Choosing the right email marketing platform is crucial for business owners looking to effectively communicate with customers and establish an online presence. Beehiiv and Mailchimp are two popular solutions but have key differences in features and capabilities.
In this comprehensive Beehiiv vs Mailchimp comparison, we evaluate both platforms across criteria including market position, ease of use, design capabilities, features, performance, support, pricing, reputation, and more.
Understanding strengths and limitations in these areas will empower you to select the best email marketing platform for your unique needs.
1. Understanding the Basics
Beehiiv is a relatively new platform, founded in 2021 by Tyler Denk. It offers an all-in-one solution for email marketing, e-commerce, and website building.
Mailchimp has been around since 2001. Founded by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong, it started as an email marketing platform and has expanded into other capabilities like website building, automation, and CRM.
Mailchimp is by far the most widely used platform of the two. It’s an all-in-one platform that claims over 14 million users, while Beehiiv has around 50,000.
However, Beehiiv is gaining popularity for its intuitive drag-and-drop builder and bundled email plus e-commerce features. The Beehiiv Facebook page has over 500 followers.
Mailchimp also has an active Facebook group with over 13,800 members where users discuss email campaigns, website design, and more.
So Mailchimp has greater brand recognition and market share, but Beehiiv offers capabilities that resonate with many entrepreneurs. Both have engaged user communities.
2. Features and Functionality
Automation
Beehiiv
Beehiiv makes it easy to create automated email workflows with its visual drag-and-drop builder. Users can set up welcome sequences, drip campaigns, abandoned cart flows, and more without any coding.
Pre-built templates help you get started quickly. Just customize the content and triggers as needed. For example, you may want new subscribers to receive a 5-email onboarding sequence over 2 weeks.
Advanced conditional logic lets you segment contacts based on behaviors like email opens, link clicks, and cart activity. Send the right message at the right time automatically on this service automation platform.
E-commerce stores can leverage automation for post-purchase follow-ups. Thank customers for purchases, offer support, drive engagement, and surface other products.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers robust automation through its workflow feature. Users can create sequences like welcome series, win-back campaigns, email courses, and more.
Workflows involve a visual builder to configure triggers, delays, conditional logic, and messages. For example, you may send a discount to subscribers who abandoned their cart after 3 days.
Mailchimp lets you target groups or tags within an automation. This allows personalizing messages based on subscriber interests and behaviors.
The platform also provides pre-built automation templates to optimize workflows for common scenarios like onboarding, re-engagement, and lead nurturing as part of its marketing automation suite.
Advanced features include A/B testing of emails and segments in a workflow. This helps determine the optimal content and targeting for higher engagement.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins for best automation tool that helps you win at the digital marketing game. Its robust workflow builder enables both simple and complex multi-step sequences tailored to different audiences. The expansive app integrations also give Mailchimp an edge for connecting email to other systems.
Email Templates
Beehiiv
Beehiiv offers over 1,250 responsive email templates covering categories like welcome emails, promotions, newsletters, and more.
Templates are customizable with the drag-and-drop editor. Change colors, fonts, images, blocks, and text easily. Adjust column widths by dragging dividers.
The template library makes it fast to create emails that look great on any device. Select a template and modify it to match your brand.
Beehiiv also lets you create new templates from scratch. Build your own layouts and save them as templates to reuse. Embed buttons, social sharing icons, countdown timers, and other design elements.
Every template is mobile-friendly out of the box. The builder automatically optimizes for smaller screens. View edits in real-time across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers hundreds of professionally designed email templates across industries like retail, food and beverage, and more.
Customize any template using the drag-and-drop editor. Change layouts, insert merge tags, update images, pick new colors, and modify text.
The template library helps users of all skill levels create polished, on-brand emails quickly. Pick a template close to your desired design and personalize it.
Mailchimp also allows uploading HTML and CSS email templates designed externally. This supports advanced customization.
Every template is mobile-optimized. Mailchimp automatically checks compatibility and responsiveness across devices.
The template experience streamlines email creation for beginners, while still offering flexibility for experienced designers through custom code upload.
Winner: Tie
Both Beehiiv and Mailchimp provide extensive libraries of professionally designed email templates that can be customized through a drag-and-drop editor. Their offerings are nearly identical, with plenty of options for every use case and industry. For email templates, this one is a tie.
Segmentation
Beehiiv
Beehiiv enables the creation of targeted segments to send tailored messages to specific groups.
Segment subscribers based on profile data like location, gender, age range, interests, and more. Group people together for relevant content.
