Because of this, I'm oftentimes left with a decision—pay a premium to hire my own research team and create new and compelling content, or pay a fraction of the price for an AI writing tool that can quickly research a topic and write a paragraph as well as (or better than) most humans.

When the topic doesn't require specialized knowledge, I'm more likely to use AI.

In order to find the best AI content writer, I tested 12 copywriting tools and had each one generate a paragraph reviewing it's own service. The results were a mixed bag, but it's fair to say that the cream rose to the top.

Best AI Content Writers (2023)

Most Popular

Copy.AI

$49/mo*

• Dedicated to short form writing
• Free Trial Option
• $11M in Funding

Lab Notes:

Copy AI is a worthy competitor in the race to build neural content writers that match or exceed the abilities of human writers. Our testing showed a tool capable of producing quick and easy product descriptions, headlines, and social media content, but it lacks output for full-length articles and other long-form writing.

Read Review

Try For Free

2,000 words/mo Free

Our Favorite

Jasper AI

$82/mo*

• Templates for long and short form content
• AI art platform add-on
• $125M in Funding

Lab Notes:

We've been using Jasper AI almost exclusively after trying out the other writers. It's the best funded writing platform, which means continued improvement, but does also come with a heftier price tag. We don't mind the added cost, though as it still comes in well under the price of paying a human writer for roughly the quality of work.

Read Review

Try For Free

10,000 words free through our referral link

Best Value

Anyword

$24/mo*

• Plagiarism checker
• Writing community access
• $21M in Funding

Lab Notes:

Anyword is by far the cheapest of our top 3 AI writing tools, but doesn't give up much in terms of quality. We found that Anyword's short-form, technical copywriting was indistinguishable from humans and held up to the top competitors. In addition, Anyword gives users 2 months free trial to give the app a try.

Read Review

Try For Free

2 Months Free

The prices above are subject to change. Your costs may vary.

Researched, Reviewed, & Written by

Tim Seidler – Owner & Founder | WebMonkey

Our recommendations are based on real-life, hands-on experience and updated regularly on the basis of new product releases, pricing changes, and a number of quality factors.

Why use an AI content generator?

The real question is, why not?

If you haven't actually sampled text from an AI writing tool yet, I suggest you do. Entire paragraphs are generated in the blink of an eye simply by providing a few keywords and clicking submit. Not only that, but the copywriting that is produced can rival any professional human writer depending on the subject matter.

Instead of making you do all the work, I've picked a few target keywords and phrases to demonstrate just what these writing tools can do.

Our Choice – The Best AI Writing Tool

JASPER AI

By far the most comprehensive and awe-inspiring copywriting tool we have had the privilege of testing. Jasper spits out perfectly crafted sentences with almost no need for keyword manipulation. It's as if this text generating technology can read your mind and put your words on paper far better than you'd ever imagine was possible.

Try Jasper Free

First Impressions

I started using Jasper in the spring of 2023, and it just now occurred to me to review its writing technology along with its competitors.

The aha moment for me was when I found the paragraph generator in the list of templates. By simply typing in a question or topic and clicking “generate,” Jasper opened my eyes to how quickly I could produce copywriting on a large scale.

Since then I've used it to summarize bible verses, talk about art colleges, and review products.

When people catch onto AI writing technology the same way they've begun to find AI art, the world will change very rapidly, and I truly believe that Jasper will be leading the way.

Jasper AI Review (of itself!)

Jasper AI is a writing assistant powered by advanced artificial intelligence. It's designed to help copywriters produce error-free writing faster and more efficiently than ever before.

By utilizing advanced text filtering, plus deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, the writing assistant offers instant checks of your writing for spelling, grammar, tone of voice, punctuation and other inaccuracies. With this level of precision and accuracy, Jasper AI ensures both efficient and effective writing when it comes to tackling any text writing tasks.

The paragraph generator tool within Jasper enables users to quickly generate a high-quality, engaging paragraph with just a few clicks. With tags and sentence structures already included, all you have to do is add your own topic of discussion and let Jasper AI take care of the rest.

This technology can be used for a variety of applications such as short stories, essays, blog articles, social media posts, and much more. Editing is not necessary when using this cutting-edge tool; the generated paragraph is presented in an easy-to-use format that will save countless hours of time and energy in the writing process.

The text above was combined from two separate outputs. The level of specificity about the service shows me that Jasper actually looks at existing information on the web and bases the answer on it's findings.

How much does Jasper cost?

Jasper pricing is variable, but the company currently sets their Creator plan at $49/mo. For more advanced users the Pro plan is set at $69/mo.

Does Jasper AI have a free trial?

Yes! Jasper offers a 7-day free trial to try out the Creator and Pro plan features.

How much money has Jasper raised?

To date, the company has raised more than $126 million from both venture capital and private investment funds. The success of Jasper AI has been credited to its cutting-edge technology, which helps businesses reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Funding was led by notable venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Base10 Partners, with a number of other investors, including Radiant Venture Capital and Vertex Ventures, joining the latest round.

Most Popular AI Writer

COPY AI

It's hard to compete with Jasper, but lucky for Copy AI, they had a head start. Boasting more than 300,000 users, this service more than triples the reported users of Jasper. Though I found it slightly inferior in its ability to spit out perfect paragraphs, for certain applications, Copy AI is the way to go. It's also slightly less expensive if you're price conscious.

Try Copy AI Free

First Impressions

The first time I used the tool I tried to find a template that allowed me to generate a full paragraph based on one topic. What I came up with was Bullet Point to Paragraph.

It asked for a topic and at least 40 characters of text to describe what I wanted it to say. For me, it seemed a little excessive to require a character count when I'm ultimately trying to reduce my writing. That said, I was thoroughly impressed by the output.

I was given five well-crafted options of varying lengths. The sentences were arranged in multiple paragraphs—unlike Jasper, which bunches them all into one continuous string.

I like that it told me how many characters and words were in each output. They ranged from 80 words to 225 words each. Having the choice to decide how concise I wanted the requested text to be was a very nice touch.

Copy AI Review (of itself!)

With the new Copy AI from Artificial Intelligence SaaS, you can create content for blogs, e-books, and webpages that is indistinguishable from a human writer. Not only is it capable of writing in text format with an individual voice for each piece, but it can also create multimedia content that enriches your messages with images and videos.

Copy AI's machine learning algorithms look at the content you provide them as well as what other people like to read on the web. They learn from all this data to develop their own style and improve upon it over time. This means that not only do you get great content created by artificial intelligence software but the content will get better over time!

To see how well Copy AI works, I gave it the task of writing a blog post about itself.

The sentence above blows me away. The AI tool was self aware enough to know I was asking it to review itself.

Most Affordable AI Writer

Anyword

Rivaling the best AI writing tools, but costing less than half their competitors, Anyword delivers a simplified user interface that allows you to quickly jump into text generation using their AnyCopy feature. You also have the ability to work with pre-determined templates tailored to specific types of copywriting. Try it free for 2 months.

Try Anyword Free

Anyword Review (of itself!)

The AI Writing Tool from Anyword is a revolutionary program that can help streamline the writing process for all types of content. This AI-driven writing platform helps to automate aspects of the writing process such as research, grammar, and spellchecking. The easy-to-use interface allows users to customize the writing process to their particular needs and write with confidence.

Furthermore, the tool offers detailed analytics on your writing performance which can help to inform and improve your writing style in the future. All in all, the AI Writing Tool from Anyword is an impressive product that is sure to help make anyone's writing experience more efficient and effective.

I'm having a hard time finding fault with Anyword. I loved the simplicity of the interface. While they offer the same templates as other services, I didn't feel as overwhelmed with choices right away. Their AnyCopy tool allows you to jump into text generation mode right away, which I appreciate.

More AI Writing Tool Reviews

ChatGPT Review (of itself!)

ChatGPT is a valuable tool for writing content. It can help generate ideas, draft articles, and even refine your writing. The AI provides quick responses, which makes it ideal for brainstorming sessions. Its ability to understand and respond to various topics ensures that the content produced is relevant and well-informed. Whether you're writing a blog post, an essay, or social media updates, ChatGPT can assist in creating clear and engaging content.

One of the strengths of ChatGPT is its versatility. It can adapt to different writing styles and tones, making it suitable for a wide range of content needs. The AI can also help with editing and proofreading, ensuring that the final product is polished and free of errors. However, it's important to review the AI's suggestions to ensure accuracy and appropriateness. Overall, ChatGPT is a helpful tool for anyone looking to improve their writing process and produce high-quality content efficiently.

ChatGPT is one of the most popular AI content writing platforms and for good reason—it's versatile, concise, and conversational. It's also very affordable for how powerful it is. The main downside is that it has periods of downtime during times of peak traffic.

CopySmith Review (of itself!)

The Copysmith copywriting tool is a powerful technology that makes it easy to write persuasive copy quickly and conveniently. It uses AI technology to help you create optimized content for a wide range of marketing applications.

With its advanced algorithms, it can detect your target audience, determine the best voice and tone to use, automatically define USPs, pick keywords and phrases that ensure maximum engagement rate, and even generate headlines and body copy with just a few clicks.

Its sophisticated algorithm helps ensure that you get great quality content while also saving time and energy. Furthermore, with its extensive library of writing styles, it can be adapted to fit almost any type of writing – from SEO blogs to website copy and beyond! With its easy-to-use dashboard and affordable pricing plans, Copysmith makes it extremely fast and easy to generate engaging content that resonates with your intended audience.

Copysmith has a wide range of AI tools and templates to meet multiple writing needs. And while the platform takes a bit of practice to get the hang of, its output is solid when compared to other AI writing platforms.

Peppertype Review (of itself!)

If you're looking for a writing tool that can help you get your ideas down quickly and easily, you should check out Peppertype. It's a great AI-powered tool that can help you with everything from brainstorming to editing.

I really like the way that Peppertype helps you to organize your thoughts. It's easy to add new ideas and rearrange them, and the AI provides helpful suggestions for how you could improve your writing. The editing features are also really helpful, and I've found that the tool does a great job of catching errors that I might otherwise miss.

Overall, I highly recommend Peppertype if you're looking for a writing tool that can help you be more productive. It's helped me a lot, and I'm sure it can help you too!

I don't like that the Peppertype tool chooses to speak in the first person on my behalf. The writing is well done and can pass for human, but that doesn't mean I want to portray that. If there were additional checkboxes that gave me the option to change perspective I think I'd like it more.

Rytr Review (of itself!)

Rytr is an AI writing tool that uses AI to generate content for you. This article will discuss some of the use cases of this tool and how it can help you in your business.

The Rytr AI writing tool is a content generation platform that takes care of all the tedious tasks involved in creating content. It can help you generate blog posts, articles, newsletters and more. It also allows you to customize your content by adding images, videos, or links to relevant resources.

If you are looking for a way to save time on content creation while still maintaining quality, then this is the best AI writing assistant for you!

I don't love the way the tool infuses, what I deem, basic high school formatting into the text output. Telling me what the article will discuss and signing off with a paragraph that summarizes the previous paragraph is unnecessary filler, and I don't want to have to filter through that for the meat of the topic every time I ask for an output. On the other hand, if it was offered as a checkbox I could turn on and off, I think that could be useful.

Copymatic Review (of itself!)

If you are in search of a writing tool that can help you get your work done faster and easier, then you should definitely check out CopyMatic AI. This amazing tool uses artificial intelligence to help you write better and faster. Here is a review of this amazing tool to help you decide if it is the right fit for you. CopyMatic AI is a revolutionary writing tool that uses artificial intelligence to help you write better and faster. This amazing tool was created by two former Google employees, who saw the potential of using AI to help people write better.

CopyMatic AI is designed to help you improve your writing skills by giving you real-time feedback on your work. This writing tool is very easy to use. All you need to do is type in what you want to write and the tool will give you real-time feedback on your work. The feedback includes suggestions on how to improve your grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. You can also use the tool to check your work for plagiarism. CopyMatic AI is a very affordable writing tool. It only costs $3 per month, which is very reasonable considering the benefits it provides. Overall, CopyMatic AI is an excellent writing tool that can help you write better and faster.

While there are some highlights in the generated text, the overall impression I get is that this tool needs more development. The sentences are choppy, and it repeats “real-time feedback on your work.” Ultimately I don't want to have to edit AI writing extensively, as that defeats the purpose of using a copywriting tool in the first place.

WriteSonic Review (of itself!)

I recently had the chance to try out Writesonic AI Writing Tool and I must say, I'm impressed. It's an incredibly powerful tool, with a simple and intuitive interface that makes creating content incredibly easy. The AI-driven writing capabilities are particularly impressive. It can quickly generate content ideas and help you refine them into full-length articles, without you having to do any of the heavy lifting. The AI also checks your work for grammar and spelling mistakes, so you don't have to worry about making any errors.

I also found the tool's collaboration capabilities to be incredibly useful. It was easy to share my work with my team and get feedback in real-time, and the integrated chat feature was great for discussing ideas. Overall, I'd highly recommend Writesonic AI Writing Tool to anyone looking for a powerful and easy-to-use writing tool. It's definitely worth checking out!

Again, I don't love the first person. After trying out a few of these tools, I do think that it chooses that voice when you specify “review” in your seed keywords. When I swapped to asking about “features,” I didn't get the same perspective. The tool also chose to use the word “incredibly” more times than I'd like, but I think that overuse of adverbs is common across most AI writing tools. I also have a suspicion it might be one way Google's algorithms identify AI content—so beware.

Simplified Review (of itself!)

In this fast-paced world, we are always looking for ways to be more productive. One way to be more productive is to automate some of our tasks. This is where ai writing tools come in.

Ai writing tools can help you write faster and better. They can also help you with your grammar and spelling. In this article, we will review some of the best ai writing tools.

Though I included their brand name, Simplified, in the text prompt, the AI failed to return a result that was specific to this service. It also failed when it came to writing a lengthier response.

Scalenut Review (of itself!)

Scalenut is a unique AI writing tool that allows users to write articles and essays faster and with more accuracy. The Scalenut platform uses natural language processing (NLP) technology to analyze the user's text, identifying the main ideas, sentences, and paragraphs. This information is then used to generate an outline for the article or essay, as well as suggestions for improvement.

The Scalenut platform also includes a revision feature that helps writers edit their work quickly and easily. With this tool at your disposal, you will be able to produce top-quality content in no time!

Scalenut's AI writing tool performed well in my opinion. It gave me two paragraphs that are neatly written and go into some level of detail about the product.

Frase

Frase.io is yet another option for AI copywriting. Their tool offers a free trial that includes on search query. After that, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. The Solo plan gives you 10 queries per month for $15, the Basic gives you 30 queries per month for $45, and then Team plan is $115 per month for unlimited queries.

When there are services that give you access to much more for less, we have a hard time understanding why anyone would choose them.

Article Forge

Article Forge is a gated AI writing platform. In order to activate your free trial you're required to give up your credit card information and agree to the price increase after 5 days ($57/mo). This tells me that they either don't trust that users will want to use their service after testing the tool or that they're out of touch with the current ecosystem and are falling behind in other areas as well.

We recommend waiting for a free trial without strings attached or trying Jasper instead.

Copy Shark

After filling out Copyshark's application to demo the product before anyone else, I was left disappointed. Unfortunately, they're one of the only services that actually required a credit card up front.

Sadly, I know if I signed up for the trial I'd forget about the subscription and pay the $59/mo unintentionally.

It's hard to believe anyone would pay for a writing service they can't try first. For now, I'll wait to voice my opinion on the Copy Shark AI writing tool until they open up to free trials.

Examples of AI generated copywriting

The best way to show you the power of these copywriting tools is to put them to work. Below you'll find actual text that was created in a few short seconds.

Industry: Religion
Keyword: John 3:16
Thoughts: This example shows that the AI generator for Jasper was able to identify the actual bible verse, quote it, and summarize its relevance in a matter of seconds.

Generated by Jasper.ai

Industry: Education
Keyword: Best Nursing Schools in Chicago
Thoughts: Again, the paragraph generator from Jasper is able to pull relevant and specific information about the subject and craft a near-perfect paragraph that would take most humans significant brain power and time to match.

