Email marketing tools are built for sales and marketing teams to send out email campaigns and track their performance. Constant Contact is a popular, strong choice for small-to-mid-sized businesses. Good software in this category has a balance of reasonable pricing and features to help your specific use-case. Constant contact’s pricing varies by the features you need, and the amount you will use it. It is also crucial to compare Constant Contact to alternative options. Mailchimp is a popular and capable email marketing alternative. By comparing the two, along with some other options, you will be empowered to make the best purchase decision for your business.
What is Constant Contact?
Constant Contact is an email marketing tool built around offering affordable customer contact options. Users praise its strong user interface and fantastic feature list. On Google, you’ll find that Constant Contact is frequently compared to Mailchimp, and for good reason. These tools are great for sending out marketing information, newsletters, and direct sales pieces. They are both designed to allow sales and marketing teams to continuously nurture leads and customers.. The two offer similar functionality, at intersecting price points. For a full overview of what email marketing software is, check out our category page.
Constant Contact Pricing
Constant Contact pricing tiers vary by the number of contacts in your email list or database. This makes the platofrm’s pricing pretty varied but it allows for good customization for your needs. The basic plans fall under two categories, Email and Email Plus. Constant Contact offers a Pro plan as well. This upper tier offers marketing automation and analytics tools that go beyond simple email marketing.
If you would like to see what end-users have to say, click here to read reviews
Email Plan Features and Pricing
$25-95/month
The base-tier plan from Constant Contact is a good fit for small marketing teams who do not need the broader customer engagement tools of the advanced tier.
Users will get access to unlimited email sends for up to 500 contacts. This plan is limited to 3 users. Base-plan users still get the full range of integrations available. Popular third-party integrations include Salesforce, Shopify, Outlook, Gmail, and Facebook. Constant Contact also integrates with Zapier, which allows for integrations with more than 3000 other software products.
The contact pricing will scale with the size of your business. This system rather intuitively charges by the number of different contacts you have, rather than individual emails sent. The base tier goes from 0-500 contacts. The next tier allows for 501-2,500 contacts, and raises the price to $45/month. You can view the full range of pricing options by number of contacts below. After 10,001 Contacts, users are automatically upgraded to the Email Plus plan.
| Number of Contacts | 0-500 | 501-2,500 | 2,501-5000 | 5,001-10,000 | 10,001+ |
| Price | $20/Month | $45/Month | $65/Month | $95/Month | See Email Plus |
For the actual emails, users have a wealth of tools available. Industry-specific email templates allow for greater customization for different use cases. Small businesses will also benefit from the landing page builder. Customer-facing teams (e.g. sales, marketing, customer service) will appreciate email A/B testing capabilities and integration eCommerce platforms.
Constant Contact allows users to import email lists and segment them by contact characteristics. From a marketing automation perspective, there are substantial options. Welcome emails and automated responses to non-openers will help cut down on busy-work and repetitive tasks.
Where Constant Contact outshines the competition is in what they offer beyond email marketing tools. Social media management and marketing analytics are a big draw. Users can create, schedule, and organize social media postings to Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. You can manage your engagement and responses through a single social monitoring and inbox feature.
With your undoubtedly amazing posts live, you can analyze their success with the Facebook and Instagram insights tools. Finally, LogoMaker, an image library, and a marketing calendar allow you to create and manage your brand. This high level of customization also doesn’t diminish the user-friendliness of the platform. Best of all, these features are available on all of the Constant Contact plans.
Email Plus Plan Features and Pricing
$45-$335/month
The upgraded tier allows for up to 10 users. This will be important for larger email marketing teams, with a greater customer base or customization requirements.
This plan follows the same pricing model as the previous plan. The table below outlines contact-based pricing tiers. Those who have more than 35,000 contacts can reach out to the vendor directly for pricing information.
| # of Contacts | 0-500 | 501- 2,500 |
2,501- 5000 |
5,001-10,000 | 10,001-15,000 | 15,001-25,000 | 25,001-30,000 | 30,001-35,000 |
| Price | $45/ Month |
$70/ Month |
$95/ Month |
$125/ Month |
$195/ Month |
$225/ Month |
$295/ Month |
$315/ Month |
Users get access to everything in the Email plan, and more. This plan offers substantially more email marketing engagement features than the lower tier. Users have the ability to create polls and contact forms for email recipients to fill out. You can offer coupons and online donations. Ecommerce segmentation tools allow you to target customers based on their purchase history. Finally, customizable pop-up forms allow for more real-time interaction with your customers.
From an automation standpoint, there are added features at this level. The automated email behavior and triggered series of welcome emails included. These allow for replies to be sent based on how a customer interacts with your previous emails. You can also set up a triggered series of welcome emails that target new customers added to the contact list. Finally, this plan gives users the ability to send surveys directly to customers. This ensures greater feedback for marketing or sales teams.
Constant Contact Pro Plan Features and Pricing
$245+
This plan is designed for marketing teams that want to go well beyond email marketing. Added features at this level include A.I marketing automation, predictive analytics, and much more. The first pricing bracket goes from 2500 contacts up to 10,000. This will cost $245/month. More detailed pricing can be calculated here, based on the number of contacts in your database.
For this cost, you will get a wealth of A.I driven features. 20+ predesigned A.I marketing playbooks will help you get started. A.I campaign optimization will further automate your customer emails.
From here, the features list gets even more extensive. Smart subject lines and dynamic individual incentives will customize your marketing content to the recipient. For eCommerce users, this is further bolstered by personalized product recommendations. A drag-and-drop workflow editor helps make this automation process easier to use.
