10 Constant Contact Alternatives to Help You Choose the Right ESP

Launched way back in 1995, Constant Contact is practically geriatric in the fast-moving world of digital marketing.

This longevity has helped it build one of the strongest brands on the market…

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…but it also leaves the platform open to competition from younger, smaller, more agile disruptors.

Which begs the obvious question: are there better Constant Contact alternatives out there?

To help answer it, we’ve rounded up 10 of the best alternatives to Constant Contact and compared them across the following criteria:

• Price
• Product features
• Customer support
• Pros and cons
• Target audience

Let’s dive in…

What Are the Best Constant Contact Alternatives?

1. Drip

As the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed, Drip is us. We’re a marketing automation platform for ecommerce brands—particularly DTCs. With our user-friendly point-and-click email builder and pre-made workflows, we make it simple for ecommerce marketers to create email marketing and onsite campaigns that do what you need them to: drive sales and revenue.

What Makes Drip the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Built for ecommerce. Constant Contact offers plenty of ecommerce functionality, but it’s ultimately a generalist platform serving a wide range of B2B and B2C brands. Meanwhile, at Drip, ecommerce is our core focus—meaning everything we do is geared toward helping ecommerce brands reach new audiences and generate more sales.
• Developed for ecommerce. Again, Constant Contact’s generalist focus forces it to factor various industries into its development plans. By contrast, every new feature, tool, or integration we introduce is built specifically for ecommerce.
• Sophisticated onsite marketing. Onsite campaigns help you generate leads and point steer customers toward products they’ll love. Constant Contact’s onsite features are limited to fairly basic onsite forms, whereas our Sleeknote—a feature-rich onsite form and popup-building platform—enables us to offer unparalleled onsite capabilities. Take total control of the design and placement of every popup, slide-in, and sidebar, and craft your onsite messaging experience with drag-and-drop ease.
• Ecommerce-focused interface. Our clutter-free UI makes it easy to find all the tools, features, and reports you need to grow sales and revenue. Contact Contact, with its far broader focus, hides all that stuff among a bunch of other functionality that isn’t super-relevant to ecommerce marketers.
• Revenue-centric reporting. Constant Contact’s reports prioritize generic email marketing metrics (think open rates and click-through rates), whereas Drip’s are focused on revenue. We make it simple to see how much money you’re generating from each individual automation and email.
• Friendly, ecommerce-focused support. Our support team will happily pull up a chair, pore over your ecommerce strategy, and offer customized recommendations for your brand—however much you pay us. That sort of personalized support is only available to Premium Constant Contact customers.
• Better value plans. Honestly, Contact Contact is pretty pricey. For instance, $50/month only gets you up to 2,500 contacts and 25,000 emails (plus basic automations and templates). With Drip, you get the same list size (and unlimited emails) for $39/month, plus our advanced onsite campaigns and dedicated customer support.

How Does Drip Compare to Constant Contact?

2. Klaviyo

Like Drip, Klaviyo is built for ecommerce marketing. However, it’s not exactly a DIY solution; you’ll need an in-house dev team or a full-service agency to use it effectively. So it’s a better fit for enterprise-level brands with big budgets. But how does it stack up against an all-rounder like Constant Contact?

What Makes Klaviyo the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Dedicated to ecommerce. If you’re an ecommerce marketer (with a large-enough budget), Klaviyo is a no-brainer, because it’s built specifically for brands like yours. Constant Contact isn’t.
• Free functionality. Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan, whereas Klaviyo gives you up to 250 contacts and 500 monthly email sends free of charge.
• Slicker templates. While Constant Contact offers twice as many templates as Klaviyo, they’re pretty basic, and the editor is quite limited. Klaviyo’s templates are far more sophisticated and come in various “flavors”, including email, SMS, and onsite forms.
• More bang for your buck. If you only go off contact list sizes and email send limits, Constant Contact is technically cheaper. But Klaviyo offers way more functionality, including built-in SMS marketing, push notifications, and more.
• Advanced reporting and analytics. Klaviyo’s analytics tools feature user-friendly—and totally customizable—dashboards to visualize your key KPIs. It also includes AI-driven predictive analytics, capable of forecasting a customer’s next actions and churn risk. Constant Contact’s reporting is perfectly decent, but as we’ve already noted, it’s geared toward engagement metrics rather than sales and revenue (and it doesn’t do all that clever predictive stuff).

