Constant Contact Review

Email marketing is a large part of many small businesses' overall marketing strategies. Small businesses are looking for top email marketing software that is, first and foremost, easy to use, while also offering all of the tools they need to run effective campaigns. Constant Contact hits those marks and then some. Constant Contact is an excellent option for small businesses that need a solid but affordable email marketing solution. Its two service plans are based on the number of subscribers on your contact list, but you can send unlimited emails on either tier. The simple, drag-and-drop email editor is ideal for businesses that want to quickly and easily create beautiful campaigns. Constant Contact also integrates with numerous marketing applications and offers robust analytics.

Constant Contact Editor's Score: 9.5/10

Pricing/value	9.4/10
Features	9.6/10
Customizations, add-ons and integrations	9.2/10
Ease of use	9.9/10
Customer support	9.3/10

Why We Chose Constant Contact as the Best for Small Businesses

We chose Constant Contact as the best email marketing software for small businesses because it's easy to use and offers all of the most valuable features, like A/B testing, autoresponders, deliverability tools and drag-and-drop email editor. These are staples that all businesses need in their email marketing software. Additionally, Constant Contact provides email templates, list management, and robust reporting and analytics. You get all of these features for an affordable price, starting at just $20 per month.

What We Like About Constant Contact

• It is an affordable email marketing option that can fit within many small businesses' budgets.
• It provides all of the key features most small businesses look for in email marketing software.
• The company offers excellent customer support.

What We Don't Like About Constant Contact

• There are no free options.
• The A/B testing feature is limited.

Ease of Use

Small business owners who are tackling their own marketing need tools that are easy to learn and use. Constant Contact fits the bill with its outstanding email editor. We were impressed with how this tool automatically scrubs your website to find your logo, colors and social media profiles, making it easy to apply your branding to email campaigns. With this information loaded into Constant Contact's editor, you can easily customize one of its dozens of templates, which can be saved as “favorites” for future use. Not all of the other email marketing services we examined offered this functionality.

Constant Contact integrates with numerous products – including Excel, Salesforce and Outlook – to help you build your email lists. We found that it's easy to sync your data from these tools to capture contact data, which can be a big timesaver. Constant Contact recently formed a partnership with Vimeo to give users the ability to create, host and manage video within the Constant Contact platform. Many other services don't offer this video option, which can add a whole other element to your marketing efforts.

Features

Here are some of Constant Contact's most valuable features for small businesses.

A/B Testing

A useful feature of modern email marketing software, A/B split testing allows you to send two versions of the same campaign to different segments of your audience, to gauge which version performs better. Constant Contact's A/B testing feature lets you alter the subject lines when sending campaigns to two test contact groups. After the test period, the better-performing subject line is automatically sent to the rest of your audience. This tool can be helpful when you're trying to target your campaign to ensure it's hitting all the right notes. Unfortunately, with Constant Contact, A/B testing is limited to subject lines; you can't use it to test other components of a message.

Autoresponders

Constant Contact's autoresponder feature lets you create a series of personalized, automated emails to send when certain trigger behaviors or dates occur. For example, these emails may include welcome messages for new subscribers, and birthday and anniversary emails for existing customers.

Constant Contact's 97% deliverability rate is impressive, and the company's website offers numerous resources on email best practices, as well as phrases that may land your campaigns in spam folders.

Drag-and-Drop Email Editor

Our analysis found that Constant Contact's email editor makes it easy to add your brand's colors, logo and social media accounts simply by allowing the tool to scrub your website. Once your branding is loaded into Constant Contact, you can select a template and edit it using the drag-and-drop tools. First-time users will see a tutorial video to help them navigate the email editor.

Email Templates

Constant Contact users can peruse the platform's library of dozens of well-designed templates, which are built for both desktop and mobile devices. We found dozens of templates across a range of topics. Each template is fully customizable to your brand.

List Management

With Constant Contact, building your email list is as simple as syncing the program with Outlook, Salesforce or Excel. We like that you can use tags, such as “past client” or “prospect,”  to categorize your imported contacts. While list management is a standard email marketing software feature, Constant Contact makes the import process simpler by automatically removing duplicates and unsubscribed contacts. This isn't something you find in all email marketing software.

Reporting and Analytics

An email marketing campaign is only as good as the number of people who received, opened and clicked through it. Constant Contact offers comprehensive reporting and analytics tools that display campaign results almost immediately after an email has been sent. You can view open rates, click rates, the number of emails sent, bounces, successful deliveries, unsubscribes, spam reports and did-not-opens. You can also see which specific links were clicked, as well as social media statistics and poll responses. In addition, the reporting dashboard gives you the option to resend an email.

