Expensive but Effective! The first Newsletter tool that comes to mind.

MailChimp is quite a popular tool that is frequently used by budding enterprises because of it's generous Freemium model. I started using MailChimp around 3 years ago and I've never been happier. This tool helped me understand where I went wrong with my campaigns, improve them and made me save a LOT of money by deciding not to hire a separate design team. After using it for a few months, I realized that switching to one of MailChimp's paid models would benefit me way more.

Pros

1) Template Compatibility: The templates that you choose in MailChimp are optimized to fit on all screen sizes. Whether the recipient has a smartphone, a desktop, a laptop or even a tablet, your content will be delivered to him/her the way you want it to be.
2) Scope for better future campaigns: What I mean by this is - MailChimp gives you an edge or an insight into how your campaigns are doing. Based on the statistic report, you can refine and optimize your campaigns and make them more effective.
3) Engendering Interaction: Creating a Survey or a User Form has never been easier.
4) No HTML knowledge required: As I mentioned earlier, MailChimp has a myriad of optimized templates to choose from which helps you become much more creative with your campaigns. There is no need for a separate Design Team unless you don't already like the templates that are available.

Cons

1) User Interface: MailChimp does have a user-friendly interface(s). However, the problem is that they change the User Interface every time they roll in a new update. Yes, this will be easy to master in a short while, but that still requires a NewsLetter team to get accustomed to the new interface. This wastes a lot of time.
2) Zero Tolerance to Affiliate Marketers: If you're an affiliate marketer and you've just stumbled upon MailChimp, turn the other way. I'm not sure what the penalties are but I know they're quite severe.
3) Expensive: Though the Freemium version of MailChimp is rather generous, the paid subscriptions can surely burn a hole in your pocket when you find yourself wanting to send more emails and build your subscription list.

The Professional and Easy Way to Deal with Sending Emails to the Masses

I am very satisfied with Mailchimp and would highly recommend its use to anyone who is serious about scaling a potentially big business. I will surely consider Mailchimp for my personal brand as the first 2,000 subscribers are free anyway, which makes for a sweet deal! It helped our current company present itself professionally with emails by having access to such a great template editor. We didn't have any web developer working on our team at the time, so it was easy to resort to using the included features, even though it's important to note that any code can be pasted as HTML for those who know what they are doing. We thought that we knew our customers, but the reports generated by Mailchimp really opened our eyes and allowed us to know what works and what doesn't, which was surprising and very useful. Initially, we deployed our own mail server, but we found out the hard way that Mailchimp is a much more reliable solution for us and it removes all barriers related to scale as everything is taken care of automatically on their side.

Pros

Mailchimp has a truly professional feel to it. The interface is responsive and well designed. The platform makes it easy to start for free and offers flexible plans, perfect for a startup. Mailchimp has many tutorials available that came in handy more than once. They also use a good sense of humor, making for a less boring experience when reading technical material. There are many options to customize the service and I found it easy to make all the necessary changes in order to set my account for a Spanish audience in Mexico.

Once a campaign has been sent, reports are automatically built. I could even see the stats being updated live just a few minutes after sending everything! There is detailed information about open rates, click rates and statistics about the general industry to see clearly if the audience is being reached as expected. One can also see the reaction of every customer in each campaign: unsubscribes, bounces, number of clicks, etc. All this information is accessible and can be exported to CSV.

Another aspect that I really liked is how well the template editor works. You basically insert "blocks" of text, dividers, images or other types of blocks on the right side of the page and you can see in real-time the template being rendered on the left side. I haven't found any issue when viewing an email sent through Mailchimp based on a template, both on mobile and desktop clients. On the contrary, it made for a consistent design and branding.

Cons

Mailchimp works wonderfully well, but it isn't for the faint of heart when it comes to the initial customization. Sure, the documentation is great, but it does take a while to setup everything. It wasn't clear to me how to use templates inside campaigns, for instance, but even without reading all the documentation, one can deduce much of the functioning by simple trial and error, which ended up being my preferred way to learn my way around.

