Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp(How To Find The Best?)

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp Reviews

Email marketing is arguably the most effective marketing tool – even in this day and age of social media and video marketing.

Compared to making marketing videos or producing a social media campaign, a marketing email is relatively easy to make. Its penetration levels are pretty high as well.

Email marketing helps you build a loyal customer community. You are certainly not getting that with PPC (pay per click) and social media ads.

However, contrary to general perception, email marketing is more than just throwing in a few sentences, images, and links.

Email is a very common form of communication online, with billions of emails sent and received every day.

In this ocean of email messages, your marketing emails should have certain uniqueness to stand out or at least grab recipient’s attention.

Besides making sure the message is coherent and grammatically correct, the included links are not broken, and the images display properly, the email message should also be attractive overall.

If this sounds complex or you are not the “creative” type, do not worry since there are companies that can help you craft the right emails for your business and create effective correspondences with your users.

In the crowd of companies or platforms offering email marketing solutions, Constant Contact com and Mailchimp stand out with their sheer market presence and experience.

In this Constant Contact vs. Mailchimp article, I’ll compare the two, discuss the various aspects of their respective services, talk about their plans and prices, etc. so that you know how they truly stack up against each other.

Let’s dive in…

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp: A Brief Comparison Overview

Constant Contact has been in the business of online marketing since 1995. It has roughly 500,000 customers across the globe.

That may not sound like much because it is not much. Mailchimp, on the other hand, is the market leader, with a 62.23 percent market share.

This is despite having set up shop six years after Constant Contact, which has 8.69 percent of the market under its fold.

If Mailchimp is such a dominant force, then why do this Constant Contact vs Mailchimp comparison?

The reason this Constant Contact vs Mailchimp comparison is relevant is because Constant Contact is the second largest online marketing service provider in terms of market reach.

Also, both Constant Contact and Mailchimp have comparable offerings.

What is Constant Contact And What is Mailchimp?

Headquartered in Massachusetts, Constant Contact is in the business of digital marketing since 1995. Originally called Roving Software, the company was rechristened to its current name in 2004.

Over the years, Constant Contact has acquired multiple companies to strengthen its market positioning and widen its overall value proposition.

Founded in 2001, Mailchimp is an email marketing and marketing automation platform.

It initially started as a premium service. The freemium option that it now offers was added to the mix only in 2019.

By June 2014, the company was sending more than 10 billion marketing emails a month on its users’ behalf.

Pricing For Constant Contact com vs Pricing For Mailchimp

Constant Contact offers multiple plans, but no free plan. You can, however, try out its premium plans free for a month. Basically, constant Contact pricing is divided into different plans to choose from:

Lite

Priced at $5 per month and ideal for one user, the Lite plan is the least expensive premium plan that lets you send up to 10,000 email messages a month. You get 500MB of file storage with the plan.

Email

Priced at $20 per month, the Email plan lets you send any number of emails. It offers increased file storage as well.

Email Plus

The Email Plus plan is priced at $45 per month. It offers everything the Email plan offers, and also adds a host of other unique features such as surveys, polls, dynamic content, online donations, coupons, etc.

Is Mailchimp Free?

Compared to Constant Contact, Mailchimp’s price plan takes a more tiered approach.

Mailchimp offers a free plan, which is quite generous in itself (even though the features are limited).

In the free plan, you can send up to 10,000 emails to a maximum of 2,000 contacts. If you’d like to send more emails to more subscribers, you’ll have to buy the premium plans. There are three paid plans:

Essentials

Starting at $9.99 a month, this Mailchimp price plan builds on everything the free plan offers, offering all email templates, custom branding, A/B testing, and round-the-clock support in addition.

This plan also lets you access 50,000 contacts and is ideal for email senders requiring added support.

Standard

The Standard plan is the most recommended, according to pricing Mailchimp.

Priced at $14.99 a month, this plan packs in everything the Essentials plan offers, besides providing added features such as retargeting ads, advanced audience insights, custom templates, etc.

The plan is ideal for growing businesses seeking better insights and wanting to build on their customer base. The number of contacts you can access in this plan is 100,000.

Premium

Priced at $299.99 a month and letting you access more than 200,000 contacts a month, the Premium plan is the most expensive of them all.

Besides packing in features of the other three plans, the Premium plan also offers advanced segmentation, role-based access, unlimited seats, multivariate testing, and phone support.

The plan is best for professional email marketers who require advanced features and extensive customization.

