With a lot of companies shifting their marketing campaigns towards utilizing social media platforms nowadays, email marketing appears to be irrelevant and just one of those strategies that can take a backseat to lessen costs. However, when employed wisely and efficiently, email marketing can increase sales, generate new leads, and retain existing customers. So yes, companies should still strongly consider email campaigns as one of their marketing strategies.
Now, if your company is one of those seriously thinking about email marketing, two of your options are Squarespace and Mailchimp. When they started, these two platforms were on different ends of the spectrum, so to speak. But recent developments on both platforms had them having common functionalities. This review will only focus on one of these which is email marketing. Which one is perfect for your email marketing needs? You’ll have to read through the end of this post to find out!
Contents
Squarespace vs Mailchimp Comparison Chart
| Model | Squarespace | Mailchimp |
| Â |  |  |
| Price | Check Price at Squarespace.com | Check Price at Mailchimp.com |
| Automation | Subscriber Activity: Welcome New Subscribers, One Month Check-In, Say Thanks with a Coupon Commerce: Thank You Customers, Reward Big Purchases, Upsell Customers | Customer Journey Builder, Behavior-based automations, Transactional email, Postcards, Date-based automations, RSS-to-email, Scheduling, and other pre-built automation features |
| Contact List Management | Import email lists, create brand new lists | Advanced list segmentation tools |
| Integrations | 60+ third-party integrations and 20+ extensions | 250+ different apps and web services |
| Platforms | Web: Cloud, Windows, & Mac Mobile: iOS & Android | Web: Cloud, Windows, & Mac Mobile: iOS & Android |
| Customer Support | 24/7 Email Support & Live Chat, Help Center, Community Forum | 24/7 Email Support & Live Chat, Help Center |
| Training | Live, Webinars, Documentation | In Person, Webinars, Documentation |
The Basics
Squarespace and Mailchimp are primarily built to cater to companies’ different marketing goals.
Squarespace is a website-building platform that is popular among small business owners, bloggers, and creatives. This popularity basically comes from the fact that it has made website building fun and easy with its ready templates and other functionalities. Since it was founded in 2003, millions of users have created their websites on the platform.
Squarespace has grown to include other products that help their customers grow their presence online. The platform currently offers tools needed for e-commerce, domain hosting, and brand building aside from website building. Squarespace’s most recent offering is Squarespace Email Campaigns and was made to address the email marketing needs of its users.
Meanwhile, it’s obvious just by looking at its name that Mailchimp was originally designed as an email marketing arm of small businesses. The platform provided an affordable and simple option for small business owners back in the day when email marketing tools were expensive and complicated. It still is one of the most affordable and, in fact, has a Free subscription package.
Mailchimp has also continued to update its offers and is now an all-in-one marketing platform much to the delight of its present users. And like Squarespace, it also offers domain hosting and website building.
Ease of Use
Squarespace and Mailchimp both have email templates that are ready to use or to be customized to follow your brand’s design.
Squarespace Email Campaigns was developed to give Squarespace users the chance to employ email marketing without having to leave the platform. Thus, it becomes easy to apply existing designs and content with just a few clicks. Blog posts, logos, images, and buttons can be included in an email newsletter through drag and drop just as one would in the Squarespace website builder.
Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop builder, on the other hand, is one of the features that users loved when the platform was first introduced. Users can also upload and keep their files in the Content Studio that comes with their account. And like Squarespace, Mailchimp also has email templates available and even has basic email templates provided for the Free version.
Email Marketing Automation
Automation makes email marketing easier and both Squarespace and Mailchimp has this for their users.
Squarespace Email Campaigns have 6 basic email automation choices and they are divided to whether your goal is Subscriber Activity or Commerce. This is kind of limited when compared to Mailchimp’s automation options. But since this product is just recently launched, we can hope to see more features added soon.
Mailchimp is, without a doubt, a pro when it comes to email marketing automation. The platform’s visual automation tool, Customer Journey Builder, makes it possible for its users to trigger events based on their customers’ behavior. This makes emails more warm and personal, therefore, retaining more email subscribers in the long run. What’s even great is that basic automation tools like welcome emails and abandoned cart reminders are available even to those on a Free plan.
List Management
Squarespace has limited segmentation and customer tagging features when compared to Mailchimp.
You can say that Squarespace still has a lot of room for improvement in terms of organizing email subscribers. A simple contact list management feature may be okay for small businesses with a very limited number of customers but might be a turnoff to the bigger ones who prefer to group their subscribers into targeted segments.
Meanwhile, Mailchimp has marketing CRM tools that provide businesses with insights based on their audience’s behavior. Behavioral targeting is available which makes sending the right messages to the right people possible. Users can also organize their email subscribers with custom tags.
Verdict
When it comes to email marketing, Squarespace still has a long way to go.
Mailchimp appears to be the better option when it comes to email marketing. Years of being in the industry has made the platform a pro with its powerful email marketing tools. In fact, some of these are not offered by Squarespace and, thus, are not featured in this review. These include A/B testing, lookalike audience finder, and analytics, to name a few.
Squarespace Email Campaigns, on the other hand, has a promising start. Small businesses with sites built on Squarespace may benefit from it as it is easy to add existing content to newsletters. Hopefully, more email marketing tools will be added in the months and years to come.
FAQs
No, Squarespace Email Campaigns plans start at $5/month. Mailchimp has a Free plan for up to 2,000 contacts.
You can export your mailing list and import them into your Squarespace Email Campaigns or Mailchimp account.
Yes, Mailchimp integration is possible with a Business and Commerce Squarespace plan.
An active website is needed to sign up for a Squarespace Email Campaigns account. Should the website’s subscription expire, it is still possible to access the dashboard from a parking page. Mailchimp, on the other hand, does not require a website.
