So you’ve realized Constant Contact isn’t your cup of tea.
We get it – it’s not them; it’s you. This breakup was inevitable.
The good thing is there are many fantastic email marketing tools in the sea – and today, we’ll be your Cupid, matching you with suitable alternatives, so you don’t waste your time on the wrong tools.
To brief you on our process of selection, don’t skip the following sections.
This is the criteria we used when choosing the top four Constant Contact alternatives:
- Feature score
- Ease of use
- Customer support
- Price
- Aesthetics
After giving it a thought, these are the tools we’ll cover today:
- Constant Contact
- GetResponse
- Sendinblue
- ActiveCampaign
- MailerLite
Are you looking to save time? Here is a TL;DR and a visual comparison photo of the Constant Contact alternatives battling it out.
TLDR:
- Pick GetResponse if you’re looking for an all-in-one marketing toolkit that allows you to build professional-looking websites, converting sales funnels, get subscribers, and create various automated or ordinary email campaigns.
- Pick Sendinblue if you’re looking to save money while utilizing automation and small subscriber lists.
- Pick ActiveCampaign if you own a B2B company or ecommerce business and wish to automate, personalize and improve customer relationships.
- Pick MailerLite if you’re looking for a cost-effective email marketing solution for SMBs with a great free plan.
For the full-feature comparison table, take a look at the bottom of the article.
Curious to learn more? Let’s dive deeper.
Table Of Contents
- Constant Contact – overview
- GetResponse – an all-in-one marketing solution
- Sendinblue – an affordable Constant Contact alternative
- ActiveCampaign – customer experience automation platform
- MailerLite – easy-to-use email marketing platform
- Still undecided? Here’s a complete visual comparison of the four Constant Contact alternatives
Constant Contact – overview
Before we present you with the contestants, let’s examine what made Constant Contact good (and bad) in the first place.
- Event Management (marketing) – It allows you to manage registrations for your virtual events. Unfortunately, you can only access it in their Email Plus plan.
- Geared toward small businesses – Originally aimed to be cost-effective yet innovative, now it’s being challenged by newer competitors that offer better functionality.
- Ability to create websites – many alternatives offer a way to create landing pages, but close to none enable you to create full-fledged websites.
Things we like about Constant Contact
- Intuitive and easy-to-use dashboard – A bit dull looking but easy to navigate and use.
Source: Constant Contact
- Website builder – Pretty robust with enough customization options to satisfy everyday needs.
- Great for sending simple newsletters – We’ve read and agree with many reviewers that Constant Contact has done an excellent job making this as easy as possible.
Things we do NOT like about Constant Contact
- It’s increasingly becoming less cost-effective (and it offers no free plan) – Over the years, they’ve been steadily increasing prices (and adding more features, of course). Still, at some point, the price isn’t ideal for small businesses just wanting to send simple newsletters to their audiences.
- Forms have no custom field option, and poor customization options – We’ve honestly expected more customization options here that hope they make these changes in the future.
- Cancelling requires going through a sales rep – This is not something you think about while using the software, so it might not be a “con,” per se. In
- The editor is sometimes buggy/glitchy – This is not a frequent occurrence, but when you’re in a flow state and the image you’re uploading doesn’t seem to load or keeps disappearing, you might get annoyed.
- Lack of design customization and cookie-cutter designs – While many marketers won’t take this as a terrible thing, creative freedom is something we’d love to see more of.
Constant Contact pricing
Constant Contact is somewhat expensive.
While both plans offer unlimited email sending, its pricing is still based on the number of subscribers you have, which, over time, can become quite expensive.
You’ll also notice that those interesting features you were looking forward to being in the more expensive “Email Plus” package, and switching to that plan will cost a hefty $25-$30 monthly increase on the base package for 500 subscribers.
But, if you upgrade, you’ll get access to more tools like automated welcome series, customizable pop-up forms, and advanced ecommerce marketing.
For example: Let’s say you have a list of up to 10,000 subscribers and want to access Email Automation. Then your best choice is to go for the Email Plus plan, which will add up to $125 per month (before any discounts). That’s $30 more than what you’d pay at GetResponse, and you’re not getting access to features like Live Chats, Webinars, or Sales Funnels.
Speaking of which…
GetResponse – an all-in-one marketing solution
Reasons to pick GetResponse
This is what makes us confident you’ll enjoy using GetResponse:
- Unlimited emails – pricing is based on the contact number, not on the number of emails you send. Send away as you please and create steady drip campaigns with perfect timing; it’s the same whether you send two emails per day or one per month!
- First-class customer support – our reps respond within a minute or two, so you’re never stranded in the middle of a risky situation.
- True all-in-one solution – more than any other alternative to Constant Contact, GetResponse offers tools that let you engage your audience across all key channels, like email, marketing automation, transactional emails, SMS, webinars, web push notifications, live chats, landing pages, website builder, and paid ads. No need to integrate external tools as all of these come out of the box.
