Constant Contact Review

Constant Contact Review: 1-minute summary

In a nutshell, I think there’s a decline in interest in Constant Contact’s software because there’s hefty competition in the industry, and Constant Contact doesn’t offer the best product market fit. Why? Well, it doesn’t offer the best marketing features, and it also doesn’t provide the best price. In other words, who’s its target audience? So what’s the ideal Constant Contact customer? I don’t know …

The screenshot below shows a graph of the number of searches in Google on the search term Constant Contact. It clearly shows a decline in interest from 2010 to 2022.

Furthermore, according to this article on prnewswire.com, published on February 10, 2022, Constant Contact had 470,000 customers. This means Constant Contact barely grew in customer count from 2019 (468,000 customers) to 470,000 in 2022.

Cheaper alternatives:

More expensive alternatives but offer more features:

What is the best email marketing software? I’ve thoroughly tested the 10 most popular email marketing tools. Read out my FULL roundup review here or watch the video below.

Constant Contact review: Pricing

Relatively expensive
The Core plan’s features are minimal, i.e., not worth its price

The table below shows the annual prices of the most popular email marketing companies, including discounts for purchasing annually. By scrolling to the right, you can find higher contact numbers up to 20,000. Click here for a full-width version if you’re on a laptop or PC.

	500	1,000	1,500	2,000	2500	3,000	4,000	5,000	6,000	7,000	8,000	10,000	15,000	20,000	20,000	50,000	100,000	200,000	300,000	500,000	700,000	900,000	1,200,000	1,500,000	2,000,000	2,500,000	3,000,000	4,000,000	5,000,000
MailerLite Growing Business	$10	$15	$25	$25	$25	$39	$39	$39	$59	$59	$59	$73	$109	$139	$139	$289
MailerLite Advanced	$20	$30	$40	$40	$40	$50	$50	$50	$80	$80	$80	$110	$150	$180	$180	$340	$440	$820	$1,200	$1,900
ConvertKit Creator	$29	$29	$49	$49	$49	$49	$79	$79	$99	$99	$99	$119	$149	$179	$179	$379	$679	$1,279	$1,879
ConvertKit Creator Pro	$59	$59	$79	$79	$79	$79	$111	$111	$139	$139	$139	$167	$209	$251	$251	$519	$879	$1,579	$2,179
Zoho Standard	$4	$7	$17	$17	$17	$18	$24	$31	$35	$38	$41	$49	$61	$74	$74	$138	$242
Zoho Professional	$6	$12	$29	$29	$29	$30	$40	$52	$58	$63	$69	$81	$101	$123	$123	$230	$403	$748	$1,035	$1,380
Sender Standard	$19	$19	$19	$19	$19	$33	$33	$33	$57	$57	$57	$57	$87	$107	$107	$227	$367	$697
Sender Professional	$35	$35	$35	$35	$35	$60	$60	$60	$120	$120	$120	$120	$200	$250	$250	$460	$860	$1,660
Constant Contact Lite	$12	$30	$50	$50	$50	$80	$80	$80	$120	$120	$120	$120	$180	$230	$230	$430
Constant Contact Standard	$35	$55	$75	$75	$75	$110	$110	$110	$160	$160	$160	$160	$210	$260	$260	$460
Constant Contact Premium	$80	$110	$150	$150	$150	$200	$200	$200	$275	$275	$275	$275	$325	$375	$375	$575
ActiveCampaign Marketing Lite	$39	$39	$61	$61	$61	$99	$99	$99	$174	$174	$174	$174	$286	$286	$286	$486
ActiveCampaign Marketing Plus	$70	$70	$125	$125	$125	$186	$186	$186	$287	$287	$287	$287	$474	$474	$474	$699
ActiveCampaign Marketing Professional	$187	$187	$187	$187	$187	$262	$262	$262	$424	$424	$424	$424	$686	$686	$686	$1,011
ActiveCampaign Bundles Plus	$116	$116	$171	$171	$171	$232	$232	$232	$333	$333	$333	$333	$520	$520	$520	$745
ActiveCampaign Bundles Professional	$482	$482	$482	$482	$482	$557	$557	$557	$719	$719	$719	$719	$981	$981	$981	$1,306
GetResponse Email Marketing	$19	$19	$29	$29	$29	$54	$54	$54	$79	$79	$79	$79	$174	$174	$174	$299	$539
GetResponse Marketing Automation	$59	$59	$69	$69	$69	$95	$95	$95	$114	$114	$114	$114	$215	$215	$215	$359	$599
GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing	$119	$119	$139	$139	$139	$169	$169	$169	$199	$199	$199	$199	$299	$299	$299	$444	$699
Mailchimp Essentials	$27	$45	$45	$75	$75	$110	$110	$110	$180	$180	$180	$180	$230	$270	$270
Mailchimp Standard	$20	$45	$45	$60	$60	$100	$100	$100	$135	$135	$135	$135	$230	$285	$285	$450	$800
Mailchimp Premium	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$350	$465	$535	$535	$815	$1,025	$1,600
AWeber Lite	$15	$25	$25	$25	$25	$45	$45	$45	$65	$65	$65	$65	$145	$145	$145	$388	$788
AWeber Plus	$30	$40	$40	$40	$40	$60	$60	$60	$80	$80	$80	$80	$160	$160	$160	$403	$803
AWeber Unlimited	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899	$899
Klaviyo Email	$20	$30	$45	$60	$60	$70	$100	$100	$130	$150	$150	$150	$350	$375	$375	$720	$1,380	$2,070
Klaviyo Email & SMS	$35	$45	$60	$75	$75	$85	$115	$115	$145	$165	$165	$165	$365	$390	$390	$735	$1,395	$2,085
Beehiiv Launch	$0	$0	$0	$0	$0
Beehiiv Grow	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49	$49
Beehiiv Scale	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99	$99
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Starter	$20	$20	$40	$40	$60	$60	$78	$96	$112	$128	$144	$176	$256	$336	$336	$816	$1,616
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Professional	$890	$890	$890	$890	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,140	$1,390	$1,390	$1,640	$1,890	$1,890	$3,190
HubSpot Marketing Hub - Enterprise	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,600	$3,700	$3,700	$3,700	$4,000	$4,450	$5,250	$5,950	$7,350	$8,550	$9,750
Moosend Pro	$9	$16	$24	$24	$32	$32	$48	$48	$64	$64	$64	$88	$160	$160	$160	$315	$624	$1,216	$1,808	$2,896	$4,080	$5,840

