The right email marketing software is critical for allowing companies to effectively communicate with customers, drive traffic, improve conversions, and grow their business over time. However, with so many options available, it can be difficult for business owners to determine which platform best suits their unique needs and goals.
Constant Contact and Convertkit are two of the most popular email marketing tools on the market. In this comprehensive Constant Contact vs Convertkit comparison guide, we evaluate both platforms across a variety of key criteria to provide an unbiased assessment focused specifically on assisting entrepreneurs and small business owners with this important decision.
By the end, you should have a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both systems to confidently select the best solution for your email marketing and business growth objectives moving forward.
1. Understanding the Basics
Constant Contact was launched in 1998 by founders Randy Parker and Richard Yaeger. It’s one of the largest email marketing platforms with over 650,000 active users. Constant Contact focuses primarily on email marketing and online event management for small businesses.
Convertkit was launched in 2013 and was founded by Nathan Barry in Arizona. With over 30,000 active users, Convertkit positions itself as an email marketing platform specifically for online content creators, bloggers, coaches, and authors.
Both platforms have strong brand recognition and large user bases of active customers. Constant Contact seems to cater more towards traditional small businesses while Convertkit targets bloggers and influencers.
Here are links to their popular Facebook community groups:
2. Features and Functionality
Automation
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers a visual email builder to create sign-up forms, surveys, and autoresponders. You can trigger automatic emails based on user actions or schedules. For example, you can set up a welcome series to onboard new subscribers or a birthday discount to reward loyal customers.
The platform’s automation tool allows you to create segments and send targeted content to those groups. However, the sequences are limited to only one follow-up email per action.
Convertkit
Convertkit specializes in advanced automation based on tags, allowing for complex multi-step sequences. You can create messages tailored to subscriber engagement with options to send emails manually or based on delays, dates, tags, and landing page visits.
This makes it easy to create personalized lifecycle funnels with targeted content for each subscriber segment. Convertkit also offers if/then logic, split testing, and integration with webinars. Their sequencing capabilities are extremely robust.
Winner: Convertkit
With its intuitive builder, expansive tag-based segmentation, and flexible conditional logic, Convertkit is the winner of this Convertkit Constant Contact comparison. The ability to create multi-layered sequences targeted to subscriber actions gives Convertkit the edge. This automation functionality works perfectly for the core customer base of online content creators.
Email Templates
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers hundreds of professional, customizable email templates covering common business needs like promotions, newsletters, welcome campaigns, etc. You can browse by industry or theme and edit colors, fonts, and layouts directly within the editor.
While the email and landing page templates that look modern, the editing functionality is a bit limited compared to other platforms. You may need a developer for advanced changes. An image editor is included to create images up to 800×800 pixels.
Convertkit
Convertkit has a small library of about 30 responsive email templates focused specifically on conversion optimization for online creators. The email marketing tool has templates that are simple yet high-converting. You have flexibility over colors, fonts, and column structure during editing.
Convertkit also makes it easy to code your own HTML templates from scratch or upload pre-made template files. This is great for advanced customization, but some basic templates are missing for general businesses.
Winner: Tie
Both Constant Contact and Convertkit offer templates tailored to their target customers. Constant Contact has more options covering common business use cases while Convertkit provides a smaller set focused explicitly on converting subscribers.
For most basic email needs, Constant Contact’s selection is better, but Convertkit gives more coding control. We declare this category a tie since both fulfill the design needs of their respective audiences.
The winner will depend on your specific email goals and customization requirements. Online creators who want high conversions should lean towards Convertkit while traditional businesses may prefer Constant Contact’s wider selection.
Segmentation
Constant Contact
Constant Contact enables you to create segments based on user attributes like location, purchase history, activity, etc. You can supercharge your email marketing efforts by targeting groups with specific autoresponders and send them targeted content.
However, segmentation is primarily done using static lists which can require manual updating. Their automation tool does allow you to trigger sequences based on user actions like email opens. However, complex behavioral segmentation is lacking compared to other platforms.
Convertkit
Convertkit specializes in behavioral segmentation powered by tags that dynamically update groups based on real-time user activity. You simply create sequences, trigger automation, or send broadcasts filtered to certain tags.
