Mailchimp vs. Twilio SendGrid

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Mailchimp
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Mailchimp is the email marketing and marketing automation platform. Most email marketing platforms tell you how your campaigns perform, but Mailchimp goes a step beyond and tells you why by analyzing the data from half a billion emails sent through the platform every day to offer personalized recommendations for improving content, targeting, automations, and driving revenue using emails
$0
per month
Twilio SendGrid
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns provides users with segmentation, campaign editing, and deliverability. According to the vendor, Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns is trusted by over 80,000 customers globally, including Airbnb, Spotify and Uber. Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns aims to help users by providing: MORE EFFICIENT EMAIL BUILDING The campaign building process is free from frustrating, rigid step-by-step wizards that slow users down. The vendor says…
$15
per month
Pricing
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$15
per month
Advanced
$60
per month
Free
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Considered Both Products
Mailchimp
Chose Mailchimp
sendgrid works well if you are [a] developer, want more data, and managing many lists. Mailchimp, on the other hand, works on simplicity and provides an easy way to set up landing pages and forms.
Chose Mailchimp
Mailchimp is arguably a stronger solution when it comes to simple, straightforward email marketing. If, however, you have a more peculiar use case or need to implement your solution with a more fully-fledged API and almost certainly pay less money per month, sendgrid is likely …
Chose Mailchimp
It's better for the average campaign requirements. Some projects require more advanced features and we use other tools for those. For example, making an system email that needs to be white-listed and then send system emails from it. For that we used Mailjet, sendgrid and other …
Chose Mailchimp
Mailchimp is the better choice for small businesses, but it starts to lose its power and luster when you scale and want more power, features, and email-focused reliability. As a jack of all trades, it gets the job done—but it's now the email powerhouse on the block.
Chose Mailchimp
I think hubspot is a lot better for automated emails requiring business logic and more complex requirements, which is generally what i do. however if you are sending out more straightforward email marketing campaigns for a newsletter, product updates, or otherwise already …
Chose Mailchimp
I have tried a lot of email marketing software and mailchimp has been the one that has given me the best ROI. The emails are easy to design and it's not difficult to gather information on my recipients either. Mailchimp has helped me grow my customer database through targeted …
Chose Mailchimp
For small to medium users, Mailchimp to be the best option. Evaluating cost and ease of use, we found it to be a good choice. It did everything we needed while costing less than the alternatives we looked at for our use case. The ability to get up and running quickly was a key …
Chose Mailchimp
We selected Mailchimp against other alternatives for its non-technical workflow and cheaper pricing suitable for small and medium businesses. Also, it offers a ready-made landing page, signup forms, and email templates suitable for any type of business.
Chose Mailchimp
Mailchimp was the best out of what I have previously used. It has much better reporting, automation and better list management. It is a good product to use if you are able to spend a bit of time and money to develop some templates and make it look amazing. It has been a big …
Chose Mailchimp
Mailchimp is more user-friendly and all the staff picked up on it very quickly.
Chose Mailchimp
During my research on email marketing tools I tried couple of other tools also but I found most of them unfit as per my requirements. Some of them were not providing trial versions whereas some of them were not having Drag and Drop feature and some of them were not good in …
Chose Mailchimp
MailChimp is not the cheapest email campaign company however it has been the easiest to use for me since I stared using the service in college and then found it was what was used at the companies I worked for. It allows me to send email surveys that are released at a timeline …
Twilio SendGrid
Chose Twilio SendGrid
MailChimp is just not as flexible as we've found SendGrid to be. We used MailChimp for several clients in the past and it always did an ok job, but we were never blown away. With SendGrid, we have what we feel is a much more sophisticated platform and experience. Plus we can do …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
SendGrid offers a ready-to-go solution to delivering e-mails to your users. They have integrated the most popular features/requirements for managing the Marketing aspect of your e-mail list with one of the best APIs for managing your lists, campaigns, creatives, and messages. …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
All of the aforementioned competing services don't have a transactional email component along with their email marketing campaign services. Also, SendGrid is the most economical value of the 4, while 2nd place goes to MailChimp with regard to pricing. I liked SendGrid out of …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
Before using SendGrid we used Mailchimp and were very limited with segmenting our users. Then we moved to ActiveCampaign and paid a ton of money for sending a few promotional emails per month. Then we got SendGrid - letting us rid both of ActiveCampaign and Mailgun and having …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
We considered using Mailchimp from the beginning but we weren't in a place where we needed everything Mailchimp had to offer and we needed a simpler solution that was easy to implement and use. SendGrid served us well as a bigger stage company with limited funds and needs but …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
We have been looking for an email marketing provider that would match the budget ("not too high" :), our database numbers (over 10K subscribers), and convenience. MailChimp is very convenient and easy to use, but it was expensive at 10K+ subscribers. Emma, which I haven't used, …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
Twilio SendGrid is a great all around email marketing solution. It does everything that Mailchimp can do but offers a whole host of other features a professional marketeer would require. Mailchimp does not support email campaigns that promote gambling products.
