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Based on weighted criteria below
Low Pricing icon

Low Pricing (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

Forever free plan
for 0-2,000 subscribers/ 12,000 emails per month.

This plan may be all that you need when you're just starting out. It is a pretty generous free plan.

MailChimp offers two basic types of plans (with a flexible pricing structure): list-based and send-based

Here are a few pricing examples.

List-based:

$10/month
for 0-500 subscribers,

$15/month
for 501-1,000 subscribers

$25/month
for 1,001-2,000 subscribers

$180/month
for 26,001-36,000 subscribers

$1050/month
for 225,001-232,000 subscribers

MailChimp's rates are highly segmented. There are a lot more pricing plans in between these options.

Send-based:

At $0.03  per email:
300 Emails – $9
2,000 Emails – $60 

At $0.02  per email
10,000 Emails – $200

At 0.005  per email
375,000 Emails – $1,875

High-volume pricing (CPM)
2,000,000 Emails – $2,500 ($0.00125/each)

MailChimp also offers a Pro add-on for $199/month that adds extra analytic tools made for growing companies.

Note: MailChimp has an extremely flexible pricing structure. There is a plan at every $5 interval beginning at $10, but it’s not a strictly linear progression. You can use the billing calculator to figure out exactly how much your plan would cost.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers 2 list based pricing plans:

E-mail Plan:

$15/month
for 0-500 subscribers,

$35/month
for 501-2,500 subscribers,

$55/month
for 2,501-5,000 subscribers,

$85/month
for 5,001-10,000 subscribers,

Custom quotation for more than 10,000 subscribers.

Email Plus Plan (includes more advanced features like surveys, registration forms, coupons, and more):

$45/month
for 0-500 subscribers,

$60/month
for 501-2,500 subscribers,

$80/month
for 2,501-5,000 subscribers,

$110/month
5,001-10,000 subscribers.

Custom quotation for more than 10,000 subscribers.

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, has no setup fees, 60 day free trial (for 100 contacts), 10% discount if you prepay for 6 months in advance, or 15% off for a year in advance. CC also offer s double the incentive to prepay for nonprofits, with a 20% discount for 6 months and a 30% discount for annual payments.

Design icon

Design (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp has hundreds of built-in beautiful HTML templates with lots of different color schemes.

Your emails can look different depending on the email client your customers use. In MailChimp you can preview how your email will look in 10 of the most popular email clients. MailChimp beats Constant Contact here. Being able to preview your emails is a huge advantage and a feature that should be in every email marketing app.

All the templates are also mobile optimized, so you don't have to worry about sending you customers emails that will lag on their phone.

You can also add your own HTML email design, customize an existing template, or code a completely new one from scratch.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact's design looks a bit dated. The email templates are kind of boring.

You still get access to more than 400 built-in templates and with the use of the drag and drop editor you can customize the templates to put your own personal spin on them.

A HTML editor is also available if you are planning to code a custom email.

If you want to ensure that your email will render well on mobile devices you’ll have to look for mobile-friendly templates. The downside is that you don’t have a mobile preview, so you have to be careful when you design your template.

Sadly, Constant Contact does not offer preview for mobile devices or different kinds of email clients. This is a big deal, and using Constant Contact will have you wasting hours in testing. MailChimp lets you check your emails thoroughly before you send them out.

Frontend Features icon

Frontend Features (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp’s complete features are only available to paying customers, so if you are using the free plan some of these may not be available.

Paid users get access to all MailChimp's features including: email designer, multi-user account, analytics /reports, autoresponders, custom forms, subscriber profiles, geolocation and deliver by time zone, audience segmentation, integration into other web services, or any of their support options.

MailChimp has a seven, count-em seven, mobile apps available for Android or iOS that can help you manage your email list while away from the computer.

MailChimp Mobile - Lets you send campaigns, view reports, and add new subscribers.
MailChimp Coupon Scanner - This lets you put coupon codes into your emails.
MailChimp Editor - You can edit emails right from you phone with this app.
MailChimp Snap
- This lets you take a photo, or select an existing photo, and build a simple email around it that you can send out to any of your lists.
MailChimp VIPs - mark extra-special subscribers as VIPs and receive notifications when they open and click
Mobile Signup Forms - a great app that will help you collect email addresses in person at a storefront or conference.
SMS for Events - This sends text messages to your subscribers during events.

