From freelancers to small business owners to large scale corporations, everyone is getting into email marketing — and if you’re not, you’re seriously missing out on the chance to connect with and retain a client base. When it comes to deciding which email marketing software is right for your needs, there are three competing players: it’s Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo vs. ActiveCampaign.

To help you decide which email marketing software is right for you, we’ve done a head-to-head comparison, looking at everything from how flexible the email builders are to how easy it is to integrate each into your current marketing tactics. Whether you’re a freelancer working with a client or you’re someone trying to get your own email traffic, this guide will help you decide which email marketing solution is right for you.

Related: This is why email marketing is one of the most underrated skills for freelancers to have right now.

What are Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign all used for?

Mailchimp is probably the most popular email marketing software out there, simply because it’s a big name and it’s one of the oldest tools available. It’s historically been known for its ease of use and accessibility. 

Klaviyo is primarily used for eCommerce businesses, since it easily integrates with eCommerce store builders like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. 

ActiveCampaign is one of the most advanced email marketing tools available, with several features for things like audience segmentation and marketing automation. It’s getting popular among bloggers and service-based entrepreneurs, who rely on lead generation and audience retention for their business.

Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo vs. ActiveCampaign: A Head-to-Head Comparison

When it comes to building the emails themselves, Mailchimp is your simplest option. The straightforward visual drag-and-drop builder and basic email marketing automations make this tool easy for beginners. 

However, this also makes Mailchimp one of the least robust options.

Klaviyo is in the middle.  It has more email builder customization and less automation templates than Mailchimp, so it’s a little harder for complete beginners to start with.

ActiveCampaign has the highest learning curve out of the three, simply because it has so many capabilities. For example, there are over 500 marketing automation “recipes” you can employ, but some functionalities are codependent, meaning that you have to set up one feature before you can use another. 

The user interface of ActiveCampaign is most certainly the most polished and the software has the most features — but that also means ActiveCampaign is the most difficult to get used to.

Flexibility of Design

Each email marketing software has dozens of email templates that serve a variety of purposes: abandoned cart campaigns, holiday specials, and onboarding sequences, to name a few. 

Mailchimp’s free plan has around 10 email templates available, and their paid plans offer around 125. You can use custom code to build email templates when you pay for the Standard plan. You are allowed a single-step automation and do not get to create multi-step conversion funnels, or “customer journeys,” until you pay for the Essentials plan. 

Klaviyo reports having dozens of pre-built, mobile responsive templates that you can edit to match your brand. The email editor even pulls design elements from your website to help you quickly create on-brand emails.

ActiveCampaign has around 125 beautiful mobile-responsive email templates available, with the ability to customize, and all templates work with HTML.

ActiveCampaign’s uniqueness and flexibility is not so much in the email designs themselves, but all the ways you can use them. ActiveCampaign’s functionalities allow you to add dynamic content that’s tailored to each person on your contact list, and predicts the right time for you to send your email, that way your readers get your emails at the right time of the day and they’re reading what is most relevant to them. You can add conditional content, which shows viewers the most relevant content depending on their behavior.

Every part of the ActiveCampaign content creation process is tailored to readers and is driven by real-time user data, which is what makes this software so strong and flexible.

Mailchimp, because it has been around for so long, has over 300 integrations, so you can connect all of your online tools.

However, even though ActiveCampaign has been around for less time, it boasts over 870 integrations. So, you can rest assured that whatever marketing, sales, and customer management solutions you’re using right now will connect nicely with ActiveCampaign.

Klaviyo is famous for integrating well with Shopify. The email marketing software allows you to recapture not just people who abandoned their carts, but also people who browsed on a website without actually putting anything in their cart. You can also create coupon codes that work on a Shopify site, pull product recommendations from your Shopify product listings, and even create a “back in stock” alert for users who were interested in certain products that weren’t available at the time.

ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, is fantastic at deciding which leads are more worth pursuing with their “customer scoring” system. Based on real consumer behavior, a contact’s “score” rises when they engage with an email in a certain way, and decreases when they ignore it or do not follow through and click on a link.

In short, Klaviyo has the upper hand when it comes to eCommerce, while ActiveCampaign helps much more with segmenting your audience based on engagement levels. With that high level of understanding your readers’ behavior, you can better plan out your email marketing campaigns.

Mailchimp has all the standard features of any basic email marketing software, but doesn’t have many special features.

If you’re running an eCommerce business — especially if your store is built with Shopify — it may be in your best interest to go with Klaviyo.

However, if you are focused more on building relationships with the contacts on your email list, and on bringing each contact a personalized experience that makes them more likely to engage with your emails, then ActiveCampaign may be the right email marketing software for you.

If you’re seriously strapped for cash, go with MailChimp for now. When you want to take your business to the next level, though, migrate your contacts to ActiveCampaign. 

Just remember that, like your career, email marketing software is an investment. Don’t go with the cheap option because it is the cheap option. Go with what’s worth it in the long run.