Constant Contact vs Salesforce
Trying to choose between Constant Contact vs Salesforce 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.
- 1.4 TrustPilot
- 4.4 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 3.4 / 5
Salesforce
Salesforce is a powerful marketing ecosystem that includes CRM, a system for marketing personalization, sales automation, analytics, and more — and all that is AI-powered.
Pricing
Dynamic, depending on the number of users, add-on products, and more
Key features
- CRM
- Email marketing automation
- Personalization
- Segmentation
- Analytics
- A/B testing
Support
Salesforce Help, phone, online chat, separate support systems for additional products
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.
Salesforce
Salesforce, Inc. is a cloud-based software company that was founded in 1999 and is currently headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, and application development.
Difficulty
Constant Contact
Beginner-friendly. Basic tutorials are built into the interface.
Salesforce
Most users claim that it takes at least a month to learn working in Salesforce, so it’s not beginner-friendly.
Best for
Constant Contact
Small businesses, nonprofits, and event organizers. Some features are aimed at sales and marketing directors.
Salesforce
Large or scaling businesses and sales teams
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.
Salesforce
No free plan, 30-day free trial that includes:
- Preloaded data for learning
- Pre-configured processes, reports, and dashboards
- Online training and live onboarding webinars
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.
Salesforce
Salesforce has a very complex pricing system that includes several products. Since we’re only talking about email marketing, here are the pricing plans for the email, mobile, and web marketing package.
Basic: $410/month with unlimited users, billed annually, includes:
- Subscriber profiles
- Drag-and-drop segmentation
- Email and mobile-optimized templates
- Content management and workflows
- A/B testing
- Personalisation tools
- Preference center
- Integration with Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud
- Reports and dashboards
Pro: $1282/month with unlimited users, billed annually, includes:
- Personalisation Builder
- Automation Studio
- Triggered Communications
- Automated workflow and campaigns
- Web and mobile analytics
Corporate: $3844/month with unlimited users, billed annually, includes:
- Journey Builder
- Mobile SMS and MobilePush
- Multi-channel predictive content
- Advanced reporting
Entreprise: pricing depends on contact and message volume, unlimited users, includes:
- Real-time big data segmentation
- Distributed sending
- Shared content, subscribers, and data
- Locked templates
- Custom roles and permissions
- Business Units
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
Salesforce
All customers regardless of a pricing plan can create a case in Salesforce Help using their Salesforce or Trailblazer accounts. Phone support in English is available 24/7 but support in other languages has limited availability for some regions:
- French Support (Canada) — Monday–Friday, 3:00 AM–11:30 AM EST
- Spanish and Portuguese Support for Latin American countries — Monday–Friday, 8AM–8PM EST
- French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese Support for European countries — Monday–Friday, 8AM–4:30PM GMT
- Mandarin and Korean Support for Asian countries — Monday–Friday, 10AM 7PM AEST
In addition to that, Salesforce also provides an extensive knowledge base, a YouTube channel with longform video tutorials, and communities for admins and developers.
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
Salesforce
- CRM
- Email marketing automation
- AI-powered list segmentation
- A/B testing
- No-code email template builder
- Analytics in customizable dashboards
- Google Analytics integration
- Integration with third-party data sources for relevant embedded ads
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
Salesforce
- Pre-made templates are empty but offer different layout options.
- Salesforce includes three types of templates: Classic (basically plain text with little customization options), Lightning Experience (allow for images, links, rich text, etc.), and built-in Email Template Builder (your regular marketing email editor).
Video/screenshots
Constant Contact
Salesforce
Integrations
Constant Contact
Over 5,000 integrations, including Google and Facebook Ads, WordPress, Canva, Vimeo, SalesForce, Eventbrite, Shopify, Stripe, WooCommerce, social media
Salesforce
4000+ integrations and apps like other CRM systems, other ESPs (for example, Mailchimp), Slack, Tableau, Zoom, and more. Some of these integrations are free, others are paid for separately or only available for certain pricing plans.
Devices
Constant Contact
- iOS
- Android
- Web
Salesforce
- Web app
- Desktop app
- Mobile apps for iOS and Android
Languages
Constant Contact
Danish
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Castilian Spanish
Latin American Spanish
Swedish
Salesforce
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
English
German
Italian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Russian
Spanish
Spanish (Mexico)
Swedish
Thai
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
Salesforce
Salesforce offers Automation Studio for automating email journeys which allows users to create complex email sequences with many conditions.
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
Salesforce
- Great support on onboarding from the vendor
- Sophisticated customer journeys
- Dynamic content in emails
- Integrations with CRMs
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
Salesforce
- Steep learning curve
- Very convoluted pricing system that caused most of the negative reviews on TrustPilot
- Hard to implement and maintain, requires a Salesforce administrator to help
- Very expensive and includes arising additional costs
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!
Salesforce
Salesforce scores a perfect 5/5 in our data reporting research category. It offers a lot of data visualization tools on all of its plans, which are important tools for any kind of business, and whether you’re looking for a sales or customer service CRM. These tools include custom reports, a chart builder, and revenue data views, and allow you to better understand data, explain trends, and generate valuable insights. When you can analyze data faster, you can create feasible business goals and targets.
When it comes to email marketing, you build your stack according to your size and maturity. You will consider Salesforce Marketing Cloud (either Engagement or Account Engagement) once you have data in your CRM and want to use it. In this case, Salesforce Marketing Cloud competitors would be Adobe, Oracle or Braze.
But Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a great solution if you consider the platform. You can easily use your CRM data, you have powerful Artificial Intelligence features with Einstein and one of the most powerful Customer journey orchestrators with Journey Builder.
<...>
As for me, Salesforce meets the needs of both SMB and enterprise companies, but be careful with budgets: of course when customization needs are rising, you have to pay for that. But exactly the CRM gives you that opportunity.
*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.
