Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, which email marketing tool should you choose? If you’re looking for an email marketing solution that provides the right tools for a successful email marketing campaign, you’ve come to the right place.
Two of the most popular email marketing tools include Constant Contact and Mailchimp. Both offer their own unique set of features and pricing, battling to be crowned King and win the hearts of their customers.
Here at WebHostingProf we sign up, test, and try out all of our recommendations. We consider who will be using each service in order to give you an overview of what features might be important to you, how easy each service is to use, and whether they are good value for money.
Table of Contents
Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp: Features
Most email marketing solutions will have a lot of features in common given that their basic services should be aligned. Constant Contact and Mailchimp are no different, both offering the following features:
- Email list builder
- Send email messages
- Build email campaigns
- Segmented lists
- Analytics tools and reports
- Landing page creation tools
- Form builder
- Website builder
- Campaign tracker
Constant Contact Features
Constant Contact’s easy to use drag and drop builder makes it easy to design and customize marketing emails that are going to stand out. Their builder is responsive so your emails will look great on every device.
Their automation tools are perfect for both beginners and advanced users. Although the word automation can sometimes feel daunting, it actually makes your life so much easier. You can automated welcome emails, create triggers for unopened emails, and create campaigns that are sent out on a schedule that suits you and your customers.
Instead of manually having to import all of your contacts, Constant Contact’s contact management lists can help you automatically upload contacts from the likes of Excel, Outlook, or wherever else they are stored. This means you can reach all of your customers at any given point without missing a beat.
You can try Constant Contact’s email marketing plan for free for the first month (more on this later). However, their Basic email marketing plan includes plenty of the features most small to medium businesses will need, including eCommerce marketing. Constant Contact make it incredibly easy for you to build a website and online store, coupled with fantastic eCommerce marketing tools.
Mailchimp Features
Mailchimp’s Basic plan provides a lot more features in comparison to Constant Contact. You’ll already have access to automation options and the ability to target behaviors.
You’ll have access to Mailchimp’s app so you can manage your account, add contacts, and send campaigns from anywhere in the world. This is a really useful feature if you think of an idea on the go, or remember something essential that you’ve missed.
One of my favorite features that Mailchimp offers is their capability to integrate with over 250 apps, including the ever-popular WordPress. You’ll be able to create landing pages for your customers, post on social media, and run ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Mailchimp offer a domain service where you can connect an existing domain to your account or create a custom or branded domain. The dashboard is simple to use and guides you through the entire process. Mailchimp is a lot more scalable as each pricing plan offers a logical step up, allowing to cater to a wider pool of budgets.
Features Winner: Mailchimp
Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp offer generous features on their basic plans. The main selling point for Constant Contact is the eCommerce capabilities on their Starter plan. However, Mailchimp offers a larger set of features overall for the price, making it more accessible to beginners and advanced users.
Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp: Pricing
While pricing is ultimately based on the cost of a product or service, we like to take into account value for money. We look at what features and benefits you get on each pricing plan and assess which plan is right for you.
A cheap plan may cost less, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s good. We signed up to all of the plans on offer from Constant Contact and Mailchimp to give you an idea of what you can get for your money.
Constant Contact Pricing
Constant Contact offers two pricing plans; Email and Email Plus. Both plans include all of the features listed under their marketing, eCommerce, websites, and support sections which I’ll detail below.
Marketing: This covers everything you need to market your brand or business. It includes a logo maker, list building tools, contact management, landing pages, image library, Google ads, and lots more. You’ll have a limit of 3 users on the Email plan and 10 users on the Email Plus plan.
eCommerce: The eCommerce features allow you to sell unlimited products on both plans with a transaction fee of 1.5%. You can sell digital products and downloads, accept online payments, and setup integrated shipping management.
Websites: You’ll be able to create a mobile-responsive website which comes with free hosting, unlimited storage, and a free SSL certificate. You can also track your website analytics, create a blog, and connect a custom domain to your website.
Support: Both plans give you access to Constant Contact’s support services including learning resources, chat support, and phone support.
Mailchimp Pricing
Mailchimp offer 4 pricing plans, including a free plan for life. The prices quoted below are based on staying within the plan’s maximum contacts, email sends, and other limits. If limits are exceeded Mailchimp won’t stop the campaigns, but charges will be applied.
Marketing Channels: All of Mailchimps plans include email, landing pages, Facebook and Instagram ads, social posting, postcards, pop-up forms, and marketing calendars. The Standard and Premium plan also include social post scheduling and retargeting ads.
