ActiveCampaign vs Constant Contact
Trying to choose between ActiveCampaign vs Constant Contact as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 3.6 TrustPilot
- 4.6 Capterra
- 4.6 G2
Average 4.3 / 5
ActiveCampaign
An automation platform that combines email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning for cross-channel management, segmentation, and personalization. It can also be used to automate sales and support processes.
Pricing
Starts from $9 a month for 500 contacts (billed yearly)
Key features
- Automation features for marketing
- Integrated CRM tools
- Integrations with various popular services
- Landing page constructor
- Intuitive email builder
Support
Availability: 9 am - 11 pm CDT (GMT-5) Communication in the chat or via email
- 2.2 TrustPilot
- 4.3 Capterra
- 4 G2
Average 3.5 / 5
Constant Contact
Online marketing platform offering a range of features from email marketing and automation to SMS marketing and CRM.
Pricing
Starts at $12/month for up to 500 contacts and 5,000 email sends
Key features
- Drag-and-drop email templates
- AI Content Generator
- Event management
- CRM
- Automation
- Reporting
- Web sign-up forms
- SMS and social media marketing
- Polls & surveys
- Landing page builder
- 5,000+ integrations
Support
Live chat and phone for all the plans during the office hours. Self-service and community support.
General info about company
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom. Hubs in Chicago, Sidney, and Dublin.
Constant Contact
The company was founded in 1995 by Randy Parker and was later sold to Endurance International in 2015. In 2021, it was acquired by ClearLake Investments. Headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Difficulty
ActiveCampaign
No coding or design skills are required as there are plenty of automation recipes available. The system itself is comparatively complex, though, and needs some getting accustomed to.
Constant Contact
Beginner-friendly. Basic tutorials are built into the interface.
Best for
ActiveCampaign
Businesses that plan to scale their email marketing up to include CRM, e-commerce integrations, and diverse automation schemes.
Constant Contact
Small businesses, nonprofits, and event organizers. Some features are aimed at sales and marketing directors.
Free plan
ActiveCampaign
No free plan. Has a free 14 days trial with up to 100 email sends to 100 contacts. The features available within the trial match the Professional tier of features.
The trial is limited to 1 user and doesn’t include:
- Predictive Sending
- Predictive Content
- Sending auto-responder campaigns
- Custom fields in forms
- Using “Email Results” in subscription forms
- SMS credits or sending
- Adding a domain to a landing page
Constant Contact
No free plan. Depending on the location, users can get a 14 or 60 day free trial with access to the core features and send up to 100 emails. No credit card required.
Pricing
ActiveCampaign
Marketing + CRM
For 500 contacts, billed yearly/monthly:
- Lite $9 / $15
- Plus $49 / $70
- Professional $149 / $187
- Enterprise — individual pricing
Other pricing features:
- 2-year price lock
- Billing pause for 12 months with the account and campaigns intact.
- Only charges for the contacts the client actively markets to, no matter how many lists they’re on.
- A 20% discount for nonprofits.
- Free 14 days trial.
Constant Contact
Based on number of contacts and email sends. Overage fees of $0.002 per email apply.
For up to 500 contacts, billed monthly:
Lite $12
- 1 user
- 1 GB storage
- Monthly email sends: 10x your number of contacts.
Standard $35
- 3 users
- 10 GB storage
- Monthly email sends: 12x your number of contacts.
Premium $80
- Unlimited users
- 25 GB storage
- Monthly email sends: 24x your number of contacts
Other pricing features:
- Everyone: 15% off for 12-month prepay
- Nonprofits: 20% off for 6-month prepay and 30% off for 12-month prepay
- Full refund for closing account within 30 days of signing up. Conditions apply.
- Free trial
- Customized solutions for agencies, organizations in need of 5+ accounts, franchises, and member-based associations.
- Lead Gen & CRM starting at $449/month
- SMS Marketing, starting at $10/mo USD for 0-500 messages with any paid plan. Available only for US customers.
Support
ActiveCampaign
Working hours: 9 am – 11 pm CDT (GMT-5)
Either live chat or email requests
Aside from online support, ActiveCampaign offers:
- Free online training
- Community and forum
- FAQ website section
- Study Hall — in-person learning classes
Constant Contact
- Live chat and phone for all the plans during the office hours.
