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5 Best Constant Contact Alternatives: Find the One That’s Right for You

Looking for Constant Contact alternatives? You’re not alone.

First launched back in 1995, Constant Contact is ancient as far as email marketing platforms go. The platform reached its peak around 2011, losing customers to competitors like Mailchimp, and has struggled to regain its dominance since.

I mean, check out this Google Trends data for Contact Contact vs Mailchimp vs Brevo vs GetResponse vs ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign:

Constant Contact Alternatives
Chart:
Google Trends data for Contact Contact vs Mailchimp vs Brevo vs GetResponse vs ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign

Constant Contact clearly has some issues, but with dozens of Constant Contact alternatives out there vying for your business’ dollars, there’s never been a better time to make the switch to another email marketing solution!

Finding the right Constant Contact alternative can be a challenge if you don’t have the time to try all the various alternatives. So to make the process easier for you, we’ve reviewed 5 of the best Constant Contact alternatives, taking into account several factors, including features, pricing, and what type of businesses they best serve.

Want a quick overview of how the alternatives compare? Here’s our take on the competition:

Best Constant Contact alternatives
Alternative Cheaper than CC? Most unique feature vs CC Free plan? Starting price for paid plans
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) Easy to use reporting options & email marketing automation $9.00/month, unlimited subscribers, 20,000 emails/month
Mailchimp Cheap to get started $13.00/month, 500 subscribers
ConvertKit Email marketing automation $9.00/month, 0-1,000 subscribers
ActiveCampaign Email marketing automation $15/month, 0-500 subscribers
GetResponse Landing page tool and webinars $13.20/month, 0-1,000 subscribers

Why look for Constant Contact alternatives?

 

Constant Contact is one of the more popular email marketing services and tools on the market as the Google Trends data above clearly shows.

It primarily targets small-medium sized businesses and does a decent job helping marketers who want to connect with customers where they go everyday: their inbox. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right email tool for you.

There are several drawbacks to its offering:

Constant Contact alternatives
  • Pricing starts at $12.00 a month for up to 500 subscribers. It’s expensive compared to the competition.
  • Lacks many of the automation tools found in other platforms.
  • Has limited capabilities, including personalization, sign up forms, and segmentation.
  • The email templates have outdated designs.

If you are using Constant Contact and fighting to earn a solid ROI on email marketing, or you took a look at their pricing and balked, it’s time to take a look at other options.

Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives out there that do just as good as job — and with more features — for less money.

Five of the best Constant Contact alternatives

Interested in finding out what Constant Contact’s competitors are offering? Here’s our comparison:

1. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

Top Constant Contact alternatives: #1 Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a full-featured email marketing platform with a beginner-friendly setup that’s super simple to use. It also offers extremely handy tools for relationship building, if that’s one of your email marketing goals (hint: it should be!)

Additionally, compared to other Constant Contact alternatives, Brevo has a nice WordPress plugin, which lets you sync contacts, create and send emails from your WordPress dashboard, and monitor your analytics. It also has some impressive automation and reporting features, and all for an affordable price.

 

Features 🧰

As I mentioned above, Brevo has a lot more to offer than your basic email marketing tool. Constant Contact is quite robust, but still focuses on email marketing. Brevo, on the other hand, is more robust:

  • Provides SMTP.
  • Easy to use drag-and-drop email editor.
  • Fully-responsive templates.
  • Custom form building to attract more subscribers.
  • Ability to segment your email list.
  • Simple template-based automation workflows.
  • Ability to use algorithmic-based sending times (i.e. let their algorithm choose the best time to send your emails).
  • Robust reports for tracking, including heat maps and advanced open rate reports.
  • A/B testing for subject lines, images, and more.
  • Integrates with all your favorite tools, including WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and Zapier.
  • SMS marketing and Facebook ads management.

Pricing 💵

Pricing for Brevo is free for the bare bones package and goes all the way up to custom-build Enterprise plans. The most popular Premium plan costs $65 per month and allows users to send 20,000 emails every month.

Free trial? 🤑

Even better; there’s a whole free plan that lets you send up to 300 emails a day to an unlimited number of subscribers. This plan does include a Brevo logo in your emails and offers limited reporting.