Industry: Gaming / Ecomm
Keyword: TITAN EVO 2023 SERIES Gaming Chair
Thoughts: If you're looking for product descriptions; Jasper is able to quickly research and summarize product details effortlessly.

Does AI generated content rank well in Google?

Yes! The writing generated from the best AI tools doesn't seem to be easily detected by search engines, and is capable of ranking quickly in the SERPS.

Don't believe me? Sign up for examples of AI generated content ranking top 10 within 24 hours!

Assuming you have an established web presence and follow standard SEO best practices, there's no reason AI generated copywriting can't perform well on Google.

Top 3 AI Copywriting Tools

Winner – Jasper

10,000 Words Free

Runner-Up – Copy.AI

2,000 Words/mo Free

Best for Less – Anyword

Get 2 Months Free

The post Best AI Content Writer : We Asked 12 AI Writing Tools to Review Themselves Then Assessed Their Answers appeared first on WebMonkey.

Many online services have emerged out of this need to improve and simplify the site creation process. Some offer in-depth SEO tools to help your site reach more viewers, and some may rely on marketing functions and PPC tools.

Choosing the best service for your site can be challenging. If you’ve been trying to decide between SEMrush and Moz, this brief guide may help you make your final decision. We’ll be taking a moment to consider each service’s features, advantages, and disadvantages before comparing them directly. Let’s begin!

SEMrush Overview

SEMrush is a service offering website creators and digital marketers a full range of virtual tools, many of which are geared toward SEO or PPC. As such, it could be a helpful one-stop-shop for all of your necessary site improvement and site marketing tools.

Like many other such services, SEMrush offers users several service options. Each plan consists of a set amount of functions and features and costs a predetermined monthly price. Users could also choose to invest in an annual program that withdraws a single, full payment.

The optimal plan for any potential user depends on the user’s needs and preferences. For example, a small business owner new to website design and creation may benefit from the SEMrush Pro plan far more than the SEMrush Business plan, despite the name.

Pro

The SEMrush Pro plan is the favorite SEMrush option for freelance workers and small businesses. It offers a moderate amount of services and tools, including up to three campaigns per month, 10,000 data rows per analytics reports, and up to 500 simultaneous keyword tracking functions.

In total, users can enjoy more than 40 unique SEO and PPC tools to increase their site’s ranking, visibility, and marketability. As such, the $100 may be relatively affordable, particularly for those hoping to grow their site over the coming months or years.

Guru

Individuals that choose the Guru plan can enjoy a little more than those who’ve chosen the Pro option. Instead of 10,000 data rows per analytics report, users can enjoy 30,000 data rows per report.

This plan also includes access to historical site data, allowing subscribers to access historical data reaching back to 2012. With the Guru plan, you can experience a slight upgrade in the Pro plan’s tools, particularly in usage.

However, apart from the few additional functions described above, the Guru plan doesn’t offer a ton of other features and extra tools. Those looking to enjoy the maximum amount of SEMrush’s toolkit may want to choose the Business plan.

Business

The SEMrush Business plan costs about $399 per month. It includes everything offered in the Pro and Guru plans, plus some. For example, while the Guru plan offers 30,000 data rows per each analytics report, the Business plan provides 50,000.

The Business plan also SEMrush PLA data for product listing ads, unlimited targets per project, Google Data Studio integration. Users could also choose to share with “read-only” access. As such, this plan may work best for larger businesses with heavy analytics needs.

Pros

• Offers a lot more than just SEO tools
• Easy to understand and use interface
• Plenty of SEO and PPC tools
• Users can generate tons of daily reports

Cons

• Some SEMrush plans may be too pricey for self-employed entrepreneurs or small business owners
• No free trials
• Ranking data is only pulled from Google, not other search engines

Moz Overview

Moz is a company that provides an array of website and SEO services. They have four primary products, though they offer a restricted amount of access to several necessary SEO tools.

Depending on the exact product you choose, Moz could be your ultimate SEO toolkit. Or, it could be a comprehensive set of functions that help you improve your site’s SEO while also allowing you to manage marketing resources and content quality.

Due to the many different facets of Moz, it’s crucial to examine each of its offerings. In this way, it may be easier to understand what Moz offers potential users and what it lacks.

Free Tools

Moz offers its site visitors a simple SEO toolbox that includes a handful of practical applications. You can find a:

• Domain SEO Metrics Tool
• Keyword Explorer
• Online Presence Analysis Tool
• Link Explorer
• Moz Bar Tool
• Domain Analysis Tool
• MozCast Tool

To access most of these tools, you will need to register with Moz and create a user account. This process can be tedious and a little time-consuming for those hoping to access SEO tools very quickly. However, once you’re signed into Moz, their free toolbox is incredibly easy to use.

Still, free users are given restricted access to all of the features mentioned above. To gain unlimited access to the many SEO tools Moz offers, you’ll likely need to upgrade your plan to a paid one. Moz offers four paid products, the most popular of which seems to be either the Moz Pro or the Moz Local services.

Pro

The Moz Pro service offers a few different levels of access, depending on the selected payment tier. The most affordable of these tiers is the Standard one, which costs about $99 per month. This cost can be slightly reduced by choosing an annual billing option.

The Moz Pro Premium service costs about $599 per month but is designed for medium-to-large businesses or companies. There’s also Moz Pro Medium and Moz Pro Large, both of which offer varying levels of toolbox access and effectiveness.

As such, users that opt for the Moz Pro service can expect to run 3-50 campaigns, track between 300 and 4,500 keywords, crawl between 100,000 and 2 million pages, and make between 5,000 and 100,000 backlink queries per month.

Moz Pro is designed to meet the needs of small businesses, self-employed entrepreneurs, and larger companies hoping to improve their website’s SEO. However, Moz also offers a service that grants access to its SEO toolbox and a few nifty marketing functions.

This alternative service is called Moz Local. It’s also a bit challenging to describe due to the multiple payment plans available.

Local

Moz Local comes in three “flavors” of service, each with a specific price point. The most affordable of these payment tiers is the Moz Local Lite, while the Moz Local Elite is the priciest.

Users can expect to spend about $129 per month on Moz Local Lite and $299 per month for the Elite option. The mid-tier plan, the Moz Local Preferred, costs $179 per month.

The Moz Local service is designed for business owners. With a primary focus on listing management, data aggregation, data syncing, and social media integration, this service helps website builders craft a site that appeals to consumers and popular search engines.

While Moz Pro could help you master SEO basics and intermediate SEO skills, Moz Local attempts to do that plus help you keep your business functioning smoothly and effectively. It features more marketing-based tools and analytics to help business owners stay one step ahead of the market.

But businesses in need of an in-depth SEO service may decide to top for a combination of Moz services. The Moz STAT service, for example, could be particularly helpful in generating search engine results pages (SERP) analytics.

STAT

Moz STAT appeals to the analyst in all of us. It grants users access to a dazzling abundance of SERP analytic tools, including large-scale rank tracking. Pricing starts at about $720 per month, which is bound to be an affordable cost for businesses that require such a massive amount of SEO data.

Mozscape API

The Mozscape API service may be best suited to programmers or website developers with extensive knowledge of tool creation and SEO integration. This service offers up a seemingly endless stream of metrics and data analysis tools and allows users to create their own SEO tools and applications.

You could try this service for free if you decide to take advantage of the free 30-day trial. That’s excellent savings when you consider that this service costs between $250 and $10,000 per month. Still, this service is almost explicitly designed to meet the needs of expert designers and data analysts.

Pros

• Free SEO tools for those unwilling or incapable of paying for a subscription
• Plenty of different payment tiers appeal to users of all budgets
• Four distinct products for website designers
• Affordable plans for small and large businesses
• Excellent range of SEO applications

Cons

• Overcomplicated pricing structures can be challenging to navigate
• Moz Local could offer more marketing tools
• Only offers two plans that are beneficial for the majority small of business owners

SEMrush vs. Moz: Which Is Better?

The first thing to point out about these two different services is their selling point. Moz advertises itself as an SEO software and data service that can help you increase your site rankings and help you reach a wider audience. SEMrush advertises itself as a marketing toolkit, offering SEO services in addition to a wide range of other features, including content marketing.

Because these two companies don’t offer precisely the same services, comparing them can be tricky. However, it’s made easier by breaking each service down into three essential categories. After all, you could compare apples and oranges based solely on their color, but that won’t help you decide between their texture, taste, and convenience.

As such, we’re going to compare SEMrush and Moz based on their features, ease of use, and price. This way, you’ll have a more comprehensive idea of what both services offer and which might be the better option for your site.

Features

SEMrush offers one essential product at three different pricing tiers. Moz offers four products at several different pricing tiers. Comparing these features is a dubious task.

That said, Moz’s two most affordable plans offer almost the same types of functions as SEMrush’s two most affordable plans. Still, SEMrush offers the tiniest little bit more in terms of functionality, making it the overall winner in this category.

But users only looking for simple SEO tools could find that Moz’s features work better for their purposes. Of course, they’ll need to master Moz’s occasionally confusing user interface.

Ease of Use

A user interface, or UI, is a crucial aspect of any software or online service. You could have the best and most capable software at your disposal, but if you don’t know how to operate it, it’s not doing you much good.

Moz’s user interface is relatively standard. There are plenty of tabs to access and click through to find various tools, but exporting data and wading through the numbers can be laborious. SEMrush visualizes its data in a far more user-friendly way. Its general design is also easier to learn and master.

But because Moz can be used as an SEO tool, and SEMrush can work as a multipurpose site toolkit, users only wanting SEO assistance may find that Moz is easier to use. For this reason, it’s challenging to determine which UI is easier to use. Still, SEMrush has a slightly flatter learning curve.

Price

When it comes to price, Moz is unquestionably the better option. That’s because Moz offers free SEO tools and a free 30-day trial for its Pro plan. SEMrush isn’t as budget-friendly. The lowest-price payment plan for SEMrush users costs about $100 per month.

Still, it’s crucial to consider the adage, “you get what you pay for” when comparing these two services. Sure, Moz offers free SEO tools, and their Moz Pro pricing starts at the same point as SEMrush’s Pro plan. But does the range of services reflect this pricing point?

Well, Moz Pro Standard offers more page crawls per month, unlimited scheduled reports, and far more SEO-focused functions than SEMrush Pro. However, SEMrush Pro does provide more keyword tracking per month, and they also offer a few unique features like social profile tracking.

Creators searching for a handy SEO toolkit may find that Moz Pro Standard is the better option in terms of features and price. But those hoping to discover an all-in-one service for multiple site improvements may find that SEMrush is the better-value choice despite its higher price point.

Overall, Moz is the most affordable solution. But the better value depends on your needs and preferences.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below you will find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions regarding SEMrush and Moz. If you cannot find the answer you’re looking for below, don’t panic.

The customer service teams for both of these services do an outstanding job of answering client questions and concerns, so don’t hesitate to reach out to Moz Support or SEMrush Support for more info.

Which Is Better SEMrush or Ahrefs?

Determining whether SEMrush or Ahrefs is the better service can be challenging. That’s because the right answer depends on what you’re looking for from an SEO service. SEMrush offers a ton of SEO and marketing tools, and Ahrefs is primarily designed for SEO.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use application with phenomenal keyword research and SEO tools, Ahrefs may be the better option over SEMrush. But if you’re hoping to gain access to a comprehensive set of online tools to improve your site’s performance and rankings, SEMrush could be the more satisfactory choice.

Essentially, the buyer is the only person who could answer this question. That’s because each site designer has a unique vision for their site.

Some may want to focus on content creation and curation, slowly learning about search engine optimization as they go. Others may focus on SEO first and fill their pages with useful content after figuring out a solid SEO plan. Determining which type of site builder you are could help you choose the best possible service and virtual toolbox.

Is SEMrush Free?

No, SEMrush is not free. Unlike many other online toolbox applications that offer free trials or essential tools, SEMrush charges a minimum of $99 per month ($83.28 per month when billed annually).

Is Moz Good?

Is pineapple on pizza good? Depending on who you ask, you’re bound to get several different answers. That’s because “Is [something] good?” is a subjective question that is nearly impossible to answer. However, “Is Moz Helpful?” or “Is Moz Useful?” are questions that do have a more definitive answer.

Moz can be a helpful service for individuals or businesses hoping to improve their site’s SEO. If you choose to upgrade to Moz Local or Moz STAT, you could also work on content marketing, intercompany communication, info sharing, and SERP analytics. As such, Moz could also be considered a beneficial service.

What Is Moz Pro?

Moz Pro is one of three paid Moz services. It grants Moz users access to several Moz functions, including:

• Keyword Explorer
• Ranking Tracker
• Site Audits
• Crawl Diagnostics
• Link Explorer
• Page Optimization Score
• Customized Reports

This option is designed to suit the needs of website designers and creators that are explicitly hoping to improve their site’s SEO and rankings. Depending on the precise plan, Moz Pro can cost between $99 and $599 per month.

Users could also choose to save by purchasing an annual plan. You can expect to spend between $950 and $9,750 when selecting a one-time yearly payment.

This variation ensures that small business owners and self-employed site owners can afford Moz’s most popular SEO functions. Larger companies or businesses can access the more expensive elements Moz offers.

Final Thoughts

Both SEMrush and Moz could help website creators hoping to increase their site’s rankings, visibility, SEO, and reception. However, Moz’s services are geared more toward SEO purposes than marketing tactics.

SEMrush offers far more marketing features and functions than Moz and includes nearly everything Moz offers in SEO. But Moz offers free SEO tools and low-priced plans for subscribers. SEMrush’s most affordable plan costs about $100 per month. Still, your exact needs and preferences will help you decide between these two services.

The post SEMrush vs. Moz appeared first on WebMonkey.

Ahrefs and Majestic SEO are two such tools that may offer specific benefits, but how do these advantages compare? In this article, we’ll be comparing the two services and discover why they’re different and how they might be integral to checking backlinks and optimizing your site’s SEO.

What Is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is an SEO service that offers multiple tools to help website builders and content creators increase their website traffic while optimizing their SEO and overall ranking. An Ahrefs user and subscriber could access a wide range of services.

This toolset varies depending on the service tier the user has chosen. Still, Ahrefs sports a simple user interface and plenty of resources to help creators of all skill levels learn and improve.

As such, it’s a well-loved set of tools that could be beneficial for a wide range of people. The best way to decide how appropriate Ahrefs might be for you is to learn a little more about these tools and features.

Notable Features

Ahrefs is a multipurpose SEO optimization service that offers users a toolbox of helpful features. The most notable of these include the Ahrefs:

• Site Explorer
• Keywords Explorer
• Site Audit
• Rank Tracker
• Content Explorer

Let’s explore these features in greater detail to understand why they’re an integral part of the Ahrefs package. If you’ve been struggling to choose between Ahrefs and another SEO service, like Majestic, these features may help you make your final decision.

After all, Ahrefs has quite a lot to offer aside from backlink checking. It’s incredibly easy to work with, and you can master its functions and reporting features in a matter of hours or days.

There’s a lot to be said for simplicity, particularly for website design and optimization. You could have the most advanced and capable SEO toolbox in the world, but if you don’t know how to perform the functions you need, it’s virtually worthless. Ahrefs’ designers seem to understand this principle, and it shows in the user interface.

Site Explorer

If you think that the Site Explorer function sounds like a web browser type, then you’re not alone, and you’re not wrong. This feature’s name reflects its role and purpose, which is to explore other people’s sites. However, Site Explorer gives users SEO x-ray vision.

With this function, you could view any website’s traffic, keywords, competitors, and backlinks. This info could help you get a leg up on the competition when improving your site’s SEO and attracting new visitors to your pages.

Keywords Explorer

Finding the right keywords to help generate traffic and increase content quality can be a challenge. The Keywords Explorer helps to minimize the headache of securing the optimal SEO keywords by suggesting helpful keywords and allowing you to search for related keywords.

Site Audit

Sometimes you just need a full, comprehensive report on how your website is doing. The Site Audit function allows users to generate a massive set of information regarding their website’s general performance, tags, content quality, and links.

