Skip to content

March 7, 2012

3

OpenCart Mail vs MailChimp

by Ian
mailchimp-logo

The latest version of OpenCart is out (version 1.5.2.1) and I found a very interesting comment in the changelog:

“Mass mail system has been changed so it can send out an unlimited numbers of mails. no need for mail chimp anymore.”


Firstly, let me say that OpenCart is great, it works out of the box, the code is clean and concise and quite frankly while it may be a little behind on features compared to some of the more established ecommerce platforms it is leaps and bounds ahead in areas such as community support, third party extensions etc. But, to say that the OpenCart in built mail feature has reached the stage of maturity that there is no need for services such as MailChimp is a huge call. Here’s why, let’s compare them:-

OpenCart Mail vs MailChimp

FeatureMailChimpOpenCart
HTML EmailYesYes
Plain Text EmailYesYes
HTML TemplatesYesNo
WYSIWYG EditorYesNo
Scheduled Email DeliveryYesNo
Test to Pass Spam FiltersYesNo
Test in Mail Clients YesNo
Open/Viewed/Click Thru StatisticsYesNo
Integration with Google AnalyticsYesNo
Self Cleaning Lists (Bounces etc)YesNo

We’ll stop there because that list could go on and on for a while. OpenCart is a great ecommerce platform but it is not an email list replacement and whilst I commend the work that has gone into the existing mail feature I think they would be better spent devoting time to other features and avoiding bold statements that quite frankly are way off.

There’s a reason MailChimp is the industry leader in email marketing and it’s not all hype.

If you want to integrate OpenCart with the MailChimp platform then you can use the MailChimp OpenCart Module.

Read more from News
  • http://www.graphicmail.com/ Shu-aib

    Interesting article Ian, thx. For further reading on the email marketing or automated software topic, here’s an interesting article about which is best: http://graphicmailza.blogspot.com/2012/03/email-or-automated-software-which-is.html

  • Valleydancer

    I think Opencart should drop phplist into its architecture. baddaboom!
    It’s free, proven, and in the most in demand as per the hostgator reps as of March 2012.
    It installs via Fantastico and is a snap

    • http://twitter.com/imaginetech Ian Gallacher

      @Valleydancer, how does PHPList stack up against the above feature list? I’d love to extend this post to include PHPList if you know the answers.