These apps let you do most of the things available in the MailChimp web app right from your smartphone. Obviously, MailChimp is superior to Constant Contact when it comes to mobile apps. Constant Contact only has one. 

Constant Contact

Constant Contact gives you access to the basics, like subscriber profiles, list growth tools and list segmentation, social media support, multiple user accounts and signup forms.

Other features like split A/B testing and trigger-based messaging aren't in Constant Contact. If you want to use either of those you'll need third party integrations. This is a bit of a shame. A/B testing can be really useful in making a successful email marketing campaign, and it is disappointing that it's not included in Constant Contact.

Constant Contact also only lets you create one sign-up form per account. That is a little absurd. Any email marketing campaign has to target different kinds of users, and they won't all respond to the same form.

They've got Android and iOS apps as well. Those are pretty impressive. They allow you to create new emails, send emails, and track your data from your phone. This strikes me as pretty slick for a program that doesn't have mobile preview.

Backend Features icon

Backend Features (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

The dashboard is very well designed. It is very clean and intuitive, and seems to be geared towards users of any skill level. They obviously put a lot of care into the design of their interface.

On the main menu you'll find the following links:

  • Campaigns - where you can access your current campaigns.
  • Templates - the starting point for creating your email designs.
  • Lists - where you can manage you current subscriber lists or create new ones.
  • Reports - where you can track how well your campaigns performed, check open and click rates, and more.
  • Automation - here you can setup your automated emails to users that subscribe to your lists, open links from your newsletters or buy your products (only available to paying users).

MailChimp's backend is really very usable no matter your skill level. It is much better designed than Constant Contact.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact's interface might look a bit dated, especially for tech-savvy users with a background in web design. The dated look makes MailChimp look much better by comparison.

Nevertheless, the user interface is pretty intuitive.

There's five huge buttons on the left side of the screen:

  • Home - This is where you go when sending your first email. Once you get started these options will be replaced by a dashboard with your recent campaign activity, list growth, and other recent events.
  • Campaigns - You'll find all the necessary tools for customizing email templates and managing a campaign here.
  • Contacts - This lets you manage your subscriber lists and your lone sign-up form.
  • Reporting - This has real-time reporting on all your campaigns.
  • Library - Here you can manage you stored files and access the image library, where you can find a huge collection of stock photos, both free and paid.
Reports & Statistics icon

Reports & Statistics (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp has a strong reports section, they track data on open and click rates, top links clicked, performance over time, subscriber activity, revenue reports, opens by location, and unsubscribes.

There are also maps that show the locations of the people who have opened emails. This can be pretty cool to look at. It is always fascinating to see where your emails end up.

You’ll also have access to reports for successful deliveries, forwards, unique opens, and abuse reports, and you can view bounces and social activity.

Don’t forget that you can track higher-level stats (ROI, conversion rate, revenue and the average value per visitor) using the Google Analytics integration (Analytics 360). You can download reports for both single and combined campaigns in CSV format.

This all adds up to a lot of useful data. You won't have a shortage of information to help you fine-tune your email marketing campaign.

MailChimp has a lot more options for reports and statistical analysis than Constant Contact.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact sticks to the basics when it comes to reports. You'll be able to track opens, clicks, spam reports, unsubscribes, bounces, and contact growth by source.

You can't do A/B split testing, or location tracking in the app itself. You'll have to use their Google Analytics integration if you want that kind of data.

You can view both total opens and unique opens, and you can also view a list of individual subscribers who opened your email or clicked on a link.

You can also see contact growth by source, which is handy if you want to see where your new subscribers are coming from.

One nifty feature is their industry average comparison. You can select an industry and compare your statistics against the industry average. This is pretty much the only statistic you'll find in Constant Contact but not in MailChimp.

Flexibility icon

Flexibility (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp offers several ways to add subscribers to your list. You can import subscribers from a CSV, TXT, manually add contacts from XLS or XLSX files, or import from services like Google Contacts, Salesforce, Highrise, Zendesk and even Constant Contact.

Constant Contact does not return the favor. It is much easier to get MailChimp up and running.

You can import the contacts to a new list or append them to an existing one. Import new subscriber data to an existing list is also possible.