Different plans

Free plan (60-day free trial)
Core (starting from $9.99/mo – 30-day money-back guarantee available*)
Plus (starting from $45/mo – 30-day money-back guarantee available*)

Constant Contact Core Review

Maximum of 1 pop-up sign-up form
Maximum 1 sign-up forms
Limited to 1 automated email
Exit intent pop-ups aren’t accessible
Cannot remove Constant Contact logo/branding

Here’s the deal: in most cases, Constant Contact’s Core plan is more expensive than MailerLite (MailerLite review), which offers more features.

Constant Contact Core – Pop-up limitations

Constant Contact isn’t entirely transparent regarding its features and two paid plans; Core and Plus. For example, the pricing page states that you can use website sign-up forms on the Core plan. But when you’re on the 1st paid plan, the Core plan, and want to create a pop-up form, it warns you that you can only create one with the Core plan. So you need to upgrade to the Plus plan for more than one pop-up sign-up form. You can create multiple inline sign-up forms, though.

Other pop-up features/settings aren’t accessible on its Core plan, and these limitations aren’t apparent when signing up. For example, you cannot change the timing of a pop-up form; by default, the pop-up will appear after 5 seconds, and if you’re not on the Plus plan, you cannot change it. Also, settings like exit intent and frequency aren’t available.

Constant Contact Core – Marketing automation limitations

Core plan users can only access the single-step welcome email automation and do not have access to any other email automation (see image below). Single-step automation means that you can only send one email. You can adjust the email’s delay to X hours, days, or weeks.

