Top 9 alternatives to Constant Contact (2024)

What is Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is one of the oldest email marketing tools - the company has existed since 1995.

Constant Contact's target audience is typically small businesses, non-profit organizations, and self-employed individuals. Over the past few years, the company has expanded its offering to go beyond email and become a marketing platform with a form tool and a website builder to help you reach a wider audience.

Constant Contact is a popular choice for businesses, especially in the event management industry, due to its functions of event management niche. The tool itself is easy to use and offers a massive set of integrations. It also has some excellent deliverability rate.

But if you're here looking for alternatives to Constant Contact, you're probably aware of its limitations. The usual complaints are generally about the limited automation and customization features and the price that is slightly higher than average.

Before we get started, let's take a look at the strengths of Constant Contact and the disadvantages that might encourage you to turn to another messaging tool.

Benefits of Constant Contact

• High deliverability rates
• Easy to use drag-and-drop editor
• Large selection of free customizable email templates
• Niche functions for surveys and event management
• Free website builder
• Over 500 integrations across all business sectors

Disadvantages of Constant Contact

• Limited automation (only autoresponders) and optimization functions (a/b testing for subject lines only).
• Limited contact management
• No RSS email function
• Limited reports (basic email metrics)
• Registration forms and landing pages are basic and difficult to personalize.
• Expensive for what it offers

Whether you're desperate for a new email marketing tool because Constant Contact isn't right for you anymore, or you're just looking to see what else is out there, I've rounded up 9 alternatives to Constant Contact that you should consider and how they compare in terms of features and price.

Let's get started.

What are the best alternatives to Constant Contact?

Here's my pick of the best Constant Contact alternatives.

1. HubSpot Email Marketing.

HubSpot's email marketing tool is part of a much larger all-in-one platform. The HubSpot platform includes marketing, sales, and customer service tools that allow you to grow and evolve your business.

Features

• Automation :

Constant Contact allows you to create automated email sequences, but that's about all you'll get in terms of automation. THEHubSpot automation tool goes far beyond the limits of email marketing. HubSpot allows you to create customizable autoresponders and complex automation flows. Emails can be triggered when a person takes a specific action or based on a particular characteristic, from CRM data. You can use one of the pre-built automation flow templates or create your own from scratch. These workflows help you manage your email campaigns, but also help you manage the inner workings of your team through contact management, lead evaluation, and more.

• Customization :

The real power of HubSpot Email Marketing comes from CRM. While Constant Contact offers personalization tags that you can add to your emails, HubSpot's free CRM collects all sorts of data about your website visitors and contacts to allow you to personalize your emails at scale. CRM doesn't just gather basic information about your subscribers, but it also records all of the interactions they have with your business.

• More than just messaging :

HubSpot's free plan offers a lot more value than most email software because of the full suite of tools you get when you sign up. There are standard email add-ons like forms, a CRM, landing pages, and marketing automation, but you also get an ad management platform, a live chat, a chatbot builder, customer service ticketing software, and more. All of these tools are natively integrated into the email marketing tool to make your emails more powerful. And it's free! When you upgrade to paid plans, you get even more value for growing your business, like content strategy, SEO, and social media management tools. Beyond email, Constant Contact has a website builder and an ad creation tool, but HubSpot generally offers more value overall.

Pricing

• Constant Contact doesn't have a free plan, which can be a deterrent if you're just starting out and don't want to commit to a subscription yet. HubSpot's free plan gives you unlimited subscribers and up to 2,000 email submissions per month. You get all CRM features, forms and popups, live chat and bots, and ticketing for free.
• Constant Contact offers 2 paid plans: the $20/month Email plan and the $45/month Email Plus plan. Both plans include unlimited mailings for 500 contacts (the price increases as you increase your contact list). Compared to HubSpot's free plan, signup forms are available on the $20 plan, but popups only on the $45 plan.
• The paid plans of HubSpot start at $50/month and provide access to advanced automation, personalization, and optimization features. Pricing also changes according to contact levels. You start with 1,000 free contacts and then pay for each additional thousand.
• HubSpot is generally cheaper when you're just starting out or have a small subscriber base. As you move up the payment levels, HubSpot gets more expensive, but you also get a lot more value for growing your business.

Start with HubSpot Email Marketing.

2. Moosend.

Moosend is another all-in-one marketing platform that has various tools to grow your business. It is a particularly attractive alternative to Constant Contact for e-commerce and travel businesses.

Features

• Automation :

Moosend has more advanced email automation than Constant Contact. The pre-designed workflow library includes several templates that are particularly suited to e-commerce. E-commerce templates allow you to send an email to someone who left items in their shopping cart or someone who made a particularly important purchase, so you can follow up without having to remember it. There are many triggers to choose from, especially when someone views a certain product or subscribes to a certain list.

