Systeme.io vs Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the email platform in this pair. Its email features page states a delivery rate above 99% for marketing email and for transactional email. The landing-page builder is for opt-ins and campaigns. A reader who already takes payment in a store, and who wants the campaign tools around that store, is on Mailchimp's side of the choice.

Systeme.io is built around the sale. The email marketing page puts the messages in the same account as the funnels and the checkout, and it says you can send unlimited emails to your contacts. The pricing page includes three sales funnels and one course before you pay, and it lists no transaction fee on any plan. A reader whose next step is a sales page, a checkout and a course is on Systeme.io's side.

Automations are the piece Mailchimp holds back. The compare-plans table leaves Marketing Automation Flows off Free, so a multi-step campaign requires a paid plan. Systeme.io includes funnels and email together before you pay, and the paid plans raise the limits.

A short newsletter, still inside Mailchimp's free cap, with no course to host and no checkout to build, can stay where it is. The delivery rate Mailchimp publishes, and the automated flows on its paid plans, are what you pay for once the list grows and payments are handled elsewhere.

In a public email-marketing thread, one person recommended Systeme.io's free account for digital products sold through a funnel. That is a comment about fit. Inbox placement is a separate question, and Mailchimp is the side that publishes a rate.

Switching takes longer than the price difference suggests. The audience sits in one product and the automations sit with it. You bring the list across, then rebuild those automations in the account you keep. Nothing connects the two logins.

When the visitors come from ads

ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams that run paid traffic: pages, checkout, a CRM and attribution on one set of records. A builder can draft a page from a prompt or clone one from a URL. Variants rotate under one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep their learning on that link. Teams that buy it are usually comparing it with Systeme.io, because both build funnels. Mailchimp remains the email platform.

The trial lasts 14 days and requires no credit card. Starter is $97 a month. A 0.5% fee applies to revenue through its own gateways, which are Stripe, NMI, PayPal, Klarna or Authorize.net. Sales sent to an external checkout are outside that fee.

It is newer than the platforms beside it, and independent reviews are scarce enough that you are largely taking the vendor's word until real volume runs through the tests and the checkout. A platform from 2023 has had less time to collect that public record. Pages, same-URL tests and checkout stay on every plan, including the trial.

The free plans are where these two platforms diverge. Mailchimp's help page on pricing plans is the source for its free contact cap, its monthly send cap and its daily send cap. Systeme.io's pricing page gives the free contact cap, the three funnels and the one course, and sign-up requires no credit card. Read the figures in the table, then decide which cap you will hit first.

At 500 contacts, you have to move to a paid Mailchimp plan. The USD pricing page shows Essentials and Standard at that tier, and it shows a 14-day trial on the paid marketing plans. Systeme.io is still unpaid at that list size. The dollar figures sit on the 500-contact line of the table.

Once the list passes Systeme.io's free cap, Startup is the next plan: a higher contact cap, more funnels and more courses. Webinar and Unlimited are the two higher monthly prices on that same page. For a Mailchimp list of 5,000, use the selector on that USD page. The rates this table prints for Mailchimp are the 500-contact ones.

On a paid Mailchimp plan, subscribed, unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts all count toward the total. A list that looks small in the inbox can sit on a higher plan because old unsubscribes are still in the count. Cleaning that audience changes the bill.

Essentials then allows 10 sends for each contact in the month. Standard allows 12. A busy promotional calendar can hit that send limit on Mailchimp. Systeme.io's email page states unlimited sends on every plan, including before you pay.

Systeme.io's Mailchimp alternative page still says Mailchimp caps free accounts at 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails. Mailchimp's help page says otherwise. The first line of the table follows the help page.

If the next sale needs a funnel, a checkout or a course, Systeme.io is the default. The unpaid account includes that stack up to its contact limit. After that, the plan is Startup.

Choose Mailchimp if payments are already handled elsewhere and what you still need is email marketing: the automated flows on its paid plans, and the delivery rate it publishes. A newsletter still inside Mailchimp's free cap can stay on Mailchimp.

My take: I would put a digital product on Systeme.io while the list is still at that size, because the funnel and the course are in that account. I would keep Mailchimp when the store already charges the buyer and the only change is the campaign.