Constant Contact review 2023: Is it right for you?

With a Shopify rating of 3.5, Constant Contact is a well-known email and digital marketing platform that offers a variety of tools.

It goes beyond email marketing to incorporate social advertising, SMS, and search engine optimization (SEO) in its suite of features.

But does it successfully integrate these channels? Is it worth the price? Is it the best tool for your specific needs?

Find the answers by reading this detailed Constant Contact review. Here we’ll not only review its features in detail but also provide alternatives you can choose from. You’ll also get a side-by-side comparison of Constant Contact and its competitors.

Let’s get started.

Is the tool right for me?

Constant Contact is not a new player in the email marketing industry. If you read its reviews, you’ll find mixed opinions — some people hate it, while some are loyal users.

After all, it’s a platform designed for small businesses, but not the most affordable option out there. Whether it’s good for you will require you to go through its features and pricing, and then assess. 

Here’s a quick overview of who should and shouldn’t consider Constant Contact when comparing email marketing tools.

Constant Contact screenshots

If you feel Constant Contact is not the tool for you, don’t worry, we’ve got other options for you. In the following sections, we’ll give you some Constant Contact alternatives and provide a quick comparison of their features and prices.

Keep reading to find the right tool for your needs.

Constant Contact features: An in-depth review

Before we get into the in-depth Constant Contact review, please check out how it compares with other similar platforms. Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison of Constant Contact with its competitors.

In the following sections of this Constant Contact review, we’ll analyze each feature in detail. Please compare these with your requirements to see if Constant Contact is the right fit for your business.

Ease of getting started ★★★★★

The signup process for Constant Contact is quick and easy. You just need to enter your email address and create a password to create an account. 

To get the 14-day free trial, you don’t need to enter your credit card details. 

Even after you sign up for a paid plan, you can get a full refund if you cancel within 30 days. This 30-day money-back guarantee is unique as none of the major platforms offers this. It gives you the freedom to test paid features without hesitation, as you can get a refund if you don’t find it satisfactory.

After you log in, you can easily find everything you’re looking for in the simple and easy-to-navigate dashboard. It also offers several guides and resources to help new users get started.

Building an email campaign ★★★★☆

Though the email editor is slightly different from that in tools like Klaviyo or Omnisend, it’s still easy to use. The option to change the preheader or campaign name, for example, is inside the email design editor.

The user interface is easy to navigate and you’ll find that content layouts are well organized. You can run both regular and automated email campaigns, and can also A/B test your subject lines.

Here are some other features it offers that make building an email campaign easy:

• Hundreds of ready-to-use templates that can be easily customized using a drag-and-drop editor.
• Occasion-ready templates to quickly create campaigns for specific occasions, such as Christmas or Black Friday.
• A huge library of stock images for paid users and free images for free trial users.
• A BrandKit feature where you can upload your logo and other branding, which will automatically apply to your emails.
• Multiple options for content blocks, such as polls, RSVP, products, social sharing, and more.
• A coupon content block that allows you to add dynamic links to your emails. This allows you to generate discount codes for your promotional campaigns.

Building an email campaign with Constant Contact is as easy as it is with most other email marketing platforms. It also offers personalization via adding details about a contact or using dynamic links. For example, a yoga studio can direct customers to the relevant class schedule pages on its website based on the contact’s living location or membership level.

The only drawback is that the product content block is a bit slow and, in the beginning, it takes time to show your products. We’ve had better experience with other tools like Omnisend, in this regard.

Marketing automation ★★★★☆

Just like email building, we found the automation part to be equally easy to use. The features have standard names and are easy to find and use.

It offers 15 pre-built templates for most usual ecommerce cases. In addition, these templates have rules and the copy ready, so the only thing you have to do before launching them is to check if the email fits your brand design.

And if you want to create integrated email and SMS workflows, you can do that for an extra cost.

This Constant Contact review won’t be complete if we don’t mention the automation triggers that it offers.

The platform offers triggers for the following ecommerce scenarios:

• Welcome new subscribers
• Send an offer to new or existing customers
• Send a thank-you email to customers
• Re-engage prospects
• Send a reminder
• Target specific interests, 
• Recover revenue
• Show items in cart
• Upsell or cross-sell
• Wish subscribers on special occasions

That being said, its automation feature is still not as robust as that offered by competitors like Active Campaign, Klaviyo, or Omnisend. Therefore, if you plan on running complex automated campaigns, I recommend checking out the alternatives.

Signup forms and landing pages ★★★☆☆

While Constant Contact offers both forms and landing pages, it doesn’t provide a dedicated collection of templates for them. The form-building principle is similar to Mailchimp and Brevo—where you have access to a builder and a draft to create a form that aligns with your brand.

However, the form option look pretty decent:

• Popups 
• Flyouts
• Banners
• Inline ads, etc. 

The same applies to the landing page builder. It lacks ready-to-launch templates for quickly creating landing pages. Consequently, you can only expect a fairly basic lead generation landing page.

The platform provides form analytics. You can track metrics like conversions and the number of submissions, but nothing more advanced than that.

Constant Contact offers list management and segmentation using tags, just like most tools. The segmentation capabilities are still limited compared to other similar tools.

To conclude, Constant Contact leaves much to be desired when it comes to building engaging forms and landing pages.

Segmentation ★★★☆☆

In this section of this Constant Contact review, we’ll list the segmentation options it offers and how robust they are.

