Hang tight…
Mailchimp is a powerful email tool — but it can't create your customer list for you. Shopolo builds your list automatically from every gift card purchase, loyalty sign-up, and order. Then you email them, all from the same dashboard.
Pricing sourced from public Mailchimp and Shopolo plan pages. Subject to change.
The biggest challenge with Mailchimp for a local business is getting contacts in. You have to import CSVs, set up pop-ups, or integrate with your POS. With Shopolo, every gift card buyer, loyalty member, and customer who places an order is automatically added to your customer list, ready to mark as opted in.
Mailchimp charges based on the number of contacts in your list. At 500 contacts it's free; at 5,000 it's $75/mo; at 50,000 it's $350+/mo. Shopolo is a flat monthly fee regardless of how many customers you have. For a growing business, Shopolo is more predictable.
If you use Mailchimp for a local restaurant or salon, you still need separate tools for gift cards, loyalty, booking, and ordering. That's 4–5 extra subscriptions. Shopolo replaces all of them — including the email marketing — in one platform at a lower combined cost.
Mailchimp is the right choice when email is your primary need and you require advanced multi-step automation — drip sequences, A/B testing, complex segmentation across tens of thousands of contacts. If you're running a digital-first brand with a large, sophisticated email program, Mailchimp's depth is valuable. For a local restaurant, café, or salon emailing a few hundred to a few thousand customers with promotions and gift card campaigns, Shopolo is simpler and more cost-effective.
No hardware. No setup fees. Loyalty, bookings, gift cards, and ordering — live in under 10 minutes.
Start free — 30 days →