SendFox Vs Mailchimp

If you are looking for a stellar and reliable email marketing service, you are probably wondering which one would be a better choice for your business – SendFox vs Mailchimp?

In this article, we’ll help you discover the answer by going over both of these email marketing softwares looking at how they compare on a number of points including user friendliness/interface, tools and features, and price point. By the end of this article, it should be clear to you whether SendFox or Mailchimp is going to be the better choice of email marketing provider to help you grow your business and sphere of influence.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Why you need an email marketing service provider

Is email marketing still effective?

Email marketing has been around since the dawn of the internet, so you can be forgiven for believing that it’s an outdated form of marketing, simply because many new ways of building audiences, market and sell have been discovered since. With an ever increasing number of social media platforms allowing you to build an audience and promote your products or services, it is reasonable to assume that no-one reads their emails anymore.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Permission marketing is alive and well

While email marketing may not be as effective as it was ten years ago, when everybody actually opened and read their emails, email marketing is still one of the most important ways to promote and grow your business in 2021.

The reason for this is that people will casually follow people on social media platforms like Instagram or TikTok, while the number of websites they give their email address to is much smaller. In other words, if someone signs up to your newsletter or gives you their email in return for a freebie you are offering on your website, this already tells you that they are not an entirely passive follower – they have, instead, just marked themselves as a warm lead, someone who is likely to be open to buying from you.

When someone gives you their email address, they simultaneously give you permission to start a dialogue with them via email. This is where your email newsletter and pre-scheduled email marketing campaigns become important.

Build a personal relationship with your customer base

Your email newsletter is one of your best tools for establishing and building a solid, long-term relationship with your customer base.

If you are able to deliver valuable content or information directly to your email subscribers’ inboxes every few weeks consistently for years, that is an unbeatable way of building trust and authority. It also help you stay top of mind, so that when one of your subscribers needs a therapist/business mentor/new lawnmower and you have been providing them with relationship advice, business tips or gardening wisdom for a while and they have come to know and trust your brand, guess who they are going to hire or buy from?

In short, businesses and brands who have an email marketing strategy in place have a huge advantage over brands that don’t.

Build unlimited forms and landing pages

Simply capturing email addresses is of course not enough if you want to run a profitable business.

That is why both Mailchimp and SendFox go above and beyond simply being great email service providers – both platforms allow you to build forms and landing pages, both of which are invaluable marketing tools.

Is Mailchimp still king among email service providers?

Mailchimp has been around since 2001 and has earned its reputation as one of the most trusted and reliable email marketing platforms available.

Mailchimp’s primary claim to fame is that the software enables users to both build and manage their email mailing lists, create and schedule email marketing campaigns and email automations.

Of course, during its twenty years of existence, Mailchimp has grown and changed a lot – and the fact that the platform is still around, and still popular, is a testimony to its sturdiness as well as its ability to evolve with the changes in technology. Today, Mailchimp is not only an email marketing tool, but a powerful all-in-one solution for almost all of your online business and marketing needs.

Mailchimp is still considered a heavyweight in the digital marketing field, and it is easy to see why when you consider the many tools and features that Mailchimp offers. At the same time it is important to be aware of the fact that there are many great subscription-based Mailchimp alternatives out there at this point – many of them offering pre-built templates and other great features to rival those you get with a subscription to Mailchimp.

Mailchimp tools and features

Throughout its twenty years of existence, Mailchimp has kept expanding its suite of tools and features – which also tells you that Mailchimp is likely to continue to do so in the years to come.

One of the greatest Mailchimp features worth highlighting is the intuitive drag-and-drop builder, which makes it easy to craft professional looking emails regardless of your experience level. Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop builder comes with a reasonable number of pre-made templates, built to make your emails dynamic and engaging so that your subscribers will want to read them.

Mailchimp’s content studio is also worth mentioning here. The content studio lets you store and manage all of your images and other files in what is essentially a great virtual library of visual content, always ready for you to pull out and use in your email campaigns when needed.

In addition to the drag-and-drop builder and the content studio, the easy-to-set-up marketing automations are one of the things that make Mailchimp such a great email service provider. Mailchimp’s email marketing automation feature enables you to always be able to send the right email to the right person at the right time, whether you are checking off your to-do-list with an automated email or using Mailchimp’s customer journey tool to build a stronger relationship with your subscribers.

In addition to regular newsletters and onboarding email sequences, Mailchimp also enables you to quickly and reliably send out transactional emails such as order confirmations.

Mailchimp also taps you into real-time analytics, so that you can keep an eye on how your various email campaigns are doing and quickly identify what’s working and where you might need to make tweaks and up your email marketing game.

Mailchimp pricing and subscription options

Mailchimp offers four different Marketing Platform subscription options, depending on your email marketing needs and budget. The four different options are Free, Essentials, Standard and Premium.

First things first. Mailchimp’s Free plan taps you into all the features and tools you need to start growing your business and audience with email campaigns. Specifically, you get access to basic CRM functionality, Mailchimp’s creative assistant, website, form and landing page builder tools, and a Mailchimp domain.

