Constant Contact Reviews & FAQ (2020)

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Constant Contact is a very popular autoresponder service that I was eager to take for a whirl. While I do not use it for emailing personally (I instead go for Sendy which is a cheap one-time fee of only $59), I definitely found Constant Contact to be a very good all-round autoresponder that is a reasonable choice for most businesses, though I do have one or two reservations about it. What follows is the main questions I found people had about Constant Contact and my answers to them, as well as my review & verdict on whether I recommend using it.

What is Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is an autoresponder (email marketing software), one of the biggest and most established in the industry. The company was originally founded in 1995 and since then has grown to hundreds of millions in revenue and with over 1,000 employees, and was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG) in 2015 for $1.1 billion.

Hearing that Constant Contact is owned by EIG made me quite skeptical of it, as we’re quite familiar here with their reputation of acquiring hosts and burning them to the ground (see our hostgator review written by Joma Kleen). However, while it’s not as if I’ve used Constant Contact for years, during my time using them I found support to be fast and competent, and fortunately, I didn’t encounter such a terrible support experience as our Hostgator reviewer did. And according to comments all over the web and our own user reviews we collected, Constant Contact does appear to offer reasonable support.

What are Constant Contact’s features and benefits?

Constant Contact can do quite a bit, as you’d expect given the size of the company. Here’s a rundown of some of the features available in Constant Contact:

  • Drag and drop email template builder
  • Automation tools (send an email to new subscribers, set up an automatic email series, resend emails to people who didn’t open them etc.)
  • eCommerce tools and integrations
  • Upload contact lists from Excel files or other CRM tools like Salesforce
  • Tracking (sends, bounces, open rate, click rate etc.)

But Constant Contact is not a revolutionary or innovative service, as there are other autoresponders that can do all of the above as well. With Constant Contact, you’re paying for its reliability and trustworthiness, not super-innovative features.

How does Constant Contact’s pricing work?

The absolute minimum cost for Constant Contact is $20/month, but that’s only for the basic plan and if you have 500 contacts or less. The price increases quickly with the size of your email list. Here’s how it works as of March 2020:

Email plan pricing:

  • 0 – 500 contacts: $20/month
  • 501 – 2,500 contacts: $45/month
  • 2,501 – 5,000 contacts: $65/month
  • 5,001 – 10,000 contacts: $95/month
  • 10,001 – 15,000 contacts: $195/month
  • 15,001 – 25,000 contacts: $225/month
  • 25,001 – 30,000 contacts: $295/month
  • 30,001 – 35,000 contacts: $315/month
  • 35,001 – 50,000 contacts: $335/month
  • More than 50,000 contacts: Contact the sales team

Email Plus plan pricing:

  • 0 – 500 contacts: $45/month
  • 501 – 2,500 contacts: $70/month
  • 2,501 – 5,000 contacts: $95/month
  • 5,001 – 10,000 contacts: $125/month
  • 10,001 – 15,000 contacts: $195/month
  • 15,001 – 25,000 contacts: $225/month
  • 25,001 – 30,000 contacts: $295/month
  • 30,001 – 35,000 contacts: $315/month
  • 35,001 – 50,000 contacts: $335/month
  • More than 50,000 contacts: Contact the sales team

How does Constant Contact compare to Mailchimp?

I would like to compare Constant Contact specifically to Mailchimp as that is the primary autoresponder it is usually considered against. As I see it, here are the benefits of each one:

Constant Contact advantages vs Mailchimp

  • Offers phone support
  • Has some in-built features for surveys and coupons (also possible with Mailchimp, but you’d have to use some 3rd party integration)
  • Many user reports state that email delivery is better with Constant Contact (we are working to verify if Constant Contact really does have better email delivery, or if that’s just a myth)
Mailchimp advantages vs Constant Contact

  • Better for automation as you can send personalized product recommendations and follow-ups depending if for example someone clicks some specific link (very useful)
  • Can make more advanced sign-up forms with custom fields
  • More advanced A/B testing, as you can test sending emails to different segments of your list to see which one works better
  • Very advanced reporting including a click map overlay
  • More integrations (over 700, compared to around 450 integrations for Constant Contact)

For more information on Mailchimp, check out our compilation of Mailchimp reviews here.

Who are the competitors and alternatives to Constant Contact?