- Flawless conversion funnels – lead generation, sales, webinars, and more – GetResponse makes it easy to create multiple sorts of conversion funnels, even if you have zero experience!
- It’s cost-effective – we’re not about that penny-pinching life, but a good deal is a good deal. 😎
- Multi-language support – GetResponse comes in more than 20+ languages, so even if English isn’t your native language, you’ll be able to use it with ease.
Reasons to avoid GetResponse
We’re not really keen on the “one size fits all” approach – it’s just not true.
Although it’s a stellar tool, GetResponse won’t fit everybody:
- A fewer number of integrations – GetResponse does have around 150 integrations, but it’s still less than other popular Constant Contact alternatives such as Mailchimp. On the other hand, you get a substantial amount of features, and you can connect external tools with API, Zapier, or PieSync, so this one is easily fixed.
- You need better automation with a basic plan – the most affordable GetResponse package (apart from the Free plan) goes for $15/month. When we consider what you get for your money, it’s a pretty good deal, but automation capabilities are limited.
- A bit difficult to use once you try to connect multiple tools – with GetResponse, you can easily grow sales, funnels, create multiple lists, and build an audience; however, things get a bit cluttered regarding the UI. Nothing to worry about – our customer success team helps in a flash, and with the MAX plan, you get a dedicated account manager, so things run smoothly.
GetResponse pricing
GetResponse’s pricing has five tiers: Free, Basic, Plus, Professional, and Max.
Your monthly costs will depend on the size of your email list and what features you want to use.
The Basic plan at $15 per month will offer email marketing, autoresponders, unlimited landing pages, unlimited website builder, and more.
But, if you’re looking to utilize webinars, contact scoring and tagging (helpful in evaluating the worth of a particular email contact), sales funnels, and building automation. You’ll want to grab the “Plus” plan or more.
Want to learn even more? Check out our GetResponse vs. Constant Contact review
Sendinblue – an affordable Constant Contact alternative
Reasons to pick Sendinblue
- All-in-one solution – Sendinblue is advertised as a complete, standalone marketing platform covering the entire marketing funnel, containing everything from CRM, email, and SMS marketing to ads. This makes it handy for people who cannot be bothered with tinkering and combining several different tools to get what they need – but only if you get a paid plan.
- Intelligent and robust marketing automation – create your own set of rules and triggers for emails, SMS, updates, and contact organization. If that’s too complicated, Sendinblue has both beginner and advanced automation templates you can set and forget. A/B split testing will show what works best.
- Being there for your customers – install branded chatbox with a simple copy-paste action and help the customers in real-time. You can automatically see which page they’re on and assign the conversations to different agents. Or, use personalized SMS messages to send time-sensitive/ transactional info or other bulk messages, and monitor their performance.
- Reliable CRM – manage customer relationships from a centralized dashboard. It requires no prior installation: just upload contact information, and you’re ready to work. Notes from previous calls are there too. You can organize the contacts according to their place in the conversion funnel, sources of acquisition, similar characteristics, or other criteria of your choice. A shared inbox makes teamwork even easier.
- Conversion features – Landing pages are so simple to build: use one of the provided templates, adjust the branding and add whatever you wish in the drag-and-drop editor, choose the goal, and they can go live. Creating Facebook Ads is just as simple; with Sendinblue, you can target specific contacts or find new but similar people to target with Facebook’s lookalike audience feature.
Reasons NOT to pick Sendinblue
- A bit basic and outdated – it is easy to use but also a bit clunky with few customization options when it comes to design.
- No mobile options – another thing is making Sendinblue outdated: it’s not compatible with mobile users. A mobile app would solve many issues for marketers working on the go.
- Issues with Shopify – people complain of bugs that randomly subscribe, unsubscribe, and resubscribe users who have previously unsubscribed, making it challenging to stay GDPR compliant.
Sendinblue pricing
Sendinblue is cost-effective and scales according to the business size and needs. Pricing is based on the number of emails sent, but additional charges apply if you want to expand certain features (add more landing pages, for example).
Their free plan is a great choice, as it doesn’t rob you of the best features this app has, which we see pretty often when analyzing Constant Contact alternatives. You can cover all the basics with it; as for the things it doesn’t include, a couple of integrations won’t do you any harm, but the lack of customer support might.
Lite plan, however, is pretty meh – it’s too similar to the Free plan, and if you decide to get the paid plan, it’s better to go for the Premium plan and enjoy. Dare we say, you can use it even as an enterprise – these are the only differences between Premium and Enterprise:
- Landing Page Builder – unlimited for Enterprise, five (+ five extra for $20, max 20/ month) for Premium
- Shared inbox – unlimited for Enterprise, three for Premium ($9 per additional inbox/ month, max ten inboxes)
- Integrations – basic for Premium, basic and advanced for Enterprise
- Multi-user access – unlimited for Enterprise, three for Premium ($9 per additional user/ month, up to 10 users)
- Dedicated IP, Dedicated account manager, SLA, SSO & SAML – only for Enterprise
In short: Premium has enough, Enterprise has unlimited stuff. These differences only matter once you scale from big to huge.
