Our selection of the best alternatives to Mailchimp for your newsletter

Mailchimp quickly became a reference software in the 2010s in theemailing and direct marketing market. The solution focused on simplicity and design, and massively simplified the newsletter creation experience.

However, Mailchimp has not been able to keep up with the market evolution, especially due to the explosion of e-commerce. It is competing with other softwares that offer a more interesting quality-price ratio.

Solutions like Sendinblue in Europe, or ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo in the USA, have become real references for small and medium businesses. They offer efficient and less expensive plans, and support available in French.

In this article, we offer you a comparison of the best alternatives to Mailchimp in French, which we have built from the following points:

• Customer support available and accessible in French
• A good presence on the French market
• A good deliverability on the French market
• A drag & drop editor of the latest generation
• Automation and multi-channel marketing features: SMS, Live Chat, Phone, Whatsapp etc.
• Lead capture features: multi-list forms, landing pages, popups, etc.

Many of the solutions we present here are developed in France, but we have not included the “Made in France” bonus. Our ranking is mainly based on the quality-price ratio they offer.

Top 10 French emailing software: comparative table

#1 Sendinblue: The French nugget that is eating up the market

Intuitive and complete, Sendinblue is growing rapidly and is very present on the French market. The software offers customer support in French and accessible by email, including in its free version. The solution benefits from excellent deliverability in France. It guarantees the protection of users’ personal data, which gives it a very good reputation.

In terms of marketing automation, Sendinblue offers interesting basic features, such as sending welcome emails or automatically sending a promo code for users’ birthdays. The software also allows you to imagine more advanced marketing automation scenarios, such as lead scoring to track the purchase path of your users and determine an onboarding scenario adapted to their needs.

Sendinblue also offers extremely comprehensive multi-channel marketing: SMS, Whatsapp, live chat, Facebook ads, web notifications, etc. The tool also offers numerous lead capture features, such as the creation of forms or landing pages. However, they are a bit dated.

Benefits

• Sendinblue offers anemail marketing experience equivalent to Mailchimp. We regret the absence of some UX touches like the growth of the number of subscribers from one week to another or the fact that the contact tables are editable like an excel sheet, but nothing that justifies the 4 to 10 times higher prices of Mailchimp.
• Even if Mailchimp now offers many automation features, especially around e-commerce, Sendinblue is more powerful. The software offers the most powerful marketing automation engine on the market and the most interesting in terms of value for money.

Disadvantages

• The lead capture features are the weak point of Sendinblue. The landing page engine it offers is rather incomplete, the WordPress and Shopify plugins as well as the forms are not very efficient. On this point, Sendinblue is close to the level of Mailchimp.

Rates

• Sendinblue offers an attractive monthly rate available from 19€/month.
• Sendinblue allows you to send free emails to a list of 5,000 contacts, with a daily limit of 300 emails per day.
• Unlike Mailchimp, Sendinblue does not limit the number of contacts, even in its free version. It provides access to all the automation and contact management features and French language support available by email.

#2 Plezi One: Emailing software for content marketing

Plezi One is a solution made in France, designed by a company that is very attentive to its customers. It has an interesting offer and an accessible customer support in French. The software is designed to help content marketing teams generate more value by putting content at the center.

Benefits

• The software benefits from a good presence on the French market as well as an excellent deliverability.
• Plezi One has an efficient drag & drop editor.

Disadvantages

• The software is still young and a bit light in terms of marketing automation features. It is however promising and very interesting for those who want to start in email marketing or those who work on a limited scale (less than 10,000 contacts).

Rates

• Plezi One offers a Premium version for 39€/month, which allows you to benefit from all the features of the free plan and to run email campaigns.
• The free version of Plezi One offers forms, content and contact management, as well as dashboards (performance reports) sent directly by email.

#3 Hubspot Emailing: the CRM giant publishes an emailing solution

Hubspot Emailing is one of the leaders in the email marketing market. The software offers a free plan and customer support, available in French. A drag & drop editor is also available with all subscriptions.