I didn't find the File Manager as intuitive as the rest of the interface when I started using the product. Sometimes, I would want to resize pictures or apply filters and would get confused as to where the image has been saved or if it were indeed saved. However, it does seem to be getting easier to use in recent versions, as it contains a "revision history" for each uploaded file and an impressive list of adjustments in the image editor, which is a great addition when working on a different computer where the usual software might not be present. I still prefer using external applications when modifying pictures, but Mailchimp does allow to make pretty much any modification you might need and having access to a revision history makes it easy to go back to an earlier version of a file even without first making a backup of it.

Arguably the only Email Marketing and Survey tool you will ever need

The learning curve for me was very straight forward. I have been able to record improved conversions from my marketing emails due to the high customization of email prepared with this software.

Pros

First-time users of MailChimp will enjoy the editor which is fast and simple to use, as it also supports the use of drag & drop interface to prepare your message. The support for auto-responders, A/B testing, recurring emails and RSS to newsletter has made my job easier. MailChimp analytics can tell you exactly what you need to know about the emails you sent. The analytics also helps me know what and what not to adjust in my email campaign and because I use MailChimp for the creation of Facebook, Instagram and google ads is another useful reason I have stuck to it. I regularly use Mailchimp to integrate with applications like WordPress to create subscription form and create ordering pages for e-commerce software like Shopify and woo commerce. It has been flawless so far. I will say they have a lot of features in the paid plan that makes email marketing enjoyable and subscribers spoilt for choice

Cons

Mail chimp does not encourage using their service for affiliate marketing even after you pay for their product. I learnt this the hard way when my defaulting account was blacklisted. I also observed that emails sent to Gmail landed in the promotion tab while some company internal servers blacklisted emails sent from my Mailchimp account. You should do well to beware of the forever free plan because they don’t provide customer service for it after 30 days and it does not support autoresponders. The pricing plan is not very straightforward to understand. Over the years, they have included some changes which are not great from a customer perspective (like the need to verify that your contact was gotten from a subscription page) and the reduction of contact allowed on the free forever plan to just 2000.

Mailchimp doesn't money around when it comes to features and customer service

Working for a non-profit and having a very targeted base of individuals that I am trying to communicate with can be cumbersome and frustrating because that target group is very segmented by demographics. Mailchimp allows me to modify how I communicate with these segments, without having to reinvent the wheel and send separate campaigns to each segment. I can easily create one campaign and then segment from within to make sure I am communicating correctly to each group.

Pros

Mailchimp has a robust and user friendly dashboard that makes it easy for a novice to get started with an email campaign. That being said, hidden below the surface of templates and cookie cutter designs are fully customizable features and the ability to code your own emails. I believe it serves as the best of both worlds for the unassuming small business owner who really does't have time to learn or the the money to hire a professional to handle their email marketing; it also allows large corporations with a scantly lit room full of code loving nerds to have full control of their email design. Mailchimp doesn't discriminate between these two worlds when it comes the analytics and reporting , they have a terrific suite of tools to measure success. To top it all off, Mailchimp is constantly updating their technology to improve their product and help businesses communicate with their customers.

Cons

The worst thing about Mailchimp is their pricing, they can get pretty steep when you start trying to expand your reach and communicate with a larger audience. The pricing isn't outrageous, but it also isn't competitive. The other cons in my opinion are personal annoyances and probably aren't shared among a whole lot of other users. Their automation tools are a bit limited, my expectations were set high based on all the features that Mailchimp has, automation is one that is still a work in progress. My other annoyance is the branded copy all over the site, it's like being instructed by two dudebros who are constantly making inside references as they show you around. Some probably find this very charming, I find it kind of irritating.

Optimum Choice for Email Database Mailing/Management!

