Which is better? Mailchimp or Aweber. It’s a question I’m often asked.

They are both newsletter tools that have sign up box creation tools and autoresponder facilities which are perfect for when you want to have a sign up for a freebie on your website.

But what are the other differences?

Cost:

Aweber starts at $19 per month. Mailchimp is free as long as you don’t exceed 2000 subscribers. However, what is not obvious is, if you want to have autoresponders then you need to upgrade which costs a minimum of $10 per month.

Design tools

Both tools have recently improved their design facilities and ability to customise and create templates. However, I would say that Aweber’s templates are far more flexible and customisable. Mailchimp I find rather more restrictive and you can’t change things like the width of sidebars.

Sign up boxes

Aweber has a far greater choice of ready made sign up boxes with nice graphics, as well as being able to totally customise every aspect from the size of the box and which elements to include, colours etc.

Adding Subscribers

The biggest difference is the ability of adding subscribers by you manually adding them, either one at a time or by uploading a CSV file. You can do this with minimum problems to Mailchimp – a tick box to verify that you have their permission to email.

Aweber required you to get them double-opted in. This means, that after uploading the contacts, they will be sent an email asking them to verify they want to receive your emails.

Which means you have little control over whether they actually click on the link. Without them verifying, they won’t receive your newsletters. The work around is a cleverly worded verification email that tempts the person to verify their subscription. You might do this with contacts you’ve met at a networking event for example.

Sending to multiple lists

Here Aweber comes out tops. You can send out one email campaign to multiple lists. Then if someone is in more than one list, they will only receive one copy of the campaign.

With Mailchimp, you can only select one list to send your campaign to, so whilst you can duplicate a campaign and send it to another list, if people are on both lists, they receive the campaign twice, which doesn’t reflect very well on you.

Final verdict

Mailchimp is a good starter newsletter tool that because it limits what you can do could be a good thing.

However, when you get more experienced and want more flexibility with the design, and have more than 1 list, then graduate to Aweber.