Mailchimp vs Constant Contact (2024 Comparison) – Forbes Advisor

Here’s a closer look into the similarities and differences between Mailchimp and Constant Contact.

Starting Price

Mailchimp’s entry-level paid plan is called “Essentials” and priced at $13 per month. It supports up to 50,000 contacts as well as 5,000 email sends per month. While Constant Contact’s base plan, which is known as “Lite” is slightly cheaper at $12 per month, it only accommodates up to 500 contacts and limits your email sends to 10 times the number of contacts you have.

Free Plan

Mailchimp allows you to get started with a Free plan, which may be all you need if you only have 500 or less contacts and are only looking for basic email capabilities. Constant Contact doesn’t have a free plan but you can try the software for free for 60 days to determine if you want to invest in a paid plan.

Ease of Use

Both Mailchimp and Constant Contact are user-friendly platforms and built so that anyone, even those with no coding or technical experience can create and send emails. They will walk you through the signup process and offer a number of resources to help you with questions or issues you may have.

Landing Pages

With Mailchimp’s landing page builder, you can design an unlimited number of landing pages and take your email campaigns to the next level. Through the multivariate and A/B testing feature, you’ll be able to optimize your pages and hopefully, increase conversions. Constant Contact also offers a landing page builder with a drag-and-drop editor. It allows you to drag and customize various blocks plus A/B test your pages.

Automations

The Classic Automations feature in Mailchimp gives you the option to send targeted emails that go out to your contacts at specific times or when certain actions are triggered. Constant Contact’s automations are a bit more advanced, especially if you invest in the highest-level plan. With this plan, you can automate follow-up emails to contacts who don’t open your initial email, abandoned cart reminders, birthday and holiday greetings and more.

Reporting and Analytics

Mailchimp uses AI to share robust insights about your email marketing efforts. It can make recommendations to increase your open rates and conversions. In addition, you’ll receive real-time stats so that you can pinpoint what’s working and what needs to be improved. Constant Contact’s reporting tools are a bit more basic as they solely focus on basic performance metrics, such as sends, open rates and bounce rates.

Templates

As long as you opt for Mailchimp’s Essentials plan or a higher-level plan, you can access more than 100 prebuilt templates. Constant Contact offers far more customizable templates and has a search bar so that you can find the templates that align with your particular email needs and preferences quickly.