Constant Contact Core – Removing Constant Contact’s logo

What I also find weird is that Core plan customers cannot remove the Constant Contact logo from sign-up forms. Usually, when you purchase an email marketing company’s paid plan, you can remove its branding. Unfortunately, the Core plan doesn’t allow you to remove the Constant Contact branding on its sign-up forms. They also don’t communicate this on their pricing page. Instead, you’ll only find out about it once purchasing the Core plan.

Such actions result in unhappy customers. For example, the screenshot below is from Constant Contact’s community.

Constant Contact Plus Review

The Plus plan’s price mostly matches the prices of ConvertKit (Pro plan) and GetResponse (Marketing Automation plan). AWeber (Plus plan) is often a few hundred dollars cheaper annually, and Mailchimp (Standard plan) is primarily a few hundred dollars more expensive annually.

When subscribed to the Plus plan, all the Core plan’s limitations are gone. In other words, unlimited automated emails, removing Constant Contact’s logo, more popup settings, etcetera.

See the pricing page for a full breakdown.

Keep in mind that if you read the rest of this Constant Contact review, its features aren’t any out of the ordinary. In other words, limited landing page customization features, a maximum of one popup and inline sign-up form, and basic email automation features. In other words, Constant Contact offers an average product for a relatively high price.

Cheaper alternatives:

More expensive alternatives that also offer more features:

Discounts

Constant Contact offers 10% off when purchasing a 6-month plan and a 20% discount when subscribing to its tool for 12 months. These discounts are the same for both the Core and Plus plan.

If you are a nonprofit organization, you can get up to 20% off when purchasing a 6-month plan and a 30% discount when subscribing to its tool for 12 months. These discounts are the same for both the Core and Plus plan.

Cancellation process

Warning: The only way to cancel a paid subscription at Constant Contact can be by phone on specific days and between particular hours. For example, you can’t cancel your account in your dashboard or via email like most other email marketing companies.

Signing up for a paid subscription can be done within 30 seconds online on a Sunday afternoon but canceling needs to be done by phone between specific hours on business days. This is Constant Contact’s tactic of discouraging paid subscribers from canceling their subscriptions.

Furthermore, suppose you are not from the US. In that case, you’re probably charged heavily by your phone company (maybe even up to $1 per minute) when calling its international number. For testing, I signed up for a paid account in August 2020 and canceled my account by phone. The manager I spoke to confirmed that they are working on a solution for this so people can cancel their accounts online. Apparently, they aren’t in a big rush to change things since their customers still cannot cancel their account online, which is already a few years later.

On May 16, 2022, I tested the process of canceling a paid subscription with Constant Contact by phone, and all-in-all the call took 13 minutes. A lot of waiting, and I was asked two times by two different people why I wanted to cancel.

Refunds

Constant Contact is one of the few email tools that offer a 30-day refund guarantee. There are a few catches, though, e.g., you must have sent at least one email, etcetera, so make sure to read its terms and conditions. Keep in mind, that you can only cancel by phone.

Extra discounts (special occasions)

Besides the regular discounts, Constant Contact offers Black Friday deals. For example, in 2020, it provided 40% off for six months; in 2021, the Black Friday deal was 40% off any Constant Contact email plan for four months; in 2022, the sale was 30% off the Plus plan.

An email marketing company that also offers significant discounts multiple times per year is GetResponse (GetResponse review).

The big difference is that GetResponse offers these lifetime discounts when purchasing for 24 months.

The number of contacts (subscribed vs unsubscribed)

Constant Contact charges you for active contacts only. This means that if someone unsubscribes from your email list, that contact will not count towards your billing. Some email marketing firms charge you for both unsubscribed and subscribed contacts, such as AWeber and MailChimp, which will ramp up your monthly costs.

Constant Contact Review: Free plan

Does Constant Contact offer the best free plan compared to its competitors? The short answer is no – the longer answer can be found here, where we compare the best free email marketing tools.

