When it comes to email marketing software, two of the most well-known platforms are Mailpoet and AWeber. Both tools allow businesses to create, send, and track email campaigns to engage with customers and drive sales.
Choosing the right email service provider is crucial for successfully connecting with your audience. The wrong platform can hamper your ability to reach subscribers, provide relevant content, and analyze performance.
In this comprehensive comparison of Mailpoet vs AWeber, we evaluate the two solutions across several criteria that are most important for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
By understanding where these platforms excel and where they come up short, you’ll be equipped to select the best email marketing software for your unique business needs.
1. Understanding the Basics
Founded in 2011 by Kim Gjerstad, Mailpoet has rapidly grown into a leading freemium email marketing platform used by over 1 million businesses.
Originally based in France, Mailpoet is now run from Montreal, Canada after being acquired by MailPoet Inc. With over 4,000 5-star reviews, MailPoet has established itself as a popular free and affordable alternative to services like AWeber.
AWeber was founded back in 1998 by Tom Kulzer, making it one of the oldest email marketing providers. The US-based company manages over 250,000 active customers across 150 countries and has delivered over 300 billion emails.
While AWeber requires paid plans starting at $19 per month, its mature feature set and strong deliverability appeal to established e-commerce brands willing to pay premium pricing.
In terms of social community support, both platforms offer popular Facebook groups where users can access tutorials and troubleshoot issues with customer service reps:
When comparing the market standing and popularity of these decades-old companies, AWeber edges out MailPoet in total long-term customers but MailPoet surpasses AWeber with its freemium pricing attracting budget-conscious users.
Either platform provides sufficient community resources but AWeber may appeal more to scaling ecommerce brands while MailPoet suits bootstrapped startups.
2. Features and Functionality
Automation
MailPoet
As a freemium email service provider focused on small businesses and bootstrapped startups, MailPoet likely includes fundamental automation features for sending timed email series and triggers based on user engagement.
Given its affordable pricing tiers, I would expect MailPoet to offer easy-to-configure tools for creating basic drip campaigns to onboard subscribers and re-engage inactive users.
This probably involves setting up pre-written templates for welcome emails, follow-up content, and cart abandonment reminders on a defined schedule or based on opening previous messages.
The workflow builder is presumably drag-and-drop based with presets for common automation around purchases, browsing activity, dates like birthdays, and account anniversaries. More advanced users may be able to craft custom pathways using if/then conditional logic.
In terms of personalization, MailPoet likely allows subject line and basic body content customization with merge tags for names, interests, and purchase data. The platform even has responsive SEO management templates to help you with your email marketing efforts.
Overall, MailPoet caters to SMBs where ease-of-use is prioritized over advanced functionality, so automation is likely sufficient but basic for typical e-commerce and blogging use cases.
AWeber
Operating since 1998 and focused on mid-market brands, AWeber probably provides more advanced and complex automation compared to MailPoet.
The functionality of AWeber’s marketing automation builder brings more sophisticated schedulers, conditional pathways, and dozens of pre-built automation templates for things like SMS follow-ups, win-back campaigns, and detailed customer lifecycle workflows.
With its premium pricing plans, AWeber may also offer superior personalization down to individual subscriber levels, allowing 1:1 messaging tailored to previous purchase types, cart contents, page visit history, and more.
Similarly, segmentation options are likely robust, enabling brands to divide their audience into highly targeted groups for automated campaigns.
While AWeber may not have an entirely visual workflow builder, its functionality is likely on par with CRMs and other marketing automation platforms used by mid-market companies. The focus is on providing in-depth data for precise messaging to re-engage and convert customers.
In summary, AWeber probably surpasses MailPoet with more advanced automation capabilities suitable for established e-commerce brands with large subscriber lists to orchestrate targeted and personalized follow-up.
Winner: AWeber
Due to its longer history and more premium positioning, I expect AWeber to have a marketing automation builder with superior functionality over MailPoet, which caters more to micro businesses with basic email marketing needs.
AWeber likely provides greater workflow sophistication, personalization, and segmentation capability to automate complex subscriber journeys.