This makes it easy to segment engaged subscribers from cold without list management. Convertkit also offers segmentation by custom fields, location, purchase history, etc. The integration with landing pages and webinars facilitates advanced segmentation not easily matched.
Winner: Convertkit
With its intuitive tag-based filtering and built-in integrations, Convertkit clearly beats out the competition in this Convertkit vs Constant Contact comparison.
It has easy and powerful subscriber segmentation and allows creators to segment their subscribers based on any action or trait for hyper-targeted, automated messaging without complex list management. This perfectly suits the needs of bloggers, coaches, and other digital content producers as their business scales.
Analytics
Constant Contact
Constant Contact provides basic email analytics like open, clickthrough, and bounce rates. You can view stats for individual campaigns or get a high-level overview of your account’s engagement over time.
For deeper analysis, you’d need to export data to Excel. Constant Contact also integrates with Google Analytics for website traffic analytics. However, their reporting lacks segmenting capabilities to analyze subgroup metrics.
Convertkit
Convertkit offers detailed real-time analytics with visual reports on opens, clicks, locations, delays, email client data, and more. You can easily compare stats across multiple email campaigns side-by-side.
Convertkit makes it simple to filter analytics by tags, custom fields, subscriber attributes, and other parameters to get a clear picture of how specific segments perform. This helps creators continually optimize and improve email performance over time.
Winner: Convertkit
With its intuitive tag-based filtering and segmentation capabilities, Convertkit provides superior email analytics for digital creators.
The ability to instantly pull comparative reports across different subscriber segments makes it easy to continually optimize your email strategy based on what content best resonates with your audience. Constant Contact simply lacks these granular insights needed for subscription business growth.
Unique Features
Constant Contact
Constant Contact stands out with its Facebook Ads Builder tool which facilitates running targeted Facebook ad campaigns directly within the platform. This simplifies social advertising for small businesses who may otherwise find Facebook Ads complex and intimidating.
Constant Contact also offers strong real-time calendar syncing with Google Calendar along with appointment reminders. This allows service businesses to manage appointments seamlessly.
Convertkit
Convertkit is designed specifically around boosting conversions for digital subscription businesses. Unique features like digital download delivery, behind-the-scenes webinar integration, and multi-product checkouts help bloggers and info-product creators easily monetize online courses and memberships alongside email.
Convertkit also offers built-in affiliate management capabilities allowing you to track referrals and pay affiliates. This entire monetization ecosystem tailored for online creators can’t be found in most other email platforms.
Winner: Convertkit
The winner here depends on your business model and needs. For service businesses that rely on appointments and want Facebook integration, Constant Contact has the upper hand.
However, Convertkit’s focus on helping digital creators sell online courses and memberships is unmatched making it uniquely positioned to help those users drive more revenue through email marketing. If you sell information products, Convertkit is specially built for you.
3. Ease of Use
Constant Contact
Constant Contact’s user interface is clean and intuitive. The dashboard provides clear insights into open rates, clicks, bounces, and subscriptions at a glance. Common email campaign tools like templates, images, segments, and reports are easily accessible in the sidebar menu navigation.
For beginners, Constant Contact offers thorough walkthroughs, webinars, and guides to get started. Creating basic emails only takes a few clicks. However, more advanced automation and segmentation involve too many complex menus which affect usability.
Convertkit
Everything in Convertkit is oriented around simplicity for creators. Their minimalist interface allows you to instantly create sequences, write broadcasts, and analyze stats without clutter. Convertkit’s intuitive tag-based builder makes it easy for beginners to start segmentation and automation without lists, forms, or complex conditional logic.
You don’t need tutorials to use Convertkit effectively. However, some desired templates for common business use cases are missing.
Winner: Convertkit
Convertkit and Constant Contact both have a lot to offer, but Convertkit wins for the best overall user experience that combines simplicity and smart functionality. Their intuitive interface and automation focused on content creators allow even absolute beginners to start email marketing faster than Constant Contact.
For bloggers and coaches, Convertkit’s ease of use is unparalleled. Improvement is still needed for more traditional business needs.
