Constant Contact Review 2024

Edited by Amy Smith

Updated


Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported, which means we earn commissions from links on Digital. Commissions do not affect our editorial evaluations or opinions.

Bottom line: After starting as an email marketing provider, Constant Contact has expanded its services into other aspects of digital marketing, becoming one of the top providers in the field. From building deeper relationships with customers to converting more leads, its mission is to help small businesses grow.

Who should choose Constant Contact? Entry-level or new small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that only need the basics. You can upgrade as you grow, but for real scalability, you’ll likely have to move to another platform for more in-depth reporting and better testing tools.

What we like about Constant Contact

  • Affordable solution: With plans starting from only $9.99 per month, Constant Contact has a good price for great features.
  • Simple user interface: Even without experience, I found it hard to get lost in Constant Contact’s admin interface, which includes a simple header bar with all the required tools.
  • Exceptionally long free trial: For those in the U.S., Constant Contact offers a 60-day free trial; for everywhere else, there is a 30-day free trial. None of its competitors can match this free trial period.

What fell flat

  • Lacks depth in some features: The biggest downside I found in Constant Contact is the lack of depth in some features. A/B testing, email templates, reporting, and integrations aren’t as extensive as what alternatives such as HubSpot CRM and GetResponse offer.
  • Not the most scalable solution: Constant Contact is a solid solution for small businesses, yet its most affordable plans lack the scalability to support large companies. For example, Constant Contact’s A/B testing and reporting tools aren’t robust enough for in-depth testing.

Constant Contact’s Editorial Review

Constant Contact has strong features, affordable pricing, and overall excellent customer service. I found Constant Contact lacks depth in its features, but it’s still a great solution for most businesses.

Constant Contact boasts great features suitable for small businesses, but its depth and scalability have drawbacks. Consider the advantages and disadvantages when deciding whether to use Constant Contact.

“Email marketing is an effective way to communicate with prospects, leads, and customers, and Constant Contact is a good entry-level option that gets high marks. However, it isn’t as advanced in areas especially important to marketers, including split testing and detailed analytics. Although Constant Contact is affordable, its value has diminishing returns when you need more powerful tools and better insight compared to Mailchimp, Drip, and ActiveCampaign.”

Amy Nichol Smith, Content Marketing Manager

See how we review email marketing platforms.

Plans & Pricing

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  • Core ($9.99 per month)
  • Plus ($45 per month)

Features

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  • Advanced campaign-building tools
  • A/B testing
  • Website and store features
  • Reporting tools
  • Ease of use
  • Flexibility

Support

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  • Live chat
  • Email support
  • Knowledge base
  • Blog
  • User community

Plans and Pricing

Constant Contact offers two plans:

  • Core: $9.99 per month
    • Good for: Small businesses, e-commerce, nonprofits
  • Plus: $45 per month
    • Good for: Small businesses, agencies, freelancers

All Constant Contact plans include hundreds of email templates, sign-up forms to grow your list, social media and e-commerce integrations, engagement reporting, and more.

Features

Constant Contact offers useful features for all of its plans, including robust campaign-building tools, A/B testing capabilities, a landing page builder, and award-winning customer support.

While Constant Contact was originally software for email marketing, it now offers social media, list building, event, and SMS marketing tools.

Social media tools to make your presence known

Constant Contact comes with a dashboard that lets you post to all major social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook simultaneously.

Here are some things it can help you do:

  • Schedule content in advance
  • Read and respond to comments from one place
  • Integrate your social media and post from it simultaneously
  • Use tools for designing Instagram and Facebook ads

List building tools to grow your contact list

Constant Contact’s List Builder tool makes it easy to grow your email list. You can add sign-up forms to your landing page, website, blog, or SMS to collect subscribers’ contact information.

I was able to import contacts from a spreadsheet or a standard file. Once you have a list of subscribers, you can easily manage them from the content management page and segment your leads into different groups so that you can send targeted emails or SMS messages.

For example, you could create a group for customers who have purchased in the past 30 days and another group for those who have not.

Email tool with 100s of email templates

Constant Contact comes with a handy email tool — you can create and send out email marketing campaigns. Whether you want to send a newsletter, a discount, or a sales email, you’ll find an email template that meets your needs. If not, you can always customize your own emails.

It has the following advantages:

  • 100s of ready-to-use email templates
  • Mobile responsive templates designed to adjust automatically
  • Easy to use drag-and-drop email editor
Constant Contact reporting

Email automation to minimize manual work

The email automation tool enables you to schedule emails ahead of time. With the help of series triggers and action blocks, you can create entire email funnels or single welcome emails.

A few highlights of Constant Contact email automation:

  • Send automatic emails to new newsletter subscribers
  • Send follow-up emails for those who didn’t open your first email
  • Build email series based on how subscribers engaged with your previous email

Email automation helps you and your business to save time by not having to send emails manually.