You will be able to segment your audience better with smart segmentation and subscription preferences. Optimized campaigns will reduce wasted time and resources. A.I will determine the best time of day and how many emails to send to individual customers. Finally, the advanced reporting and analytics tools will allow managers to track their email campaign progress with all the data they could need. A full feature list for Constant Contact can be found here.
Users will also gain access to the full suite of email marketing tools from the Email Plus plan, which are detailed above.
Another addition adds SMS marketing to a user’s marketing toolbox. Up to 100k texts are allowed at a cost of $0.02USD per SMS.
If constant contact is the choice for you, check out this video tutorial to begin to learn how to use the software.
Constant Contact Alternatives
Though a fantastic product, Constant Contact may not be right for everyone. But there are several alternative options that may fit your business needs better.. Below are two of the best, given some popular user needs.
Mailchimp
Almost any discussion of email marketing software will bring up MailChimp. This popular tool has gained popularity for a good reason. Its pricing structure is similar to that of Constant Contact but may be cheaper in some cases. There are 4 pricing tiers available.
Mailchimp Free:
The first tier of Mailchimp comes in at the best possible price-point: free This plan is well-suited to small businesses or freelancers who need simple functionality and have a limited number of contacts.
The free plan allows for up to 2,000 contacts, with one audience and seat. 10,000 email sends are allowed per month. The audience is a list of contacts and personal.
Users get access to a surprisingly robust list of features on Mailchimp’s free plan. Facebook and Instagram ads can be generated, though not scheduled, in the free version. Pop-up form creation is included. Users can even create print postcards for as cheap as 75 cents each.
Free users will get access to contact profiles and basic audience segmentation capabilities. The analytics tools are substantial, especially for a no-cost option. The audience dashboard allows for better visualization, and purchase behavior analytics offer insight to sales teams.
Beyond email marketing, the free plan offers various additional tools that have helped Mailchimp become so popular. The content studio allows for branded, multi-channel campaign creation. The free version even offers basic templates to help you get started.
Mailchimp also supports the ability to build a website. These support purchasing with a “buy button” and site analytics available. A Mailchimp domain is free, and users can purchase a custom one if they see fit. You can also connect a preexisting domain.
Mailchimp Essentials
$9.99/month+
This level allows for greater functionality at a low-cost. Notably, this is lower than the base level of Constant Contact. This level allows for up to 500 contacts at this price point. There is a monthly send limit, which is 10x your contact limit. The second tier is $20.99/month for up to 1,500 contacts. You can view the rest of the pricing brackets here. This tier is consistently cheaper than Constant Contact’s Email Plan.
This tier adds email A/B testing functionality and more pre-built templates in the design studio. The branded Mailchimp footer can also be removed from creative content. Essentials also adds the Customer Journey builder. This visual, drag and drop tool allows users to customize their buying experience and flow.
Mailchimp Standard
$15/Month+
This tier starts at $15/month for up to 500 contacts. The cost increases significantly faster than the previous tier. 2.5k contacts will cost $52/month, and 5k costs $80/month. The full pricing breakdown can be viewed here. This tier is more expensive than Constant Contact’s Email plan but cheaper than the Email Plus plan.
This plan includes some of the same send-time optimization features we see in Constant Contact’s more expensive tier. Behavioral targeting allows you to segment the audience by how they have interacted in the past. This is similar to the A.I driven automation in Constant Contact.
A key differentiator of this plan is the increased audience insight functionality. Predictive demographics and lookalike audience finder features allow for more precise targeting.. A lookalike audience finder and customer lifetime value tool will help teams find leads that are the most likely to convert and become customers.
This tier offers templates that can be created using custom code in the creative content studio. Users can download their designs. Retargeting ads and improvements to the customer journey feature are also added. Multiple starting points and branching allow the customer journey to reach its full potential as a visual customer interaction tool.
Mailchimp Premium
$299/month+
This level has some of the most advanced functionality you can find in email marketing software. The base-level allows for up to 10,000 contacts. The next tier goes up to 15,000 contacts for $370/month. The full pricing schema can be viewed here. This tier is significantly more expensive than the Email plans from constant contact. It is more comparable to the Pro plan.
The Premium plan adds multivariate testing and advanced audience segmentation capabilities. This level allows for unlimited “seats”, or access points to as many audiences as you need. Comparative reporting allows teams far greater insight. This is the main purpose of this plan, for those who need the more advanced analytics tools. Customers also gain access to phone support directly from Mailchimp
If you have decided to purchase Mailchimp, consider checking out this video to learn how to get the most out of your new tool:
ActiveCampaign
If you have got this far and are thinking you want more, then ActiveCampaign may be the right email marketing solution for you. The software offers email marketing with similar features to the previous two options.
This software stands out from the rest as a combined email marketing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.
The basic CRM features start at the Plus plan, which starts at $49/month. Pricing for each plan scales with the number of contacts, just like the other two products .
CRM sales allows for the basic functionality of CRM to bolster your email marketing campaigns. Lead scoring will help qualify which leads have been sufficiently nurtured and are ready to pass onto the sales team. SMS prospect nurturing helps take your marketing program to the next level. The visual, central decision hub will streamline your decision process and make it far easier to implement. You can track the whole sales process from start to finish, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. This option will be a great introduction to CRM features, especially if this is something you had not previously considered.
More Email Marketing Alternatives
If you have read this piece and want to explore more email marketing options, we have plenty of resources for you. Check out our email marketing page to read more about all of the options available, and see how they compare. You can also check out this piece on marketing automation software, which includes some great information about email marketing.
If you have decided email marketing is not enough, it may be time to explore marketing automation software. For more complimentary software, look at CRM tools. ActiveCampaign is a good bridge between the two, but there are many options available. For small businesses, we have this piece of the 4 Best CRM and who should use each
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