Overview

Marketo and Mailchimp are both email platforms, but comparing them is like comparing a commercial jet to a Cessna. Both fly, but they're built for different purposes, different scales, and different budgets. For our take on each, see our Marketo comparison and Mailchimp comparison.

The 9x Price Reality

At 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp Standard costs $100/month. Marketo Select costs $895/month. Before CRM, implementation, and training, Marketo is 9x more expensive. Factor in the full stack, and it's 15-20x more. Most businesses don't need to spend that much on email marketing.

When Mailchimp Is Enough (Which Is Most of the Time)

Mailchimp handles email campaigns, basic automation, landing pages, and simple analytics. For small businesses, creators, and growing companies, that's plenty. Mailchimp's ease of use means you spend time on your business, not on learning a marketing platform.

When You've Outgrown Mailchimp

The legitimate reasons to consider Marketo: your sales cycle is 6+ months with multiple stakeholders, you need to prove which of 50 marketing touchpoints drove a $200K deal, and your marketing team has the expertise to operate enterprise software. That's a small percentage of businesses.

The Sequenzy Alternative

For SaaS founders, neither platform is ideal. Mailchimp lacks SaaS-specific features and charges extra for transactional email (via Mandrill). Sequenzy combines transactional email and marketing campaigns with native Stripe integration — at $49/month.