If you’re stuck choosing mailerlite vs mailchimp, you’re really choosing between “fast-to-launch and affordable” and “feature-heavy and familiar.” Both can send newsletters. The difference is what happens after you hit Send: segmentation, automation depth, deliverability control, and how much you’ll pay as your list grows.
Below is a technical, opinionated breakdown from an email-marketing perspective—especially if you care about automation and clean data, not just pretty templates.
1) Core philosophy: simplicity vs ecosystem
MailerLite feels built for creators and small teams who want to publish consistently without wrestling with settings. The UI is modern, lists are straightforward, and you can be productive quickly.
Mailchimp is the “default choice” because it’s been around forever, has broad integrations, and offers lots of knobs. The tradeoff: the product surface area is bigger, and so is the chance you’ll pay for features you don’t use (or accidentally count contacts you didn’t mean to).
My take: If you’re starting from scratch and you want to ship campaigns this week, MailerLite is usually the lower-friction ramp. If you’re already deep in a toolchain that “just works with Mailchimp,” the switching cost can outweigh the benefits.
2) Pricing and contact counting: where the bill surprises happen
Email marketing costs don’t scale linearly with value. They scale with contacts, and each vendor defines “contact” differently.
Things to check in both platforms:
- Are unsubscribed contacts billed? Some tools historically counted them in ways that make list hygiene expensive.
- Do you pay extra for multiple audiences/lists? If duplicates exist across lists, costs can balloon.
- Automation tiers: advanced journeys often live behind higher plans.
In practice:
- MailerLite tends to be more predictable for small-to-medium lists.
- Mailchimp can get pricey faster, especially if you maintain multiple audiences or have duplicates.
If you’re cost-sensitive but still want serious automation, it’s worth also benchmarking brevo (formerly Sendinblue) and getresponse—both often price differently (e.g., by sends or with bundling that changes the economics).
3) Automation and segmentation: the real differentiator
Most teams outgrow “newsletter-only” quickly. The real question is how easily you can build these flows:
- Welcome series with branching
- Post-purchase follow-ups
- Re-engagement for inactive subscribers
- Lead magnet delivery + tag-based routing
Mailchimp provides a strong set of automation building blocks, plus a big integration marketplace. Segmentation is powerful, but the UX can feel like you’re navigating a legacy product that has grown by accumulation.
MailerLite has solid automation for common lifecycle flows and is generally easier to reason about. Tagging/fields are approachable, and building simple branches is quick.
Where you might hit limits with MailerLite:
- Very complex, multi-path journeys with heavy conditional logic
- Sales-driven pipelines
If your email program is tightly coupled to CRM stages and you want deeper behavioral automation, activecampaign is the tool I usually see winning that comparison (at the cost of complexity).
4) Deliverability, data hygiene, and a practical workflow
Deliverability isn’t magic—it’s process. No tool will save you from blasting cold lists or ignoring engagement signals.
A practical approach you can implement in either platform is an “engagement-based cleanup” policy:
- Track last open/click
- Segment people who haven’t engaged in 60–90 days
- Run a re-permission campaign
- Suppress/remove the rest
Here’s a vendor-neutral example using simple logic (adapt this to segments/tags in MailerLite or Mailchimp):
for each subscriber in list:
if subscriber.hard_bounced:
unsubscribe(subscriber)
else if days_since(subscriber.last_engagement) > 90:
add_tag(subscriber, "inactive_90d")
segment = subscribers where tag == "inactive_90d" and not purchased_recently
send_campaign(segment, "Do you still want emails?")
if no_engagement_after(7_days):
suppress(segment)
What this buys you:
- Lower costs (fewer billable contacts)
- Better inbox placement (higher engagement rates)
- Cleaner reporting (less “dead weight” skewing metrics)
Opinionated note: I’d rather send fewer emails to a healthier list than chase vanity subscriber counts. Most “deliverability problems” are actually list quality problems.
5) Which should you choose? (and when to consider alternatives)
Choose MailerLite if:
- You want a clean UI and quick setup
- Your automations are straightforward lifecycle flows
- You care about predictable pricing as you grow
Choose Mailchimp if:
- You rely on its integration ecosystem
- You need certain advanced features and don’t mind complexity
- Your team already knows it and switching would slow execution
If neither feels right:
- convertkit is often a better fit for creator-first workflows and audience monetization.
- activecampaign is hard to beat for deep automation + CRM-style logic.
- brevo can be compelling if you want different pricing dynamics and multichannel options.
Soft recommendation: if you’re early-stage or migrating from spreadsheets, start with the tool that makes you send consistently. You can always “upgrade” later—but you can’t optimize an email program that never ships.
