ConvertKit vs MailChimp: Why I Switched to ConvertKit

If you’re looking to assess the differences between ConvertKit vs Mailchimp, you’re in the right place!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my full disclosure.

I switched my email marketing provider from MailChimp to ConvertKit, and I am very happy with the results since making the switch. The main reason I made the switch was because I outgrew MailChimp after having created my first e-course: Start a Blog Crash Course. I had already created a free resource library with an accompanying opt-in form. MailChimp only allows you to have one opt-in form per list, and I had used mine on the free resource library. I needed another opt-in form that would push subscribers to my list, and this is something MailChimp does not offer.

That said, MailChimp and ConvertKit are both great options depending on the phase of blogging you’re in.

Related:

To give you some background, I am former corporate marketer and I have worked with a ton of different email marketing providers. From HubSpot and MailChimp to Lyris and ConvertKit, I’ve seen it all: robust and costly to simple and free. Having worked in so many different email softwares over the past seven years, it’s safe to say I’m pretty picky when it comes to email marketing providers. ConvertKit is, hands down, my favorite email marketing provider for bloggers. They didn’t miss a beat when creating this software, as it centers around features that are especially important for bloggers.

For our purposes, I’m focusing my email provider comparison on ConvertKit vs MailChimp because they are two highly popular email marketing providers for bloggers.

CONVERTKIT VS MAILCHIMP

CONVERTKIT VS MAILCHIMP: OPT-IN FORMS

1. MailChimp allows only one opt-in form per list. I’m starting off the comparison with opt-in form allowance because this issue ultimately led me to make the switch to ConvertKit. As I mentioned above, I outgrew MailChimp because I had created more content that required a second opt-in form. You may be thinking that you could simply solve this issue by creating a second list in MailChimp and having an opt-in form trigger to that list. You can do that, but it would get messy. You would start gaining the same subscribers on each list if they filled out both of your opt-in forms. Imagine if you continue growing your content and need four or five opt-in forms. You would not want to create a separate list for each opt-in form!

Why not? Imagine this scenario: You want to send out an email about a new blog post to all your subscribers. If you have multiple lists to manage, you’d need to make sure to send that email to all your lists. What about duplicate subscribers? You’d need to make sure to de-duplicate your subscribers on each list so that they wouldn’t receive the email twice. Plus, MailChimp charges you per subscriber, even if that subscriber has already joined your list. You’d be paying multiple times for the same subscriber.

That said, when you’re just starting out as a blogger, you probably won’t have a ton of content. Typically, your first lead magnet, or incentive to subscribe, would be some type of freebie, which you would offer in exchange for an email address. MailChimp works perfectly for this scenario. You won’t need multiple opt-in forms at the beginning stages of blogging, so the free version of MailChimp makes the most sense. However, after you grow your blog and are ready to have more than one lead magnet, you’ll probably want to upgrade to ConvertKit so you can have more than one opt-in form per list.

Here are two forms I am utilizing:

The first form above leads to my free resource library and was created directly in ConvertKit. I simply grabbed the code and placed the form on my site. My second form above sits on this landing page. I simply created it in ConvertKit, grabbed the code and embedded it onto my landing page, which I made in InstaBuilder 2.0.

2. I can embed Convertkit email forms easily into my InstaBuilder 2.0 landing pages. I created this landing page for my Start a Blog Crash Course using InstaBuilder 2.0. I wasn’t sure how well the integration would work with my ConvertKit form and my InstaBuilder 2.0 landing page, but it was incredibly easy to do. I just grabbed the coding and placed it into the InstaBuilder 2.0 form builder.

Here’s how the forms look on my landing page:

If you’re looking for a great landing page plugin for WordPress, I love InstaBuilder 2.0. It only cost me $77, and it was a one time fee. I have seen many bloggers use Instapage for their landing page, but that costs $68/month. YES, A MONTH. I was so excited to see that InstaBuilder 2.0 cost only $77… for life! It has a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder and a ton of free templates to choose from. It was a no brainer for me to invest in InstaBuilder 2.0 for my landing pages.