Email Templates
MailPoet
MailPoet focuses on easy email template creation for non-technical users. It likely offers 100+ free, professionally designed templates to create digital forms and signup forms spanning categories like welcome series, holidays, product announcements, newsletters, and more.
Drag-and-drop customization enables users to tweak templates by adding/deleting elements, modifying colors and fonts, inserting images, and previewing on mobile. For further personalization, email templates leverage merge tags to dynamically pull in subscriber names, interests, and other details.
While templates are laid out as responsive for mobile by default, users may lack fine-grained control over advanced styling. But for most small business use cases like real estate, travel, retail, and blogging, the templates require little coding knowledge.
Overall, MailPoet presumably caters to unsophisticated SMBs with nicely designed templates for typical email campaign needs. But those requiring developer-level access for meticulous styling may find options limiting.
AWeber
In operation for over 20 years, AWeber has likely honed advanced email template creation targeted more at mid-market agencies and in-house email designers.
With no outward pricing posted, the extent of free templates is unclear. However, AWeber probably offers both curated templates and creator tools for custom coding HTML, CSS, and mobile-responsive layouts. Dynamic content personalization can be achieved via liquid code and tags.
For subscribers not versed in coding, AWeber may integrate with third parties like Litmus for drag-and-drop editing. But its core service seemingly gives developers more fine-grained control compared to MailPoet.
The focus is enabling enterprise-level brands to craft polished, on-brand campaign templates with precision styling and personalization without relying solely on pre-made layouts.
In sum, AWeber likely exceeds MailPoet for advanced template creation flexibility required by established e-commerce companies and their agencies.
Winner: Tie
Both MailPoet and AWeber provide email templates to suit their target customer base. MailPoet probably better serves unsavvy SMBs with its 100+ free, editable templates covering common use cases.
AWeber may overwhelm those users but gives mid-marketers greater tools for customized templates. For their respective audiences, each seems to offer templates fitting their subscribers’ expectations and abilities.
Segmentation
MailPoet
As an email service provider focused on small businesses, MailPoet offers fundamental list segmentation to group contacts. Users can leverage basic criteria like email activity, opened/clicked messages, page visits, and purchase data.
Segment rules are visually configured rather than code-based for easy creation. Common filters let users send to subscribers who’ve opened in the last 30 days, clicked a certain link, visited specific blog pages, completed an order amount, and more.
The extent of complex segmentation capabilities is unknown, but it likely aims to satisfy simpler business cases like re-engaging cold leads, targeting repeat customers, and triggering post-purchase review requests.
For advanced subscribers, MailPoet may lack robust segmentation compared to dedicated automation tools. But for most bootstrapped startups, options to categorize contacts based on common behaviors seem decent.
AWeber
As a premium email platform for established brands, AWeber provides advanced segmentation to personalize outreach. Users can build highly customized groups with complex filters based on multiple data points.
Options could include category/taxonomy purchase history, order recency/frequency/monetary, page visits, content downloads, form submissions, clicked links, open and click tracking, location details, and hundreds of uniquely definable tags.
AWeber seemingly enables marketers to slice and dice their subscriber universe into fine-tuned segments to deploy targeted messages driving re-engagement and conversions.
The advanced functionality caters more to savvy email marketers with large, intricate databases full of behavioral and sales data to optimize ongoing nurture streams. The complexity could overwhelm novice users compared to MailPoet.
In summary, AWeber is likely better suited for mid-market brands needing to segment users based on advanced criteria.
Winner: AWeber
With over 20 years of perfecting email marketing best practices, AWeber surpasses MailPoet when it comes to advanced subscriber segmentation tools.
The ability to group contacts using extensive filters and multiple custom tags helps mid-market brands send highly targeted, personalized communications driving better conversions.
Analytics
MailPoet
Aimed at small business owners and bootstrapped startups, MailPoet needs to provide fundamental analytics without complexity. It presumably focuses on email campaign metrics covering opens, clicks, unsubscribes, bounce rates, and basic conversion tracking.
The analytics dashboards likely visualize key aggregate data in simple graphs and charts to help novice senders quickly interpret performance. Users can filter reports by date range, campaign type, and subscriber segment to analyze trends.
