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Weighing Mailchimp against Klaviyo, or wondering whether the cheaper tool would do the job? Every platform below is capable software. Each comparison sets one of them beside a service that writes and sends the campaigns for you, and says plainly where buying the software alone is the better call.
How it all works
Most teams shopping for a new platform are not short of features. They are short of the hours to use the ones they already pay for. These pages separate those two problems. If the hours are the missing half, how the managed service is scoped is set out in full elsewhere.
1
Usually it is the one you signed up for years ago and never left. Look at what you actually sent on it last quarter, rather than at the feature list that persuaded you originally. Receipts and password resets are a different job on different economics, and they are covered under managed transactional sending.
2
Each comparison covers the subscription at your list size, the add-ons that sit outside it, the hours your team spends inside the editor, and what the list is worth in the months when nobody finds time to send.
3
If you have a marketer with a free day each week, buy the software and keep the difference. If that person does not exist, a better editor will not conjure one. We say which case you are in on every page. Where writing the campaign is the real bottleneck, the content tool comparisons cover that decision.
Six platforms, six different answers to who writes Thursday's email.
VS
Best Known Name
Four Paid Tiers
Experts Cost Extra
Mailchimp is the default choice and a capable editor. Phone and priority support arrive at the Premium tier, and a dedicated customer success manager is reserved for custom plans spending at least 299 dollars a month. Below that line the strategy is yours to invent.
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VS
Built For Ecommerce
Store Data Native
Services Priced Apart
If you run a store and somebody on your team lives in the data, Klaviyo is the better purchase and we will say so. It is built around store behaviour rather than newsletters, and its onboarding and support are sold as separate professional services packages.
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VS
Phone Support Included
Small Business Staple
Send Caps By Tier
Constant Contact puts a person on the phone on every plan, which most of this category does not. Sending is capped at ten times your contact count on the Lite plan, and every thousand sends past the cap adds two dollars to the bill.
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VS
Lowest Sticker Price
Caps On The Cheap Tier
You Still Write It
MailerLite starts at twelve dollars a month, the lowest sticker price of the six, though automations and user seats stay capped until the higher tier. It is the right answer when the constraint is your budget. It is the wrong answer when the constraint is your calendar.
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VS
Deepest Automations
Priced By Contact Tier
Someone Must Build It
ActiveCampaign has the deepest automation builder in this category and prices every plan against a contact tier you select. Pro is 79 dollars a month at a thousand contacts and 375 at ten thousand. All of it is genuinely good, and all of it still needs somebody with a free week to build it.
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VS
Free To 10k Subscribers
Now Called Kit
Built For Creators
ConvertKit is now called Kit, and its free plan carries ten thousand subscribers before you pay anything. Creator runs 33 dollars a month at a thousand subscribers and 116 at ten thousand. The tool was never the thing that stopped the newsletter going out.
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About the service
Managed email marketing is not a licence with our logo on the invoice. We plan the calendar, write the copy, build the templates, cut the segments, send the campaigns and answer for what lands in the inbox. You approve a schedule and read a report. Everything between those two things is ours to carry.
Most email marketing platforms are close enough in features that the comparison stops being useful quite quickly. Where they genuinely differ is what happens as the list grows, because pricing tiers move at different points and the jump is rarely where you expect it. Work out what twenty thousand contacts costs on each before you commit, not what two thousand costs, because migrating a list later is worse than choosing carefully now.
The other axis worth checking is how each treats unengaged contacts. Some charge for every address you hold whether or not it has opened anything in two years, and others let you archive them cheaply. That difference compounds, and it quietly punishes the exact behaviour that keeps deliverability healthy, which is pruning people who never read anything.
Beyond that, the tool is not what determines whether email marketing works for you. Sending something people want to receive is, and that is a content problem rather than a software one. If your open rates are poor, changing vendor will not fix them. If they are good and the bill is what hurts, the tiering questions above are the right ones.
A marketing list punishes weak authentication faster than anything else you send, because the volume is high and the recipients are lukewarm. We set SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the exact domain your campaigns leave from and align them before the first send. Then we read the reports, which is where you find the tool somebody connected last spring and forgot about.
The usual failure of email marketing is not a bad campaign. It is the quarter where nothing went out because the person who writes it had a busier job. We hold a calendar you have approved and we send against it. Consistency is most of what separates a list that earns money from a list that costs you a subscription.