• Customization :

Constant Contact's personalization features allow you to add certain labels to match your contact information, but customizing Moosend is a bit more complex. For example, if you are a clothing store, you can make recommendations based on the weather conditions where your subscriber lives. So you can adapt the content of your emails to show warm sweaters and boots if it's winter in one part of the world and sandals and swimsuits in the other. You can generate product recommendations based on similar purchases made by other customers, or remind someone that it's time to restock a certain product and encourage repeat sales.

• Pay as you want :

If you don't want to commit to a monthly plan, Moosend offers an option called “credits” that allows you to access all of the features available in the Pro plan, but you only need to pay for what you need at one time.

Pricing

• Moosend offers a free plan that allows you to send unlimited non-transactional emails to up to 1,000 contacts and have access to all form types, design options, automation, tracking, and most reports.
• Most of these features are only available on Constant Contact's Email Plus plan, which costs $45.
• Moosend's paid plans start at $10/month and give you access to landing pages, personalized reports, and more personal customer support options.
• At the end of the day, Moosend is a much cheaper option than Constant Contact. As with most email tools, the cost actually increases when you increase the number of subscribers to your plan.

Start with Moosend.

3. Brevo.

Sendinblue and Constant Contact are both easy to use email marketing platforms that are perfect for beginners, but Sendinblue also has more sophisticated features that make it a better alternative for advanced marketers.

Features

• Automation :

Constant Contact offers a welcome series and automated sequences on their more expensive plan, but has fewer automation options overall than Sendinblue, and Sendinblue has automation features available on their free plan. Automation features that Sendinblue has that Constant Contact doesn't include automation workflows using if/then/else logic, dynamic segmentation, automatic lead evaluation, database automation, abandoned cart (Constant Contact only has it with Shopify), on-page event tracking, SMS automation, andAttribution of prospects in the CRM. Only autoresponders are common to both tools.

• Optimization :

Constant Contact allows you to a/b test your subject lines, but Sendinblue also allows you to a/b test your content. Sendinblue also optimizes sending time, which Constant Contact does not.

• More marketing tools :

Sendinblue is more than just an email sending tool; it's a marketing platform that gives you lots of different ways to reach new customers and grow your business. Sendinblue and Constant Contact both have a creator of landing pages and Facebook ads. However, Sendinblue also has a sales CRM, retargeting ads, live chat, and SMS marketing.

Pricing

• The free plan of Sendinblue allows you to send 9,000 emails per month (or 300 emails per day) and includes a mobile-friendly email designer, email templates, SMS marketing, comprehensive CRM features, transactional emails, and basic automation and reporting.
• Sendinblue's pricing model is based on the number of emails sent rather than stored contacts, which means you can have as many subscribers as you want across all plans. Constant Contact charges per stored contact, which can quickly become expensive for a small business whose list is growing rapidly.
• Paid plans for Sendinblue start at $25/month, but the most exciting features like Sendinblue branding, a/b testing, and advanced reporting are available on levels above $39/month and $66 for landing pages, marketing automation, and Facebook ads.

Start with Sendinblue.

4. Omnisend.

Omnisend is another great email sending tool that is very popular with online retailers for its e-commerce features and attractive pricing plans.

Features

• Automation :

Constant Contact offers a bit of customization and automation, but these functions are quite limited. Omnisend has pre-established automation models for cases where someone abandons their shopping cart or simply to welcome a new potential customer. You can also promote cross-selling opportunities by recommending products to your customers based on past purchases. Each template is customizable to suit your own customer journey.

• Forms :

Constant Contact doesn't have custom field options, but you can change the look of your forms to match your brand. Omnisend offers a wide variety of forms with advanced customization options. Omnisend offers popups, embeddable forms, and even a wheel of fortune for a more fun and fun email capture experience.

• Analysis and reports :

Constant Contact offers basic email metrics such as clicks and openings. Because Omnisend is focused on e-commerce, the tool's analytics reports track the performance of your automation workflows with key sales metrics so you can accurately determine what's generating sales and when. In addition to standard engagement metrics, you can measure the return on your sales investment and determine the attribution of revenue across channels and devices.

Pricing

• Omnisend offers a free plan that allows you to receive up to 15,000 emails per month (or 2,000 per day), a month of historical website tracking data, 3 active signup forms, exit forms, popups, signup boxes, landing pages, unique discount codes, product content blocks to display your products in your emails, and other e-commerce features.
• Some of Omnisend's free features (e-commerce marketing and landing pages) are available in the Constant Contact Email plan for $20/month. To get customizable popup forms and coupons, you should opt for the $45/month Email Plus plan.
• Paid plans for Omnisend start at $16/month and include more features like automation, SMS marketing, advanced segmentation, unlimited forms, Facebook custom audiences, priority support, and more.

