• by Ray Schultz , April 27, 2021

Email provider Mailchimp is adding two new tools that will extend its ecommerce capabilities. 

The new solutions, Stores and Appointments, are designed to help entrepreneurs and small business owners digitize their brands from a single platform.  

Stores -- which is being tested in beta and will be available on May 18 -- will allow merchants to recreate brick-and-mortar retail experiences through an intuitive e-commerce platform. They can use such Mailchimp capabilities as email and automation to drive traffic to their site. 

Appointments will enable firms to offer service bookings online and integrate with email marketing, websites, and calendars. It will be offered to current and new clients on Wednesday, April 28.  

“At a high level, our Stores product will enable merchants to create an online storefront, add and edit products, process orders, and configure payments, tax, and shipping,” writes CEO Ben Chestnut in a blog post. 

Chestnut adds: “Our Appointments product will allow businesses to offer services bookings online and manage their schedule. And, he notes, “we’re making them free.”

There are three pricing tiers: 

Free 

Core — $10/month

Plus — $29/month 

In each case, there will be minor percentage charges per transaction. 

Why is Mailchimp getting into ecommerce? “For starters, our customers have been asking us to add more commerce functionality to our marketing platform,” Chestnut says.  “In fact, nearly 40% of our 14 million customers are in the commerce space, and in 2020, 61% identified as offering services.” 

Chestnut says when small businesses start up, “they shouldn’t have to think about what e-commerce software they need to install.”