Systeme.io Vs. Mailchimp: Which is The Best For Affiliate Marketers?

Every online business runs on two things: tools and platforms. To build a great online empire means relying on several platforms and lots of tools to create a sustainable business worthy of scaling.

Systeme.io and Mailchimp play important roles as platforms and tools that help you scale your business as an affiliate marketer. But which of them better suits you as an affiliate marketer?

This review of Systeme.io Vs. Mailchimp will help you arrive at the best platform to grow your business.

What is Systeme.io?

Systeme.io is a marketing and automation platform established as an all-in-one solution for online marketers in 2010. Aurelian, who started the platform, started his online journey as a blogger and started making €1,000 from his blog alone in 6 months.

He moved into webinars to grow his business and audience and eventually resorted to email marketing to manage his relationships with prospects and clients. While he was able to grow as a coach and build his business, he realized it was difficult to scale.

It was also expensive to go the duct tape style of combining online marketing tools. There and then, he decided to build his own platform that would be the one-stop solution for all indie marketers and small businesses.

Systeme.io launched exclusively in France but later grew to include English-speaking countries and currently supports eight languages.

The platform indeed has many features that you can hardly find in any single tool available right now. For example, it combines sales funnels and landing pages with email marketing, eCommerce features with drop shipping possibilities, affiliate marketing, etc.

We will look at the Systeme.io features next.

Main Features of Systeme.io

Systeme.io is among the few platforms that attempt to be all things to all people and be proficient at each of them. As a result, it has a variety of ideal functions for solopreneurs and small-sized businesses that are just starting.

But the most important instrument on the platform is the sales funnel capabilities that let you create “Clickfunnels a quality” funnels without the costs associated with platforms such as Clickfunnels, Kajabi, and Kartra.

It can also be an alternative to various marketing tools for emails, such as Mailchimp, Convertkit, and GetResponse.

But it’s not just better equipped than its rivals. It offers competitive pricing that will cause you to consider moving the entirety of your marketing onto Systeme. It also has an efficient email marketing system with an automatic responder and scheduling features.

You can also monitor and optimize the performance of your assets. While you have sales funnel and landing page features allowing you to grow your list and nurture them on the same platform with email marketing, autoresponders, and advanced e-commerce features.

If you’re an owner of an eCommerce business, Systeme has got you covered with their dropshipping integrations for eCommerce dropshipping and other features, along with a range of payment integrations, including Stripe or PayPal.

If you’re looking to create a more sophisticated marketing strategy and automation, Systeme has the features you need and A/B test tools to help you optimize them over time. You can mix the many tools on Systeme.io to automatize the entire business operations process.

In addition, Systeme offers online course hosting, webinar hosting, and blogging. This means that as your business grows, you don’t have to rely on new platforms that need integrating into Systeme.io.

For this reason, Systeme.io doesn’t have integrations except for payments. You can start with just using their sales funnels for affiliate marketing and add dropshipping later.

And as you become an expert with an audience, you can utilize their email marketing features and the product management and online course creation tools to build more income streams.

In addition, you can start hosting webinars with the same platform. Systeme.io makes it a no-brainer if you are a newbie to get started fast!

Many of the solutions offered by other platforms don’t include all features right from the start. And they also require you to pay very high prices as you go up. On the other hand, Systeme.io makes it easy to enter and much easier to stay onboard.

Systeme offers almost all the features an online business person needs. For example, suppose you’ve got e-commerce or a course that has been a hit or a business, and you wish to let other people earn income as tour affiliates.

In that case, you can incorporate affiliate marketing to your products to allow users to promote your products and earn an income from the sale.

When you think about all the advantages and affordable prices, this one-stop marketing platform is difficult to resist. It’s not impossible for newbies not to grasp the immense worth that comes from it.

It is 3-10 times more costly for the same functionalities elsewhere. This saved up cash from choosing Systeme.io could be used to purchase ads and assets or create content that can ultimately boost your business’s profits.

Is Systeme.io 100% perfect? That isn’t true. There is no perfect product, but Systeme.io comes close enough.