Keep in mind that when you import a new list or switch to MailChimp from another email service provider, you may need to reconfirm your subscriber list, especially if your current list hasn't been recently or regularly cleared of unsubscribes and bounces. Other ESPs handle bounces differently than MailChimp so double check that your bounces aren't included when you upload your subscribed addresses.

There are no contracts and you can cancel at any time, but you won’t get a refund for fees you’ve already paid including email credits. You still have the option to temporarily pause monthly billing if you don't need to use MailChimp for a while.

Keep in mind that if you are on a paid account and want to go back to the Forever Free plan, you can downgrade only once over the life of your account.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact’s import tool makes it very easy to gather your subscribers into a single list without needing to reconfirm their subscription.

You can upload spreadsheets and TXT files, or you can import contacts from mail or CMS services service like Salesforce. For creating small lists, you have the option of manually adding contacts.

Constant Contact offers a 60 day free trial, but after that it’s quite difficult to cancel your subscription. You can't suspend your account over email or chat, so you have to call a billing specialist. If you cancel your account and then change your mind, it can be reactivated within 90 days of the cancellation.

Constant Contact also only allows you to store up to 2GB of files online before they charge you for more storage.

Automation icon

Automation (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp offers an easy way to set up autoresponder emails. The interfaced is intuitive and has a lot of features.

Autoresponders allow MailChimp users to engage with their subscribers one-on-one by sending automated welcome emails, birthday messages, purchase follow-ups or even provide product recommendations based on previous purchases.

It's much easier to setup automation in MailChimp. They don't have any strange delays or email restrictions like in Campaign Monitor.

All the emails can be personalized based on customer interests, and you can send emails based on customers' website activity and behavioral targeting.

Keep in mind this is one of the features only available on paid plans, so free users will have to upgrade before using the automation features.

 

Constant Contact

Constant Contact's autoresponder feature lets you set up an email series for similar customers and send targeted messages.

You can also send automated emails to customers that make a purchase or sign up for your mailing lists.

Strangely, you have to wait a day after adding your contacts to your autoresponder list before sending out any autoresponse emails. This might get old pretty quickly.

Also, you can't copy emails created in autoresponder to use as standard emails. That is pretty weird. There are definitely a few situations where that might be necessary.

Extensibility icon

Extensibility (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp offers an enormous number of integrations and add-ons.

Their Integrations Directory lists more than 800 integrations, so its pretty likely that your favorite apps will be included.

A few of MailChimp’s most popular add-ons and integrations are Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Shopify, Bigcommerce or Zoho.

MailChimp has hundreds and hundreds more integrations than Constant Contact.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact offers over 200 apps and integrations.

They also let you develop your own apps, if you are so inclined.

Some of the most popular integrations are Google Analytics, WordPress, PayPal and social media-specific apps, including the Constant Contact Facebook app.

 

Support icon

Support (weighted 11%)

MailChimp

MailChimp doesn’t have live telephone support.
The only way to communicate with them is by Email (you can reach them 24/7) or live chat (available Monday-Friday from 8am-6pm EST)

Email or chat support is only available after you become a paying customer, so free accounts can only use the self-service support available through their online knowledge base.

MailChimp’s team is active on social media especially on their Twitter and Facebook pages so if you are looking for a quick answer this might be the best option.

MailChimp's support isn't nearly as good as Constant Contact's. Constant Contact has a bunch of different ways to get help, including telephone support. MailChimp just can't compete with Constant Contact's support options.

Constant Contact

Perhaps Constant Contact's best feature is their support (the company has even won three Stevie awards over the years for its customer service). They offer phone, chat, and email support and they have a dedicated Twitter account for customer service @CTCTHelp.

Phone support is available for different time zones:

USA & Canada: Monday - Thursday 7am - 11pm EST, Friday 7am - 9pm EST, and Saturday - Sunday 10am-8pm EST;

UK: Monday - Friday 9am - 4am GMT,
Saturday - Sunday 3pm - 1am GMT;

International: Monday - Thursday7am - 11pm ET, Friday7am - 9pm ET, Saturday - Sunday10am - 8pm ET

Online Chat is available Monday-Friday, 7am-9pm EST.

Constant Contact offers a variety of live and recorded webinars, blog posts covering tips and industry news, and a massive knowledge base with frequently asked questions arranged by different topics.

Constant Contact offers in-person classes and seminars for an additional fee ($199+).

Their customer support is really responsive and helpful.

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