Dynamic segments automatically update based on user behaviors. Filter by engagement metrics like email opens, link clicks, page views, and purchases.
For example, create a segment for subscribers who opened a back-to-school promo but haven’t made a purchase. Then send them a targeted follow-up.
Beehiiv also lets you combine multiple filter criteria using “and” or “or” to fine-tune segments. Target subscribers from Canada who clicked a certain link in the last 30 days.
Overall, easy segment building gives Beehiiv users precise control over custom audience targeting for campaigns. Apply segments within automation workflows too.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers extensive options for subscriber segmentation and personalization.
Divide your audience into groups based on profile data like demographics, interests, purchase history, and more. Send content tailored to each group.
Behavior-based automation segment based on real-time user actions like email opens link clicks, cart activity, and purchases. Trigger customized follow-ups.
Use “and”/”or” filters to get ultra-specific with targeting. For example, subscribers from a certain city clicked a link in Campaign A but not Campaign B.
Saved segments make complex filters reusable for future campaigns. Apply segments when building workflows as well.
With its powerful segmentation capabilities, Mailchimp enables deep personalization and highly customized messaging for different audiences, such as compliance customer surveys drip sequences.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins for best segmentation capabilities due to the expansive combinations of filters possible between profile data, behaviors, and campaign interactions. Saved segments also make complex targeting reusable. Overall, Mailchimp provides greater flexibility to hyper-personalize messaging.
Analytics
Beehiiv
Beehiiv provides key email marketing analytics like open, click, and bounce rates. View performance for individual campaigns or aggregated over time.
Drill into campaign reports to analyze opens and clicks by link, segment, geography, and more. See which content resonates with different audiences.
For email lists, assess top-performing and inactive subscribers over custom date ranges. Monitor how audience engagement changes over time.
Beehiiv integrates with Google Analytics to track website traffic, landing pages, and goals generated by email campaigns. Connect insights. The platform lacks advanced features like multivariate testing and predictive analytics based on machine learning. But core reporting is robust.
Overall, Beehiiv covers the basic performance metrics most small businesses need to optimize email and connect it to web analytics, but it lacks the detailed features for a more in-depth consumer intelligence solution.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp provides in-depth analytics on email campaigns and audience engagement over time.
See opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounce rates, and more for each campaign. Filter by groups and segments to pinpoint what resonates.
Take advantage of A/B testing capabilities to optimize subject lines, content, and designs based on hard data.
Audience reports reveal email activity, website behaviors, and purchasing habits of subscribers over time to guide strategy.
Predictive analytics leverage machine learning to model the likelihood of engagement and churn based on past behaviors.
Mailchimp also integrates with Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, and other platforms. Sync data for full funnel analysis.
With its advanced testing and machine learning features, Mailchimp offers unparalleled email analytics possibilities.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins for its sophisticated analytics capabilities that go far beyond standard email reporting. A/B testing provides optimization insights while machine learning uncovers hidden patterns. It provides the deepest analytics capabilities.
Unique Features
Beehiiv
Beehiiv offers a full website builder tightly integrated with email marketing. Beyond just landing pages, you can build complete sites and sync subscribers seamlessly.
The drag-and-drop website builder provides 100s of templates to choose from. You can add blogs, galleries, e-commerce stores, and pop-ups, and design custom layouts to build a comprehensive website.
Having both website creation and emails in one platform enables you to create seamless cross-channel experiences between your site and emails. For example, you can easily trigger automated emails based on interactions and behaviors on your website.
Beehiiv also provides logo design capabilities powered by artificial intelligence. You can get AI-generated logo ideas that match your business brand and style preferences. Or you can work with a human designer through Beehiiv to develop completely custom logo concepts. The platform makes it simple to get a professionally designed logo aligned to your business.
Overall, the bundled website builder, e-commerce features, and logo design capabilities make Beehiiv stand out. You don’t need to integrate separate tools because the website and email marketing features are unified in one platform.
Mailchimp
A unique Mailchimp capability is the detailed audience insights pulled from predictive analytics and machine learning algorithms.
The machine learning techniques reveal trends and patterns in audience behaviors that are not discernible through standard email reporting and analytics. These audience insights then power recommendations on the most high-impact strategies to implement for your email campaigns, automation, landing pages, and ad targeting.
Mailchimp also has responsive SEO management templates and provides sophisticated A/B testing capabilities for testing subject lines, email content, design variations, calls-to-action, and more. You can continuously improve your email marketing performance through an optimization-based approach backed by data from ongoing A/B testing results.