- Live chat: Mon-Fri 3 am-8pm ET
- Phone: Mon-Fri 8am-8pm ET, Sat 10 am-6pm ET
- Knowledge Base
- Product Help Center
- Community Forums
Features
ActiveCampaign
- Marketing automation
- Landing page builder
- Built-in CRM for small-medium-sized businesses
- Many service integrations
- Drag-and-drop email designer
- Free migration from other services
- SMS marketing
- Site messages
- Live chat and automated chatbot workflows
Constant Contact
- Drag-and-drop email templates
- Dynamic content in email
- Reporting (engagement, campaign comparison, open rate by device, heatmap*, revenue*)
- Automations (pre-built and custom templates)
- AI Content Generator
- Marketing CRM
- Web sign-up forms
- Polls & surveys
- Landing page builder
- Social media posting
- Event management, including selling services and merch with the tickets and accepting payments
- Scheduled email sends
- Contact segmentation
- Social media ads manager
- Facebook retargeting ads*
- Google Ads Manager*
- SEO recommendations*
- 5,000+ integrations
- SMS marketing (US only)**
- Subject line A/B testing
_____________________
*Available only with Premium
**Charged separately
Templates
ActiveCampaign
125+ templates
No-code dynamic content available
Email template recommendations and guides
Templates for:
- Abandoned Cart
- Conference Event
- Customer Service
- Holiday
- Newsletter
- Reviews Feedback
Constant Contact
- Over 200 mobile-responsive templates
- Drag-and-drop editing
Popular templates:
- Newsletter
- Holiday-themed
- Retail
- Industry-specific
- Customizable Standard template to any occasion
Video/screenshots
ActiveCampaign
Constant Contact
Integrations
ActiveCampaign
Facebook, Google Analytics, WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, Unbounce, ClickFunnels, Salesforce, Zapier, and more
Constant Contact
Over 5,000 integrations, including Google and Facebook Ads, WordPress, Canva, Vimeo, SalesForce, Eventbrite, Shopify, Stripe, WooCommerce, social media
Devices
ActiveCampaign
- Website
- Email extensions for Chrome and Outlook
- Mobile app for Android and iOS (possible to review email reports, track customer activity, and manage CRM data).
- No installable solution
Constant Contact
- iOS
- Android
- Web
Languages
ActiveCampaign
Czech
Dutch
English
French
German
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Slovenian
Spanish
Danish
Finnish
Simplified Chinese
Turkish
Vietnamese
Constant Contact
Danish
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Castilian Spanish
Latin American Spanish
Swedish
Automation
ActiveCampaign
800+ automation recipes for email and other marketing channels.
Offers the whole customer experience automation:
- Links different integrated services (like Shopify or Facebook) into cohesive scenarios.
- Collects broad data on each customer, so it’s possible to customize segments based on almost any parameter.
- Helps to choose the best content, send time, and delivery channel for each individual customer.
- Has AI advice on improving the marketing strategy.
Constant Contact
- Automated email and SMS messages.
- Automation Path Builder with a library of plug-and-play path templates and ability to create a custom path.
Some path templates are compatible with Shopify and WooCommerce, including:
- Welcome email series
- Abandoned cart messages
- Win-back series
- Thank you series
- Request a review
Pros
ActiveCampaign
- Hundreds of automation options even for sophisticated purposes
- CRM features
- Mobile app
- A dedicated email deliverability specialist checks the client’s email for compliance before sending
- Automation of 1:1 communications to customers on the website or social media
Constant Contact
- Ease of use
- Diverse template library — more than 200 mobile-ready email templates categorized by tag
- Over 5,000 Integrations with filters by category
- Sharing newsletter content on social media in one-click
- Niche features for event organizers
- Automated contact list segmentation based on engagement
Cons
ActiveCampaign
- High price and no free plan
- Customer support is often unavailable or slow
- Complicated automations system
- Steep learning curve
- Reports aren’t great (not enough information, no real-time results, visually unappealing, etc.)
Constant Contact
- Steep price tag for the users who have more than a couple hundred subscribers and going beyond basic functionality. Some features are not included in the plans and cost extra, like SMS
- Automation can’t include multiple channels, actions and conditions. Selection of triggers is also limited
- A/B testing is limited to subject lines
- No customization options for sign up forms
- Only five templates for landing pages
- No geographical breakdown of the regions that are engaging more, or the time that subscribers open emails
- No RTL language support
- Account can be canceled only by phone
Reviews from experts
ActiveCampaign
“ActiveCampaign is a solid choice for your email marketing needs. There are few flaws (though they matter), and if you want a service you can integrate into almost any tool chain, ActiveCampaign’s feature-packed plans have few equals.
While its decent feature set could potentially be let down by the rather high prices on more expensive plans, ActiveCampaign still provides good value for your money”.
“So do we recommend ActiveCampaign?
As this ActiveCampaign review highlights, it’s really tough to fault ActiveCampaign, not only do they offer almost everything you need within an email marketing platform, but they do it very well.
The reporting offers you insight into almost all facets, such as page visits, geo-tracking, openers, ecommerce and more. One area that is slightly lacking is the email builder, not offering an experience as slick as other services out there, with a few niggling features that could be done better (like the revision history)”.
Constant Contact
Pros: The email templates are easy to use, and I've been able to train multiple users in our organization to use it, who don't have a background with tools like this. As an email tool, I'm very happy.
Cons: As a social tool, I'm disappointed. Right now you can't post to Twitter (X) at all. You can't upload videos to share as Reels, and if you want to edit copy for each social media platform you have to make separate posts.
Pros: Constant Contact is very intuitive and user-friendly. People with no email experience can easily jump in and create nice-looking emails. <...>
Cons: Since I started using Constant Contact in 2019, the platform is virtually the same. <...> Unfortunately, we have used Constant Contact to its capacity. Our emails cannot improve or change with the features that are currently available. It would be nice to see more customization in emails and better analytics reporting!
*This information is current as of 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
