MailChimp Reviews

The ability to do send emails via RSS.

With RSS campaigns, nobody has to login every morning to send the daily news email to 19K readers.

Pretty much everything, and the RSS campaign is the only reason we stick with MailChimp. The connector to Salesforce is the worst thing about it. Expect your Salesforce storage to increase by 100% after connecting to MailChimp, maybe even more than that. I've seen organizations jump from well under their data limit to 240% of their data limit because of MailChimp. It is actually easier to manually import and export between the two systems than to use the connector.

MailChimp's deliverability is pretty poor, and I don't think they are interested in improving it. Our news is something that our subscribers actually want and they call when they don't receive it. That's not your typical MailChimp customer, and so MailChimp support really doesn't care (the monkey puns don't help.) We routinely see subscribers unsubscribed without their knowledge. MailChimp insists this is because they've forwarded to a friend who has clicked the unsubscribe link. If this happened once a year, I'd believe it. This happens several times a week and I just don't buy it.

MailChimp also chooses not to fail gracefully in some situations that have caused me big problems. For instance, I had a list in Salesforce that I knew was already mostly in MailChimp, but I knew that there were at least a few emails that weren't in MailChimp and I wanted to add them. Because MailChimp does a nice job of not adding any email address twice, I foolishly imported the list into MailChimp. Unfortunately it contained too many emails that MailChimp had decided not to send to (unsubscribes, bounces, etc.) and instead of simply refusing to import all of those, it imported the entire list and shut down our ability to send email. We couldn't send email again until we took out every single subscriber that had been in that import, and this included ones who had been active subscribers with no issues, and were simply duplicated in the list we imported. We had to contact these people individually and ask them to re-subscribe, and they were not impressed. I'll likely hold a grudge about this for a long time.

I've used it for two years.

Setting up MailChimp as a mail marketing tool is easy, however, connecting to Salesforce isn't hard, but it works poorly.

There's an issue with MailChimp at least once a month, and usually we spent three to five hours dealing with it.

The basic MailChimp services scale well. The Salesforce connector, however, scales very, very poorly.

Poor. When they have shut off our ability to send mail, there is no email sent to us. Therefore, we have to login and go to our notifications to find the reason.

Very poor. Expect monkey puns and people who don't care about your problem.

We've used Constant Contact, which also charges by the size of the list rather than total sends. We definitely need a provider that charges that way. We switched because Constant Contact didn't have RSS Campaigns. As I said before, we do like RSS Campaigns and they work most of the time.

It's straightforward, and you don't really have a lot of choices, which can be a good thing.

We did it in-house.

Tough to say. Employees are generally happier, because their email sends are automated through RSS campaigns. Those of us who have to deal with deliverability and connectors are much less happy, and we've had to spend a lot of (expensive) time dealing with it.

This is where MailChimp shines. Our licensing cost is US$120/month, which is very cheap for sending 15k emails per day. As soon as another vendor starts providing RSS campaigns, and not charging $1200/month (low end of other things I've found that do this and connect to Salesforce), we'll probably switch.

• Constant Contact
• Vertical Response
• Predictive Response -- as soon as they launch their RSS campaign feature, we'll seriously consider switching

Don't connect to Salesforce, and expect about 80-90% deliverability.

• Bulk emailing
• Reporting

We do more outbound marketing as this method makes it so much easier to do.

The training materials need work. Also, the on-line info is only useful if you already know what you are doing which generally isn't the case with a new product.

I've used it for eight months.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Very good.

Very good.

There was nothing in use previously.

It was quite straightforward as it has easy to follow instructions.

It was implemented in-house.

No cost to set it up.

No other options were looked at.

• Use it
• I have produced twp training manuals for beginners which I've used with my clients

• Very user friendly
• Drag and drop feature
• Forms

I've used MailChimp for six years.

Customer service of this product is excellent.

Tech support is great and they get back to you fairly fast.

ROI is great, I am able to look at click throughs and robust analytics.

It's very robust and easy to use as well as being very user friendly

• Easy learning curve
• User friendly
• It is easy to make a new design with the basic templates available
• The statistics feature is very important to see if our newsletters are being read

We used to send a lot of emails with Microsoft Outlook but it took too much time. Now, with Mailchimp it is so much easier to send mailings to our members.

At this moment I cannot think of one.

For three years now.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Service is great! I have had some questions about mailings and I used the chat feature. I was always helped in a superb way.

Service is great! I have had some questions about mailings and I used the chat feature. I was always helped in a superb way.

Before I used Yourzine.nl which is also a web based newsletter application. We switched because of the costs as Yourzine was too expensive.