Pros

Mailchimp is absolutely ideal for corresponding with customers/clientele, especially, (and from my experience), for small businesses and non-profits. Not only is Mailchimp very affordable for businesses with limited budgets, it is a great way to manage and store the likely smaller customer lists those businesses have. In my personal experience, I have loved the way the "unsubscribe" feature works with Mailchimp. It notifies you as the user when and why someone requests to be unsubscribed from future correspondence, and ensures they are actually removed from your Mailchimp list. I have found that this is so much more foolproof than keeping up with your own list in a simple spreadsheet. Along those same lines, mailing out to a list on a spreadsheet and/or directly from an email account often results in the message being flagged as spam/junk for recipients. You also often have limits as to how many addresses you can send a message to at one time, creating additional time and work for the user. Mailchip does it all for you with one click of the button. Not only that, you can review analytics including how many people have opened the email, how many additional clicks links within the email have gotten, how many emails were undeliverable, and more. It is just so user-friendly, and I have never come across anything comparable that gives you more bang for your buck.

Cons

Sometimes the formatting of an email newsletter-type communication can be tricky for a novice on Mailchimp, but after doing it once or twice, you get the hang of it and it becomes much easier. The "test email" feature also eases my own mind, knowing that I can see exactly what it will look like in my customers' inboxes before I actually send it out for real. I generally send it to my personal and business email addresses, read them on my desktop and phone, to make sure the formatting looks correct on all before sending. Although that is a bit tedious, I have peace of mind knowing what I send out looks professional and readable.

So easy a Chimp could do it!

Mailchimp is a wonderful email campaign platform. We are currently utilizing the free version, going on 5 years now, for our bimonthly newsletters and have never run into a single issue. As a marketer, my favorite thing about Mailchimp is the ability to share our newsletters and subscribe links via social media. You can also create pop-ups or static forms to embed on your website so that when people subscribe they are automatically added to your subscriber list.

Pros

Mailchimp’s free plan allows you to have up to 2,000 subscribers and includes 12,000 emails you can send out, per month. For those new to Mailchimp, there are numerous preset templates you can choose from which you can further customize to your liking or create your own from scratch. Campaign templates can incorporate images, polls, embedded videos, call to actions, plain text, and custom HTML. Once you have created a template – with the specific look you are looking for – you can duplicate it and create your next campaign so you do not have to start from scratch. It’s likely you will encounter someone on your subscriber list who either resides or works for a company in the EU. Mailchimp has all the needed GDPR tools and regulations in place to make your campaign process as easy and stress free as possible to manage.

Uploading new contacts to your subscriber list can be done in minutes (CSV files). You can also create multiple lists which you can further segment into more specific groups (in the case you may not want to send the campaign to the entire list of your choosing). Before sending off your campaign you can preview what it will look like to your recipients on desktop and mobile devices and check your links to make sure they work appropriately. Mailchimp also provides A/B testing and basic analytics, pertaining to each campaign you send out, to give you more insight into the campaign’s open rates and clicks.

Cons

I have very few complaints about Mailchimp, but I do wish they could incorporate spell check into their system somehow to help expedite the editing process. Also keep in mind, if you choose to upgrade from the free plan into a paid plan, you can only downgrade back down to the free plan once.

If you choose to make any changes to a campaign that has already been sent off, it will not update those campaigns, it will only show those updated changes to those you send the campaign to after saving those changes. Meaning if you find a mistake in a campaign you have recently sent out, know that there is no “undo” or fix.

Great For Simple Needs

One of the reasons I have stuck with Mailchimp, at least for now, is how easily it integrates with Squarespace. It's hard to think of changing that. Overall, Mailchimp has been a good option as a startup with limited time and resources. Depending on people's needs, I do recommend it to friends and clients, but it certainly has it's limitations for growing and scaling with more complex needs. If you are new to email marketing, though, certainly give it a try as your training wheels. It's worked out well for many people and companies.

Pros

One of the reasons Mailchimp is so popular is that it's pretty easy to use. It was definitely a pioneer in the drag and drop space for email templates. And they've added a lot of bells and whistles over the year as well. Plus, they're a generous and charitable company, which I appreciate. Though you could easily spend days trying to learn all the features, if you have pretty simple needs, you'll be able to get up and running fairly quickly.

