Which tool is for you? Mailerlite or Convertkit?

An unbiased comparison of two great email marketing services

We have personally used both Convertkit and Mailerlite on different websites, and want to give you our personal opinions about the platforms in comparison.

We care about your success and make that a priority over any potential affiliate commissions we might make. We will look at a few categories: Email broadcasting, opt in designs & customization, workflows & automations, integrations, subscriber management, customer support, and pricing.

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Email Broadcasts

This is the core functionality of any email marketing service, and luckily both of these platforms do this very well.

Each tool will allow you to schedule email broadcasts, have a simple process of creating emails, and have some nice customization options.

Pros for Mailerlite:

More design options on broadcasts, with drag and drop elements that can be customized easily
Built in Emoji support
More advanced split testing options (can split test From Name & Email content, as well as subject line)
Can schedule emails to be sent at a specific time of day FOR EACH subscriber's time zone (8am for New York, and 8am for California for example)
Click map visually shows how your readers are interacting with your emails.

Pros for Convertkit:

Some tests have stated that Convertkit has slightly higher deliverability than Mailerlite
Creating a broadcast is slightly fewer steps than Mailerlite

At the end of the day, I think that Mailerlite wins this category for a better split testing experience, more flexible builder, and the ability to send emails at the same time of day for each subscriber dynamically.

Opt In Designs & Customization

I'll preface this section by saying that it is very common for people to use a separate tool to actually create their opt in forms. For example, you can use Divi's page builder to integrate with both Mailerlite and Convertkit. The benefit here is that your designs will look more uniform when it is all done on the website itself.

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But of course this introduces one. more. tool... which can be a frustration when things don't line up for some reason. So in this comparison I'll assume you are doing all your opt in forms and landing pages using simply your email marketing service.

Pros for Mailerlite:

More landing page templates to start from. And you can fully customize the landing page by dragging and dropping additional elements into the canvas
Ability to search for free images and GIFs from unsplash and giphy directly from the landing page editor
Built-in photo editor where you can crop, add effects, and annotate images

Pros for Convertkit

Convertkit can host your freebies on their servers and makes it easy to send your subscribers directly to what they signed up for.

Mailerlite also wins this category for having almost all the options that Convertkit has, but adds on significant features like direct stock photo integration and a more robust landing page builder.

Workflow & Automations

Automation becomes an important part of an advanced marketer's toolkit, and both of these tools provide great options for automations.

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Pros for Mailerlite:

Can show thumbnails of each of your emails on the workflow canvas for easier identifying your process

Pros for Convertkit:

Can build more advanced workflows
Has built in analytics that shows how many subscribers have completed each step, and where they are currently in the workflow
Has advanced rules that are "if this then that," that work alongside the visual automations.

Convertkit definitely wins in this category - so if you like to geek out and create advanced workflows, Convertkit will give you more tools to work with.

Integrations

Integrations is one of those scary words... but if you are building a blog, you can't ignore it. As your toolset grows, the ability to integrate them together becomes more important (and frustrating at times), so it's good to consider integrations when making your selections:

It doesn't make much sense to do Pros for each service here, so here is the conclusion. Convertkit has more native integrations out of the box, and wins this category.

However both tools integrate with Zapier, which allows you to connect them to pretty much anything under the sun, which can somewhat level the playing field. But native integrations are definitely easier to work with!

Subscriber Management

Both of these tools are great at overall subscriber management. They are both "tag" based, which means you can continually learn more about your subscribers and stack on more "tags" to indicate special actions, like what freebie they signed up for, what they purchased, and whether they are a hot lead or an inactive subscriber.

But Convertkit has some more pros up its sleeve:

A built in Gmail extension that dynamically shows all the tags that someone has whenever they email you (this is really cool and helps your email efficiency a lot!)
An advanced feature where you can track your subscriber's activity on your blog. So if a subscriber reaches a particular page (let's say the sales page or checkout page), you can add a special tag to them, and even launch a new workflow!

So another point for Convertkit :)

Support

Live chat support is a great way to get your questions answered as you are working through a new tool. And as busy moms, it's important that it's available whenever you can steal an hour to work on your blog.

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This is a strong win for Mailerlite, as they offer 24/7 live chat support (even on their free plans). Their team works fully remote, and can spread out the work schedule across all time zones.

Convertkit has live chat "available" 24/7, but they do not have someone available at all times. Especially when working late (like the screenshots are showing at 10:03PM), I can start a chat with Mailerlite in minutes (I've never personally waited more than 10 minutes), while I may wait until the next business day with Convertkit if I reach them after hours.

Pricing

This one is pretty cut and dry to compare:

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You will save a good bit of money using Mailerlite, especially in the beginning when you can take advantage of their free plan.

Final Thoughts

So to recap, Mailerlite won the following categories:

Email Broadcast
Opt in designs & customization
Support
Price

And Convertkit won:

Workflows & Automations
Integrations
Subscriber management

For beginning bloggers, I would recommend you get started with Mailerlite. As you advance, you can always upgrade to Convertkit if you find you need more than Mailerlite has to offer.

And for more advanced bloggers, you will hopefully be able to take this comparison and make the right decision for your own needs and existing tools!

If you'd like to sign up for either of these services, please use our affiliate links below :)

Sign up for Mailerlite

Sign up for Convertkit

PS: Whichever tool you decide to use, I encourage you to go through the entire course. Throughout the lectures Suzi and I both add strategy and advice that can be universally applied to your email marketing :)

Deciding Which Tool is for you…

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