Mailchimp

Pros

Easy to setup: I've used Mailchimp in the launch of dozens of brands and digital products. Mailchimp is so easy to setup; I can literally have an account up and running, collecting email addresses within 20 minutes.

Great free option: One of my favorite things about Mailchimp is the fact that you get up to 2,000 contacts for free. Having that as an option (particularly for new businesses) is absolutely critical in making sure you can measure ROI from the platform before you start investing a lot of money.

Easy to use: Mailchimp's forms, email templates, list management, etc. is all so simple. In the rare case you can't do something you want via the Mailchimp admin, it can probably be done via the API. Mailchimp has also done an exceptional job of integrating with 3rd party platforms to make sure you can easily maximize your email collection.

More than just email marketing: In the last few years Mailchimp has started offering additional features outside of email campaigns, like Facebook ads and card mailing services. I personally don't think they're as good as Mailchimp's email service, but I am sure they'll improve over time.

Cons

In the last couple of years Mailchimp has made some changes to their pricing structure that I don't particularly love:

1) Pay as you go features have become more limited compared to their monthly plans.
2) Monthly rates have increased (although that's bound to happen at some point).
3) They now include some social platform contacts in your allotted contacts (i.e. you pay for them like they're email contacts).

As well, Mailchimp automatically increases your bill when you cross over your plan subscriber threshold. I'm not a huge fan of that, but I suppose I prefer it to them just disabling collection of new contacts.

Pros

MailChimp is pretty easy to use as mailing software goes. It's fairly simple to set up, and managing your contact list is fairly intuitive.

The software takes care of all the hard work indentifying emails that don't work or have bounced. You can segment out certain groups and tag different people so that you're able to send emails only to certain people for specific campaigns.

This helps you keep emails targeted. For example, if I want to send a newsletter to only commercial clients, I tag them with the "commercial" tag and then choose to send only to those tagged recipients.

Cons

Two things. Advanced features and pricing.

With advanced features, it was incredibly difficult to setup for sign-up forms. Some of the more advanced features are hidden deep in linking trees and aren't easy to find. I almost always had to rely on Google to tell me where to go and what to do. Compare this to somewhere like MailerLite that's really easy to navigate and find what you're looking for.

As regards to pricing, the free plan for MailChimp is one of the best, allowing up to 2,000 subscribers before you have to pay, but after that they gouge you ridiculously so. Compared to other mailing software, MailChimp is highway robbery.

Pros

I like that I can create email templates and mass email customers while being able to address each one by name in the body of the email with the placeholders such as *|FNAME|*. It makes it seem personal. I like how I am able to see who opens my email and who clicks a link in my email. I like how I can insert buttons in the email in order to make it easy for my customer to begin shopping. Tagging contacts is helpful when I want to email a select people.

I like how I can create leads page or landing pages with forms to get new subscribers.

Cons

For the Android mobile app, when I enter a new contact, sometimes the first and last name does not save or the field clears when I add a tag.

For the free version, I don't like not being able to have more than 1 group.

I don't like how I cannot search specific recipients by name and send them an email.

I like that customers can self-unsubscribe from my emails without having to email me.

Pros

Mail Chimp is very flexible and gives you a wide variety of easily customizable options. I use it for everything from Turkey Drives and fundraiser registrations to Album release contests. I hired 2 new people that have almost no graphic design experience and they were both able to learn the platform in a short time and implement what they knew in a real-world environment. Furthermore. The templates aren't cookie-cutter and are easily customizable. They update someone signs up for your product or offer. Its a low key way to get alot more customers and sell alot more products without texting 100 people1 at a time. in the end its definitely worth trying out

Cons

I wish Mail chimp had a desktop app that was downloadable and cloud-connected. I also wish that you could integrate it with other software like Google Drive or other Cloud-based services.

Pros

Simple, Easy to use user interface for the software wherein I could customize the emails that go out whenever any event takes place on the website. The integrations with other apps was mind blowing as it helped us to minimize our task. The analytics in Mailchimp are a blessing to us as it helps in targeting the right audience at the right time.

Cons

The free tier plan was very less for a company like ours as we wanted to be sure about it completely before finally implementing it. Due to high email bounces, the marketing automation companies are very strict on the bounce rates and they just block your account instantly.