Pricing

Constant Contact's two email marketing plans, Email and Email Plus, begin at $20 and $45 per month, respectively. This affordable price can fit into the budgets of most small businesses. Both plans include all of the necessary tools to create professional email campaigns.

Each plan can accommodate unlimited emails and comes with customizable templates, contact management and list-building tools, pop-up forms, tracking and reporting features, an image library and a mobile app. The price of each plan scales according to the total number of contacts on your list, with a maximum contact limit of 500 for the lowest-priced plans.

Once you have more than 10,000 subscribers, you must sign up for the Email Plus plan, which accommodates up to 50,000 subscribers for $335 per month. Businesses with more than 50,000 subscribers need to reach out to Constant Contact for a custom quote.

The difference between Email and Email Plus lies in the advanced features offered in the latter. Email Plus comes with dynamic sign-up forms, access for up to 10 users, email automation, event marketing, online donations, surveys, coupons and some initial one-on-one consultation.

Implementation and Onboarding

Simply provide your email address, phone number and company information to sign up for the 60-day free trial and start using Constant Contact; no payment information is required. Once you create your account, you can immediately begin crafting your first email campaign by clicking the “Create an email” option.

Next, you import your fonts, logo, brand colors and social profiles from your website. From there, you can choose an email template that best suits your needs, such as a newsletter or a product announcement. Once you're happy with the email, you're ready to build your email list and send your first message. The entire process, from sign-up to send, can take as little as 10 minutes. This is important for small business owners, especially those who wear many hats and might not have hours upon hours to create email marketing campaigns.

At the end of your trial period, you have the option to enter your credit card information and sign up for one of Constant Contact's paid plans.

Customer Support

Constant Contact offers numerous resources to help its customers achieve success with their email campaigns. The platform's extensive knowledgebase and videos are great for self-service, but if you need one-on-one assistance, you can reach out to a Constant Contact representative via live chat or phone. The company also provides free webinars and blog resources for user education.

You can reach Constant Contact by phone Monday through Saturday, with varying hours depending on the department, or by live chat Monday through Friday. When we reached out to Constant Contact to test its support, the representative was friendly and helpful and answered all of our questions.

Limitations

One downside is that Constant Contact does not offer a free plan like many of its competitors do. While it does have a 60-day free trial, some small businesses with basic email marketing needs and small contact lists may find it more cost-effective to sign up for a free-forever plan with another provider. If a free plan is what you need, Benchmark might be a better option. You can learn more in our full review of Benchmark.

Another drawback is Constant Contact's A/B testing feature, which is limited to email subject lines. Other email marketing platforms allow you to test other elements, like images and layouts, giving you better insight into your email campaigns' effectiveness.

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a highly effective direct marketing strategy that allows businesses to send targeted emails, communicate directly with customers and improve brand engagement. The top email marketing platforms allow you to create visually engaging emails, build and segment contact lists, and track subscriber behavior to see which campaigns are the most effective.

Methodology

To identify the best email marketing services, first we compiled a list of popular platforms based on online research. We carefully examined each service's online reputation and narrowed down our list to some finalists. We spent several weeks researching each email marketing service by investigating its offerings, watching tutorials and how-to videos, testing the software (when possible) and reading user reviews. We also evaluated each service's pricing structure and customer support. When selecting our pick for the best email marketing service for small businesses, we considered the features that would be most important to small businesses with modest email marketing budgets.

Constant Contact FAQs

What is Constant Contact used for?

Constant Contact is an online marketing service that is known primarily for its email marketing software. The company is geared toward helping small businesses build their online presence through creating a website, utilizing social media and launching email campaigns.

How much does Constant Contact cost monthly?

Constant Contact starts at just $20 per month. Prices vary depending on businesses' number of contacts. There are also discounts for upfront payments.

Can you use Constant Contact as a customer relationship management (CRM) system?

No, Constant Contact is not a CRM system. However, it can integrate with a CRM system to streamline processes. If you are looking for a CRM system that has built-in email marketing software, Freshworks CRM might be a good option for you. You can learn more in our review of Freshworks CRM.

Bottom Line

We recommend Constant Contact for …

• Small and midsize businesses that are looking for affordable email marketing software.
• Businesses that want to experiment with a risk-free email marketing service.
• Businesses that want to integrate their email marketing with other e-commerce or social media platforms.

We don't recommend Constant Contact for …

• Businesses with many email contacts (over 50,000).
• Companies that are looking to use highly customized templates.
• Businesses looking for a completely free plan.