How Does Klaviyo Compare to Constant Contact?

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp and Constant Contact are arguably the best-known brands in the email marketing and automation space—and both have lost ground to smaller competitors in recent times, prompting them to add new features (and increase their prices). So which of these two incumbents takes the crown?

What Makes Mailchimp the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Easier to do difficult stuff. Both Mailchimp and Contact Contact are pretty user-friendly. But Mailchimp’s navigation feels more intuitive, with some nice touches like a breadcrumb menu in the campaign builder.
• Solid free plan. Mailchimp used to offer one of the most generous free plans on the market. While Mailchimp has stripped a bunch of functionality from it in recent times, it still exists, whereas Constant Contact doesn’t have one.
• Better, more flexible templates. Although Mailchimp has about 100 fewer templates than Constant Contact, it’s definitely a case of quality over quantity here. It offers more scope for customization thanks to its wider range of content blocks (including product recommendations).
• More customizable forms. Constant Contact’s onsite customization is pretty limited—you can change fonts, images, background colors, and not much else. Mailchimp’s onsite editor is far more flexible, with its drag-and-drop editor and custom fields.
• More insightful reports. With Constant Contact, reporting is limited to opens and clicks (although it does have a Google Analytics integration). Mailchimp, meanwhile, offers one of the best reporting systems on the market, incorporating click maps, geo-tracking, social reports, and more.

How Does Mailchimp Compare to Constant Contact?

4. Omnisend

Omnisend is another ecommerce-specific marketing automation platform, allowing brands to build and automate email, SMS, and push notification campaigns. It’s used by over 100,000 businesses (including big names like Hallmark and Naked & Famous Denim). But were they right to choose it over Constant Contact?

What Makes Omnisend the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Get started for free. Omnisend’s free plan certainly isn’t the best on the market, but it does allow you to send 500 emails, up to 60 SMS messages, and up to 500 push notifications to 250 contacts per month. Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan, making Omnisend the clear winner here.
• Ecommerce-specific templates. We’ve already noted that Constant Contact offers plenty of templates, but that they’re… not the best quality. Omnisend has about half as many templates, but they’re far more attractive—and they’re even available to free users.
• More marketing channels. Both Constant Contact and Omnisend are predominantly email marketing platforms, but Omnisend also offers push notifications and SMS campaigns, giving you more ways to reach and engage your audience.
• Revenue-focused reporting. Omnisend makes it easy to find your most impactful resorts (such as revenue per campaign), whereas Constant Contact is all about engagement metrics.
• Cheaper prices. Without wishing to repeat ourselves, Constant Contact is expensive—especially considering its limited feature set. To give just one example, with Omnisend, it’s $15/month cheaper for up to 2,500 contacts (plus you get 5,000 more monthly email sends and unlimited web push notifications).

How Does Omnisend Compare to Constant Contact?

5. Brevo (FKA Sendinblue)

Brevo—formerly known as Sendinblue (RIP)—is one of the most budget-friendly automation platforms on the market. But its comparatively low prices don’t come at the expense of advanced marketing functionality. So it’s easy to see why Brevo is the tool of choice for 500,000+ customers in 180 countries.

What Makes Brevo the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Superb free plan. We can’t be any clearer: you don’t get anything free with Constant Contact. But even if it did have a free plan, it’d likely struggle to compete with Brevo, which lets you send up to 300 emails a day (including transactional emails) without spending a single cent.
• Cheaper across the board. Whichever way you look at it, Brevo is far cheaper. Here’s an example: for $25/month, you get 20,000 emails and an unlimited contact list. Constant Contact’s closest alternative—25,000 emails to 2,500 contacts—is twice the price. Sheeesh.
• Reach audiences on more channels. Constant Contact offers built-in social media scheduling, which Brevo doesn’t do. On the flip side, Brevo also does push notifications, SMS marketing, and WhatsApp campaigns; you’ll need an integration to most of that with Constant Contact. So Brevo wins here, too.
• Free CRM access. Brevo offers a free CRM through its Sales Platform, which includes unlimited contacts, pipeline management, and CRM automation. Constant Contact doesn’t offer any of that stuff.
• Highly customizable onsite forms. Brevo’s drag-and-drop editor is a joy to use, allowing you to design on-brand forms and add all the data fields you need. Constant Contact’s form editor is trickier to use and offers fewer customization options.