To start with, the platform offers four prebuilt segments:

• Most engaged
• Somewhat engaged
• Least engaged
• Everyone else

As evident, these allow you to segment subscribers based on how much they engage with your emails. This is a very basic segmentation criterion, which might be enough for beginners but not good enough for well-established businesses.

While it does offer some other segmentation criteria based on customer behavior, it’s still quite basic. And there is no on-site behavior criteria.

The segmentation options it offers include list membership, contact details, tags, contact email activity, and ecommerce activity (placed an order, amount spent, number of orders, etc.).

Overall, this tool may be good for ecommerce beginners but doesn’t have the capabilities to support advanced ecommerce business needs.

Analytics ★★★☆☆

Constant Contact offers all essential campaign analytics data and reports. You can see your overall campaign performance and granular reports on each separate campaign.

It also has a mobile app for Android and iOS, where you can get analytics reports on the go.

You can track key metrics like sends, opens, clicks, bounced, and no. of people who unsubscribed. It can track results over time. 

It also offers analytics for your automation workflows and allows you to track various metrics, such as:

• The number of subscribers in a workflow
• Revenue generated
• The number of conversions 
• The conversion rate,
• Insights from conditional splits
• Email engagement rates

Does it mean it offers comprehensive analytics suitable for ecommerce businesses?

From our perspective, it appears that Constant Contact lacks important ecommerce-specific reports, such as regular email campaign reports, heatmaps, and geo-location reports.

Customer support ★★★★★

Constant Contact offers 24/5 support to its customers via email, phone, and live chat. But it doesn’t offer support on weekends.

Other than that, there are a variety of tutorials, webinars, blog posts, and other learning resources to help new users. There’s a dedicated help center where you can find all these resources to make the most of this platform.

You can also schedule onboarding calls with their team to get answers to any questions you may have on how to use the platform.

While the number of support channels is high, the lack of weekend support could be a problem for critical issues. Businesses can’t afford to wait for two days before getting a resolution to their problems.

However, if you don’t work on weekends, it shouldn’t be a problem. Apart from that, Constant Contact offers excellent support options.

Integrations ★★★★★

The platform offers 300+ integration with various platforms and apps, such as Canva, Salesforce, Gmail, and more. This is similar to what many other email marketing platforms offer.

When it comes to ecommerce integrations, it integrates with a few ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Etsy, Bigcommerce, Woocommerce, and payment gateways like Stripe and many others.

Constant Contact review: Pricing plans ★★★☆☆

Given that these plans don’t allow unlimited emails, the prices can get very expensive as your contact list and monthly emails grow. Clearly, this pricing structure isn’t suitable for enterprises.

Now, let’s see how Constant Contact’s prices fare in comparison to its competitors — Brevo, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp.

Here’s how Constant Contact’s plans compare with those of its competitors.

While Constant Contact’s prices may seem competitive, you also need to compare the features offered by each tool for a fair comparison. Klaviyo, for example, costs more but offers a lot more features than Constant Contact.

In the next section of this Constant Contact review, we’ll give you an overview of each of these competitors and their key features. Use this information, along with prices, to make a fair comparison.

Constant Contact competitors

Based on our extensive research we’ve shortlisted three Constant Contact alternatives — Brevo, Klaviyo, and Mailchimp.

Let’s see what each has to offer and what makes them a good alternative to Constant Contact.

Brevo

Brevo is one of the Constant Contact alternatives that go beyond email marketing to offer a lot more features. It has CRM, WhatsApp marketing, SMS marketing, and other capabilities. 

In terms of email marketing, it stands out for its “Best Time” feature that allows you to send emails at optimal times to get maximum engagement. It also supports transactional emails, which is a useful feature for ecommerce businesses.

If you want to run omnichannel marketing campaigns, Brevo is a better option than Constant Contact.

Klaviyo is a well-known email marketing and automation tool for ecommerce businesses. It is known for its advanced reporting and segmentation capabilities, better than what most tools offer. 

Its unique features include a Subject Line Assistant and the option to send mobile app notifications. Another useful feature is that it allows you to A/B test forms, which is something that most similar tools don’t offer.

Though the starting price is affordable, it can get very expensive as your number of contacts increase. So, Klaviyo is a good option only for advanced users and established ecommerce businesses, not startups or solopreneurs.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an affordable email marketing tool that offers all essential features a small business or solopreneur would need.

Its most unique feature is a report that shows a contact’s activity for a specific duration of time. This is a useful report that most other tools don’t offer. 

Its Dynamic Content block is also an excellent feature. It allows you to send postcards or surveys, which is quite useful. Plus, you also get an Inbox Preview feature that allows you to see how your emails will look on various devices.

Overall, it’s a great tool for ecommerce marketers, but doesn’t offer some of the advanced features that Klaviyo does. Compared to Constant Contact, it offers similar, if not more, features at a more affordable price.

Constant Contact review: Wrap up

Constant Contact is an email marketing tool that’s suitable for small businesses. If you want a simple, no-frills platform purely for email marketing purposes, then Constant Contact has a lot to offer.

But when you compare it with other similar tools, you’ll find that you can get more features and access to multiple marketing channels for a similar price. Ultimately, the choice is yours and you should choose based on your requirements.

After all, you don’t want an advanced tool like Klaviyo if you have no use for it. So, compare the features and prices of Constant Contact and its competitors to make an informed decision.

FAQs

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Our team strives to be accurate and unbiased in reviewing email tools. However, we recognize that mistakes can happen, and it’s essential for us to stay up to date. If you come across any errors or things that need to be reviewed again, please let us know.