MailerLite and ConvertKit stand out as the top choices if you want a simple yet functional email marketing service.
MailerLite markets itself as the perfect tool for small business owners looking for a comprehensive email marketing platform.
ConvertKit, on the other hand, has positioned itself as a full-featured email service built by creators for creators.
Which platform offers the best features for your business?
In this comprehensive MailerLite vs ConvertKit review, we compare these two platforms’ features, pros, cons, and pricing to help you make an informed decision.
MailerLite vs ConvertKit: A quick overview
MailerLite and ConvertKit are robust email marketing tools known for their intuitive user interfaces and customization options. However, both tools tend to target specific audience segments.
For instance, MailerLite offers a complete, well-rounded product that appeals to business owners. It offers marketing features that can help business owners run successful digital campaigns.
On the other hand, ConvertKit has niche objectives and specifically targets content creators. While its features may closely resemble those of MailerLite, ConvertKit made it clear that it has a specific audience base.
Both email marketing tools have poor ecommerce ratings. MailerLite has a Shopify rating of 2.9/5 stars, while ConvertKit has no rating at the moment. As such, ecommerce brands should find a more reliable tool for their email marketing needs.
Before we compare their features in detail, let’s go over the main distinctions between MailerLite vs ConvertKit side by side to see how the tools compare.
On the surface level, both tools have strikingly similar features. However, there’s more than meets the eye in the true capabilities of these email tools.
Let’s get into an in-depth comparison of these tools in the next section.
MailerLite vs ConvertKit comparison: Feature by feature
We’ll now compare the features of ConvertKit vs MailerLite in detail to help you determine the best email marketing platform for you.
Ease of getting started
We’ll begin our MailerLite vs ConvertKit comparison by examining the ease of getting started on each tool.
Both tools have a straightforward signup process, but the process is more elaborate when signing up with MailerLite.
MailerLite asks for quite a lot of information to fill in and a strict verification process. The process may seem unnecessarily tiresome if you’re still considering other tools.
In contrast, ConvertKit’s signup process is quick and easy and meets the industry standard.
The settings are displayed logically on both tools, making it easy to find and customize to your liking.
MailerLite’s navigation is very user-friendly, with clear instructions on what you need to do next. Just after signing up, a wizard appears to help you finish the setup process.
This feature is invaluable for marketers using the tool for the first time as it allows you to get acquainted with the platform quickly. However, advanced users may not need the extra help to get started.
ConvertKit’s navigation is quite satisfactory; nonetheless, the aspect undermining its efficacy is the menu design. The menu looks different from what other email marketing platforms offer.
It’s also evident that the tool is designed for creators, going by the unusual names given to standard features like Broadcasts and Snippets.
This can be a challenge for marketers who have used other platforms before. However, novice marketers may be fine with this.
ConvertKit comes with unique features that cater to the needs of creators, such as:
- A tip jar for email subscribers to tip creators
- The ability to sell digital products
- A creator network to connect with like-minded colleagues.
In contrast, MailerLite has more common features, such as:
- iPad subscribe app
- Email verifier to optimize email lists and improve deliverability
- Paid newsletter subscriptions
- Website creation tools
MailerLite wins this round. Despite the strict signup process, its navigation is intuitive and guides users on the next steps.
Building an email campaign
This section discusses the ease of building an email campaign using ConvertKit or MailerLite. We’ll evaluate the ease, type, and quality of campaigns you can create with each tool.
Our analysis found that MailerLite has better features for building an email campaign, and here’s why.
MailerLite has an intuitive campaign wizard similar to other email marketing software. The wizard comes with three campaign builders that serve the following functions:
- Drag-and-drop editor: This feature helps create captivating emails by dragging and dropping elements into your design.
- Rich-text editor: You can craft text-based emails to drive your message home.
- Custom HTML editor: With this, you can customize your emails using HTML to achieve your desired design (only available on the highest plan).
While ConvertKit’s email wizard is intuitive and well-organized, it lacks the drag-and-drop capabilities of MailerLite. This makes creating an email campaign difficult since you must do everything from scratch.
Regarding email templates, MailerLite also triumphs over ConvertKit. The tool has an impressive selection of 90 email templates, but you can only access these templates on a paid plan.
In contrast, ConvertKit only comes with 15 templates for different purposes. We also found the templates to be relatively limited compared to what other email marketing platforms provide.
Both tools support personalization but to different degrees. ConvertKit allows you to add merge tags into the email copy but there’s no easy way to do that with the subject line.
Conversely, MailerLite allows you to add personalization elements to your subject lines, email body, and preheaders. This gives you more opportunities to engage subscribers with highly-targeted content.
Further, both tools support various email campaigns. With ConvertKit and MailerLite, you can run the following campaigns:
- Regular email campaigns
- A/B test campaigns for email subject lines
- Automated campaigns
Overall, MailerLite excels in almost all aspects of email building, while ConvertKit stands out as the tool with the most unique features.
ConvertKit has many distinctive features catering to creators, including creating digital product cards and selling them via email.
MailerLite is the clear winner in this round. It comes with many features to help you build email campaigns with ease.