There are loads of competitors and alternatives beyond Mailchimp and Sendy. The autoresponder industry is huge, with millions of online businesses needing one, and so you can find all kinds of different autoresponders catered to different businesses and people. As I mentioned at the start of this review, I mainly recommend Sendy, but you can also take a gander at these other autoresponders:

  • Aweber
  • InfusionSoft
  • iContact
  • GetResponse
  • 1ShoppingCart
  • HubSpot
  • Autopilot
  • Omnisend

UPDATE July 2020: A really fun and well-made new autoresponder that we just reviewed is Flodesk, which I recommend taking a look at.

UPDATE August 2020: Also worth checking out is SendFox.

Is Constant Contact’s website builder any good?

Constant Contact’s website builder will only be useful for you if you’re absolutely brand new to setting up a website and know nothing about hosting a website. Which is exactly how it’s marketed:

If you’ve hosted a website before or are willing to learn, I strongly recommend giving Constant Contact’s website builder a pass and building your website on an established platform like WordPress, as we do. It is vastly more reliable, established and you can do way more with it (there are thousands of WordPress plugins and themes). And not even as difficult as you probably imagine it – you absolutely do not need to be a programmer.

Do I recommend Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is a good, solid autoresponder service. However, there are many areas where there are other autoresponders that are better, so it definitely depends on your specific needs as to whether it’d be the best overall choice for you.

What do others say about Constant Contact?

We put out a request for users of Constant Contact to write about what they think of it. Here’s what we’ve received so far (if you have anything to add, please do – submit a comment below or a review).

I can't recommend Constant Contact enough as it is a great marketing tool that's ideal for small businesses. I used to use MailChimp but I feel that this has come along a lot better and the features are a lot easier to get on board with and help me achieve more.

What makes it so special is that they've added a number of features over the years that not many if any of their competitor's sport - such as advanced surveys and social campaigns.

It integrates with so many apps, even niches one that you wouldn't expect.

--Bridgette, EcoSecretariat

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#bridgette

Constant Contact is a good platform, depending on what your business's needs are. If your business is looking for a simple way to communicate with your subscribers, Constant Contact is perfect. It is very easy to start an email list, design the email and send it out. Anyone can do it, no matter how non-technical you are. The problems come in when you want to take your emails to the next level. If you want to start doing more segmentation and targeting of certain demographics, you really need something more advanced. If you are looking to start any sort of automation based on triggers from your subscribers, you are going to need something more advanced. The perfect user for Constant Contact is a business that is just beginning to get into email marketing. Its simple to learn and start getting your feet wet. Then once you become more advanced, your email platform should as well.

--Celeste, Rogers and Hollands

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#celeste

Constant Contact lacks a lot of features that modern email marketing tools have these days. The most notable is its lack of marketing automation capabilities. It has an autoresponder but even that is clunky and difficult to use. You cannot automatically tag a subscriber based on an action they took (like clicking on a link) which makes building out segmentation for personalization very cumbersome.

Constant Contact also lacks A/B split testing. People asked for it over a year ago and it still has not been added. The pricing isn't great either when you compare it to other services available. We found a few when we were shopping around that had more features, worked more intuitively, and cost less.

--Skyler, Ardent Growth

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#skyler

Our agency uses Constant Contact for roughly 75% of our clientele. Compared to other services like MailChimp, ActOn, or Salon Clouds, Constant Contact offers a more user-friendly platform for users are have more experience with Email Marketing Platforms. Analytics are easy to find, lists are easily updated, and templates are straightforward.

For an apples to apples comparison, MailChimp is the more beginner friendly if your team is looking to start out in Email Marketing. However, MailChimp's analytics are hidden and difficult to find for beginners.

Constant Contact also allows for agency profile access and personal agency access, making it easy for clients to maintain direct access to their business's profile in the event they move from one agency to another.

Client independence and transparency is important to our agency, and Constant Contact allows for that.

--Ashley, The Loop Marketing

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#ashley

Constant contact is a great e-mail marketing tool for online marketers. Some of the features include user-friendly interface, automated e-mail marketing campaigns, integration with eCommerce platforms, social media integration, and more. It's an excellent value for the price. However, after using it for three years, we switched to another cloud-based e-mail automation software that helps us recover abandoned carts, comes with builtin templates, and had better segmentation. Overall if you're looking for an e-mail marketing software for your business other than e-commerce, it's the best you'll find, for e-commerce is above average id rate it 4 out of 5.