This feature allows creators to assess their site’s health and improve it, resulting in a more satisfying visitor experience. When in doubt, it’s time to audit that website out.

Rank Tracker

The Rank Tracker function is accessible via desktop or mobile devices, making it easy to generate and download SEO reports on-the-go. You can quickly customize your keyword searches, check your site visibility, and monitor traffic trends, all from one handy place.

If this data isn’t specific enough for you, then there’s always the deep-dive version that grants you access to more than a dozen individual features, including the featured page snippet, Adwords, and shopping results. This information could be crucial to how you design and improve your site.

Content Explorer

When you’re looking to make your website better, it’s often helpful to take a look around you. What are the most successful websites doing? What helps them attract so many visitors, shoppers, and interested onlookers? The Content Explorer feature can help you answer that question.

When you view some of your favorite websites’ site analytics, you may begin to notice trends and patterns in how they optimize their content for better SEO. You can adopt these habits and use them to boost your own site’s traffic!

Pros

• A wide array of SEO and site optimization tools for one bundled price
• Shows backlinks and related data in easy-to-read reports
• Integrated with tons of Google tools for increased compatibility with Google Analytics and related services

Cons

• Backlink historical index isn’t as vast as Majestic’s
• Ahrefs tools may not locate all potential backlinks
• The cost of total services is relatively high

What Is Majestic?

Majestic is an SEO service that specializes in generating backlink data. Their historical index is one of the most impressive, featuring millions of logged points that you can compare to your own site’s links to check their validity and security.

Like Ahrefs, Majestic does offer a few additional tools and functions. However, unlike Ahrefs, Majestic doesn’t consistently work on updating and improving those non-essential features.

Instead, Majestic’s most significant updates and improvements are its backlink checking and analysis features.

Notable Features

Explaining the types of functions and features Majestic SEO offers is challenging to do without mentioning the pricing tiers that separate them. As such, we’ll be tackling Majestic’s most notable features by exploring which tools as offered with each pay tier of service.

Lite

The most affordable plan is the Lite service. It grants access to one user and allows them to compare their site’s backlinks against a fresh index, use a site explorer to discover site metrics, and generate keywords to optimize site content.

There are also a handful of functions that allow you to view competitor site information, determine industry influence based on content, and otherwise perform research and analytics that could help you improve your own site’s performance.

Pro

There are a handful of updates available to users that choose to upgrade to the Pro plan. In addition to all of the previously mentioned features, those on the Pro plan can access an immense historical backlink index. They can also export raw data and generate customized reports.

There’s also an exciting Backlink History function and a smattering of competitor-focused features. All-in-all, the Pro plan is a worthwhile upgrade on the somewhat stale offerings of the Lite plan. Still, neither of these two options compare to the full scope of the API plan.

API

The API plan can be quite pricey. However, it can also handle and generate an immense amount of data. If you’re hoping to generate up to a million analysis units and create dense amounts of analytics site data concerning backlinks, then this may be the plan for you. It offers every tool in the Majestic toolbox, though it’s main charm is backlink optimization.

Pros

• Could be the more affordable solution for backlinking issues
• Offers an in-depth array of backlinking tools and analytics
• The Pro Plan includes a site Rank Tracker application

Cons

• May retrieve an absurd amount of backlinks per domain, making it difficult to read and analyze data reports
• Primarily only performs as a backlink checker

Ahrefs vs. Majestic: Which Is Better?

Now that we’ve explored the features, advantages, and potential disadvantages of both Ahrefs and Majestic, we can compare them. Of course, comparing each aspect of these services would be time-consuming and challenging to sort through.

That’s why we’ve narrowed down our comparison to three crucial factors. To determine which of these SEO services is best, we’ll compare their features, prices, and user interfaces.

The most helpful, affordable, and easiest-to-use option is likely to be the better investment, though your precise needs and preferences will also help inform your final decision.

Features

At their best, both of these services could help optimize your site’s SEO and increase traffic to your site. At their worst, they’re an overpriced SEO toolbox and a glorified backlink checker. Still, your site needs and goals will influence your opinion on the usefulness of these two different services.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a reliable option that offers plenty of easy-to-use tools and applications, including a site explorer, keywords explorer, site audit function, rank tracker, and content explorer. Ahrefs also gives subscribers the chance to explore thousands of additional features, including domain comparisons and batch analysis.

With Ahrefs, you could pull between 175 and 7,000 keyword reports each week. You could consistently check against a live backlink index, and you could also choose a plan that offers historical and recent indexes.

With this access, you could generate and view thousands of results with each Link Intersect report. Viewing backlinks and repairing faulty ones is simplified with Ahrefs. This helps make SEO optimization easier.

The additional features and functions also serve to improve site SEO and traffic. Majestic’s primary purpose is similar, but it doesn’t perform quite as many functions.

Majestic

Majestic is primarily a backlink checker and index tool. You can access far more historical backlink results with Majestic than you can with Ahrefs. However, this information may not be incredibly helpful.

Some Majestic payment tiers grant users access to additional services, such as a nifty Clique Hunter function for targeting competitor sites. These secondary features can be helpful, but they’re not presented as readily as Ahrefs’ additional features and functions.

The learning curve for the Majestic toolbox is far steeper than the one for Ahref tools. Some of this complication results from less-than-stellar user interface design. However, a substantial bit is the result of pricing tiers.

After all, it’s challenging to compare two services’ features when both offer different tools based on pricing tiers.

Price

Each of these services offers varying levels of tools and applications. The more money you’re willing to spend on each potential level of service, the greater your range of options. For example, Ahrefs offers a Lite plan that gives users only the most basic access to Ahrefs services.

This Lite plan does not include access to a recent or historical backlink index. It’s only by moving up the payment tier to the Standard Ahrefs plan that you gain access to in-depth tools and services.

The same can be said of Majestic, though the range of services is far less diverse. Majestic’s Lite plan grants access to recent backlink checks, a keyword generator, and a keyword checker. But that’s about it. The Majestic Pro plan, which isn’t much cheaper than the Ahrefs Standard plan, offers the extensive historical backlink index that users are expecting.

Overall, Majestic is the more affordable option. However, if you choose Majestic, you’ll be opting out of the additional applications available with the Ahrefs plans. Choosing between these two SEO tool boxes based on price is tricky because you get what you pay for. The choice is yours.

Ease of Use

Determining ease of use is a challenge, primarily because creators can have a sparse amount of SEO knowledge, or they can be SEO wizards. For those who are comfortable working with SEO tools, the user interface presented with Ahrefs may be overly simplistic.

However, if you’re unaccustomed to using SEO tools, the simple interface may be better suited to your needs. That said, Majestic can offer in-depth reports and analytics information. If you’re focused on finding a capable backlink checker and indexer with a massive history and database, Majestic could be a better option.

Still, for overall ease of use, Ahrefs is the smarter choice. It is designed to help creators and builders of all skill levels achieve their SEO goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below you will find the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Ahrefs and Majestic SEO. If you cannot find the answer you’re looking for below, don’t fret. Both services have exceptional customer service teams that may help answer further questions.

Is Ahrefs Worth the Money?

The answer to this question depends on your needs and preferences. If you’re already using an SEO optimization tool that works well for you, you may not benefit very much after investing in Ahrefs. If you’ve never used SEO tools before, you may find that Ahrefs is worth the money.

Essentially, if you’re looking for multiple SEO tools in one easy-to-find service, Ahrefs could be an excellent and financially practical solution. However, if you’re only hoping to work on one aspect of site SEO, such as backlinking, Majestic could be the smarter choice.

Which Is the Best Free SEO Tool?

The best free SEO tool appeals to the most significant number of needs and preferences you have concerning your site. For example, if you’re satisfied with your keyword usage but unhappy with your analytics apps, you may want to search for free SEO analytics tools. Google Analytics is a well-loved and highly trusted option that may work for that purpose.

But if you’re looking to change your keyword density or you’re struggling to think of helpful keywords, a keyword-focused SEO tool will be more beneficial. Keywordtool.io is an excellent option that may be worth a try.

How Can I Make Backlinks?

A backlink is an external link to a different website. Adding them to your site is relatively easy. You simply need to add your external hyperlink. But maintaining backlinks can be far trickier, especially if you keep a backlink-heavy site.

That’s because backlinks on your page could lead to empty pockets of space. Just because you’ve linked to a site’s page doesn’t mean the site will always keep that page around. As such, some of your backlinks may be “dead” or corrupted.

One of the advantages of having a backlink checker and optimization tool is avoiding faulty or spam-like backlinks. The right tool could remove or repair backlinks without you ever needing to lift a finger.

Final Thoughts

Ahrefs is an SEO toolset that features a keyword generator, backlink checker, and several site analysis tools. Majestic SEO is a service that primarily focuses on backlinks, providing an index and browser-based reports and analytics. Both could help you increase your ranking in search engines.

However, Ahrefs is a far more comprehensive set of services. Majestic SEO can only tackle backlink-related tasks. As such, the better option for you depends on your current set of SEO services.

If you’re already satisfied with most of the tools at your disposal, Majestic SEO may be the better option. But if you’re looking to overhaul your current system, you may opt for Ahrefs.

The post Ahrefs vs. Majestic SEO : SEO Web Tool Comparison appeared first on WebMonkey.

We’re here to help make your life easier by comparing two SEO keyword engines, so you don’t have to. Both SpyFu and SEMRush are two acclaimed tools with reputations for starting, growing, and maintaining online businesses. We’re here to help answer the question: which program is the best fit for you?

Both SpyFu and SEMRush are SEO marketing tools that make sure you’re choosing the best, most searched, and most applicable keywords on your webpage. The biggest mistake you can make when first starting a website is not optimizing it for search engines to find easily. The second biggest mistake is biting off more than you can chew when creating a website.

However, there are a ton of other features that both contenders offer. We’re going to break their multitude of features down for you, so you know what you’ll get exactly with each program and tier membership. The last thing you want to do is go into this without ample information about what each company can do for you and your growing business.

What is SpyFu?

SpyFu has been around for over ten years, originally launched in 2006. As a company, it has grown into one of the top competitors in tracking SEO and PPC trends. By finding high-ranking keywords for companies to use, they boost the company’s profitability and overall digital marketing success.

What SpyFu Offers

As the name suggests, SpyFu advertises all the ways you can spy on your competitors to help get a leg up on them. You can see comprehensive lists of competitor site domains, purchased keywords, and organic rankings that will help you improve your website.

PPC Tools

Their PPC competitor research tools help you “spy” and pick out the best keywords to run your campaigns with to make sure you stay on par with your competition. This comes with a grouping tool as well, so you can see which groups have worked best for the competition and how you can improve it.

They also track how much money is spent on buying certain keywords, which helps you stay ahead of the curve and hop onto trending keywords long before your competition catches on. All of this and more comes with the PPC competitor research information, and it’s all available in unlimited downloads.

SEO Tools

SpyFu’s SEO competitor research tools are also top-notch and function similarly to the PPC research. You can get access to your competition’s top SEO keywords and even categorize them into groups with their handy Keyword Group Analysis Tool.

You can not only see keywords but see actual numbers to their ranking as well. You can pinpoint exactly why you may not be ranking in the same capacity that your competition is and improve your digital marketing efforts with ease. SpyFu will also help you track and generate backlinks to help boost your website’s domain presence.

SpyFu Bonuses

Speaking of domains, SpyFu will also track and show you the top-ranking websites in your specific niche, not to mention how much money they spend on buying AdWords too. They’ll help you see the most searched keywords straight from Google Keyword Planner, so you guide your online marketing presence in the right direction.

Besides these amazing marketing tools at the tips of your fingers, SpyFu also offers both step-by-step guides and over 200 video tutorials to make sure you’re thoroughly acquainted with their technology and use it correctly. They also have easy to access customer service.

Pricing

SpyFu has three different product tiers that each come with their own advantages. The first tier is Basic, which is great for those just starting out and gives unlimited search results, data exports, and domain overview PDF files. However, it’s only used for small domain SEO domains—anything with less than 1,000 keywords.

The second tier is Professional, and the tools included in this tier include everything from Basic and up the numbers of things like domain contacts and sales leads, tracking keyword rankings, and expanding from just small SEO domains to include medium as well—anything between 1,000 to 30,000 keywords.

Finally, there’s the Team tier. This is for well-established businesses and includes up to 5 separate user logins. The Team tier builds off the Professional tier and ups the numbers on everything mentioned before, and includes large SEO domain tracking—anything larger than 30,000 keywords.

Plus, if you’re unsatisfied with your SpyFu experience, they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can cancel with ease via email, their live chat service, by phone, or even just logging into your account and canceling through the portal.

What is SEMRush?

SEMRush was started about two years after SpyFu in 2008. In its 12 years of business, the team grew from more than just SEO and IT specialists. SEMRush offers over 40 different SEO and PPC marketing tools that help companies grow and experiment in their ads to see what sticks and what doesn’t.

What SEMRush Offers

Much like SpyFu, SEMRush offers various tools to help boost your SEO keywords, PPC keywords, social media, and content marketing presence, and give insight into your competitors’ marketing to help you focus on where to improve your own.

PPC Tools

SEMRush helps you optimize your PPC strategy by offering a variety of features. They’ll give you insight into your competition’s paid search strategies, ad campaigns, and the effectiveness of their landing pages. Additionally, it’ll help you find effective keywords for PPC campaigns, along with the average cost of certain PPC keywords at a local level.

SEO Tools

SEMRush tracks your SEO keywords daily, helping you get an insight into how your ranking changes each day. It will also allow you to look at your competition’s SEO strategies and build upon them in a way that bolsters your own online marketing. Moreover, you can see tons of different SEO keyword ideas to help you get even more traffic to your website.

SEMRush Bonuses

The toolkit SEMRush provides to you will also help you create and execute effective social media and content marketing campaigns. They’ll help you create ads for both Facebook and Instagram and look at your competitor’s campaigns to see what works and what doesn’t.

Market research is also provided with SEMRush, which lets you see your competition’s marketing angles from all sides, not to mention key marketing players in your niche that will help your website grow. It will also help you track and hop on different market trends to stay relevant and timely with your website.

Pricing

Just like SpyFu, there are three different membership tiers within SEMRush. The first is Pro, which is great for those just breaking into digital business and marketing. You can have up to 3,000 reports per day, with up to 10,000 results per report. You can manage three projects at once and up to 500 keywords tracked daily.

The next level is Guru, which is $199.95 per month or $166.62 per month if billed annually. This is the perfect fit for those who own and operate SMBs, small to mid-sized businesses, or expanding marketing agencies. With this tier, you can have up to 5,000 reports per day with 30,000 results per report. You’re also able to have 15 projects at once and up to 1,500 daily tracked keywords.

Guru adds the Content Marketing Platform as well, which helps you find unlimited topic research, 800 different SEO templates, and even lets you track trends in different countries. It also allows you up to 5 plagiarism checks per month and gives you the historical data of your competition’s tracked keywords and ad campaigns.

The final tier is Business, and it’s the most comprehensive tier by far, with 10,000 reports per day and 50,000 results per report, not to mention you get up to 5,000 daily tracked keywords and an unlimited number of projects. Business tier members get access to the same Content Marketing Platform as well as more extensive sharing options, and Google Data Studio integrated into their reports.

All levels get access to mobile ranking, sharing with “edit” access, and every tier comes with one authorized user. However, more can be added if necessary for an additional fee. However, if none of these plans quite fit what you need at the time, SEMRush offers custom plans, too. This will make sure you get access to all the items you need, and you don’t waste money on things you won’t use.

SEMRush allows you to cancel, upgrade, or downgrade your membership tier or your selected features at any time. If you’re unhappy with your experience with SEMRush, they even offer a 7-day money-back guarantee.

The Winner

Both SpyFu and SEMRush are remarkable tools that help digital marketers, and online businesses grow and thrive. In all honesty, the best one boils down to what you need to do for your SEO and PPC business practices. SpyFu vs. SEMRush isn’t an entirely even matchup because each business (and business owner) has different needs.

It’s undeniable that SpyFu is less costly than SEMRush, but it seems SEMRush offers a more comprehensive look at the daily fluctuations of SEO and PPC. You might pay extra for the feature, but there’s a reason for it.