How Does Brevo Compare to Constant Contact?

6. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a different beast to the rest of our Constant Contact alternatives. Why? Because it targets a totally different audience: content creators. If you’re a coach, author, podcaster, or musician looking for an email marketing tool to engage and monetize your audience, ConvertKit seems a compelling proposition. But how does it measure up against a heavyweight email platform like Constant Contact?

What Makes ConvertKit the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Inclusive referral marketing. Content creators know referral marketing is an effective way to grow their audience, so it’s worth noting that ConvertKit’s Creator Pro plan (priced at $25+ a month) offers inclusive access to SparkLoop’s referral marketing platform. Constant Contact integrates with a different referral platform, Referral Rock, but you’ll need to pay a separate subscription for it—and it’s not cheap, with prices starting at $200/month.
• Built-in creator network. All paying ConvertKit customers are welcomed into the platform’s Creator Network, allowing them to recommend—and, more importantly, be recommended by—fellow creators. Constant Contact doesn’t offer anything comparable.
• Newsletter monetization. If you have at least 10,000 subscribers, ConvertKit helps you find paid newsletter sponsorship opportunities, opening up a whole new revenue stream for your content. Again, Constant Contact isn’t really built for content creators and doesn’t have anything similar.
• Free tools. Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan. ConvertKit does, and it’s pretty decent, allowing you to send unlimited emails to up to 1,000 contacts and create unlimited landing pages, link pages, and opt-in forms.
• Cheaper email marketing. There’s no way around it: ConvertKit is cheaper. For example, it charges $41/month to send unlimited emails to 3,000 subscribers. Constant Contact’s most similar plan, for 2,501 – 5,000 contacts and up to 50,000 email sends, costs almost twice as much.

How Does ConvertKit Compare to Constant Contact?

7. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has one of the most impressive feature sets of any marketing automation platform, offering a wealth of tools designed for brands and organizations across a dozen different industries. Over 150,000 businesses in 170+ countries use it for their email campaigns.

What Makes ActiveCampaign the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• More advanced automation. Until recently, Constant Contact’s automations were limited to autoresponders. They’ve improved since then, but they’re not as sophisticated—or easy to use—as ActiveCampaign, which offers 850+ automation “recipes”.
• Inclusive email testing. At Plus level and above, ActiveCampaign users can access five monthly email tests via a third-party tool called Inbox Preview, allowing them to see how your emails will look across different email clients and devices. Constant Contact doesn’t have any built-in email testing capabilities.
• Predictive actions. ActiveCampaign uses machine learning to optimize campaign performance, such as customizing email send times based on when they’re most likely to be opened. You don’t get that with Constant Contact.
• More native integrations. Realistically, both platforms offer more integrations than you’ll ever need. But this is a numbers game, and ActiveCampaign has over 870 integrations, whereas Constant Contact “only” has 300+.
• Higher email deliverability. At time of writing, Email Deliverability Report ranks ActiveCampaign as the second-best email marketing tool for deliverability, while Constant Contact is down in 16th place.

How Does ActiveCampaign Compare to Constant Contact?

8. AWeber

AWeber and Constant Contact are both aimed at small businesses looking for affordable, high-value email tools. Both are veterans of the email marketing scene, having hit the market way back in the 1990s. But which has the edge today?

