Founded in 1995, Constant Contact is one of the oldest email marketing platforms on the market. The email provider belongs to a large group of digital tools called EIG, which include services like Bluehost, HostGator and Web.com.
Over the years, Constant Contact’s popularity has grown to over 650,000 customers. They are an email marketing tool for small businesses and their service reflects this. They boast features that the majority of their competitors don’t offer, like digital product downloads, appointment scheduling, event management and social media campaigns.
One other reason why they are so well-liked is their large choice of apps and integrations that also work with the most niche products. Together with the more standard trigger automations and recurring newsletter, these make Constant Contact a solid option for email marketing.
Despite the solid features and benefits Constant Contact offers, the email market has become a lot more competitive in recent years, and Google Trends has shown that they seem to be on the decline. This can have a few reasons.
For example, their products might not be meeting the high market standards other email marketing providers offer, or their pricing is not competitive anymore, which is a particular pain point for small businesses who work with a tight marketing budget.
We take a look at ten Constant Contact alternatives to help you with your email marketing campaigns.
As Constant Contact advertises across their website, their big focus is on small and medium-sized businesses, and it’s fair to see their offering in this light. Constant Contact does cover some of the basics in email marketing to get a start-up and small businesses off the ground.
If you are not looking to grow your business as fast or just want to try some features, Constant Contact might be a starting point.
However, for the majority of marketers and digital professionals, Constant Contact just does not cover enough ground to step up the email marketing game. Particularly looking at price vs. features you are getting (and even the backend design), it’s simply not the best value for money.
In fact, for the same price you pay with Constant Contact, you can get much more powerful features with other email providers like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
Constant Contact scores with their impressive choice of niche features but there are a few significant issues where they cannot keep up with the competition:
Basic Automations
Constant Contact gives you the option to include anniversary or welcome emails, as well as trigger automation emails based on clicks and opens. While these autoresponders are great, they lack some more advanced automation features, like combining conditions and actions.
Customer Service
Sadly their customer support on email and live chat are not the best.
Email Editor And Templates
We all know your email design has to be slick and convincing to get your subscribers’ attention. Constant Contact’s email templates are outdated and their editor doesn’t like include some important tools, like design or spam testing.
Price
With very few advanced features, Constant Contact’s pricing is on the expensive side. There are a lot more affordable options that offer you much more for your marketing budget.
Sign-Up Forms
Customising your sign-up forms is a standard feature across new email platforms. Unfortunately, you can’t add any custom fields to Constant Contact’s basic registration forms.
And while Constant Contact has picked up some issues, like deliverability rates, user access levels and enhancements in reporting, as well as adding a website builder, the greater lack of advanced features makes it difficult to justify their higher price point.
All these disadvantages are a good reason to take a look at what other email marketing tools are out there, and find the right fit for you.
Our Top Ten Constant Contact Email Marketing Alternatives
EngageBay combines affordable prices and customizable automation with CRM and SMB features. They are much more competitive on price than Constant Contact.
A big plus of GetResponse is their sales funnel features. Their editor is available in 117 languages. GetResponse also offers tools to create webinars and landing pages.
Mailchimp is an all-round email provider. Their free plan allows you to have more subscribers than Constant Contact, and it comes with lots more features. Their advanced reporting is also a big bonus.
Compared to Constant Contact’s basic reporting, Sendinblue comes with some solid reporting features. Their price is affordable and includes better automation and transaction emails.
SendPulse
SendPulse is an excellent tool to create multi-channel campaigns, including emails, SMS, social media etc. Their free plan is much more generous than Constant Contact.
Best Constant Contact Competitors
Here is our list of the best competitors to Constant Contact, with details on pricing, pros, cons and who each one is best suited to.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is the best tool for marketers who want to have full control over how and when they send emails and messages out to subscribers. ActiveCampaign allows you to create follow-up campaigns with multiple conditions and actions which gives you lots of flexibility for setting up complex workflows and in-depth sales funnels.
This may sound overwhelming for beginners but once you spend a little bit of time and patience exploring the tool, you’ll find it offers everything you need, and more.
Pricing
Up to 500: $15/mo
Up to 1,000: $30/mo
Up to 2,500: $61/mo
Up to 5,000: $99/mo
Pros
It’s easy and straightforward to set up email automations and manage your contact lists. You can create complex workflows with ActiveCampaign, and design well-targeted email campaigns, with customized fields and personal messaging. Their reporting and analysis tool works well to dive deeper into campaign data so that you can check what works for your campaign and what does not.
Cons
If you have a lot of contacts, ActiveCampaign is on the expensive side. They also don’t provide a lot of data for their spam tests, so you only get the basic pass or fail but no explanation on what you could improve.