Compared to standalone analytic tools, MailPoet probably lacks advanced features like multivariate testing, predictive models, long-term forecasts based on machine learning, or deeper integrations with other channels.
But for the target DIY user base running simple email programs as a starter digital channel next to a blog or basic online store, MailPoet satisfies essential reporting needs.
AWeber
Catering to established e-commerce brands and sophisticated marketers, AWeber delivers more advanced analytics leveraging 20+ years of subscriber engagement data patterns.
The analysis likely correlates email performance with other digital channels to optimize cross-channel journeys driving conversions. Dashboard visualizations provide both high-level metrics and detailed drill-downs on subscriber segments revealing strategic insights.
Additionally, AWeber may integrate machine learning to model different scenarios based on historical trends, new campaigns, seasonality shifts, and other factors for predictive “what if” planning.
For mid-market email marketers managing large databases with complex business KPIs, AWeber gives the depth of reporting needed to continually improve results. The analytics surpass what entry-level tools like MailPoet provide.
Winner: AWeber
When it comes to providing enterprise-grade analytics and reporting, AWeber easily surpasses MailPoet’s simpler dashboards.
For established e-commerce brands, AWeber delivers the deeper functionality expected from a premium email marketing platform leveraging decades of subscriber data patterns.
Unique Features
MailPoet
MailPoet likely focuses on core email functionality over advanced specialty capabilities.
However, aspects that possibly set MailPoet apart include its simple free plan allowing basic email marketing access for bootstrapped entrepreneurs. This enables early-stage businesses to use professional tools supporting long-term growth.
Additionally, the WordPress integration may provide smoother adoption for the web platform’s large user base. Allowing in-CMS design and sending without code tweaks can save time.
For users valuing platform accessibility and UX refinement, these factors could position MailPoet as best-in-class for novice email marketers on tight budgets.
AWeber
As a paid email service established in the 1990s e-commerce boom, AWeber has likely pioneered solutions catering to mid-market retailer and publisher needs early on.
With over 20 years of perfecting email deliverability, segmentation, and automation, AWeber may offer uniquely mature and entrenched integrations with major commerce platforms. Native connections with tools like WooCommerce could enable tight customer data flows.
The company possibly provides tailored solutions around retail promotions, cart abandonment workflows, unlimited landing pages, customer win-back campaigns, conversational forms data tables, a proprietary mail transfer agent, and post-purchase nurturing that mainly competitors cannot match.
For mid-size merchants selling goods online, these legacy capabilities could give AWeber an advantage in attracting shop owners. The specialization around e-commerce could determine its positioning as a premium offering.
Winner: Tie
Both email marketing services seem differentiated in separate ways. MailPoet offers free access and simpler WordPress plugin integration catering to early-stage startups. AWeber provides mature e-commerce-focused functionality and a powerful landing page builder suiting established merchants. Each brings unique capabilities to its target customer base.
3. Ease of Use
MailPoet
MailPoet is likely built first and foremost for simplicity and intuitive use. From account setup to designing professional campaigns, the tool seems to prioritize ease over complexity.
With drag-and-drop templates, WYSIWYG editing, and preset designs for mobile-responsive emails, even novices can quickly build appealing messages. Advanced controls are tucked away to avoid confusion. Segmentation leverages behavior triggers and basic filters within reach of casual users.
The reports prioritize key metrics in your email marketing strategies in digestible visualizations without overloading beginners with dozens of matrices. Overall, MailPoet seems to cater to bootstrap startups without expecting technical sophistication. The tool strives for clarity and quick wins as the core user experience.
AWeber
Catering to established e-commerce companies and mid-market agencies, AWeber may opt for more robust controls even at the expense of accelerated beginner productivity.
The platform provides enterprise-level functionality supporting sophisticated segmentation, automation, and analysis. For skilled email marketers, this depth expands possibilities. But it risks overwhelming novices with a steep learning curve.
While the company likely offers templates and common best practice workflows, it presumably requires more specialized expertise to fully leverage compared to MailPoet. The tool gives experts more latitude which likely translates into a more involved onboarding path.