Chose Twilio SendGrid
I have been using Sendgrid for a while now, and the main reason to select it in the first place was because of the data analytics it offered and data security. Its high deliverability and rates and the pricing offered for our requirement suited our budget; hence, we chose it …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
We also have Kartra, which is not in your list. Seriously, if I’m running the campaign, it’s SendGrid. I’m not a tech guy, but I can use it and can even design something and get the HTML code out if I need to.
My biggest gripe is that it’s so hard to move data across platforms, …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
Some of the other platforms we have used in the past appeared to be cheaper up front, but in the long run... they were a lot more costly than Twilio SendGrid. Some of the other email marketing tools did not offer drag and drop features that make building an email campaign easy …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
For transactional email, SendGrid is hard to beat. When your use case includes transactional emails as well as marketing email sends, SendGrid is a one-stop shop.
Chose Twilio SendGrid
Cost is effictive measurement when we want to get started with any email provider. SendGrid provides cost-effective solution than other competitors. Also, their dashboard is more user friendly for marketors and developers. They provide in-detail analytics for each events …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
I started using this application only because of its accuracy in newsletters. Once I started using this application for my product promotions I got very positive results. After couple of successful promotional email campaigns I realized a significant increase in transactional …
Chose Twilio SendGrid
Sendgrid was already in place when I start working here. It does a good job and I am glad were using it.
Chose Twilio SendGrid
For engaging with existing (non-cold) email lists including transactional emails and just general daily/weekly newsletters, SendGrid has a good price and high deliverability rates. SendGrid is also very startup-community friendly and helped our developers get up to speed and …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
8.0
472 Ratings
3% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
7.8
46 Ratings
4% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor8.1437 Ratings7.733 Ratings
Dynamic content7.8420 Ratings7.936 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.9401 Ratings8.134 Ratings
Landing pages7.5325 Ratings7.622 Ratings
A/B testing8.0356 Ratings8.526 Ratings
Mobile optimization8.1431 Ratings9.034 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.5459 Ratings7.646 Ratings
List management8.1459 Ratings5.940 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences7.7317 Ratings7.520 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
9.1
2 Ratings
17% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation6.22 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
8.1
48 Ratings
6% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
-
Ratings
Calendaring8.443 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.734 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
8.2
42 Ratings
9% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns8.340 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration8.134 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
7.5
457 Ratings
0% above category average
Twilio SendGrid
7.9
46 Ratings
1% above category average
Dashboards7.7120 Ratings8.444 Ratings
Standard reports8.0455 Ratings8.544 Ratings
Custom reports6.948 Ratings6.928 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
7.3
41 Ratings
4% below category average
Twilio SendGrid
-
Ratings
API7.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals6.26 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability5.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.320 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM7.517 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM8.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.636 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Mailchimp
-
Ratings
Twilio SendGrid
9.1
8 Ratings
7% above category average
URL Validation00 Ratings9.38 Ratings
Link Tracking00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Image Validation00 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Inbox Display00 Ratings9.38 Ratings
Email Accessibility Tools00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Spelling and Grammar Check00 Ratings8.66 Ratings
Spam Testing00 Ratings9.38 Ratings
Email Previews00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Emma by Marigold
Emma by Marigold
Score 8.6 out of 10
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User Ratings
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(496 ratings)
5.7
(57 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(51 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(373 ratings)
1.0
(4 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(14 ratings)
3.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.5
(22 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MailchimpTwilio SendGrid
Likelihood to Recommend
Mailchimp
With Mailchimp we are able to revive and enhance our personal connect with the customers. The easy-to-use tools allows us to personalize the email content, segregate and target important leads & send relevant messages. Also, it offers interactive analysis on the performance of a particular campaign. We can judge the effectiveness of our mailers in real time.
