Alternatives to Mailchimp

**You cannot use Mailchimp for Affiliate marketing**

Mailchimp has been omnipresent in the email autoresponder sphere for several years now and has become somewhat of an industry standard thanks to its free pricing to certain levels and wide-ranging functionality. However, if you are an Affiliate Marketer, you should NOT use Mailchimp. Mailchimp has a zero tolerance policy to any sort of affiliate marketing through its platform, and at the very least you should backup your email lists before trying anything of this sort, as you are near guaranteed to be banned (I can vouch for this, it happened to me.) Though Mailchimp is a good all-purpose tool, there are many better options on the market.

So, you ask, what do you use instead? I’ve listed four of the best free or freemium alternatives below, along with four of the best budget alternatives along with whether I believe from my research they are affiliate link friendly. I’ve also given a brief review of their functionality and their good and bad features, and pricing.

As an Affiliate Marketer, you’ll want to be able to market your own tools as well I’m sure (myself included!). I’ve included a description of each tools – Affiliate or Referral program with each review as a little bonus.

QUICK SUMMARY

AFFILIATE FRIENDLY UNCLEAR NOT AFFILIATE FRIENDLY
GetResponse (my favourite) Send in Blue MailerLite
Aweber ConvertKit
NewsLetter2Go OmniSend
Send Pulse

Four best free alternatives

Send in Blue

Send in Blue is fast becoming a juggernaut with forays into Facebook Ads, CRM and a full marketing toolbox. An awesome website and interface make it a powerful offering, available with limited functionality and low email limit for free. For not exorbitantly more money you can take advantage of its full offering. I love the animation on the front page!

Features email and SMS marketing, marketing automation, segmentation, online chat, Transactional emails, CRM, landing pages, Signup Forms, Facebook Ads, Reporting, Email Heat Maps, A/B Testing, Real Time stats, an API, plugins

Pricing – Send in Blue will send up to 300 emails per day on its free plan. Beyond that it’s worth checking out their pricing here.

Affiliate Friendly: From the information on their site, it’s hard to determine. They have standard anti-spam policies as well as privacy and user agreements.

Does it have its own affiliate program? YES – https://www.sendinblue.com/affiliates/

5 euros for any free signups through your link, and 100 for any paid subscription.

Newsletter2go

Integrations are Newsletter2go’s middle name – some fantastic off the shelf integrations with your favourite CMS or CRM are available. As such Newsletter to go is a fairly simple offering, but it does offer up to 1,000 free emails a month.

Features: email marketing, drag and drop editor templates, Personalisation, Whitelisted servers, Automated Campaigns, tracking, geotracking, click maps, one click imports, ability to add customer attributes, integrations.

Pricing- Lite version is always free, but somewhat functionally limited, including 1,000 free emails a month. There is a 14 day free trial of the standard offer available.

Point of difference: As the name suggest Newsletters2go is based around making newsletters about your products. Its range of integrations is also excellent.

Affiliate Friendly: Yes, in general, it is possible to add affiliate links to marketing.

Has its own affiliate program: Yes – Newsletter2go has an affiliate program with 10% commission.It’s found here: https://www.newsletter2go.com/become-a-partner/

MailerLite

MailerLite is a functional email platform that offers all the standard features with exceptional value – its free offering is reasonably extensive.

Features: Drag and Drop editor, Automation, templates, Landing Pages, Pop-ups, embedded forms, automation, grouping, personalisation, segmentation, promotion popups, A/B Testing, Reporting, surveys, geolocation reporting.

Point of Difference – Mailerlite is a simple yet powerful mail solution designed to help businesses grow. It’s a shame it’s not affiliate friendly but if you have an email marketing campaign for other purposes, it’s an excellent offer.

Pricing – first 1000 subscribers are free, with limited functionality. Up to 12,000 emails a month on this plan.

Affiliate Friendly: No

Has its own affiliate marketing platform: Yes – and it offers an excellent 30% commission ongoing, here. https://www.mailerlite.com/affiliate

SendPulse

SendPulse is another big offering. It channels many delivery methods into its platform, think web push, viber, smtp, Facebook ad. A lot of bang for your affiliate buck.

Drag and drop editor, web push notification, email, SMS, subscriber analysis, signup forms, statistics, a/b testing, chatbot for messenger, integration, mobile app.

Pricing: – 1-2500 subscribers free, up to 15,000 emails a month. offers a pay as you go program

Affiliate Friendly: Yes! the SendPulse blog describes how it can be used for affiliate marketing.

Point of difference – more than just an email platform, SendPulse integrates SMS, Facebook chatbot and web push notifications into it’s offering.

Has own referral program : https://sendpulse.com/refer

Yes, but it’s only a bonus $50 to your account.

Four best Budget Alternatives

ConvertKit

All you need to build your emails, forms, landing pages, reporting, funnel automation, email sequences, broadcasts, integrations, app.

Pricing– 0-1k Subscribers starts at $29 USD. 14 day free trial

Point of difference – Built to grow online businesses. Built by creators, for creators.

Affiliate Programhttps://convertkit.com/affiliate

has a 30% ongoing commission.

GetResponse

Exceptional platform that is most affiliate friendly. Check out their advertising here – they actually encourage and integrate with affiliates.

Email Marketing, autoresponder, visual email editor, Landing Pages, split tests, funnels- sales, leads, webinar, Webinars, forms and surveys, Automation, segmentation, workflows, ecommerce tools, social ads creator, tracking, CRM, Integration.

Pricing: starts at $15 USD for 1000 subscribers, with some functionality limited to higher plans.

Point of difference: GetResponse is an awesome all round offering that has some fantastic features available at achievable price points. Also offers an inbuilt CRM and many integrations, some purpose built for Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Friendly: Yes

Has Affiliate Program: Yes, two! Bounty for referral or ongoing, found it on their site here.

Aweber

Features: Well rounded, simple to use interface, full functionality at all price points, unlimited emails, automation, segmenting, analytics, sign up forms, integrations, many template email styles.

Pricing: Aweber starts at $19 USD a month for up to 500 subscribers. It now also has a free program for up to 500 subscribers with limited functionality.

Affiliate Friendly: Yes – check out their blog on contextual affiliate marketing.

Unique point of difference: Unlimited emails and its easy to use interface mean Aweber is a great starting point for email marketing.

Has Affiliate Program: Yes, found on their site.

Omnisend

Omnisend is an “omnichannel” marketing platform- more than merely and email autoresponder. It has custom add ons as part of its pricing, and these form a strong part of its value add, but are beyond the scope if this article (they include items such as web push notifications, Google Customer Match and Facebook messenger add ons).

As far as email goes, Omnisend offers Automation Workflows, Advanced Segmentation, SMS in Automation, Product Import (it is heavily ecommerce orientated), sign up forms and more as part of its good value base email offering.

Pricing: Starts at $16 a month, but scales quickly.

Affiliate Marketing: Be cautious, make sure at a minimum that customers are aware they may be third party marketed to as part of your email campaign. Ultimately Omnisend is based around ecommerce, and may be best suited to your Amazon FBA offer. Its not 100% clear if they are affiliate friendly, and it’s not really the intention of the platform. For an omnichannel offering for Affiliate Marketing, try SendPulse.

 

Has Affiliate Program: YES – here https://www.omnisend.com/partners/

Affiliate Disclaimer: In case you were in any sort of doubt, yes, I’m an Affiliate in some manner for some of these programs. I like to practice what I preach. If you are intending to utilise any of these email platforms I’d love if you went through one of these links to support my site.