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YMLP vs Mailchimp Features.
Not sure if Mailchimp, or YMLP is for you or your website? Let’s get right to the side by side comparison! Check out our full comparison table below where we compare YMLP vs Mailchimp, their features, product details, benefits and drawbacks!
Here is a YMLP vs Mailchimp comparison from their “Free” Tier plans.
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In this post, we are also going to go over some important and common FAQs that often come up when making the YMLP vs Mailchimp comparison.
In the end, we’ll summarize both. Then also give you a better software alternative for your subscriber lists and email marketing campaigns.
YMLP vs Mailchimp FAQs.
Delivery Rates.
As far as delivery rates across the board for YMLP and Mailchimp, they are pretty similar and are more based on what you’re selling and how you craft your emails.
Importing Contacts.
The amount of email volume you can send depends on your list sizes and categorizations. Increasing those are crucial obviously in building up effective newsletter and email campaigns by expanding your reach. If you need to import contacts for example, Mailchimp seems to give you a much harder time than most email marketing and autoresponder services like YMLP.
You would think this should be the opposite, but Mailchimp has their “Audience” feature, which could make separating your lists and contacts quite cumbersome. In addition, each plan limits the number of audiences you can have. In their “free” plan you can only have 1.
High Risk Niches.
If you’re selling anything high risk like: affiliate marketing, making money online, adult niches, gambling, dating sites, firearms, etc. I’d avoid Mailchimp and go with YMLP.
Although, truth be told, most email marketing and autoresponder services don’t really care for those as well, but Mailchimp puts down the ban hammer much faster than YMLP. At least with YMLP you do have some room for recourse.
It’s against Mailchimp’s terms of service, which clearly states which niches are prohibited and it’s heavily enforced. They don’t even allow you to promote their own referral program with their own platform.
Although YMLP is run by marketers and are more forgiving of the use of raw affiliate links. Whereas with MailChimp’s TOS, they are far less forgiving.
So, if you’re in one of those niches, Mailchimp’s obviously a non-starter and you would need to try your luck with YMLP.
Beginner Friendly.
Mailchimp is the default service for beginners. It’s a bit clumsy with lists but it’s pretty easy for those new to list building and newsletters who don’t need all the bells and whistles.
Integration.
Mailchimp’s pretty easy to use and can integrate with most anything. It’s also easy to build templates.
By default, MailChimp is also integrated with many popular social media channels like: Facebook and Instagram. They also offer ecommerce integrations with: Paypal, BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify etc.
So if you use some of them, it’s easy to configure your integrations with MailChimp.
Customer Service.
Most chose YMLP over Mailchimp when it gets down to their paid plans because they are the cheaper option.
However, if you forget to suspend your account with YMLP for any reason, they won’t notify you for lack of use and will continue to bill you.
On the other hand, I’ve read cases where YMLP have closed accounts without telling their clients as well. These closures resulted in their clients losing all their contacts.
In addition, YMLP’s customer support is far from stellar, they’ve even been known to shut down paid accounts after only a few test emails. All without any refunds.
Mailchimp only gives email support in its free plan for the first 30 days.
After that, if you have a free account you cannot ask Mailchimp for any service help whatsoever. You’re on your own after that
Some problems can be partly solved by their FAQ sections, their knowledge base and video manuals, but personal support is unavailable.
For a premium account, support may be provided via chat or e-mail (but there’s no phone support or customer service).
Even in their paid plans, you’ll face some difficulties with Mailchimp’s Customer Support.
Mailchimp’s support team has been increasingly unhelpful over the years and at almost every request they seem to forward the same message like “We’re forwarding this issue to our senior leadership team”, etc.
Mailchimp’s reputation or lack thereof in Customer Support is well known. Simply go through some of the more popular forums like Reddit and Quora. You’ll find first hand reports of Mailchimp’s poor customer service.
Every business is judged by its quality of customer support and sadly Mailchimp’s customer support has some of the worst reviews by former customers I have seen in the email marketing and autoresponder field.
Pricing
Although YMLP free plan is quite limited in the amount of emails, contacts, etc. you can have in their free plan, their paid plans turn out to be cheaper than Mailchimp’s when your volumes increase. Though, not by much.
