Constant Contact Review: Advantages, Drawbacks, and Pricing
Constant Contact is one of the oldest email marketing software options out there. It’s known for being a bit on the pricey side, but it makes up for that with an impressive set of features. It offers a toolbox of marketing features for companies who want to step up their digital marketing.
But is it the right tool for your company? By the end of this review, you’ll find out the answer.
Exploring What Constant Contact Has to Offer
Constant Contact is a popular email marketing tool for small businesses and those targeting niche markets.
It started out in 1995 as an email marketing platform. But it later branched out to automation, email list management, CRM, multi-channel marketing, and even event marketing.
These features are pretty cool and can suit many businesses, but Constant Contact might not have specialized or advanced options.
It’s basically a decent platform that doesn’t shine in any specific area. So, if you’re looking for depth of features in any specific area, you might find it a bit lacking.
Here’s a quick look at Constant Contact’s email marketing features and other capabilities:
| Feature | Description | Our Score |
|---|---|---|
| Landing pages | Create landing pages with a drag-and-drop editor to capture leads. | ★★★★☆ |
| Email templates | Craft good-looking emails using pre-built templates for different scenarios and industries. | ★★★★★ |
| Email automation | Automatically send emails in response to user interactions. | ★★★★★ |
| CRM | Manage your sales pipeline and track the status of individual deals. | ★★★★☆ |
| Social media marketing | Connect with your subscribers and find new ones on social media. Schedule posts and reply to messages | ★★★★☆ |
| Event marketing | Grow and engage your audience by organizing and hosting events. | ★★★★☆ |
| A/B testing | Test your content and subject lines to find the version that resonates with your audience. | ★★★★☆ |
| Reporting and analytics | Track and compare your campaigns’ metrics and measure clicks through heatmaps. | ★★★★☆ |
| Integration | Connect with other platforms, such as Shopify and Facebook ads, to get more leads and sales. | ★★★★☆ |
What Do People Say About Constant Contact?
In this part of our Constant Contact review, we’re looking at what real users have to say about this platform.
While opinions vary, a lot of people appreciate Constant Contact for its user-friendly and straightforward interface. Beginners have an easy time getting started with email marketing, thanks to its simple templates and AI-assisted email content writing.
Check out this user review as an example:
But as you can see in the same comment, the user isn’t so thrilled by the limited customization options. Meh! It gets the job done, but you don’t get that email-building power to create unique and eye-catching campaigns.
Some users even complain that the platform is hard to navigate:
Users have also complained about the glitchy email builder that does weird things when they try to import files from other places.
These oddities could be easily addressed with some simple HTML tweaking. But since design and editing are only possible through dragging and dropping, you have to tinker around until the email looks like what you have in mind.
Here’s a user review explaining the issue:
Let’s take a moment to go over what users are saying about Constant Contact, breaking down the good and the not-so-good to get a clearer picture of the platform’s strengths and weaknesses.
| Positive Aspects | Negative Aspects |
| Intuitive design | Frequent glitches |
| Good integration | Expensive |
| Surveys | Limited customization |
| Reliable analytics | No free tier |
| Extensive templates | Limited automation |
Is Constant Contact Right for You?
To recap our Constant Contact review, let’s lay out our best nuggets of advice to help you make a decision.
You should opt for Constant Contact if:
- You want an entire suite of digital marketing tools in one platform.
- You don’t mind paying extra for features you might never use.
- You appreciate having lots of templates and are okay with limited customization options.
- You want a platform that’s easy to navigate without a steep learning curve.
You should look for another email marketing platform if:
- You need highly advanced or specialized email marketing features.
- Your budget is tight, and you’re looking for the most cost-effective option.
- You want more control over data analytics and detailed reporting.
- Customization down to the smallest detail is crucial for your campaigns.
- You’re managing a large list and need more sophisticated automation options.
Constant Contact Pros
If you’re still not sure about your decision and need to know more about Constant Contact, let’s dig deeper into what makes it an option worth considering.
Beginner-Friendly Interface
Constant Contact is designed with beginners in mind. It has an intuitive interface with a minimal learning curve.
The header bar gives quick access to everything you need, and there are handy tips around the interface to make sure you don’t feel lost.
Starting a campaign is straightforward: select a pre-designed template and customize it with text, colors, and images. There’s no need for in-depth tech skills, like HTML coding, to make things your own.
An intriguing feature is the AI assistant, which helps you generate content when you’re stuck for ideas. This way, you can craft the perfect message for your audience and boost your open rates without wasting time.
Decent Analytics
Constant Contact offers the same analytics features as most mainstream email marketing tools. You can track your open rates and click-through rates, unsubscribes, bounces, and spam reports.