Forever free plan	❌ (only a 60-day free trial)
Maximum subscribers/contacts	Unlimited
Maximum emails	100 emails in total
Email automation	Only single-step automation
Support	Email & phone support
Remove branding	❌
Maximum sign-up forms	❌ (cannot publish a sign up form)
Maximum landing pages	❌ (cannot publish a landing page)
Can add custom domain	❌
Email scheduling	❌
Create a website	❌

Constant Contact Review: Newsletter Features

This section only covers Constant Contact’s newsletter features and not its automation features

In a nutshell, the most distinctive element of Constant Contact’s newsletter features is that you can send a relatively high number of monthly emails (24X) compared to its competitors. Besides, its newsletter features are fine but nothing out of the ordinary.

Remember, as you’ll read below, Constant Contact doesn’t offer a feature that automatically adds Google Analytics UTM parameters to your website links, which would be an absolute no-go for me. But it depends on your needs and how you feel about this.

Maximum contacts and monthly emails

	Core	Plus
Max contacts	50,000	n/a
Max monthly emails	24X	24X

When you reach 50,000 contacts, the price you pay for the Core plan equals the Plus plan’s cost, i.e., they automatically upgrade you to the Plus plan. The Core plan’s price seems cheap at lower contact numbers but rapidly increases when you gain more subscribers.

Furthermore, the monthly sending limit of 24 times your total contacts is generous compared to its competitors. Mailchimp only allows you to send up to 15 times your contact number on its most expensive plan. Other email tools like ConvertKit (ConvertKit review) offer unlimited emails, but many email marketing companies limit their customers to around 10 – 15 times their contact number.

User-friendly email newsletter editor
Hundreds of email templates available

In a nutshell, besides its user-friendly editor, there isn’t much more to it. It offers basic features every email tool offers, e.g., email scheduling, re-send to non-opens, A/B testing options, and segmentation options. In other words, its newsletter features shouldn’t be the reason to choose Constant Contact over cheaper alternatives like MailerLite.

Besides its templates, you can also choose to start with a blank canvas and design your own by using its easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder. Constant Contact has a very user-friendly email editor. Still, I must say that more and more email tools are offering a similar (great) experience.

One drawback of the Constant Contact newsletter; is Constant Contact automatically adds its logo to every email campaign you send with a link to its website. Unfortunately, there’s no option inside their dashboard to remove the logo. Keep in mind that I’m not necessarily talking about the free trial – Constant Contact also adds its logo to newsletters of paid customers.

So when googling, I came across this page where they state it can only be removed when contacting their customer service, and they can remove it for you. This is an unnecessary and cumbersome process, in my opinion. When reading Constant Contact’s community pages, you find posts from paying (frustrated) customers like the one below.

Segmentation

Segmentation options are available on both plans, Core and Plus
Segmenting on ecommerce activity is only available on the Plus plan

In a nutshell, Constant Contact’s segmentation options are fine but nothing out of the ordinary.

One of the segmentation options is Click Segmentation. When you add a link URL to your email, you can enable Click Segmentation, which automatically adds the contacts to another list that clicked on that link. For example, you can create an automated campaign to send specific emails to every subscriber who joins the list.

The Click Segmentation feature (see above) you don’t see at every other email tool. The other segmentation features Constant Contact offers are relatively basic, e.g., choosing one or multiple segments, lists, or tags when sending a newsletter.

A drawback of the Core plan is that there isn’t an option to create a custom segment based on ecommerce activity. MailerLite, a cheaper Constant Contact alternative, does offer ecommerce segmentation options in its first paid plan.

Email Scheduling

Email scheduling is available on both plans, Core and Plus

Every email tool I tested can schedule an email for a future time/date. Besides this primary feature, Constant Contact doesn’t offer other email scheduling features similar to AWeber’s feature Delivery By Timezone or Mailchimp’s feature Timewarp. Both these features enable you to deliver an email to your entire audience at a specific time, no matter the timezone.