Features of Systeme.io

• Sales Funnels
• Email Marketing
• Website Builder
• Affiliate Program Management
• Business Automation
• Evergreen Webinars
• Online Course Creation
• Blogging
• Sell Products

Advantages of Systeme.io

• Suitable for Beginners, Individuals, and Small Businesses
• Simple and Easy to Use Interface
• Lots of Marketing and Automation Tools to Choose From; All in One Platform
• Free Plan Is Great for Starters
• Create Your Own Affiliate Marketing Program

Disadvantages of Systeme.io

• Lack of Third Party Integrations
• Page Builder is a Work in Progress
• Features Could be Overwhelming
• Lack of Onboarding Process, Little Tutorials Available

Systeme.io Pricing

Systeme offers just four options on the shelf. The most popular one is completely free forever!

Unlike GetResponse, which starts with 500 contacts in the free plan, Systeme offers 2000! It comes with unlimited email sends with a single campaign and three sales funnels, each with up to 10 sales steps, as well as the option to set up a blog and create endless blog entries.

In addition, you can make a single course for free and get unlimited students and unlimited storage space for files. This is extremely useful because certain platforms lure you into an offer similar to this, only to restrict your space and require payment. But not with Systeme.

You can utilize a single slot for automation rules, workflows, A/B testing ordering bump, 1-click upsell tag, deadline funnel, discount codes, and payment integrations. You can also build your own affiliate marketing program using this plan for free, which includes an online webinar, a custom domain, and 24-hour email assistance.

This is a lot of money and has led to some people not being convinced Systeme.io can keep it up for long enough. However, I do believe the free plan will stick with us forever.

Mailchimp has seen immense growth because of its free plan. The future will be the only judge now that the platform is currently used by over 8,000 business owners using it.

The base plan is available at a price of $27 if you pay per month and $228 when you pay annually, and you save the cost of a few dollars. In addition, it provides the possibility of 5,000 contacts and increases the features included in the free plan.

It’s the same for their second-most costly plan, referred to as “webinar.” The “webinar” plan is priced at $47 per month for monthly payments and $396 annually for an audience of 10,000 email addresses.

The most expensive is the “Unlimited” plan which costs you $97 per month and $828 if you choose to pay annually. All plans that are paid for come with no-cost migration from your previous platform (s).

For each paid plan, you will receive an additional 30% off if you select the annual payment. This is good saving when you’re confident about what you’re doing and are prepared to make a long-term commitment.

Who Is Systeme.io For?

Coaches, indie online business owners, eCommerce builders, and affiliate marketers will benefit greatly not only from its low cost but also from the immense fortress of features that Systeme.io provides.

If you are also a brick-and-mortar business owner looking to build the online portion of your brand with a single platform, Systeme.io would be that platform.

It comes at a highly competitive price and has amazing free features that you can get started with even without paying a dime. According to the company, the free plan is available for a lifetime.

This is extremely convenient for anyone starting an online empire with $50 in the bank. You can get premium features for free.

What is Mailchimp?

Founded in 2001, email marketing started making Mailchimp one of the early email marketing platforms available to marketers, including GetResponse, which was started in 1998.

Mailchimp started by creating nice usable email templates as well as mailing lists. These two made it easier for marketers and online business people to build their audience and build relationships with them using nice and appealing email templates.

However, Mailchimp saw a much bigger potential and became a full-fledged email marketing service provider allowing customers to create email campaigns, send emails, and at the same time be able to track the performance of the emails.

This was great for any marketer. Today, Mailchimp is used by over 13 million businesses to create and send converting emails for their businesses. Mailchimp prides itself in helping these businesses to build relationships with the right people enabling them to grow and build their revenue.

Today, The company ranks in the 14th position in the 2021 Forbes Cloud 100 ranking. Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms with a $10B market capitalization.

It serves as an all-in-one marketing tool for managing audiences and building relationships for businesses all around the world.

Main Features of Mailchimp

Mailchimp is very much like GetResponse. They started as a simple email marketing tool, grew into a marketing automation tool, and now they want you to do all of your marketing on their platform.

What features do they have to help you grow your business? Here is what Mailchimp offers.

First of all, Mailchimp is a solid email service provider. Their email marketing tools are enough for any small business and even large business to be satisfied with. They have up to 307 integrations if you want to extend the platform’s functions, such as adding SMS, live chat, customer service, and more.

