Mailgun vs Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform

by Gralio Feb 13, 2025

Mailgun and Mailchimp cater to different email marketing needs. Mailgun excels in transactional email delivery for developers, while Mailchimp offers a wider range of marketing tools for creating and managing campaigns, making it suitable for businesses seeking a more comprehensive solution.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 5421 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 6 hours, 37 minutes of reading.

Mailgun

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Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform

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About

Mailgun is an email service designed for businesses that send lots of emails through their apps and websites. It helps you reliably send things like password resets and shipping notifications, track whether these emails were delivered, and analyze their performance. Mailgun offers simple, pay-as-you-go pricing based on the number of emails you send.

Mailchimp is a popular marketing platform designed to help growing businesses of all sizes. It enables you to create, send, and analyze email and advertising campaigns. With features like pre-designed templates, landing page creation, marketing automation, and data analytics, it provides a comprehensive toolkit to manage your marketing efforts. Mailchimp emphasizes data-driven insights to optimize campaigns and aims to drive sales through personalized customer interactions across multiple channels, including email, social media, and text messages.

Summary

Main difference

Mailgun is a transactional email API service for developers, ideal for sending automated emails like password resets and shipping confirmations. Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform best suited for businesses seeking broader marketing functionalities such as email campaigns, landing pages, and audience segmentation.

Relative strengths of Mailgun (compared to Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform)

More developer-focused with robust APIs and webhooks for custom integrations.
Strong focus on email deliverability and infrastructure.
Cost-effective for high-volume transactional emails.

Relative weaknesses of Mailgun (compared to Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform)

Limited marketing features beyond transactional emails.
Simpler email templates and design options.
Customer support has mixed reviews.

Who should use Mailgun VS. Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform

Mailgun is a reliable email service for businesses sending transactional emails like password resets and shipping notifications. Users praise its easy setup, especially with WordPress, and developer-friendly API. However, some have reported unreliable customer support and occasional deliverability issues. It's best for small to medium businesses, particularly in software and e-commerce, seeking a developer-focused email platform.

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform ideal for growing businesses. Users praise its ease of use and automation features, especially the drag-and-drop email editor and pre-built workflows. However, some find the pricing model expensive as their contact list expands. Consider Mailchimp if your business needs a user-friendly platform with robust email marketing capabilities.

Best for small to medium businesses needing transactional emails.
Ideal for software, e-commerce, and other online businesses.

Best for small to medium-sized businesses.
Suitable for various sectors, including e-commerce, retail, and marketing.

Mailgun and Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Contact Management

Partially supported

Mailgun offers basic contact management like lists and segmentation, but not interaction tracking or relationship building.

Supported

Mailchimp allows organizing contacts, tracking interactions, and building stronger relationships.
Email Marketing

Partially supported

Mailgun supports personalized email marketing, but lacks advanced features found in dedicated platforms.

Supported

Mailchimp allows creating and sending personalized emails using merge tags and dynamic content.
Website Builder

Not supported

Mailgun is an email service and does not offer website building features.

Not supported

Mailchimp does not offer website building but supports creating landing pages.
Drip Campaigns

Partially supported

Mailgun supports drip campaigns through integrations with platforms like Drip and its automation features.

Supported

Mailchimp offers robust drip campaigns that are automated and personalized based on user actions, events, or pre-defined schedules. The platform offers both pre-built and custom workflows to nurture leads and onboard users.
Segmentation Integration

Partially supported

Mailgun supports segmentation via integration with platforms like Ongage.

Supported

Mailchimp provides extensive segmentation tools and allows users to integrate predefined segments with their email marketing campaigns.
Email templates

Supported

Mailgun offers pre-designed and customizable email templates for various marketing needs.

Supported

Mailchimp provides pre-designed, customizable email templates for various marketing purposes.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

-0.56

Rather negative sentiment

-0.16

Neutral sentiment
Customer Service

-0.33

Rather negative sentiment

+0.15

Neutral sentiment
Ease of Use

+0.57

Rather positive sentiment

+0.87

Strongly positive sentiment
Reliability and Performance

+0.43

Rather positive sentiment

+0.6

Rather positive sentiment
Ease of Implementation

+0.25

Neutral sentiment

+0.69

Rather positive sentiment
Scalability

-0.5

Rather negative sentiment

-0.18

Neutral sentiment

Mailgun and Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform Pricing

No data

User sentiment

Rather negative

-0.56

We couldn't find a pricing page for Mailgun.

Mailchimp offers a free plan and three paid plans called Free, Essentials, Standard and Premium. They also offer a Pay As You Go plan for infrequent senders where you can buy email credits as needed. A 15% discount is available for nonprofits and charities.

Plans

User sentiment

Neutral

-0.16

See full Pricing page

Mailgun and Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform review insights

5421 reviews analysed from and

Users love

Easy setup and integration, particularly with WordPress.
Reliable email delivery and tracking with detailed logs.
Developer-friendly API and webhooks for flexible integration.
Free tier allows ample usage for small projects.
Comprehensive documentation and helpful guides.