Best For
Bigger budgets. If you have more than a few thousand contacts, ActiveCampaign can quickly become expensive. Their features on automation and workflows are impressive and really make the expense worthwhile for marketing professionals and larger businesses who want more from their email marketing software.
BenchMark is based in fifteen countries across the world, which is testament to its international ethos. BenchMark’s email marketing tool has some fantastic multi-language features which make it an excellent tool for international email campaigns.
Pricing
Up to 1,000: $23/mo
Up to 2,500: $35/mo
Up to 5,000: $58/mo
Up to 10,000: $89/mo
Pros
With individual content blocks, their editor makes building email campaigns quick and easy. The template design is stylish and makes newsletters look modern. BenchMark is available in nine languages.
Cons
Some of BenchMark’s advanced email features are lacking behind that of the competition. Their system for email automation resemble basic autoresponders that are triggered for email signups, opened emails and on clicks.
Unfortunately managing your subscribers isn’t straightforward either as you canot easily move subscribers from one list to another.
Best For
Small number of emails. There are no real features that stand out with BenchMark. Their free plan is only available for up to 250 emails per month, so if you don’t need to send out a large amount of emails, BenchMark still might be an option for you. Try out BenchMark for your email marketing campaigns
ConvertKit
ConvertKit’s offer is aimed at digital professionals, like bloggers, Youtubers and podcasters. Their free plan is very limited and doesn’t include many of the standard features you need to run an email marketing campaign.
Pricing (Per Contact)
Up to 1,000: $0/mo
Up to 300: $15/mo
Up to 1,000: $29/mo
Up to 3,000: $49/mo
Up to 5,000: $79/mo
Up to 10,000: $119/mo
With a paid plan you can add priority support, free migration and automation
Pros
Designed for digital marketers and bloggers, ConvertKit comes with a slick email automation editor and great list management benefits. It also has done very well in deliverability tests.
Cons
Although ConvertKit does offer a free plan, their paid plans are more on the expensive side when you have more than 1,000 subscribers.
With this you unfortunately do not get any really advanced email marketing features. Reporting and different account access levels are also basic. There is a limited selection of email templates and designs, and their landing page builder tool is tricky to work with.
Best For
Bloggers. If it’s just the basic features you are after, then ConvertKit could be a decent option, but the lack of more flexibility with design is a big issue, especially at this price point. Try ConvertKit’s free email marketing tool
EngageBay
EngageBay is a truly affordable option with some powerful email marketing features. This is one of the reasons why it had a great success story in recent years, and continues to grow.
With EngageBay’s cloud email service you get access to a variety of tools, including A/B testing, autoresponders, workflows, trigger automations as well as a swift drag and drop builder.
With all these features, EngageBay is a solid alternative to Constant Contact, and a good email marketing option for SMBs.
Pricing (Per Contact)
Up to 500 contacts and 1,000 branded emails: $0
Up to 1,000 contacts and 3,000 branded emails: $11.99/month
Up to 50,000 contacts and 25,000 branded emails: $39.99/month
Unlimited contacts and 50,000 branded emails: $63.99/month
They also offer a 10% discount on annual subscriptions and a 20% discount on biennial subscriptions.
Pros
With their eye on small and medium-sized businesses who have a limited marketing budget available, EngageBay provides a host of features for little money.
Their free plan includes some impressive functionality, like email broadcasts and sequences, an integrated CRM, predictive lead scoring and autoresponders. EngageBay can also help with onboarding sessions, mobile applications and migration.
Cons
Unfortunately they don’t offer marketing automation with their free plan, and their native integrations are quite limited as well.
Best for
Value for money. If you are a small or medium-sized business, freelancer, tech startup or solo marketer, EngageBay provides feature-rich email marketing for a small budget. Their free plan is perfect for startups and you get access to a wide range of features. Try EngageBay with their free plan
GetResponse
Polish-based email provider GetResponse boasts with plenty of handy email marketing features. With their integrated website and landing page builder tool, GetResponse could be a great option for beginners.
Pricing (Per Contact)
Up to 500: $0/mo
Up to 1,000: $15/mo
Up to 2,500: $25/mo
Up to 5,000: $45/mo
Up to 10,000: $65/mo
Pros
With a whopping 27 available languages, and tools for automations and list management, GetResponse is one of the best for international email campaigns.
They offer attractive looking templates and their spam testing tool gives you enough detail to make sure your email won’t end up in junk folders. If you are just starting out in email marketing, GetResponse’s integrated landing page builder makes this platform an appealing all round option.
Cons
While spam tests give you lots of details for improvement, GetResponse didn’t score well in deliverability tests. They have also limited storage for content and media uploads to 1GB. And one of the biggest negatives is that any automation features are only available with their paid plans.
