Hi Krowb,
Please know that this plugin is also free. To have a nice overview of why you would use this plugin over MailChimp’s embedded form, let me write down a list of possible reasons.
- It allows you to redirect people to a custom thank you page, versus having them end up on MailChimp’s website
- It allows you to bypass double opt-in, if you have other verification mechanisms in place
- It allows you to integrate with other plugins so that you can subscribe people that fill out your contact form, checkout form, registration form, etc. This is all not possible with MailChimp’s embedded form.
- It’s faster than using MailChimp’s embedded form, because it does not rely on third-party JavaScript.
- You can subscribe to more than one MailChimp list at once.
- You can configure subscriber tags in your form settings, so that each new subscriber coming from that form has that subscriber tag applied to him or her.
That’s just a quick list of things that come to mind. All that said, if you’re happy with Mailchimp’s embedded form and don’t need any of the integrations that we ship for free (WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, WordPress comments, WordPress registration form, BuddyPress, bbPress, Easy Digital Downloads, Events Manager, custom forms), no need to use this plugin of course. No hard feelings!