Mailchimp vs Substack
Mailchimp and Substack are both marketing automation software. Mailchimp is a commercial product from Intuit. Substack is a commercial product from Substack Inc.
Which to pick
- Pick Mailchimp when
- A small business or nonprofit wants a familiar email newsletter tool with lots of templates.
- Pick Substack when
- A writer wants to start a free or paid newsletter at no upfront cost and benefit from Substack's discovery network.
Side by side
Email marketing with templates, audience segmentation, automations, landing pages and basic e-commerce integration, owned by Intuit.
Newsletter and blog platform with paid subscriptions, podcasts, video and a reader network and app.
Prices have risen and the free plan has shrunk, while competitors offer more automation per dollar.
It takes 10 percent of paid subscription revenue, and branding and design control are limited.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service and mobile app (both)
Not published (both)
Closed source, sold by Intuit
Closed source, sold by Substack Inc.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code. (both)
1k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
25k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Other comparisons
More marketing automation platforms
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.