Honest Pros and Cons in 2023

Considering using Constant Contact to power your website’s email marketing efforts? In our hands-on Constant Contact review, we’ll help you decide if it’s the right tool for your specific situation.

In general, Constant Contact offers an all-around solid tool 📧 for email marketing. It has all the key features that most businesses need. These include a visual email builder, pre-made templates, marketing automation, and more.

However, its pricing model won’t be a good fit for all businesses, and you might get better value with a different tool. It really depends on the size of your list and/or how frequently you email your subscribers. Additionally, if you have more niche feature needs, you might be happier with a different tool. ⚙️

Our Constant Contact review will help you understand the product and assess these variables to choose the best email marketing service for your business.

Constant Contact review summary 📜

If you want to understand the comprehensive depth of information presented in this Constant Contact review, we encourage you to keep reading.

👉 If you’re in a rush, though, here’s a quick summary of some key details and conclusions that you’ll find later in our review:

Next, let’s take our Constant Contact review more hands-on with a detailed look at five key features that you get with Constant Contact:

1. Pre-made email templates
2. The visual, drag-and-drop email builder
3. The visual automation builder and automation templates
4. Email analytics and A/B testing
5. The opt-in form builder

Pre-made email templates

While you’re always free to design completely custom emails from scratch using the visual builder that we’ll show you in the next section, Constant Contact also gives you access to a large library of pre-made email templates.

You can choose these templates when you’re creating an email and then still customize everything using the visual builder.

While you do get access to a lot of different templates (a “pro”), some of the templates can look a bit dated and/or basic (a “con”).

For example, this “Admin Card” template is pretty basic (though that’s not necessarily a bad thing).

However, you do also get access to some more unique designs, such as this design for AAPI Heritage Month.

Overall, while not all of the designs will amaze you, you should be able to find a good-looking template to use as the base for your emails.

Visual, drag-and-drop email builder

To help you design your emails, Constant Contact offers a visual, drag-and-drop email builder.

You are still free to use your own custom HTML templates if you prefer that approach. But for most non-technical users, using the visual builder (and maybe one of the pre-made templates) offers a much easier way to customize your emails.

In general, we found the Constant Contact visual builder to be very easy to use.

To add content/design elements to your emails, you can just drag them over from the sidebar.

For text email content, you can then just click and type on the page, much like you’re working in a Word document. You can also add merge tags to insert information dynamically, such as each subscriber’s first name.

To control layouts, you can also rearrange everything in the visual preview just by dragging elements around.

To configure each block, you’ll see a toolbar appear in the editor when you select it. For example, text blocks get a text formatting toolbar, as you can see in the screenshot above.

Other types of blocks also get their own toolbars. Some blocks also include an Edit option that lets you open more advanced settings in the sidebar. For example, the social follow block lets you set up your social profiles on the sidebar.

To see what your designs will look like on different devices, you can open the preview pop-up to see both desktop and mobile previews.

Visual automation builder

If you want to get the most from your email marketing efforts, you’ll probably want to set up different types of automatic email sequences or more advanced marketing strategies.

The simplest option to get started is a basic autoresponder, wherein every subscriber receives the same sequence of emails on the same schedule.

However, you might want to also implement more advanced types of automations, which is where Constant Contact’s visual automation builder comes in really handy.

For example, you could have different branching series of emails based on the actions that users take. You might send one email to a person who engaged with the previous email in the series, while sending a different email to a person who didn’t open the previous email.

To help you do this more easily, Constant Contact offers pre-built automation templates called “automation paths,” which include templates for abandoned cart emails, birthdays, and more.

Whether you choose an automation path or build your own from scratch, you can fully manage your automation sequence using a visual builder.

Email analytics and A/B testing

To help you understand the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts, Constant Contact comes with built-in email analytics for important engagement metrics including the following:

• Opens
• Clicks
• Unsubscribes
• Bounces

You can even see a heat map view of your email so that you can see the exact elements that your users clicked on in a visual preview.

Beyond giving you access to this important data, Constant Contact also includes A/B testing so that you can optimize those metrics. With Constant Contact’s A/B testing tool, you can easily A/B test your emails’ subject lines to find the best-performing variant.

Opt-in form builder

To collect new subscribers and grow your email lists, you have two high-level options:

1. You can use Constant Contact’s built-in opt-in form builder to create forms and popups that you can embed on your site.
2. You can use a dedicated list-building tool that integrates with Constant Contact, such as a pop-up plugin or a form plugin. Sumo and OptinMonster are two popular options, but there are lots of others.

If you want the most flexibility for customizing and targeting your forms, you’ll probably want to use the third-party list-building tool approach.

However, if you just want to embed a simple newsletter subscribe form on your site, Constant Contact’s built-in form builder is more than capable of getting the job done.

👉 You can create the following:

• Popup
• Flyout
• Banner
• Inline form
• Text to join
• Landing page

The opt-in form builder is not drag-and-drop like the email builder, but it is still quite easy to use.

No Constant Contact review can be considered thorough if it doesn’t cover the pricing. That is often the determining factor for many readers so let’s get into it.