Event marketing tool to promote events

Constant Contact comes with a built-in event marketing tool. I was able to manage events, sell tickets, and track details in one place.

Event marketing tool features:

  • Gather registration data and manage it all from one place
  • Sell items and collect payments, like event fees
  • Set up an automated email campaign to thank your participants
  • Get feedback from real-time reporting and find out how everything went

SMS marketing to help reach customers via text

As a new feature, Constant Contact allows you to connect with your customer via SMS marketing.
The SMS marketing feature comes with an extra $5 per month cost, and it’s only available in the U.S. at the moment. To make things easier, you will get a dedicated phone number, text message editor, reporting, and list tools.

Constant Contact Campaigns page

A/B testing tools to maximize your marketing results

Constant Contact A/B testing tools allow you to test different subject lines to maximize the email open rate. This information can be used to fine-tune future email campaigns for improved results.

While testing different providers, I found an A/B testing option is a must-have in email providers. While Constant Contact has subject line A/B testing, alternatives like Active Campaign offer more robust A/B testing capability, including the capacity to test entire email funnels. However, this is not a deal breaker for most people, since you can still perform basic subject line A/B testing.

Website and landing page features to build a website

In addition to providing you with a powerful email marketing platform, Constant Contact also offers a website builder and landing page builder.

These features give you everything needed to design and launch a professional-looking website, no matter your experience level.

Here are just a few things you can create:

  • A landing page: convert more leads and sell stuff
  • A website: showcase your services
  • A blog: keep your customers updated.

For those wanting to create a basic website, Constant Contact asks you basic questions about your niche and helps you to set up the site based on that. For those who wish to create an e-commerce store, you will be asked about your products, preferred payment methods, shipping charges, and more.

I found these features easy to use, but limited in their capabilities. There are similar types of website-building features offered by competitors such as Mailchimp and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), thus, there is no big difference in terms of the features. For those wanting to create a proper website, definitely opt for a website builder.

Reporting tools to understand marketing performance

Reporting tools to understand marketing performance

Constant Contact reporting and analytics tools enable you to better understand your customers and make your campaigns more effective.

It offers reports like engagement reports to see how emails performed, campaign comparisons to assess various campaigns, click segmentation to create targeted lists, and mobile open rates.

Reporting tools help you with the following:

  • Save time: By adjusting and creating content that resonates with your customers, you can save time from manual testing and increase your conversions.
  • Improve team productivity. Reporting tools improve the productivity of your team through the segmentation of customers and a better understanding of problems.
  • Analyze valuable metrics: Analyzing metrics like open and engagement rates allows you to better understand your customers and see what works.

Constant Contact lacks some depth regarding its reporting tools compared to some of its competitors.

For example, Mailchimp offers everything above plus geo-tracking, social media reports, and an e-commerce conversion tracking feature for an affordable price. Despite Constant Contact’s basic tracking features, if you want more versatile reporting, choose an alternative like Mailchimp.

Although Constant Contact’s Marketing Automation plan, which starts at $449 per month, offers more actionable reports, I would not recommend upgrading just for the reporting tools.

Ease of use

Constant Contact offers in-app tips to help improve your email marketing campaigns as it walks you through a straightforward process of launching your first campaign. The strategic partnership with other platforms lets you easily create and manage your marketing content. To help you make the most out of every feature, Constant Contact offers video and blog tutorials.

Choosing a campaign type

Beginner-friendly dashboard: Email marketing campaigns are simple to set up and launch quickly. It suits marketers of all experience levels, including those who have never used email marketing software. Users of Constant Contact praise the user interface’s simplicity for newcomers.

Constant Contact has well-marked menus that make it easy to find your way around. You can log in and immediately see all necessary menus on your user dashboard, including total contacts, and various insightful statistics such as contact growth, and social audience growth.

Flexibility

Constant Contact has a library of more than 300 different apps you can access to extend its functionality.

What you can do with the integrations:

  • Easily create emails and digital ads: You can integrate Canva to make your email design process more smooth or Vimeo to add high-quality video elements to your campaigns.
  • E-commerce tools: With Shopify, you can drive more sales, and sync contact payment data automatically using Stripe. And with WooCommerce, you stay connected to your customers with automated emails.
  • Social media platforms: Your account can be connected to social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can schedule and automate posts and track results.

Constant Contact may lack some depth in its app integrations, to the extent that close competitors Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign both offer more than 800 app integrations. But it is very likely you will find the app you’re looking for.

Integrations

Constant Contact has a library of more than 300 different apps you can access to extend its functionality. For example, you can integrate Canva to make your email design process smoother, or Vimeo to add high-quality video elements to your campaigns.

