Mailchimp vs Thinkific
Side-by-side comparison of Mailchimp and Thinkific.
Email marketing platform built for growing audiences
Build and sell online courses without technical headaches
What they are
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing and automation platform used by independent creators, small businesses, and e-commerce brands to build subscriber lists, send campaigns, and track engagement. It offers drag-and-drop email builders, audience segmentation, and basic landing pages. The platform is mature and well-documented, though its pricing scales quickly once your list grows beyond a few hundred contacts.
Thinkific
Thinkific is a hosted course platform where creators build, market, and sell online courses, membership sites, and digital communities. It suits independent educators, coaches, and small teams who want a dedicated course home without stitching together separate tools. The course builder is straightforward, though the platform's customization ceiling is lower than fully self-hosted alternatives, and transaction fees disappear only on paid plans.
if you need email marketing. Starts at 13/mo.
- +Extensive template library covers most creator use cases out of the box
- +Audience segmentation lets you target specific subscriber groups
- +Built-in analytics show open rates, click rates, and revenue attribution
if you need hosting and monetization. Starts at 63/mo.
- +No transaction fees on paid plans
- +Unlimited courses and students on most tiers
- +Built-in community and membership features
Which to choose
Mailchimp and Thinkific solve different problems, so most people would not choose between them directly. The comparison below helps if you are weighing where to spend budget, or deciding whether you need both.
Read the full reviews for Mailchimp and Thinkific.
Pricing checked 8 Jun 2026.