Transpond or Mailchimp: Which marketing platform should you use with Capsule?

Our view at Stack - Capsule CRM simplifies customer relationship management, streamlines sales processes, and saves time. Features include contact management, customisable sales pipelines, email integration, analytics, and workflow automation. It doesn't provide full email marketing functionality but it does allow you to connect to other tools.

Finding the right marketing solution for your business can be tricky when many platforms offer seemingly identical features. As a Capsule user, it’s essential to find a marketing solution that meets your business’s needs and works seamlessly with the CRM.

Transpond and Mailchimp are popular marketing platforms for Capsule customers, and we’d like to help you choose the right one for you. We’ll first explore their features and functionalities, before comparing the factors that matter most to our customers.

Comparing mid-range plans

Comparing top-level plans

*Transpond plans are available at a smaller volume of contacts.

†Mailchimp Premium’s lowest contact volume is 10,000.

Which is better for my organization?

Transpond and Mailchimp integrate with your Capsule account to facilitate marketing campaigns, access new opportunities, and finetune your targeted outreach. However, how they fare in pricing, usability, and customization may help you choose the right platform for you.

Transpond’s native integration with Capsule is a bespoke development: it’s built to access and share key data points relevant to your contacts and campaigns, in your CRM. Connecting Capsule and Transpond enables automatic data syncing, including Tags, and standard and Custom fields. Capsule’s Saved Lists automatically pull through as Segments in Transpond for rapid campaign initiation. You can also access a contact’s activity and engagement with your Transpond campaigns from the Capsule sidebar, enabling instant visibility from your CRM.

Mailchimp offers a standard CRM connection, which can require a more complex setup. While you can share custom identifiers like Tags and Custom Fields, engagement and activity from Mailchimp campaigns aren’t accessible from Capsule’s sidebar.

Ease of use

Transpond’s clean and user-friendly interface makes it easy to launch your first campaigns or switch from a previous provider without downtime. The platform is designed for smooth adoption, with a Capsule integration to help you launch campaigns, nurture leads, and monitor engagement easily.

Transpond’s plans evolve with your business, offering a wider feature set and increasing sophistication to serve your marketing needs as they grow.

Mailchimp’s platform has been described as overwhelming, while some features remain limited.

Mailchimp’s complexity can present difficult onboarding, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.

Others feel Mailchimp values form over function, frequently adding visually attractive but unnecessary updates, hindering users’ productivity and adoption of the tool.

Pricing and affordability

Transpond was created with small and medium-sized businesses in mind, offering key marketing tools at a lower price so you only pay for what you need. With a transparent pricing model, you can start from £7/ $10 per month, making it a great choice for small organizations. You don’t need to worry about onboarding fees or unexpected costs.

Transpond’s free plan offers the essential features for email marketing, so you can start creating campaigns without worrying about costs.

Both platforms base pricing on your volume of contacts. Unlike Transpond, Mailchimp also counts unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts. This makes it all too easy to hit and surpass your contact limits, causing Mailchimp to instantly upgrade your plan and payment. Users warn that Mailchimp’s pricing rises quickly, making it less suitable for non-profits and smaller organizations.

Supporting small businesses to grow

Whether you’re a small business owner wearing many hats, a one-person marketing department, or an advanced team, Transpond helps you get to grips with email marketing and master complex, multi-channel campaigns – wherever you are in your marketing journey.

It’s built specifically for small and medium-sized businesses looking to establish and optimize email marketing campaigns, adopt essential automation, and implement website tracking. Avoid the unnecessary complexity lumped in with tools like Mailchimp.

Mailchimp’s complexity and higher fees price out smaller organizations. Some users describe the feature set as unnecessary for small businesses, while must-have tools limit their scalability and opportunities for sophistication.

Customization and flexibility

Transpond’s tools are customizable, so you can build campaigns to suit your goals. Choose from dozens of prebuilt email templates, using them as they are, or styling them to suit you. With WYSIWYG and drag-and-drop editors, HTML input, and a Brand Analyzer to choose from it’s easy to create professional, branded emails and build better communications.

As well as seamlessly connecting to Capsule, Transpond integrates with payment platforms, scheduling and calendar tools, and social media networks, so you can do more with your email campaigns without leaving the platform. The seamless Capsule connection lets you make use of your Custom Fields, Tags, and saved lists to make audience segments easily.

Mailchimp also integrates with Capsule to nurture your contacts. However, users find the email builder too basic, meaning it’s difficult to create advanced designs. While users can select predefined templates, they’re also described as lacking deep customization. With Mailchimp, you can also build automations to help you manage basic tasks.

Deliverability and reliability

Transpond’s is a reliable service with users praising, delivery speeds.

Meanwhile, Mailchimp’s customers report that the platform glitches and freezes. Some users find email deliverability unreliable, discovering their campaigns are sent directly to recipients’ junk folders or don’t reach the contact.

Transpond and Mailchimp: a summary

Both marketing platforms provide an essential toolkit to start with email marketing, or optimize your existing campaigns with advanced functionalities and additional tools.

Transpond’s pricing has no hidden fees and is well-suited to small and medium-sized organizations with limited budgets, while its free plan provides everything you need to set your email marketing in motion.

Capsule’s native integration with Transpond reduces the time spent switching platforms or hunting down contact records. Enjoy a seamless connection that makes audience and segment creation effortless and enables instant access to campaign engagement from your CRM.

If your marketing team prioritizes ease of use, transparent pricing, and flexible, powerful tools, Transpond is likely the better choice.

Try any Transpond plan for free or sign up to the free plan to kickstart your marketing campaigns with ease.

If Capsule CRM is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.