Best For
Small business owners. GetResponse has some powerful email marketing features that business owners of small businesses and marketing managers would be able to use. Try GetResponse’s email marketing tool
Mailchimp
Together with MailerLite, Mailchimp is one of the best-known email marketing platforms. It covers a wide range of features with their generous free plan, and you also get landing page options included.
While Mailchimp’s free plan is very generous with features and contact allowance, there are a few snags when it comes to their paid plan subscription model if you get over a certain number of contacts.
The advantage of a subscription is that your credits will be automatically topped up and you don’t have to remember to buy credits.
Unfortunately, this means if you go over your contact limit, you will incur additional charges, so keep a close eye on how many subscribers you have and change to the next level up if you think you might go over.
Pricing (Per Contact)
Up to 2,000: $0/mo
Up to 2,500: $30.99/mo
Up to 10,000: $78.99/mo
Up to 30,000: $230/mo
Pros
Mailchimp’s free plan allows you to have 2,000 contacts and you can send up 10,000 emails per month for free (however, this does include a little Mailchimp ad at the bottom of each email).
Mailchimp also includes automations and in-depth reports covering social media, ecommerce conversions, clicks, opens, most popular links and many more.
Cons
If you need to upgrade, Mailchimp’s paid plans are on the high side. For this, you can get better value for money with other email tools like ActiveCampaign or GetResponse.
One other caveat with Mailchimp’s automation is that creating a complex workflow with automated emails is not very intuitive, and you can’t manage contact lists easily (for example, moving a contact from one list to another isn’t possible).
Best for
Beginners who want more. Mailchimp offers a great free plan with lots of flexibility for newbies to try their hands on email marketing, including standard features like automations and detailed reporting. Try Mailchimp for free
MailerLite
Relatively recent to the email marketing playing field, MailerLite has a modern feel that comes across in their efficient and minimalist email templates. Combine this feature with an affordable price, and MailerLite is a serious contender to Constant Contact.
MailerLite’s user experience and simplicity make creating email campaigns quick and easy work. Their email deliverability rates are consistently high. For small businesses and solopreneurs, MailerLite offers a set of features that is more than enough to get you started.
Their ‘Forever Free’ plan has unfortunately been limited now to a lower number of emails you can send to your contacts and fewer newsletter templates. However, for anyone with fewer than 1,000 subscribers, MailerLite definitely gets the job done.
It’s worth noting that MailerLite have a rigorous approvals process for email subscribers so you need to make sure that your practices for sending emails and list collection are up to scratch.
Pricing (Per Contact)
Up to 1,000: $0/mo
Up to 2,500: $15/mo
Up to 5,000: $30/mo
Up to 10,000: $50/mo
Pros
If you compare MailerlIte’s prices with some other email providers, you will instantly see how much more competitive they are on their paid plans. MailerLite’s editor is straightforward to use because of its intuitive and slick interface.
Their email automation and solid list management system makes managing email campaigns so much quicker. MailerLite is available in 7 languages together with support for each one. Even if you already have a website, with MailerLite you have the option to create single landing pages to direct visitors to.
Cons
Automation and reporting could do with some improvement to allow users to extract more subscriber data and target their communications.
A slight disappointment is their lack of spam and design testing which would allow you to dive deeper into email deliverability issues and also preview how your email looks in different email providers.
Even though MailerLite offers some competitively priced plans, there are some solid features missing, like advanced reporting, CRM functionality and full automation to create complex workflows.
Best For
Freelancers. MailerLite is really targeting small businesses and freelancers with their cheap/free email marketing offer. All of their paid plans come with all features included. Try MailerLite’s email marketing tool
Omnisend
If you are an online store owner and want ecommerce-specific features with their email marketing, then Omnisend is your best alternative to Constant Contact.
The tool is easy to set up and, a big plus, you can target customers with automated emails at each stage of the purchasing process. Omnisend also integrates with different apps and allows you to send Facebook and Whatsapp messages, as well as SMS and push notifications.
Omnisend’s Pro plan includes unlimited emails and a higher SMS allowance than their free plan. For features, the only improvement with the paid plan is that you can add a custom domain signature which could improve your email deliverability.
This means, for those who want to send a lot of SMSs messages to their subscribers, you are better off going for the Pro plan which gives you 3,540 international SMS..
Pricing (Per Contact)
500 emails/month to up to 250 contacts: Free
Up to 500 contactable subscribers and 6,000 emails/month: $16 per month
Up to 1,000 contactable subscribers and 12,000 emails/month: $20 per month
Up to 5,000 contactable subscribers and 60,000 emails/month: $65 per month
All plans allow you to store unlimited contacts.