Marketing automation
To drive sales on autopilot, it’s advisable to choose a platform with superior automation capabilities. Let’s find out which tool has more advanced automation capabilities.
Although ConvertKit’s automation is user-friendly, its labels are quite confusing. The tool has both “Sequences” and “Automate” tabs for email automation.
But once you figure out the labels, the automation system is pretty decent, and the interface looks clean and modern.
MailerLite’s automation is also user-friendly, and the interface is easy to navigate. Here you can find 15 automation templates for most usual business cases. However, it doesn’t offer ready-to-go workflows like ConvertKit. The platform only offers the workflow logic, and you’ll have to create the content yourself.
ConvertKit offers users 28 pre-built workflows, but they are all designed for creators. For example, there is a template that offers readers a complimentary chapter of your book before purchasing it.
Lastly, neither of these tools allows you to integrate other marketing channels into the workflow. If you desire this feature, you’ll need to consider an email platform like Omnisend or GetResponse with omnichannel integration capabilities.
ConvertKit wins this round because it offers more automation templates.
Signup forms and landing pages
In this section of our ConvertKit vs MailerLite comparison, we’ll analyze how these tools help create signup forms and landing pages.
MailerLite and ConvertKit have 24 and 9 customizable templates for signup forms, respectively. Both tools have a reliable editor and decent templates for signup forms and landing pages.
MailerLite’s wide variety of signup form templates include:
- Signup popups
- Promotion popups
- Embedded forms
- Half-screen forms
- Narrow bars
After creating and launching your forms, tracking their performance and making adjustments where necessary is crucial. Luckily, both tools offer signup form analytics that allow you to see the number of visitors, subscribers, and conversion rate.
MailerLite allows you to A/B test your forms and see the results in real-time. Convertkit doesn’t have this feature.
Additionally, both tools offer landing page templates and seamless landing page editors. Both platforms provide a decent amount of landing page templates, but Convertkit offers various landing page purposes.
This round ends in a tie. With both platforms, you can achieve very similar things.
Segmentation
When prioritizing audience segmentation, the choice between MailerLite and ConvertKit as email tools becomes crucial.
ConvertKit has many filters and tags for audience segmentation, but it doesn’t offer ready-to-go audiences. This means you’ll have to create your audience segments from scratch.
The segmentation options you can use to build your audience groups with ConvertKit include:
- Subscription date
- Name
- City
- Distance from the city
- Country, and a few more
Similarly, MailerLite has many filters for segmentation, and it also doesn’t offer pre-built segments. The tool allows you to group subscribers based on the following:
- Interests
- Email engagement
- Geography
- Timezone
- Signup form they filled
You can also combine several segments for enhanced targeting.
Although ConvertKit and MailerLite offer decent segmentation options, they still don’t match the capabilities of other top marketing tools.
For instance, MailerLite doesn’t offer segments for onsite behavior, purchase behavior, lifetime value, and other filters for ecommerce.
ConvertKit also lacks segmentation options for customer lifetime value, onsite behavior, and other advanced filters.
These limitations may affect your ability to target and engage your audience effectively.
This round ends in a draw. Both tools need to improve their segmentation.
Analytics
MailerLite vs ConvertKit: Which platform offers better campaign analytics? Let’s find out.
MailerLite has a simple reporting dashboard of the regular campaign metrics, such as:
- Subscriber engagement
- Email campaign performance (opens and clicks)
- Devices
- Popular links
- Click maps
- Opens by location
Integrating MailerLite into your ecommerce store, lets you track ecommerce metrics, such as:
- Number of orders
- Revenue generated by email campaigns
On the ConvertKit platform, we found very similar metrics. Those who sell products can also access the complete transaction report.
In addition, the tool offers advanced deliverability reporting and insights into subscriber engagement on automation workflows.
However, ConvertKit doesn’t offer advanced analytics like heatmaps, real-time analytics, or geolocation tracking. It also doesn’t have an integrated dashboard to get all reports in one place.
Still, when compared to MailerLite, it offers a more comprehensive analytics suite with better reporting capabilities.
ConvertKit wins this round because of its comprehensive reports. Though both tools lack the advanced analytics features that many top email marketing platforms offer, ConvertKit is comparatively better.
Customer support
Analyzing customer support options is crucial when choosing between MailerLite vs ConvertKit. An email platform should have reliable customer support to help you troubleshoot.
ConvertKit offers its paying users 24/7 live chat and email support. Free plan users only get community support.
MailerLite users on the free plan receive email and chat support for the first 30 days. The platform offers unlimited chat support for users on the highest-tiered plan and 24/7 email support for all paid plans.
Additionally, both platforms provide abundant resources to guide users. ConvertKit provides the following:
- Community forum
- Creator university
- Knowledge base
- Educational videos
- Blog
Meanwhile, MailerLite offers:
- YouTube tutorials
- Knowledge base
- MailerLite academy
- Blog
Phone support is missing on both tools, which is a disadvantage when compared to other email marketing platforms.
ConvertKit wins this round by a slight margin because it offers live chat and email support to all paid plan users.