If you outgrow the Free plan, the next step up is the Essentials plan, starting from $9.99/month, based on 500 contacts. The Essentials plan gives you everything included in the Free plan, as well as email templates, multi-step journey templates, custom branding, A/B testing, and 24/7 email and chat support. In short, the Essential plan is a great choice for those who are only sending emails and want to be able to access support 24/7.

If you are hungry for more advanced features, then the Standard plan, with prices starting from $14.99/month based on 500 contacts, is going to be a good choice for you. The Standard plan gives you everything included in the Essentials plan, as well as these really awesome advanced features: Customer journey builder + branching points, send time optimization, behavioral targeting, custom templates and dynamic content. The Standard plan is great option for businesses that want all the data-driven automation tools they need to grow faster.

Finally, there is the Premium plan for those wanting to be plugged into the very best email marketing tools that Mailchimp has to offer. On the Premium plan, which costs $299/month and upwards, based on 10,000 subscribers, you get everything included in the Standard plan, plus advanced segmentation features, multivariate testing, comparative reporting, unlimited user seats and role-based access (Which is great if you are working with a team and would like to outsource more of the digital marketing to others on your team), and phone support.

In addition to the four Marketing Platform subscription options, Mailchimp also offers three different Website & Commerce plans, each of which comes with features that you don’t get on any of the Marketing Platform subscriptions. The three Website & Commerce options are called Free, Core and Plus.

Mailchimp’s Free Website & Commerce plan gives you all of the tools you need to build a website and launch a store. It is important to note that the Free subscription costs nothing to sign up for – but there is a +2% transaction fee and Stripe processing fees whenever you make a sale.

The Core Website & Commerce plan starts from $10/month, and there is a +1.5% transaction fee and Stripe processing fee whenever you make a sale. The Core plan taps you into the website customization tools that you will find lacking on the Free plan, as well as 24/7 support.

The Plus plan opens up a whole new set of possibilities by tapping you into all of Mailchimp’s website and commerce features. The Plus plan starts from $29/month and there is a +0.5% transaction fee and Stripe fees whenever you make a sale.

Mailchimp pros

There are many great things to be said about Mailchimp. As a veteran email service provider, Mailchimp has proven its worth over and over and over again.

This brings me to the first pro worthy of highlighting: Mailchimp is as robust and reliable an email marketing software as they come. If you choose Mailchimp, you know that you are in good hands and that you will never have to worry about whether or not you are going to get a consistent level of service.

Another great thing about Mailchimp is how versatile this email marketing tool has become. Over the years, Mailchimp have kept adding more and more features and tools in order to keep up with the times. Overall, Mailchimp has done so very successfully.

While the Premium plan might come at a hefty price tag, the other subscription options Mailchimp has to offer are quite affordable. And of course there is the Free plan, which allows even the most cash-strapped beginner entrepreneurs among us to get started on building their businesses through email marketing.

Mailchimp cons

I know, you are never suppose to look a gift horse in the mouth, but truth be told, the Free plan on Mailchimp isn’t great – and this is true whether we are talking about the Free Marketing Platform plan or the Free Website & Commerce plan.

Sure, if you are an amateur or seriously strapped for cash, the Free plans are much better than not getting started at all. But the Free version of Mailchimp begins to feel very limited in scope after a very short time.

Another, related con of using Mailchimp is that the price tag quickly stacks up – particularly if you want access to Mailchimp’s more advanced features and automations that are only available on the Premium and Plus plans.

Yet another con related to the cost of using Mailchimp is the fact that the ability to send transactional emails is not included in any of the plans -instead, you will have to pay for this feature separately and according to your need.

Who Mailchimp is perfect for

Mailchimp is a great all-in-one (Or at least, a fantastic many-in-one) email marketing and business building tools for marketers, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, service providers and eCommerce businesses owners at all levels.

Having said that, it is clear that Mailchimp’s best features and tools are reserved for higher-tier subscribers who are willing to splash the cash in order to access the full range of possibilities that Mailchimp has to offer. This prompts me to recommend Mailchimp specifically to those whose businesses are in a growth phase and who have the extra cashflow to invest in a stellar email marketing platform with great support and advanced automation features.

Is SendFox able to compete as an email service provider?

Mailchimp is no longer the only animal worth paying attention to in the email marketing juengle – today, there are several viable alternatives, many of them available at a more affordable price point. SendFox is one of them.

SendFox is a relatively new software, but has fast gained traction and popularity thanks to its great tools and features, automation options and affordable pricing. As a matter of fact, SendFox brands itself as the most affordable email marketing software on the market and promises to help you get your email newsletter started, even if you lack knowledge, a team and even a budget. In other words, it is clear that SendFox’s target audience are solopreneurs as well as small eCommerce business owners and marketers at the beginning of their journey.

But how does SendFox hold up against Mailchimp on key points? And is it worth it going for this cheaper alternative to Mailchimp rater than investing more money upfront? Well, let’s take a look.

