Mailchimp vs HubSpot - Which Marketing Tool is Best for You?

0 min read

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Static and dynamic content editing

Static and dynamic content editing

"A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!"

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Phew! Finally, you've made the decision to invest in a marketing automation platform. You've heard all of the amazing things it can do for your business and you're ready to see results. 

The only problem is, with so many platforms to choose from, where do you start? 

Mailchimp and HubSpot are huge players in today's market but it can be a challenge to know which one to use.

Don't worry, we're here to help! We'll walk you through the basics of choosing the right platform for your business and give you a few tips on how to get started.

So, Mailchimp or HubSpot?

Hubspot and Mailchimp both offer a wide range of features and tools to help businesses grow their online presence and reach their target audiences.

If you're in the market for a marketing platform, you've probably come across Hubspot and Mailchimp. They're both popular choices with a lot to offer businesses of all sizes.

At a quick glance, Hubspot is a comprehensive inbound marketing platform that offers a wide range of features and tools to help businesses grow their online presence and reach their target audiences. Mailchimp is a more affordable option that is easy to use and offers a wide range of templates and integrations.

But which one is the best platform for your business? Well, let's start with the basics...

An Overview of Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform that helps businesses send newsletters, promotional emails, and automated drip campaigns.

It also offers a wide range of integrations with popular business software like Salesforce, Shopify, WordPress, and more. As with HubSpot, Mailchimp provides users with powerful data insights so you can track your campaign's performance and make necessary adjustments. It also offers some features for building landing pages and pop-ups. However, it doesn’t offer quite the same range of features as Hubspot:

- Landing page builder

- Lead capture forms

- Email marketing

- Marketing automation

- And more…

An Introduction to Hubspot

HubSpot is widely recognised as a leading authority in the digital marketing industry. Their blogs, videos and courses are some of the most popular resources available.

Hubspot is an inbound marketing platform that helps businesses grow their online presence and reach their target audiences through a comprehensive suite of tools and features.

With Hubspot, you can create and publish high-quality content, manage your social media channels, track your website's performance, and generate leads through powerful SEO and lead capture forms. HubSpot provides users with powerful data insights so you can track your campaign's performance and make necessary adjustments.

Hubspot is a comprehensive inbound marketing and sales platform that helps businesses attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. It offers a wide range of features, including:

- A drag-and-drop website builder

- SEO tools

- Lead capture forms

- CRM tools

- Email marketing

- Marketing automation

- Sales automation

- And more…

How do Mailchimp and HubSpot differ?

The main difference between Hubspot and Mailchimp is that Hubspot is an all-in-one inbound marketing platform while Mailchimp specialises in email marketing. That said, both platforms offer a wide range of features and tools to help businesses grow their online presence and reach their target audiences effectively. 

We're digging into 5 areas of comparison; pricing, features, ease of use and customer service...

1. Pricing

Mailchimp offers four pricing tiers: Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium.

The Free plan includes up to 2,000 contacts and 10,000 sends per month while the Premium plan starts at $299/month for 500k contacts. 

Mailchimp’s pricing is based on the number of subscribers you have and starts at $9.99/month for up to 2,000 subscribers.

Mailchimp's pricing model is based on the number of contacts in your database. So, if you have a small database, Mailchimp could be a more affordable option for you. As your number of contacts increases, you mind find yourself in the territory of HubSpot pricing, at which point you might want to use other distinguishing features and functionality to help you make your choice.

HubSpot offers three pricing tiers: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. Prices start at $50/month for the Starter plan and increase to $800/month for the Enterprise plan. 

2. Features

Both Hubspot and Mailchimp offer a wide range of features to help businesses grow their online presence and reach their target audiences.

As mentioned, Hubspot offers a wide range of features for inbound marketing, sales, and website building, whereas Mailchimp’s focus is more on email marketing, so it doesn’t quite have the same spectrum of features. Let's take a look at a few comparisons:

Email Marketing - Templates and Design

Mailchimp offers a wide range of customisable templates, including both pre-designed layouts and fully editable options. Categorised into ecommerce, events, holidays, offers, newsletters and more, it's easy to select a relevant template and get started quickly on your email campaign.

screenshot of Mailchimp email templates inside the email campaign builder - choose from newsletter, e-commerce, promotions and more to get started

Users can easily make changes to fonts, colors, and images, creating a unique look that fits their brand. In addition, Mailchimp includes built-in analytics to help users track the success of their campaigns, providing detailed metrics on open rates, click-throughs, and more.