Automations: All of Mailchimps plans include single-step automations and classic automations builder.
Customer Journeys: The free plan gives you a free preview of the customer journey builder and pre-built journeys, however, you’ll only get all of the benefits from the Standard and Premium plans.
Insights/Optimization: All plans include basic reporting, but you’ll need to be on the Premium plan to use their comparitive reporting tool. All but the free plan includes A/B testing, personalized product recommendations, and subject line helper.
Support: You’ll get access to Mailchimp’s knowledgebase, and marketing glossary and tips with the free plan. The other plans all have access to 24/7 email and chat support, whereas only Premium plan customers will be able to make use of Mailchimp’s phone support.
Pricing Winner: Mailchimp
Constant Contact and Mailchimp offer extensive pricing plans with plenty of features. However, Mailchimp's pricing plans are far more scalable than Constant Contact's and seem to be more upfront about everything they cover. They also offer a free plan whereas Constant Contact only offers a free trial.
Constant Contact vs Mailchimp: Templates
Both companies offer templates that you can use to build your email marketing campaigns with. There’s a wide variety provided by both Constant Contact and Mailchimp, so we’ve analyzed each one carefully to decide who the winner is.
Constant Contact Templates
Constant Contact offers a large range of templates including sales email templates, holiday email templates, event invitation templates, HTML email templates, and much more. In fact, they offer over 240+ email templates that you can get started with right away.
You can sign up to Constant Contact’s free 60-day email marketing trial without having to input any credit card details, so it’s entirely risk free. Their email templates are easy to work with, offering a simple drag and drop builder so you can make the perfect email templates for any occassion or campaign.
Mailchimp Templates
You’ll have a choice of 100+ email templates with Mailchimp. You can start with different layouts, themes, or code your own templates if you wish. There are also thousands of templates available for Mailchimp via external resources like ThemeForest.
With Mailchimp you get a lot of variety and can choose the right template or theme for your requirements. If you feel brave enough to create your own template, the choice is there, making Mailchimp a suitable option for beginners and advanced users.
Templates Winner: Both
This was almost impossible to decide because Constant Contact and Mailchimp provide stunning mobile-responsive templates. They have a wide variety of templates each, all offering something different. Although advanced users may prefer Mailchimp's "create your own" template design, I feel that both services deserve the award of winner for this category.
Constant Contact Vs Mailchimp: Ease of Use
Whether you’re a first-time email marketer or you’ve been doing this for years, a user-friendly platform is a must. Ease of use doesn’t just refer to how easy a service is to understand or use, it’s about how intuitive it is and accessible they make it so you can get your job done efficiently.
Constant Contact Ease of Use
When you first login to your Constant Contact account, you’ll be presented with a simple dashboard that outlines some easy navigation points like templates, contact management, reporting, create an email, and more.
There’s a menu at the top that provides further navigation to campaigns, contacts, reporting, sign-up forms, library, social, integrations, and website. Everything is in one place and doesn’t require you to navigate to different areas where you struggle to get back to the dashboard.
Although it’s not the most stylish dashboard I’ve ever seen, there isn’t much reason to complain as it provides functionality and an intuitive layout suitable for any type of user.
Mailchimp Ease of Use
Mailchimp’s dashboard is a little more design-heavy. It feels as though they’ve put a lot of effort into this area but unfortunately sacrificied some usability by doing so. Unlike Constant Contact, there’s no easy navigation on the front page.
The dashboard offers an overview of your audience analytics which is undoubtedly handy to have, however for me it feels like it’s in the wrong place. You’ll need to use the navigation at the top to access your campaigns, create templates, automated processes, etc.
Ease of Use Winner: Constant Contact
Constant Contact is the clear winner here. Both services are easy to use, but Constant Contact is definitely more intuitive. From the minute you access your dashboard everything is right in front of you. There are fewer navigation steps to take in comparison to Mailchimp, making it easy to get to the right places.
Constant Contact vs Mailchimp: Who Takes The Crown?
Before I give you my own opinion on my review of Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, I wanted to clarify that not every email marketing solution is right for everyone. My priorities could well be different from yours, and that’s okay!
In my own tests, I found that Mailchimp was the clear winner in the majority of categories. If you’re a WordPress user, Mailchimp is highly recommended as it ticks the boxes for:
- A wide choice of features across low-tier plans
- Free plan
- Scalable options
- WordPress plugin
- Stunning templates (and create your own)