Cons

Mailchimp was a leader in the market when they started. I'd argue that they've fallen behind the curve. I believe they started adding new features like landing pages and ads, when they should've really caught up with their competition in their core asset—email marketing. If you only really need to email the same group of people over and over again, or have a few sub-lists working in tandem with the main one, Mailchimp gets the job done. But if you have multiple opt-ins, for example, you'll be disappointed at how clunky the system is to navigate, set up, and organize. A lot of patchwork has to be done, or you have to operate a lot of different lists, which isn't recommended. This is where I find myself, and why many people I know have switched away from this software. It is a basic need for so many businesses now, and one of the reasons I think Mailchimp is losing market share, despite adding several new features over the past two years. I'd really love to see them get back to the basics and make strong improvements there.

Useful pioneer in simplifying mass email marketing

Our company has mostly used Mail Chimp as a recruiting and advertising tool to reach candidates for potential job opportunities. MailChimp was one of the first professional template based email marketing tools to send out mass emails to potential clients, recruits, etc. Over the years, they've refined their products and added social networking tools as well as other current trending tools for outreach. They are quite useful in adding these important tools to small to mid-sized companies that could benefit from these tools but may not necessarily have the budget to develop and utilize these tools in-house. In addition, the tools are quite affordable and there are several free sample versions/credits you can use to test out the product. The most useful tool I have used consistently with MailChimp is their automated mass-email campaigns. Provided that you obtain the list based on the candidate/clients interest and not through spam based lists, you can send out polished lists for automated outreach to large groups of individuals. We have also used MailChimp to conduct employee and client satisfaction surveys, etc. In general, lots of tools for smaller companies to utilize to stay relevant and competitive with larger companies and you can scale the account/costs to your individual needs. There are limitations with FTC/internet/marketing laws that smaller companies may not be aware of, but you learn quickly. If you know how to do MS Office mail merges, this product works.

Pros

Intuitive with a lot of options for smaller businesses without dedicated marketing teams to offer polished outreach tools that are normally inaccessible. This product allows sales teams, company marketing efforts, and recruiters to all have outreach tools for relatively cheap.

Free options to test out products initially to see how it fits your company/departments needs.

Cons

There are a lot of limiting factors based on anti-spam marketing laws (emails), FTC, etc., that MailChimp doesn't necessarily let you know before purchasing and sending out campaigns. You learn quickly limitations such as the inability to send out emails to mass email lists through MailChimp because they don't want to violate these laws. Your lists must be organically obtained (such as through your website or ATS landing site, job ads, advertisements, etc.) in order for them to be used through MailChimp. So forget purchasing an email list from a recruitment organization and then emailing thousands of cold candidates through MailChimp, you will be flagged.

Also, you need to be aware AND track candidates that asked to be removed from future emails and ensure you do NOT email them again to stay compliant.

Great quality for the investment

Overall our experience with MailChimp was a good one. I think it is a perfect platform to get going on to build your audiences and find your groove. Just know that you will outgrow this platform and your need for more advanced features will push you to a different service. If you want to use some semi-advanced features of most enterprise ESP's, you will ned to utilize additional middleware to accomplish this. But MailChimp is a great return for the investment.

Pros

MailChimp continues to improve and add enterprise type features that you would normally pay much more for with other ESP's. Features that we get the most out of are the automations, transactional service (Mandrill), and store syncing to pull customer data and purchase behaviors into MailChimp for segmentation and triggers. We have been with MC for years and each year it continues to get better. The custom short codes we can use for personalization are very helpful in creating campaigns that are unique to the individuals that are receiving them.

Cons

While they continue to advance, this ESP is still along way from an enterprise solution. The syncing is great, when is works properly. MailChimp does not actually provide the connection with different shopping carts and instead relies on third-party app developers to provide this. This leads to a bunch of issues trying to get support because each wants to point the finger at the other.

Mandrill is a great service for transaction sends, but it was combined with paid MailChimp accounts awhile ago instead of a standalone service. Wish they would have kept it separate because there is much more potential on its own.

I don't like that you can not combine template types when creating a new campaign/automation. You have to either select a pre-made template or code your own. I wish it had the ability to do both.
While the automations are a must have in today's world, and they are continuing to improve them, there is still a long way to go with these in my opinion to catch up to other ESP's.