--Ronald D'souza, Angel Jackets

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#ronald

My name is James Pollard and I run TheAdvisorCoach.com, a marketing consultancy for financial advisors with a specialty in email marketing. I recommend Constant Contact to financial advisors because it's easy to use and their customer support is consistently top notch. Financial advisors aren't known for being tech savvy, so it's extremely important for me to recommend something that they can use with no problems. I also use Constant Contact (as well as Drip, MailChimp, etc.) and love the step-by-step way it takes you through building an autoresponder and/or sending a broadcast email. I personally send broadcast emails every single day, so I appreciate a service that allows me to get it done quickly. With Constant Contact, I can sit down, write an email and hit send with no hassle.

--James Pollard, The Advisor Coach

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#james

From my experience, I think Constant Contact is fine for businesses as they are just starting out and unsure if they are willing to (or, more importantly, able to) invest in email marketing. It's a fine starter and can get the job done, but it is overall not my preferred platform.

Companies that have the resources to execute email marketing campaigns should consider other options, especially for automated campaigns and designed newsletters. While Constant Contact has the essentials for automation, it is limited in flexibility and capabilities, such as creating tag-based automations or creating automations around email campaign interactions.

--Leo Manning, Slice Communications

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#leo

Ohhh..do I have an opinion of Constant Contact!!!

Our company has been working with email marketing for over 5 years now. We actually started with Constant Contact. This email service is great for beginners that are just looking to email all their subscribers and want an easy way to do. While that worked years ago, email marketing is much more advanced now. Plus I personally found them to be like a mean nun in a private school. The number of calls I got disciplining me for mistakes I made. Ugh! Platforms like MailChimp or Klaviyo offer what Constant Contact does, but with many more options for designs, segmentation and automation. Plus much nicer communications! My recommendation is if you want to start off right, use a more advanced platform for your emails. Something like Klaviyo, while it is 25-30% more costly, you will be more effective with your email campaigns, results in more leads and/or sales. It will be way worth the extra cost in the end.

--Jeff Moriarty, Moriarty's Gem Art

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#jeff

Constant Contact is worth it, if your email marketing needs fit their strengths. Based on my own use and my clients' use, Constant Contact excels at simple management of very large audience lists. If you have a team that is sending lots of email to lots of people, it's worth it. However, if you are trying to plug email marketing into a larger marketing strategy / toolkit, it's not really worth it. They don't have the automation tools, templates, or testing abilities of competitors. And they also don't have the enterprise focus of other marketing automation companies. Think about your email marketing needs, and try to match them to either Constant Contacts' strengths, or a direct competitor.

--Nate Shivar, ShivarWeb

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#nate

I have been using Constant Contact — in my full time jobs and also freelance gigs — since 2001.

It’s not the least expensive option out there but Constant Contact really is the best of the bunch for basic email blasts. Their customer support is outstanding and their interface is pretty intuitive. Mail Chimp, an email option that I recommend to clients on a low budget, is incredibly clunky and sometimes even frustrating.

You can set up drip campaigns with Constant Contact but their campaigns are not as comprehensive as Infusionsoft, which is also a CRM.

--Bob Johnson, BittenByAZebra

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#bob

I've used Constant Contact for about 12 years. Today, it's a much more intuitive and robust system. It's my no. 1 marketing tool for my newsletter distribution. It's reliable, effective, and easy-to-use. I get clients from my newsletter. Without Constant Contact, I wouldn't be able to reliably send it. It's absolutely worth it, and the return on investment means it pays for itself.

--Michelle Gamble, 3L Publishing and PR

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#michelle

I am a business owner who uses Constant Contact for my email newsletters and I love the service. It is easy to set up an email newsletter and you have a wide variety of templates to choose from, depending on your email's message. You can also easily monitor the number of clicks your email has received and its click through rate. There's also access provided for all other previous email newsletters to see what the average is for opens and clicks, which allows you to get a better look at what customers are clicking on and opening.

--Deborah, MyCorporation

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#deborah

I've used Constant Contact to organize email newsletters. I would recommend it for small businesses or entrepreneurs who want an easy, user-friendly way to manage their email list. It's easy to create templates in Constant Contact which is important for businesses that don't have a designer on staff. If you're looking for a more full-service email marketing system with lead tracking, customized template options, and robust reporting options, then you might need a more powerful CRM built for enterprise like Hubspot or Marketo. If it's email newsletters and campaigns that you want, Constant Contact can be worth it.

The integrations in Constant Contact are much appreciated (e.g. Hootsuite, Facebook, Salesforce, Shopify, etc.) so that you don't have to go messing around with Zapier to get things connected. Constant Contact packs a lot of value for the features that you get, so it could be definitely worth it for certain businesses.

--Cassandra, Can I Rank

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/constant-contact-review#cassandra