Mailchimp vs. recapture: Is Recapture a solid Mailchimp alternative?

Is Recapture the Best Mailchimp alternative?

It depends on what you want to do. Mailchimp is one of the oldest email marketing tools around and for years, was considered the easiest to get started with. But that’s changed quite a bit in the last 5 years and you may need something different than a newsletter tool that has decided to get into ecommerce as a side hustle. But is Recapture a viable Mailchimp alternative?

Let’s see how Recapture stacks up against Mailchimp

Mailchimp Pros

  • Super cute mascot
  • Pricing is very startup friendly at lower contact amounts
  • Free tier allows you to send up to 1,000 total emails to 500 contacts in a month
  • Lots of templates available for newsletters, etc

Mailchimp Cons

  • Editor is difficult to learn, not a great user experience
  • Editor is constantly changing. UX is difficult to keep up with.
  • Automations in Mailchimp are more awkward to configure and manage
  • Lowest tiers of automation have limited "actions" (triggers to start a campaign), forcing you to upgrade to get more
  • Customer support is most definitely one of their weakest points, according to existing customers.
  • Features like A/B testing, personalization, and segmentation are not available on every tier
  • Cost quickly adds up and gets expensive fast when adding new contacts. Two price increases in 2022 (+26%) as well.
  • Free tier is now not nearly as helpful to new stores (very restrictive). Free tier significantly reduced in 2023.

Best For

  • Stores that are getting started
  • Low volume sending stores that do an occasional broadcast
  • Stores with fewer than 500 contacts
  • Someone who is already familiar with Mailchimp and wants to use it for ecommerce

Not a Good Fit For

  • Stores who want some sophistication to your reporting and analytics
  • Stores who have a lot of email campaigns to setup, send and manage
  • Stores who want to use segmentation or A/B testing earlier
  • Stores making over $10,000/month
  • Stores who have over 2,000 contacts and want to do more frequent broadcasts or add SMS and see analytics for both, under one roof
  • Stores who want responsive, friendly customer support

Bottom Line on Recapture as Mailchimp Alternative

Mailchimp would be a great fit for stores that are getting started, or stores that don't have a budget for their email marketing while building their customer list. Mailchimp has many templates making promotional emails a snap and their broadcast limits are friendly for starter stores, no doubt. But woe be to any marketer or merchant that needs support--Mailchimp clearly struggles with customer support by a wide margin. Plus, the usability of their editor is far less than you'd get on other platforms.

If you're looking for a solid Mailchimp alternative, Recapture might make sense for your store.

If you're looking for a service that grew up with ecommerce in its blood, has more triggered campaigns, with pre-built actions for things like Abandoned Carts, Post Purchase and Winbacks without having to build these yourself, and without limits on sends or email editor sections, or you just plain expect responsive, friendly customer support--Recapture may be your better alternative to Mailchimp.

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