For a lot of South African businesses, “email marketing” still means Mailchimp. They opened the free account in 2018, sent a few campaigns, and never really questioned whether it was the right tool.
That’s fine in most cases. Mailchimp is a reasonable choice. But the email platform market has moved on, prices have crept up, and several Mailchimp alternatives now do specific jobs noticeably better. Whether you should switch depends on what you’re actually doing with email.
Here is an honest look at the main options, the trade-offs, and a quick way to figure out which one suits your business.
Mailchimp: where it still makes sense
Mailchimp is the most familiar email platform in the world. Almost every freelancer, agency, and assistant has used it. The templates are decent, the editor is friendly, and integrations with most other tools just work.
Where it falls short: it has become expensive at scale, the automation tools are weaker than the competition, and the contact-based pricing (you pay for unsubscribed and inactive contacts too, unless you clean regularly) catches people out.
Stick with Mailchimp if you’re sending simple monthly newsletters to a list under 2,000, you’re not running complex automations, and you don’t want to learn a new tool.
MailerLite: best for simple, well-designed campaigns
MailerLite is the platform we recommend most often for small businesses just getting started or moving away from Mailchimp. It’s cheaper, the editor is cleaner, and the templates look more modern out of the box.
The free tier is generous (1,000 subscribers, 12,000 emails a month) and the paid plans start meaningfully lower than Mailchimp’s. Automation is solid for basic welcome sequences, abandoned cart flows for e-commerce, and post-purchase emails.
Pick MailerLite if Mailchimp feels overpriced, you want better-looking emails with less effort, and your automation needs are straightforward.
Brevo: best value, especially if you want SMS too
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) sells email by volume rather than by contact list size. That changes the maths entirely if you have a large list of mostly-quiet contacts you only email occasionally.
Brevo also handles SMS, WhatsApp Business, and live chat in the same dashboard. For a service business or a small e-commerce store that wants to consolidate messaging tools, it’s a real saving.
Pick Brevo if your list is large but you send infrequently, or if you want one platform handling email plus SMS plus chat.
ActiveCampaign: best for serious automation
ActiveCampaign is what you graduate to when your email marketing gets ambitious. The automation builder is the most flexible we’ve used, the CRM features are properly integrated, and the segmentation rules let you do things the others can’t.
The trade-off is complexity. There is a learning curve, and the price climbs faster than the alternatives as your list grows.
Pick ActiveCampaign if you’re running multi-step nurture sequences, you want behavioural triggers (someone visits a page, an email fires), and email is central to how you sell.
Klaviyo: best for e-commerce
Klaviyo was built for online stores and it shows. Deep integration with Shopify and WooCommerce, ready-made flows for abandoned cart, post-purchase, browse abandonment, and win-back. The reporting ties revenue directly to email, which makes ROI conversations easier with everyone in the business.
It’s not cheap once you cross 1,500 contacts, and it’s overkill for service businesses. But for any product business doing real volume, it’s the obvious choice.
Pick Klaviyo if you’re running e-commerce and you want email to drive measurable revenue.
Kit (formerly ConvertKit): best for creators and personal brands
Kit is built around plain-text, personal-sounding emails. Coaches, consultants, course creators, and writers tend to gravitate here. It’s not the prettiest, but the audience-tagging system and creator-focused features (paid newsletters, landing pages, digital product sales) are unmatched.
Pick Kit if your brand is built around you personally, you sell digital products or courses, or you write emails that feel more like letters than campaigns.
How to actually pick
If you’re paralysed by the choice, here is the shortcut:
- List under 1,000 and just want a clean monthly newsletter? MailerLite.
- Online store doing real revenue? Klaviyo.
- Service business with complex sales cycles? ActiveCampaign.
- Big list, infrequent sends, want SMS too? Brevo.
- Personal brand, courses, or paid newsletter? Kit.
- You really like the Mailchimp interface and you’re under 2,000 contacts? Stay where you are.
A note for South African businesses
All of these platforms are based overseas and bill in USD or EUR. That means a weak rand changes your monthly cost. Build that into your planning. Most also offer annual billing at a discount, which lets you lock in a rate.
Whichever you pick, make sure you’re handling consent and unsubscribes properly under local law. Our POPIA guide covers what you need.
Read next
If you’re switching platforms, the welcome sequence is the first thing to rebuild. See what goes in a welcome sequence. And to set the right baseline rhythm once you’re up and running, here is how often you should be sending.
Need a hand picking, or migrating?
We’ve moved clients between most of these platforms and built campaigns on all of them. If you’re stuck choosing, or you’d rather just hand over the setup, see our email marketing service or get in touch.