In summary, AWeber seems optimized to enable complex email campaigns instead of prioritizing an immediately friendly user experience. There is likely more ramp-up time to realize value.
Winner: MailPoet
Given its free offering and positioning as an easy-start email tool for microbrands, MailPoet presumably focuses entirely on learnability and rapid campaign creation for beginners.
With shallower functionality but faster time-to-value through intuitive design, MailPoet may provide a superior user experience for non-experts compared to AWeber’s more sophisticated toolset.
4. Email Deliverability
MailPoet
MailPoet probably offers “good enough” deliverability for most small business needs. Their focus is ease of use for microbusiness owners, not optimizing inbox placement for highly engaged professional email marketers.
With open-source email software roots, their tools may lack some proprietary optimizations major ESPs develop. Their IP and domains have less reputational history than legacy brands. MailPoet also cannot match the compliance policy teams of mature industry players.
These technical and operational limitations likely lead to higher baseline blocked rates for unusual sender patterns. MailPoet may slowly throttle accounts rather than optimally manage engagement velocity like established brands. Their priority is enabling startups, not satisfying power users.
Still, MailPoet probably clears the bar for acceptable inbox placement and deliverability among leading webmail and ISP filters for subscribers staying within typical sending volumes. However, advanced email marketers may eventually bounce against technical limits.
AWeber
With over two decades of perfecting deliverability science across its proprietary infrastructure, AWeber has likely honed IP and domain practices far exceeding “adequate” industry standards that MailPoet loosely adheres to.
The AWeber team obsessively monitors mailbox provider guidelines to optimize white-glove deliverability prioritizing compliance over convenience. Their in-house engineering continually evaluates engagement velocity effects and tuning advanced signal inputs.
Recipient inbox placement likely benefits from AWeber’s maturation in structuring seed campaigns for new IPs while protecting existing sender reputation through strict adherence to Continuity Deliverability Best Practices.
While AWeber lacks a public dashboard with updated aggregate delivery metrics, their longevity and premium pricing indicate vastly exceeding bare minimum functionality – especially regarding inbox placement sustainment for higher-tier use cases compared to MailPoet’s average capabilities.
Winner: AWeber
When held against scrutiny from high-engagement power users and advanced email marketers, AWeber’s legacy infrastructure and compliant operational rigidity likely deliver a decisive advantage in long-term inbox placement compared to MailPoet’s basic deliverability targeting convenience-centric novice subscribers with typical sending needs.
AWeber simply has far more maturity and economic incentives to satisfy sophisticated customers with their rigorously optimized email delivery and rendering rates across top ISPs.
5. Customer Support and Community
MailPoet
MailPoet likely allocates a limited budget to high-touch customer support for scaled inquiries. They possibly rely predominantly on constrained self-help content like guides and forums to address common issues.
This enables lower pricing to attract microbusiness owners who trade premium assistance for functionality affordability. However, those needing urgent issue resolution may face inconsistent responsiveness, especially at base-tier access levels.
As MailPoet’s support priorities lie with maintaining platform accessibility over maximizing support quality, users may experience a “self-service-first” resourcing model on par with many bootstrapped SaaS startups. Simpler needs get addressed but complex issues face uncertainty.
For early-stage businesses, this trade-off may suffice temporarily until requiring more sophisticated capabilities and responsive assistance from mature providers.
AWeber
Backed by substantial funding rounds tied to a 20-year operating history and large subscriber base, AWeber presumably invests considerably in customer support infrastructure for timely issue investigation and resolution given higher solution intricacy.
Enterprise pricing plans likely correlate to enterprise-grade support SLA policies regarding response times, channel access, and tiered account management. Self-help content also expands on MailPoet’s lighter resources.
But that high-touch access demands premium spending requirements often out of reach for basic email marketers. Ultimately the customer pays for substantive assistance – a calculated trade-off catering to established mid-market brands over solopreneurs.
So while AWeber likely services sophisticated needs faster, their focus stays on premium subscribers able to afford responsive care. Those on entry plans may face tier-gated prioritization.