Hubspot also offers many features for email marketing. Like Mailchimp, it has a variety of templates with drag-and-drop editing capabilities, making it easy to create professional emails with minimal effort. It also provides real-time insights on campaign performance so users can quickly see how their content is resonating with subscribers.

Overall, Mailchimp and Hubspot offer similar functionality for email marketing. However, users will likely have different preferences depending on their individual needs; whether you're looking for an easy-to-use tool that helps you get started quickly or an advanced platform with powerful customisation options.

Automation Tools

When it comes to marketing automation, there are many different options available to businesses. Mailchimp is widely lauded for its ease of use and extensive list management features, making it a great choice for small businesses looking to get started with automation. 

It is well-known for its powerful automation features, which allow you to easily create customised workflows that target your audience based on their interests and behaviors. 

Whether you want to send follow-up emails, schedule social media posts, or create custom landing pages, Mailchimp makes it easy to set up automated processes that help drive results.

Hubspot also offers excellent automation tools that can be used to segment contacts, trigger personalised content based on triggers like website visitors or abandoned shopping carts, and track customer engagement over time. 

Hubspot also has many powerful features that make it a strong contender in the world of marketing automation. With its robust CRM capabilities and advanced segmentation tools, Hubspot enables users to personalise their campaigns in a highly targeted way, catering directly to each individual customer's needs.

Overall, both Mailchimp and Hubspot offer great features for automating your marketing efforts, but when it comes down to it, Hubspot's more advanced capabilities make it a clear winner in this area.

Analytics, Insights and Reporting

When looking for a robust analytics, reporting, and insights tool for your marketing campaigns, Mailchimp and Hubspot are two of the most popular options available.

At first glance, Mailchimp and Hubspot may seem quite similar. Both offer comprehensive analytics tools that help marketers gain valuable insights into their efforts, as well as comprehensive reporting capabilities so they can track key metrics over time.

However, there are also some important differences between these two platforms. For one thing, Mailchimp's main focus is on email marketing, whereas Hubspot offers a wider range of tools for website optimisation and social media promotion.

Mailchimp makes your data digestible, so it’s easy to monitor trends, track performance, and create better campaigns as you go. Easily access insights into your open rates, click-throughs, unsubscribes, and more. You can also see how your campaigns compare to industry benchmarks.

Meanwhile, Hubspot is renowned for its advanced reporting features, which give you detailed insights into all aspects of your marketing efforts. Hubspot provides users with a complete view of their marketing performance, including detailed insights into website traffic, leads, customers, and sales. It also includes powerful tools for A/B testing and website optim

HubSpot analytics dashboard showing email newsletter sign up data

Despite these differences, Mailchimp and Hubspot continue to be popular options among marketers looking for robust analytics access and insights into their campaigns.

Website Building & Landing Page Creation

When it comes to building and maintaining a website, Mailchimp is particularly well-known for its simplicity and user-friendly interface. This makes it ideal for those who want an easy way to build basic landing pages and manage their marketing campaigns. 

There's a whole host of templates to get started with meaning there's no design or code experience or expertise needed to create a stunning website that converts.

Mailchimp offers a super-straightforward approach to the landing page creation process, with two options to choose from:

  1. Basic templates - accept payments, add a signup form content block, and promote products or services with content blocks.
  2. Themed templates - designed with placeholder images and text, you can add your own content. 
Mailchimp landing page template customisation through fonts, colours and more

In comparison, HubSpot offers a wider variety of landing page options, allowing users to pick from customisable templates in their landing page builder. HubSpot also allows for A/B testing and allows personalisation with smart rules that pull data from your CRM; create targeted landing pages that are personalised for each individual visitor.

What’s more, HubSpots customer-facing tools improve workflow and customer experience, allowing businesses to integrate help desks and ticketing tools, as well as live chats and bots.

It's certainly more advanced in terms of features and functionality, giving users access to a wide range of tools designed to improve website performance and help boost ROI.

Ultimately, both Mailchimp and Hubspot have their pros and cons, but when comparing Mailchimp to Hubspot in terms of website building and landing page creation, it seems clear that Hubspot's versatility and powerful marketing tools have a competitive edge.