Audiences / Email lists

Constant Contact allows you to create up to 1,000 lists to segment your contacts. Note that having contacts in multiple lists doesn’t mean you’re paying for duplicates. Instead, Constant Contact only charges you for unique email addresses.

Also note that you shouldn’t confuse these lists with accounts, i.e., if you work at a marketing agency and run email marketing campaigns for clients you shouldn’t use these lists for your customers. Every customer should still have their account. Why? You cannot add multiple physical addresses for the email footer for the different lists. There’s also the risk of sending a mass email to various lists, i.e., numerous of your clients’ contacts, resulting in mass unsubs/spam reports. Also, you cannot set a different default from email address and name for each list.

All-in-all, these lists aren’t meant for different accounts. Instead, there’s an option to add a master account and use subaccounts for your clients.

Google Analytics Tracking

When you have a website and use Google Analytics, you’re probably familiar with its TUM parameters that allow you to track clicks on those links in Google Analytics. For example, you can use the Google Analytics URL builder to generate those URLs manually but as you can understand, converting every URL to a Google Analytics URL is painful.

Therefore, as a website owner, it’s an absolute must for me that my email marketing tool provides an automatic UTM parameter tool, i.e., whenever I add a link to my emails, the email tool automatically adds UTM parameters to my links.

So, despite seeing multiple threads of customers asking for such a feature, Constant Contact sadly doesn’t offer it.

Ecommerce

Once you have connected your ecommerce store, e.g., Shopify, you can add products to your newsletter. Many email tools offer such features, including the cheapest tool, MailerLite (MailerLite review).

My opinion:

Constant Contact can work fine for ecommerce but is it the best? No, it’s not the best. In my opinion, you’re better off with email tools that are 100% focused on ecommerce businesses like Klaviyo.

Klaviyo, on the other hand, allows for much more customization. For example, Klaviyo lets you create a product recommendation on products a customer recently viewed, products a customer may also like, products that the customer has added to their cart, the newest products, etcetera. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; you can add rules if the customer has limited purchase history, and you can add filters, e.g., categories, prices, and stock.

The bottom line? For the best user experience, I recommend choosing an email marketing tool solely focused on ecommerce, like Klaviyo, if your emails are mainly about promoting your ecommerce products.

Do note that Klaviyo is relatively expensive compared to other email tools and (in most cases) more expensive than Constant Contact’s Plus plan. Especially at the higher subscriber numbers (15,000+), you’ll pay thousands of dollars more annually for using Klaviyo over Constant Contact.

Constant Contact Review: Email Marketing Automation

Constant Contact’s automation features are easy to use. The downside of its automation functionalities is that they are limited/basic. For example, tools like MailerLite offer more automation functionalities for a lower price. Moreover, Constant Contact’s first paid plan, the Core plan, offers only single-step automation functionalities making this plan far less valuable.

Pricing

Free trial and Core plan users cannot publish multi-step automations (What is this?)
Want to access all its automation features, you need the Plus plan

You need to understand that if you want access to all of Constant Contact’s automation features, you have to subscribe to its Plus plan, which can be hundreds if not thousands of dollars more expensive than a cheaper alternative, e.g., MailerLite (MailerLite review).

Constant Contact’s automation features are very(!) basic

As previously mentioned at the beginning of this review, the Plus plan’s price mostly matches the prices of ConvertKit (Pro plan) and GetResponse (Marketing Automation plan). MailerLite and AWeber (Plus plan) are often a few hundred dollars cheaper annually, and Mailchimp (Standard plan) is primarily a few hundred dollars more expensive annually.

We must consider the product price to review a product feature, e.g., automation features. Why? Well, the best concert seats often cost the most money, right?

In a nutshell, Constant Contact’s automation features are probably one of the most basic I’ve come across.

