My Experience with iContact vs Mailchimp

Last Updated on August 2, 2024 by Ewen Finser

In this comparison I’ll share my thoughts and decision points around which platform is better and – more specifically – in what situations each makes the most sense.

Before diving in, some quick context here is that I’ve been operating online and using email marketing tools for the last 10+ years in my various businesses (blogging, courses, ecom, services). I’ve tried pretty much every tool, including both iContact and Mailchimp off an on.

For the purposes of this comparison, I’ll reference a few brands I operate + I also set up a vanilla subscription to each platform to explore some of the features I might not typically use in my businesses.

Alright, so let’s get started with some of the high level DIFFERENCES that I noticed…

Main Differences Between iContact and Mailchimp

• iContact has a much more affordable starting price at $9/month (500 subs), while Mailchimp’s cheapest plan starts at $20/month (500 subs) after the $1/month intro first month offer.
• Mailchimp has broader market share with a wider pool of specialists and consultants available, whereas iContact has much smaller market share and awareness.
• Mailchimp is more widely integrated with third-party platforms, whereas iContact has comparatively fewer integrations.
• Mailchimp includes SMS marketing features, whereas iContact exclusively focuses on email marketing
• Mailchimp has more templates and presets (like email invoices), whereas iContact has less.
• Mailchimp offers a completely free (basic) email tier up to 500 subs, whereas iContact has a fully featured 30 day trial.
• iContact offers a unique SpamCheck process before you send every email to ensure higher deliverability, while Mailchimp does not have a similar feature.
• iContact customer support tends to be more responsive and knowledgeable (on all pricing tiers) compared to Mailchimp.

Alright, so let’s dive into some of the key stand out feature considerations to evaluate here.

Standout Features of Mailchimp

These are some of the marquee features of Mailchimp that stand out to me:

• Ubiquity: Mailchimp has massive market share and almost everyone has used them at one point or another. This has many downstream effects like a wider integration base, more marketing / dev talent, and more templates.

• Best in class integrations: Mailchimp has been around so long that it really integrates with pretty much every third-party platform that has an API or Zapier connection. There’s a lot of value in this if you like to fully integrate (or need to) your tech stack.

• Basic Free Version: It’s not much (only up to 500 subs) and doesn’t feature advanced automations, but for those just getting started, having a completely free tier is quite attractive.

• Testing: One of the features I remember even from the early days is their multivariate and A/B testing frameworks being easy to use and almost a byproduct of sending emails (it’s so easy to do). This is an excellent forcing function to gradually increase open rates over time.
• Templates: Mailchimp has 100s of templates to choose from so you don’t have to start from scratch with email design.

• Social Posting: Mailchimp was an early adopted of multichannel social posting from within the email interface. This allows you to gain wider distribution, without a whole lot of additional effort.

Standout Features of iContact

On the other hand, here’s where I see iContact standing out:

• Affordable Pricing: iContact starts at just $9/month for 500 subscribers and escalates in an affordable manner ($14/month for 1,000 subs), making it one of the most affordable email marketing platforms and a really good value for the features provided.

• Deliverability Focus: iContact’s unique spam checking feature (prior to sending each email) helps ensure higher email delivery rates and sets the entire network apart from peers in terms of spam rates.
• Social Media Posting: Similar to Mailchimp, iContact also features a robust social media integration and analytics for dual-purposing email communications across your network. This is really helpful for developing responsive communication strategies and, unlike with Mailchimp, iContact supports more platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn.
• (NEW) AI Content Assistant: iContact is an early adopter of AI supported content (as a tool, not a replacement) to help overcome writer’s block.
• Small Business Friendly: One of the things I love about iContact is their simple two-tier pricing structure (both affordable) are great cost effective options for businesses on a budget. If you know you need to do email marketing and would love the core features of the top tier premium services, iContact is an incredible value.

Integration Capabilities

Integration options may make the difference for you, as they often do for me.

Clearly, Mailchimp has a wider integration network than iContact…

But iContact is no slouch here either with many popular integrations covered…

My personal take is that while Mailchimp does offer more integrations, it’s a clear go / no-go decision if iContact has the ones you need.

Mailchimp tends to excel with more boutique integrations.

Pricing Plans Compared

The other area I wanted to take a closer look at in depth is the pricing plans.

The reality is, capable email marketing services are everywhere these days. Automations come standard. And there really isn’t a WHOLE lot that separates one platform from another. This is where price comes in.

Mailchimp has the more complex and differentiated pricing plan by far:

There’s not only the (above) 4 tier email marketing pricing tiers, but also 4 different types of use cases:

This means that Mailchimp is suitable for a much wider array of business use cases (e.g. SMS, bulk sends / transactional) and even has a functional (basic) free plan to get started with.

But this also means they are a bit “all over the place” and a jack of all trades, master of none.

iContact – on the other hand – feels more tailored for the classic small business use case. Strong automation and data, more suitable for traditional marketing campaigns, newsletters, etc…

This is actually the largest use case and why their comparative cost savings (for paid plans) is significant:

In fact, for the standard business use case, iContact is an excellent budget alternative compared to peers.

Other in-market Competitors

I always like evaluating tools in the wider context of the market. Here are some different flavors of email marketing platforms that often come up in the same conversation as Mailchimp and iContact:

• ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign is a great solution if you want MORE data and segmenting options. It’s also a great option for more high touch sales marketing cycles where a lite CRM is almost what you need.
• Mailerlite: Mailerlite is one of my favorite value platforms, with affordable features, lightweight interface, widespread integrations, and flexible for many business models. When I don’t know what I want to do with a list yet – but still want to start building a list – I start with Mailerlite.
• Beehiiv: If you are specifically interested in the newsletter trend within email marketing, it’s hard to beat Beehiiv in terms of this feature-set. They are laser focused on newsletter creators and are trying to evangelize the “newsletter as a business” model.
• ConvertKit: Similar in some ways to Beehiiv, ConverKit is more broadly focused on creators and storytellers, to include bloggers, newsletter creators, and information / digital product creators. A good option if you want evergreen email automations, a newsletter player, and/or digital product sales tools (courses, downloadables, etc…).
• Aweber: Another incumbent, Aweber was initially disrupted by the wave of automation upstarts like ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit, but has since re-invented itself as an easy to use and affordable business automation email platform. Feels very similar to iContact.
• Constant Contact: Similar to Aweber, a longtime industry name, Constant Contact also revamped about 5 years ago and is a good option to price compare Mailchimp and iContact against.

Who Should go with Mailchimp?

There are a few reasons and use cases where I’d definitely lean towards Mailchimp:

• “Free” is a Necessity: If you really don’t know how you are going to leverage email or just can’t afford ANY additional cost right now, getting started with the Mailchimp free tier is MUCH better than nothing.
• eCommerce Operators: If you are selling physical goods online, Mailchimp’s combination of transactional email templates (and pricing), along with with SMS marketing capabilities make it a slightly strong choice here.

Who Should go with iContact?

On the other hand, I do think iContact is a good fit for:

• Small Businesses: Where your use case is sending campaigns, automations and newsletters to customers or potential customers. If this sounds like you, go with iContact.
• Cost Savings: If you are tired of cutting a huge check to your current email service or don’t directly drive meaningful revenue just yet, go with iContact here.
• Deliverability Optimizers: If you are trying to optimize your open rates, it’s worth trying iContact just for their spam check tools.