You can also track where users click on your content using heatmaps. This feature helps you spot confusing elements in your design and content.
Strict Spam Policy
Constant Contact has better deliverability compared to other mainstream email marketing tools like Mailchimp and ConvertKit. It’s still much lower than you could get with a specialized platform, like Campaign Refinery, but it’s decent.
Part of the reason is Constant Contact’s tougher stance on spam. The main part of their policy is watching out for accounts with spam reports of over 0.01%.
This means if you send 10000 emails and all of them are delivered, you can’t have more than one spam report. The platform flags and analyzes accounts that go over the limit to detect the behaviors that trigger spam filters.
Multi-channel Customer Support
You can get technical support via live chat, phone calls, and email support. But live chat and phone calls are only available Monday through Friday.
Plus, there’s a knowledge base that offers step-by-step guides and tutorials. And users can share their experiences and ask questions through Constant Contact’s user community.
Constant Contact Cons
Although Constant Contact is a decent entry-level email marketing tool, it comes with drawbacks.
Premium Price Tag
One of the biggest disadvantages of Constant Contact is that it sits on the more expensive side. The tool’s pricing is ideal for small businesses with a limited number of subscribers. But it gets steep if you want more advanced features for a large email list.
You can find other alternatives that offer the same or better functionality at lower prices for the same number of subscribers. (More on that later).
Overloaded with Basic Features
The more features, the better, right? Yes, as long as you don’t need an advanced solution.
Most Constant Contact features are regular ones you can find in other email marketing tools out there. A/B testing, templates, list-building features, and automation aren’t anything special.
Plus, there are many features that you’ll probably never use — like event management. This means you may end up paying for features that don’t help you grow your business.
The customization choices aren’t great either, which really highlights the issue with having lots of features that aren’t very deep. It’s especially frustrating when you come across a bunch of email templates that look almost right, but there’s not much you can do to modify them.
No Multi-channel Automation
You can automate emails based on triggers like opens, clicks, and joins. You can use different triggers to send emails to subscribers based on their activities — like welcome messages and cart abandonment emails.
While the highest tier plan gives you more options to customize your automations, your options are still pretty limited. The platform doesn’t offer the flexibility you see with many Constant Contact alternatives.
On top of that, the automation features only apply to email marketing. You can’t automate other channels, like SMS or social media channels, even though the platform has a few features to help you manage social media and SMS.
Frequent Glitches
Constant Contact gets a lot of love for its easy-to-use and straightforward interface, but sometimes it might let you down. There can be glitches and hiccups, especially when you try to do things like add videos. Also, writing text directly in the editor or copying it from somewhere else can be tricky, often messing up fonts and spacing.
Limited Email Sending
Regardless of which pricing plan you choose, unlimited sending isn’t an option. With the Lite plan, you’re allowed to send emails up to 10 times the size of your subscriber list. This limit increases to 12 and 24 times for the higher tiers.
While the monthly sending limits are generous, some businesses might find them restrictive.
It’s also worth noting that there are other services like MailerLite and GetResponse that do offer unlimited sends every month.
Limited Customization
Although Constant Contact has many templates and design libraries, it falls short when it comes to sophisticated customization options. Plus, some of its templates are outdated, though you can tweak some features to create your own design.
Here’s what you can customize:
- Text fonts
- Layout
- Colors
- Social media buttons
- Images
- CTA button
However, some advanced customization options, like changing image placement, are unavailable.
Learning Curve
The Biggest selling point of Constant Contact is its beginner-friendly design. When you start using the tool, you can find your way around its features effortlessly and create your first-ever campaign.
However, the platform offers a wide range of features. And that’s where it stops being intuitive.
Exploring all those features and learning how to incorporate them into your campaigns takes a while, involving a bit of a learning curve.
Constant Contact Pros and Cons
Let’s summarize the key pros and cons of Constant Contact to get a better idea.
| Pros | Cons |
| User-friendly design. | Expensive for the features. |
| Strict spam policy. | Too many features with basic functionality |
| Intuitive and easy-to-navigate UI. | Limited automation triggers not available on all channels. |
| Multi-channel customer support. | Limited customization. |
| Decent analytics with heatmaps. | Limited automation triggers are not available on all channels. |
| None of the plans offer unlimited email sending. | |
| Glitchy design when adding pictures or videos. |
Constant Contact Pricing
Every Constant Contact review has to include details about its pricing structure.
Constant Contact charges you based on the number of subscribers. It doesn’t offer a free plan, although you can get a 14-day free trial to figure out if you like the platform.
Constant Contact’s pricing structure has three tiers: Lite, Standard, and Premium.
