Constant Contact vs ConvertKit

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.

ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is based in Idaho, the US. It was created by Nathan Barry, a blogger and creator who needed a better way to promote his books and courses.

Beginner-friendly. Basic tutorials are built into the interface.

Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.

Small businesses, nonprofits, and event organizers. Some features are aimed at sales and marketing directors.

Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.

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.

The forever free plan includes the contact list of up to 1,000 subscribers and the following features:

• Unlimited landing pages
• Unlimited forms
• Unlimited “broadcasts”, or one-off email campaigns, sent right away or scheduled
• Audience tagging and segmentation
• Selling digital products & subscriptions
• Community support
• Free recommendations

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.

Dynamic pricing depends on the size of your contact list and the features of interest.

Creator: $9–1,916/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the free features plus:

• Live chat & email support
• Paid recommendations
• Free migration from another tool
• Automated email sequences
• Visual automation builders
• Third-party integrations
• One additional team member

Creator Pro: $25–2,166/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the Creator features plus:

• Newsletter referral system
• Subscriber scoring
• Advanced reporting

• 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

Community support:

• The internal forum where you can ask questions and receive answers from ConvertKit support specialists and other platform users
• Available even on the free plan

Email and live chat support:

• Available for Creator users
• Priority support via email and live chat available for Creator Pro users

ConvertKit also provides a knowledge base and a YouTube channel with tutorials. The platform also runs online workshops for newbies in marketing.

• 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

• Email builder
• Email marketing automation
• Landing pages
• Sign-up forms
• Tools for selling digital products and paid subscriptions
• List segmentation
• Lead scoring
• A/B testing
• Reporting and analytics
• Internal referral systems for creators to earn off putting links in your newsletter or paying to get promoted by other creators

• Over 200 mobile-responsive templates
• Drag-and-drop editing

Popular templates:

• Newsletter
• Holiday-themed
• Retail
• Industry-specific
• Customizable Standard template to any occasion

25 email templates made for content creators by content creators, includes templates for:

• Newsletters
• Content promotion
• Product sales pitch
• Waitlist

The templates are sourced from other users and you can create and share your own.

ConvertKit also offers 50+ landing page templates not specified by purpose.

Over 5,000 integrations, including Google and Facebook Ads, WordPress, Canva, Vimeo, SalesForce, Eventbrite, Shopify, Stripe, WooCommerce, social media

120 integrations with third-party apps for:

• Memberships and courses
• Analytics
• Lead capture
• E-commerce
• Giveaways
• Quizzes
• Workflows
• Webinar
• Affiliate management
• CRM
• Scheduling
• Email verification

ConvertKit also supports Zapier for even more integrations and provides users with the API docs for custom integrations.

• iOS
• Android
• Web

• Web app only

Danish Dutch English French German Italian Portuguese Castilian Spanish Latin American Spanish Swedish

English

• 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

10+ visual automation templates for starting a paid newsletter, releasing a new podcast, crowdfunding for a music album, and other tasks that professional content creators might face.

• 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

• Good platform for content creators
• Great deliverability
• Supports paid newsletters and has a “tip jar” functionality for free donations from subscribers
• A flexible tagging and segmentation system for targeted campaigns

• 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

• Very basic reporting
• Expensive compared to other email marketing tools
• Not great for midsize and large businesses
• No drag-and-drop builder which makes it harder to design emails from scratch