Benefits

• In terms of marketing automation, Hubspot Emailing is developed. It offers many features: creation of landing pages and workflows, document hosting solutions, full reporting or A/B testing.
• One of the big advantages of the software is the natively integrated free CRM, which allows you to centralize prospect and customer data. On this point, Sendinblue is also an interesting alternative.

Disadvantages

• The big disadvantage of Hubspot is its price. The software offers free packages, but they are quickly limiting. Its first plans (45€ & 740€/month) are not very interesting.
• For those who are looking for a very advanced solution integrated with CRM (Hubspot or Salesforce), the Enterprise solution is very interesting, but it is very far from the use of Mailchimp.

Rates

• Hubspot offers an entry price of 41€/month (497€/year). The Starter package includes 1000 marketing contacts and the classic marketing automation tools.
• For a list of 5,000 contacts, the Starter package offers a monthly rate of 198€/month (2376€/year).
• The free plan of the software allows you to send up to 2000 emails per month and store up to 1,000,000 contacts.

#4 ActiveCampaign: the American solution that relies on marketing automation

ActiveCampaign is a very efficient American solution, especially in terms of marketing automation. The software benefits from an excellent deliverability and a good presence on the French market. It also has an interesting drag & drop system that allows you to add text blocks, images, HTML blocks, etc. The platform offers its customers several multi-channel marketing solutions: SMS, WhatsApp, customizable landing pages, automated live chat and chatbots, Facebook campaigns, etc.

The support, the help center and the ActiveCampaign application are available in French, but the community and the marketing glossary are only available in English.

Benefits

• ActiveCampaign owes its reputation to its advanced marketing automation and lead capture features: site tracking, registration forms, goal tracking, performance reports, A/B tests on automations, etc.
• But the software is especially powerful in terms of lead scoring. It will allow you to identify your best leads, offer them resources adapted to their desires and gain new customers.

Disadvantages

• ActiveCampaign is efficient, but too complex, especially for those who only want a regular newsletter.

Rates

• ActiveCampaign offers an attractive monthly rate of 9€/month, for a list of 500 contacts.
• For a list of 5,000 contacts, the cheapest offer is €80/month (Lite version). The Plus package is 150€/month, and the Professional package is 215€/month.
• ActiveCampaign does not offer a free plan.

#5 Webmecanik: open source marketing automation software made in France

Webmecanik is a marketing automation tool made in France that hosts and customizes the open-source marketing automation software Mautic. Thanks to the open source, the software benefits from the many features of Mautic, and offers a layer of support and training. The software has a drag and drop email editor, and a very efficient deliverability thanks to Mailjet, European leader in email sending.

In terms of multi-channel communication, Webmecanik offers more or less the same features as its competitors: email and SMS notifications, chat, sending automated campaigns on Twitter. Webmecanik respects the RGPD.

The software offers classic lead capture solutions: sending personalized web forms, creating landing pages, web tracking, A/B testing.

Benefits

• One of the big advantages of Webmecanik is the performance of its lead management tools compared to its French competitors. The application offers an easy to use drag and drop editor, numerous channels and a powerful lead scoring tool. Webmecanik allows you to set up an automated lead scoring strategy.
• Above all, Webmecanik offers premium support for all its users, regardless of the subscription chosen. It includes an account manager, free access resources, email support and a webmarketing training program, the Webmecanik academy

Rates

• Webmecanik proposes an Enterprise offer starting at 400€/month for 10 000 contacts. Count about 1370€/month for a list of 100 000 contacts. This package gives access to all the features we have mentioned.
• The Reseller offer, starting at €500/month, is mainly aimed at agencies. It allows to have three customer accounts, the mutualization of contacts and an account manager.

#6 Zoho Campaigns: the emailing software of the Zoho suite

Zoho Campaigns is an emailing software available to Zoho B2B CRM users. It has a good deliverability on the French market. It has a drag & drop editor that is easy to use and customizable, depending on the offer chosen.