A bigger list is not a better one. We suppress addresses that never open, verify what arrives from your forms, and tell you when a segment should be retired rather than mailed again. Sending less to people who want it beats sending more to everyone, and it is the cheapest deliverability work available.
What does a managed email marketing service actually do?
We run the whole channel rather than renting you a tool. Strategy and calendar, copy, design, segmentation, scheduling, sending, and the deliverability work underneath all of it. You approve a plan and read a report. There is no platform licence to buy, because the sending runs on our own managed stack rather than a seat on somebody else's.
Why do our campaigns land in spam or the promotions tab?
Two causes, and they need different fixes. Authentication is the quick one: if SPF, DKIM and DMARC are not aligned on the domain you send from, a mailbox provider has no reason to trust you. Engagement is the slow one. Providers watch who opens and who deletes, and a list you mail indiscriminately teaches them to filter you. Cleaning the list usually moves the number further than rewriting the subject line.
Should campaigns and receipts send from the same domain?
No, and this is the one piece of setup worth insisting on. Mailbox providers score campaigns and receipts separately, so a promotion that annoys people should never be able to drag your password resets down with it. We keep the sending identities apart. If the receipts need operating too, that is a separate service and the two are built to run alongside each other.
Do we need a dedicated IP?
Almost certainly not. A dedicated IP only earns a reputation if you send enough to keep it warm, and most marketing programmes never do. It is telling that MailerLite offers one only as an Enterprise add-on. A cold dedicated IP performs worse than a well run shared pool, and we will say when your volume genuinely crosses that line.
Who sets up SPF, DKIM and DMARC?
We do, on the exact domain your campaigns leave from, and we align them so the whole chain can be verified. Then we read the DMARC reports, which is the step nearly everyone skips and the one that tells you what is actually sending as you. Once the reports are clean we move the policy from monitoring to enforcement.
Why not just buy the cheapest platform and run it ourselves?
You should, if the tool is the thing you are missing. MailerLite starts at twelve dollars a month and publishes exactly what each tier includes, which is honest value. What no platform includes is somebody deciding what to send, writing it, and answering for whether it earned anything. That is the part we sell, and it is the part that is expensive to hire.
How often will you send?
Usually two to four campaigns a month, with automations running underneath them. Sending more is not the goal and it frequently backfires. A smaller, better targeted send beats a weekly blast to everyone, and it protects the reputation that makes the next one land.
What happens to the list we already have?
We audit it before anything goes out. A list that has sat quiet for a year holds dead addresses and spam traps, and mailing it cold is the fastest way to damage a domain. We verify it, suppress what should never be touched, and reintroduce the rest in stages. Occasionally the honest answer is that most of the list should not be mailed at all, and we would rather say that in week one.
What happens to the platform we already pay for?
You can cancel it. Sending runs on our own managed stack, so there is no seat to keep, no second invoice and no subscription in your name. We export your list, your sending history and your automations first, and we tell you what does not carry across before you cancel anything rather than after.
Do you write the copy, or do we?
We write it. You get a calendar in advance and drafts to approve, with a review cycle that does not need a standing meeting. Teams who want to write their own usually do not need this service, and we would rather establish that in the first conversation than sell you a seat nobody logs into.
What size business is this for?
It pays for itself when email should be a revenue channel and nobody currently owns it. Typically that means a real list, something worth buying more than once, and no marketer with a spare day each week. A company that already employs a good marketer should buy them a good tool instead, and we will tell them so.
What if we already pay for Klaviyo?
Then you own a capable tool for a store, and the honest question is whether anybody is using it. If somebody on your team lives in that data, keep it and run it yourself; we say so on the comparison page. If nobody does, the licence is buying a seat rather than the work, and this service replaces both.
What numbers do you report?
Revenue per campaign, revenue per subscriber, list growth net of unsubscribes, and deliverability broken out by mailbox provider. Open rates became unreliable once mail clients started prefetching images, so we treat them as a diagnostic and never as the headline. When a campaign loses money it appears in the same report as the ones that worked.
Are we locked in?
No. The list, the templates, the automations and the domain authentication live in your account and stay yours. We work month to month on thirty days notice. A service that needs a contract to keep you is telling you something about the service.
What do you need from us to start?
DNS access for the sending domain, access to whatever platform you use now, and an hour with somebody who knows what actually sells. We audit the list and the authentication first, then the first campaign usually goes out inside three weeks.