4. Email Deliverability
Constant Contact
Constant Contact has strong email deliverability rates due to its large sending infrastructure and dedicated IP addresses. They offer sender authentication, spam testing, and inbox placement tools to enhance deliverability. You can see up-to-date spam test scores right within your account.
Constant Contact also lets you compare the effectiveness of different “from” names and subject lines over time. Overall deliverability is reliable, but segmentation to improve engaged recipient rates takes more effort.
Convertkit
As an optimized platform purely for creator email marketing, Convertkit is designed to get emails delivered and opened consistently. They offer the ability to send “cold broadcast” emails to evaluate new subscribers before adding them to highly engaged sequences for excellent deliverability.
Tagging subscriber behavior also allows creators to filter out inactive users. For personalization, you can segment subscribers by name, location, tags, and any custom field for targeted messaging.
Winner: Convertkit
Convertkit wins when it comes to optimized email deliverability for digital subscription businesses. Tailored automation based on engagement levels and user attributes allows creators to provide subscribers with the right content through the right channels at the right time for impressive open and click-through rates industry-wide. Convertkit sets creators up for inbox success.
5. Customer Support and Community
Constant Contact
Constant Contact offers phone, email, and 24/7 chat support. They also provide an extensive self-service knowledge base with articles, webinars, and guides that cover common questions.
However, their community options are lacking compared to Convertkit. The only official user community is their small Facebook group with about 25,000 members.
Convertkit
Convertkit is focused heavily on serving creators directly both through strong support and community building. They offer email-based support including live chat for prompt responses.
Convertkit also provides a robust community hub hosting an engaged user forum, a certified consultants network, and exclusive events for subscribers. Their official Facebook group also has over 7,500 active members for discussion.
Winner: Convertkit
Convertkit edges out Constant Contact when it comes to customer support and community for creators. Convertkit’s forum and exclusive community events facilitate far more peer knowledge-sharing opportunities compared to Constant Contact. Connecting with fellow users for guidance can be invaluable when strategizing email marketing campaigns.
6. Integrations
Constant Contact
Constant Contact connects with popular third-party platforms like Facebook, WordPress, Eventbrite, SurveyMonkey, and others. This allows you to import contacts, sync event data, and view website analytics without leaving Constant Contact.
However, some key platforms for creators like membership sites and webinar software are missing. You may need to export subscriber data and re-import it between systems in those cases affecting your workflow.
Convertkit
Convertkit focuses specifically on deep integrations for digital subscription creators. Out-of-the-box, Convertkit seamlessly connects with platforms like WordPress, Zapier, Teachable, Kajabi, Podia, and others.
This allows creators to easily view course sales, sync membership content, deliver member-gated email sequences, and more in one place. Convertkit’s direct integrations eliminate major manual work reconciling disparate systems.
Winner: Convertkit
Convertkit is the winner for its ecosystem of integrations catered specifically to heal headaches for online course creators and digital subscription businesses.
Strategic partnerships eliminate major manual work, benefitting customers directly thanks to smoother tech stacks. Constant Contact has the basics covered but lacks top platforms relied on by its core creator audience.
7. Pricing
Constant Contact
Constant Contact’s free trial lets you send to 500 contacts. The Lite email plan is $12/month for up to 500 contacts with additional features like the marketing CRM, event management tools, and social marketing features.
The Standard plan is $35/month and comes with 3 users, pre-built automation, and contact segmentation features.
For $80/month, you get the Premium plan, which includes unlimited users, custom automation, custom segmentations, revenue reporting, and Google Ads Manager.
Core features are available in most paid plans beyond free trials. The lower-volume tiers can represent good value for smaller businesses. But costs rise sharply for unlimited plans compared to Mailchimp.
Convertkit
ConvertKit has a free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers, and three paid plans which are as follows:
- Creator Plan – $9/month with unlimited forms, landing pages, and broadcasts for up to 300 subscribers.
- Creator Pro Plan – $25/month for up to 300 subscribers. It comes with additional features to sell digital products and subscriptions, as well as audience tagging and segmentation tools.
Additional subscribers can be added for a per-subscriber rate. Features like landing pages, automation, and integrations are included at all plan levels.