SpyFu, on the other hand, is more like a monthly summary of what worked and didn’t work for you and your competition. SpyFu also seems exclusively focused on helping pick out perfect keywords, while SEMRush helps with keywords as well as other aspects of digital marketing.

It’s important to not bite off more than you can chew at the beginning, so if you’re just starting out, SpyFu is a lower-cost investment that can help you get your feet wet in online content marketing. Once you’re comfortable with traditional SEO and PPC practices and know what to do and how to execute it, it may be smart to make the switch to SEMRush and utilize all its extra features to take your business to the next level.

All in all, SEMRush and SpyFu are great tools to help businesses expand and reach their fullest potential with their SEO and PPC keyword optimization, not to mention the multitude of other services included in their price. However, choosing the best program ultimately comes down to what you’ll need in a keyword research tool and how much you can afford to spend at the time.

FAQs

For beginners and seasoned digital marketers alike, sometimes a refresher is always helpful. We’re going to define some key terminology you’re bound to run into on both websites and what they actually mean in terms of implementation for your online business and helping it grow.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search engine optimization is crucial for creating websites or other digital platforms because you want your product or web page to show up among the first few links when searched.

If you’re unfamiliar with SEO, it can be extremely confusing and may seem like nothing more than a superfluous buzzword. SEO is more than just a buzzword, though, and implementing it correctly can make the difference between whether your website sinks or floats.

SEO has a line, though, where you want it to be naturally integrated into your writing and website. The last thing you want is a site that’s overly full of SEO content. Your viewers will catch on and quickly leave as soon as they came—that’s the opposite of what you want.

One last piece of advice when it comes to SEO: don’t write to answer someone’s Google search. Keywords are always more pertinent and beneficial than simply answering a question and will ultimately drive more traffic to your website than only answering a question ever will. For example, “where do coffee beans come from?” is a less effective search than simply writing with the words “coffee,” “bean,” and “production.”

What is PPC?

PPC is another important acronym that stands for Pay-Per-Click. Having a working knowledge of SEO and its practices helps you find the perfect keywords and groupings that make sure your ads are generating revenue for your website.

You have to pay to utilize PPC in search engines but, when it functions correctly, the fee you pay is minuscule compared to the business you’re bringing in to your website. Keyword research for SEO and PPC is where both SpyFu and SEMRush excel, along with a variety of other services.

What is AdWords?

AdWords is another term that appears on both SpyFu and SEMRush’s websites and services offered and is crucial to excelling in digital marketing and advertising. Google AdWords is now known as Google Ads and functions with a PPC model. In short, it’s the advertising model many website owners choose, as Google is the biggest search engine with the largest market share.

But how does AdWords work? There’s an algorithm that Google runs each time you run a search. The algorithm chooses from a pool of (paying) candidates to determine which ones it’ll show on the search engine results page as an advertisement. Using SEMRush and SpyFu can help you rank higher in this algorithm, though the jury’s out on the specific impact of either option.

The post SpyFu vs. SEMRush appeared first on WebMonkey.

Two of the most popular choices out there are Ahrefs and Moz Pro. Let’s dive into each and see how they compare!

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset designed to boost your rankings on search engines and increase your traffic. It's used by some big names, including Netflix, Facebook, and even LinkedIn.

They also supply videos and blogs about SEO in general, giving more insight for those of us who may still be learning about online marketing.

Key Features

Every all-in-one tool is going to be a little different, so let’s take a look to see what Ahrefs offers.

Keyword Tool

One of the key things to look for in an all-in-one SEO tool is if it allows you to track your traffic and organic keywords over time with their Keyword Explorer.

Ahrefs' keyword tool gives your business endless keyword suggestions, determines the difficulty in standing out when ranking your keywords, and finds the search volume for said keywords.

It breaks these down into charts and graphs, both of which are easy to read. Even better, their keyword tool allows you to see how your competitors rank with similar keywords. When you know how the competition is doing, you can determine what your next move needs to be, after all.

Website Authority Checker and Rank Tracker

Next, every all-in-one SEO tool should let you monitor not just your overall website rank, but it should also give insight into your perceived authority.

This information will help you determine your SERPs and how relevant search engines think your website is for your industry. If your perceived authority is low, you can take the steps you need to improve your standing.

Site Audit Tool

However, one of the best features that Ahrefs has is the Site Audit. A website audit is when you go through every single page on your site to determine your SEO standing. Doing this by hand, so to speak, is tedious and time-consuming.

The Site Audit tool does all the work for you. It goes through everything you've published and not only flags your issues, but it then gives suggestions on how you can fix them.

Better still, you can manually choose what areas of your website to audit if your site is gigantic. This will let you work on the most relevant areas to save precious time.

Content Explorer

The Content Explorer tool is a great way to see what your clients are actually looking for. The tool researches over a billion web pages to find the most popular articles on any and all topics.

This tool will show you the estimated organic traffic, the number of referring domains (websites that link to the content), its backlink popularity (domain rating), the value the organic traffic has, and also the amount of social sharing it gets.

That's a lot of information, but Ahrefs breaks it down into simple graphs to make it easy to understand. It's a great method of finding link building prospects and topics that don't have heavy competition.

Site Explorer

Ahrefs' Site Explorer tool helps you get a leg up on the competition in three main ways.

Firstly, it does organic traffic research to see what keywords are working for your competitors and their most searched pages. They monitor over 150 million keywords, so you can rest assured they'll have a good base to pull from and get you accurate information.

Next, the backlink checker will show you which websites link back to your competitors and how good the quality of those backlinks is. They have a huge index of live backlinks (at over 14 trillion links) to really help you analyze your competition.

Lastly, it shows you paid traffic research. If your competition is doing paid search advertising, Ahrefs will show you. Plus, they'll show you where they aim that paid traffic.

Pros

• Website audit tool to optimize your content
• Site Explorer to analyze your competition
• Keyword Explorer to see what your customers and clients are actually looking for
• Content Explorer to see your industry's top-performing content and learn from their success
• Rank Tracker allows you to monitor your progress
• Overview function that gives detailed graphs that are easy to read, including the top issues that require your attention

Cons

• Doesn't have a great API tool
• Most of the tool boils down to link management

Moz Pro

Moz is also an all-in-one SEO tool, which means it does everything you should need to optimize your website for SEO.

You'll get an SEO platform and Search Engine Results Page (SERP) analytics and Application Programming Interface (API). They claim to provide the most accurate SEO data with almost 41 trillion links indexed in their Link Explorer.

Plus, their blog is one of the most impressive when it comes to detailed information on SEO in general, so it's a fantastic place for anyone still learning to start.

Key Features

To get a better understanding of Moz Pro, let’s look at some of its most promising features.

Site Audits

One of Moz Pro’s best features is its Site Audit. It goes through even large websites relatively quickly, showing both new and any recurring issues you may have over time.

If you want to understand your business’s overall SEO, the audit allows you to uncover trends to take advantage of and opportunities to improve.

It’s relatively easy to read, as well. The tool gives you colored charts, breaking down any issues you may have by category, including both new and total issues.

Rank Tracking

Rank tracking specifically refers to your keywords. Moz Pro will go into detail about how your keywords perform over time. You can look at monthly or weekly performance or even set a specific range of time to analyze.

Better still, you can compare how your keywords function on mobile versus how they perform on desktop. This will tell you how your clients behave on mobile devices compared to what they’re searching for on desktop.

Backlink Analysis

If you want to investigate your website’s authority and how it ranks on SERPs, this is the tool to use.

The Link Explorer feature looks at your backlinks, which of your pages are most valuable, your linking domains, and your anchor text. They analyze this data and show you how to improve the quality of your links to boost your authority.

It then allows you to compare your standing to your four biggest competitors. It will show you the quality of their linking domains and then compare how they may have fluctuated over time. This can give a good insight into how to improve your own standing.

Keyword Research

To truly have your website be optimized for success, you’re going to need to do keyword research.

Keyword research can be tedious, but the Keyword Explorer tool makes it a whole lot easier. Not only does it analyze your keyword usage and content strategy, but it also allows you to create keyword lists.

These lists will categorize, prioritize, and even compare the keywords you’re using to develop your SEO and outrank your competition.

On-Page Optimization

All the analysis in the world won’t help if we don’t know how to apply it. That’s where Moz Pro can help.

Simply enter a keyword or phrase and page combination, and Moz will give you a prioritized list of recommendations along with the steps you need to take to maximum optimization.

Custom Reports

Moz Pro makes reports easy to digest with drag-and-drop charts and graphs. You can add your own notes to these charts to keep your data organized, and you can even have reports regularly generated and automatically delivered to any clients you choose.

These include site crawl data, SERPs rankings, and how you compare to your competitors. You can monitor these trends over time or get a quick snapshot of your results.

Pros

• Keyword explorer to keep your content optimized and will assist in prioritizing your keywords
• Chrome extension that lets you monitor any unique web page
• Site explorer to give you your organic visits and rankings as well as a detailed link profile analysis
• Business listing analysis that lets you access your domain and page authority
• Offers a hearty package of free tools

Cons

• Not quite as many features as the competition
• Isn't as fast to process updates as others
• May be less intuitive to use
• Often less functional and efficient than Ahrefs

Comparison and Overview

The two tools may seem similar, but they have some stark differences. Let’s examine how each treats some of the most important features.

Domain Authority

One of the biggest differences is how the two generate domain authority.

As a quick refresher, domain authority is another way of determining your ranking on search engines.

Ahrefs focuses on the strength of your link profile. Therefore, the more links you have, the higher your rating on Ahrefs will be.

However, Moz Pro instead determines your rank in search engines based on your link profile. That means that they look at the links your site has and specifically determines how well they correlate with your content and how that will influence your SERPs rank.

In this instance, Moz may give a more accurate representation of what you can expect. For Ahrefs, it's enough to have plenty of links to boost your domain ranking in their eyes. Moz instead looks at the whole picture, meaning your rank may end up being lower.

That isn't a bad thing, though. When you have an accurate look at your domain authority, you can take the necessary steps to correct any issues and get your rank up.

Rank Tracking

The big point of using these all-in-one tools is to get your website boosted. Otherwise, there's no point in spending your money on a service that falls short.

First, Moz lets you check your rankings by searching a list of your target keywords for specific pages. Then, Moz will display how each page is performing.

Ahrefs checks different domains and subdomains by searching exact URLs and how they perform on Google. It will generate a list of any keywords that boost your rank on search engines.

Link Monitoring

Both Ahrefs and Moz allow you to see how your link profile is standing up against the competition.

Moz lets you input any URL (yours or a competitor's) and then get a complete profile on it, including information on backlinks and page and domain authority.

With the report, you can see where you need to expand and get new backlinks.

However, Ahrefs lets you look at various aspects of linking, including backlinks, keywords, and competitor analysis. With the tool, you can see the anchor text, do-follow and no-follow links, as well as when links were made.

This gives an insight into your own link profile, but also how your competitors are holding up.

Keyword Research

We've talked about why keywords are important, so let's compare how Ahrefs and Moz let you do keyword research.

Ahrefs has a Keyword Explorer to find keywords to boost your ranks. It also gives you related terms, so you can be sure you're covering all your bases.

Further, it gives you rank data to see how competitive each keyword is and which has the most potential for growth. Plus, you'll get their global rank tracking to see how your keywords track in many different countries.

Moz also has a Keyword Explorer that will show the most important and relevant keywords for your site. However, its focus is on helping you pare down your list.

Don't fear! It also gives you insights into your page authority and domain authority, which will give a thorough prediction of how your pages (and site overall) will perform on SERPs.

Summary

Moz Pro and Ahrefs are two of the most popular all-in-one SEO tools for a reason. They both offer excellent services, enhanced analysis, and large data banks that are updated frequently.

However, which you choose depends on your particular needs. Ahrefs focuses more on links and improving your strengths there, while Moz Pro provides more overall improvements to your entire site. Ahrefs is faster, but Moz gives a comprehensive picture.

At the end of the day, which tool you need will be up to you and your unique needs.

FAQ

Have more questions about the matchup of AHREFS vs. Moz? Here’s some additional insight.

How Is SEO Changing?

SEO is never stagnant. We’ve written about what SEO is before, but search engines like Google are always updating their algorithms.

For example, one of Google’s latest updates (affectionately called BERT, standing for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) means that searches are getting smarter. Now, searches will be able to understand nuance in ways they never have before.

But there has also been a shift towards mobile these last few years. More and more people are favoring mobile devices over traditional laptops or desktops. Therefore, SEO strategies need to reflect mobile usage more and more.

How to Conduct Keyword Research?

The most efficient way to do research is by using a keyword explorer tool. Fortunately, both Moz Pro and Ahrefs come with such a tool, meaning you don't need to invest in extra products or services.

Otherwise, you can use Google's Keyword Planner, a good alternative. It helps you discover new keywords and comes up with suggested alternatives to increase your traffic. Unfortunately, you do need a Google Ads account to use this service.

What Are SEO Backlinks?

An SEO backlink is one way that search engines like Google and Bing determine which websites are top quality. A backlink simply means how many outside sources link back to your content.

The more people who end up linking back to your web pages, the better. There is a caveat, however. If a bunch of low-quality or spammy websites are linking to your pages, your ranking may actually take a hit as search engines will be wary of your site.

The post Ahrefs vs. Moz appeared first on WebMonkey.

Both of these tools are highly respected, but once you begin using a website, it is good to commit to one analytical SEO tool. This is why we will look closely at why you need to know the differences between AHREFs vs. SEMrush.

Why Use AHREFS or SEMrush?

AHREFS and SEMrush help web developers analyze and optimize their websites so they can move up the ranks in popular search engines. They give web developers an understanding of what content will attract new visitors through organic search traffic.

These two tools offer keyword recommendations for blog posts. They also provide suggestions for backlink websites. Most importantly, they help you audit your website to see what is helping and hurting your ranking. These are the commonly used tools on AHREFS and SEMrush, but they also offer more in-depth analysis to help grow your website.

Overview of SEMrush

SEMrush is an internet toolkit that helps web developers with their content marketing. The site conducts keyword research, tracks the competition, and audits blogs. It makes research-based backlinks suggestions and tracks AdWords and SERP results.

The website has a massive database of millions of domains and keywords. Companies like PayPal and Forbes use it. It offers limited free information to non paying customers while providing robust data to paying customers.

Overview of AHREFS

AHREFS is an SEO solution that helps web developers optimize their digital marketing. The website helps web developers find out what backlinks to use and how to get the most out of SEO.

AHREFS offers information and analytics about backlinks, content, keywords, and ranking. It also will audit your website so you can keep track of its SEO health. Like SEMrush, AHREFS also offers some limited information for free and has pricing plans that include healthy amounts of useful data.

Let’s look at how both sites can help you build your website and increase your rank on search engines.

Keyword Research

Inexperienced web developers often stumble across AHREFS and SEMrush while conducting keyword research. Both of these sites help developers understand how keywords rank, using information about the following:

• The number of people using keyword phrases
• What websites are ranking high with those keywords
• Showing how individual keyword rankings are difficult to break into
• Recommending other keywords

To use the keyword research tools, you enter the keywords, for instance “Dog Food Reviews“, you want information on into the Keyword Explorer and Keyword Overview search bars. The sites respond quickly with numeric search volumes, scores regarding difficulty, popular sites, and similar keywords.

When giving information, SEMrush gives a percentage to differentiate keyword difficulty. AHREFS gives a number out of 100. The higher the score for both sites, the more difficult it will be for your website to rank with that keyword. SEMrush gives a percentage with the number following the decimal. AHREFS uses a whole number.

As SEMrush uses percentages, the keyword research is considered more refined when compared to the whole numbers on AHREFS.

Both sites allow users to build their list of keywords. When you do this, you can check how your keyword scores evolve. When looking at keyword difficulty scores, there isn’t much difference between AHREFS and SEMrush.

AHREFS Keyword Research

There are some details that separate AHREFS vs. SEMrush. AHREFS shows the challenges with ranking, and it shows what backlinks will help your rank on page one. It also estimates how many clicks you should get from organic searchers. It tells you what search engines beyond Google will help you rank with any given keyword, making AHREFS better in keyword research, in our opinion.