There’s no If/Else feature (MailerLite does offer this)
There’s no 50/50 split feature (Mailchimp does offer this)
You cannot automatically add/remove tags (MailerLite does offer this)
You cannot automatically add/remove them from/to a list (MailerLite does offer this)
You cannot automatically update a custom field (MailerLite does offer this)
You cannot automatically unsubscribe them (MailerLite does offer this)

Below you can see a screenshot of a MailerLite automation sequence where I use a conditional if/else statement. All the contacts that aren’t in the group Newsletter will go through the flash (red) branch, and all others will go through the green branch.

There are a few more automation limitations when using Constant Contact, e.g., there’s no option to automatically add tags to your contacts/subscribers when they sign up through one of your sign-up forms or landing pages. You can only add tags if you import new subscribers, manually one by one, or by adding a tag to a list. But none of these can be done automatically.

What’s also weird/annoying is that you cannot add more emails to the campaign after you publish an email automation. Instead, you must create a new campaign or copy the old one to add another email. See a comment from a frustrated Constant Contact customer below.

Easy way to distribute ebooks/pdfs (freebies)

A great way to gain new subscribers is to give away something for free, like a free ebook.

Constant Contact allows you to upload files directly to its servers. This will be handy when sending subscribers a free ebook (pdf). However, this might seem like an obvious feature for an email tool; 9 out of 10 email companies do not offer the option to upload a document like Constant Contact.

Delivering a free ebook with email marketing software MailerLite will take you up to 3-10 minutes – depending on how tech-savvy you are. It’ll only take a couple of seconds with Constant Contact.

Constant Contact allows you to distribute free ebooks to your subscribers in multiple ways. The easiest option is to use its Lead Generation Landing Page, and on its Thank You Page, you can select the option to offer a file download after someone opts in. But you can also use a welcome email after someone opts in through one of your forms or landing pages to deliver the free ebook.

Constant Contact Review: Landing Page Features

Cannot connect custom domain to landing page
Cannot add sign-up forms to custom landing pages
Only one template design available for the Lead generation landing page

When creating a Constant Contact landing page, it offers three options: A lead generation landing page, a shoppable landing page, and a custom landing page.

Cannot connect custom domain to landing page

Most email tools can add your custom domain to your landing pages so it’ll look more professional and, therefore, increase the number of people opting in. However, constant Contact, on the other hand, doesn’t allow you to add a custom domain to your landing pages, leaving you with a weird and fishy-looking URL.

Constant Contact URL example: lp.constantcontactpages.com/cu/cxpGuOn/

Custom domain example: http://creatoregg.com/ or http://creatoregg.com/landing-page-1

Constant Contact also has the option to create a website, and you can connect your custom domain or subdomain within seconds (I’ve tested it).

The downside, however, of the Website Builder is that it doesn’t fully integrate nicely with all its other features, like email marketing. For example, you can’t use their landing pages, sign-up forms, or event pages inside their Website Builder. Furthermore, they have two different support departments—one for the email marketing services and the other for the Website Builder.

When you ask an email marketing question to the website builder support staff, they reply by saying, “you need to contact their support,” which is strange because it feels like they are referring to an entirely different company. While for me as a Constant Contact customer, I’m just using the features they offer me. Their chat support contact hours also differ from one another.

Cannot add sign-up forms to custom landing pages

As mentioned above, you have three options when creating a landing page. You must select the Lead Generation Landing Page to create a landing page to collect email addresses. The other two don’t offer the option to add a sign-up form to your landing page, which is weird, in my opinion. Moreover, the Lead Generation Landing Page has a very basic design, as shown in the screenshot below. This is the only design for the Lead Generation Landing Page, i.e., Constant Contact doesn’t offer multiple landing page designs for its Lead Generation Landing Pages like many of its competitors do.

The custom landing pages are intended for simple web pages and not for collecting new newsletter subscribers since you cannot add a sign-up for a custom landing page.

Constant Contact Review: Sign-up Form Features

Limited to one popup and one inline form
Limited design functionalities
Not the best way to deal with privacy laws (GDPR)
Easy way to distribute ebooks/pdfs (freebies)
Cannot add/create a custom thank you page
Cannot delete the default Constant Contact legal text and HTML link below a sign-up form

Opt-in form limitations

The big downside of Constant Contact’s opt-in forms is that you can only create one popup and one inline form/embedded form. So it isn’t possible to create multiple popups for multiple pages since there’s one universal code.