Winner: Beehiiv
Beehiiv wins for unique features based on bundling a robust website builder with email marketing and design tools in one integrated platform. This unified approach streamlines creating cohesive customer experiences across channels, especially when adding e-commerce capabilities. While Mailchimp has some advanced analytics features, it lacks the website builder and design tools.
3. Ease of Use
Beehiiv
Beehiiv has a user-friendly interface and an intuitive drag-and-drop visual interface that makes it easy for even non-technical users to create emails, landing pages, and websites.
The editor allows you to easily drag in different elements like images, text blocks, buttons, dividers, and more and drop them anywhere on the page. You can completely customize the layout and design without needing any coding skills.
Beehiiv has extensive libraries of templates and assets to significantly speed up the website and email design process. You don’t have to build completely from scratch. Just start with a template, and customize the colors, fonts, content, and brand elements to match your needs. This saves a tremendous amount of time compared to designing fully custom emails and sites.
The platform is highly beginner-friendly. Within minutes, you can launch basic email campaigns and create websites by simply selecting templates and adding your own brand touchpoints. The learning curve is gentle, enabling anyone to get started quickly.
Overall usability and user experience are excellent with Beehiiv. The platform provides helpful in-line tips and prompts to guide users through key tasks and workflows. Built-in tutorials and webinars offer additional training resources to help you master more advanced features and capabilities over time.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop visual interface that simplifies building emails, landing pages, and postcards. The editor makes it seamless to customize designs without coding.
While Mailchimp provides extensive capabilities, the dashboard is designed to guide beginners through core workflows like creating an email campaign in simple, intuitive steps. The platform helps new users get started on the right foot.
Abundant templates help new Mailchimp users hit the ground running. You can pick pre-designed templates and customize them to match your brand style, no design experience is required. This accelerates the process compared to designing new layouts.
Usability is pretty straightforward, but mastering advanced functionality like automation workflows takes more upfront effort and involves a steeper learning curve than Beehiiv. The interface can also feel busier once you access the full breadth of features.
Winner: Beehiiv
Beehiiv wins for superior ease of use thanks to its highly visual drag-and-drop editor that optimizes for simplicity. The abundance of templates and streamlined workflows enable complete beginners to create professional emails and websites quickly without coding or prior experience.
4. Email Deliverability
Beehiiv
Beehiiv leverages a variety of deliverability features and capabilities to help maximize email delivery rates for its users.
The platform provides dedicated IP addresses, which maintain a consistent sending reputation and avoid potential issues from shared blacklists. Beehiiv also implements domain authentication including DMARC and DomainKeys, which improve credibility and security when delivering emails.
The platform closely monitors outgoing email content and provides guidance to help users avoid common spam triggers like over-abbreviated content, misleading or deceptive subject lines, and inappropriate imagery.
Based on extensive deliverability testing and data, Beehiiv offers optimization tips for crafting compliant content, properly formatting copy, writing effective subject lines, and designing calls to action.
In addition, Beehiiv provides granular analytics to track key email deliverability metrics like spam complaints, blocks, and bounces. This allows users to actively troubleshoot any delivery issues and fine-tune future campaigns to improve overall email deliverability.
Overall, Beehiiv provides strong email deliverability capabilities right out of the box, minimizing the experience required compared to managing deliverability independently.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp heavily prioritizes email deliverability through advanced features like dedicated IP addresses, white-label domains, and active compliance monitoring. Dedicated IPs maintain consistency in sending reputation and avoid problems from shared blacklists.
Mailchimp domains are fully authenticated to improve security and credibility. The platform also scans all outgoing email content, links, and imagery with AI to identify any questionable elements before sending.
Granular analytics offer insight into critical email deliverability metrics like spam reports, blocks, and bounces. This enables users to take proactive action based on feedback to continuously refine campaigns and stay out of spam folders.
Additionally, Mailchimp provides extensive guidance and best practices for crafting compliant subject lines, avoiding spam trigger words, personalizing copy, and properly structuring email content based on decades of optimization testing.
With over 20 years of experience in the email marketing industry, Mailchimp has robust deliverability capabilities built into its platform. Their deep expertise removes much of the guesswork for users when creating campaigns optimized for inbox delivery.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins for superior email deliverability thanks to over 20 years of expertise in optimizing and testing campaigns to maximize reach and avoid spam filters. Robust compliance features plus advanced analytics help beginners overcome deliverability hurdles. Their extensive guidance and best practices are invaluable resources.