Building and Analyzing Backlinks

If you want to grow your website, you need other websites to link to you. Backlinks, the external sites that link to yours, are necessary to get your SEO ranking to grow. Both websites will share a list of backlinks for any domain name.

Backlinks Databases

When it comes to backlink databases, the numbers don’t lie. SEMrush has nearly seven times the amount of backlinks in their database than AHREFS. Clearly, SEMrush can offer a more accurate analysis of backlinks. Interestingly, both sites have unique benefits for backlinks research.

For example, AHREFS has a comprehensive list of backlinks connected to Shopify.com, while SEMrush has more backlinks for BigCommerce.com. If you use a Shopify account, then you probably aren’t too concerned with backlinks on BigCommerce.com, and vice versa.

Backlinks Tools

When looking at AHREFS vs. SEMrush, you want to compare the tools and reports they share. Both sites provide information about the following:

• The links you should follow
• The links to avoid
• Backlink locations
• Domain status
• Types of domains (.edu, .gov, etc.)

Since both sites share the same information, the only difference is the way they present it. SEMrush uses graphics to showcase stats in a way that is easy to interpret. AHREFS shares one stat more deeply: anchor text. The site shows the anchor text and what surrounds it.

Both sites also share a tool called “Link Intersect,” which allows users to see what a backlink would look like from your website. Then, you can see what it looks like on competitor sites. You can also see what websites link to your competitors’ sites and not to yours. SEMrush shows you four websites. AHREFS shows three.

Auditing Backlinks

There is one avenue where SEMrush beats AHREFS with backlinks: Auditing. SEMrush audits backlinks to determine which links will harm your website rather than help them. Once you see what SEMrush finds, you can request that Google disregard them.

Then, SEMrush will help you build your backlinks by sharing a list of websites you should ask for a backlink from. SEMrush shares this information in a style that looks like customer relationship management. The backlinks are used as prospects rather than listing them in a basic spreadsheet.

SEMrush Backlinks Tools

SEMrush is better at helping with backlinks when compared to AHREFS. The added backlinks auditing and the more extensive backlink database gives SEMrush the edge in this department.

Overall Site Auditing

Websites need constant auditing. Without it, they end up with broken links, useless keywords, and other critical problems. AHREFS and SEMrush both have site-auditing tools that show how well the technical and SEO aspects are performing.

The two sites use similar auditing tools that look for weaknesses on your website. Both sites look for:

• Missed keywords
• Slow-loading or duplicate content
• Crawl errors
• Absent headers
• SSL issues

Which is Better at Auditing?

When comparing the two sites, SEMrush is slightly better. The auditing tool is more user-friendly than the tool on AHREFS. SEMrush uses a to-do list, where AHREFS asks you to make your own to-do list.

SEMrush has an SEO checker that audits your site, then offers suggestions for improvement. SEMrush prioritizes the recommendations, which can include:

• What keywords will help your page
• How to get featured as a Google snippet
• How to improve meta descriptions
• What your blog lengths should be

To make things even better, SEMrush also explains why the improvements will help your website.

User-Friendly Interface Design

Any type of online tool needs to be easy to use. Of course, websites can provide tutorials for users, but the best sites are truly intuitive. When it comes to SEMrush and AHREFS, the designers at AHREFS had a better understanding of intuitive design, making the site more user-friendly from the start.

When looking at the two sites side by side, users notice that the AHREFS menus are logically designed. The dashboard groups related information together in a way that makes sense. Users appreciate that AHREFS has a design that lets them see the site “at-a-glance.” Intuitive design enables users to go where they need to go without clicking around and wasting time.

SEMrush is also user-friendly, but AHREFS is slightly better. The issue that differentiates the two sites is that SEMrush gives more data, so more menu items are organized.

SEMrush gives information in graphs and charts, so you will like the site’s design if you are a visual learner. You will also appreciate how SEMrush gives you so many options for organizing data and breaking down the auditing information.

Free Trials

Both AHREFS and SEMrush offer some information for free. They also offer free or low-cost trials before they ask you to commit to a contract. AHREFS offers a seven-day trial period. SEMrush offers a 14-day free trial.

Both sites offer quick demos on their trial pages, so you can see what they offer before you commit. Once you’ve used the trials, you cannot use them a second time.

Additional Content Marketing Features

A popular feature on both AHREFS and SEMrush is the content-marketing toolbox. The suite of tools gives users ideas for blog topics, auditing capabilities, and keyword ideas. It also scans the web for mentions of your brand.

If you want the content-marketing toolbox, you have to pay extra for it. These features are significant time savers, especially if you struggle to create blog ideas. SEMrush has more extensive features than AHREFS has, but they both provide value for the extra money.

Customer Support

Robust websites like AHREFS and SEMrush come with useful support services. Fortunately, the sites are well-built, so users do not have to use support services very often. SEMrush offers slightly more support than AHREFS in the form of phone, chat, and email. AHREFS only provides chat and email support channels.

Even though AHREFS only has two channels of support, they are easier to access. On all pages, AHREFS has an icon – a large question mark. The icon contacts a customer support representative, who will respond immediately.

SEMrush offers customer service differently. To access it, you must scroll to the bottom of the page to find customer service contact information. Fortunately, you do not have to maneuver further through the site to get phone numbers and email addresses.

Cost of Services

Software as a service (SaaS) apps are often cheap, but AHREFS and SEMrush don’t fit that typical description. The services they offer are robust, so they charge relatively high prices for them.

Some customers might be surprised to see the costs of the services. But, once you consider all of the data you can access, the prices start to make sense.

SEMrush offers three price points:

• Pro
• Guru
• Business

SEMrush offers a 16% discount for users who pay for the year in full. Enterprise users can build a custom service with SEMrush. With a custom service comes a customized price.

AHREFS offers four price points:

• Lite
• Standard
• Advanced
• Agency

AHREFS offers a discount of two free months if users pay for the entire year in full.

Both websites share all of the features and the amounts of searches, keywords, and more. It is good to look closely at all of the features and services at each price point before deciding. If you have several users, you might need to upgrade your services or pay for additional users.

Adding Users

SEMrush plans are only for one user. If you need to add users, the price increases per month per user. Each plan has a cap on the number of users you can add, with the Business plan having the highest cap of nine users. All others only allow two additional users.

On AHREFS, you can add three or five users on the Advanced and Agency plans.

Project Limits

Both of these sites have limitations on the projects you can build with them. AHREFS offers more opportunities with up to five projects in the Lite plan. In SEMrush, you can only build three projects at the Pro plan. In the Guru plan, you can make 15 projects in SEMrush. Meanwhile, in the Standard plan, AHREFS lets you create up to 10 projects.

The top plans give users the ability to create 25 projects, or, you have the option in AHREFS to pay an extra charge to create more projects.

FAQ

Before you decide which SEO tool to use, we wanted to share the answers to some commonly asked questions.

Why do I need an SEO tool?

Web developers and content markets benefit from using SEO tools to streamline their work. Instead of guessing what keywords to use or what backlinks to seek, SEO tools like SEMrush and AHREFS do most, if not all, of the research for you.

Having access to SEO data lets you focus on what you do best – build websites, run your business, or create marketing campaigns.

Which is better: SEMrush or AHREFS?

Both websites have pros and cons. We suggest using the free trials before you sign up for one of these sites. SEMrush has more data in it, but AHREFS offers a streamlined site with useful information, too. For example, we referenced how AHREFS has data about Shopify, while SEMrush doesn’t. Details like these can help guide your decision.

Do both sites offer tutorials?

AHREFS and SEMrush both offer tutorials. They both have robust blogs with information about updates and tools. If you have a question about anything on the two sites, you can access a plethora of information.

AHREFS calls its information center the Help Center. SEMrush calls its information center the Knowledge Base. For users who prefer video tutorials, both websites also offer video lessons and vlogs on YouTube.

The post AHREFS vs. SEMrush : Competing SEO Tool Competition appeared first on WebMonkey.

While WordPress offers thousands of different themes, they can often get very complicated and overcrowded. The more fluff a theme has, the slower your page may run when implemented. A “lightweight” theme means that it takes little power for your blog to incorporate, not affecting your site speed at all. If your goal is a fast yet cohesive looking page, this list of the top lightweight WordPress blogs is for you. 

What You Need to Know About WordPress Themes

A few key terms are helpful to know for this ranking of the top 8 lightweight WordPress themes. First, WooCommerce is a plug-in that is compatible with specific WordPress themes, allowing storefronts and businesses to sell and advertise their products easily. Essentially, it effortlessly turns your page into an online store. 

Second, page builders: A page builder is something used on WordPress to help creators format and create pages to make their themes stand out. Page builders help add complexity to your WordPress blog. 

Third, SEO or Search Engine Optimization. If a WordPress theme has SEO concepts in mind, it merely means that the theme considers the traffic your blog will get based on specific keywords from search engines. Certain themes implement SEO practices, giving your blog the chance to show up on online searches and gain more views. 

After getting to know these terms, if you're looking for a simple yet effective theme to help your blog get started, this is the place for you. If you can't get your blog to look the way you'd like while maintaining its speed and accessibility, perhaps you need to implement a lightweight WordPress theme. 

Generate Press 

Generate Press is a lightweight, basic theme offered on WordPress. It adds less than 10KB to your page, meaning it keeps things running quickly. The simple design is easy on the eyes and keeps things uniform and cohesive. Generate Press is suitable for any content, be it a personal blog, a business venture, or a storefront. 

Features 

The main features of Generate Press include its user-friendly interface, its compatibility with plug-ins, and its ability to be maneuvered through quickly. GeneratePress offers a block template where your blogs each get a small feature with the ability to expand to continue reading. 

The short blurb promoting each blog includes the date published, any tags, and the title. The sneak peeks into your content is a great way to get viewership up with exciting and enticing storylines. 

The theme flows flawlessly and is simple yet aesthetically pleasing for those who prefer a toned-down look. GeneratePress boasts the ability to work with all page builders, making it easier to shape your blog exactly how you see fit. 

The speed is one of its most alluring qualities – being able to add a professional-looking format while making the site speedy to use is a massive plus for viewers. The ability to work well with multiple plug-ins is also a bonus as it allows you to add flare to your site. 

Pros

• User friendly
• Adding less than 10KB to your page 
• Compatible with many plug-ins and page builders 

Cons

• Bland colors 
• Commonly used block style

Bottom Line

GeneratePress is perfect for those that don't want to stand out. The theme offers little color and vibrancy, so someone looking to remain neutral and straightforward would enjoy this theme. GeneratePress is a great beginner option to help new bloggers get an idea of how they want their site to look. 

Astra

A similar option to GeneratePress, Astra is a lightweight theme adding less than 50KB to your page. The theme provides quick perusing and customizability. Astra is an excellent option for any personal blog, business, or storefront. 

Features 

Astra's main features are the simple, lightweight design, its ability to be changed based on your preferences, and its compatibility with page builders. Similar in look to GeneratePress, Astra offers a block design that previews your blogs. While GeneratePress has separate blocks for each blog, Astra's blocks run onto one another, creating a seamless and cohesive page. 

The blog previews feature the title, small snippet of your writing, date published, and categories. Astra is SEO-conscious and ensures search engines will favor your site. The theme can provide unparalleled speed to its users and viewers due to it being so lightweight. It also offers full customizability, stating you can alter the theme to fit exactly how you want your blog to look. 

Pros

• Extremely fast 
• Adding less than 50KB to your site 
• Customizable 
• Simple layout for any user
• SEO concepts in mind 

Cons

• Not stimulating to look at 

Bottom Line

Astra is the perfect theme for someone who values speed over creativity. While the theme may be customizable, it lacks color and flare, leaving it quite bare. However, for those who prefer a reliable site over a bright one, this theme would work well. It also favors SEO concepts and is compatible with page builders, helping your site gain traction. 

Portfoliolite 

Portfoliolite is the perfect lightweight theme for those looking to start their online portfolio. The banner across the opening of your blog displays the name in a sure-to-see place. 

Features 

The main features of Portfoliolite include its ability to use WooCommerce, its versatility for not just portfolios but businesses and storefronts, its compatibility with a large number of WordPress plug-ins, and its ability to work with page builders. The theme showcases each blog title prominently along with the date published, the number of comments, and the post category. 

The pop of color in the “Read More” links leave the blog, as a whole, looking very neat and orderly while adding a splash of fun. Not in a block style, the seamless look of the theme adds to the professionality and is great for a portfolio that aims to showcase different works. The seamless aspect also allows viewers to scroll continuously amongst your portfolio, ensuring they see all the work you have on display. 

Pros 

• Seamless 
• WooCommerce compatibility 
• Perfect display for those looking to showcase their portfolio 
• Page builder compatible 

Cons 

• Similar to other seamless themes 

Bottom Line

Portfoliolite is the perfect option for someone who has a large amount of work to share. While it may work for a business or a storefront, this theme does exceptionally well with portfolios (hence the name). 

If you are looking to display your content, Portfoliolite is the perfect starting point. The natural flow of this theme is what keeps it speedy and light. Its ability to work well with WooCommerce and page builders helps creators share their content professionally yet tastefully. 

PopularFX

PopularFX is another lightweight theme that goes above the basic set-up. It allows for a plethora of different formatting options and customizability while remaining speedy.

Format 

The format of PopularFX follows a more intricate block style. While each blog has its preview, there are more options to add to your snippet. There is also the ability to add lists, HTML, links, photos, elements, tables, checkboxes, and headings. The addition of these formatting options makes your blog cleaner and more put together while remaining fast and easy to use. 

The blog title will appear across the top banner, with the option to add links to other areas such as an About Me page or your Contact Info. PopularFX is an excellent way for creators to keep the speed while adding a few extra features that make their blog stand out. Its simple nature caters more towards a personal blog rather than a business or storefront. 

Pros 

• Quick to navigate 
• Simple yet effective 
• Offers formatting customizability 
• Good for personal use 

Cons

• Lacking color
• Not the best option for businesses or storefronts

Bottom Line

PopularFX follows the roadmap for an option providing simple yet effective themes. Again, perfect for those who prefer catering to practical usage over aesthetics, PopularFX is an excellent option for the personal blogger who wants a reliable blog page. 

Top Store

Top Store is the perfect lightweight WordPress theme option for online stores. Unlike the themes based on personal blogs, Top Store provides features that benefit those selling and marketing a product. Storefronts often require a slightly different set-up than a personal blog as they have products to sell instead of stories to share. 

Features

Top Store's user-friendly template allows for easy navigation, which is essential when selling a product. The theme provides header and footer options, making it easy for customers to find what they're looking for. The customizable pop of color along the banner provides a nice touch to the theme's otherwise simplistic nature. 

A drop-down menu provides the perfect spot for customers to look through everything offered, allowing them to find products they enjoy. Each post has a preview, allowing customers to browse through merchandise and learn about what the store is selling. The theme also allows for a search of the site, providing customers with the ability to look up specifics. 

The theme offers helpful features such as a comparison tool where your customers can compare one product versus another, a product carousel that displays each product, and a wishlist where they can save their favorites. Top Store also provides a quick link to the comments so customers can see what others are saying about your products. 

Pros 

• Simple for all customers to navigate 
• Features to help improve quality for customers 
• Fast 
• Customizable colors 

Cons

• For storefronts only – one customer base 
• Your store won't stand out with this basic theme

Bottom Line

Top Store provides a great starting point for a new storefront that needs a template to get going. It will allow your store to be viewable and clickable while implementing a few neat features to impress your customers. The simplicity of it will enable the customers to view quickly, something that can come in handy if your site has a lot of traffic. 

Due to the specific nature of a storefront site, Top Store is a great option when it can be challenging to find a reliable storefront theme. While speed isn't always an absolute necessity for a personal blog, a storefront can lose customers quickly if it's ineffective and slow. A simple styled theme like Top Store ensures that customers remain happy and returning. 