There are threads on Constant Contact’s community page about these limitations dating back to 2018. Years later, there’s still no change; its customers can’t use multiple popups on multiple pages.

Limited design functionalities

Usually, when creating a sign-up form with email tools, you can add an image and change the styling. However, Constant Contact doesn’t offer that; you cannot add a picture and change the styling. Remember that customers have requested such features for years, and still, there’s no solution.

Not the best way to deal with privacy laws (GDPR)

Every email tool deals differently regarding complying with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation), and other privacy laws.

Constant Contact, for example, adds a text below every sign-up form you create (see screenshot below):

By submitting this form, you are consenting to …

Keep in mind that you cannot delete this text. The only parts you can change are marked yellow in the screenshot below. Moreover, it also added an (unremovable) link to Constant Contact’s website:

Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.

Some Constant Contact competitors do not force you to add footer text to sign-up forms. Instead, they let you decide how you want to comply with privacy laws. For example, the screenshot below shows a sign-up form from the email tool MailerLite (MailerLite review). The form allows one to sign up for a webinar, AND there’s an option to sign up for its newsletter (promotions and such). And not to forget, all the text of the marketing permissions is fully editable, and MailerLite doesn’t force you to use these marketing permission checkboxes within your forms.

I prefer MailerLite’s way because they leave me in charge instead of forcing me to use a specific text like Constant Contact. Furthermore, Constant Contact leaves no room for the ones that do not want to subscribe to the newsletter but want to receive the free ebook or join the webinar since I cannot add marketing permission checkboxes.

Cannot create a custom thank you page

The Constant Contact’s sign-up forms feature doesn’t allow us to add a custom thank-you page like the feature Lead Generation Landing Page does. It also doesn’t allow us to edit the thank you page or the message. Instead, it just shows the message: Thanks for signing up! You can unsubscribe anytime using the Unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email. This is unfortunate because utilizing the thank you page is a great way to let your new subscriber know about your products or services.

Constant Contact Review: Support

Chat support is available on working days (and Saturdays) between certain hours. This limited chat availability will slow you down because you will run into roadblocks, guaranteed. You can choose to email support, but, for example, when emailing support on a Saturday, you need to wait until Monday to receive an answer, which is a bit annoying. Especially in the beginning, when testing and setting up your email marketing, it’s incredibly convenient if there’s an option to contact chat support at any time. I’ve found that Constant Contact’s competitor GetResponse (GetResponse review), has very user-friendly chat support.

Constant Contact Review: Reporting

The bottom line is that Constant Contact’s reporting features are decent. Why not great? Well, I’m missing a comparing feature. As you can see in the screenshots below, you can easily keep track of things like contact/subscriber growth, the number of emails you’ve sent, and revenue made. To determine how your business performs, you have to know historical numbers and compare them.

If you’re reporting to a manager or a customer, you probably need a tool like Excel (or a professional reporting tool) to keep track of your month-by-month performance. A month-by-month performance allows you to showcase at a glance whether you’re growing or not. Constant Contact only shows you the data for one month but doesn’t show a graph of an entire year specified by monthly growth.

Keep track of subscriber growth

The image below shows that you can customize the timeframe you want to view (4), which also allows for a custom timeframe (critical!). In addition, you can see the number of contacts that are added, deleted, etcetera.

For more information see this page.

Email Reporting

There are broadcast emails, i.e., regular newsletters and automation emails. Preferably you want the option to report on both separately, and Constant Contact allows you to do that.

Similar to its other dashboards, the email reporting dashboard allows you to select a custom timeframe (2). Sadly, the number of emails sends (3) are regular emails, including automation emails. I instead prefer to see this data individually, so I know the number of automated and regular emails sent separately.

