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Are you looking for Mailchimp alternatives? Small business owners tend to go for the Wix email marketing tool—it’s cheaper and pretty easy to use. But is it the best option for you?
In this article, we’ll look at Wix email marketing vs. Mailchimp side by side, so you know which tool best meets your business needs.
We’ll compare Wix and Mailchimp based on their:
But let’s go ahead and cover the basics first.
People who built their sites with Wix are naturally drawn to its email marketing tool—its free, a limited version is already pre-installed on any Wix website, and it lets you get started right away.
Ascend by Wix is mainly appealing for its intuitive UX. Even if you’ve never created an email campaign in your life, it will be easy to build one as Wix provides useful pointers along the way. Plus, Ascend by Wix goes beyond email—it also offers multiple tools for your SEO, social media, and ad campaigns.
Mailchimp, while a little more complex to use, is one of the most popular email marketing providers. It’s cloud-based and offers everything that Ascend by Wix has, and much more. However, it’s much more expensive, so it may be a better choice for people who are ready to invest their time and money to create more sophisticated email campaigns.
Let’s quickly look at the comparison chart to get a basic sense of how Wix differs from Mailchimp.
| Email Marketing Service | Ascend by Wix | Mailchimp |
| Pricing | Free up to 5,000 emails/month Charges a flat rate
Basic plan: $10/month (paid yearly) Professional plan: $12/month (paid yearly) Unlimited plan: $24.5/month (paid yearly) |
Free up to 10,000 emails/month
Contact-based pricing Paid plans up to 5000 contacts: Paid plans up to 10,000 contacts: |
| Features | Mobile responsive Basic segmentation Basic marketing automation Autosave feature Sync with Gmail and Facebook Messenger Social post campaigns Customizable forms |
Mobile responsive A/B Testing Saveable content blocks Product recommendations Signup Forms & Landing Pages Social posts and ads Advanced Segmentation Marketing automation |
| Customer Service | 24/7 email and callback support | 24/7 Email and Chat Support with some paid plans |
The main difference between these two platforms is that Ascend charges you a flat rate, while Mailchimp offers contact-based pricing, which means that it gets more expensive as your subscriber list grows.
If you’re not willing to commit to a paid plan yet, both Wix and Mailchimp have free plans with limited access to the most basic features you’ll need to create your first campaigns.
You can send 9,500 emails and create five email campaigns per month. See all the features below:
You can send 50,000 emails and create 20 email campaigns per month. See all the features below:
You can send 1,000,000 emails and create an unlimited amount of email campaigns per month. See all the features below:
Check our Wix email pricing guide for more details.
Everything in the free plan plus:
Everything in the Essentials plan plus:
Everything in the Standard plan plus:
Ascend by Wix may be better if you don’t have a big budget and just want to send a few basic email campaigns. Mailchimp is a more expensive tool, but it has far more features to take your email marketing to the next level.
If you’re ready to invest in Mailchimp, you may as well consider Omnisend—it’s just a tad more expensive but offers much more features for ecommerce, such as SMS marketing. Check our detailed Omnisend vs. Mailchimp comparison for more information.
Both email marketing platforms have a drag-and-drop editor where you can customize various templates. They also have an autosave function so you don’t have to worry about losing your carefully edited email campaigns.
Ascend by Wix has about 16 designer-created email templates for multiple types of email campaigns. And while this is a good starting point, Mailchimp is going for the win with over 100 templates and a possibility to code your own template.
Ascend definitely pales in comparison to Mailchimp when it comes to automation. It offers automations based on transactional workflows and lets you send automated welcome emails, but that’s pretty much it.
With Mailchimp, you get about 30 different automation options that allow you to cover your whole marketing funnel. And yet, it still doesn’t beat Omnisend on this one.
Omnisend allows you to add in other channels such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, push notifications, and more. You can even use conditional splits to further tailor your workflow around your customers’ engagement, demographics, and shopping behavior.
While Ascend by Wix doesn’t have A/B testing, Mailchimp lets you test subject lines, CTAs, images, and more.
Ascend by Wix lets you segment your subscribers by their demographics, geography, and behavior. Mailchimp offers all that, plus it enables you to retarget your segmented contacts with ads.
Wix’s features may be good enough if you’re just starting out with your side business. However, if you’re looking to scale your email marketing, Mailchimp may be a better choice. Even though it’s more expensive, it gives you more automations and other features, such as A/B testing.
And if you want to take your email marketing to the next level, you should consider Omnisend, which has A/B testing, targeted segmentation, Facebook sync, and more.
This email marketing platform also lets you offer smart product recommendations based on your customers’ browsing history. Plus, you can automatically integrate discount codes into your campaigns. None of this is possible with Mailchimp or Ascend by Wix. Get started for free here.
With Wix, you won’t have live chat or phone support even if you get their most expensive plan. However, the Unlimited plan offers “VIP support,” meaning that Wix will prioritize your requests over others. Also, they have a callback service and a well-oiled email ticketing system.
Mailchimp offers email support on all their plans. Some of the paid plans also include chat support. If you want to contact them by phone, you’ll have to be on their most expensive Premium plan.
Both Ascend by Wix and Mailchimp have decent customer support. However, if you want to call them yourself, you’ll have to go for the most expensive Mailchimp plan.
In reality, though, neither of these providers’ customer support matches Omnisend’s. It is arguably Omnisend’s strongest aspect, since average response times are roughly 8 minutes. Other providers can often take hours or even days to respond.
Ultimately, Mailchimp may be a wiser choice if you want to get more serious with your email campaigns. It’s a dedicated email service provider that has been here since 2001 and, with time, expanded its platform with more marketing tools. Ascend by Wix, on the other hand, is a relatively new product from a website builder, launched only in 2018.
Want to take your email marketing to the next level? Check out Omnisend. It costs just about the same and, compared to Mailchimp, its segmentation is much better since it’s focused on ecommerce, it offers more sophisticated automation, and it’s easier to use than Mailchimp. Get started for free here.
Get started with Omnisend today & drive sales on autopilot with pre-built automation workflows at Omnisend