Airi

Airi is a great option for those looking to run a business site or blog. While good options for both, Airi offers a more professional set-up that many other themes are lacking. If your blog happens to lean more professionally or has a more mature audience, Airi is an excellent theme to add. 

Features

Losing the block theme, Airi has a seamless feel as all the content flows very nicely. A small line separates each post preview from one another, allowing you to scroll through past content endlessly. Each post preview features the date posted, the title, how it's categorized, the number of comments, and a snippet of the text. 

Airi provides WooCommerce support, helpful if you are promoting or selling any merchandise. The versatility of WooCommerce will allow your business site to take off and sell to its full potential. Airi is a great option for those looking to start their business site from the ground up with a little help.

The customizability of both WordPress and WooCommerce together will allow for an original and diverse page for your business. The seamless feel also adds professionalism, allowing customers and viewers to take your page seriously. 

Pros 

• WooCommerce compatibility 
• Sleek and easy to follow 
• Seamless 
• Perfect for up and coming businesses 

Cons

• Only suitable for businesses 
• Not the best option for established businesses 

Bottom Line

Airi is a great, lightweight option for businesses that are looking for help starting their page. For those that are new to the game, this is the perfect theme to help you get a basis for your website. The compatibility with WooCommerce will provide a lot of help in getting your content seen and product purchased. The seamless feel makes your site look welcoming and put-together, and the speed of it will keep customers coming back again and again. 

OceanWP 

Ocean WP is another option that stands as one of the best lightweight WordPress themes. The seamless flow of each blog allows for a sleek look that viewers can enjoy. Straying from the typical block-style while remaining speedy is a perfect alternative for those looking to create a website. 

Features

Ocean WP, similar to Airi, provides a seamless and sleek looking theme. While Ocean WP is similar to Airi in its ability to work well for a business site, it is also suited for a personal blog or portfolio. WooCommerce, again, is compatible, an essential feature for any storefront. 

SEO concepts were integrated with Ocean WP, ensuring your blog brings in the most views possible. The lightweight design allows for speed and quick access among devices. The customizability makes it so that you can change your site's look to better fit the device viewing, whether it be a tablet, phone, or PC. 

Page builders were also kept in mind when formating Ocean WP, as they are easy to implement with the theme. Each post's seamless preview shows a title, published date, category, and a small fragment of the total blog. 

Pros

• Seamless look 
• Speedy 
• WooCommerce compatibility 
• Page builder compatibility 
• SEO concepts 

Cons

• Not great for storefronts 
• Similar view to other popular themes 

Bottom Line

Ocean WP is a great option for those looking to jump on the seamless wagon and leave the block style behind. The fluidity of the non-block themes makes your site look more professional and put-together, something that can provide continuous clicks and traffic. Ocean WP is a wonderful option for those looking to create a portfolio, as it displays content in an easy to digest, viewable manner. 

Blocksy

Blocksy is a lightweight theme that provides another different take on the block style blog. The shifting of the standard block style allows for a new look while remaining simple. Implementing the simplicity of styles like Blocksy is a great way to get started on your website with minimal effort for maximum gain. 

Features

Instead of the common block style theme that runs horizontally with one long block across your screen, Blocksy provides three blocks vertically. Each section provides a small blurb featuring your post, the date, and the title. This unique take on the block style helps break up the basic look's monotony while keeping the same speed that a lightweight theme offers. 

The Blocksy theme is an exceptional option for those looking to start a personal blog, a business blog, or a storefront. The vertical block style allows for a theme that is customizable in a personal or professional way. It has SEO concepts in mind, allowing your blog to gain the most access. It also had WooCommerce built into it, meaning you can ensure that anything you sell is getting the best chance. 

Blocksy works with the best WordPress page builders, meaning your blog is customizable to an extent and able to look its best with minimal effort on your part. The vertical block view allows viewers to get more post previews per page, ensuring they can get an idea of your content quicker and decide if it's something they want to see more of. 

Pros 

• A unique take on the block style theme 
• SEO concepts 
• WooCommerce compatibility 
• Works well for any blog
• Fast 

Cons

• Not extremely customizable 

Bottom Line

Blocksy is a superior option for either a business, personal blog, storefront, or more looking to jazz up their site. The unique flare on the original block-style theme is a perfect way to keep a lightweight blog's simplicity and speed while standing out from the crowd. The extra vertical blocks also allow for multiple samples of your work to be on display at once. The uniform look is appealing and sure to please readers. 

Try a Lightweight WordPress Theme

Depending on what type of site you're running, these lightweight WordPress themes are sure to garner recurring clicks. While all simplistic, they provide the necessities for running a successful blog. Speed is a priority for a lightweight theme, which is why all of these value swiftness and accessibility. The easy navigation and basic outlook allow for a plethora of different users to enjoy your content. 

The block format is the classic style that most lightweight themes follow, as it is easy to keep simple while things remain navigational. While most of these follow that same style, they are all unique enough to offer slightly different templates. A business, storefront, personal blog, or portfolio-maker will benefit from any of these themes. 

The customizability of nearly every single one of these lightweight themes allows you to alter your blog to your specific preferences. Implementing a lightweight theme is perfect for a new blogger who needs the basics while they're getting settled. Changing colors and font styles is ideal for making your blog feel more like home while not having to code a theme by yourself. 

Consider any of these themes if you need help getting set up with your site in the beginning. These are great options for someone who is just starting – if you are an established blogger and WordPress user, perhaps you would be comfortable with something more elaborate. If you aren't interested in some fancier blogs' intricate complexities, then these could be great additions to your page.

The post Best Lightweight WordPress Themes for Performance appeared first on WebMonkey.

However, while larger companies have more flexibility to experiment or even create their own email marketing systems, small businesses often rely on existing options. When margins are tighter, a few percentage points of difference between a company can be enough to make or break your business.

With that in mind, we looked through the options to find the ten best email marketing services for small businesses. Before we get into the reviews, however, we want to briefly explain our process and how to interpret these reviews.

Finding The Right Service For You

Every email marketing service is different, and even more importantly, so is every small business. What works for other stores in your industry won’t necessarily work for you, particularly when we account for your staff’s skill and how much time you can devote to creating marketing emails.

That’s why our top companies list is alphabetical and does not have a universal winner or “best overall”. Titles like those can imply that you should choose a particular service even when that may not be right for your business.

Instead, we recommend reading through the reviews of all of these services, then determining which of them best fits your needs as a small business. Once you know that, you can focus on choosing between your top choices.

Don’t forget to account for company growth. If your business is stable and unlikely to change significantly in the future, that’s different from a business where you may need significantly higher marketing capacity over the next few years. It’s better to go with the service you want to use in the future, even if that’s different from the best choice right now.

Finally, all of the information below is accurate as of the last time we updated this article. However, some elements (like pricing) may have changed since then. Always check the current pricing on a marketing service’s website before you sign up with them.

Best Email Marketing Platforms 2023

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an automation-focused marketing platform with a wide variety of features. Outside of email marketing, it also provides services like CRM, win probability estimations, market segmentation, and even engagement tracking.

This makes ActiveCampaign fundamentally more robust than email-focused companies, although not every small business wants or needs these features.

Pros:

• More features than most companies
• Highly personalized content
• Good for more extensive marketing teams

Cons:

• Requires more work than some competitors
• Doesn’t have as many templates

Major Features:

• Audience Segmentation: This feature allows you to group and organize contacts based on practically any information you have about them. For example, if you’re releasing a new accessory for a product, you can create marketing emails for people who bought the primary product.
• Conditional Content: Conditional content shows different things to different users based on whether they’ve met particular criteria. For example, this can add content to marketing emails if people purchased a product. This helps to automate the process of creating personalized marketing campaigns.
• Drag-And-Drop Design: ActiveCampaign’s email designer makes it easier to create reasonably good-looking marketing emails without worrying about coding them. This includes adding text, images, buttons, videos, line breaks, and other things.
• Integration: ActiveCampaign integrates with various apps to provide support for different users.
• Multi-User Editing: This system allows multiple users to edit marketing campaigns. While this isn’t as relevant for small businesses, it does help if you have one or two other people at your business who can help craft marketing messages.

Like all good marketing companies, ActiveCampaign features an extensive collection of analytics options to help you understand what your audience responds to. Once you know what works, you can perform additional tests to continue optimizing your emails and improving your results.

This is the fundamental key to success in email marketing as a small business. When the evidence guides your actions, you can produce better marketing emails with less effort. They even save older drafts so you can revert a template anytime you need to.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is a solid choice for many small businesses. It’s also extremely budget-friendly, with the basic email service available for as little as $9/mo if you have 500 or fewer contacts. The pricing goes up as you get more contacts, but you should get enough of a return on your investment to cover each stage when you get there.

We particularly like how you can focus on email marketing without paying for all of their other features. The premium option levels include more than most small businesses need, so paying for that would be a waste of funds.

That said, the other features also offer the opportunity for growth, so ActiveCampaign is a good choice if you expect your business to change over time and want easy access to marketing systems beyond emails.

AWeber

AWeber is a small business email marketing system, which is a significant difference from ActiveCampaign above. Like our previous choice, they focus on using automation to streamline the process and improve results for companies like yours.

Pros:

• Huge library of email templates
• Focuses more on email than most of its competitors
• Particularly easy to use

Cons:

• Not as good if you want non-email marketing

Major Features:

• Campaign Marketplace: AWeber offers pre-built marketing campaigns that can let you perform marketing even faster than their other options. That’s saying something because the other options are pretty fast in their own right.
• Drag And Drop Designer: AWeber offers easy-to-make custom emails and, more importantly, the same thing for landing pages. The second part is extremely useful because a poor follow-up to a good email will only hurt your conversion rate.
• Smart Designer: The Smart Designer is an AI-based assistant that helps create branded email templates. It does this by looking at your website to gather logos, imagery, and colors then bases customized templates for you based on that data. Recognizably branded emails perform better, so this is a useful feature.
• Template Library: AWeber’s library of email templates simplifies the process of making emails even further. In most cases, this is more useful than the Drag and Drop system because it’s faster, and they can promote templates that work better.

Aside from its technological features, AWeber offers 24/7 customer support. That’s extremely useful if you’re planning a marketing campaign late at night or even early in the morning if you end up needing help with a technical issue.

Even better, they offer a free version of their services. This supports up to 500 subscribers on your list and 3000 emails per month maximum, but also offers outstanding access to their other software and services. AWeber free includes email design, campaign automation, landing pages, full technical support, and more.

We like this a lot. If you have an incredibly small business, free email marketing is the best deal you can get, and AWeber’s systems are good enough to make it work for you. Even if you have more customers than that, you can start with only part of your subscription base to test their system and get to know it, then sign up for a paid plan when you’re more familiar with it.

With all of that in mind, AWeber is a good choice only if you’re a small business and expect to remain so. It does not offer other types of marketing services, so you’d need to sign up with someone else to do anything else.

They’re also a bit more expensive than some competitors on the lower end, starting about $19/mo for up to 500 subscribers on a pro plan and scaling up to $149/mo for a maximum of 25,000 customers.

At that point, though, you’re stretching the definition of a small business and should consider other services. We like AWeber as an option for small companies, but it’s not a great choice for medium or large organizations.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a comprehensive marketing platform offering email, online stores, website creation, and social media marketing as its main focuses. However, they also serve as a good example of when to scrutinize marketing hype.

For example, they claim that you can build an excellent website in minutes. While it’s true that you can use a template to set up the basics of a website, creating a truly comprehensive site that includes unique images and photos, company information, and content for users to access takes somewhat longer. In short, remember to be careful when a company hypes itself up.

Pros:

• Integrates with a wide variety of marketing tools
• Includes in-depth guides to help you learn more about marketing
• Centralizes data so you can understand things better

Cons:

• More useful for mid-sized businesses than small ones

Major Features:

• Centralized Marketing: Constant Contact lives up to its name by gathering multiple marketing tactics in one platform. This includes email, but also social media, SEO, and other processes.
• Ecommerce Integration: Constant Contact helps integrate its email marketing practices into the websites it creates. This is somewhat easier than doing each thing separately and trying to ensure they can link up together.
• Email Campaign Ideas: This page includes design tips, best practices, recommendations, and other content tailored to specific industries. This is useful for designing the material, but not quite as fast as AWeber’s Template Library.
• Marketing Advisors: Constant Contact has a large team of online marketing advisors that you can connect with through email or, more usefully, over the telephone. This allows for rapid guidance whenever you’re unsure about a part of an advertising campaign.

As we can see from these features, Constant Contact is fundamentally different from our first two choices. It’s not as easy to use as AWeber, so it’s not the best choice if you’re short on time and want to automate as much as you can. However, since it’s more interconnected, it offers seamless support for more marketing strategies.

Constant Contact also works out better for companies expecting some level of growth. The more types of marketing a company offers, the better it is as you continue growing. Constant Contact offers a 60-day email marketing trial, which is long enough to learn most of the nuances of their system.

Email marketing here starts at $20/mo, which is relatively high for the introductory level. Websites are sold separately and start at $10/month, and they include SSL Certificates, unlimited storage, analytics, custom domains, and eCommerce support. However, they have extra transaction fees, and that adds up over time.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a creativity-focused marketing platform. Alongside email marketing, it also focuses on signup forms and landing pages for visitors. Note that this isn’t quite the same thing as a full website design. Landing pages are simpler, and users may not visit anywhere else, but sometimes that’s all you need.

The main difference here is that ConvertKit isn’t so much for small businesses as it is for tiny businesses. You might use it for selling individual products to relatively small groups of people, rather than a larger number of people around the world or in your neighborhood.

Pros:

• One of the best choices for single-employee businesses
• Better for artistic products
• Has a clear, easy-to-understand flow between its components

Cons:

• Not as good for regular businesses

Major Features:

• Easy Email Templates: Like many other companies, ConvertKit offers email templates to help make reasonably decent-looking marketing emails with minimal effort. This isn’t unique to them, but they do a good job at it and have a respectable number of options.
• Email Automation: Automation options include visual options to help you understand the automation paths and adjust it as needed. Analytics information helps you see how different steps are performing, allowing you to tweak and improve them over time.
• Email Signups: ConvertKit emphasizes this more than many other email marketing companies. Signup forms work together with their landing pages to help get more and more people onto your marketing lists, ultimately helping you grow your business.
• Landing Pages: For sufficiently small businesses, landing pages make more sense than full websites. These are direct sales pages that focus entirely on one product, and you can make more landing pages for each new product you want to offer.

All of these are decent features, and to an extent, we’re glad ConvertKit exists. There are only so many large businesses out there, and not every small business wants to grow that way. Companies that focus exclusively on the smallest businesses aren’t right for everyone, but they are right for some people, and that’s what really matters here.

In short, ConvertKit only makes sense if you’re extremely small and just want to do easy setups for marketing your products. This is closer to hobby-level than true business-level stuff. It’s also a good option if you want to test things with a smaller audience before opening up your marketing to a larger group. That’s a niche case, but it is a viable option.

Drip

Drip is a small business-focused eCommerce engine. Their main product is something they call ECRM, or eCommerce customer relationship management. This is an important distinction from purely email-based marketing because it means you can’t effectively separate the email from everything else. You should use all of their systems, or none of it, but nothing in-between.

Pros:

• Does a lot more than just email
• Flexible, but focuses on premade workflows to minimize your startup times
• Good for users who want to spend time optimizing marketing campaigns

Cons:

• You won’t get anywhere near the full value unless someone can devote a lot of time to it

Major Features:

• Customer Data: The customer data processes gather and display information to help you understand your audience. These include tags (which make it easier to segment audiences), customized fields, event tracking, and integration with platforms like Facebook and Shopify to understand the customer’s entire journey.
• Engagement: Engagement options support customer interaction, including through the use of SMS and behavior-based automation. Drip’s engagement tools also support things like showing advertisements to specific users just after other interactions they get, such as email or physical postcards.
• Optimization: Drip’s optimization options include data dashboards that clarify useful insights and A/B testing systems to let you see which variants of your marketing processes are the most successful. This is key to long-term growth, so it’s one of our favorite features within automation systems.
• Personalization: Personalization options include things like providing unique discount codes, product recommendations, or price-drop notifications based on their previous behavior. This allows you to get the benefits of sales without necessarily giving those benefits to the public at the wrong time.
• Workflows: Drip focuses on premade workflows rather than asking you to build them yourself. Notably, they have quite a lot of premade choices, and that makes it much easier for small businesses to get started.