To learn more about the different plans and their various features, head to the official site.

Constant Contact or Mailchimp: Feature Comparisons

In this Mailchimp vs Constant Contact showdown, let’s now discuss the two companies based on specific parameters.

User Interface

Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp offer clear sections and easy navigation, which render them perfect for people who have just gotten introduced to email marketing tools.

When compared to Constant Contact, Mailchimp’s editor feels a lot faster and more modern. That said, Mailchimp has certain advanced features that could be hard to decipher in the beginning.

Constant Contact customizes its primary dashboard based on your prior email marketing experience and your exposure to the software. When you first log in to the system, it asks you certain questions, displaying content based on your responses.

The less experienced marketers are provided a simple and streamlined primary dashboard with key actions they could take, alongside an explanation for each of the tasks.

If you are setting up an email campaign for the first time, these tasks are solid starting points. Also, the explanations guide you on the primary actions you should take.

Mailchimp offers a dashboard that gives you an overview of the various steps to creating an email campaign.

The checklist-style interface helps you learn the different stages involved in creating a campaign. Also, there is in-app messaging that dishes out helpful messages pertaining to the feature you are currently using.

These messages help you understand how to use the specific feature, alongside enlightening you on its benefits.

For instance, a message relating to segmented messages would let you in on statistics, such as click rates increase by 14 percent on average with segmented campaigns.

Mailchimp’s navigation menu to create a campaign is pretty clear. You can move backward and forward to check each step of the marketing campaign and ensure everything is right.

With Constant Contact, there are certain aspects to the interface that do not feel seamless – the contacts section, for instance. Also, the menu has quite a few elements concealed.

Templates and Flexibility

Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp offer a good number of well-designed templates to get the ball rolling.

However, Mailchimp’s templates are well-sorted or finding the one that suits your industry or specific requirements is easier. Mailchimp has the templates organized in sections such as e-commerce, holidays, events, notifications, newsletters, etc.

Constant Contact email templates are not as sleek or modern as Mailchimp. Mailchimp templates have a lot more flat, modern designs.

If you’d like to create a template of your own, both platforms are compatible with HTML. Mailchimp lets you import your codes from a .zip file or a URL. Mailchimp also offers blank templates, which it calls ‘layouts’.

These are essentially empty structures wherein you could add images, text, and other content.

Constant Contact also offers a couple of these blank templates, but they are not as intuitive as Mailchimp templates.

Having said that, Constant Contact offers features that let you compose custom emails.

For instance, you could tailor your email messages to your brand’s styles and colors by simply entering your website address.

Mailchimp offers a lot more options and flexibility for editing templates. For example, you get more content blocks, such as product recommendations.

There are also multiple ways through which you could display your images or social media features, including the likes and shares on your page. Not to mention, both let you save your custom templates for later use.

Mailchimp has another feature called segment builder’. It leverages machine learning to automatically create segments based on prior customer behavior.

These segments are dynamic, which means Mailchimp automatically adds and removes customers instead of you doing it manually. Adding and removal actions are based on certain specific conditions that customers should meet.

Autoresponders and Automation

Constant Contact provides decent autoresponders. In case you didn’t know, autoresponders are emails that get sent to users who voluntarily joined your mailing list. You can also add coupons and surveys.

Mailchimp offers autoresponders too, but the focus is more on marketing automation.

What is the difference between autoresponder and marketing automation? Autoresponders are basically messages that go out in a sequence automatically.

The email messages go out one after another at regular intervals.

Marketing automation, on the other hand, comprises a set of tools that help automate your complete promotional process. Automation is capable of doing everything that autoresponders accomplish.

But it also assists with tracking and making decisions based on your workflow and goals.

Mailchimp’s marketing automation features include segment-triggered campaigns, email sequences (ideal for bulletin sales funnels), etc. There is also the A/B split testing feature with three different variables – such as different content, send time, or subject line.

Multivariate testing is possible if you’re willing to pay for a plan. A/B testing function helps you set a particular objective for every campaign and design the “success” criteria accordingly.

Deliverability

A marketing email is not worth the effort and time if it ends up in the recipient’s spam folder. In other words, an email is considered “delivered” only if it lands in the receiver’s primary folder.

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp deliverability rates are pretty much the same.

Though there are conflicting pieces of information online in the various Constant Contact versus Mailchimp comparison write-ups, indicating one has a better deliverability rate than the other, the number is usually in the high 90s (percentage) for both.