Read full review
Twilio
I think Sendgrid is a great tool for sending out emails of all types. I've primarily used it for transactional emails as we've had other solutions for marketing emails, but I'm sure it would do just a good job - there is a "Marketing" section within the app you can use. Sendgrid integrates really easily with the development frameworks I've used, such as Laravel and Lumen; I've also integrated it with Moodle with ease.
Read full review
Pros
Mailchimp
  • Mailchimp allows you to manage your mailing list really well. You can subscribe people, unsubscribe people manage the mailing list directly into segments, and what not.
  • Mailchimp has features where you can create campaigns based on your mailing lists and send out newsletters to your subscribers based on a multitude of parameters that you can setup. Such as send email daily, weekly, monthly and they also have event based mails that you can send out.
  • Mailchimp also has a feature where you can design your emails. The look and aesthetics are very important when sending emails to your subscribers and all those needs are addressed here.
Read full review
Twilio
  • Managing email lists / audiences is easy with features like groups and segments.
  • They provide pre-built email templates that are very easy to modify. It is also super easy to create new email templates with their drag-and-drop email builder.
  • Provides clear / easy-to-read analytics of email campaigns.
  • I can easily import large email contact lists all at once or add a user manually one-at-a-time, when needed.
Read full review
Cons
Mailchimp
  • The interface remains a cluttered, non-intuitive mess. That's true from the haphazard way features are organized to the actual email layout.
  • Analytics have never been a priority, and I don't see that changing with Intuit's new ownership. I'm very frustrated over the limited choices for reporting, even when using third-party solutions. If I needed that function, I would not use MailChimp.
  • I would love to develop a workflow screen that lets me focus on the things that I use all the time. Customizing the interface where the content actually goes into the software would help.
  • I never understood why we couldn't import a document into a MC template. At best, we're spending time copying-and-pasting from one app into MC.
Read full review
Twilio
  • Not necessarily their Email API but their email in general - they are currently in beta for automated email sequences but are still bare bones. Much more work is needed before it can be used mainstream and be able to convert everything to SendGrid.
  • Helping with warming up our dedicated IP for the best-sending score.
  • We seem to hit the promotions folder a decent amount (maybe the IP problem above) and even a lot of their emails hit my spam or promotions folder (whether they be transactional or marketing) which isn't a great sign when trusting an ESP.
  • Transactional email sequences would be a huge plus.
  • Now that Twilio owns SenGrid, having an integrated platform where you could see all our transactional emails together.
  • Better reporting and split reporting between transactional and marketing emails.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Mailchimp
We've had Mailchimp for about ten years, I want to say. I started with the company about four years ago, and I don't see us ever diverting to another source. It's easy for us to use, and we have all our clients already built into the database. I imagine we'll use them for as long as we have the company.
Read full review
Twilio
No answers on this topic
Usability
Mailchimp
Our team use Mailchimp almost every week. Overall UI is simple for anyone to get started with it. The resource library around using particular features is also there, so we don't have to train our team on this product. We also used a lot of other features as well.