Here’s an overview of what each tier has to offer:
- Lite: Starting at $12 a month, this tier offers basic features, including drag-and-drop design functionality, integration, and event marketing.
- Standard. This tier starts at $35 a month and offers all Lite features in addition to extra ones like pre-built automations and list segmentation.
- Premium. The premium account, starting at $80 a month, comes packed with all the features, including custom design and automation, email SEO suggestions, and Google Ads Manager. Premium users can also get free SMS marketing services for 500 contacts.
These prices are for 500 subscribers and go up as your list grows. The table below shows how much you’ll have to pay if you have a list of 25k subscribers.
| Tier | Monthly commitment | Annual commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Lite | $280 | Not available |
| Standard | $310 | Not available |
| Premium | $425 | Not available |
These prices can be steep for businesses with large email lists. That’s even more painful considering the limited number of features for Lite and Standard plans.
In addition to the three pricing tiers, Constant Contact offers pricing incentives. For example, it offers a 30% discount to nonprofit organizations.
How to Cancel Constant Contact
If you’re a Constant Contact customer and want to cancel your account, you can do so by calling the company’s billing support.
You can reach support staff from Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 8:00 pm Eastern Time, and on Saturdays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm. If you’re in Australia, you can call a dedicated line from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm local time.
Constant Contact’s process for canceling a subscription seems a bit unusual. Why do you have to call the company when they can easily give you a self-service option in your customer dashboard?
They say it’s to understand your needs better and promise they won’t pressure you to stay. However, some customers have felt otherwise. After canceling, you should receive a confirmation email within 24 hours.
When canceling your Constant Contact account, keep these important tips in mind:
- Constant Contact doesn’t offer refunds.
- Cancel a few days before your next billing cycle, especially if the charge falls on a weekend.
- The company will still charge you even if support isn’t available to take your call.
- Once your account is canceled, you’ll lose access to all your contacts, campaigns, and reporting data.
- Your data is kept for up to 120 days after cancellation. After that, you won’t be able to recover your account or any of its data.
- You don’t need to cancel your account if you’re on a free trial. The clock will simply run out and you’ll lose your premium access.
Email Marketing Platforms to Replace Constant Contact
Constant Contact can be a decent choice as long as you’re a small business with a limited subscription base. Once you decide to grow your list or get deeper into customization, you’ll probably be disappointed.
So, let’s consider a few viable options that can replace Constant Contact.
SendGrid
SendGrid is an email marketing tool for businesses that manage large email lists and send plenty of transactional emails. It has a robust platform designed to scale with your needs.
SendGrid’s core functionality is sending bulk emails efficiently. Other features include:
- An email builder with HTML and drag-and-drop editors.
- Detailed analytics to track email performance.
- A sign-up form builder with a customizable appearance.
- Automated email sequences to engage your audience.
- Customizable templates to create eye-catching emails with dynamic content.
SendGrid isn’t without its drawbacks, though. Some users find the interface a bit tricky to navigate, especially when they’re just starting out. Also, because it’s packed with advanced functionalities, it might feel overwhelming for smaller businesses or those new to email marketing.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is another marketing service for medium-sized to large businesses. In addition to being a good replacement for Constant Contact, it’s among the best Mailchimp alternatives.
It’s an all-in-one email marketing tool that offers a comprehensive solution for marketing automation, CRM, and sales automation.
Its biggest strength is the depth of its automation capabilities for customer engagement and lead nurturing. The platform is also a good choice for segmentation and personalization.
On the flip side, the learning curve can be steep since mastering the platform’s advanced features takes time and patience. So, only pick ActiveCampaign if you think the sophisticated features are what you need.
Campaign Refinery
We consider ourselves the best Constant Contact replacement a small business can hope for, especially if you send lots of emails and want every single one to land in the primary inbox.
We specialize in high deliverability, and we don’t bloat our software with features that look good on paper but end up complicating your workflow.
Every aspect of our platform contributes to making your email campaigns more effective:
- Top-notch deliverability you can count on.
- Easy-to-use tag-based segmentation for organizing your contacts.
- An intuitive automations builder that packs a punch.
- Access to exclusive SOPs and learning materials.
- A clean email list filled only with valid addresses.
- Ready-to-use campaign templates to spark inspiration and save time.
- A chance to join an exclusive circle of reputable, high-volume email senders.
What if you need a CRM or landing page designer? We’ve got you covered with 1000+ integrations because we believe each tool should focus on only one area — and ours is maximum deliverability for high-volume email.
Supercharge Your Email Marketing Deliverability with Campaign Refinery
Become part of a select community of high-volume senders and enjoy peace of mind with our industry-leading email deliverability rates.
Apply to join Campaign Refinery today and experience the difference of focused, efficient email marketing.