But, things get not more expensive with Mailchimp’s paid plans, but if you’re not careful, you’ll end up paying much more for that “free plan” of theirs as well.
Mailchimp’s great if you have a small customer base or email list of less than 2000. But, here’s where things start to go astray.
If you’re on a tight budget, “Free” is usually best, but only to start with. Especially, if you have no budget!
However, Mailchimp offers limited features with it’s paid plans and pricing. In fact, they charge, rather than for just subscribed contacts, but the overall number of contacts. If you want to run a newsletter for example, it’s easy to work out your monthly costs.
In addition, you’d have to pay more for a premium plan to send unlimited emails with all their advertised features, like: Segmentations, A/B testing, Marketing Automation, Tagging, etc.
Even though MailChimp is the one of the most popular email marketing services around and certainly one of the oldest of its kind with a huge customer base, they’ve been slowly nickel and diming their customers more and more as the years have gone by.
For example, in their most recent pricing changes, they now charge you for unsubscribed accounts as well. So if you’re not constantly purging your lists, you’ll be forced to pay for subscribers who are no longer on them.
They are also charging for the number of emails in your account, regardless of status and emails sent.
Mailchimp’s limitations on “Forever Free” Plan.
A major reason why Mailchimp is so popular is due to their “Forever Free” plan. But, they have also included some limitations on that free plan as well.
For example, the free plan in MailChimp allows you to send 10,000 emails in a month with 2000 Subscribers. Once you cross the limit, you need to purchase their premium plans and/or get hit with overage charges.
Some of Mailchimp’s best features are not even available in their “Free Forever” plan, including A/B Testing and Custom Branding among other valuable tools that can help you grow your email lists and become more efficient as well.
MailChimp’s most common drawback is it becomes way too expensive as your volume of emails increases.
Personally, I don’t mind paying extra for additional emails sent, etc. but I want to know beforehand, so I can plan and budget for it. Who wants to get stuck with a huge and unexpected bill at the end of the month? I know I don’t. What about you?
YMLP vs Mailchimp a better alternative to both.
Bottom line, as far as the YMLP vs Mailchimp and their “Free” plans are concerned, Mailchimp wins hands down despite all that I’ve said in this post.
YMLP may have many more features included in their free plan than Mailchimp, but because they limit the amount of contacts and emails in their “free” plan, it makes those features practically useless.
Although YMLP’s paid plans are a little cheaper overall than Mailchimp’s for what you get, you are much better off going with the Premium Email Marketing and Newsletter Service Provider I will name below and it’s not Mailchimp.
Use Mailchimp until you know what you’re doing and hit the number for the free plan. You can always re-evaluate your options and migrate later.
I’d also recommend sticking with MailChimp until you hone in on what tools and functionality you’re looking for. Mainly for when you want and are ready to expand. You’ll want to choose a more permanent paid solution.
Of course, Mailchimp has different pricing and features for their paid plans. However with Mailchimp, things get a bit murky and confusing, where if you’re not careful, you’ll end up paying quite a bit more for that so-called “Free Forever” plan than you signed up for.
You should also remember that MailChimp is not designed to be customized.
In the end, when you factor in customer service, which could not only be crucial starting out if you have no experience with email marketing and newsletters, but as you grow, you will certainly need a Provider you can count on.
Besides, I don’t know about you, but, having access to high quality training materials, a knowledgeable and helpful support staff will teach you so much, it’s well worth the minor extra costs
I’ve used MailChimp and have read more than I needed about YMLP to know that Aweber is for me. MailChimp is definitely cheaper, at least at first, but Aweber is far better, especially in the long term.
Aweber is not only much easier to design and schedule campaigns, but it also has better stats, etc.
But, best of all are Aweber’s customer service and their stable pricing structure. You’ll never get a “surprise” charge at the end of the month that can throw off your entire budget, unlike with Mailchimp.
You might want to start with MailChimp, if you really have no budget, but if you’re serious about your business and plan to incorporate email marketing and newsletter as an integral part of it, then you might as well do it right from the beginning and get Aweber.
By starting off with Aweber from the beginning, you’ll not only get the right education and skills for email marketing, list building and newsletter publication and distribution, but you’ll definitely save yourself aggravation and even some (or a lot of) money in the long term.
