Email Designer Pro vs Mailchimp
These two aren't quite the same kind of tool — and that's the most useful thing to know up front. Mailchimp is an all-in-one platform that sends your email, manages your audience and runs your campaigns. Email Designer Pro is a no-code, offline desktop app that designs and personalises email and exports send-ready MJML + HTML — you send it through whatever platform you like. Here's an honest look at where each fits, and how they can work together.
Last reviewed July 2026 · Competitor details change — check mailchimp.com for their current plans.
Choose Mailchimp if you need an all-in-one platform that actually sends email — audience management, automations, signup forms, analytics and deliverability — and you're comfortable with a subscription that grows with your contact list.
Choose Email Designer Pro if you want to design and deeply personalise emails (one design → a tailored copy for every recipient), keep your contact data on your own computer, own the exported MJML/HTML, and pay once — then send through any platform you choose (even Mailchimp).
At a glance
They solve different problems
Mailchimp is a marketing platform. Beyond the template editor, it stores your audience, sends the email from its own infrastructure, runs automations and journeys, hosts signup forms, and reports on opens and clicks. If you want one place to do all of that, that's its strength.
Email Designer Pro deliberately does one slice extremely well: turning a single design into a personalised email for every recipient, then handing you clean files. It doesn't send, track opens, or manage lists — you bring your own sending platform. That focus is why it can be a one-time purchase that runs offline.
Pricing: one-time vs a bill that grows
Mailchimp is priced by how many contacts you store, so the cost climbs as your list grows — and its own documentation notes that unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts can still count toward your paid total until you remove them. The free plan was also reduced in 2026.
Email Designer Pro is a one-time US$49 purchase. Your list can grow to any size without changing what you pay for the design tool. (You'll still pay whatever your chosen sending platform charges — but you're free to pick a cheap or usage-based one.)
Personalisation and data privacy
In Mailchimp, personalisation uses merge tags and audience fields that are filled in as it sends from the cloud, where your contacts live. Email Designer Pro does the merge itself, on your machine: load a CSV or JSON, insert fields like {{first_name}}, add conditions and repeaters for per-recipient product lists, and generate a finished email for every row — your contact data never leaves your computer.
The best part: they work together
This isn't strictly either/or. A common setup is to design and personalise in Email Designer Pro, export the HTML, and send it through Mailchimp (or any other platform — SendGrid, Amazon SES, your CRM). You get Email Designer Pro's design and per-recipient personalisation without being limited to a template editor, and Mailchimp's sending and reporting where it's strong.
Where Mailchimp is the better choice
To be clear, Mailchimp does a great deal that Email Designer Pro simply doesn't:
- Actually sends your email, with managed deliverability and sending reputation.
- Audience management, segmentation and signup forms.
- Automations, customer journeys and A/B testing.
- Open/click analytics, reporting and a large integration ecosystem.
If you want all of that in one subscription, Mailchimp is a capable choice. If your pain is the design and personalisation — plus the growing bill, the cloud storage of your contacts, or being locked into a template editor — Email Designer Pro is built to solve exactly that, once, offline.
Design and personalise once, send anywhere
Pay one time, keep your data on your computer, and export send-ready files for any platform.
This comparison reflects publicly available information about Mailchimp as of July 2026 and our own product. Mailchimp is a trademark of its respective owner; we're not affiliated. Details change — please verify current specifics on mailchimp.com.