Podia and Mailchimp are both tools for managing and automating your email marketing, but while Mailchimp exclusively focuses on email, Podia gives you a wide range of features for running your entire business.

Every creator business is unique, so to help you make the best choice for your situation, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details.

Pricing and plan limits for Podia and Mailchimp

Nearly all email marketing platforms, including Podia and Mailchimp, have different plans and pricing based on the number of email subscribers you have. As you grow your list, you must upgrade to continue contacting your audience members.

Here’s how the plans, prices, and limits work for Podia and Mailchimp.

With Podia, you’ll start by choosing a base plan:

• Free (10% transaction fee): Includes a website, community, one digital download, one online coaching product, and customer messaging
• Mover: $39/month or $33/month when paid annually (5% transaction fee), includes everything on the Free plan plus unlimited digital products, unlimited courses, unlimited coaching, and our simple online course builder
• Shaker: $89/month or $75/month when paid annually, includes everything on the Mover plan plus affiliates and embeddable checkout.

All plans include your first 100 email subscribers for free. If you have more subscribers, you’ll pay an additional fee.

• Up to 100 subscribers: Free
• Up to 500 subscribers: $9/month
• Up to 1500 subscribers: $17/month
• Up to 2500 subscribers: $25/month
• Up to 5000 subscribers: $42/month
• Up to 10000 subscribers: $63/month
• See pricing for more subscribers

There are no email send limits with Podia, so you can send as many messages as you like on all plans.

Mailchimp offers four different base plans and the price of each plan varies depending on the size of your list. Each plan also has email send limits, so if you hope to send lots of messages to your followers, this is something to keep an eye on.

• Free: Up to 500 contacts with 1,000 monthly email sends
• Essentials: Starting at $13/month for 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly email sends
• Standard: Starting at $20/month for 500 contacts and 6,000 monthly email sends
• Premium: Starting at $350/month for 500 contacts with 150,000 monthly email sends

To illustrate, let’s say you have a list with 1,500 subscribers.

With Podia, you could use the free plan with the email add-on and your total cost per month would be $17. You’d also get unlimited email sends to those 1,500 subscribers, and a free website, community, digital download, and coaching product.

With Mailchimp, you wouldn’t be eligible for the free plan and the prices for 1,500 contacts increase significantly:

• Essentials: $26.50 per month, limit of 15,000 monthly email sends
• Standard: $60 per month, limit of 30,000 monthly email sends
• Premium: $350 per month, limit of 150,000 monthly email sends

If you exceed your email limits in a given month, you have to pay overage charges too.

How many audiences or segments can I have?

As your audience grows, you might need a way to send emails to certain people on your list but not others. You can do this by creating different groupings of people from your main list.

With Podia, you can set up segments and tags. Segments are groups of audience members that you can customize based on filters. For example, you can make segments based on when people were last active, which products they have purchased, how much they’ve spent with you, or which tags are associated with them.

Tags are labels you can manually add to audience members based on shared characteristics. You can send a campaign or broadcast email to a specific tag or segment, or to your entire list.

With Mailchimp, you can organize your email list by breaking it into different audiences, then building segments within each audience. You get one audience on the free plan, three audiences on the Essentials plan, five audiences on the Standard plan, and unlimited audiences on the Premium plan.

Email scheduling and automation can make your business run on autopilot

Ever wish you could deliver content, engage with followers, and make sales without having to spend 23 hours a day tied to your computer? Scheduling and automation can help.

Email scheduling allows you to write an email whenever you have time and send it to your audience at a later date. Automations are pre-written emails or campaigns that are sent to audience members whenever they take a certain action, like purchasing a product, opting in to a newsletter, or downloading a lead magnet.

With Podia, you can schedule and send as many broadcasts and campaigns as you like on all plans.

With Mailchimp, you can schedule emails and set up automated campaigns on paid plans.

Will my emails look pretty?

Email is an essential part of communicating with your followers, and the messages you send should look cohesive with your brand.

Both Podia and Mailchimp have an email builder that’s easy to use and templates that can jumpstart your creativity.

Here are some design features you get with Podia:

• Endless design options: You can change the background color, width, vertical padding, typeface, font color, headings, and other styles to match your brand.
• Customize your dividers, buttons, and sections: You can adjust individual sections how you want. Yes, you can set global options, but you can also completely adjust each section to your heart’s content.
• Style the header and footer: Adjust the colors, logos, and links you want to highlight in your header and footer sections.
• Templates: You’ll be able to select a starting pre-made template that we’ve designed for you or choose one of the recent ones you’ve made yourself.

Podia also allows you to view your message in your web browser and edit your design from your mobile device. Sending newsletters on the go just got easier.

Mailchimp offers a library of templates that you can customize, and you can import your own HTML templates on the Standard plan and above.

Making websites and landing pages that feel like yours

In addition to email marketing tools, both Podia and Mailchimp allow you to build a website and landing pages for free. Third-party website tools can get complicated and pricey fast. Connecting your email list with the rest of your online presence keeps things simple.

Podia’s point-and-click website builder is so simple that you can set up your website in an afternoon, with a totally customized style. Podia includes over a dozen pre-designed sections so you know your page heroes, images, grids, testimonials, FAQs, and products look amazing.

There are native integrations for your Google Analytics code, Facebook Pixel, and Pinterest tag so you can track how users are interacting with your website.

Mailchimp also has website functionality where you can pick a theme and set default colors and fonts. You can choose from six different block types and add as many sections as you like to each page. You can also add unlimited pages and customize the header and footer.

Selling products and managing your email marketing go hand in hand

Podia and Mailchimp both give creators the option to sell products.

Podia is best for selling digital products like courses, digital downloads, community memberships, webinars, and coaching sessions. Because Podia products tie directly into your email list, you can easily deliver files, run drip courses, create product waitlists, and send community notifications to your members.

Podia’s all-in-one platform also includes affiliate program management, so you can incentivize happy customers to promote your products for you. You can use PayPal or Stripe as your payment processor with Podia.

Mailchimp is better suited for selling physical products. The Mailchimp ecommerce storefront feature is only available in the USA and the UK, and sellers can make domestic sales and shipments. If you’d like to sell digital products, you’ll need to use an integration or third-party tool like Zapier to connect with another platform. Mailchimp uses Stripe as the payment processor.

Support is one of the most important features of any platform

Even the most tech-savvy creators will have questions along the way, and it’s important to be able to get answers when you need them.

Mailchimp’s free users only get thirty days of email support. After that, you’re on your own and you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to access chat and email support in the future. That said, there are help docs available to all users at any time.

Podia users get expert support, help docs, free training courses, guides, video tutorials, and access to our welcoming Creator Community on all plans. Email support is available to everyone and paid users also get quick chat support.

Good support is key to success, and you should always feel like your platform has your back.

If you’re ready to launch your dream online business, create courses, sell products, manage your email marketing, and so much more with a friendly team who gets it, we’d love to have you.