MailerChoice — An Email Provider Comparison Tool

I’m formally launching MailerChoice — a tool to compare the pricing and features of different email marketing tools like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Omnisend, Flodesk, and Mailerlite — tools to connect with your audience via email and sometimes other methods.

One of the most confusing things about checking the pricing of online email marketing tools (commonly called ESPs — Email Service Providers) is that they all have different features, packages, tiers, and pricing models.

The differences between how each email tool is presented make it super hard to pick an email tool. If you’re just starting a business, you’ve probably heard that email lists are everything. So you think “I’ll just sign up to the cheapest one, or the one with the most generous free tier.”

But signing up for a service based on what it’ll cost you now is dangerous. It can get expensive really fast. Don’t underestimate how annoying, time-consuming, and/or expensive it can be.

A minimalist line drawing of an olive-skinned man, a marketer, looking bewildered at a 1990s-styled computer.

Why It’s Important to Pick the Right Email Service Early

Early on, you might not be fussed about picking the “right” service right away. After all, how hard could it be to switch email services? Surely you just download your contact list and upload it to the new one?

In theory, yes. But in practise, changing email marketing tool is much harder than just setting up contact lists. You set up many more things, including:

Sign-up forms
Landing pages
Automations, like drip email sequences when people sign up, or custom downloads being available from certain forms
Follow-up sequences
Audience lists and segments
Products you’re selling via email
Dashboards
Other apps you might have connected to your service, like Zapier, Shopify, or WordPress

In short, you really get tied into an email service, the more advanced you get at email marketing. So it’s good to make the right decision early.

How Email Service Providers are Similar and Different

Fundamentally, all email service providers share one thing — they let you email your contact list.

All email service providers have some form of design options and templates to make your email pretty. Some of them are much better at this than other, but with most of them, there’s the capability to make really attractive emails with a bit of effort.

What’s interesting is how they’re different. And it’s al little hard to figure out.

Firstly, the pricing structure: Email marketing systems base their pricing on subscribers, contacts (which includes subscribers that unsubscribed, or maybe who are informally acquired through other means), emails sent, or a flat rate.

Because all these metrics are different (though related), it’s hard to compare one exactly with another.

On top of that, the tiers are all slightly different. Say you have 45,000 subscribers. For ConvertKit (as at today’s pricing), you’d pay $266/month on annual pricing for the lowest plan, called “Creator”. On Mailchimp, which prices by contact, you could pay$288.75/month for the “Essentials” plan, and miss out on a few features, or $337.50 for the “Standard” plan. But you might have more than 50,000 contacts — maybe you have 60,000 — which means you jump to the pricing for 75,000 contacts, restricting you to the standard plan at $472.50.

So far, so good. You can do that math. But there are over a dozen popular email marketing tools (and probably many more down the food chain), and doing that analysis over and over — and seeing how it’ll change as your list grows — is laborious.

Secondly, the feature set. Each email marketing tool has a different niche and has a different set of features.

Some of these are simply pricing features, like the existence of a free tier or free trial period (and if so, for how long).

Some features are around the scientific/analytical part of emailing, like A/B testing, conversion optimisation, and automatically optimised delivery for maximum opens.

There are basic features that some providers don’t offer at all, too, e.g. phone support. With some providers, it’s available on the high-end plans. But some don’t offer it at all.

Thirdly, channels. They all let you email your lists. But some marketing tools also let you reach your contacts via SMS, push notifications, and more.

Fourthly, integrations. Some email marketing tools have an advanced API (what is an API?), and some don’t. Those that do might not make it available via the free plan.

Different ESPs integrate with varying degrees of ease with other tools like Shopify, WordPress, Zapier/IFTTT, and more.

And fifthly, scaling. Different providers scale to different amounts. There are some ESPs that only cater to lists of fewer than 50,000 emails. While they have an enterprise plan, it’s safe to say that relatively few people would use them.

These are just some of the ways in which it’s hard to directly compare email marketing tools.

About MailerChoice

I first had the idea for MailerChoice about two years ago. I dawdled on it for years, thinking I had to find a developer, until I decided to build it myself over the last few days.

It’s still a work in progress, but the core of it is there.

MailerChoice screenshot — Screenshot of MailerChoice

You tell it the number of subscribers you have and how that’s changing, plus mark down a few required features (if you have any). Then, it’ll recommend what provider you should use — prioritising the cheapest one.

One cool thing I added is a feature that has MailerChoice figure out the cheapest way for you to scale up through your plans. For example, if you start out with a small list, it’ll suggest you sign up for a cheap plan and then migrate to a more expensive one later.

There’s a lot more coming in MailerChoice. But I’m putting it out there right now for people to test. Try it out and see if the results make sense. If you have questions about any email provider — I’ve tried a bunch, let me know!