Constant Contact vs ConvertKit
Trying to choose between Constant Contact vs ConvertKit as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 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.
- 4.7 GetApp
- 4.7 Capterra
- 2 TrustPilot
Average 3.8 / 5
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a tool for marketing automation and monetization for independent creators.
Pricing
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Tools for content monetization
Key features
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Tools for content monetization
Support
Community support for all users, email and chat support for paid users
General info about company
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.
ConvertKit
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.
Difficulty
Constant Contact
Beginner-friendly. Basic tutorials are built into the interface.
ConvertKit
Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.
Best for
Constant Contact
Small businesses, nonprofits, and event organizers. Some features are aimed at sales and marketing directors.
ConvertKit
Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.
Free plan
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.
ConvertKit
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
Pricing
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.
ConvertKit
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
Support
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
ConvertKit
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.
Features
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
ConvertKit
- 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
Templates
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
ConvertKit
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.
Video/screenshots
Constant Contact
ConvertKit
Integrations
Constant Contact
Over 5,000 integrations, including Google and Facebook Ads, WordPress, Canva, Vimeo, SalesForce, Eventbrite, Shopify, Stripe, WooCommerce, social media
ConvertKit
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.
Devices
Constant Contact
- iOS
- Android
- Web
ConvertKit
- Web app only
Languages
Constant Contact
Danish Dutch English French German Italian Portuguese Castilian Spanish Latin American Spanish Swedish
ConvertKit
English
Automation
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
ConvertKit
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.
Pros
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
ConvertKit
- 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
Cons
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
ConvertKit
- 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
Reviews from experts
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!
ConvertKit
If you’re a blogger, vlogger, frogger, YouTuber, digital course creator, or anyone who makes their own digital content for sale under a single business entity, ConvertKit is 100% the tool for you, and it’s not even close.
It has everything you need to grow your business, including direct integrations with tools specifically designed to make your life easier like course, webinar, blog, and lead magnet plugins.
If you’ve got a stable business and over 1,000 subscribers, you’ll reap all of the benefits of the world’s most streamlined email autoresponder tool at a price that won’t break the bank and is silly easy to use.
We bought this software after reading the Capterra reviews here, however we find it very limited in customization so it's mainly take it or leave type of features. We could not block freemailers from subscribing, or use custom CSS for the same purpose. In general, it is not a tool to use if you care about following a brand identity of your own.
The set-up process is tedious with Wordpress websites. We were not happy so we canceled, so instead of letting the current paid period last the software deactivated the account immediately and blocked us out of the software. We could not export our subscribers nor our content.
*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.