5. Customer Support and Community
Beehiiv
Beehiiv provides email-based customer support as their primary channel for getting assistance with platform issues or questions. Users can email the Beehiiv support team and typically receive fairly quick responses during normal business hours.
However, email support is not available 24/7, so users may experience delays resolving issues outside business hours or on weekends. Beehiiv does offer some helpful self-service knowledge base resources including FAQs, step-by-step tutorials, webinars, and documentation to help users find solutions without waiting for an email reply.
The Beehiiv Facebook community group is another useful resource, especially for troubleshooting, with engaged members who can provide tips and advice.
Though the current email and self-service options are decent, Beehiiv still has room for improvement when it comes to customer support. Adding live chat or phone-based support available 24/7 would help strengthen their customer experience versus only relying on delayed email replies.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp offers three different 24/7 customer support options via live chat, email, and phone support. This enables users to get real-time assistance any time of day rather than waiting prolonged periods for email replies.
Mailchimp also provides an expansive self-help resource through their Searchable Help Center, which contains walkthroughs for every platform feature plus troubleshooting guides to help users find answers quickly without contacting a support rep.
Beyond official channels, an extremely active 18,000+ member user community exists on the Mailchimp Community Facebook group where customers can get advice, tips, and support from fellow Mailchimp users.
For more customized learning, Mailchimp also offers one-on-one expert training sessions to provide hands-on coaching tailored to the user’s specific needs.
With around-the-clock live support options, a comprehensive self-help knowledge base, and robust community resources, Mailchimp delivers a superior overall customer experience.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins for best customer support and community resources by providing 24/7 assistance via live chat, email, and phone with no delays or waiting for replies. The highly active Facebook group, customizable training sessions, and comprehensive self-help content further cement Mailchimp as the winner in this category.
6. Integrations
Beehiiv
Beehiiv offers over 200 native integrations with many popular apps like WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and other email platforms.
These integrations allow you to connect Beehiiv with external tools to combine features and capabilities from different systems to your marketing stack seamlessly. For e-commerce sites, Beehiiv has native connections with Stripe and PayPal to provide seamless options for accepting payments.
The platform also leverages Zapier to connect Beehiiv with thousands more business apps across categories like CRM, marketing automation, accounting, analytics, and more. While Beehiiv covers the most common critical integrations a small business would need, power users with more advanced needs may want access to an even wider range of deeper third-party integrations.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp provides over 700 native app and software integrations spanning email services, e-commerce platforms, CRMs, marketing tools, social media apps, and more.
You can seamlessly connect your Mailchimp account with other critical business systems like Shopify, Square, Salesforce, Zendesk, Facebook, Instagram, Google Analytics, Adobe, and many others.
For contact management, built-in integrations with Salesforce, Zoho, and other CRMs enable syncing your subscriber lists and audience data. Mailchimp also integrates with Zapier to expand integration possibilities to thousands of additional apps, allowing you to automate data flows between Mailchimp and top software tools.
For large enterprises, Mailchimp even offers custom API integrations that can tailor connections to unique proprietary systems and data needs.
Overall, Mailchimp stands out as the leader when it comes to the breadth and depth of its integrated apps ecosystem.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins for best integrations because it natively supports over 700 apps spanning email, e-commerce, CRM, marketing, analytics, social media, and more. Zapier adds thousands of additional integration possibilities, and custom APIs cater to advanced enterprise needs. The expansive options make Mailchimp the clear winner.
7. Pricing
Beehiiv
Beehiiv offers a free plan and 2 paid plans: Grow for $42/month, and Scale for $84/month.
The free “Launch” plan lets you send unlimited emails to up to 2,5K subscribers. The “Grow” plan offers unlimited sends to up to 100K subscribers. The “Scale” plan adds advanced automation, and other features like 3D analytics, A/B testing, and priority support.
Overall, Beehiiv delivers strong capabilities at competitive prices across plans.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp has a free plan and 3 paid tiers: Essentials at $13/month, Standard at $20/month, and Premium at $350/month billed annually.
Lower tiers are suitable for small businesses. The Premium plan adds powerful enterprise features like journey builder, workflow automation, and advanced analytics.
Mailchimp’s free plan lets you send 1,000 emails per month with basic automation for your email marketing campaigns. Overall, Mailchimp offers cost-effective plans ideal for budget-conscious users.
Winner: Tie
It’s a tie on pricing. Both Beehiiv and Mailchimp provide competitive pricing across all plan tiers. The free options are comparable, and paid plans align closely in capabilities per dollar. Budget should not be a major determining factor between these two platforms.