When you visit the automation campaign tab, you can see your automated campaign’s data (see screenshot below), but this only shows the data of the individual campaigns and not as a whole. In other words, a clear and nice overview of the automated emails is missing.

Frequently asked questions

What does multi-step & single-step automation mean in Constant Contact?

The name single-step automation means that you can add only one email to your automation, i.e., if someone joins your list or subscribes to your form, you can send them a maximum of one automated email.

Multi-step means that you can send multiple automated emails, i.e., someone joins your list, and you can send an email series of X emails.

Will Constant Contact still be here in 3, 5, or 10 years?

It’s important to know whether or not the product you’re considering has a promising future. You don’t want to invest your valuable time and money learning a new tool to find out they ran out of business a few months later.

Constant Contact’s history

Randy Parker founded Constant Contact in 1995. According to his Linkedin profile, Randy left the company in 2002 for unknown reasons. Then we have Gail Goodman, who joined Constant Contact in 1999 and left 16 years later, in 2016, just after Constant Contact got acquired at about 1.1 billion dollars by Endurance International.

Most, if not all of the first employees of Constant Contact don’t work there anymore.

Constant Contact is a company that got capital injections multiple times.

By 2006, the company had raised 36 million dollars through different VC funding rounds. In 2007 Constant Contact went public and sold millions of shares. Then a couple of years later, in 2015, Endurance International acquired them, valuing Constant Contact at approximately 1.1 billion dollars.

And in 2022, Constant Contact’s parent company got acquired, as you can read below.

So, Constant Contact’s founder left long ago, and all of its earlier employees aren’t involved. This isn’t necessarily a bad sign, but it isn’t good. So maybe there isn’t a real commitment from their employees and leadership staff to go after what they envision for their company.

Constant Contact’s progress from 2013 to 2021

If we look at Constant Contact’s financial statements for 2014, they say they generated a revenue of 331.7 million dollars in 2014. Furthermore, they ended the year 2014 with 635,000 unique customers, an increase in customers as they ended the year 2013 with 595,000 customers.

In 2015 Constant Contact got acquired for 1.1 billion dollars by the Endurance International Group.

Customers are paying more every year

The average revenue per user for Constant Contact was 42 dollars in 2013 and 46 dollars in 2014; in 2017, the average revenue per user was 63 dollars; in 2018, it was 67 dollars; and in 2019, it was 69 dollars.

10% decrease in customers

The total number of subscribers of Constant Contact did go down year after year, and in 2014 they had 635,000 customers; in 2016, they had 544,000 customers; in 2017, 519,000 customers; in 2018, 497,000 customers; and in 2019, they had 468,000 customers.

So that is a decrease in subscribers of almost 10% if you compare 2017 to 2019.

The revenue stayed somewhat the same because of the average revenue per subscriber increase. The revenue in 2017 was 401 million dollars; in 2018, it was 410 million dollars, and in 2019, it was again 410 million dollars.

Whatever the case, it’s not a good sign that Constant Contact is moving backward both in customers and yearly revenue.

Sources:

What happened on February 10, 2022?

On February 10, 2022, Endurance International Group, which acquired Constant Contact in 2015 for $1.1 billion, got acquired by Clearlake Capital Group L.P. for $3 billion. Besides Constant Contact, the Endurance family owned Bluehost, HostGator, Domain.com, and others. So, I’m not sure Endurance International got any return on its investment in Constant Contact, looking at the $3 billion it received for handing over dozens of brands.

According to this article on prnewswire.com, published on February 10, 2022, Constant Contact has 470,000 customers. This means Constant Contact didn’t grow in customer count from 2019 (468,000 customers) to 470,000 in 2022.

In that same article, they write that Constant Contact will move forward as a standalone business. This means there (probably) won’t be public financial statements available related to their customer or revenue numbers from this point on. They also write: Constant Contact raises $400 million of equity to rapidly accelerate growth through investments in product development, sales talent, and customer support. This is a significant investment looking at Constant Contact’s annual revenue in 2019 ($410 million.)