Mailjet vs Mailchimp

If you’re choosing between Mailjet and Mailchimp, you’re likely trying to balance ease of use with powerful email marketing features.

Mailchimp is a household name in email marketing. With its intuitive interface and wide brand recognition, it’s often the first stop for beginners who need a simple way to send newsletters or drip campaigns. It’s got a generous free tier, solid templates, and a reliable experience—but it starts to feel limiting as your email strategy matures.

Mailjet, on the other hand, may not have the same mainstream reputation, but it’s quietly built a loyal base of users who love its focus on deliverability, real-time collaboration, and scalable infrastructure. Mailjet gives you more flexibility with how you manage your teams and emails, especially when you’re working with multiple stakeholders or developers.

If you’re asking: Should I start simple or think ahead to scale?—this comparison will guide you.

Who is Mailjet?

Founded in 2010 and now part of Sinch, Mailjet is an email marketing and transactional email platform built with collaboration and deliverability at its core. It’s especially loved by fast-growing teams, developers, and international brands that need to send large volumes of email reliably.

What makes Mailjet stand out is its real-time team collaboration tools—something you don’t often see in email platforms. Multiple team members can work on the same email in real time (like Google Docs, but for emails). Add that to their high deliverability scores, GDPR compliance by design, and a robust SMTP relay and API offering, and you’ve got a platform that grows with your business.

Key highlights:

• Real-time email editor collaboration
• Transactional and marketing emails in one platform
• Advanced permissions and user roles
• 99.9% uptime SLA
• Strong support for developers via SMTP and API

Who is Mailchimp?

Launched in 2001, Mailchimp has long been the go-to for small businesses looking to get started with email marketing. Its drag-and-drop builder, cheerful branding, and generous free plan have made it accessible and popular.

Mailchimp is especially appealing if you’re a solo entrepreneur, small business owner, or marketer looking for an all-in-one marketing solution. You’ll get email campaigns, a basic CRM, landing pages, social posting tools, and analytics under one roof. But while it’s easy to start, many users hit a wall when trying to scale with Mailchimp’s more advanced features.

Key highlights:

• Easy-to-use interface for beginners
• Pre-built automations and templates
• Basic CRM included
• Free plan with up to 500 contacts
• All-in-one marketing dashboard

How Do Mailjet and Mailchimp Compare?

Let’s break it down by category so you can clearly see how these two platforms stack up. Whether you’re focused on automation, email design, team workflows, or data control, the differences matter.

In the next section, we’ll start with email automation, one of the most important factors in choosing an email service provider.

Automation: Simple Sequences vs. Flexible Journeys

Mailchimp is often praised for making automation easy to use—especially for beginners. You can set up welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and basic sequences with a few clicks. But if you want deeper logic, like multi-branch conditions or complex triggers, you’ll hit limitations fast—unless you’re paying for a higher-tier plan.

Mailjet, on the other hand, offers a more flexible automation engine even on lower-tier plans. You can create custom workflows based on behavior, actions, or dates, and use conditions to guide contacts down different paths. It also combines transactional and marketing email automation in a single workspace—a big win if you’re managing both.

Key automation features compared:

If automation is central to your email strategy—and not just a “nice to have”—Mailjet gives you more flexibility for less money.

Segmentation: Basic Buckets vs. Real-Time Filters

Segmenting your audience is what turns “email blasts” into personalized experiences. Whether you’re filtering by behavior, demographics, engagement, or custom tags, how well your platform handles segmentation makes a big difference.

Mailchimp does this well—especially if you’re just getting started. You can segment based on campaign activity, purchase behavior, or location. But the system uses “audiences” as silos, and contacts cannot be shared across them. That means if someone appears in two audiences, you’re paying for them twice.

Mailjet uses a unified contact list with flexible segmentation rules, allowing you to create dynamic segments based on real-time behavior, custom fields, or event triggers—without duplication. You can also combine multiple conditions using “AND/OR” logic and trigger automations from specific segments.

Mailjet wins on:

• Real-time segmentation updates
• Custom contact properties
• Global suppression lists
• No charge for duplicate contacts across lists

If smart targeting and list hygiene are high on your list, Mailjet’s segmentation tools give you greater control without added cost.

Email Design: Templates That Look the Part

Let’s talk design—because no matter how smart your automation is, your email still needs to look great in the inbox.

Mailchimp offers 100+ templates, a simple drag-and-drop builder, and mobile responsiveness. It’s fast to get started, and their editor has improved over the years. You can even use their Content Optimizer tool on higher plans to suggest design improvements based on best practices.

Mailjet takes a more collaborative approach. Its Email Editor is built for teams, with real-time editing (yes, like Google Docs) and role-based permissions so designers, marketers, and developers can all work together. There are also 100+ templates and responsive design, but with a stronger emphasis on branding and code access for custom layouts.

Key differences in email design:

If you’re collaborating with a team or care deeply about brand consistency, Mailjet gives you more room to customize—and better tools to collaborate.

Landing Pages: Built-In vs. Add-On

Mailchimp includes a drag-and-drop landing page builder on all plans, which makes it easy to spin up simple pages for lead magnets, product launches, or email opt-ins. You get access to basic templates, simple forms, and some tracking options. For small campaigns or solo creators, it’s more than enough.