Start with Omnisend

5. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a good alternative to Constant Contact for bloggers, YouTubers, freelancers, and affiliate marketers to consider. The platform was built with content creators in mind.

Features

• Automation :

ConvertKit offers more advanced email automation features. While the automation feature in Constant Contact is limited to autoresponders and drip email campaigns, ConvertKit uses the “if this, then that” logic to allow you to build marketing automation flows and sales funnels. You can also combine multiple drip campaigns into a single workflow and tag subscribers based on their preferences for more targeted campaigns.

• Email creator and templates :

Constant Contact has a much greater variety of models than ConvertKit. Convertkit's templates are actually pretty basic. They want to encourage users to create simple emails without too many graphical distractions. Constant Contact has a drag-and-drop creation tool, while ConvertKit has a rich text editor. So here, the choice could depend on your personal preferences.

• Forms :

Convertkit allows you to create various types of forms that are particularly relevant to content creators, such as content offers, newsletter sign-ups, and blog subscription forms for specific blog categories. The form tool is easy to use and allows you to set up a confirmation email once someone has just signed up.

You can also see how Convertkit compares to Mailchimp for more information on this platform.

Pricing

• ConvertKit offers a free plan that allows you to send emails to up to 1,000 subscribers. You also get unlimited landing pages and forms, customizable domains, and subscriber tagging.
• The most engaging ConvertKit features (i.e. automations and sequences) are available on a paid plan, starting at $29/month, and the price increases based on the number of subscribers you have.
• While Constant Contact doesn't have a free plan, the cheapest paid plan ($20/month) is cheaper than ConvertKit's paid plan and also includes landing pages, signup forms, and custom domains. But ConvertKit's $29 plan offers more value than Constant Contact's $45 plan in terms of automation.

Start with ConvertKit.

6. MailerLite

MailerLite has recently grown in popularity and is a good alternative to Constant Contact for anyone who needs an affordable email marketing tool.

Features

• Automation :

Like most email tools on this list, MailerLite beats Constant Contact when it comes to email automation. The automation flow builder is less sophisticated than high-end platforms like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign, but it does the work for email. Trigger options include form submissions, clicks, and cart abandonments.

• Email creator and templates :

Mailerlite and Constant Contact are both very good at using the email generator itself. Both offer the option of using a drag-and-drop editor and an HTML email editor for those who prefer to code their emails themselves. They both support email surveys and e-commerce campaigns, but Constant Contact has a wider selection of email templates to choose from.

• RSS email campaigns :

MailerLite's RSS-to-Email feature automatically inserts the latest blog posts into an email and is available in the free plan. Constant Contact, surprisingly, does not have this feature.

Pricing

• MailerLite offers a free plan that gives you the choice between a drag-and-drop email editor and a rich text editor, but no access to newsletter templates. This plan includes up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month. You get landing pages, signup forms and pop-ups, an unsubscribe page creator, email automation, RSS campaigns, A/B testing, email campaign reports, and surveys.
• For comparable features, you'll need to sign up for the Constant Contact Email Plus plan, which starts at $45/month.
• MailerLite paid plans start at $10/month and the cost increases as soon as you exceed 1,000 subscribers. These plans include access to the custom HTML editor, newsletter templates, custom domains, promotional pop-ups often used in e-commerce, the option to automatically forward to subscribers who didn't open your first email, time zone delivery optimization, dedicated IP addresses, and advanced tracking.

Start with MailerLite.

7. ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign is another growth platform that covers marketing, sales, and service. It's a good alternative for more experienced marketers looking to incorporate advanced automation into their marketing strategy.

Features

• A/B testing :

As mentioned earlier, one of the main disadvantages of Constant Contact is the fact that it only allows testing the subject line. With ActiveCampaign, not only can you test both the subject line and email content, but you can also test the performance of your entire automation workflow with up to 5 versions at a time. Anything you can automate, you can test.

• Automation :

Constant Contact has very simple automation features that can easily become quite limiting if you're looking to expand. ActiveCampaign uses triggers and actions as well as site and event tracking to create truly powerful automations. Triggers you can add include subscribing or unsubscribing someone from a list, submitting a form, forwarding an email, responding to an email, abandoning a cart, etc. ActiveCampaign also comes with a built-in CRM that you can combine with automation tools to improve sales.

• Analysis and reports :

Constant Contact reports offer standard email metrics: open rate, click rate, bounce rate, and unsubscribe rates. You can also compare up to 5 emails to see how they compare to each other. ActiveCampaign reports are much more comprehensive. They are divided into five report categories: campaigns, automation, goals, contacts, and chats. Each of these reports is then divided into sub-reports for further details.

