Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences That Matter in 2024

Both Omnisend and Mailerlite are popular email marketing solutions having a significant user base and loyal customers. 

Omnisend, as a platform, is focused on the email and SMS marketing automation niche and is more geared towards eCommerce businesses that want to explore the power of marketing automation.

On the other hand, Mailerlite has a more diverse offering that includes email and SMS automation, landing page builders, and popup builders.

In this article, we will distinguish the two platforms in detail. Our goal is to find out which has better features to offer. This would help you to identify the right platform for your business.

Key Differences Between Omnisend and Mailerlite

TLDR; If you are in a hurry, you can refer to this list of differences between Omnisend and Mailerlite and decide which marketing platform is the right fit for your needs.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite

In this article, we will read about:

• Onboarding and Pricing
• Email campaigns
• SMS/MMS
• Web Push Notifications
• Automated Workflows
• Customer Segmentation
• Forms and Popups
• Sales Tracking and Reporting
• Integrations
• Wrapping Up

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences in Onboarding and Pricing

Both Omnisend or Mailerlite lets you create an account for free. As a free user, you can use both platforms with some limitations of the features you can explore. Moreover, both Mailerlite and Omnisend charge you based on the number of your contacts.

If you want to utilize the premium features, you need to upgrade as a paid plan user.

Omnisend Pricing

Omnisend has four different pricing tiers. As we said, the pricing depends on the number of contacts. In addition, if you subscribe to the annual plan of Omnisend, you can avail yourself of a good discount on the charges.

Free Tier

• The base plan of Omnisend is free and is best to test the system.
• You can design, target, and send personalized emails to up to 15000 emails per month.
• Free plan users will get a powered by Omisend verbiage on their newsletters.
• You can easily send promotional email campaigns.
• You can create up to 5 segments of contacts.
• You can have up to 2 active signup forms.
• You can generate automatic discount codes that can sync with your store.
• You can access several beautiful in-built email templates.
• Integrates with multiple third-party systems.

Standard Plan

• The Standard plan of Omnisend starts from $16 per month. The cost can go up depending on the number of your contacts.
• You can design, target, and send personalized emails up to 12 times your list per month.
• You can send SMS and MMS messages to reach your customers or contacts via phone.
• You can easily access email automation, SMS automation tools, and workflow utilities.
• You can create up to 20 segments of contacts.
• You can have an unlimited number of active signup forms.
• Integrates with more third-party systems than supported by the free plan.

Pro Plan

• The Pro plan of Omnisend starts from $99 per month. The cost can go up based on the number of your contacts.
• You can design, target, and send personalized emails to up to 15 times your list per month.
• You can send SMS and MMS messages to reach your customers or contacts via phone.
• You can easily access email automation, SMS automation tools, and workflow utilities.
• You can create up to 50 segments of contacts.
• You can have an unlimited number of active signup forms.

Enterprise Plan

• The Enterprise plan of Omnisend is a custom plan tailored for your specific needs.
• This is actually an unlimited plan where you can avail of every Omnisend feature. 

We encourage you to visit the Omnisend website to compare these features and offerings in more granular detail.

You must note that all paid plans of Omnisend offer fourteen days to try out the system for free. So, if in doubt, you can create your trial accounts and explore the platform to find if it suits your needs.

Mailerlite Pricing

Mailerlite, on the other hand, has a more simplified pricing structure. There are only two plans to choose from. Either you are a free tier user, or you are a premium plan customer. 

If you opt for the paid plan, your cost will depend on the number of subscribers and emails you wish to send. In addition, Mailerlite offers a few handy addons that you may explore on a need basis

Free Tier

• The base plan of Mailerlite is free and is best to test the system.
• You can send emails to up to 1000 subscribers and 12000 emails per month.
• Free plan users will get a powered by Mailerlite logo on their newsletters.
• You can not access HTML editor or newsletter templates.
• You can not use a custom domain or promotion popups.
• You can not have a dedicated IP or advanced email features and tracking functionalities.

Paid Plan

• The Paid plan of Mailerlite starts from $10 per month. The cost depends on the number of your subscribers.
• Paid plan users can avail themselves of 24×7 live chat support and paid addons.
• They can send completely customized, unbranded emails.
• Can access HTML editor and custom templates.
• Can have a dedicated IP, custom domain, and promotional popups, more detailed tracking reports.

You can refer to the Mailerlite website for the latest pricing.

Verdict – In short, we found Mailerlite is more cost-effective than Omnisend for the same number of contacts and monthly email quota. Mailerlite wins for us.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences In Creating Email Campaigns

With its collection of professionally designed email templates, it is very easy to send beautiful newsletters using Omnisend. The platform also lets you easily customize the template to match your brand. The saved designs can be reused. 