Easy to use drag-and-drop email editor.
Useful automation features like welcome emails and reminders.
Detailed analytics are helpful for optimizing campaigns.
Integrates well with other systems and platforms.

Users dislike

Unreliable customer support, often slow and unhelpful.
Sudden account suspensions and unexplained service interruptions.
Difficulties with email deliverability, especially to Hotmail and Outlook.
Pricing can be high, especially for dedicated IPs and additional features.
Limited UI functionality and occasional bugs.

Pricing can get expensive as your list grows.
Free plan has limited functionality and customer support.
Advanced features require a paid plan.
Contact management features could be improved.

Mailgun and Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform Ratings

G2

4.2/5

(292)
Capterra

4.3/5

(154)

G2

4.4/5

(2538)
Capterra

4.5/5

(2450)

Company health

Employee growth

No data

4% increase in the last year

Web traffic

No data

11% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

No data

March 2018 - $0

How do Mailchimp's marketing automation features compare to Mailgun's transactional email focus?

Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform focused on broader marketing campaigns, including email newsletters, drip campaigns, and customer journeys. Mailgun, conversely, specializes in transactional emails, such as password resets and shipping notifications, prioritizing reliable delivery and performance tracking for these specific types of messages. While Mailchimp offers some transactional email capabilities, its strength lies in marketing automation, while Mailgun's focus remains squarely on optimizing the delivery and management of transactional emails.

Which platform offers better integration with e-commerce platforms for personalized campaigns?

Mailchimp offers better integration with e-commerce platforms for personalized campaigns. Its product description explicitly emphasizes personalized customer interactions and data-driven insights to optimize campaigns. Furthermore, its features list includes email marketing integration with various e-commerce platforms, enabling automated and personalized email campaigns. Mailgun, while useful for transactional emails, doesn't have the same focus or feature set for personalized e-commerce campaigns.

What are the advantages of Mailgun?

Mailgun's advantages lie in its focus on transactional emails, developer-friendly features, and simple pricing. It excels at sending emails like password resets and shipping notifications reliably through its API and webhooks. Its detailed tracking and logging, along with inbox placement optimization tools, give users greater control over deliverability. The pay-as-you-go model makes it cost-effective, especially for smaller projects starting with the generous free tier.

What are the disadvantages of Mailgun?

Mailgun users report unreliable customer support, sudden account suspensions, and occasional difficulties with email deliverability, especially to Hotmail and Outlook. The pricing can become expensive for dedicated IPs and extra features, and some users find the UI functionality limited with occasional bugs.

Alternatives to Mailgun and Mailchimp All-in-One Marketing Platform

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot Marketing Hub is a comprehensive marketing platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a suite of tools including email marketing, marketing automation, social media management, analytics, and SEO optimization, all within a single platform. This helps businesses streamline their marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and track results. Its focus on inbound marketing and lead generation makes it a popular choice for businesses looking to attract and convert leads into customers. HubSpot Marketing Hub integrates seamlessly with HubSpot's CRM platform for enhanced sales and marketing alignment.

MailerSend

MailerSend is a transactional email service designed to help businesses send important communications like invoices, password resets, and shipping notifications. Its features include a drag-and-drop email builder, pre-made templates, and integrations with popular platforms. MailerSend focuses on reliable delivery at scale and provides tools for managing email lists and analyzing performance. With both an API and user-friendly interface, it caters to technical and non-technical users alike. A free plan is available for smaller senders, and paid plans offer additional features and higher sending volumes.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It helps you create personalized customer journeys across various channels like email, SMS, and ads. You can automate repetitive tasks, track customer behavior, and improve your marketing campaigns with its CRM and sales automation features. ActiveCampaign integrates with over 900 popular business tools and offers a wide range of pre-built templates and automation recipes to streamline your marketing efforts.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a digital marketing platform designed to help small and midsize businesses grow. It offers tools to build email lists, create and send marketing emails, manage social media, and track results. Constant Contact aims to simplify digital marketing with easy-to-use features and integrations with popular business tools. It stands out with its focus on small businesses, providing affordable plans and award-winning customer support.

HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub is a sales software platform designed to help mid-sized and growing businesses streamline and automate their sales processes. It offers tools for managing contacts, tracking deals, sending emails, and analyzing sales performance. Its focus is on providing a user-friendly interface and a suite of integrated tools that work together seamlessly. HubSpot Sales Hub aims to improve sales efficiency, increase productivity, and drive revenue growth by providing a centralized system for managing all aspects of the sales pipeline.

MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing platform designed to help businesses grow. It allows you to create and send email newsletters, build landing pages, and automate your marketing. You can design visually appealing emails and web pages using pre-made templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor. MailerLite also provides tools for segmenting your audience, personalizing content, and tracking campaign performance. Integrations with popular e-commerce and business applications are also available.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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