Social Media Integration and Ad Performance

When it comes to social media integration and ad performance, Mailchimp offers a wide range of features that make it easy to manage your social media presence, including bulk scheduling, detailed analytics, and in-depth reporting.

Mailchimp boasts integrations with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, however, beyond those channels, you're not supported through the platform.

Meanwhile, Hubspot is renowned for its powerful ad tracking capabilities, helping businesses to take their campaigns to the next level by understanding exactly which ads are driving the highest ROI.

What's more, it also supports LinkedIn accounts and YouTube channels (Marketing Hub Enterprise only) so this might be a deciding factor depedning on which channels you're active on and want to automate scheduling and reporting for.

HubSpot dashboard screenshot showing social media scheduling

3. Ease of use

Both Hubspot and Mailchimp are relatively easy to use once you've got your head round the various dashboards and functionality.

Mailchimp’s platform is simpler and easier to navigate and is well-known for its easy-to-use interface, making it an ideal choice for newcomers to the world of email marketing.

Hubspot’s platform is more comprehensive and can be overwhelming for beginners, boasting a wide range of powerful features that make it ideal for seasoned marketers who need enhanced functionality.

While Mailchimp is likely best for beginners and those looking for simplicity and straightforward functionality, Hubspot may be a better fit for more experienced users who need advanced features and customisation options.

Overall, both Mailchimp and Hubspot offer great ease of use, making them top choices for businesses looking to grow their online presence. Which one is best depends on your needs as a marketer – but either way, you can't go wrong!

Is HubSpot or Mailchimp better for your business?

The answer to this question depends on your needs and goals. Ultimately, the best marketing platform for your business will depend on your specific needs and budget.

Whilst both platforms offer a free version of the platform, Mailchimp overall is the more affordable option which may be more appealing to a smaller company with less complex requirements. HubSpot, on the other hand, will likely be the better option for companies of a larger scale. 

When to choose Mailchimp:

  • You’re working with a smaller marketing budget
  • Your focus is email marketing and templates are perfect for your users
  • You need a slipstream solution that isn’t overcomplicated

When to choose HubSpot:

  • You’re an enterprise with a large marketing budget 
  • You require advanced customisation to templates and reports
  • You’re looking for a central hub for Marketing, Sales, Operations, Services and Client Relations

In summary, if you're looking for an all-in-one solution with a comprehensive suite of features, then Hubspot may be a good choice for you. However, if you're on a tight budget or only need simple marketing functionality, then Mailchimp could be a better option.

Both Hubspot and Mailchimp offer free trials, so you can try them out before you commit to a paid plan!

Just a heads up, some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, meaning we may make a small commission on any sign-ups or purchases for the tools we recommend.

Mentioned tools

Other resources

View all
Webflow vs Framer: Battle of the Website Platforms (AI Insight)
Webflow vs Framer: Battle of the Website Platforms (AI Insight)
Webflow vs Framer: Battle of the Website Platforms (AI Insight)
Delve into website building platforms, Webflow and Framer, to help you determine which one suits your business needs best. AI, usability, integrations and more.
Delve into website building platforms, Webflow and Framer, to help you determine which one suits your business needs best. AI, usability, integrations and more.
Read now
Ramp VS Salesforce - Which All-in-One Marketing Platform?
Ramp VS Salesforce - Which All-in-One Marketing Platform?
Ramp VS Salesforce - Which All-in-One Marketing Platform?
Looking for an all-in-one marketing platform? This comparison of Ramp and Salesforce covers usability, pricing, features, customer reviews and integrations.
Looking for an all-in-one marketing platform? This comparison of Ramp and Salesforce covers usability, pricing, features, customer reviews and integrations.
Read now
7 Best CRM platforms for Small Businesses in 2023
7 Best CRM platforms for Small Businesses in 2023
7 Best CRM platforms for Small Businesses in 2023
Looking for the best CRM platforms for your small business in 2023? Check out our top 7 with features, pros and cons, to help you make an informed decision.
Looking for the best CRM platforms for your small business in 2023? Check out our top 7 with features, pros and cons, to help you make an informed decision.
Read now

The Key to Boost Your Creative Confidence

Free Guide Download
Thank you! Your email has been received!
Download Report
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Unloc best tools for 2023 downloadable guide cover
Unloc gradient background