If you’re stuck on mailerlite vs mailchimp, you’re not alone: most “email marketing platform” advice is either outdated or written by people who never shipped a campaign under pressure. Both tools can send newsletters, automate sequences, and track performance—but they feel very different when you’re actually building funnels, cleaning lists, and iterating weekly.
Quick take: who each tool is really for
MailerLite is the “get it live fast” choice: clean UI, straightforward automations, solid landing pages, and pricing that doesn’t punish you the moment you grow.
Mailchimp is the legacy default: lots of integrations, a familiar editor, and a brand everyone recognizes—plus a tendency to get expensive/complex as your needs mature.
If you’re a creator or lean startup, you’ll probably value speed and simplicity. If you’re in a broader stack with lots of tools and handoffs, you may value ecosystem and familiarity.
Pricing and list management: the hidden cost is churn
Pricing pages rarely tell the full story. The real cost shows up when:
- You hit a subscriber threshold and your bill jumps.
- You realize you’re paying for contacts you never email.
- You need multiple audiences/segments without duplicating contacts.
In practice, MailerLite tends to be more forgiving for small-to-mid lists and is easier to keep “lean” without paying for stale contacts.
Mailchimp can be totally fine early on, but its cost curve often makes teams reconsider once they start segmenting aggressively, running multiple lead magnets, or experimenting with frequent list imports.
Opinionated rule: if you’re still validating your acquisition channels, optimize for low overhead (time + money). If you already have predictable acquisition and a stable funnel, pay for the platform that reduces operational risk.
Automation and segmentation: simple vs powerful (and where it matters)
Automation is where these platforms stop being “newsletter tools” and start being revenue tools.
MailerLite automations are clear and easy to reason about. For many teams, that’s a feature: fewer knobs means fewer broken flows.
Mailchimp can handle typical journeys, but the experience can feel fragmented—especially when you’re juggling audiences, tags, and advanced segmentation.
If automation is your core competency (behavior-driven branching, scoring, multi-step lifecycle), consider looking beyond both. ActiveCampaign is often the benchmark for automation depth, while ConvertKit is popular with creators who want automations without feeling like they’re configuring an aircraft cockpit.
Where it matters most:
- Lead magnet to onboarding: can you tag/segment reliably?
- Behavior triggers: clicks, page visits, purchases.
- Re-engagement: suppression logic so you stop emailing dead leads.
Deliverability and reporting: what you can measure, you can fix
Most “deliverability talk” online is vague. Here’s the practical view: your deliverability depends more on your sending behavior than the logo on the dashboard. But your platform affects how easy it is to do the right things.
Both MailerLite and Mailchimp provide:
- Domain authentication support (SPF/DKIM)
- Basic campaign reporting (opens, clicks, bounces)
- List hygiene signals
The difference is workflow. You want fast answers to:
- Which segment is dragging performance down?
- Which subject lines work for this audience, not your whole list?
- Are automation emails outperforming broadcasts?
If you need sharper ecommerce or funnel reporting, you may also evaluate GetResponse or Brevo depending on your stack and budget. The point isn’t that one tool is “best”; it’s whether the tool makes feedback loops tight enough to improve weekly.
Actionable example: a practical re-engagement segment
Before migrating platforms or rewriting sequences, do this: identify cold subscribers and suppress them. It’s the quickest win for deliverability and often boosts click rates immediately.
Here’s a vendor-neutral way to define “cold” in plain logic (adapt it to segments/tags in your tool):
COLD_SUBSCRIBERS =
subscribed_at <= today - 90d
AND last_open_at <= today - 60d
AND last_click_at <= today - 60d
AND NOT tagged("customer")
ACTION:
exclude COLD_SUBSCRIBERS from regular campaigns
run a 2-email reactivation sequence
if no click after 7 days -> unsubscribe or move to low-frequency segment
Why this works:
- Opens are noisy now; clicks are a stronger intent signal.
- Suppression protects your engaged audience from being penalized by dead weight.
- You get a clean baseline before you judge any platform’s “deliverability.”
Choosing in 2026: my biased decision framework
If you want the simplest path to shipping clean campaigns and basic automations with minimal overhead, MailerLite is hard to argue against.
If you need broad integrations, a familiar editor, and you’re operating in a team where “everyone already knows it,” Mailchimp can still be a reasonable default—just go in with eyes open on pricing and structure.
If you’re on the fence, compare them using your reality:
- Build one landing page + form + welcome automation in each.
- Create one segment for engaged users and one for cold users.
- Run the same campaign to a small slice and compare workflow friction.
And if you discover you actually need deeper automation or creator-friendly flows, it’s worth lightly evaluating alternatives like ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit—not as a dramatic switch, but as a sanity check on what “good” can look like.