What Makes AWeber the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Solid free tier. AWeber certainly doesn’t offer the most generous free plan, allowing you to send 3,000 monthly emails to 500 subscribers. But any free functionality is better than none, and as we’ve already noted, Constant Contact doesn’t have a free tier.
• Cheaper paid plans. AWeber plans work out a lot cheaper than Constant Contact’s—especially if you’re just looking for an email platform. For just $22.50/month, AWeber lets you send unlimited emails to 2,500 subscribers. That’ll cost you more than twice as much with Constant Contact (and you don’t get unlimited email sends, either).
• More email templates. To be honest, we’re not particularly impressed with either platform’s templates—they’re a little basic, and not particularly easy to customize to your brand. But AWeber offers about three times more than Constant Contact, so it takes the win here.
• More integrations. Again, more is more here. AWeber offers 750+ integrations, which is over twice as many as Constant Contact.
• Built-in push notifications. Want to send push notifications to subscribers? You’ll need an integration to do it with Constant Contact, whereas AWeber offers push notifications on all plans—even the free one. 

How Does AWeber Compare to Constant Contact?

9. GetResponse

GetResponse is another of the heavyweight all-rounders, with a diverse range of brands—including Red Bull, Ikea, and Zendesk—using its email marketing and automation tools. While Constant Contact is geared toward small businesses, GetResponse claims to be a platform for everyone. So which is best?

What Makes GetResponse the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Higher email deliverability. At time of writing, GetResponse is third on Email Deliverability Report’s ranking, whereas Constant Contact is one of the poorer performers at #16.
• Feature-packed free plan. GetResponse’s free plan doesn’t offer the most attractive contact list or email send limits (at 500 contacts and 2,500 monthly email sends), but it does include a ton of juicy extras, including free access to the platform’s website and landing page builders. Constant Contact doesn’t have a free tier.
• Cheaper paid plans. GetResponse doesn’t really bill itself as a low-cost platform, yet it still offers better value for money than Constant Contact. Its paid plans start at $13.30/month for 1,000 contacts and unlimited emails; Constant Contact’s closest comparable plan costs $30/month.
• AI-powered website builder. All GetResponse customers—even those on the free tier—can leverage the platform’s sophisticated, AI-powered website builder, allowing them to create a site without any coding skills. Constant Contact doesn’t have a website builder (although it does let you create basic landing pages).
• Built-in webinar hosting. A niche use case, but a potentially valuable one for some brands: GetResponse customers at Marketing Automation level and above can use the platform to host webinars. You’ll need an integration to do the same through Constant Contact.

How Does GetResponse Compare to Constant Contact?

10. HubSpot

HubSpot is certainly the most feature-rich of all the Constant Contact alternatives in our roundup. So much so that you wouldn’t really describe it as an email marketing platform at all, because it does so much other stuff. That makes it hard to compare to a “pure” email tool like Constant Contact, but we’ll try our best!

What Makes HubSpot the Best Constant Contact Alternative?

• Tons of free functionality. HubSpot certainly isn’t the cheapest way to send emails, but it does have a feature-packed free plan that includes an unlimited list size, 2,000 monthly email sends, and limited automations and segmentation. Constant Contact, as we’ve noted multiple times, has no free plan.
• Free CRM. Both platforms offer a built-in CRM, but HubSpot’s customer relationship management platform is one of the best on the market—and you can use it free of charge!
• Integrate with everything. There’s nothing obvious missing from Constant Contact’s library of 0ver 300 integrations, but it can’t match the 1,000+ offered by HubSpot.
• Manage multiple business functions. HubSpot’s major point of difference is its ability to combine sales, marketing, support, ops, and content management in a single platform. If that’s what you’re looking for, you won’t get it from Constant Contact.
• Powerful analytics. HubSpot’s analytics suite is one of the best on the market, incorporating all your sales, service, and marketing data to create a single source of truth. Constant Contact’s reporting is extremely basic by comparison, although it does offer a Google Analytics integration.

How Does HubSpot Compare to Constant Contact?

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

There might be some niche use cases in which Constant Contact is the perfect tool for you (like if you absolutely must have a built-in social media scheduler).

But for the vast majority of email marketers, there are plenty of better—and cheaper—Constant Contact alternatives.

If you’re an ecommerce marketer, we’d strongly recommend checking out Drip’s sales and revenue-focused automation platform. We think you’ll love our simple UI, advanced, pre-built workflows, and beautiful, ecommerce-specific email and onsite templates.

But don’t take our word for it. See for yourself by signing up for your 14-day free trial today!