Very out of the box. No need for assistance. If you are familiar with internet and websites, you can start right away.

We did not make use of a vendor.

• Setup costs: none
• Monthly costs: about US$240

No, this product (Mailchimp) was the best option we found.

No need of advice. It works out of the box on a web browser.

The list management and segmentation options are probably our favorite feature. It allows us to manage one list but send campaigns based on segments. It’s a cleaner way to do it compared to Constant Contact where you need to have multiple lists with the same recipient on each which quickly becomes confusing and redundant.

We also love the drag and drop feature in creating and updating email campaigns! It makes it really easy to customize templates on the fly.

We also love that we can be added as managers for our clients. This allows us to login using our own account but toggle back and forth as needed.

The list management is the feature that really helps us function better. We are able to manage ONE list and segment campaigns by clients, city, whether the recipient has been to a presentation, etc.

We use Constant Contact occasionally for clients but the list management tool is not nearly as robust forcing you to add everything in a “tag” field which becomes a dumping ground for information but is the only way to segment a single list. It’s just not as usable.

One of the things that we like about MailChimp is that they are constantly improving. We are very happy with the features they offer and don’t find we are using “work around” solutions. However, if I had to say something, I would say the options for the RSS campaigns could be improved. Images from posts are fussy to add to RSS campaigns and adding excerpts vs. full posts or title only can be confusing.

Westchester Marketing Café LLC has been using MailChimp for over five years. We were first introduced to MailChimp by a client, actually, but found it to be a better solution than VerticalResponse which we were using at the time, so we made the switch.

No, set up was pretty easy. You can copy and paste your list, or import it using a myriad of options. Setting up the template was pretty easy as well.

Setting up the RSS campaign was probably the hardest part. But we ended up not using that feature since we wanted to be able to add other snippets besides just the latest blog article so we now do it manually anyway.

I vaguely recall a problem some years back but we were able to resolve it quickly and without major incident. I don’t even recall what the issue was now.

No. Along with most of our clients we are a small business so the lists we manage are all under 10K and pretty easy to manage.

We have not tried any of the other features such as the 360 integration that relates to eCommerce stuff which is where I would imagine scalability may be an issue.

I really haven’t had to use customer service much but it is only by email which is unfortunate.

Again, I really haven’t had to use technical support but it is only by email which is unfortunate. Anytime I’ve had question I search online and using their Knowledge Base which has not let me down yet. However, if someone was less familiar with HTML/coding I can see where this might be an issue.

We used to use VerticalResponse but made the switch because we found MailChimp to be easier and faster to work with. In particular, the user interface was far more user friendly. They also seemed to be more “cutting edge” and continue to add features and improve usability.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward, although obviously there was a learning curve. We had to familiarize ourselves with the interface, and make decisions about list management (i.e. what data to collect and/or add in the background as we imported our list), etc. However, we found the learning curve to be pretty short.

We implemented it in-house.

We are a service company so ROI is hard to measure. We do, however, get positive results with calls and emails from our newsletter although sometimes this is simply in the form of a “thank you.”

There was no set up cost. We spend $10/month for the option of not including the MailChimp logo on our newsletter and another $1/month for the social integration which gives us information on our readers and their social media profiles.

We have not considered switching but as I mentioned we do occasionally use ConstantContact for clients. Every time we do we feel validated that MailChimp is the way to go!

If you are not already working with a marketing person, it may be a good time to start. Having a strategy for your list, your email campaigns and social integration is key to success. A good team will help you get up and running more quickly and avoid common mistakes in the process.

Whether you are using a service to implement or going it alone, understand how you will be targeting your campaigns so you can properly manage your list. Importing your list properly will help you in the long term.

• List management (compliance)
• Drag and drop email creation
• Chat support

There was no email marketing at our company before MailChimp, so this product allowed us to begin email marketing which is less costly and less resource intensive.

A/B testing on design could be streamlined.

Since 2009, so six years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10.

10/10 - I LOVE the chat support.

It's straightforward.

I did it myself.

We have the $79 per month plan – very affordable!!

Constant Contact is the only one I remember discussing.

Take advantage of their knowledge base and educate yourself on the fundamentals of email marketing.

Broadcasting newsletters and mail management.

Staying in touch with our clients and knowing if our clients are still interested in our services.

List management could be more scalable.

Five Years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Yes - the list management can, at times, be somewhat confusing when using different form factors.

Excellent.

Very good.

No.

Straightforward, but I found the earlier versions to be easier in respect to the building of templates.

We implemented it in-house.