The Battle of Titans: Mad Mimi vs Mailchimp Compared

In today’s review showdown, we pit Mad Mimi against Mailchimp to see which email provider will prevail. Mailchimp is the real OG, having been founded way back in 2001 one and gained a huge user base of over 9 million people. Mad Mini is slightly newer, having kicked off in 2008 and with only 125 000 customers, but may be a better fit than its more famous contender depending on your needs.

Pricing

Let’s kick off this discussion with a look at pricing, a major deciding factor when it comes to any purchase.

Each tool offers a free trial to lure you in. Mad Mimi offers its services for free for only up to 100 contacts, while MailChimp remains free for up to 2000 contacts (if you stay under 12000 emails per month).

Let’s take a look at what happens after you pass the free trial thresholds:

Number of Contacts	Mad Mimi	Mailchimp
500	$10.00/month	Free
2500	$16.00/month	$30.00/month
5000	$27.00/month	$50.00/month
10000	$42.00/month	$75.00/month
350000	$1049.00/month	$1500.00/month

After its free trial is over, Mailchimp immediately becomes much more expensive than Mad Mimi.

What’s more, while Mad Mimi includes all of its features and within its standard monthly plans, Mailchimp requires an additional $199.00/month to get access to its “Pro” features. However, these Pro features are advanced, and unless you are quite a large enterprise, would not be worth the extra spend.

If price is your predominant concern, Mad Mimi comes out as a clear winner.

Features

Email providers in general offer a dazzling world of features. The world of features in Mailchimp and Mad Mimi is no different.

Both Mad Mimi and Mailchimp offer your expected email marketing features in their standard paid monthly plans:

• Autoresponder campaigns, which allow you to automatically send contacts one or a series of email after they subscribe.
• Design and send HTML emails
• Create RSS-to-email campaigns, which allow you to automatically send your database an e-newsletter version of your new blog posts
• Access key statistics about open and click-through rates
• Facebook page signup forms

Despite the similarity between the features offered, Mailchimp’s features are more sophisticated and robust.

From form-building to autoresponder options, to reports and statistics, Mailchimp offers significantly more flexibility and functionality.

Some useful Mailchimp features significantly lacking in Mad Mimi include:

• Robust split testing: Allows you to try out different subject headers/send times to understand what gets your messages opened and clicked through. Mad Mimi does offer something called a ‘campaign comparison’ tool, although it’s not as useful as the well-developed MailChimp split testing functionality.
• Time zone specific delivery: Delivers your campaign according to the recipient’s time zone.
• Email client testing: Allows you to visualize how your email design looks in all major email clients and mobile apps (impressive!)
• Very strong autoresponder sequence: Mailchimp allows you to send automatic emails after a huge variety of triggers, including birthdays, whether a subscriber clicks on a particular link in an e-newsletter and according to which purchases the subscriber makes.

Long story short, although Mad Mini does have all of the basic features that you’d need in email marketing, MailChimp’s offerings are stronger. If you plan on running email marketing for a large e-commerce operation, for example, Mailchimp would be a better option.

Customer Support

Email marketing can get complex and confusing, and having good customer support is a very important in an email marketing provider. You will find yourself reaching out to support quite often, so it’s essential that you understand the pros and cons of each of Mad Mimi’s and MailChimp’s customer support.

Customer Support Feature	Mad Mimi	MailChimp
Chat Support	Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm EST.	24 hours a day during weekdays
Email Support	24 hours, response time less than 1 hour	Within 24 hours
Phone Support	Only upon specific request	Not offered

Firsty, the lack of direct phone support in both of these providers is disappointing, as it can be difficult to communicate technical problems over text.

Secondly, it’s important to note that Mailchimp does not offer customer support to it’s non-paying members, other than spotty email.

That being said, Mailchimp certainly has stronger customer support. Live chat support 24 hrs/day is very attractive. The only situation where Mad Mimi would excel at customer support is for those using its free plan.

Email templates

Email templates allow you to create beautiful emails quickly and easily, with no coding. Mad Mimi and MailChimp approaches templates in slightly different ways.

Mailchimp’s offers hundreds of email templates up for grabs. You can modify these templates, adding even more variety. You can also design from scratch from a blank template.

Mad Mimi takes a different approach. Instead of a myriad of different themes to look through, Mad Mimi offers one basic template which you can modify according to different color schemes.

Both Mad Mimi and Mailchimp provides the ability to upload and insert graphics, such as logos and other branded material.

Mad Mimi is the simpler option. For example, Mad Mimi’s straightforward design process allows you to easily insert your logo.

MailChimp has a huge variety of templates, many which may be too crowded to get your logo in easily.

However, if variety is important, MailChimp is the email provider of choice. Mailchimp also offers more design options than Mad Mimi, such as the ability to add buttons, boxed text and image groups.

If you still don't think either tool is right for you, then there are many other Mailchimp alternatives to consider too.

Conclusion

Mailchimp is a more sophisticated and mature email provider. Although it is significantly more expensive than Mad Mimi, you get what you pay for in terms of customer support and functionality. Mailchimp is ideal for more complex email marketing operations, which will need a large degree of analytics, A/B testing and campaigning. If you are medium to large size business owner in the e-commerce field, you may very well benefit from spending the extra cash on MailChimp. This is especially true if you really want to drill into your email marketing data and want lots of reports to play with.

However, if you are running a slight simpler business with a smaller amount of offerings, Mad Mimi provides great value. This is especially true for larger list sizes.

Finally, for beginner blogs with lists smaller than 2000 contacts, Mailchimp is a good and free option over Mad Mimi.

Give Mad Mimi a try now

Give Mailchimp a try now