Like ConvertKit, Drip isn’t a great choice once your business grows past a certain point. It has a process to use, and that process certainly works, but it’s only flexible within its own structure and doesn’t connect too well to most outside services. That’s why businesses that want to work with a lot of other services should choose another email provider instead.

However, Drip is easy to set up and get going. Their workflows are the biggest part of this because most of those have been heavily optimized over the years to work for most people in most situations. You can realistically install dozens of well-made automated workflows in a couple of minutes, giving you an instant, fully-functioning marketing campaign.

Pricing starts at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers, with unlimited emails from your account during that period. This scales up to about $1,599/mo if you have 140,000 people, and anywhere higher than that is customized pricing. However, that’s well beyond small business, so chances are you’ll never have to worry about the high end of their fees.

GetResponse

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform for companies of all sizes, which is excellent if you want to grow your small business and stick with the same marketing system. Changing systems is relatively difficult past a certain point, so that’s not a small consideration.

Email isn’t the only part of their platform, but it is a significant part, and it has several features that help it stand out as a viable choice for small businesses.

Pros:

• A great choice if you want to keep growing your company
• Easy access to art
• More landing page options than some other services

Cons:

• Requires more marketing experience to get the most from it

Major Features:

• Automated Blog Digest: This is relatively rare among email marketing services, so it stands out as a more significant selling point. This system helps you increase your blog’s reach by sharing it on social media and through email pages, which is excellent if users enjoy reading your content.
• Autoresponders: These are automated email sequences that automatically follow up with users who perform certain activities. These are a great way to help users feel like you’re giving them timely, personalized attention.
• Landing Pages: GetResponse heavily emphasizes the use of landing pages, including showing different landing pages to different groups. This allows you to fine-tune your customer’s experience based on data like culture, regional education, and spending habits.
• Shoppable Emails: Shoppable emails allow people to add products to their cart directly from the email. This reduces the number of steps users need to complete to buy something and thereby helps improve overall sales rates. Like the automated blog digest, this is a surprisingly rare feature.

Like other email marketing services for small businesses, GetResponse includes a selection of responsive templates that help improve conversion rates. Their landing pages are exceptionally robust thanks to their use of Shutterstock and Giphy. These services mean you don’t have to provide your own pictures, and that makes a huge difference.

They also support A/B testing to get more information on which services are effective and which aren’t. We always like seeing that, and the added flexibility of on-page options like countdown timers, forms, and popups lets you customize things even more.

GetResponse starts at $15/mo for up to 1000 subscribers on your list, which is a bigger list size than many competitors have before costs start going up. Their pricing scales up to $450/mo for 100,000 people on the regular plan. They also have premium plans for moderately higher prices.

MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most well-known email marketing platforms for small businesses, and with good reason. However, in recent years, they’ve been expanding their offerings to become more of an all-in-one marketing platform. Their current services include website creation, marketing, and even help for physical advertising like postcards.

Physical ad services are scarce among email marketing companies. While that’s not a deciding factor for most businesses, it does show that MailChimp is willing to look outside of the box and create services that can help your small business from a single centralized area.

Pros:

• One of the largest and most reliable services
• Offers comprehensive email and website development
• Extensively compatible with other apps

Cons:

• Can be a little overwhelming if you don’t know where to begin

Major Features:

• Content Studio: MailChimp’s content studio uses an AI-based Creative Assistant that helps rapidly build on-brand designs and edit them as needed for different marketing channels. This makes it easier to provide a consistent look regardless of where customers find you.
• Extensive Integration: MailChimp can connect to many types of apps and stores to further improve our experience. For example, their system will automatically gather your product images and store them in one place so you can add them to marketing emails and other material as needed.
• Team Collaboration: MailChimp is team-friendly, which means that multiple people can work on the same marketing campaign, and everyone will still be on the same page for creating content.

As a comprehensive service, MailChimp works best when you use it for all of your marketing needs. Luckily, their focus on integration means you can still use most of your existing apps and software, and that’s a benefit most of its competitors can’t offer. If you’re still unsure which service to use, MailChimp is a pretty good choice for most small businesses.

Pricing starts at free for up to 2,000 contacts and one primary audience, which is useful for learning their system and getting used to it. This easy entry is another reason they’re a good default choice. Paid plans range from $9.99/mo (for up to 50,000 contacts) to $299/mo (for their premium services and over 200,000 contacts).

MailerLite

As their name implies, MailerLite is an email-focused marketing platform, although they offer to land pages to help complete the experience. They’re fundamentally a lighter marketing platform than many of their competitors, but that’s not always a bad thing.

When you’re dealing with everything else your business needs, a system that’s too involved can be just as bad as one that doesn’t have enough features. Balancing your time commitments is essential to success, and MailerLite’s inherently smaller service is sometimes the best choice.

Pros:

• Simpler and easier to use than some competitors
• Average customer service response time of fewer than 5 minutes for a chat
• Supports features like pop ups and surveys

Cons:

• Not a good choice if you want to keep growing your business

Major Features:

• Drag And Drop Emails: MailerLite features basic templates supported by a drag and drop editor. This isn’t as robust as AWeber’s, but they’re not trying to be that comprehensive, either.
• Integration: MailerLite integrates with services like CouponCarrier, Shopify, and WooCommerce. This makes it easier to start working if you’re already using popular platforms.

MailerLite’s focus on simplicity is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It’s not a good choice if you want to keep growing your business because you’ll hit a point where it simply doesn’t have the features to keep up with other services.

That said, we need to point out the difference between the number of subscribers and the complexity of your business. You can market to a huge list of people while still having a simple business. MailerLite is suitable for simple businesses, regardless of size, but not for complex companies.

Pricing starts at free (with 12,000 emails/month and up to 1000 subscribers) and scales upward from there. Costs go to about $1,915/mo for up to 600,000 subscribers, and anything beyond that is going to be custom pricing.

SendGrid

SendGrid is an email-focused platform, which means they don’t do much with landing pages, websites, eCommerce stores, or social media. That means they’re not as good of a choice if you want to centralize your marketing while your company grows, but it also means that they’re extremely good at their focus.

SendGrid is particularly suitable for high volume senders. They claim to send out more than 80 billion emails per month, giving them incredibly precise insights about user behaviors in different industries.

Pros:

• A great choice if you only want to work with emails
• Includes an email API for customized programming
• Supports email testing
• Offers many extra features, including flexible design, list management, and comprehensive statistics

Cons:

• Not good for anything besides email

Major Features:

• Flexible Systems: SendGrid supports both customized programming and the use of their Drag And Drop interface, which means you can design emails and other content exactly the way you want to use it.
• Great For High Volume Delivery: SendGrid delivers more emails than most of their competition, which means their platform is optimized for extremely high volumes. Therefore, you can scale your deliveries upward without worrying about running into technological limits.
• Supports Growth: While it doesn’t provide non-email marketing services, SendGrid is a good choice for businesses of all sizes. This means you can keep using it no matter how big your business gets, and you can even bring other employees onboard.

Overall, we don’t like SendGrid for small businesses as much as some other options on this list. The reason for that is their focus is entirely on email, and small businesses often do better with a comprehensive platform. For email-only needs, however, it’s a top choice.

Pricing here ranges from their free plan (limited to 100 emails/day, with no time limits) to $14.95/mo for their initial paid plan. This scales up to $29.95/mo for up to 100,000 emails, or more if you want their pro features.

Note that SendGrid prices things mainly by the number of emails you send, not your list’s size. This is different from most of their competitors and worth keeping in mind. They switch to customized pricing on the professional plans around the time you hit 1.5 million emails/month, but that’s beyond most small businesses.

SendinBlue

SendinBlue is an all-in-one service that offers email, SMS, ads, landing pages, and other marketing opportunities. Like most of their competitors, they provide extensive automation to help minimize the time you need to spend tweaking things. Their platform is fully GDPR-compliant, too, which is useful if you want to market in the EU.

They claim to send about 100 million emails per day, which is a small fraction of what SendGrid does. That doesn’t mean SendinBlue is bad, but numbers like these help illustrate the scale of different systems.

Pros:

• A great choice for businesses who want to centralize marketing efforts
• Supports transactional emails
• Integrates with advertising systems for retargeting
• Supports plugins for added connectivity

Cons:

• Fewer templates than services like AWeber

Major Features:

• Email Heat Map: This is a rarer analytics service that visually displays how people engage with your emails. This makes it easier to tweak and adjust things, so the most important things are in the areas where people have the most activity.
• Send Time Optimization: This part of their service uses a machine learning-based algorithm to adjust send times and improve overall email delivery rates.

Overall, SendinBlue is a generalist service. Their email systems and analytics are more than viable, but they don’t have quite the same edge in specific areas as many of their competitors. That said, they’re not fundamentally bad at anything, either. Since they’re an all-in-one, they’re good at centralizing data and supporting your needs as your business grows and changes.

SendinBlue also uses click-through reports, which help simplify the critical information, rather than bombarding you with charts and graphs. This is a nice touch for small business owners who don’t have the time to spend poring over big data’s fine details.

Like most of the better services, SendinBlue offers a free plan, which in their case allows unlimited contacts but only 300 emails per day. Their other plans range from $25/mo (10,000 emails) to $99/mo (100,000 emails) on their base plan and somewhat more for their pro plan.

Final Thoughts

All of the services above are great options on their merits, but they have different focuses. AWeber and ConvertKit are especially visual (reminding us of Adobe's advertisement maker). SendGrid, on the other hand, is amazing for high volume delivery. If you’re still unsure which service is right for you, start by narrowing it down to your top three choices and figuring out which service will be the best choice in the future.

The post Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business appeared first on WebMonkey.

Whether you're new to mailing lists or you're looking to upgrade, there are some great companies to help you with your email marketing. Two of the best are Constant Contact and ConvertKit. Both companies offer a variety of features so that you can both organize and take your email marketing game to the next level.

But which one is better? As with many of these, each of these companies can best fit the needs of different use cases. We've done the hard work and found out the best features – and the negatives – for each of these email marketing services. Read on to figure out which is best for you.

Overview of Constant Contact

Constant Contact has actually been around since 1995. The business started in an attic and was designed to help small enterprises run email marketing campaigns that could compete with much larger businesses.

The company has since expanded to offer help for several of your business needs. In addition to email marketing, Constant Contact also offers a website builder, online store setup, and help with social media marketing. With the addition of these new features, it seems that Constant Contact is dedicated to helping small business owners and website owners get their message in front of a broader audience.

Constant Contact is also centered around customer service. They offer plenty of options if you need help, including marketing advisors and technical support. They even provide services if you want a more hands-off experience, including personal advisors who'll do your marketing for you.

What Are Constant Contact's Best Features?

Constant Contact is a good option for website owners who are ready to get serious about their email list. It offers some powerful features to take your email game to the next level and help you make conversions. Its additional features are also helpful for increasing your web presence.

One Platform, Many Options

Constant Contact has recently added several new options for its users, including a web builder, eCommerce, and social media marketing. These features may work well for you if you like to have everything all on one platform. You can log in to one site and take care of your website, email, online store, and social media, all in one place.

While this feature may be just what you've been looking for, if you're more technically inclined, you may prefer to use separate platforms for each of these elements, as you'll get more customization. Even if you only need an email marketing platform, Constant Contact is one of the best in the business and is a viable option.

Drag and Drop Templates

One of the most important aspects of email marketing is creating professional-looking emails that are consistent with your other branding. Constant Contact makes it easy to create beautiful emails, even if you have no technical know-how. Their drag and drop templates let you design your emails just the way you want.

You can also customize everything so that your emails are always on-brand. It's easy to change colors, fonts, and logos so that you can stay consistent for your readers. If you're the type who likes to customize everything and doesn't like to work from templates, Constant Contact offers that option as well.

Email Automation

For the busy business owner, email automation is a must. Constant Contact lets you set up email automation to help save you valuable time. You can easily set up an email to welcome new subscribers – no need to keep an eye on your email to see who signs up.

You can create triggered email series so that once someone joins your list, they'll regularly receive an email series. This feature is perfect for creating a sales funnel. If you want to customize even more, Constant Contact has you covered. You can create email segmentation to target different groups on your list. You can also set up resends to people who don't open.

List Management

Keeping track of your email list can be a pain, but Constant Contact helps you manage it in one easy place. You can upload your list from just about anywhere, including Excel, Outlook, and Salesforce. If you gather email addresses in several different places, such as on your website and various social media, Constant Contact captures them all and stores them in one place.

Tracking Tools

Your email marketing campaign won't do you much good if you don't have any tracking tools to measure your success. Constant Contact has powerful tracking tools to help you throughout the entire email marketing process.

Tools like click segmentation can help you to segment your lists and increase chances of conversions. Email open rates let you see just how many people are actually opening your emails. A heat map tool even enables you to track which of your links get the most clicks.

Constant Contact makes it easy for you to keep up with your email marketing metrics and make adjustments accordingly. They even have an app that lets you check your data from your mobile phone.

Dynamic Sign-Up Forms

Convincing potential customers to give you their email is tough, but Constant Contact allows you to create dynamic sign-up forms to place on your site. Their form editor lets you customize forms that are both attractive and on-brand.

Overview of ConvertKit

ConvertKit is an email marketing software company aimed at creators like artists, bloggers, and musicians. Their motto is “the future belongs to creators,” and their goal is to help creators earn money online so that they can keep doing the things they love.

Unlike many email marketing software companies, ConvertKit seems to be aimed at the individual instead of small businesses and larger organizations. They offer features like customized emails, automations, landing pages, and eCommerce to help users get their word out. The company has even more features coming down the pipeline, such as recurring payment options, color palettes, and split paths in automations.

What Are ConvertKit's Best Features?

ConvertKit has some great features to help you create emails that stand out from the crowd and make money from those emails. They also have automation capabilities and offer features to help you grow your list.

Landing Pages

ConvertKit eliminates the need for a full website if you prefer something more straightforward. They offer a template editor that lets you create professional-looking landing pages. You can use these pages to help grow your email list.

Free Downloads

One of the best ways to grow your email list is by offering free downloads. ConvertKit allows you to add a PDF download to landing pages and sign-up forms so that your new list members will have easy access once they sign up.

Personalized Content

You can increase your chances of getting your email opened and read by customizing your subject lines and the body with personal information about your list members, such as their names or job titles. With ConvertKit, it's easy to set up and automate these personalizations, instead of spending time changing the information in each email you send.

Email Templates

ConvertKit has an intuitive drag-and-drop template editor to let you quickly create emails and spend more time focusing on content creation. You can also make your templates mobile responsive and save images for easy access.

You don't have to use HTML, but ConvertKit lets you use it if you want more customization options. You can also create several templates to use for different funnels.

Digital Products

If you create digital products for sale, ConvertKit lets you sell those products directly from your email or landing page. You can also create sales pages. You don't have to use other plugins or integrations, and your customers can make a purchase and get an instant download.

Automated Sales Funnel

ConvertKit allows you to make an automated sales funnel so that you can convert your list members into customers. The whole process is automated, so you can create your sales funnel, and when new members sign up for your mailing list, they will receive messages in the funnel at customized times.

Comparisons Between Constant Contact and ConvertKit

Constant Contact and ConvertKit offer similar pricing structures, but ConvertKit does offer a dedicated free option, while Constant Contact doesn't. Both increase in price as you get more subscribers.

Much of your choice will come down to your personal needs, as opposed to whether one of the platforms is better per se. Constant Contact is aimed at small business owners who may have several revenue streams, while ConvertKit is made for creators. Their platform is designed for the individual and works well for those who don't want a website.

Constant Contact is better for those who do want a full website and want lots of customization options. Their platform may be a better option for businesses that are growing.

Constant Contact Pros and Cons

Pros

• You can easily maintain your email list, website, eCommerce, and social media all in one site.
• The interface is intuitive and easy to use, even for the technically challenged.
• Excellent event integration features.
• Extensive library of templates to help you make professional-looking emails.