Mailchimp is well equipped now to help you build a website, create quick landing pages and start growing your audience without leaving the platform. You can do this using their free Mailchimp subdomain or buy your own, which by the way, burns a hole in the pocket.

You may want to rely on platforms like WordPress if you want to be able to explore other objectives for your website beyond creating pages. For example, with Mailchimp, you can quickly create designs for your social media as well as social and search ads.

Their creative AI editor can help you design much faster, but Canva may as well be much better. This is why they have a Canva integration allowing you to embed your Canva designs in your Mailchimp assets such as emails and websites.

There is also A/B testing and other amazing features to choose from.

Features of Mailchimp

• Email marketing and automation with 307 integrations and advanced segmentation and subscriber tagging tools. Autoresponder features
• Website and Landing page builders
• Shoppable landing pages
• Facebook and Instagram ads
• Social media scheduling and posting
• Marketing calendar
• Form Builder
• A/B testing of subject lines, “from names”, send time, and the actual content of the mail. You can also determine the ratio or percentage of subscribers to show each campaign variation. Mailchimp also has multivariate testing for some of its plans.
• Analytics

Mailchimp is a feature powerhouse when it comes to email marketing and related marketing functions such as website building. However, they thrive in email marketing as there are much better solutions for landing pages, websites, pop-ups, etc.

But while they do well in email marketing, they still lack certain features critical for email marketing success, especially when it comes to segmentation. Mailchimp is good for autoresponders, abandoned carts, follow-ups, and more, but it lacks some segmentation that limits what marketers can do with their hard-won audience.

Every email marketer wants to be able to send specific emails to certain portions, such as follow-ups based on their previous actions or interactions with their emails. This is where Mailchimp struggles to meet clients’ needs if it truly is the perfect email marketing tool out there.

For instance,  if you want to send emails to users who interacted with a specific email but probably never opened a related one, you will struggle to get this done. But it does happen where you want to interact with a part of your audience that interacts with some emails but doesn’t interact with others.

Mailchimp lacks automatic segmentation, which is a time saver for email marketers. Rules allowing for advanced auto segmentation are not currently possible with Mailchimp, making this much harder for markers.

You cannot also make custom rules to make these functions happen. However, alternatives like ActiveCampaign have far advanced segmentation features, including automation rules that allow you to focus on more high-level things than manually segmenting your audience.

Advantages of Mailchimp

• Lots of templates to use for your email campaigns and landing pages.
• Suitable for small businesses and individual online business owners.
• Mailchimp has over 800 integrations, making the platform usage very appealing.
• Easy to use and simple to figure out the interface.
• Advanced list and subscriber tagging and segmentation are amazing.

Disadvantages of Mailchimp

• Pricey plans for businesses that are working on a tough budget.
• Lacks an email marketing program feature.
• Mailchimp offers no email and no live chat support for a free plan, leaving you out to dry if you face any problems.
• The more contacts you have, the more you have to pay to the platform to keep running. This, however, is common with platforms with email marketing as their main focus, such as GetResponse.
• A custom domain costs $137.81 for each year that you use it. Quite exorbitant to what Wealthy Affiliate offers. Better to stick to WordPress or other website builders and duct tape with integration plugins.

Mailchimp Pricing

Mailchimp offers a pricing plan that can meet every one of your online marketing requirements, especially if you depend primarily on email. If you’re in search of an email marketing service or are contemplating switching to another, now is the time to learn about the pricing plans of Mailchimp.

Mailchimp is a free email marketing software available to begin for as long as you keep below 2,000 users or 10,000 emails. It’s easy to say, “that’s great,” and it is true that the freemium model is how they made it so popular as the number one email marketing platform in the world.

However, there are a lot of alternatives available that also provide low-cost and free mail marketing programs, such as Systeme.io, Convertkit, Active Campaign, and GetResponse. Also, Mailchimp is quite costly in comparison to these.

Mailchimp provides four pricing tiers that start with zero ($0), basic ($9.99), Standard ($14.99), and premium ($299). Let’s dive into the details of the four Mailchimp plans to assist you in analyzing costs and determining which is most appropriate for your requirements.

Is Mailchimp truly free?