Omnisend lets you create actionable emails for eCommerce stores and boost your conversion. It offers you a drag-and-drop Content Editor. You can use the editor to create campaigns with dynamic content blocks designed for eCommerce like Product Picker, Dynamic Discount Code, Scratch Cards, and Product Recommendations.

Omnisend lets you leverage customers’ profile data, shopping history, and more filters to build audience segments for campaign targeting.

It has a built-in Campaign Booster and an A/B testing tool to optimize your open rates.

Mailerlite also has a built-in template library that can help you to create an attractive email fast. The drag-and-drop editor and HTML editor are intuitive and can help you to customize your emails visually. But you must note that these features are only available to paid plan users.

Mailerlite has advanced features like A/B testing, segmentation, and surveys. The platform also has advanced email automation in place to help achieve your marketing goals.

Verdict – Mailerlite and Omnisend offer similar features in terms of creating email campaigns. However, the advanced tools are only available for the paid plan users of Mailerlite. This makes Omnisend a better alternative to Mailerlite. Omnisend wins for us.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences In SMS/MMS marketing

If you need SMS and MMS communication, Omnisend is the only option here. Mailerlite has no in-built feature to send SMS using the platform. In other words, you must use a third-party service to avail of SMS services along with Mailerlite.

Omnisend, on the other hand, helps you combine automated texts with email using a single automated workflow and provide a consistent, personalized experience to your customers. 

In short, Omnisend offers SMS as a fully integrated channel that you can include in your automation or use for one-off campaigns. 

The automation library has pre-built workflows with SMS in cart abandonment, birthday, order & shipping confirmation automation. You can get activate these with only a few clicks.

Omnisend uses high-throughput toll-free numbers. This means there are no hidden fees for higher sending speed or scale. Moreover, Omnisend supports all country codes for sending text-only messages. You can also collect your site visitors’ phone numbers with TCPA-compliant SMS list-building tools like Popups, Sign-up Boxes, Landing Pages, and Wheel of Fortune. 

Pro & Enterprise plan users of Omnisend get free monthly credits added to their account. This means the users can save on SMS costs while engaging with customers using better-converting, omnichannel messaging.

Verdict – Omnisend is the clear winner. Since Mailerlite does not have SMS offerings, there is no scope of comparison between Mailerlite and Omnisend here.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differeneces in Sending Web Push Notifications

Web Push Notifications help you instantly retarget your customers by utilizing integrated and personalized push notifications for your eCommerce marketing.

Unfortunately, Mailerlite does not have Web Push notifications in its offerings.

On the other hand, Omnisend has powerful features to let you send push notifications to your customers. You may even combine push notifications with emails or use them as a fallback for automated SMS and increase your reach while keeping the message consistent.

With Omnisend’s Push Notifications, you can:

• Push for Cart Abandonment
• Push for Browse Abandonment
• Push for Transactional Messages
• Push for Promotional events

Verdict: In the absence of Push Notifications, Mailerlite does not give any competition to Omnisend. While Omnisend has a powerful Push Notification system, Mailerlite lacks it altogether. Omnisend is the clear winner here.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences in Creating Automated Workflows

Omnisend is a powerful system that lets you offer a consistent, personalized experience using multiple communication channels. These include eMail, SMS, or Push notifications. 

Omnisend lets you drag and drop these channels into a single workflow. You can use the pre-built messages, subject lines, and workflow settings to start marketing fast. 

For example, you can reuse the in-built automation for:

1.  Welcome eMails
2. Cart Abandonment
3. Product Abandonment
4. Order Confirmation
5. Shipping Confirmation
6. Cross-selling

It also lets you add rule-based automation splits and /B testing capabilities.

The in-built reporting feature can help you identify what works for your case. You can also connect with third-party software to enhance all your automation needs. 

In short, Omnisend has a strong Workflow Editor and very advanced automation capabilities built right into the system.

On the other hand, marketing automation is a little limited in the case of Mailerlite. 

As it lacks support for eMail, SMS, or Push Notifications – the automation is not as exhaustive as Omnisend. 

It has a few in-built automation like sending welcome Emails, celebrating anniversaries, delivering lead magnets, sending abandoned carts, etc. 

You can mix and match the different automation options. Mailerlite has options and capabilities to track and monitor your campaigns and automation.

Verdict – Automation is more complete, advanced, and powerful in the case of Omnisend. Mailerlite also has an impressive automation system but it looks less complete when compared to Omnisend. So, Omnisend wins for us.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences in Creating Customer Segmentation

Omnisend is an email marketing platform that is primarily geared towards eCommerce users. So, it has ample features to filter your audience based on different transactional events and purchase behaviors.

The customer segmentation intelligence uses different customer lifecycle events and helps you retain your most valued customers. Omnisend dynamically assigns each customer a lifecycle stage and presents this data in an easy-to-read lifecycle stage map for easy customer segmentation.

Mailerlite, on the other hand, has a more basic version of the customer segmentation feature. It lets you filter your contacts (or tag them) based on behavioral traits and interests.