8. Reviews and Reputation
Beehiiv
Beehiiv earns overwhelmingly positive reviews from users who praise the platform’s easy drag-and-drop builder and all-in-one integration of email marketing, website building, and e-commerce capabilities.
Users highlight Beehiiv’s intuitive visual editor, extensive templates, and ability to create professional-looking emails and full websites without needing to know any coding.
Some potential downsides mentioned in reviews are Beehiiv’s smaller size and brand recognition compared to competitors, as well as the lack of more advanced optimization features like robust A/B testing.
However, Beehiiv still garners excellent ratings on top consumer review sites like 4.7 out of 5 stars on Capterra, reflecting the platform’s strengths for small businesses.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp garners stellar reviews from users who praise the platform’s powerful email marketing and automation capabilities, abundant integrations, and overall ease of use. Many positive Mailchimp reviews highlight the platform’s intuitive drag-and-drop builder, extensive templates, ability to scale campaigns, and quality customer support.
Some potential negatives are Mailchimp’s steeper learning curve for more advanced features compared to beginner tools, as well as its busier interface once you access the full suite of capabilities.
However, leading review sites consistently rate Mailchimp very highly, including 4.3 out of 5 stars on G2 and 4.7 on Capterra, cementing its reputation as an email marketing leader.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp wins slightly for more positive reviews and reputation, earning top ratings across all major review platforms for its powerful email capabilities, ease of use, automation tools, abundant integrations, and stellar customer support. While Beehiiv also performs well, Mailchimp’s long-standing product maturity and brand reputation give it the edge with reviewers.
9. FAQ’s
Beehiiv FAQs
- How do I create an email campaign in Beehiiv?
Select the “Email campaigns” tab in your Beehiiv dashboard. Click the “+” button to create a new campaign. Choose a template, customize the content, select your list, and schedule the send date. Click “Save & Send” when you’re ready to send. - Does Beehiiv have automation workflows?
Yes, Beehiiv supports automation through its Beehiiv Sequences feature. You can set up triggers like new subscriber signups along with delays, conditional logic, and emails to create automated workflows like welcome sequences. - Can I sell products through Beehiiv?
Yes, Beehiiv has built-in e-commerce capabilities so you can easily build an online store and sell products or services through your Beehiiv site. You can process payments through integrations like Stripe or PayPal. - Does Beehiiv integrate with CRMs?
Beehiiv offers integration with popular CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho to synchronize contacts between the platforms. You can also connect it to your CRM using Zapier. - How do I get help with Beehiiv?
Check the searchable knowledge base and startup guides or reach out to Beehiiv customer support via email. You can also join the Beehiiv Community Facebook group to connect with other users.
Mailchimp FAQs
- How do I create an email campaign in Mailchimp?
In your Mailchimp dashboard, click the “Campaigns” tab. Select “Create Campaign” and choose the type you want. Choose a template, customize the content, select your list, and schedule it. Hit “Send” when you’re ready. - Does Mailchimp have automation features?
Yes, Mailchimp offers extensive automation through its workflow feature. You can set up triggers and multi-step sequences, filters, delays, and more to automate marketing. - Can I sell products with Mailchimp?
Mailchimp does not directly offer built-in e-commerce, but you can connect your Mailchimp account to an e-commerce platform like Shopify to manage your store and sync your subscriber data. - How does Mailchimp integrate with CRMs?
Mailchimp offers direct integrations with CRMs like Salesforce, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics to synchronize contacts, campaign data, and more between the platforms. - What support options does Mailchimp have?
Mailchimp provides 24/7 customer support via live chat, email, and phone. Users can also access the searchable knowledge base or Mailchimp community for self-help.
Final Thoughts
Choose Beehiiv if…
Beehiiv is a great choice for small businesses and entrepreneurs who want an integrated platform to easily create professional emails, websites, and simple e-commerce stores. The intuitive drag-and-drop editor, extensive templates, and bundled features make Beehiiv ideal for beginners focused on core email and web needs rather than advanced capabilities. It’s a cost-effective, user-friendly solution.
Choose Mailchimp if…
Mailchimp is better suited for experienced email marketers who need more sophisticated features like advanced email marketing automation , expansive integrations, predictive analytics, and marketing CRM capabilities. The broader feature set supports complex email campaigns, segmentation, A/B testing, and cross-channel coordination ideal for established businesses.
You may also be interested in checking out some Mailchimp alternatives to help with the evaluation process.