SendFox tools and features

You’ll be either delighted or disappointed to know that SendFox offers a great but small selection of tools and features.

Worthy of highlight are the easy-to-use, drag-and-drop tools you need to set up unlimited automations, build unlimited forms and landing pages, as well as set up pre-scheduled email marketing campaigns.

SendFox pricing and subscription options

If you want to tap into SendFox, you have two different options – a Lifetime Plan and a subscription called the Empire Add-On. The latter is only available if you have already signed up for the former. In other words, there is no casual subscription options.

Access to SendFox’s Lifetime Plan requires a single payment of $49. While this is a bit of an up-front investment if you are just starting out and cash is tight, it does exactly what it says on the tin by giving you lifelong access to SendFox, with all of the tools and features the software comes with now, as well as any new upgrades to be added in the future. The Lifetime Plan gives you unlimited monthly email sends, up to 5,000 contacts (If your number of contacts exceeds 5k, this costs an additional $49 per 5k), double opt-in required, and reduced SendFox branding.

If you want to remove the SendFox branding entirely, you will have to sign up for the optional Empire Add-On, which costs $18/month. In addition to removing any SendFox branding, the Empire Add-On also gives you access to an even better sending server than the one you get access to on the Lifetime Plan, the ability to remove the double opt-in that is required without the add-on, and a HTML editor for advanced customization and design.

SendFox pros

The primary pro of choosing SendFox over Mailchimp is that the Lifetime Plan is paid as a one-off. Presuming that you are going to be building your business and brand for many years to come, this is an absolute bargain.

Another upside to using SendFox is its simplicity. SendFox doesn’t come with any frills, which can seem like a limitaiton, but it can also help you see your way clear to what actually needs to get done in order to grow your business and start seeing real results in the form of newsletter signups, conversions and sales.

Yet another pro worth mentioning is the HTML editor that you get access to if you opt for the Empire add-on. The HTML editor is a great way of customizing your emails and making them uniquely your own so that your subscribers will instantly recognize and email from you or your brand.

SendFox cons

Interestingly enough, the cons of using SendFox seem to simply be the flip side of the pros.

First of all, the one-off payment of $49 for lifetime access, despite being fantastic value for money, can seem like quite an investment to seriously cash-strapped beginners. If only SendFox were to offer a free plan or a free trial, it would give potential customers an opportunity to trial the software before committing to the $49 upfront investment.

Another con that needs to be brought up is the fact that the Lifetime plan only allows you to grow your subscriber count up to 5,000. While this is plenty of headroom when you are just starting out, you are going to need more once your business takes off.

Who SendFox is perfect for

SendFox gives you spectacular value for your money, and is a great choice of email marketing software for entrepreneurs, marketers and eCommerce business owners who are just gaining their wins and are refusing to let a lack of experience, team or budget stop them from laying the cornerstones of their empire.

Sendfox vs Mailchimp Q & A

We have gone over the essential tools and features, the pricing and subscription options, the pros and the cons of both Sendfox and Mailchimp. If you are still left with any unanswered questions on your mind – or if you simply want the facts without any of the fluff, I hope that you will find what you are looking at in this brief Q & A section.

What is SendFox?

SendFox is one of the newer email marketing tools on the market, but is fast gaining traction and a reputation as a viable alternative to Mailchimp.

While SendFox is a no-frills email marketing and landing page builder tool that lacks some of the sophisticated analytics that Mailchimp has to offer, it still has all of the tools you need to craft both engaging and visually stunning email marketing campaigns, automations, landing page, pop-ups and more – all at a significantly smaller price tag than what you have to pay for a Mailchimp subscription.

Is there a cheaper alternative to Mailchimp?

Mailchimp offes a Free plan, but if you want to unlock Mailchimp’s more advanced features, the price tag starts at $299/month. In other words, if you are a new solopreneur, small business or content creator at the beginning of your journey, it makes sense to be looking around for a cheaper alternative to Mailchimp. Luckily, there are many cheaper alternatives to Mailchimp, including SendFox, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign and Drip.

Does SendFox have automation?

Yes, your SendFox membership gives you access to unlimited automations!

Why is Mailchimp not good?

Mailchimp is a great all-in-one email marketing solution, but the rather hefty price tag that comes attached to the Premium plan means that many can’t afford to start out using Mailchimp. There are many lower-priced alternatives to Mailchimp that offer many more tools, features and automations at a much smaller price point.

Final thoughts

You have made it to the end of this article, and chances are that you have already made up your mind as to whether SendFox or Mailchimp is the best choice of email marketing software for you and your business.

Allin all, you can’t go wrong with either of these two contenders – both softwares are sleek and robust, and will equip with everything you need to craft engaging newsletters and email marketing campaigns.

Where the two softwares really differ is when it comes down to what your money gets you. If budget is no constraint and you want access to as many advanced email marketing features and automations as possible, Mailchimp’s Premium plan is a great way to go.

If, on the other hand, you are a beginner entrepreneur, marketer or business owner and you lack both email marketing experience and a budget, then SendFox is the best value for money choice.

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