Winner: AWeber
AWeber presumably dedicates vastly more funding to customer service infrastructure and self-help content depth than MailPoet by an order of magnitude.
For subscribers needing reliable issue resolution, AWeber’s commercial maturity suggests significantly outpacing MailPoet’s capabilities dependent on lean support formulas given budget constraints around servicing primarily freemium users.
6. Integrations
MailPoet
MailPoet likely prioritizes ease of use for small business owners over advanced integration controls that enable deep customization.
Their integration ecosystem possibly focuses on smooth connectivity for popular small business tools like basic e-commerce platforms, simple CRMs, web form plugins, and website analytics rather than robust enterprise solutions.
While MailPoet may document APIs and vanilla JavaScript code for developers to build basic integrations, they probably do not offer the granular resources more sophisticated enterprise IT teams expect when managing complex martech stacks and databases.
The priority is simplifying email marketing adoption for less technical users even if that limits flexibility in tying detailed databases to campaigns. Integrations satisfy essential needs.
AWeber
With over 20 years of cementing partnerships across the marketing technology landscape, AWeber has likely cultivated certified integrations with industry-leading CRMs, e-commerce platforms, and SMB efficiency tools.
Deep roots in solving ecosystem connectivity challenges long before rivals probably equip AWeber with proven API services leveraged by enterprise development teams to connect their marketing stack seamlessly and enable advanced workflows based on campaign response behaviors and granular customer trait data in CRM and ERP databases.
While AWeber may not match the breadth of mainstream advertising and analytics integrated tools niche providers cater to, their longevity satisfying match sophistication for mid-market brands suggests vastly exceeding MailPoet’s baseline out-of-the-box integrations designed predominantly for microbusiness simplicity.
Winner: AWeber
AWeber’s tenure serving established brands with complex martech and database architectures probably informs robust integrations and custom APIs exceeding MailPoet’s light resources focused on novice users’ basic platform connectivity needs.
AWeber’s enterprise DNA better supports advanced implementation environments even if MailPoet provides adequate plugins for early-stage email senders.
7. Pricing
MailPoet
As an email provider targeting small businesses, solopreneurs, and bootstrapped startups, MailPoet likely offers free and low-cost monthly plans supporting sending basic campaigns with limited contacts and features.
Their model seems premised on establishing free users first before upselling additional contacts, templates, and analytics through paid self-serve tiers priced around competitive mass-market tools like Mailchimp.
Given their open source foundations without external funding, MailPoet’s unit economics presumably focus on high free user conversion over maximizing average revenue per customer – prioritizing broad platform spread through grassroots adoption for now.
This informs an affordable pricing ladder for microbrands under $20 monthly even as volumes scale, with premium pricing reserved only for enterprise-tier support.
AWeber
Backed by significant venture capital and two decades of operating history, AWeber seems positioned as a premium provider targeting established mid-market companies leaning into email as a primary revenue channel.
Their pricing likely correlates to elevated deliverability, segmentation, automation, and analytics capabilities relative to MailPoet – suggesting country club monthly rates exceeding $100+ for mid-tier access beyond what grassroots platforms can facilitate economically.
AWeber potentially offers discounted annual contracts for loyal accounts as well as lending enterprise package consulting.
The emphasis caters to amplified performance and assistance premiums reflecting their maturation – not MailPoet’s mass market customer acquisition goals. Ultimately in executing sophisticated email, businesses pay for quality assurance.
Winner: MailPoet
MailPoet’s free offering and putative affordable paid tiers under $20 monthly likely vastly undercut AWeber’s pricing aimed at mid-market brands budgeting for premium capabilities and specialized support.
For early-stage email marketers, MailPoet’s light pricing probably delivers sufficient functionality despite some scale limitations later on. Each platform addresses target customer priorities through strategically pegged rates.
8. Reviews and Reputation
MailPoet
MailPoet has largely positive reviews from users. On Capterra, it has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars based on over 1,400 user reviews. Users praise its easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor, templates, detailed analytics, and integration with WordPress.
Some downsides mentioned include occasional glitches with sent emails ending up in spam folders and the free version’s limitations on the number of subscribers and automation features.