To begin with, unlike some other email marketing tools, Constant Contact does not offer a forever-free plan. However, you can test out all of its functionality with a 14-day free trial. Certain geographic areas also get access to longer trial periods.

Once your free trial expires, you can choose from one of three plans for email marketing. All three plans use tier-based pricing, with your pricing going up based on the number of contacts that you have.

For example, the Lite plan starts at $12.00 per month for up to 500 contacts. If you need to exceed those 500 contacts, the prices go up according to this fee schedule:

In addition to the contact limits, each tier also has a monthly email sending limit that’s 10X-24X the number of contacts that your plan supports. The exact multiple depends on which plan you’re using.

For example, if you’re using the Lite plan and your plan supports up to 5,000 contacts, you could send up to 50,000 emails per month. After that, you’ll pay $0.002 per email that’s over your plan’s limits.

To put these prices and limits in context, here’s a table comparing Constant Contact’s Lite plan with plans from Brevo (Sendinblue), Campaign Monitor, and MailerLite.

*The entry-level Lite plan at Campaign Monitor doesn’t support unlimited email sending. We chose the Campaign Monitor Essentials plan because its unlimited sending functionality offers a better contrast to Constant Contact.

**All of Brevo’s plans support unlimited contacts. Instead, you’re billed based on how many emails you send per month.

As you can see, Constant Contact is definitely not the cheapest option when it comes to email marketing services. Although it can be competitive if you fit within its monthly email sending limits.

Overall, if you’re on a tight budget, you might want to consider Brevo (Sendinblue) if you have a lot of contacts. This is especially valid if you don’t send that many emails per month. MailerLite is another option if you have a smaller number of contacts that you email frequently.

To put together everything that we’ve talked about above in our Constant Contact review, let’s go over some of the biggest Constant Contact pros and cons.

👍 Constant Contact review pros

• Visual, drag-and-drop email builder – the visual email builder is user-friendly and makes it easy to create great-looking emails without needing any technical knowledge.
• Helpful analytics – in addition to viewing basic metrics like clicks and open rates, you can also see more advanced analytics like a heatmap view of your emails.
• Solid A/B testing tools – you can A/B testing subject lines as well as the design and content of your emails.
• Visual automation builder – the automation builder makes it easy to go beyond simple autoresponders and set up more advanced workflows and marketing automation strategies.
• Nonprofit discount – registered nonprofits can get 20%-30% off the plans, which is a great deal.

👎 Constant Contact review cons

• Can be expensive if you have a lot of contacts – for high subscriber websites, Constant Contact can be pricey. This is because it uses the number of contacts that you have as the primary billing metric. In this situation, you could save money with a service like Brevo (Sendinblue) that allows unlimited contacts on all plans.
• No unlimited email sending – Constant Contact doesn’t offer unlimited email sending on any plan. This is a con because you can find other services that do offer unlimited sending such as MailerLite, Campaign Monitor, GetResponse, and AWeber.
• Some templates look dated – while there are plenty of great-looking templates, some of the older templates can look a little dated.
• No forever-free plan – if you want a service that offers a permanent free plan, check out our collection of the best free email marketing services.

If you want to make sure you’re choosing the best digital marketing tool for your needs, there are also some Constant Contact alternatives that you should consider.

👉 To add some context to our Constant Contact review, here’s a quick rundown of some of the best Constant Contact alternatives:

• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue): Brevo’s plans let you store unlimited contacts, which can make it very affordable vs Constant Contact if you have a lot of contacts. Instead, you’re primarily billed based on how many emails you send per month.
• MailerLite: This is an excellent budget option that has a solid forever-free plan, as well as unlimited email sending on all of its paid plans. It’s one of the best choices if you want to keep your costs down, especially if you don’t have a lot of contacts.
• ConvertKit: It can be a great option for creators looking to connect with their audiences. For example coaches, podcasts, bloggers, and so on. It also has some unique features, like creating a paid subscription newsletter.
• MailPoet: If you’re using WordPress, this native WordPress plugin lets you manage all of your email marketing efforts without needing to leave your WordPress dashboard. However, it’s not as flexible as Constant Contact when it comes to building automations.

As we near the end of our Constant Contact review, let’s go over a few common questions that you might have.

Final thoughts on our Constant Contact review 💭

Whether Constant Contact is the best option for you really depends on your specific needs and numbers. If you fit within the limits of the plans, it might be the best option for your site.

On the other hand, if you have a ton of contacts, you might be able to save money using a tool like Brevo (Sendinblue) that supports unlimited contacts and bills you based on how many emails you send.

Or, if you need to send a lot of emails, you might be better off with a tool that supports unlimited email sending, such as MailerLite, Campaign Monitor, or GetResponse.

To see some other quality options, you also might be interested in our collections of the best email marketing platforms and the best cheap email marketing services.

If you’re wondering what we use here at Themeisle, the answer is Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). We’ve found that it offers the best features and value for our specific situation. You can learn more in our Brevo/Sendinblue review. 🧑‍💻

Do you still have any lingering questions about our Constant Contact review or the tool itself? Let us know in the comments!