Read full review
Twilio
It has the potential to be really cool. However, it feels as if it was created by developers for developers (and I work with developers, yet even for me the instrument was somewhat not easy to use - just read SendGrid's help manuals...) However, if you are into data and your way of thinking is more mathematical rather than lyrical, you'll enjoy this instrument
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Reliability and Availability
Mailchimp
I have, in the 4+ years that I've used Mailchimp, never seen an issue that restricted the use of their software/tools. I don't know of a single time when they're system crashed or went down. I could be wrong, but I honestly haven't experienced any issues with outages, errors or unplanned downtime
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Twilio
No answers on this topic
Performance
Mailchimp
I haven't noticed any slow speeds from Mailchimp or their tools. I think the landing pages load quickly and look nice. The email reports and editing operates smoothly and doesn't take time to load. Additionally, when I use Mailchimp in conjunction with Zapier + Hubspot I don't notice any drag between any of these tools
Read full review
Twilio
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Mailchimp
Website tools were easy to use and understand so a novice can easily meet or exceed their client's expectations! Loved that we were able to totally customize so that the e-mail we created conveyed our client's overall messaging consistent with their branding! Client love that we can provide turnkey services to support their sales and marketing teams!
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Twilio
Twilio SendGrid Email API is everything we want it to be, and we have no reason to look for any other solution. Features and pricing match exactly what we need. As developers for SaaS products, Twilio SendGrid Email API provides a great service. I hope that they stay this way and don't inflate the service with too many marketing oriented features, because there are other tools for that and Twilio SendGrid Email API is a API for sending email first and foremost.
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Implementation Rating
Mailchimp
It's pretty easy to get up and running! There's a slight learning curve on a few things, but once you find where everything is located, you can import your list and send your first email. It really makes our clients feel great to see how quickly they can get that first email out.
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Twilio
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a means to an end and a way to stay within GDPR laws. We may not use it if this wasn't a requirement. Other platforms are better for design or management of contacts, but Mailchimp offers that secure storage of data that is required. I have not tried other bulk mail applications, so am unable to compare these.
Read full review
Twilio
If given a choice between the two, I would pick Mandrill over SendGrid. Mandrill is slightly more expensive but the data & reports that you receive from it make the service worth it. Mandrill lets you export reports over a period of time, view the actual content of emails that you've dispatched and the customer support is way better. If you can bear the slightly higher cost, Mandrill would be a better choice.
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Scalability
Mailchimp
Mailchimp over the years I've used it has grown in leaps and bounds. They have added so many additional features than were previously available. They are truly an all-in-one marketing platform now. If you're a small operation and just want to add email to your marketing efforts, they're there for you. If you're a larger operation and want to start sending postcard advertisements, they can do that. If you'd good with that and want to kick up your marketing by going social, you can do that on their platform. They are truly able to be as small as you need, but also get quite large in whatever it is you'd like to do through their system.
Read full review
Twilio
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Mailchimp
  • Mailchimp has allowed us to communicate effectively with thousands of customers with ease.
  • Mailchimp's use during our second year of business helped us expand our list of brands considerably (almost 30% YTD) because of regular interactions that we've launched.
  • Mailchimp ramp-up time is minimal for new users so I can turn things over to junior staff - saving me time and money.
Read full review
Twilio
  • Our clients experience significant ROI from their web forms - without receipt of forms, many of them would not still be in business.
  • As a solution for clients' sites, we find SendGrid is a fast installation and a 1 stop problem solver, saving us man-hours.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Mailchimp Screenshots

Screenshot of Mailchimp's advanced analytics and reporting tools. These are used to monitor trends, track performance, and get actionable insights that help users to create better campaigns and drive customer engagement.Screenshot of Mailchimp's precise audience segmentation. Its AI simplifies the workflow by generating complex customer segments for highly personalized campaigns.Screenshot of omnichannel marketing. Campaigns can be built across multiple channels, and then managed from one convenient place.Screenshot of marketing automations with the Customer Journey Builder. This is used to reach the right people with the right message at exactly the right time, which helps to drive more repeat business, increase customer retention, and see more orders.Screenshot of Mailchimp's SMS marketing. SMS can be integrated into email, automations, and social campaigns.Screenshot of Mailchimp's AI, used to deliver relevant content faster. It can generate professionally written, on-brand marketing emails with the press of a button. The user only needs to review, edit, and send.