Benefits

• In terms of automation and lead capture features, Zoho Campaigns is close to its competitors. It has the classic features, but stands out for its excellent contact management tool.
• Zoho Campaigns offers a very interesting price/performance ratio and an interesting interface, although less intuitive than the one offered by Mailchimp.

Disadvantages

• The software is interesting, especially for those who want to adopt a free plan, but its capture and lead generation tools remain less powerful than those of its competitors
• Zoho Campaign can be limited for creating email campaigns.

Rates

• Zoho Campaign offers a "Standard" subscription at 3€/month that allows unlimited emails to be sent to 500 contacts, access to advanced email templates, dynamic content and A/B testing. The "Professional" subscription, at 4,50€/month, allows sending unlimited emails, automating workflows with a drag & drop editor, and gives access to autoresponders.
• For a weekly newsletter with 5000 contacts, the software proposes a “Standard” offer at 12€/month, and a “Professional” offer at 39/month.
• Zoho Campaign offers a free subscription that allows you to send 6,000 emails/month to 2,000 contacts.

#7 Mailjet: the French nugget turned American

Mailjet is a free French email marketing solution, which integrates an intuitive drag & drop email editor. The software benefits from classic automation features, a good deliverability and an excellent reputation, in France and in Europe. However, it is very limited in terms of multi-channel marketing.

Benefits

• Mailjet is a powerful solution for sending transactional emails and efounders’ newsletters.

Disadvantages

• Mailgun’s takeover of Mailjet caused several problems. It has had a significant impact on the quality of support.
• As of 2019, the software has generally stagnated.

Rates

• Mailjet offers an entry price of €14/month, which allows you to send 15,000 emails/month to an unlimited number of contacts.
• Mailjet’s free plan allows you to send 6000 emails/month to an unlimited number of contacts, with a limit of 200 emails/day, benefit from the advanced email editor and basic statistics.

#8 Digitaleo: the local marketing software made in France

Digitaleo is a French local marketing software, designed for small businesses. The software offers the classic tools of local marketing: direct marketing, print & goodies, social networks, presence management, customer reviews, Facebook, Instagram, Google and Waze ads.

Benefits

• Digitaleo offers a very thorough support and on-demand rates. The software is aimed at a market with little digitalization. Other more flexible, more complete and less expensive solutions are more interesting for digitalized companies.
• It has good automation features.

Rates

• Pricing for Digitaleo’s solutions is available only upon request.

#9 Sarbacane: the veteran of French emailing software

Sarbacane is a French emailing software present for a long time on the French market. It offers classic marketing automation and contact management functionalities, and allows multi-channel automatic campaigns. The software allows the creation of landing pages and the creation of forms with a drag & drop editor.

Benefits

• The software offers a new interface since a few years, more intuitive and accessible.

Disadvantages

• Sarbacane remains part of a rather old B2B sales culture.
• The exact rates are to be asked directly to Sarbacane, by phone, and the information provided is very often inaccurate.

Rates

• Sarbacane proposes an “Essential” offer at 59€/month. It allows you to benefit from the standard functionalities: EmailBuilder, form editor, creation of automatic campaigns, sending of SMS campaigns, telephone support or Live Chat.
• The free trial offer allows you to benefit from all the features of the Premium offer for 30 days (multi-users, automated campaigns, landing page editor, A/B tests, etc).

#10 eTarget: the software is losing momentum

eTarget is a French emailing solution that offers many features, but has been losing momentum for a few years.

Benefits

• In terms of sending newsletters, the solution is more or less equivalent to its competitors, for attractive prices.

Disadvantages

• eTarget does not have marketing automation features.
• The software interface is not very intuitive and not very accessible.

Rates

• eTarget offers an entry price of €15/month, which allows you to send 10,000 emails per month and to have access to all the software’s features.
• The free version allows you to send 6,000 emails per month and to have access to all the features.