3. Convertkit‘s opt-in forms have statistics tied to them. Ahh, this is huge! As a former marketer, I about fell off my chair when I saw that Convertkit offered this capability. It’s so easy to see which forms are working and which are not. On one screen, I can see my best performing forms. All forms live under the ‘forms’ tab, which is also the ‘homepage’ of ConvertKit accounts. Just as soon as I open ConverKit, I see not only all the forms I have, but also the visitors, subscribers, and conversion rate for each form. I check this page several times a day because I like to see which of my forms are viewed the most, which ones are converting the best, and which ones need to be adjusted to perform better.

ConvertKit makes it incredibly easy to understand metrics, and ultimately helps me adjust my strategy for maximum results. I am able to quickly see which messaging is working, and which forms I need to tweak to see better conversion rates.

Here’s a sample of what I see in my ‘forms’ dashboard.

Pretty awesome, right? I love this feature and appreciate that my forms’ statistics are all shown on one screen, and that the screen is my ConvertKit homepage.

4. ConvertKit‘s opt-in forms are inherently eye catching. It takes a mere couple minute to create a form like this:

All I had to do was add my content and a color scheme, and I was done! That’s because ConvertKit’s forms are inherently eye catching. There’s nothing that I needed to do to make it look this nice. MailChimp, on the other hand, does not offer something like this. Their forms are bland, so unless you know some coding, your embedded forms will not look nearly this crisp or clean.

CONVERTKIT VS MAILCHIMP: EMAILS

1. An email sequence lives on one screen in ConvertKit. This makes setting up an email sequence a breeze. I can add all my emails on one screen and save them. Like, what?! You don’t really realize how amazing this is until you actually do it. With most email sequence builders, you have to create one email, then save it, then go back and create another email, save it, and so on. Then finally when you’re done, you need to connect them and set up triggers on all these different pages that takes what feels like forever.

Here’s how ConvertKit masters email sequences:

When I set up my free, 7-day email course: Start a Blog Crash Course, I set up the entire email sequence on one screen and saved it as I went. Notice above that all my emails that belong to that sequence live in the left hand navigation. As I was building out my course, I simply selected ‘Add Email’ to the sequence. ConvertKit also makes it simple to select how often a course gets sent out. At the top of the image, notice a ‘Delay Sending By’ option. This is where I select when I want to deploy each email. It really doesn’t get more user friendly and time friendly than this.

If you’re planning on creating some type of email course, I’d recommend creating it in ConvertKit. As far as MailChimp goes, yes, you can set up an email sequence, no, it’s not nearly as simple or intuitive to do.

2. MailChimp has an easy-to-use ‘drag and drop’ email builder. Take a look at the MailChimp email builder here:

MailChimp makes it easy to drag and drop different elements into the email editor. It’s easy to quickly add text, images, social media buttons, a video, and more.

Here’s the ConvertKit email builder:

Notice all the elements live under the ‘Email Content’ header. I can still upload images and insert files, but it’s not quite as user friendly as the ‘drag and drop’ MailChimp builder. ConvertKit also doesn’t have any pre-made social share buttons, so you’ll have to upload your own if you want them. I personally didn’t have any issue with the ConvertKit email builder; I just inserted my own images for the social share buttons. Here’s an example of one of my emails where I added in the images I wanted:

I was still able to achieve the same look with the Convertkit email builder as the MailChimp email editor; it was just a bit of a different process and an additional step for adding social share buttons.

3. You can A/B test subject lines in both MailChimp and ConvertKit, but it’s easier to do in ConvertKit. When creating emails in ConvertKit, it’s easy to A/B test a subject line because it’s done all in one window.

Here’s what it looks like:

You can see above that I just insert two subject lines and I’m done. In MailChimp, I have to select that I want to do an A/B test email from the very beginning. When I get through a series of screens, I can then send my email as an A/B test. When comparing ConvertKit vs MailChimp, this is just another case where ConvertKit wins out on time saving features.

CONVERTKIT VS MAILCHIMP: SUBSCRIBERS

1. ConvertKit makes it easy to offer highly targeted content to subscribers. ConverKit offers a feature called ‘tags’ where you can organize subscribers by tagging them. This is so important on so many levels. When I transitioned to ConvertKit, I had to move my subscribers over from MailChimp. I tagged all these subscribers as ‘Imported MailChimp Subscribers.’

Why is this important? Well, not only does it help with organization, but I’m also able to quickly identify the subscribers who started following me early on. Typically, those subscribers are very loyal ones because they start out on your blogging journey with you and watch you grow. This could come in handy if I eventually want to send a tailored email to just those subscribers.

Similarly, tags work well if you have products. You can tag subscribers who complete a course, for example, but don’t buy the product you reference at the end of the course. If you tag these subscribers, you can send emails to them specifically promoting your product because you know they are highly interested. On the other end, you can also tag subscribers who purchase your product. This is important because when you send out additional product-promoting emails, you are able to easily suppress subscribers who have already bought the product. Tags create so many organizational possibilities, and the options are endless.

2. Sending to unopens in ConvertKit is simple. After you send an email, you can go back into the email and simply select ‘Resend to unopens.’ Here’s a screenshot of how it looks:

MailChimp does not have a feature like this, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it in MailChimp. It would just be more cumbersome and time consuming to do. You would need to duplicate the email, download the opens, and then suppress them when you send the duplicated email. In ConvertKit, you don’t need to do any of that. They essentially did all the work for you.

CONVERTKIT VS MAILCHIMP: LOGISTICS

1. MailChimp offers a paid version and a free version, while ConverKit offers a paid version only. Here’s the breakdown of what each provider offers:

ConvertKit vs MailChimp:

MailChimp: FREE up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month

ConvertKit: $29/month for up to 1,000 subscriber and unlimited emails per month

That means if you have 1,000 subscribers and choose MailChimp, you can send a total of 12 emails per month, or 3 emails per week. If you have 2,000 subscribers, you can send a total of 6 emails per month. That’s fine up until a point. If you grow your subscriber list quickly and/or build up content that requires more email sends, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version of MailChimp. Even if you upgrade to the paid version, you still won’t get the blogger-centered features that ConvertKit offers.

The great thing about ConvertKit‘s plans is that, while they cost money, they all include unlimited emails as well as unlimited forms, courses, and landing pages. $29/month is not that much money, but it is still a rather large investment for a blogger who is just starting out and not making much. I do, however, think that making wise investments in certain blogging tools, like ConvertKit, helps bloggers grow quicker.

The monthly cost that I pay to ConvertKit is completely worth it for me because I am able to create as much content as I want with accompanying opt-in forms. This is a vital part of my growth strategy, and ConvertKit enables me to do this for what I consider a necessary and not overly expensive investment.

2. MailChimp allows you to have a reply address from gmail. With MailChimp, you are able to send out emails with a reply address that is a gmail account. What do I mean by this? I originally created an email address for my blog, abrickhome@gmail.com. This worked great for awhile because it was free and I could use it as my address to send emails from A Brick Home.

When I switched to ConvertKit, I had to get a G Suite email address, which is hello@abrickhome.com. ConvertKit does not let you send your emails from a gmail account, so I really had no choice. The lowest cost for a G Suite email address is $5/month. Again, this is not expensive but the cost does add up over time and is yet another investment in a blog.

This wasn’t really an issue for me because I knew eventually I would switch to having a more professional email address for my blogging business.

CONVERTKIT VS MAILCHIMP: CONCLUSION

Convertkit vs MailChimp: which one is better?

While I think the case can be made that blogging phase determines which email provider is a better suite, I ultimately believe that ConvertKit is the better choice for growing bloggers. ConvertKit masters user-friendly, simple processes that save time. And time is money! When I create email sequences, I do it in one window. When I check my form conversions, I do it in one window. These types of features are impressive and I’m constantly pleased with how quickly I can get things done in ConvertKit.

I am also blown away at how each element of ConvertKit is built specifically to help bloggers. There are no overlooked components that bloggers need in ConvertKit, and each one is maximized to help me as a blogger convert visitors to my site into subscribers.

It’s important to know that I am still a MailChimp advocate and appreciate them as an email provider for beginner bloggers. I used them, after all, and I’m so happy that they offer a free service. That said, MailChimp is not a tailored email provider like ConvertKit. MailChimp is generic and is used by so many various types of businesses. It’s much more tedious and time consuming to create email funnels and trigger systems that bloggers need.

Once a blogger reaches a certain point in their blogging career, they will need more features that align with a blogger’s business model. ConvertKit offers exactly what a growing blogger needs. If you want to see more details about how amazing ConvertKit is, check out this video; just select ‘Watch the Demo.’