Want to learn even more? Check out our GetResponse vs. Sendinblue comparison
Read more related content:
1. Best email marketing services in 2023
ActiveCampaign – customer experience automation platform
ActiveCampaign will help you nurture the customer relationship with more than just emails throughout the sales funnel.
Reasons to pick ActiveCampaign
- Sales automation – new deals are created automatically once the customers take specific actions. The tasks are assigned per lead behavior: everyone is on the same page, without customer slips. Lead scoring reveals who’s ready to be taken to the next stage of the sales funnel, and then they’re guided further with triggered emails.
- Personalized emails – tailored explicitly for segmented groups. ActiveCampaign uses machine learning to process the gathered data and only send the most attractive stuff to the people most likely to convert.
- Email deliverability – Email Tool Tester’s March 2021 testing showed that, for ActiveCampaign users, email deliverability was 91%.
- Mobile apps and Chrome extension – available for Apple and Android devices, with a neat interface. Manage accounts, assign the tasks, update the contacts, test and track your email performance, all on the phone. Chrome extension lets you manage sales without leaving the email account: CRM info shows up in the Gmail inbox.
Reasons NOT to pick ActiveCampaign
- Not so easy to use – their UI demands someone who already has some experience in email marketing and automation. There is some learning curve to it, and it’s not that intuitive until you get used to the dashboard and creation process.
- Outdated templates – pre-designed email templates are really old school, and so are the design options; email builder is also buggy and clunky.
- It’s pricey – although the tool offers great functionalities, it’s often too expensive for SMBs
ActiveCampaign pricing
ActiveCampaign starts at $15 per month for the Lite plan, but that one is just too basic for average needs.
Not only you’ll surely have more than 500 contacts, but you miss out on features such as landing pages, sales automation, social media tools and integrations, and more stuff considered a must.
You can get a real taste of it with the Plus plan, but at that point, you can get more affordable solutions that work just as fine (if not better). When compared to the GetResponse $49 plan, it’s clear that you can get more for less money if you dig a little deeper.
Want more details? See our GetResponse vs. ActiveCampaign comparison
MailerLite – easy-to-use email marketing platform
MailerLite is sort of a new kid on the block. Unlike GetResponse, for example, which opened shop officially in 1998, MailerLite started in 2010.
What we love about MailerLite is that for those with smaller subscriber lists, you’ll be picking one of the most affordable email marketing platforms on the market.
Reasons to pick MailerLite
- Intuitive and easy to use – setting your account and your first email campaign is a breeze. MailerLite breathes freshness with its modern-looking UI and easy-to-use navigation. Excellent choice for beginners!
- Advanced forms and pop-ups – MailerLite allows for plenty of automation capabilities. Its pop-up forms have many triggers from which you can automate virtually anything after a form is completed. You can design a custom email flow after a visitor fills out a pop-up on a product page, for example.
- Practical free plan – We see a lot of free plans that are simply an extended free trial. That’s boring. MailerLite, on the other hand, created a good free plan that small businesses can utilize to actually generate some results before they can start paying for the paid plan. More on this in the pricing section.
- A ton of learning resources – Once you’re on board, you won’t be annoyed and confused about the next steps. MailerLite gives you free guides, a knowledge base, best practices, webinars, an academy (a course), a video library, and more.
Reasons NOT to pick MailerLite
- Your emails might end up in the spam folder – While during our testing, we’ve personally not had this issue, many users reported that being the case. It’s something to consider before making a more considerable investment. The challenge with these very cheap platforms is that they also attract a ton of marketers with older lists with very low engagement rates.
- It doesn’t include many templates – MailerLite is sort of a lite version of an email marketing tool. Hence, it doesn’t have a lot of pre-built email or landing page templates you can use.
- Could use more integrations – Additionally, many of its integrations are through Zapier, which is not always ideal.
MailerLite pricing
MailerLite has an excellent free plan that works for up to 1000 subscribers.
It doesn’t leave out anything you need from an email marketing solution; as the number of subscribers grows (prices are subscriber-based), prices stay affordable, and you get a 30% discount for annual billing.
The free trial lasts for 14 days, and you get to test the premium features.
In addition to standard plans, there are separate add-ons you can purchase:
For more detailed review see our GetResponse vs. MailerLite review.
Still undecided? Here’s a complete visual comparison of the four Constant Contact alternatives
We hope our research and evaluation helped you figure out the best choice for your business.
Of course, we’ve eager to have you try out GetResponse to see why (in our opinion) it’s the best pick for most marketers and businesses.
Start a free-forever account in GetResponse. No Credit-Card Required.
Author’s note: This comparison is accurate on January 3rd, 2022. We do our best to keep it as accurate as possible, and we check it on a regular basis, however, if you want to acquaint yourself with the offer of our competitors, you should check it at their official website or contact their representatives.