Use Brevo if you… ✅

Brevo is ideal for small-medium-sized and growing companies that need more than just a basic tool, but don’t need an extremely robust (or expensive!) email marketing solution. This platform gives you a bit more control over automation than Constant Contact, but doesn’t overwhelm you with too many options.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is one of the best-known email marketing tools in the market (as the Google Trends graph up top shows!). Founded in 2001, it has led the market, particularly when it comes to automation and providing easy to use tools for a reasonable price.

Like several other Constant Contact alternatives, Mailchimp does more than just offer email marketing services. It also has marketing automation (albeit basic), landing page creation, social media ad management, remarketing ads, and a CRM (customer relationship management) tool.

 

Features 🧰

So, what does Mailchimp bring to the table compared to the other Constant Contact alternatives? Here are its most popular features:

  • Full-featured drag-and-drop email design tool.
  • Content manager to store photos, products, GIFs, logos, and Instagram images.
  • Built-in photo editor to resize and edit photos.
  • Collaboration tool.
  • Email automation tools allow you to automate sending welcome emails, date-based reminders, product recommendations, cart abandonment messages, and more.
  • Robust reporting tools give you information about your customers and campaigns.
  • Ability to send segmented messages.
  • A/B testing for subject lines, images, and more.
  • Personalization features allow you to send targeted content based on likes, location, and more.
  • Send emails based on time zone (for more on email frequency, check out When to Send Emails for Best Results)
  • Integrates with hundreds of other tools including Zapier, Shopify, Slack, and Google Sheets.

Pricing 💵

If you are just getting started and have less than 500 subscribers, you can use Mailchimp’s limited plan for free. This plan lets you send up to 12,000 emails per month, but includes a Mailchimp footer on every email and also doesn’t include support past the first 30 days.

If you need support and want to remove Mailchimp’s footer from your messages, you’ll need to upgrade to the Essentials plan, which starts $13.00 a month for sending 5000 emails to up to 500 subscribers. Pricing increases based on the number of subscribers you have. This setup is convenient for growing businesses as you only pay for what you use.

Free trial? 🤑

Yes. Mailchimp has a free plan for users with less than 500 subscribers who send less than 12,000 emails a month. Support for the free plan is only offered for the first 30 days and only by email.

Use Mailchimp if you… ✅

Mailchimp is ideal for growing businesses that may need a wide range of tools in the future, but also small businesses on a budget as the free plan is quite robust. (For more on growing our email list, you’ll want to read From 0 to 4,000 … How We Grew Our Email List – Our Stats, Tools, Opt-in Forms.)

3. ConvertKit

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is an email marketing tool aimed at bloggers, podcasters, writers, and other content creators in mind. Founded in 2013, ConvertKit has an easy-to-use interface and offers a nice amount of automation features that make it perfect for businesses wanting to set up autoresponders.

This tool doesn’t just focus on helping you send emails, it also helps you grow your audience and increase your sales.

 

Features 🧰

ConvertKit has been designed for content creators who sell digital or physical products, bloggers, and businesses who regularly deliver content upgrades such as ebooks or printables.

  • Easy-to-use visual email builder.
  • A/B testing for titles.
  • Fully-customizable, GDPR-compliant sign up forms.
  • Marketing automation tools, including welcome emails, targeted content, and marketing funnels.
  • Integrates with multiple tools, including Shopify, Zapier, Instapage, OptinMonster, and more.
  • Detailed guides for switching from other popular email tools, including Mailchimp, Aweber, Drip, and Active Campaign.
  • Free concierge migration for users with more than 5,000 subscribers.
  • Robust knowledge base and Slack community.
  • Live chat and email support available.

Pricing 💵

Pricing for ConvertKit starts at $9.00 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers when paid annually. What really stands about the pricing structure is the transparency — the monthly costs are listed first, not the discounted annual plan.

In addition, all plans offer nearly the same features, unlike other Constant Contact alternatives that only offer bare bones plans for smaller lists.

Free trial? 🤑

Yes. ConvertKit offers a free 14-day trial.

Use ConvertKit if you… ✅

ConvertKit is an ideal platform for content creators who sell digital or physical products, including bloggers, coaches, authors, podcasters, online course creators, and more. Since all the packages come with nearly the same features, it is really designed to grow with your business.

4. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a heavy duty Constant Contact alternative that offers a full suite of marketing tools beyond the basics, including email marketing, automation, sales and CRM, and messaging. This is an option you’ll want to consider if you want control over every aspect of your marketing. It offers tools for follow up campaigns, multiple conditions, and logic (if/then/else) for incredible flexibility when creating drip campaigns and funnels.

 

Features 🧰

ActiveCampaign is a full-featured tool that does far more than just send emails. Here is a quick run-down of their most popular features. Keep in mind that higher-end plans offer more features.

  • Unlimited email sending on all plans.
  • Hundreds of email templates to choose from.
  • Tons of split test options for up to five messages. Test subject lines, content, images, CTAs, and “from” names.
  • Easy to use list segmentation options.
  • Robust marketing automation features.
  • Set up email funnels and triggered emails.
  • CRM (customer relationship management tool) for all plans above Lite.
  • Excellent tracking and report features.
  • Solid email template builder.
  • Integrates with a wide range of other apps, including PayPal, Stripe, Shopify, and WooCommerce.

Pricing 💵

Like many Constant Contact alternatives, ActiveCampaign’s pricing is based on the number of subscribers and features you need. The Lite Plan starts at $9 per month (paid annually) for unlimited sending for up to 500 subscribers. This plan includes email and chat support, marketing automation, and up to three users. Pricing for the Lite Plan increases to $39 per month paid annually for up to 2,500 subscribers and $111 for up to 10,000 contacts.

Free trial? 🤑

Yes. ActiveCampaign offers a free, 14-day trial.

Use ActiveCampaign if you… ✅

ActiveCampaign is definitely worth a look for businesses with larger lists that want to leverage marketing automation, and businesses looking for an email marketing solution that integrates with a CRM (which ActiveCampaign also offers).

5. GetResponse

GetResponse

GetResponse offers a full range of marketing tools, including email marketing, landing pages, marketing automation, webinars, and a CRM. Founded in 1998, the company now helps more than 350,000 customers in 183 countries connect with their customers and drive high-ROI marketing campaigns.

GetResponse was built with smaller businesses in mind, though it offers a range of features for businesses of all sizes. Its strongest features are its automation workflows and autoresponders, which allow smaller businesses to do more with fewer resources.

 

Features 🧰

GetResponse offers a ton of features, which makes it an ideal tool for smaller businesses that don’t want to juggle multiple tools to create and send emails, host webinars, and create landing pages.

  • 500+ professional email templates.
  • Easy-to-use design tools.
  • Robust automation tools, including the ability to create workflows and autoresponders.
  • The ability to send targeted and customized emails through dynamic content.
  • Perfect Timing Delivery calculates the best time to send your emails.
  • Comprehensive tracking reports so you can see what works.
  • Advanced integrations with tools like Google Analytics, Amazon Payments, Bing Ads, BigCommerce, and more.
  • CRM, though it is limited compared to other email marketing platforms.

Pricing 💵

The base email package for GetResponse starts at $13.20 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers. This package includes autoresponders, basic landing pages, marketing automation, and one user. Higher-end packages also offer webinars, advanced marketing automation, advanced landing pages, segmentation, CRM, and ecommerce tools.

Free trial? 🤑

Yes. There’s a free, 30-day trial.

Use GetResponse if you… ✅

GetResponse is best suited to small-medium-sized businesses and marketers who are looking to help clients build relationships with their customers. The autoresponders are quite powerful for smaller teams.

Summing it all up

Constant Contact is a good option as far as email marketing platforms go. But there are many alternatives on the market that provide more features — including automation, better reporting and analytics, and modern templates — for a cheaper price.

So which of these Constant Contact alternatives is best for you?

Here’s what we recommend:

  • Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Great for small businesses that are starting out with email marketing and want a tool to grow with them.
  • Mailchimp. An affordable and beginner-friendly option for businesses getting started with email marketing.
  • ConvertKit. Ideal for content creators who want control over how they deliver (and drip) autoresponders.
  • ActiveCampaign. A heavy-duty option for businesses with big lists that want to leverage marketing automation and/or need a CRM.
  • GetResponse. Best suited to businesses and smaller teams. Use this one if none of the others have worked out for you.

Got questions about which of these Constant Contact alternatives is right for you? Let us know in the comments below!

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Raelene Morey
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