Again, Constant Contact is comparatively deficient in its app integrations, while close competitors Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign both offer more than 800 app integrations. Still, you’re likely to find the app you’re looking for on Constant Contact.

Constant Contact integrated apps
Constant Contact integrates with all the most popular platforms such as Shopify, Stripe, and Salesforce.

Support

Great customer support and self-service options

Constant Contact offers a variety of support options to meet the needs of all its customers. For those who need assistance, a team of highly-trained customer support representatives is available via chat five days a week or phone six days a week. While live support isn’t available 24/7, I had no trouble getting connected with help.

It also offers self-service options for those who prefer to troubleshoot independently. The Knowledge Base is a comprehensive resource with step-by-step instructions for solving common problems. And for those who need extra help, there is also a community forum where you can ask questions and get advice from other Constant Contact customers.

Constant Contact’s team of experts provides technical support, you can reach out via live chat and phone support, but it’s only available for a limited time.

Constant Contact offers various methods of customer support:

  • Knowledge base: Search step-by-step guides, tutorials, and how-to articles.
  • Blog: Explore small business marketing advice and insights.
  • User community: Connect with your fellow customers to be updated or ask for help.

You can connect with support whenever you need it most – even on the free plan. I appreciated seeing a lack of tiered support options, as price or membership status isn’t always an indicator of the extent of help needed.

Compare Constant Contact Alternatives

Although Constant Contact comes as a good email provider for small businesses, other options like MailchimpBrevo (formerly Sendinblue)ActiveCampaign, and MailerLite may be a better fit. Compare Constant Contact to other top-tier email marketing providers:

Email Marketing Platform

Pricing + Basic Plan Features

$9.99 per month

  • Drag-and-drop email editor
  • 100s of email templates
  • Basic A/B testing
  • Contact segmentation
  • Live phone and chat support

Consider Constant Contact if: 
You’re just starting your marketing campaigns or small business and have a tight marketing budget

Free

  • 2,500 monthly email sends
  • 500 contacts
  • 1 user seat
  • Email support for the first 30 days
  • Pre-built email templates
  • 300+ integrations
  • Creative assistant
  • Forms and landing pages
  • Basic reporting and analytics

Consider Mailchimp if: 
You want all the marketing and commerce tools you need to help you launch, build, and grow your business

Free

  • Drag-and-drop editor
  • Customizable email templates
  • A/B testing
  • Reporting analytics
  • marketing automation

Consider Brevo if:
You want an email marketing solution that charges by monthly email volume

$29 per month

  • Email Marketing & Marketing Automation
  • Landing Pages
  • Facebook Custom Audiences & Lead Ads
  • Lead Scoring
  • Split Automations

Consider ActiveCampaign if: 
You’re an SMB that is driven by marketing data and tracking

Free

  • Drag & drop editor
  • Email automation builder
  • Auto resend campaign
  • Unlimited websites & blogs
  • Multiple triggers in automations
  • AI writing assistant

Consider MailerLite if:
You want a simple, straight-forward email marketing solution on a modest budget

Free

  • Email marketing
  • Website builder
  • Connect a domain
  • List for up to 500 contacts
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up and contact forms

Consider GetResponse if:
You’re seeking features that help you empower your business as it grows

Frequently Asked Questions About Constant Contact

Is Constant Contact legitimate?

Constant Contact is a legitimate email marketing service provider, offering a 60-day free trial and a money-back guarantee so that you can try the service without risk. The company has been in business for over 20 years.

Can Constant Contact be used as a CRM?

Constant Contact is primarily known as an email marketing service but can also be used as a CRM tool.

While it is not as robust as some leading CRM platforms, it can be integrated with popular CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot.

In addition, Constant Contact’s Marketing Automation+ plan includes many of the features typically found in CRM platforms, such as contact and deal tracking, lead scoring, and automation. As a result, Constant Contact can be a helpful tool for managing customer relationships, even if it is not the most comprehensive CRM platform on the market.

Is it easy to cancel Constant Contact plans?

No, it’s well-known that the company makes it hard to cancel. You have to call during support hours and talk to the right person. You cannot cancel through your dashboard or billing account section.

What are the best alternatives to Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is a great solution for small businesses; however, there are other excellent options such as MailchimpBrevo (formerly Sendinblue)ActiveCampaign, and MailerLite.

How I Rated Constant Contact

I test sales and marketing tools based on the following factors:

  • Sale management: Does the platform offer sales tools to help with lead management and closing deals? What are its features?
  • Ease of use: Is the platform simple to set up and use?
  • Customization and automation: Can you tailor the software to your business needs?
  • Integrations and analytics: Does this software integrate easily with other business tools, and will its reporting features fit your needs?
  • The support provided: How easy is it to get help?
  • Free trial: Is a no-cost trial or demo offered?

Learn more about our review methodology.

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