimeo and Facebook Ads, and send email broadcasts. All in all, Infusionsoft is a comprehensive and complete CRM and email marketing system that will benefit any small business.
If you’re looking for feature-rich marketing software, Infusionsoft is probably a good fit for you.
Mailchimp vs. Infusionsoft
As mentioned earlier, Mailchimp has expanded from offering just email marketing to becoming a full-blown marketing platform.
They now also offer marketing solutions like automation, social media ads, landing page builders, and more. One example of this is Customer Journey Automation which are automated actions and rules based on customer actions.
A business can design its own customer journey and once activated, every time a contact reaches a particular point, it triggers a specific action. For example, you can create a customer journey wherein every time a new contact signs up, they receive a specific email one week after, then depending on what action they take then, they’ll receive another email, and so on until the journey is complete.
Mailchimp took what they are already experts in (which is email marketing) and elevated it to turn itself into a more complete marketing tool that clients and customers need. Even with their more advanced features, they have been able to maintain the ease of use of their software and platform.
Compared to Mailchimp, Infusionsoft has always been an all-in-one platform.
It offers a CRM tool, marketing automations, and email marketing campaigns. The most notable difference between Mailchimp and Infusionsoft is that Mailchimp doesn’t offer a CRM tool, which is not to be mistaken with a Marketing CRM tool. Infusionsoft has a CRM tool already integrated in its software.
Similar to the Customer Journey Automation feature of Mailchimp, Infusionsoft offers extensive marketing automation options that are more robust than Mailchimp’s version.
You can make more complex automated workflows using its drag and drop interface, making it easy to set up. Infusionsoft also offers lead generation, lead scoring, and lead segmentation which allows users to set automated rules based on the behavior of a contact. On the other hand, Mailchimp offers lead scoring, but not lead segmentation.
For some small businesses and start-ups, as well as bloggers or individuals who create content, Mailchimp can be the right choice. Especially for those who are eligible to use and stay within the free plan for at least a few months.
It offers great marketing features for literally zero dollars a month, with ample basic customer support. Nothing can beat that.
However, you might be part of a small business thats looking to switch from manually keeping tabs on leads and customers to using a CRM tool, a business that is at a critical point and needs to advance your online marketing strategy to increase sales, or part of a management team that puts emphasis on customer support always being available. If these situations sound familiar to you, Infusionsoft is definitely a better fit for you.
Although $199/month plus one-time coaching fees seem steep compared to Mailchimp, Infusionsoft is more cost-effective in the long run. The Premium Plan of Mailchimp, which has features that are the most similar to Infusionsoft, starts at $299.
For both sites, you will need to pay more each month if you want to add more contacts and users. Also, if you’re a Mailchimp user and you needed a CRM tool, you would need to use another tool. With Infusionsoft, it’s already built in.
It’s also important to note that the Mailchimp Premium plan is the only plan that gets phone support. Tutorials, online training, sending emails, and chat support are all helpful and necessary, but sometimes you just want to talk to a person to find the help you need.
This can save time that can be spent on other more important things, like increasing sales. With Infusionsoft, phone support is already included right from the start.
In conclusion, not only do you get email marketing features that are as good and even better than Mailchimp, you also get a built-in CRM tool if you choose Infusionsoft as your marketing platform.
Whether you’re part of a small but growing business, or you are the owner of your own small business looking to reach more customers, Infusionsoft is the right choice to help achieve your goals.