StarReviews Alerts

Get alerts on your favorite products and services

I agree to the Privacy Policy

Constant Contact

- Star Review

Last Updated: 10/20/2008

Click to view the Constant Contact screenshot

Constant Contact Star Rating

GoTo Constant Contact	Email This Review
Member Reviews (1)

Email marketing has definitely evolved over the past few years. We've gone from nasty spam campaigns (which the less-than-ethical marketer still performs) to finely-tuned email marketing machines. Most of it is thanks to the many email marketing services that are redefining the way we send our advertising emails. ConstantContact.com is one such service. In fact, they were one of the first. How do they do when compared side-by-side to the competition? Here's the scoop...

What’s New?

Free 60-day trial.
Online poll and survey creation.
97-percent deliverability rating.

Our Favorite Feature:

We really liked the fact that Constant Contact offers a free 60-day trial. While many of the email marketing services on the Web offer trials ranging from two weeks to a month, Constant Contact was the only one to offer a full 60 days without requiring a credit card up front. Sometimes it's hard to tell how well an email marketing service works in a month or less. Two months should give you a very good idea. Needless to say, Constant Contact isn't afraid to put its money where its mouth is.

The Constant Contact Experience:

The Constant Contact website was definitely easy to navigate and chock-full of information on the features and benefits the service offers. We were able to take a tour of the service before signing up for the trial, which was very helpful in making sure that we didn't waste any time at the site.

Once we took the tour we headed on over to the sign-up page. Sign-up was very easy to complete. We just filled out the one-page form and got instant access to our free 60-day trial. That being said, you are only allowed access to either the email marketing trial or the survey trial – not both.

We'd have liked to see the survey service incorporated directly into the email marketing service, as it is with some of the competitors. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Alas, we chose the email marketing trial and headed over to our account management page.

The first thing we checked out when we landed at the account management page were the Getting Started tour and guide. We suggest all new members do this, as both the guide and the tour offer helpful information for getting the most out of your Constant Contact membership.

After knowing how to use the service and what to expect, we were ready to test drive the features of the actual service itself. While the email marketing aspects of the service were acceptable, it just didn't wow us. There weren't really any extra perks (such as the survey, poll and contact generation features some of the other sites offered). And we wish the features they did offer would have been a bit easier to navigate. They weren't exactly difficult, but it just wasn't as intuitive as some of the other sites we had looked into.

That being said, if you're looking for a basic email marketing service and nothing more, this is definitely a site you'll want to check out.

Constant Contact Features:

60-day free trial.
Image hosting.
Contact management.
Email campaign reporting.
300+ email templates.

Constant Contact Pricing:

Constant Contact's pricing is dependent upon the number of subscribers you have in your email lists. The pricing menu is as follows:

500 contacts for $15 per month, $81 for six months or $153 per year.
2,500 contacts for $30 per month, $162 for six months or $306 per year.
5,000 contacts for $50 per month, $270 for six months or $510 per year.
10,000 contacts for $75 per month, $405 for six months or $765 per year.
25,000 contacts for $150 per month, $810 for six months or $1530 per year.
50,000 contacts for $250 per month, $1350 for six months or $2550 per year.

Constant Contact Customer Service:

Constant Contact offers customer service via email, live chat and phone. They were one of the only email marketing services to offer live chat support, which did quite a bit to impress us. Email, phone and chat support were all very responsive. Chat support had no problems with connecting us right away, although the delay between typing questions and getting answers got to be a bit irritating. Phone support, however, had no such problem. We had a hold time of about two minutes before being connected to a rep who was more than willing to answer any questions we had. Email support also provided in-depth answers within one business day.

Upside:

Easy access to customer service, free 60-day trial, variety of pricing plans to meet any budget.

Downside:

The features of the Constant Contact email marketing service didn't seem to be as plentiful as some of the competition.

GoTo Constant Contact