iContact vs. Constant Contact: Which Is Best for e-Mail Marketing?

iContact vs. Constant Contact: Which Is Best for e-Mail Marketing?:

One of the easiest, cheapest, and most effective things a small business can do to boost its awareness, revenues, and customer loyalty is e-mail marketing—sharing news and information via e-newsletters, publicizing events and webinars, and offering special deals.

Making contact with your customers and prospects is key, hence the name of two of the top-ranked e-mail marketing tools—iContact and Constant Contact.

Which is best? As often is the case, it’s a matter of taste, feature preferences, and budget, and you’ll find pluses and minuses for each program.

For example, our expert reviewer felt iContact’s templates could use an upgrade, but found its social media integration and reporting features to be excellent.

Similarly, our expert reviewer found Constant Contact’s customization and customer service to be excellent, but found its pricing “higher than some of its competitors.” Indeed, a number of user reviewers complained about Constant Contact’s pricing being excessive as the number of e-mail recipients rose and for the fees charged for add-ons.

As our user reviews show, while there are disgruntled users who dislike certain aspects of a program or have had bad customer service experiences, most users are happy with iContact’s and Constant Contact’s ease of use and customer service.

Our expert reviewer noted that Constant Contact strives to provide friendly and helpful customer service, and user reviews bear testimony to the high degree of caring users felt they received.

With social media use on the rise, it is noteworthy that iContact and Constant Contact have integrated social media into their platforms, allowing users to post e-mails to Twitter, Facebook, and more.

Likewise, with mobile use growing, users may tilt towards a platform based on the support for particular handheld devices. iContact allows users to manage campaigns from more mobile platforms, including the iPhone, Android, and the iPad, while Constant Contact offers QuickView, a free app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Constant Contact’s pricing ranges from $15 for up to 500 subscribers to $150 for up to 25,000 subscribers. Beyond 25,000 users, pricing is provided by the company directly.

iContact is free for users with list sizes up to 500 subscribers and up to 2,000 total emails per month. Its fees start at $9.95 per month for up to 250 subscribers and range to $699 per month for 100,000 subscribers. Larger plans are also available, as well as premium services billed at an hourly rate.

iContact offers a 30-day free trial for all plans, and Constant Contact offers a 60-day free trial for up to 100 contacts

Bottom Line: Both iContact and Constant Contact have reputations for ease of use, good customer service, and reasonable pricing. They vary in quality of templates, customization capability, mobile support, and other feature comparisons. Both companies offer free trials, so try their interfaces, test their templates, and see which one best suits your needs, taste, and budget.