Mailchimp vs Omnisend: pricing, features and which to choose

Mailchimp is an active email marketing and automation platform owned by Intuit, which completed its acquisition on November 1, 2021. Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius founded the company in Atlanta in 2001. Intuit reported consideration of approximately $5.7 billion in cash, 10.1 million Intuit shares valued at about $6.3 billion at the then closing price, plus employee RSUs. Mailchimp says 13 million global users and more than 1,500 employees use or support the service, although those are company-published figures. The platform targets small and mid-market businesses with email, SMS, forms, websites, advertising, analytics, ecommerce integrations, and connections to Intuit products. Its broad scope makes it a general-purpose marketing suite rather than a narrowly focused email sender.

A typical Mailchimp workflow begins with importing contacts or building an audience through forms. Users design email campaigns with templates or the editor, segment contacts, schedule sends, or create Marketing Automation Flows with triggers and branching steps. Ecommerce, social, and advertising connections add customer and campaign data, while reporting covers engagement, revenue, and custom metrics on eligible plans. Mailchimp’s pricing table lists more than 300 integrations. SMS is available in selected markets after application approval and requires purchased credit blocks. This workflow supports newsletters, promotions, lead capture, and ecommerce campaigns in one hosted application. The tradeoff is breadth rather than maximum depth: teams receive common email, form, website, advertising, analytics, and automation functions without adopting separate tools for each task.

Mailchimp becomes more expensive as a list grows or retains inactive records, because unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts count toward contact limits. Its AI terms also permit processing inputs and outputs to develop and improve AI models and services, subject to settings and applicable terms. Klaviyo is stronger for ecommerce events, profile segmentation, and revenue-focused journeys, while ActiveCampaign offers deeper automation. Brevo is more budget-oriented for high-volume messaging. Mailchimp remains broader and easier for general SMB campaigns, newsletters, forms, and ecommerce connections, but teams needing advanced behavioral data or highly granular automation may outgrow it. Small and mid-market marketing teams seeking an accessible general-purpose platform should pick Mailchimp.

Omnisend was founded in Lithuania in 2014, growing out of an earlier email product called Soundest, and focuses entirely on online stores. It serves small and mid-sized ecommerce brands that want email, SMS and web push in one tool without the complexity of an enterprise suite. Its main integrations are Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Wix and other store platforms, which sync customers, orders, products and browsing events into Omnisend automatically. That store data powers the core use cases: welcome series, browse and cart abandonment, order confirmations, post-purchase follow-ups, win-back campaigns and product launches. Omnisend competes most directly with Klaviyo, often pitching itself as easier and cheaper.

The product includes a drag-and-drop email builder with ecommerce blocks for products and discounts, prebuilt automation workflows, signup forms, popups and spin-to-win wheels, web push notifications, segmentation on shopping behavior and reporting on sales generated by each campaign. Pro plan users can add SMS through a separate credits subscription. Audience syncs push segments to Facebook Custom Audiences and Google Customer Match for ads. RFM analysis groups customers by how recently, how often and how much they buy, and churn prediction flags customers at risk. Conditional content shows different blocks to different subscribers, and a product recommender inserts items based on past purchases or recently viewed products.

Omnisend's strengths are its ecommerce focus, easy prebuilt automations, a usable free plan, built-in AI writing and segmentation, and lower starting prices than Klaviyo. Its weaknesses are SMS limited to Pro since May 2026, contact-based pricing that grows with your list, fewer advanced analytics than Klaviyo and less fit for non-ecommerce businesses. Klaviyo offers deeper data and predictive analytics for larger brands. Mailchimp suits general small businesses. Brevo is cheaper for high volumes. ActiveCampaign offers more flexible automations for service and B2B companies. Choose Omnisend if you run an online store and want strong email and SMS automation without a steep learning curve.