Pricing

• ActiveCampaign doesn't have a free plan, but its lowest paid plan starts at $9/month, which is significantly lower than Constant Contact's lowest plan at $20/month. The ActiveCampaign Lite plan generally has more to offer than the Constant Contact Email plan, including marketing automation and unlimited forms and autoresponders. The ActiveCampaign Lite plan includes unlimited email submissions for 500 subscribers.
• For $20/month, Constant Contact's Email plan also allows you to send unlimited emails to 500 subscribers, but it doesn't include forms, and the only automation available on this plan is resending emails to people who didn't open them.
• ActiveCampaign's higher tiers start at $49/month and include more advanced features like Facebook custom audiences, integrations, and SMS marketing. Deep automation and machine learning are available starting at $149. The price varies depending on the number of subscribers you have.

Start with ActiveCampaign.

8. GetResponse.

GetResponse is another interesting alternative to Constant Contact, especially for publishers, e-commerce, blogs or startups.

GetResponse vs Constant Contact: Features

• Automation :

With GetResponse, you can send 2 types of automated messages: time-based messages (you can use it to send happy birthday messages, for example) and action-based messages (with your standard trigger options). You can also use the tool to automatically mark and grade contacts or move them to a different list. These automation funnels integrate registration forms, landing pages, emails, online payments, and even webinars. Constant Contact, on the other hand, offers limited automation options (autoresponders and forwarding to those who didn't open your email), even with its most advanced plan.

• Email creator and templates :

With GetResponse, you can a/b test the content of your email messages, subject lines, form fields, and the day and time each email was sent. As already mentioned, Constant Contact only allows subject lines to be tested. GetResponse offers over 200 customizable email templates and over 5,000 free stock photos. Constant Contact gives you access to over 100 customizable email templates, but with a limited number of free stock photos. GetResponse also has an anti-spam test that checks your emails against known spam words and other behaviors to ensure that your emails don't end up in your recipients' spam folders, a feature that isn't available on the ConstantContact platform. GetResponse also allows you to create newsletters with RSS.

• Analysis and reports :

GetResponse offers the same reporting features as Constant Contact, but it also tracks your email activity in real time, offering you a geographic map so you can see where in the world the subscribers who opened your emails and clicked on your links are located in the world.

Pricing

• GetResponse and Constant Contact are both fully chargeable (not freemium) and their pricing models are based on the number of contacts you have.
• Although GetResponse doesn't have a free plan, it's a cheaper alternative to Constant Contact, starting at $15/month. This plan gets you started with 1,000 contacts and includes all email, landing page, and form features, as well as some automation, which is more than the superior Constant Contact plan.
• GetResponse's higher-level plans start at $49 and include advanced automation, the recovery of abandoned orders, and access to their webinar software.

Start with GetResponse.

9. Mailchimp.

At last Mailchimp is a free alternative to Constant Contact for SMEs that offers a good combination of marketing tools to grow your business.

Features

• Automation :

Constant Contact has simple autoresponders and personalization. With Mailchimp, you can send personalized product recommendations and purchase follow-ups and trigger email deliveries based on how your subscribers interact with you.

• Forms :

Both have form builders, but the Mailchimp one offers more customization options with custom fields to capture information that is then sent directly to the CRM. Constant Contact fields only offer the standard checkboxes for the first name, company name, etc. You can also create a QR code that links to your form within the Mailchimp platform. To do the same with Constant Contact, you need to use a third-party application.

• Analysis and reports :

Constant Contact produces reports on basic indicators such as openings, clicks, and transfers. Mailchimp offers more advanced reports that explain different email settings in more detail. You can see how users interact with your emails using the click map feature...

Pricing

• Mailchimp's pricing is much more flexible than Constant Contact, with one free plan, 2 low-cost plans, and one premium plan.
• The free plan allows you to send 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers. You benefit from basic segmentation, behavioral targeting, surveys, basic templates, a website builder, some automation, and most email functions. Features similar to Constant Contact are only available on the $45 plan.
• Mailchimp's Essentials and Standard plans, which cost $9.99 and $14.99 per month respectively, give you access to more advanced CRM features, automation, and optimization, and a lot more email submissions and subscribers. The Premium plan is then offered at a much higher price, $299 per month, for advanced segmentation, multivariate testing, and adaptations for larger teams.

Start with Mailchimp.

Summary

Bonus: If you're already using MailChimp but want to explore other options, check out this list of Best alternatives to Mailchimp.

Constant Contact is a good tool for basic email marketing campaigns and offers numerous customer support options. However, it lacks certain functions ofmarketing automation and creating advanced reports that people might look for in an email marketing tool.

If you need a tool that is more robust, with greater automation and customization, and that is scalable, opt for HubSpot or ActiveCampaign.