Mailjet, however, doesn’t offer a native landing page builder—you’ll need to integrate with third-party tools like Unbounce, Instapage, or your own CMS. That’s a downside if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform. But for teams already building custom landing pages outside of their ESP, it’s not a deal-breaker.

Reporting: Depth vs. Simplicity

Both platforms provide clear dashboards for tracking opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and engagement over time.

Mailchimp includes:

• Campaign performance metrics
• Audience insights
• A/B test reports
• Ecommerce tracking on connected stores

Mailjet offers:

• Campaign stats
• Deliverability reports
• Heatmaps
• Engagement by device, geolocation, and more

If you need quick insights and basic performance checks, Mailchimp works well. If you’re looking for deeper deliverability and device breakdowns, Mailjet’s reporting dashboard digs a bit further—especially with real-time analytics and bounce classifications.

Forms: Basic Builders vs. Custom Control

Both tools allow you to create and embed sign-up forms on your website. Mailchimp’s forms are simple and accessible with drag-and-drop editing, but the styling options are somewhat limited unless you know CSS.

Mailjet’s form functionality is more customizable. You can create embedded forms, popups, and modals that feed directly into specific contact lists or segments. Their form builder also supports multi-language options and custom fields for advanced personalization.

CRM: One Built-In, One Bare-Bones

Mailchimp offers basic CRM tools—tags, segments, custom fields, and contact profiles—but it’s not a full-fledged CRM. You’ll need external tools for pipeline management or sales automation.

Mailjet doesn’t market itself as a CRM at all. It focuses strictly on email, relying on integrations for anything CRM-related. That might sound like a drawback, but it actually allows for cleaner connections to real CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Zoho—without data duplication or syncing errors.

If you want built-in CRM tools, Mailchimp will suffice. If you want to connect to a “real” CRM system, Mailjet’s integrations offer better scalability.

Integrations: 950+ vs. 250+

Mailchimp supports about 250 native integrations—including Shopify, WordPress, and Squarespace—but deeper automation often requires Zapier or additional third-party middleware.

Mailjet integrates with over 80 tools natively, but expands to 950+ via its Zapier and Integromat (Make) integrations. It also offers a powerful API and SMTP relay, which gives developers more freedom and control. If you have technical resources or a growing tech stack, Mailjet is much easier to scale with.

Deliverability: The Deciding Factor?

Here’s the honest truth: Mailjet has consistently outperformed Mailchimp in independent deliverability tests. According to EmailToolTester’s 2024 report, Mailjet scored 93.6% compared to Mailchimp’s 91.4%.

Why it matters:

• Higher inbox placement = more opens = more sales
• Mailjet offers dedicated IP options, domain authentication tools, and deliverability monitoring on all paid plans
• Mailchimp’s tools are more limited unless you’re on a Premium plan

AI Features: Equal Promise, Different Execution

Mailchimp recently rolled out AI content tools for subject line suggestions, audience insights, and product recommendations—but most features are only unlocked on the Standard plan or higher.

Mailjet includes some AI content recommendations and predictive send-time optimization on premium tiers, but is still evolving in this space. However, with Mailjet’s collaborative editor and developer tools, many teams find they don’t rely on AI as heavily.

Pricing Breakdown

Mailchimp Pricing (as of 2025):

• Free Plan: Up to 500 contacts, 1,000 monthly emails (no automation)
• Essentials: From $13/month for 500 contacts
• Standard: From $20/month for 500 contacts
• Premium: From $350/month for 10,000+ contacts

Note: Mailchimp charges separately for contacts in multiple lists.

Mailjet Pricing (as of 2025):

• Free Plan: Up to 6,000 emails/month (200/day), unlimited contacts
• Essential: Starts at $15/month for 15,000 emails/month
• Premium: Starts at $25/month for more emails + segmentation + A/B testing
• Custom Plans: For high-volume senders and advanced API access

Mailjet doesn’t charge for duplicate contacts across lists—a major advantage if you manage multiple audiences.

Why Do People Switch from Mailchimp to Mailjet?

• Better deliverability performance
• No duplicate contact charges
• Real-time email collaboration
• Developer-friendly API and SMTP tools
• Simpler pricing at scale
• Built-in transactional email without needing Mandrill

Real Customer Reviews

“Mailchimp is good for small lists, but as soon as we scaled, we hit a paywall every few months.” — G2 User Review

“Mailjet’s collaborative editor changed how our marketing and design teams work together. Plus, no delivery issues ever.” — Capterra Review

“We moved to Mailjet for the API access and have never looked back. Mailchimp was starting to feel like a closed box.” — Software Advice

Final Verdict: Which Should You Choose?

Go with Mailchimp if:

• You’re brand new to email marketing
• You want an all-in-one beginner-friendly tool
• CRM features and drag-and-drop builders are your priority

Go with Mailjet if:

• Deliverability and collaboration matter more
• You have a growing team or developer support
• You want better pricing transparency and fewer contact limitations

FAQ

Does Mailjet offer transactional email support?
Yes, Mailjet supports both marketing and transactional emails out of the box—no need for a separate add-on like Mandrill.

Can I switch from Mailchimp to Mailjet easily?
Yes! Mailjet offers contact import tools, automation builders, and template import options to make migration seamless.

Which is better for collaboration?
Mailjet offers real-time collaborative editing and advanced user roles, making it a clear winner for team workflows.

Which platform is more scalable?
Mailjet tends to scale better with growing email lists and teams due to its pricing model and tech infrastructure.