Mailchimp’s deliverability percentages are usually in the 96 to 99 percent range. Constant Contact’s rate is 97 percent.

Registration Forms

Registration forms are at the front end of your subscriber list. When integrating the form with your site, you would want it to be pretty modern and seamless.

Constant Contact allows you to change the image banner, font, and background color. The fields available are restricted to regular tick boxes denoting a user’s basic details, such as their name, company, etc.

Mailchimp basically offers you more choices. You may add custom fields, tweak the color, drag and drop current fields, etc. Mailchimp also shines with its opt-in messages.

You can seamlessly customize those messages depending on your preferences. The option exists with Constant Contact too, but the interface isn’t as fun or intuitive.

Integrations and Add-Ons

Mailchimp offers a lot more integrations than Constant Contact, ranging from website to social media integrations.

Having said that, you are not going to miss out on an integration feature or two with Constant Contact since it covers the basics or pretty much every integration you would need.

The integrations the two offer include SalesForce, WooCommerce, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram , WordPress, etc. Unlike Mailchimp, Constant Contact offers direct Shopify integration.

ConstantContact com initially offered event management software with its plans. But there is no such option currently. You are instead prompted to use Eventbrite.

The Eventbrite integration lets you promote and manage events and track attendee registration. This third-party tool integration doesn’t work as seamlessly as the erstwhile built-in feature did.

Moreover, you’ll have to bear the fees, if any, incurred with using Eventbrite.

Reporting & Analytics

Knowing how successful your existing newsletter campaigns are would help you devise your future marketing emails or plan your next move.

Constant Contact helps you learn who opened your newsletter emails and clicked them. For tracking conversion, you can also use Google Analytics in conjunction with the tool.

Mailchimp offers everything that Constant Contact offers (including Google Analytics integration), but it also throws in social media reports, geo-tracking, and click maps.

Perhaps, the most impressive reporting feature is an e-commerce conversion tracker that lets you in on the time the products on your store get sold.

Mailchimp vs Constant Contact Support

The facility to contact your email marketing solution service provider at will is critical – whether it’s for reporting a bug, seeking assistance with using a certain feature, or wanting to downgrade or upgrade a plan.

Also, it’s important there is a variety of self-help material on offer so that you could sort the issue out yourself before having to get in touch with support.

Constant Contact customer service has a phone and chats support in tow during business hours. The company offers phone and email support, but those aren’t available 24/7.

Live chat is available, but you’ll have to search hard in the support pages to access the facility.

When not “officially” working or during the weekend, Constant Contact staff could check social media and community forums to address member concerns.

Therefore, if you do not manage to elicit a response through traditional channels, you could tweet the team.

Mailchimp offers 24/7 chat assistance and email support during working days. However, such support is only limited to users on premium plans. You will get 24/7 live chat and email support when you pay for the service.

If you choose the top-tier plan, you also get phone support.

If you are on the free plan, you would get support for the initial month of your membership. Thereafter, Mailchimp’s self-help articles are all the assistance you get.

To make things easier, Mailchimp inserts links to related articles at the base of a given page depending on the feature you are using currently or require help with.

Despite the claims of being available during business hours, both Constant Contact and Mailchimp do not have the most responsive support departments in the business.

In fact, with Constant Contact, it could take you more than a couple of inquiries to produce a satisfactory response. Mailchimp is also tardy, but it’s quicker to respond compared to Constant Contact.

Also, the company’s support reps are more knowledgeable.

Alternatives To Constant Contact

Get Response(Read Get Response full review Here)

Aweber

Alternatively, you can read about Get Response vs Aweber comparison here.

Mailchimp vs Constant Contact Reviews-Conclusion

Through this Constant Contact vs Mailchimp comparison, you should have learned that both Constant Contact and Mailchimp are rich in functionality and features.

Mailchimp, as aforementioned, has significantly more people subscribed to its services.

But the bigger market presence doesn’t imply that it’s significantly better or capable than Constant Contact. The latter offers more than just email marketing functions.

Mailchimp, on the other hand, one-ups Constant Contact reviews in almost all departments, barring for a couple.

If you happen to choose one service over the other, you are not losing out on much. However, it’s imperative you choose a service that suits your requirements and preferences better.

If you have very basic requirements and are not keen on spending anything, Mailchimp is your only choice out of the two.

GET CONSTANT CONTACT HERE GET MAILCHIMP HERE

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