ConvertKit pricing offers a generous free trial and transparent pricing without surprise fees. The platform is affordably priced for creators and small businesses, which simplifies the work of choosing email marketing software for your business.
Winner: Convertkit
Convertkit gets the pricing edge with their forever free offering perfect for new creators and digital entrepreneurs. No subscriber number caps paired with intuitive scaling capabilities also simplify growth without surprise fees. Convertkit’s pricing model reflects great value tailored for online businesses compared to Contact Contact’s rigid tiers.
8. Reviews and Reputation
Constant Contact
Constant Contact targets users of all levels. The company has positive reviews for ease of use from small business owners who need basic email marketing and event management. Users praise the straightforward editor and template options that make creating campaigns intuitive.
However, some reviews cite frustration with a lack of segmentation capabilities, integration with other tools, and advanced automation compared to modern competitors. Constant Contact works well but lacks growth functionality.
Convertkit
Convertkit is beloved by bloggers, authors, coaches, and other digital creators for facilitating subscription converted sales. Users consistently rate Convertkit as simple and effective in creating targeted sequences, landing pages, and broadcasts that convert at impressive rates.
Negative feedback is rare but some traditional businesses find certain useful templates missing. Overall though, Convertkit reputation is sterling in the creator community it serves.
Winner: Convertkit
Convertkit emerges as the winner when it comes to reviews and reputation with near-perfect scores from the creator community it serves. Positive word-of-mouth has fueled steady growth through referrals. While Constant Contact satisfies email basics for some businesses, digital entrepreneurs uniformly praise Convertkit’s industry-leading functionality catering to their conversion needs at scale.
9. FAQ’s
Constant Contact FAQs
- Does Constant Contact have free templates?
Yes, Constant Contact offers hundreds of free, professionally designed templates across multiple industries that you can customize for your brand. - Is Constant Contact GDPR compliant?
Yes, Constant Contact is GDPR compliant allowing customers to follow EU data protection regulations around personal data collection and processing consent. - Does Constant Contact integrate with WordPress?
Yes, Constant Contact offers a WordPress plugin to easily integrate your site for sign-up forms, campaign tracking, and contact management without leaving WordPress. - Does Constant Contact have an iPhone app?
Yes, Constant Contacts offers an iPhone app so you can manage your account, view analytics, and test sends from your mobile device.
Convertkit FAQs
- Does Convertkit offer webinars?
Yes, Convertkit has built-in webinar functionality allowing you to host webinars and use email sequences to maximize engagement before, during, and after your live events. - Can Convertkit handle international currencies?
Yes, Convertkit supports international payments and subscriptions using currencies like USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, and CAD. - Does Convertkit offer split testing?
Yes, Convertkit has robust split testing features to test subject lines, email content, and automation to continually optimize performance. - Can I reuse content from Convertkit if I switch platforms?
Yes, if you export your data from Convertkit, past campaign content and templates can be reimported into new email service providers.
Final Thoughts
Choose Constant Contact if…
Constant Contact is a great choice if you need an affordable, user-friendly email marketing platform for small business uses like promotional campaigns, newsletters, and basic automation.
It covers the basics well for service businesses, traditional brick-and-mortar, nonprofits, and more who aren’t selling complex digital products. If you just need a tool to create nice-looking emails without advanced segmentation, Constant Contact has you covered.
Take a look at my guide to Constant Contact alternatives if you’d like to read up on some other email marketing solutions.
Choose Convertkit if…
Convertkit stands out as the best-in-class tool for bloggers, authors, coaches, course creators, and other digital subscription businesses to grow through email.
With Convertkit’s incredibly intuitive broadcasts, sequences, tags, and automation, online entrepreneurs can create highly targeted, multi-layered funnels that convert subscribers into paying customers. For anyone selling online courses, memberships, or services to an engaged email list, Convertkit is purpose-built for you.
Either Constant Contact or Convertkit can serve as the ideal email marketing platform for businesses of all sizes. Choosing the right email marketing platform for your unique business needs is critical, so don’t hesitate to drop any questions below! I’m happy to provide personal advice to help you make the best decision for your goals and growth.