On TrustRadius, MailPoet has an 8.8 out of 10 average rating. Users highlight the intuitive interface, good deliverability, excellent customer support, and tools like the compliance customer surveys Drip has. Some would like to see more detailed documentation and tutorials available.
Overall, MailPoet reviews show users find it easy to create beautiful, customized newsletters thanks to the flexible editor and template options. They also value the detailed analytics provided in paid plans to assess audience engagement.
Read MailPoet Reviews on Capterra.
AWeber
AWeber garners consistently positive feedback, with a 4.7 out of 5 average rating across over 650 Capterra reviews.
Users compare it to Constant Contact and praise its segmenting capabilities, excellent deliverability and spam filtering, and integration with many third-party platforms. Some downsides mentioned are the learning curve with advanced features and occasional glitches in mobile/browser behavior.
On G2, AWeber has a 93% user satisfaction rating. Users highlight the email customization options, detailed analytics reports, excellent deliverability, and platform reliability. Some would like more intuitive list management and template design functionality.
In reviews, AWeber is noted for its powerful segmentation tools, strong analytics, and excellent deliverability rates for getting emails to the inbox. The extensive integration options are also popular with users.
Winner: AWeber
AWeber deserves the win for ease of use. With its user-friendly wizards, pre-designed templates and themes, and drag-and-drop editor, AWeber makes it simple for users of any skill level to create professional emails and newsletters.
Though MailPoet also has an intuitive interface, AWeber edges it out with simpler list segmentation, automation triggers, and integration with other marketing platforms. Its detailed help documentation ensures new users can easily get the hang of using the platform as well.
9. FAQ’s
MailPoet
- What types of newsletters can I create? You can create all kinds of newsletters with MailPoet – welcome email series, promotions, announcements, digests, and more. Use professional templates or custom designers to create beautiful, branded emails.
- How do I get subscribers? MailPoet lets you capture leads with popup forms, menus, and pages on your WordPress site to help you build an email list. Integrations with plugins like WooCommerce also pull in customers.
- What analytics are included? MailPoet offers opens/clicks tracking, location/device data, browser data, unsubscribe tracking, and more, to help you optimize your newsletters.
- Does MailPoet work with other platforms? Yes, MailPoet integrates with popular platforms like WooCommerce, GiveWP, Google Analytics, and more to combine data.
AWeber
- What types of emails can I send? From broadcasts like promotions and newsletters to automated emails like welcome series, anniversary, and re-engagement messages.
- How does AWeber handle deliverability? AWeber has over 97% inbox placement thanks to proprietary machine learning systems and relationships with major ISPs.
- What analytics do I get? View opens, clicks, location data, click heatmaps, link click-through rates, unsubscribe tracking, and more to optimize your emails.
- Does AWeber integrate with other platforms? Yes, AWeber seamlessly connects with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Stripe, Zapier, and 1,000+ others.
Final Thoughts
Choose MailPoet if…
MailPoet is a good choice if you want an easy-to-use email marketing solution seamlessly integrated with your WordPress site. The drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates make newsletter creation simple even for beginners.
Automation features in paid tiers allow you to send triggered messages like welcome series when users sign up or make purchases. Detailed analytics reports provide insight to improve your email performance over time.
With MailPoet’s free forever plan, small businesses and bloggers can get started sending basic emails without paying a cent. It’s a great way to dip your toe into email marketing on WordPress.
Choose AWeber if…
AWeber works well for growing businesses that want more advanced email marketing features coupled with excellent deliverability into subscriber inboxes. Segmentation tools make it easy to divide your audience and send targeted, personalized messages driving more engagement.
Robust automation workflows can help you onboard subscribers, encourage specific actions, win back inactive contacts, and more. Over 1000 integrations with other software platforms give you the ability to combine email with other marketing efforts for better results.
AWeber also provides superior analytics to optimize your emails over time. Though the learning curve is steeper than other providers, it’s a worthwhile investment for established businesses serious about email marketing.
Choosing the right email marketing platform for your needs is critical, so please ask any questions below if you need help determining what fits best! We’re happy to provide personalized recommendations to support your business growth.