Battle of the Email Giants: ConvertKit or Mailchimp? The Ultimate Showdown for 2025

Email marketing software is essential for anyone aiming to grow their audience and expand their business. With a variety of features and advantages offered by each tool, selecting the right email marketing software can be overwhelming, especially if you’re just starting out.

The key to making the right choice is understanding your specific needs. Consider questions like:

These are all important questions to ask while evaluating your options to find the software that best suits your goals.

ConvertKit and MailChimp are among the most popular email marketing platforms for bloggers. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but which one is right for your needs?

This article compares these two platforms focusing on their email editors, list segmentation, automation features, analytics, and other key aspects to help you decide which tool fits best.

Let’s dive in.

ConvertKit is designed for bloggers, small businesses, and content creators to easily send emails to their subscribers and customers. It’s ideal for those who prefer simple, mainly text-based campaigns without needing technical expertise or extensive development time.

It also includes a landing page builder, flexible list segmentation, automation workflows, and other tools to help you grow your audience and engage more effectively.

Key features include:

Mailchimp is a comprehensive email marketing solution that helps you design, send, and analyze newsletters.

It’s more than just a newsletter tool; Mailchimp serves as a marketing automation platform that enables you to craft targeted campaigns, segment audiences, and send personalized messages based on subscriber behavior and preferences.

Its features include:

The email editor is one of the most vital features in choosing an email marketing platform. Since you’ll spend a lot of time crafting your messages, it’s important to understand what each platform offers.

ConvertKit features an intuitive, user-focused editor that avoids complicated menus and confusing options. Everything is designed for simplicity, making the email creation process straightforward and hassle-free for users of all experience levels.Quick access from the main page of the editor makes it easy to start creating your emails.

You can simply drag and drop text boxes to add new sections to your message.

The editor also enables you to insert images, videos, or links into your emails.

It supports editing with HTML and CSS, giving you full control to customize any template to match your style and needs.

You can modify font styles and alignments on the fly, with changes appearing only when you choose.

Other important features include:

This allows you to customize your emails extensively:

The HTML box feature allows you to craft your email’s design precisely using code, giving full control over layout and style.

Aside from the default template, ConvertKit lets you create unlimited custom templates, which are easy to design without technical skills. All templates are responsive, ensuring they look great on tablets, laptops, desktops, and smartphones.

MailChimp’s email editor provides easy-to-use drag-and-drop tools, allowing you to quickly incorporate images, text, and other design elements into your emails. It seamlessly integrates with all of MailChimp’s pre-designed templates, so you don’t need to modify HTML or CSS unless you want to.

With MailChimp’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface, you can design a variety of email formats easily, without any coding experience.

Some of the main content blocks you can easily insert include:

You have full control over every part of your email, from the header down to the footer. When editing, a sidebar window opens on the right, allowing you to set custom styles for each element.

MailChimp provides a wide selection of ready-made templates suitable for various campaigns. These templates are customizable—you can modify colors, text, images, fonts, or add simple lines to better fit your brand identity. The templates are also responsive, ensuring your emails display correctly on all devices.

Additionally, you can use themes or design your own layouts with custom code. To do this, you can copy and paste your code, upload a ZIP file, or import from a URL. MailChimp supports multiple methods for adding custom designs to enhance flexibility.

Other key features include an image library for saving frequently used images like logos and headers, customizable call-to-action buttons that let you change fonts, colors, alignment, size, and link URLs, and the ability to use your own HTML code within the email builder for maximum control.

Overall, MailChimp stands out because it offers more flexibility and a straightforward drag-and-drop interface with many pre-designed themes and multiple-column options, allowing for quicker and more dynamic email creation. It also enables users to preview how emails will look on both mobile devices and desktops, a feature not available with ConvertKit.

Moving to email templates and customization options, both ConvertKit and MailChimp offer user-friendly interfaces for choosing premade templates or designing from scratch. They both support easy editing via visual tools or custom code.

ConvertKit allows you to choose from its built-in templates or create your own using HTML and CSS. The platform provides a visual editor for designing emails or an option to input custom code, giving you flexibility in your design process.

Adding elements to your email template is straightforward. Simply click the plus (+) sign to open a menu listing all available elements. You can include images, files, call-to-action buttons, dividers, timers, or videos to enhance your email. The platform also allows you to customize your text with options like bold, italics, and alignment.

However, ConvertKit mainly provides simple text-based emails. It offers a few themed templates, but the selection is limited. It also integrates directly with Unsplash and Instagram, allowing you to import photos directly from these platforms into your images gallery. You can embed videos in your emails by inserting a URL or uploading files directly. Supported video sources include YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia, where you can customize their size, alignment, color, and other settings.

You can also add timers to your emails to highlight key moments, and customize their appearance by choosing different styles, setting dates, timezones, and colors. Timers help create urgency and draw attention to specific events.