Yes, it is. You can begin using Mailchimp at no cost here.

The free email marketing program allows you to add up to 2000 subscribers and distribute up to 10,000 emails each month. You’ll have access to the dashboard for your audience, media studio (to make campaigns), and some of the basic email templates.

In addition to email, you can make websites, postcards, Facebook ads, advertisements on Instagram, and pop-up forms.

If you receive more than 2,000 contacts, you’ll have to upgrade. When you sign up for the free email software, each email you send out will feature the Mailchimp logo on the footer.

This means that most people will not stay on the free plan for long and choose to switch to a different vendor or opt for the more essential and basic.

Essentials Mailchimp email newsletter program

The Essentials plan begins from $9.99 monthly for 500 contacts and 19.99 for 1500 contacts. You get access to all mail templates provided by Mailchimp and can perform A/B testing on a limited basis, and can program and stop emails.

One of the major advantages of this plan is access to chat and email support as well as the elimination of the Mailchimp logo on the footer.

Mailchimp Standard plan

From $14.99 each month for 500 contacts and $49.99 to 2500, this provides access to further data on your audience. It also lets you design Google Remarketing ads, create customized email templates, and set multiple-step event-based automation.

Mailchimp Premium plan

From $299 for 10K contacts, the most expensive version is where you can build a variety of groups and utilize Mailchimp’s more sophisticated segmentation tools to focus on contacts at a finer scale.

Another benefit is you have access to Multivariate Testing, which takes A/B split testing one step further and allows you to try a variety of variables to determine which is the most efficient. The Premium plan gives you access to telephone support.

Who Is Mailchimp For?

Mailchimp is great for email marketing, but perhaps not for you if you deal with large audiences that need to be managed automatically using automation rules and advanced segmentation.

If you are working with several apps and want them to be able to integrate data, Mailchimp is one of the best choices you can take, as it comes with lots of app integrations that make things much simpler.

If you have an audience or deal with users from various backgrounds, you will find the behavioral targeting appealing. Mailchimp also has some CRM features that allow you to manage your customer relationships better than other email marketing solutions without CRM.

But for most people, the deal-breaker is in the price. And Mailchimp requires you to pay more as you grow your audience and acquire more emails. As a result, some may be forced to leave the platform due to the increased cost as they grow.

All in all, Mailchimp is a robust email marketing platform for marketers and small businesses. They currently have 13 million users, according to their website. But it may not be suitable for an affiliate marketer.

Systeme.io Vs. Mailchimp: Features Comparison

Features	Systeme.io	Mailchimp
Email marketing	Yes	Yes
SMS Marketing	Yes	No
Domain management	Yes	Yes
Form Builder (and pop-ups)	No	Yes
Website builder (drag and drop) with templates,	Yes	Yes
Webinars	Yes	No
Marketing automation	Yes	Yes
Paid ads	No	Yes
Landing pages	Yes	Yes
Live chat	No	No
Web push notifications	No	No
Sales Funnels/Conversion Funnel	Yes	No
Affiliate Program Management	Yes	No
Online Courses	Yes	No
Blogging	Yes	No
Sell Products	Yes	No
Shoppable Pages	No	Yes
Social Media Scheduling	No	Yes
Analytics	Yes	Yes

As you can see from above, Systeme.io is affiliate marketing focused and provides all you need to scale up your business. What I like most is the features for creating online courses and selling digital products.

However, if paid ads, shoppable pages, and social media scheduling features are the lifeline of your business, then you may want to consider Mailchimp. In all, I think Systeme.io offers value for money considering the features it comes with.

However, you may also consider GetResponse if live chats, paid ads, and web push notifications play an integral role in your online success.

Systeme.io vs. Mailchimp: Which Should You Buy as an Affiliate Marketer?

Mailchimp is not the best platform for affiliate marketers. It is costly for most newbies and small businesses, especially as your audience list grows with fewer features added. The custom domain comes at a great price.

Systeme.io is great for beginners, affiliate marketers, and small and large businesses. You can build your entire online empire on the platform and not need to look elsewhere for pretty much anything to build and manage your online business.

The best advantage with systeme.io is that you don’t have to spend to get started, and you get so many features that make it possible to actually afford higher plans on the platform.