Pros
With their focus on online store wonders, Omnisend has a host of useful features. You can add your store’s products to your newsletters, create nice email add-ons like gift boxes or scratch cards, and you have the ability to create complex automation workflows.
Omnisend’s free plan gives you 500 emails per month (with up to 250 contacts), and it includes some great advanced email marketing features like website tracking, A/B testing and also landing pages.
Cons
Their templates look great but there are only a few of them, so you are limited to a small number of templates. Omnisend’s free plan does only include 250 contacts so you are bound to outgrow this quite quickly.
Best For
Ecommerce. As an online store owner running an ecommerce shop, especially on a platform like Shopify or Magento, this is your best Constant Contact email marketing alternative. Try Omnisend for free
Sendinblue
French email marketing provider Sendinblue has some more interesting features. Besides the ability to send out newsletters, you can also send SMS and transactional emails.
Their automation options and reporting capabilities aren’t as advanced as with ActiveCampaign or GetResponse. When you consider the solid features with Sendinblue’s affordable pricing, then it makes them one of the strongest competitors to Constant Contact.
Pricing
9,000 emails: $0/mo (with a limit of 300 emails per day)
40,000 emails: $54/mo
60,000 emails: $69/mo
100,000 emails: $99/mo
Pros
If you are looking to send a lot of emails every day, you may want to consider the upgrade, as Sendinblue’s free plan allows you to send only 300 emails a day. The rest of their free plan is very generous although their very affordable paid plans come with unlimited contacts.
Sendinblue’s email editor is easy to use and available in six different languages. Their reporting is quite sound, so you can track all important data within Google Analytics.
Sendinblue also allows you to create your own customizable landing pages, and trigger automations can equally be customized.
Cons
While Sendinblue’s tools are relatively easy to use, their user interface is a little clunky and can lag. If you compare Constant Contact’s large number of integration apps, Sendinblue could improve on increasing their native integrations.
Best For
Tight marketing budget. Sendinblue is affordable and comes with advanced email marketing features. What’s not to like!? Try out Sendinblue for free
SendPulse
If you want to run marketing campaigns across different channels, SendPulse has quite a few good options. They allow you to send transactional emails, autoresponders, SMS, automations, web push notifications and more.
While their free plan only includes 500 subscribers for up to 15,000 emails, their paid options are more flexible.
Pricing (Per Contact)
Up to 500: $0/mo
Up to 1,000: $12/mo
Up to 5,000: $35/mo
Up to 10,000: $53/mo
Up to 30,000: $126/mo
Pros
One of the advantages with SendPulse is that it allows you to access some advanced features with their free plan. You can try out A/B testing, advanced automations, emails for transactions, and even more detailed reports.
The backend interface for creating emails and templates looks modern and is easy to work with. If you choose to upgrade, SendPulse offers a flexible monthly subscription model or pay-as-you-go.
Cons
While you can manage your automations in SendPulse with visual workflows, they are a bit clunky and could definitely be more intuitive. There is also a limited number of templates, although they do look very nice.
Best For
Multi-channel marketing. SendPulse is geared towards marketing professionals who want to manage multi-channel marketing campaigns in one place. Their free plan offers solid options to get you started, and if you have grown your subscriber list it’s easy to upgrade without being tied in. Try SendPulse email marketing tool
Which Constant Contact Alternative Is Right For You?
When you compare what Constant Contact offers with their competitors, you can see why Constant Contact falls short of the basic features in the email provider market. There are a whole range of old and new email marketing tools to choose from, and they all compete with improved features at a much cheaper price.
Here Is Our Summary Of The Best Constant Contact Alternatives:
Better Automation Features And Reporting Than Constant Contact
ActiveCampaign and GetResponse have some powerful automation tools and detailed reports that help you to improve your campaigns, and send out more targeted emails.
Ecommerce
If you run an ecommerce store online, with platforms like Shopify or Magento, and you want an email marketing platform where you can integrate your products, then Omnisend, ActiveCampaign and GetResponse are a good option.
Competitive Pricing
For a smaller marketing budget, you need flexible pricing and cheaper options from your marketing email provider. Sendinblue, SendPulse, MailerLite and EngageBay all offer full features with their smaller price plans.
Best Free Plans
As a beginner and for those who want to try out some of the basic features on the email market, you can try some of the free plans available from MailerLite, EngageBay, Omnisend and SendPulse. Also Mailchimp offers a free plan with great features.
Hi, my name is Mark Matthews, and I help to run several businesses through managing their mailing services.
I have a clear and good understanding of what a company or person should consider when choosing between options. I also have a lot of experience when it comes to managing businesses in general, from the best organizational and scheduling apps to use, to teaching owners how to create engaging emails.