Cons

• For the price, Constant Contact doesn't offer as many email marketing features as some of its competitors.
• It can get quite expensive as your contact list grows.
• It provides lots of templates but not a lot of customization options without HTML knowledge.

ConvertKit Pros and Cons

Pros

• Ideal for creators who don't want the hassle of running a full website.
• The free version is a commitment-free way to try out the service before buying.
• You can segment your list to send out targeted campaigns.

Cons

• It doesn't offer as many analytics features as some of its competitors.
• There are few email templates, so you don't have a lot of options. Most are text-based.
• Other platforms offer more options for around the same price.

Payment Options

Both Constant Contact and ConvertKit offer two payment plans to suit your needs.

Constant Contact Payment Plans

Constant Contact offers two payment plans: Email, which currently starts at $20 per month, and Email Plus, which starts at $45 per month. These prices are based on 500 contacts or less, and the costs increase as you add more contacts.

Email

With the Email plan, you get unlimited sends, branded and customizable templates, access to tracking, automatic resend to non-openers, subject line A/B testing, and eCommerce marketing. You'll also get access to marketing tools like a logo maker, contact list import and management, landing pages, social media tools, and event management.

With this plan, you get a website with hosting, analytics, blog, SSL, and more. You can set up an eCommerce store with unlimited products and transactions. You'll be required to pay a 1.5% transaction fee. If you need help, you can call or chat with their support team.

Email Plus

The email Plus plan offers the same features as the Email plan and then some. You'll get features like customizable pop-up forms, automated welcome email series, and automated behavioral series. The Plus plan also allows for more interaction with your list members, such as surveys, polls, and RSVP forms. You can even personalize your emails for each member.

ConvertKit Payment Plans

ConvertKit offers two payment plans: Creator and Creator Pro. Creator currently starts at $29 for up to 1,000 subscribers, with the price increasing as you gain more subscribers. Creator Pro currently starts at $59 per month, and the cost increases as you gain subscribers. Both plans offer two months free if you pay annually.

Creator

With the Creator plan, you'll get unlimited landing pages and unlimited traffic. You'll have the option to customize your domain name. You can send email broadcasts, automate your funnels and email sequences. You'll also get access to premium support and two different courses to help you get started.

Creator Pro

With Creator Pro, you'll get everything in the Creator plan and custom Facebook audiences, and more analytics features. You'll also receive access to priority support in case you need help.

Free Options

Both services do offer free trials so that you can get a feel for their paid services. ConvertKit is the only service with an actual free option.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact doesn't currently offer any free options other than a free trial membership.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit offers a free version of its service that lets you manage up to 1,000 subscribers. You'll get unlimited landing pages, forms, and traffic, with a customizable domain. You can send email blasts and tag subscribers, but you can't create automated funnels and email sequences. You will be able to complete the two courses under the free plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you still are torn between which service may better suit your needs, let's take a look at some frequently asked questions that may further help you decide.

Should I Use an Email Marketing Service?

If your business has an online presence, you should have an email list. You should also regularly email your list. Managing an email list is so much easier with an email marketing platform instead of using a regular email service.

Even free or cheap platforms will give you options to help you manage your list and create professional-looking emails. Platforms also offer some level of automation so that you can send emails on a schedule without having to manually send an email each time someone joins your list.

Why Should I Use a Paid Email Marketing Service?

Paid email marketing services can be helpful at almost any stage of your business's growth but become particularly useful once your list expands beyond 1,000 or so members. Paid platforms allow for advanced options like sales funnels, list segmentation, and analytics, all features that can help you increase conversions.

While you may be reluctant to spend the money each month, most business owners find that once their list is big enough, the added features make more conversions, and the paid service more than pays for itself.

Is Email Marketing Worth It?

Almost every online entrepreneur and digital marketing expert will tell you that email is still one of the best ways to get new customers. You can get visitors to your website, but what are the chances they'll come back? However, people check their email daily. If you're in their inbox, you're maintaining a connection.

Conclusion

Both Constant Contact and ConvertKit offer email marketing software that will help you to grow your list and stay connected with your current list members. These platforms make it easy to create great-looking emails, although Constant Contact does offer more options for customization. Both services also allow for automation and sales funnels, but ConvertKit is your best bet if you want to segment and target your list to increase conversions.

Overall, both platforms offer powerful solutions, and your ultimate decision will likely be based on your specific use case. It's essential to consider your needs as you think over these options and make your choice. By creating automated email sequences, you can get more conversions while reducing the amount of time you spend on email.

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Both of these platforms use data and automation to create more personalized email campaigns to convert more subscribers into customers. The question is – which one is right for you?

An Overview

When trying to decide between ActiveCampaign and MailChimp, the first step is to better understand what they each offer.

General Overview of ActiveCampaign

The ActiveCampaign platform learns from users' data. This helps to deliver more effective and personalized messages. It also includes a customer relationship management component that helps organize all customer data while consolidating communication channels and automatically handling prospect tracking.

The easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface makes it simple to build and execute even complex email campaigns, consolidate data, and create custom goals. You can also view and use detailed reports, providing even more insight into your campaigns and email marketing efforts.

ActiveCampaign can also integrate with an array of popular applications, including Zoom and Shopify.

• The Good: Provides users an intuitive dashboard that offers a “getting started” slider and support resources to help users get more familiar with the features.
• The Bad: No landing page creator offered and limited reporting capabilities.
• The Bottom Line: It offers users an intelligent platform designed to help users acquire, engage, and retain customers.

General Overview of MailChimp

MailChimp is the world's largest marketing automation platform and can be used to create compelling and effective email campaigns geared toward a customer's custom needs. It offers users an easy-to-understand dashboard to help users better understand all the data that is collected.

Like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp will integrate with popular e-commerce platforms, such as Google, Instagram, and Facebook.

• The Good: Free plan for startup companies, plenty of learning resources, third-party integrations, and drag-and-drop editor.
• The Bad: Higher prices for businesses with multiple subscribers, and some users want better reporting features.
• The Bottom Line: MailChimp is a top marketing automation platform that helps businesses create, send, and analyze email campaigns.

Features and Capabilities of ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers an array of features. Keep reading to learn what features and capabilities are offered.

Email Marketing

With ActiveCampaign, you have an array of email templates to use along with a drag-and-drop interface to make customization of your emails simple. Some of the other features include:

• Send a targeted list or all contacts a one-off email
• Conduct A/B testing to know what emails are most effective
• Send emails automatically when someone signs up for your newsletter or list
• Create complex and automated workflows by combining logic, actions, and triggers
• Schedule your email campaigns with distribution on specific times and dates
• Create drip campaigns for new customer acquisition and onboarding

Data and Analytics

The design and setup of ActiveCampaign make it possible for you to set specific campaign goals, like a specific number of webinar sign-ups or page views, and then respond based on goal completions. With these goals, you can better track aggregated data from your users.

For example, a goal is only met when someone visits your pricing page, signs up for your email list, and clicks your call to action link. All three must be done before the goal is met and completed.

With ActiveCampaign, you have a tool that will automatically track your conversion rates. This lets you know precisely how many contacts have completed your goals versus the number that have made it through the automation sequence.

When you can assess your campaign's automation performance, especially when combined with A/B testing, it will result in a much more successful email campaign. This platform has also integrated behavioral and social data along with lead and contact scoring to help your CRM and sales efforts.

Editor and Ease of Use

When looking at the editor and ease of use of ActiveCampaign, it is important to remember that this platform was designed to be a more feature-rich and powerful campaign with more advanced (i.e., complicated) features than MailChimp.

You may expect that the interface will be complicated and confusing; however, a nice surprise is that it is not. In fact, it is easy and fast to navigate and provides a polished and seamless user experience.

The drag-and-drop editor offered by this platform makes it easy to build emails, and you have the option to revert to a previous version of an email, which is especially helpful.

While all the above is true, ActiveCampaign is not as beginner-friendly as MailChimp's features – the main reason for this is the high-level features that are available. For example, setting up email automation requires a bit of practice. This is fine if you are technically inclined and willing to learn the system; however, it may be a bit overwhelming if you are a total beginner.

Flexibility and Design

With ActiveCampaign, you have access to 30 well-designed and mobile-friendly templates. You also have access to flexible content blocks and the ability to import custom templates of your own.

List Management

The approach to list management on ActiveCampaign is unique to the platform. With this site, the lists are not as rigid. This means the same campaigns can be sent to contacts that are on different lists.

It is possible to segment your contacts using custom fields or tags. You can also add or remove custom fields and tags through automation.

Another appealing feature of ActiveCampaign is lead scoring. This lets you assign scores based on the actions your subscribers take. This is very powerful, which is why ActiveCampaign is a top option for many users.

Automation Capabilities

The automation features offered by this platform are more sophisticated than what is offered by MailChimp. In fact, these automation capabilities are what you would expect to see with much more costly software.

With this platform, you can combine several actions, conditions, and triggers to create a complex and sophisticated workflow to send emails, segment and tag data, score leads, and so much more.

ActiveCampaign also offers seamless integration with the inbuilt CRM. This means you can automate all sales processes, too.

Registration Forms

You have several options to create various forms: modal, floating box, floating bar, and inline. The form editor provided is easy to use and visual. If you want to add new fields, the process is easy and straightforward.

Forms provided are responsive and can be linked to Facebook or WordPress directly and embedded if you enable these integrations. You also have options to associate the forms you are using with deals, tags, or lists.

Pricing

The pricing structure for ActiveCampaign is based on the total number of customer contacts in the plan you choose. As a subscriber, you can choose from a sliding scale between 500 and 10K contacts. For example, if you have 1,000 contacts, the lite plan would be approximately $17 per month if you pay annually. From that point, you can go up to the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plan based on your needs.

Each of the plans offered by ActiveCampaign offers unlimited email sends, marketing automation, email marketing, and 24/7 access to email and chat support. If you choose the Lite plan, you can have up to three users on your account.

If you choose the Plus plan, you receive a CRM featuring sales automation, leads score, and contact score, as well as up to 25 users. The Professional plan provides several supplemental features, such as site messaging, and can be used by up to 50 users. Enterprise plans allow you to have unlimited users and 24/7 phone support.

Features and Capabilities of MailChimp

MailChimp offers an array of appealing features. Please keep reading to learn about what it offers and why this may be the right platform for your needs.

Email Marketing

MailChimp provides many of the same features that ActiveCampaign does. With this solution, you can take advantage of the following features:

• Connect to your online store to help showcase specific items
• Create or design emails using a drag-and-drop feature, custom coding, or prepared templates
• Use collaborative features and photo-editing abilities offered by the platform

Recently, a new feature was introduced by MailChimp called “Email Beamer.” With this feature, you can create emails using a mobile device or through the Gmail or Outlook server. Once complete, it can be funneled to MailChimp through a private email address. At this point, MailChimp will assemble your draft campaign automatically, and when you decide, distribute it.

The high level of flexibility offered by MailChimp lets you create emails based on your time zone (or the time zone of your audience), use location for segmenting your email list, personalize messages using predicted demographics, and use defined triggers to automate emails.

Data and Analytics

With MailChimp, users have access to an account dashboard that provides an entire campaign overview. This overview includes all contacts that opened emails, what links they clicked in the email, how much your audience has grown, e-commerce performance, and campaign engagement.

You can also take advantage of interactive graphs that help you visualize the statistics provided. MailChimp also provides data on subscriber habits and graphs of engagement by country.

The drill-down data feature offered by MailChimp helps you compare your campaigns to other users in your industry to see how effective your efforts are. As an online store owner, you can track your sales from the initial click to the purchase, pull statistics from the website traffic tools, predict future trends, and analyze your return on investment.

Thanks to the subscriber activity reports, you can track your subscribers' activities in real-time and let users send modified campaigns to those who do not open your emails.

Editor and Ease of Use

When MailChimp was first introduced, one of its biggest “claims to fame” was how easy it was to use. It was released during a time when email marketing software was built and designed for large enterprises, which was extremely expensive and too complicated for the average business owner to manage on their own.

Today, the platform maintains much of that simplicity. It offers a drag-and-drop email editor and easy-to-use interface, making it something that even an “average Joe” can use and master.

Some even claim that MailChimp helped set the standard for what is known as an easy-to-use email editor. Put simply, it is familiar and does not come with big or confusing surprises.

While this is true, MailChimp does have a downside. For example, it can be difficult to find specific sections and features. Forms, landing pages, and automation, for example, are usually lumped together with emails in the Campaigns tab, which does not make much sense for some users. Also, creating forms and automation can be a bit confusing, which is important to note.

Flexibility and Design

With MailChimp, you have instant access to approximately 100 email templates (or, as the site calls them, themes), which are all mobile-responsive and feature a modern style. You also have access to 14 different boilerplate layouts you can customize with your own images and colors.

You have a sufficient level of flexibility to adjust the available designs thanks to the various content blogs that you can drag and drop in (promo codes, products, social buttons, images, and text). You also have the option to upload coded templates if desired.

List Management

The lists through MailChimp are mutually exclusive. What this means is that you cannot include contacts on different lists within the same campaigns. Also, since MailChimp charges per subscriber (more below), it also means that you have one contact on more than one list, you are paying for them multiple times.

If you run various projects or businesses, this separation may make sense. However, if this is not the case, it is expensive and annoying.

The list management for MailChimp is also quite complicated. Besides lists, there are other ways to organize your contacts, including groups, segments, and tags, which are all a bit too much since the specific distinction between all these is not very clear at first look.

Automation Capabilities

MailChimp offers an array of automated campaigns. This includes product purchase confirmations and abandoned cart campaigns, to name a few. However, the actual automation editor is somewhat confusing and awkward to use.

There is no visual workflow provided, nor are their options for automation to branch into various paths. It is not very flexible, and you want to have as much control as you can with automation.

Registration Forms

You can create a pop-up or embedded form with MailChimp; however, it is not as easy as it should be. Also, not all forms will be mobile responsive.

The actual form builder, where you edit the design and form fields, is more intuitive to use; you can use a different editor when you create embedded forms and then another one if you create a pop-up form.

Pricing

With MailChimp, if you have under 2,000 contacts and send less than 12K emails a month, you can use the platform for free. This is a huge bonus for smaller businesses. However, if you want unlimited emailing, you will have to pay a fee.

Like ActiveCampaign, MailChimp's pricing plans will scale up based on your total subscribers. For example, for zero to 500 subscribers, you pay $25 per month, and for 1,501 to 2,000 subscribers, the cost is $25 per month.

Along with unlimited emails, paid plans provide additional features, such as delivering emails based on the receiver's time zone, support, predictive demographics, and advanced testing tools. If you choose the Premium plan, you gain access to additional enterprise-level features, like multivariate testing and advanced segmentation, which is beneficial if you are a high-volume email sender.

The Takeaway

As you can see from the information here, both MailChimp and ActiveCampaign offer a simple drag-and-drop interface and modern templates, which will help you create professional and effective mailers. You also get robust testing options and workflows with both platforms.

Keep in mind, MailChimp and ActiveCampaign are not the only options when it comes to marketing automation. There are other options to consider, too, so be sure to learn about all the available options.

FAQs

Still have questions about ActiveCampaign vs MailChimp? Here are the answers.

Which one is more affordable – ActiveCampaign or MailChimp?

Usually, MailChimp will be the more affordable option, but ActiveCampaign offers more features for any business that wants to increase sales and build their CRM.

In terms of features and capabilities, which one is better?

Both MailChimp and ActiveCampaign offer various features and capabilities that will help you with your email goals. While this is true, the one you choose is dependent on your goals and preferences, along with your budget. Being informed and knowing what is offered by the platforms will help you choose the option that best suits your business's needs.

Remember, ultimately, this is a decision you have to make. However, with both tools, you will find you gain access to professional tools and capabilities that would not be available otherwise.

What’s the major difference between both of them?

The difference between these two services is seen when you take a closer look at managing data. With ActiveCampaign, you are more focused on completing goals, sales, and CRM. MailChimp provides users with informative dashboards, comparisons, and interactive graphs.

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