Integrations
To extend your email marketing functionality, choose a tool that supports multiple integrations. Fortunately, both tools excel in this regard.
MailerLite has a robust selection of 140 integrations. Meanwhile, ConvertKit has 100+ integrations plus Zapier to increase your tool’s functionality.
While this is impressive, the tools struggle with integrating ecommerce platforms. Both tools have plugins for ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, but their performance has been somehow limited.
For instance, MailerLite has a rating of 2.7 stars on Shopify and 2.9 on WooCommerce. ConvertKit doesn’t have any rating on Shopify and WooCommerce.
This shows that neither tool is ideal for ecommerce users. If you’re looking for better ecommerce integrations, consider platforms like Privy, Klaviyo, or Omnisend, built specifically for ecommerce businesses.
This round ends in a tie because both tools have a rich selection of possible integrations.
Compatibility with other channels
Regarding compatibility with other marketing channels, the tools could perform better. ConvertKit only supports Facebook custom audiences for Creator Pro plan customers, in addition to email.
Meanwhile, MailerLite only supports Facebook retargeting. However, this feature is only available to Advanced plan users.
Neither tool integrates with other marketing channels like SMS.
This round ends in a tie because both tools have limited compatibility with other marketing channels.
Generative AI tools
Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize email marketing through its ability to optimize content creation and personalization efforts. In this section, we’ll compare MailerLite and ConvertKit to discover which has more advanced generative AI features.
ConvertKit currently lacks any generative AI features on its platform. MailerLite, on the other hand, has an AI writing assistant and an AI subject line generator. However, these features are only available to users on the Advanced plan.
MailerLite wins this round because it has generative AI capabilities while ConvertKit doesn’t.
Price comparison
Make sure you compare the pricing in light of the features offered to make a fair comparison and an informed decision for your business.
Free plans comparison
Both MailerLite and ConvertKit have free plans that allow you to engage up to 1,000 subscribers. Here’s a detailed comparison of their free plans.
- Up to 1,000 subscribers
- Up to 10 landing pages
- Unlimited forms
- Unlimited segmentation
- No newsletter templates
- Limited email automation templates
- 24/7 Email and chat support for 30 days
- Up to 1,000 subscribers
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited email opt-in forms
- Subscriber segmentation
- Custom email templates
- No automation templates
- Community support
Paid plan comparison
In this section, we’ll discuss these email marketing tools’ paid plans. The table below compares the pricing plans of MailerLite vs ConvertKit at different subscriber levels.
This table shows that both platforms offer tiered pricing that depends on the number of subscribers and features you need.
Three different paid plans are available for MailerLite: Growing Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and is suitable for businesses with 100K+ subscribers.
ConvertKit’s paid plans include Creator and Creator Pro, accommodating over 500K subscribers.
MailerLite has more affordable plans at all levels, and if price is a key determinant, then MailerLite would be your preferred choice.
MailerLite vs ConvertKit: Which tool wins?
Before we declare the winner of this MailerLite vs ConvertKit showdown, let’s recap the key features we’ve explored so far.
3.9
3.8
500 subscribers – $10
1,000 subscribers – $15
5,000 subscribers – $39
10,000 subscribers – $73
50,000 subscribers – $330
500 subscribers – $29
1,000 subscribers – $29
5,000 subscribers – $79
10,000 subscribers – $119
50,000 subscribers – $379
100,000 subscribers – $679
- 12,000 email sends
- Unlimited audiences
- 1 website
- Up to 10 landing pages
- Unlimited popup segmentations
- Limited automation features
- Full reporting
- Up to 1,000 subscribers
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited forms
- Unlimited broadcasts
- Audience tagging and segmentation
- Sell digital products and subscriptions
- Community support
- Free recommendations
- It’s beginner-friendly
- The price is affordable
- It’s design is intuitive
- Beautiful email and landing page templates
- It has numerous features to include in your emails and signup forms
- A lot of features for creators
- Templates and automations tailored for creators
- Great support
- Reasonable pricing
- Few integrations with ecommerce platforms
- Strict new account approval process
- Lack of advanced reporting and automation features
- Unusual interface
- No AI tools
- Doesn’t support other marketing channels
- Beautiful email templates
- Affordable pricing
- Excellent email deliverability
- Unique features for creators
- Bloggers
- Solopreneurs
- Non-profit organizations
- Complete email marketing beginners
- Online creators like freelancers, bloggers, and educators
- Ecommerce businesses
- Experienced marketers
- Ecommerce brands
This table sums up our MailerLite vs ConvertKit comparison. We’ve carried out a holistic analysis of the capabilities of both email marketing tools. However, the decision depends on your specific needs and requirements.
MailerLite is an affordable platform well-suited for small businesses seeking a comprehensive email marketing solution. On the other hand, ConvertKit offers creators a seamless way to sell digital products.
Leverage our in-depth MailerLite vs ConvertKit review to discover the best tool to achieve your email marketing objectives.
Read full reviews
Our team strives to be accurate and unbiased in reviewing email tools. However, we recognize that mistakes can happen, and it’s essential for us to stay up to date. If you come across any errors or things that need to be reviewed again, please let us know.
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