You can also create and schedule broadcast emails, similar to newsletters, which are one-way messages sent from you to your subscribers. These are useful for sharing upcoming events, launching new products or services, or providing periodic updates on topics important to your audience. Additionally, ConvertKit allows automated email sequences and campaigns based on your subscribers’ journey, making your email marketing more targeted and efficient.

Get started with ConvertKit through this link.

Mailchimp offers a variety of templates for creating emails, landing pages, and sign-up forms. It boasts over 100 themed templates that are easy to customize through simple drag-and-drop tools.

The templates provided are designed around specific themes, such as eCommerce, events, holidays, celebrations, newsletters, notifications, photography, stationery, and subscriber alerts. They cover a broad range of needs for various campaigns and communication styles.

Mailchimp offers a variety of layouts suitable for different objectives, including selling products, announcing news, storytelling, educational content, and follow-up messages. You can create your emails using a single-column design, or opt for 1:2 or 1:3 column arrangements, or even just simple plain text. For more advanced customization or unique design requirements, you can modify templates with HTML and CSS code or import your own HTML files directly into the Mailchimp dashboard to use as templates.

Overall, Mailchimp stands out for its extensive template options and high level of customization.

While ConvertKit offers all the core elements found in Mailchimp, it provides fewer template choices and less flexibility when customizing designs. Its templates tend to be more basic, which might not suffice for experienced email marketers needing more sophisticated layouts.

Email list segmentation and management are essential features offered by all reputable email marketing platforms. They enable you to target specific groups of subscribers with tailored content based on their interactions. Both ConvertKit and Mailchimp can segment your email list according to actions and behaviors, but they approach it differently.

ConvertKit is particularly subscriber-focused, allowing you to add contacts to a single list while organizing them with tags and segments. This platform simplifies assigning tags based on subscriber actions, which can be selected in dropdown forms or through links clicked in emails. Tags help you identify and categorize your contacts easily, and segmentation enables you to group subscribers for targeted broadcasts. You can set up segments using filters such as “any,” “all,” or “and” to include or exclude certain groups, providing a high degree of flexibility. Additionally, you can create unlimited segments by filtering contacts by tags, custom fields, or geographic location, enabling very specific targeting.

Mailchimp also provides robust segmentation options, allowing you to organize subscribers based on various attributes like location, signup source, language, name, habitat as VIP status, or other custom data. This flexibility makes it easier to send personalized and relevant content to different subscriber groups.

You can segment your audience based on their actions, preferences, or predictions by using tags, custom forms, or analytical insights. This allows for more targeted marketing strategies.

Additionally, Mailchimp enables filtering your audience using up to five different criteria to precisely identify the individuals you want to reach. These filters can be saved for future use, and they automatically update with the latest data, ensuring your outreach is always accurate.

Advanced segmentation features also allow you to create complex, nested conditions based on data collected across various platforms, such as purchase history, gender, age range, and more. This flexibility ensures you can tailor your messaging precisely to different audience segments.

However, one limitation to consider is that if your contacts are duplicated across multiple lists, Mailchimp will charge you for each duplicate entry. This can increase costs unnecessarily.

Compared to Mailchimp, ConvertKit offers a simpler experience but fewer options. ConvertKit does not charge extra for duplicate contacts, making it a more cost-effective choice if your list management involves overlapping entries.

ConvertKit’s Email Marketing Automation

ConvertKit provides a feature called sequences, which allows you to set up automated email chains that trigger based on specific user actions. For example, you can create a rule that when someone purchases a particular product, they receive a thank-you email along with a discount offer for another product.

You can also set timers or triggers based on time of day or week to send different messages, making your campaigns more dynamic and personalized. The editor makes it easy to create and modify emails on the fly; for instance, you can embed videos directly into your messages during the setup process.

In essence, ConvertKit’s automation tools help you build effective sales funnels, establish clear rules, direct subscribers based on their actions, send relevant content at the ideal times, and segment your audience according to their journey. Its visual automation editor simplifies the process, allowing you to connect events, actions, and conditions to craft customized pathways for each subscriber.

You can set up complex automation workflows once and replicate them across your entire list, saving time and ensuring consistency. Additionally, you can add steps to your automation based on specific conditions, events, or actions, and even create multiple sequences within a single automation.

Managing these sequences is straightforward; clicking on a workflow opens it for editing within the same window. Instead of building a full funnel, you can also implement simple “if-this-then-that” automation rules, which activate based on specific triggers—making your email marketing both flexible and easy to manage.

Mailchimp provides the ability to schedule and automate emails based on specific triggers, such as when a subscriber opens, clicks, or makes a purchase from your store. It also allows you to set up multiple conditions, so you can send different messages depending on whether someone signs up via Facebook or Google. Additionally, Mailchimp analyzes when your audience interacts most frequently with your emails, suggesting optimal times to send messages. You can even plan your emails to be sent according to the recipients’ time zones. One of Mailchimp’s key strengths is its extensive library of pre-designed automated campaigns and customer journey templates, saving you the effort of manually mapping out workflows. These templates are highly customizable, enabling you to tailor campaigns to fit your specific needs.

