Choosing an alternative to Mailchimp: why switch and which product to choose

Mailchimp is perhaps the most famous and iconic tool in Internet marketing, and email marketing in particular. At the time of its appearance, Chimp made a revolution: at that time there were no inexpensive email marketing tools for small and medium-sized companies. Mailchimp developers managed to create such a product and make it very convenient, which allowed it to gain popularity around the world.



However, today for Russian companies the use of this service is becoming less and less profitable. Today we’ll talk about the difficulties you will encounter when working with Mailchimp, and how to overcome them.

Why today Mailchimp is not suitable for Russian companies

To begin, consider the main disadvantages of Mailchimp from the point of view of Russian business.

English interface

The most obvious: this product is American, created by English-speaking developers and mainly for customers from English-speaking countries. Russia has never been a priority market for Mailchimp; it is not today.



Therefore, it is not necessary to expect the appearance of localization of the interface in Russian. In situations where you need to configure complex conversations, use many different functions of the service, a fully English-language interface can seriously slow down the work.

No Russian language support

From the aforesaid, problem number two also follows: if you encounter any difficulties in the process of interacting with the product, they will also need to be solved in English. Mailchimp does not have Russian-language support; the customer service is located in the United States.



Therefore, it will be necessary not only to conduct correspondence in English, but also to accept that communication will go with a long delay due to the time difference with the USA.

High prices and inconvenient billing

An even more important point is the cost of services. Mailchimp will have to pay in dollars, but that’s half the trouble. Recently, the company began the transformation and moves away from the image of “a convenient and inexpensive email service for small and medium-sized companies.” Now it is a tool for CRM marketing, and the focus is already big business. Accordingly, pricing has changed.



Since the spring of 2019, Mailchimp billing is built not on the basis of sent letters, but according to the number of contacts. Moreover, those users who have unsubscribed from the newsletter are taken into account. Yes, there is a free version, but it is so "slaughtered" in terms of functionality that it is impossible to solve many business problems of even a small company.







Mailchimp Rates



As a result, using the service becomes extremely disadvantageous in a number of cases:

• if you have a small base (up to 5 thousand people);
• if you do not send letters often (for example, only stock alerts are sent);
• if you need a large number of features: testing, message chains, etc. - all this immediately costs from $ 299 per month.

No Russian specifics and compliance with laws

Since Chimp is an American service, it is imprisoned for companies from the USA. This means that you can pay for a service from Russia, in fact, only by credit card. This is not always convenient for domestic companies.



In addition, Mailchimp does not comply with Russian law, in particular, the law on the storage of personal data of Russians in the country (152-FZ). It turns out that if a company with Russian customers uses Mailchimp, then personal data will be stored on servers in the USA - and this violates the law and can in theory lead to trouble.

How to solve these problems: DashaMail email service

Email marketing is an area where local specificity is very important. That is what we were guided by when creating our email marketing service DashaMail . Initially, we wanted to take all the best that is in Mailchimp, including many successful front-end solutions, and develop them, “tailored” to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses in Russia.



That is why we have built a quality support service: all customers receive answers in Russian and very quickly through a chat on the site and a ticket system. You can also call us.



We provide a free trial period for two weeks - this is enough to evaluate all the features of the product, even to do large-scale mailing lists of up to 100 thousand contacts.



What is important: in DashaMail, the basis of tariffing is the size of the address base, and unsubscribed users and contacts for transactional mailings are not taken into account. All system functions are available on all tariff plans; users with a small database, but who are actively working with it, will not need to pay more just because of the unavailability of the right tool in their current tariff.



DashaMail is initially cheaper than Mailchimp - and not only it: you can see the main players in the Russian market, including UniSender, SendPulse, Sendsay, GetResponse, Mailigen.



In addition, unlike foreign services, our product can be paid in any way convenient for business: by credit card, Yandex.Money, Qiwi, from a mobile account and in cash through the terminal. Legal entities can even make a regular bank transfer. And of course, DashaMail is fully consistent with Russian law, including No. 152-FZ.



So if you are thinking about moving with Mailchimp or looking for a decent alternative to this service, test DashaMail, and we will help you achieve all the goals of email marketing.

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