Verdict – If you are an eCommerce business, Omnisend’s customer segmentation feature is far more complete than MailerLite. For non-business users, Mailerlite’s segmentation or Interest Groups functionality may be suitable. For longer lists and functional eCommerce business Omnisend simply scores higher.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences in Building Forms and Popups

Forms and Popups are powerful tools to capture leads. These are key ingredients to any email marketing campaign.

Omnisend has several built-in signup forms that you can use for collecting contacts and leads. For example, you can use Popups, Landing Pages, Wheel of Fortune, and Signup Boxes to capture these leads. 

You can also use Exit Popup to decrease the bounce rate, reduce checkout abandonment, and boost signups on your eCommerce store. 

Omnisend lets you choose a specific number of pages to view before the popup appears. You can even limit targeting the popups to particular pages of your store or website.

You can use the popups to collect phone numbers and start growing your SMS lists. You can even create phone number-only forms or capture both phone numbers and email addresses. Omnisend lets you run marketing activities with phone numbers only. 

The consent information is collected using TCPA and GDPR compliant forms. The forms are mobile optimized. And you can pick any of the professional themes to build your contact list.

Mailerlite also offers you email Popup forms. The drag & drop Popup builder makes it easy to build attractive and responsive newsletter Popups using pre-designed blocks and custom settings. You can create different Popups like Featured Popups, Floating Popups, SlideBox, Half Screen Popups, Full-Screen Popups, and On Click Popups.

Apart from using readymade designs, you can also create GDPR compliant Popups to collect leads.

Verdict – Both Mailerlite and Omnisend have sufficient features to make a professional and effective signup form for your website to capture emails. But, in the absence of support for phone marketing in MailerLite – I will give a slight edge to Omnisend.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences in Tracking Sales and Reporting

It is important to track the performance of an email campaign. So, it is necessary to evaluate if the platform of your choice has powerful reporting and analytics tools in its offerings. 

Omnisend scores well in this parameter. It has an impressive toolkit to report the sales that Omnisend is driving you with spot-on revenue attribution and reporting. You can also monitor the sales generated across all campaigns and automation.

With its advanced reporting functionalities, you can see which campaigns & workflows are adding most to your bottom line and which segments show the best engagement. You can also compare and contrast the performance of email, SMS, and other channels against various key metrics. 

Moreover, with Omnisend Benchmarks, you can also compare your brand performance to similar e-stores in the industry.

Mailerlite also has different reporting tools and utilities to keep track of your email campaigns. For example, you can track how your audience interacts with your newsletters using the built-in Click Maps.

The handy Email newsletter reports can help you track your email campaign activity and subscriber engagement. The reports include unsubscriber count, spam complaints, bounces, link activity, and other metrics critical to measuring success.

But we found that the reporting in Mailerlite is more basic when compared to Omnisend. Also, unlike Omnisend, you need third-party apps to utilize the full reporting feature if you are running a Shopify store. 

Verdict: I will give a slight edge to Omnisend here. Though both the platforms have in-built reporting features, Omnisend seems to have a more powerful and advanced reporting and sales tracking functionality built right into the system.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Differences in Supported Integrations

In today’s technology landscape, it is wise to choose a platform having ready integrations with other third-party applications. 

If you are an eCommerce business, you may need multiple third-party services as you scale up. Omnisend knows it. You can check the latest list of Omnisend integrations on the official website.

But in short, Omnisend integrates readily with almost every app and web service you may need for running your online business. These integrations range across categories like Customer Support, eCommerce Platforms, Finance, Loyalty, Payments, and so on.

Moreover, Omnisend segregates its integrations in collections relevant to different eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce.

Mailerlite, on the other hand, also boasts of plenty of in-built integrations. In fact, you will find that Mailerlite has a diverse catalog of readymade integrations. 

For example, Mailerlite integrates with around 128 external applications. 

Moreover, both Mailerlite and Omnisend supports integrations using API if you need to build a custom plugin.

Verdict: It is a tie. Both Mailerlite and Omnisend have ready integrations with several apps and services. While Omnisend is focused more on services catering to online businesses, Mailerlite has a more generic and diverse catalog. I recommend you to visit the official websites and check for yourself if the service you are looking for is present in the list of supported integrations.

Omnisend vs Mailerlite – Wrapping Up The List of Differences

As you can understand from this comparison between Omnisend and Mailerlite, Omnisend is a more powerful and feature-rich marketing platform.

Mailerlite is a more suitable platform for users looking for a decent solution without having several advanced features. In addition, Mailerlite is more cost-effective compared to Omnisend.

If you are an entrepreneur looking for marketing avenues for your online shop – Omnisend is the way to go. Though the plans may look a little pricier, you simply can not ignore the robust features that it offers under the hood.

If you are in doubt, feel free to create a free account and play around the system before you commit.