Like ConvertKit, Mailchimp supports complex conditions for automation, making it easy to target different segments, such as sending a particular email if someone signs up through social media channels. The platform also offers detailed insights into customer engagement along each step of the journey, helping you refine your campaigns for better results. If you’re running an e-commerce store, Mailchimp integrates seamlessly with popular shopping cart platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, and PrestaShop, allowing you to automate customer interactions based on their purchase behavior. Both Mailchimp and ConvertKit excel in creating automated customer journeys, though Mailchimp offers a larger selection of ready-to-use workflows that can be implemented immediately without extensive customization.

Sign-up forms are essential tools for introducing your brand to new subscribers and growing your email list. A well-designed sign-up form encourages visitors to share their contact information and become part of your community. ConvertKit and Mailchimp both offer numerous options and features for designing effective sign-up forms, including customizable templates and a drag-and-drop interface. You can personalize your forms with various colors, fonts, and button styles to match your brand’s look and feel. They also allow for creating custom forms tailored specifically to your website or landing pages.

ConvertKit enables you to embed forms directly anywhere on your site, whether on your homepage, sales page, or dedicated landing pages. It offers four main types of configurations: inline, modal pop-up, slide-in, and sticky bar, giving you flexibility in how you capture visitor information. Both platforms aim to make the process straightforward, letting you craft attractive, functional sign-up forms that can convert visitors into subscribers effectively.

It also provides mobile-friendly, pre-designed templates for your forms, making customization easy. You can adjust colors, fonts, add custom CSS, include background images or colors, and more to match your branding.

Mailchimp:

Mailchimp also provides an easy-to-use interface for creating forms. Its drag-and-drop builder makes designing forms straightforward, with extensive customization options. Users can select from a variety of templates to fit their needs.

Mailchimp’s approach involves a simple, single opt-in signup process, meaning users who complete the form are directly added to your email list. It also automatically detects duplicate entries, preventing the same contact from being entered twice. You start with the hosted signup form, which Mailchimp generates for your subscribers and audiences. These can be customized to match your branding, then shared via a URL on your website—all without any HTML coding required.

You also have options for more advanced forms, like creating dedicated landing pages to attract new contacts. These can be customized with various fields, where you can choose just the email field or include more options. Embedded forms are available for direct integration on your website using provided code, allowing for personalization if you know HTML. Additionally, pop-up forms can be set to appear based on visitor behavior or specific triggers, making user engagement more dynamic.

Despite Mailchimp’s numerous design options, ConvertKit offers a more streamlined experience tailored to creators. With ConvertKit, you won’t need to switch between multiple editors for different form types; everything is designed for simplicity and efficiency, providing a clearer path to building your email list. While Mailchimp’s variety of themes and formats is extensive, ConvertKit emphasizes ease of use to enhance your workflow.ConvertKit.

ConvertKit doesn’t include a dedicated analytics dashboard. Instead, you’ll need to open each individual email to review its performance report. This report provides data on open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, and links clicked. However, it doesn’t offer insights into bounce rates or more advanced analytics like geographic locations.

Mailchimp provides a much more comprehensive set of analytics. Its reports cover basic performance metrics, social media engagement, geographic open rates, and more. You can also monitor bounce rates, click-through rates, email deliverability, and ecommerce conversions. Additionally, Mailchimp offers Click Maps, which visualize how recipients interact with your emails, enabling you to optimize content. Unique features include the ability to compare your campaign performance against industry benchmarks, displaying open, click, and unsubscribe rates in context to help identify areas for improvement.
Winner: Mailchimp. Mailchimp excels with its wide array of detailed analytical tools.

Both platforms operate on a subscriber-based pricing model, with costs increasing as your list grows. Here’s what each service offers:

ConvertKit provides three main plans:

Pricing scales with your subscriber count.

Mailchimp offers four main plans:

Pricing increases with larger subscriber lists.

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

Advantages:

Disadvantages:

Ultimately, both Mailchimp and ConvertKit have their strengths and weaknesses. They offer a broad array of features suitable for various users, including user-friendly interfaces, automation, email sequencing, landing pages, forms, and excellent customer support. Their ease of use and streamlined workflows make either an excellent choice for beginners or experienced marketers. However, if your focus is on extensive design customization and detailed analytics, Mailchimp may be the better option. The right choice depends on your specific business needs.

Opt for ConvertKit if you want:

Start with ConvertKit here.

Choose Mailchimp if you’re looking to:

Which email marketing tool are you considering? Share your choice in the comments below!

Further Resources from StepThroughThePortal.com: There are specialized email marketing solutions tailored for specific needs. For instance, the top cold email software of 2025 can assist with prospecting and establishing new relationships. Additionally, consider these comparison articles: