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If email marketing isn’t a part of your business, the number one question we ask you is: what are you waiting for?! Email marketing has become a must to keep your customers engaged and your business booming. As with most things tech-related, email marketing is growing exponentially, not just with the number of service providers out there but with the increasingly advanced tech features that are becoming the norm. There are SO many good ones to choose from (in fact, we review over 20 here!). But how do you even begin to weed them out? That’s where we come in. We’ve broken down the most popular email marketing service providers out there and given you recommendations on our Top three winners for Best Email Marketing Service provider. You’ll also find our “Best of” reviews helpful to choose the best email marketing software specific to the type of business you have and your needs.
Top Email Marketing Companies
Below you’ll find more details on features, pros, cons, and pricing plans for each provider. Or continue reading to learn more about email marketing service providers (EMSPs) in general, common features you should expect, industry terminology and more.
What Should Most Email Marketing Services Have in Common?
It’s important to know what email marketing companies have in common, so we can leave these criteria out of our pro and con lists below. In order to even stay in business, an EMSP needs to have relationships with the major ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) such as Comcast, Verizon, Juno, etc. If they didn’t, emails would get blacklisted and clients, unable to reach their customers, would not be happy. They all advertise as having the best “whitelisting” relationships with ISP’s, but the truth is – the arrangements are more or less the same. The important thing is that the email marketing provider have the support and staff necessary to maintain the relationships, analyze the SMTP send logs, etc.
Anti-Spam Policies
Along the same lines, an email marketing brand must have an anti-spam policy in place to keep many users from being blacklisted in the event that one user misbehaves. Constant Contact, Vertical Response, StreamSend, and iContact and the rest of the lot typically take the same anti-spam measures. Common anti-spam measures, in accordance with CAN-SPAM (an official anti-spam policy), are the requirements to include a postal address, unsubscribe option, information on how the recipient joined the list in each email newsletter, and not using false or misleading headers and subject lines.
A Note on Newsletter Archiving and SEO
Many service providers, such as Constant Contact, offer a free or paid service that will archive your organization’s old email newsletters on their website. This is not always ideal for you, from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) point of view. Your email newsletter contains valuable content relevant to your business that could be indexed by search engines. If the content is archived/hosted on the EMSP’s servers, however, you won’t get credit for it, and may miss out on valuable website traffic. Look to either archive your old newsletters on your own website, or find a way to copy/paste the archive from their service over to yours.
Best Entry Level EMSP’s
From our research, Benchmark, Get Response, Campaigner, Mail Chimp, Stream Send, Vertical Response, Constant Contact, iContact and Active Campaign provide the best entry-level opportunities for small businesses. These services offer a good balance of pricing (low-cost per month per subscriber and email send count), reliability, flexibility (email template design and management) and reporting (bounce, unsubscribe, spam reports, etc.). In addition, they all provide online support communities where users can interact with other users, share their opinions on the service, as well as get support from administrators and extensive knowledge bases.
GetResponse Review
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GetResponse is our winner for best email marketing service. Their user-friendly interface and email intelligence makes GetResponse one of the easiest programs to jump into and get emailing in no time, and they have more than 350,000 customers to prove it. GetResponse actively helps you improve your campaigns to better reach and connect with your audience every step of the way. Other no cost perks include: online surveys, inbox preview, autoresponder and social networking integration. And, they get high marks for customer service, which goes a long way in our book. Monthly pricing starts at $15/month for 1,000 subscribers (our readers have access to a 10% discount if they use the links above). You get a lot of bang for your buck with their monthly accounts – more than most other email marketing service providers. What are their limitations? Advanced list segmentation and html-based email customization.
Get Response offers a 30-Day Free Trial.
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Read our full review of GetResponse
Coupon Code
Our readers have exclusive access to 10% off of GetResponse (you must use the link to the left to get this offer)! You can discuss this discount and others on our dedicated GetResponse coupon page.Campaigner Review
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Campaigner is our #2 choice for best email marketing service. Campaigner has an entry price at $19.95 for up to 1,000 subscribers. This paired with a 30-day free trial will likely be just what most small businesses need to get rolling. They also have one of the best reputations for customer service, offering around the clock, 24/7 support. Boasting more than 800 email templates, they have one of the largest libraries of creatives to help you make a unique impact on your customers. Lastly, they include 50mb CDN media/image hosting, A/B testing, social media integration and autoresponder at no additional cost. The only real negatives would be if you plan to do any online surveys, this will cost you more with Campaigner than some which include it in the monthly email cost but the tradeoffs may still make it worth your while. A unique feature offered by Campaigner is the Template Builder, which is easy to use. If you don’t like the editor you can upload your own design.
Try a 30-day free trial of Campaigner.
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Read our full review of Campaigner
Coupon Codes
Campaigner occassionally has seasonal coupon codes, visit our dedicated Campaigner coupon page.iContact Review
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iContact remains our third choice for best email marketing service provider this year. iContact offers very competitive pricing plans for their basic services (starting at $14/month for 500 subscribers) with a wide array of features. Their premier services, however, seem to be their best-selling point. With i Contact premier you get a dedicated account manager to focus on your email design, campaign and analytics, but it’s unclear how much this will cost you — you have to contact them for pricing. How reliable are they? Read the pros and cons to find out how iContact compares to others.
iContact also offers a free trial account.
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Read our full review of iContact
Coupon Code
iContact occassionally has seasonal coupon codes, visit our dedicated iContact coupon page.Our “Best of” Email Marketing Reviews
Now that you have an idea of what EMSP’s can offer you and our picks for the overall best three EMSPs, we’re going to dig a little more deeply into this industry so you can find the email marketing provider that fits the unique needs of your business or organization. Click on one of the links below to go to a “Best of” review you’re interested in.
- Best for Small Businesses & Nonprofits: Benchmark
- Best for Large Companies: Pinpointe
- Best for Ecommerce: SendinBlue
- Best Overall Value: Mailigen
- Best Free Plan: MailChimp
Email Marketing Service Comparison Table
To help you sort through the email marketing madness, we’ve created an email marketing comparison table that highlights the main features of each EMSP (Email Marketing Service Provider), along with their pros and cons.
Due to the large size of our EMSP comparison table, we are putting it on a separate page so you can reference it more easily. Please visit our Email Marketing Services Comparison Table (or click on the image at left) for pricing and feature details of the EMSP’s we review in this article. We’ll continue adding EMSP’s to the table as we gather data, and update existing ones as they add and support new features.
Best for Small Businesses & Nonprofits: Benchmark Review
A solid and progressive email marketing provider, Benchmark has stepped up its competitive edge with their Free Plan for Life, which gives you up to 2,000 contacts per month with many standard and advanced features that other service providers don’t offer for free. On top of that, Benchmark offers free surveys, polls and event marketing, as well as the option of having a private IP address ($28.95 per month) and a dedicated server ($199 one-time set up fee) for large volume senders. The majority of providers don’t even offer these extended features. What we really like is that they genuinely care about their customers’ concerns, and this is showcased by their in-dash feedback forum where you can voice your concerns without ever navigating away from the page. Benchmark pricing starts at $11.95 per month for 600 emails, and they give nonprofit 501(3)(c) organizations a 25% discount on all services. Click here to get started with their Free Plan for Life.
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Read our full review of Benchmark
Best For Large Companies: Pinpointe Review
Pinpointe touts itself as “Email Marketing for Power Users,” a cloud-based, advanced service geared toward B2B (business to business) email marketers and larger volume senders. They deliver all the features advanced email marketers want and their automation is one of the best we’ve seen. Including sub-accounts for universities and larger companies (in the Enterprise version), surveys, advanced reports including click heat maps, easy to use campaign builders and trigger and drip campaigns with flexible and dynamic segmentation. While some of the more sophisticated services can get overwhelming, Pinpointe offers a surprisingly easy, intuitive interface, and users rave about their knowledgeable and responsive customer service. Pinpointe’s pricing scale is clearly geared toward power users. Their lowest monthly plan listed online starts at $49 per month for 5,000 contacts, but you do get a 10% discount if you pre-pay for 6 months or more. They also offer pay as you go pricing and a 15-day free trial period (no credit card required).
Try Pinpointe’s 15-day free trial.
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Best For Ecommerce: SendinBlue Review
Originally designed for online merchants, SendinBlue is a relative newcomer to the email marketing software world. But they’ve made great strides (20,000 global customers), considering they’ve only been in business since September of 2012. Their approach combines email marketing campaigns, transactional emails and SMS (text) mobile messaging to best meet their users’ needs, and many of their best features are geared to the customer sales process. There are some substantial missing features, but there’s been a lot of buzz about SendinBlue recently, so we think they’re worth trying out. And you can do so for free! One of their most attractive features is their free forever plan that includes 9,000 emails per month (unlimited contacts). But while the number of emails is high, note you can only send 300 per day (so if your list is more than 300 might want to consider other services). Pricing starts at an amazing $7.37 for 40,000 emails per month, and they also offer a pay as you go plan, which starts at $27 for 5,000 email credits. Learn more in our interview with CMO, Amalia Bercot.
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Best Overall Value: Mailigen Review
Mailigen is a great option for beginners and experts alike due to its effortless customizations and wide array of features that make crafting a unique marketing strategy fun and effective. There are a few shortcomings, however, like limited stock images and template selections. All things considered, Mailigen is a fantastic option loaded with features that make for a solid product. Pricing starts at $10/month for up to 500 subscribers and $20 for 1,000 email credits (used like postage stamps). They offer discounts for 6 and 12 month pre-pay accounts and 25% off for nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations.
Try Mailigen’s 30-day free trial.
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Best Free Plan: MailChimp Review
MailChimp is one of the more popular choices for email marketing software, largely because they offer the best free plan compared to all other services. And it’s an impressive plan – you get 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, free forever. They offer a simple and fun interface and have a lot of features for beginners and budget conscious users. MailChimp has a mid-sized business plan for $10 per month and an enterprise-level Pro plan that has some sophisticated advanced features, but you’ll pay for these features (starting at $199 per month).
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Read our full review of MailChimp
Other Email Marketing Services Reviews
To jump straight to an in-depth review of an email marketing provider you’re interested in, click on one below:
Active Campaign | AWeber | BigHip | Boomerang | Campaign Monitor | Constant Contact | Contactology | ConvertKit | Emma | ExactTarget by Salesforce | FireDrum | FreshMail | Google Groups | GraphicMail | INinbox | JangoMail | Mad Mimi | Omnistar Mailer | SharpSpring Email+ | SharperEmail | Streamsend | Vertical Response
ActiveCampaign Review
Although not widely considered one of the big players in the email marketing service provider world (yet!), ActiveCampaign is certainly giving them a run for their money. They have one of the slickest and most intuitive interfaces out there, and all the features you’ll need, whether you’re a novice or a pro. In addition they have fully built-in CRM sales and automation, a ton of apps and integrations and full API. But there are a few drawbacks that keep them from rising to the top — if you need to do affiliate marketing, for example, look elsewhere. It’s strictly not allowed with ActiveCampaign. Still, this service brings a wow factor with its ease of use and affordable pricing, which starts at just $9 per month for 500 contacts and unlimited sends. They do offer 15% off all annual pre-pay accounts and 20% off for nonprofit organizations 501(c)(3).
ActiveCampaign has a 14-day free trial.
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AWeber Review
What began as an autoresponder service is now a full-fledged email marketing provider – one of the more popular ones out there. And they recently acquired Omnistar, another popular email marketing provider, so AWeber continues its growth as one of the major players in this space. AWeber prices themselves competitively, and is a strong contender in the email marketing battle. Their basic plan starts at $19 per month or $194 annually for up to 500 subscribers and an unlimited number of emails – and you get a lot of standard features with that price. What’s missing? AWeber isn’t as up to date on social media integrations and tracking as other top services, and their lack of assimilation with Google Analytics and other standard complimentary products could turn some away. One cool feature is its broadcast archive, which optimizes the newsletter archiving process by turning newsletters into easy to use web pages for your visitors.
Check out AWeber’s 30-day free trial.
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Read our full review of AWeber
Coupon Code
AWeber offers three months free to non-profits and 25% off after that. Students get 20% off. Click here to take advantage of AWeber coupons!BigHip Review
BigHip email marketing is no longer in business. We couldn’t find any information online about what happened to them.
Boomerang Review
Boomerang is no longer an email marketing service. Since our review in 2015, the company has morphed into a paid service to enhance Gmail capabilities through adding email sending and receiving settings.
Campaign Monitor Review
Campaign Monitor is an email marketing software built specifically with graphic designers in mind, but their drag and drop editor is easy to use for beginners. This interface is very pleasing to the eye and allows for multiple account management. Campaign Monitor has most of the basics you’ll need to run successful email marketing campaigns, but if you’re looking for seriously advanced features, you may need to look elsewhere. Prices start at $9 for 2,500 emails or $29 for unlimited emails — both rates are for up to 500 subscribers. They also offer a 15% discount for nonprofits.
Campaign Monitor has a free trial if you’re sending to five people or less.
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Read our full review of Campaign Monitor
Constant Contact Review
Constant Contact is one of the oldest email marketing companies around – they’ve been in business since 1996. Although perhaps the most well-known EMSP, ConstantContact has some pretty substantial limitations compared to many other services, depending on what you’re looking for. Constant Contact covers the basics, but more advanced features like split A/B testing and trigger-based messaging are absent. Pricing starts at $20 per month for 500 subscribers and unlimited sends. But, they charge for additional services that many other EMSPs include in their monthly pricing.
Follow this link to receive 60 days free.
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Read our full review of Constant Contact
Contactology Review
j2 Global, Inc., a global provider of Internet services which owns Campaigner email marketing service provider, acquired Contactology in July 2014. Contactology’s website is still functional but leads you to Campaigner’s services. For more details, read our full review of Campaigner, our #2 pick for best email marketing software.
ConvertKit Review
It’s difficult for us to review ConvertKit because unlike other companies, this one doesn’t display all of its features. What do we know? ConvertKit was built for bloggers, podcasters, service-based business owners, and YouTubers. We’re unsure if ConvertKit offers surveys, autoresponders, image hosting, and other common features customers have come to want. If you’ve had experience with ConvertKit, please share with us what you liked and disliked in the comments below.
Emma Review
Emma boasts over 45,000 customers and they’re growing fast, having made Inc 500/5000 four times. Emma emphasizes the service end of email marketing and it shows in rave reviews of their customer service. Their drag and drop email editor is easy to use and they offer full image integration from Facebook and Flickr, which could mean the world to a small business looking for free image hosting. With prices starting at $89 per month for 10,000 subscribers, Emma is significantly more expensive than some other services, but as you work up the pricing scale the prices become much more competitive.
Emma has a 14-day free trial.
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ExactTarget by Salesforce Marketing Cloud Review
ExactTarget has been around since 2000 and tags themselves as the future of marketing. While claiming to be from “humble” beginnings, this company now operates one of the more dominant email marketing and comprehensive marketing solutions on the market today. Unfortunately, this growth into big business has created somewhat of an intimidating appearance for many smaller businesses seeking these services. But, if you are looking for a comprehensive marketing integration tool to put everything in one place and makes it easy to analyze all of your online marketing efforts, Exact Target may be perfect for you.
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Read our full review of ExactTarget
FireDrum Review
FireDrum offers a multitude of email marketing and automation services, from DIY (best for freelance to small businesses) to plans for marketing agencies and large companies. When you search their website, it can be overwhelming, because they have a wide variety of plans and services they offer for each plan. The DIY plan starts at a free forever level, but it’s limited (only 100 subscribers and 500 emails per month), but their paid pricing levels are very competitive and include all the basic features you’ll need to get your email marketing up and running. What’s great about FireDrum is the a la carte services they offer if you don’t have time to take on the details, i.e. list assistance, HTML programming, campaign management, etc. All charge a fee, of course, but it’s a great option to have.
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FreshMail Review
FreshMail, based in the UK, is a new addition to our annual reviews, and we’re highly impressed with what we’ve seen. They have a good free plan, but there are some limitations (can’t rebrand your emails, limited inbox testing). But what’s really impressive is FreshMail’s paid plan that is extremely affordable compared to similar EMSPs. You get a number of advanced features with an intuitive interface that makes the process simple and fun. The downside of Fresh Mail? Since they’re based in the UK, their phone support hours are extremely limited. But we’ve seen some excellent reviews about the high quality of their customer service. FreshMail offers a 10% discount on their monthly paid plan if you pre-pay for 6 months and 15% for 12 months. Pay-as-you-go rates start at $30 for 5,000 emails.
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Google Groups Review
In 2013, Google rolled out a new Google Groups for Business platform but the focus is no longer email marketing. Today, this is a tool for improving online collaboration between team members, groups and communities who frequently interact in digital discussions. This product been removed from this article to make room for true competitors in this space.
GraphicMail Review
After more than a decade of providing email marketing services, GraphicMail has rebranded as SharpSpring Mail. See our review of SharpSpring Mail below.
INinbox Review
INinbox is another email marketing provider that offers a generous free forever plan — one that even rivals MailChimp (in the numbers of contacts and emails you can send each month). Their paid plans are among the lowest prices we’ve seen. But once you dig deeper into what INinbox has to offer, what you get for that free plan (and even their paid plans) isn’t quite as enticing — unless you only need basic email marketing. There are a lot of features lacking with INinbox that other providers have offered for years, i.e. social media marketing and RSS feed integration being the most notable. And since IN-inbox is based in the Netherlands, customer support hours are limited for those of us in the U.S. (although we couldn’t find anything other than an email form online for customer support). But if you don’t need much support and are only looking for basic email marketing service, INinbox’s free plan and prices are unbeatable.
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JangoMail Review
JangoMail began in 1998 as an elegant solution to a complicated problem. How to pull data from multiple servers (some local, some halfway around the world) and assemble it into a single mass email? That feature is JangoMail’s unique claim to fame, although it incorporates many other features, including foreign language support, in-depth personalization options and fully customizable RSS to email conversion. For all of Jango Mail’s incredible feature options, it comes with a price. They are one of the more pricey services out there and probably better for larger businesses or marketing agencies (they offer pretty extensive agency features, including multiple-users). And they base their pricing on number of emails sent per month, rather than the standard number of contacts per month, so depending on your business needs you can end up spending a lot more than you would with their competitors. Pricing starts at $90 per month for up to 18,000 emails.
JangoMail has a 30-day free trial.
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Mad Mimi Review
Mad Mimi doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the top guns when it comes to email marketing providers. But in Mad Mimi’s case, that’s okay. Sometimes less is more if you don’t want to wade through features you won’t use. Geared toward a simpler approach, Mad Mimi offers what most small businesses need with a very affordable price tag. Their standard features are solid, with the exception of split A/B testing and template selection variety. Yet they also provide a decent selection of apps/integrations, social sharing and a robust API, so they aren’t falling behind the technology times. MadMimi offers a modest free plan of 100 subscribers and unlimited emails sent, and their pricing starts at $10 for 500 subscribers.
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Omnistar Mailer Review
Omnistar Mailer had been acquired by AWeber, a competing email marketing service provider that’s growing in popularity and becoming a contender as one of the top services. Omnistar got its start in 1999 in the real estate industry and became popular for its excellent autoresponder features. You can still access Omnistar Mailer through its original website for the time being, but all the links on that site drive you directly to AWeber. Check out AWeber to see how they compare to other services.
SharperEmail Review
SharperEmail offers a clean and streamlined product with a number of pros and cons. Their lack of social media integration and several other features that are pretty standard these days shows that they are behind the times, but they offer a good product that is affordable on most budgets. Their pay-as-you-go pricing starts at $9.50 for 1,000 emails, so they are among the most affordable services. And they offer nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations 5,000 free emails per month and 15% off additional services.
SharperEmail offers a 30-day free trial.
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SharpSpring Review
GraphicMail has morphed into SharpSpring Mail+, a new EMSP enterprise that falls under parent company SharpSpring, a young but popular marketing automation software solution that has received excellent reviews from its users so far. SharpSpring Mail+ is a major step forward from GraphicMail in the way they approach email marketing. What’s exciting is their behavior-driven features, which bring together personalized emails, autoresponders, analytics and more so you can drill down to each customer’s specific activities (translation: you can target them in the areas in which they engage the most). Other EMSPs offer this feature as well, but customer behavior seems to be SharpSpring’s main area of focus. Still, they are so new that we haven’t been able to find much consumer feedback online, so check back with us for future updates!
SharpSpring Mail+ offers a 15-day free trial.
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StreamSend Review
A power player for several years in the email marketing world, StreamSend offers a number of features and professional services. And they include many of these features in their standard pricing, where their competitors charge an added fee. This is a huge plus for smaller and budget-conscious businesses. But there are a few areas where StreamSend is falling a bit behind their peers – no unlimited email pricing options, no mobile apps, and very limited software integration capability. If your organization doesn’t need these features, then StreamSend remains one of the best out there.
Try StreamSend out for free for 30 days.
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Read our full review of StreamSend
Vertical Response Review
Vertical Response has been in business since 2001, and they’ve come a long way – especially with some excellent new features launched in the last couple of years: a free plan that has a surprising bang (for no bucks!), the addition of an autoresponder (free for a limited time), and a new API and developer program that gives small businesses even more marketing tools to expand their reach. And, if you are a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), you can apply for a free credit program.
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Read our full review of Vertical Response
How to Change Email Marketing Service Providers?
So let’s say you’ve decided you want to switch to another provider, such as from iContact to Constant Contact, or the other way around. How painful will the transition process be? Fortunately, any good email marketing provider should allow you to export your subscriber list. You can then import the subscriber list into your new email marketing provider. That’s the easy part. You should also consider how you will move your newsletter archives so you do not lose this valuable content you have created over the years. The more difficult part, depending on how your website is set up, will be replacing all the sign-up boxes you have scattered over the Web to gather sign-ups for your newsletter.
Content Management Systems (CMS) Make Transitioning Easier
If you’re using a back-end driven, dynamically generated site such as a CMS (Content Management System – i.e. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal) and you have a “block” or “snippet” for your newsletter sign-up box, you should be able to make one update and have it update across your website instantaneously. If you have more than one website, you’ll need to make this update for each website.
The last thing you’ll want to copy over is the design templates you use for your newsletters. Typically you’ll have access to the HTML for these, so copying these over shouldn’t be all too difficult in most services, as most email marketing service providers provide flexible template editing options.
Which Will You Select?
So now that you are informed about many popular email marketing companies and all they have to offer, you can select one that will meet your business’ needs. Email marketing is a great way to drive sales and stay top of mind with your consumers, so it’s a worthwhile service to invest the time and resources (learn more in our Introduction to Email Marketing article). We reviewed quite a few companies, but if for some reason the email marketing brand you’re looking for wasn’t reviewed, check the comments below where you’ll find that many of our visitors are posting their own reviews and opinions. We also do regular audits to ensure all info provided is as up to date as possible. Lastly, you can also subscribe to this article’s feed to stay up to date on the latest.
Who do you use for your email marketing needs? What do you like/dislike about them?
Leave a Reply
381 Comments on "Email Marketing Battle: GetResponse vs AWeber vs MailChimp vs Constant Contact vs Vertical Response vs iContact & More!"
I’d like to chime in on Convert Kit. I recently opened an account and am moving away from Constant Contact because of their total lack of customer service. Convert Kit actually has live people who answer your questions within 12 hours, they have been so helpful. Their website is super easy to navigate, yes they have autoresponders and all kinds of other awesome tools, their newsletter is quite plain, but I’m ok with that because the rest of their service is Excellent……..I would TOTALLY recommend Convert Kit
Great reviews! I can only imagine how much work you did! I’ve been in business for 27+ years and have 68,000 active emails + 156,000 bounces (ideas on a good email update service?!?) Currently, we use Interspire email marketer (software downloaded and installed on our own server), it hasn’t been upgraded in some time, we get a 3% open rate and there are some other issues. I’ve been looking / testing EMSPs… The problem is uploading my email addresses only to get kicked out of them for exceeding .1% spam thresholds. With SendGrid, for example we got a much better delivery, plus a 9% open rate… However, they write “we have seen many companies with similar business models as yours and the end result is many complaints along with very high bounce/block rates…” We were at .4% (4 in 1,000 spam complaints) GetResponse got a 27% open rate, but we busted their spam limit as well. To avoid getting kicked out of an EMSP, I’m thinking of finding an Interspire-like system, and revamping our lists and maintaining our own email in-house. Who would you recommend we look at for that? Thank you very much!!
I actually signed up 24 months deal with GetResponse in June 2016 after reading this article as it is listed as #1 and my experience with them were so unhappy and disappointed. I closed my account with them yesterday. Though I paid until June 2018, they would not refund what I paid in advance (for my case is 10 months), in addition, even you ask before closing your account, they will tell you that they will issue a refund ticket for the remaining months after close the account. It’s like money through black hole. Duplicated contacts in the database count towards your list limit, if you have already had contacts in your database, you take your contact loaded again, they would not take the new ones and added towards to your existing ones, you will get rejected, and being instructed to load the whole thing as another list, and count the duplicated ones as new contacts and charge you more. The service is bad too. If you want to try them, start with monthly pay, do not engage long-term contract. Good Luck and I hope your experience with GetResponse is a pleasure one if you go with them.
Invaluable post! I learned a lot from the information! Does someone know if I could possibly get a sample a form example to type on?
Anyone know any good services that allows gaming content? It’s really really hard to find and I’m in desperate need of a good reliable email marketing service.
Hi there! Great review. I was wondering if there is any email marketing service that allows you to turn on and off your account? For instance, I have a big email list (~7500 contacts) that I need to send out emails to, but I only need to send them twice a year. For this reason, it seems financially inefficient to subscribe to one of these monthly pay services when I won’t be using it for 10/12 months. Is there a service that has an ability to bill per email? Or one that I can ‘freeze’ for several months?
Thanks!
Hi Kelsey, Mailchimp has a “Pay as You Go” plan that would work great for you!
Any suggestions for very user-friendly SalesForce integrated email marketing program? Also do any help you test email rendering with different email clients ie Yahoo vs Gmail vs Outlook?
What an amazing post! My favorite is GetResponse. 🙂
We use SendingMail economical little slow but effective.
Friends, l have a newly established nonprofit organization. I am looking for lead and a mentor who knows a good email marketing company to contract with that would help us generate emails and send bulk emails that will not be regarded as spam. Please can anyone link to an email company you may have used and found to be good.
Hi Israel, have you read the article above? Take a look at our #1 pick, GetResponse.
Thank you Kimberly.
Yes, GetResponse is the best one for easy use & as well as they provide a 30 days free trail with all features enable. It helps in lot of way to get reach the targeted traffic.
Thanks
I agree- GetResponse is the best!
Thanks for a great article!
May I ask – the 10 % discount we get by using your link… Does that allow us for a 1 month free trial period first? How long is the discount? For the first month? A full year? Or as long as we are customers at GetResponse. If I sign up for a 500-plan and then move to a 2500-plan, will the 10% discount follow along?
Would appreciate your answer ASAP, Thank you!
Great article by the way! Very helpful.
Your Constant Contact review and data is woefully out of date. Most of the things you say are missing are actually part of the software. When did you do your research–2013?
Hi Lisa, can you be more specific about what you say is incorrect? We’d love to correct our article so it is 100% accurate. It’s great when readers like you bring this to our attention!
Hi Kimberly, sorry for the delay in responding–I have been out of town. I also apologize for being a little snarky! It was the 3rd review in a row I had read that was outdated.
Constant Contact has changed their program and pricing structure as of about 1 year ago. The email service, including an unlimited library storage and stock images, is $20/month. It includes inbox preview (and always has). Instead of charging separately for every added software, they now have a package that includes online surveys, Facebook promotions and events management beginning at $45/month. The autoresponder feature has improved dramatically in more ways than I can outline here.
There are several more things inaccurate in your article. I recommend you do the research yourself. Since every review I have read recently is outdated, I wonder if some people’s research is just reading others’ reviews.
Thank you Lisa! We will be sure to take a look at this article again soon and make the appropriate updates! Again, thank you for bringing this to our attention!
Great article. Thanks for the info. Does anyone know where I can find a blank Schedule A Form to fill out?
Thank you for sharing this long and complete guideline for email autoresponder. I’ve decided that I will probably choose GetResponse.
We use Constant Contact in my office. There is a Google Analytics feature.
Thank you Mary! We will update the article!
I’m not sure about MailChimp, I prefer Constant Contact and GetResponse. But with Constant Contact you can’t have multiple users on your account. If you’re not sure visit their websites and get more information.
I was considering Mailgen and SendinBlue for their free autoresponder feature. I am having second guesses after reading your great reviews. I am considering ReachMail now. You have a large list of reviews, would there be chance of you reviewing them anytime soon?
Looks like ReachMail is a completely free email marketing service. So if you’re interested in them I’d say give them a shot. You won’t be hurt financially by testing them out. We still stand by our #1 pick of GetResponse at the moment but perhaps in an upcoming audit we will look more in-depth at ReachMail and consider adding them to our comparison.
Awesome list! Thanks for putting this together. We’re in the process of switching EMSPs due to our need to reach customers via SMS. Surprised that very few of these companies offer this option.
Thank you for the great comparison above! I am confused, however, regarding how these different email marketing providers determine their prices. Based on experience (and in looking at the pricing structure on their websites) it seems to me that most of the services above charge per subscriber – meaning if you have several lists, and the same person (contact) is subscribed to ‘X’ number of lists, that one person or contact is counted ‘X’ number of times – which gets your total number of subscribers and the price you pay up quite a bit. I believe that Constant Contact is the only one I’ve come across that counts contacts instead of subscribers – so even if one person is subscribed to multiple lists, they are only counted once, which keeps the price down compared to the other services (should you be in that situation). I have used about 5 different email marketing services over the years, and Constant Contact is the only one that I’ve found is structured this way. Are you aware of this difference, and if so, are there any other companies that offer their payment structure based on total contacts rather than total subscribers?
As a side note, I’m very aware of the use segments, however, have found that for most email marketing platforms, people cannot choose (or subscribe to) a specific segment, which is a function I need. For this reason I like to have multiple lists with the same contact subscribed to several of those lists.
This is one of the best email marketing reviews, Alex/Kimberly congrats for the job.
If you are looking to expand it there are some nice solutions you have missed like: https://www.sendinblue.com, http://campayn.com and http://getdrip.com.
Thanks for the suggestions! We’ll consider adding them in our next update of the article. And thank you for reading. Glad this article could be helpful for you!
Kimberly Kurimski, so basically the top rated pay you the most affiliate commission?
No, that’s not how we choose our rankings at all. We conduct unbiased reviews. Our writers have nothing to do with our affiliates. I personally know nothing about them when I conduct my research. We test products/services, make anonymous phone calls, talk with customers and many other things to determine who our top rated companies are for our reviews. How much we make via our affiliate advertising has nothing to do with who our top rated is.
This is an excellent article! I appreciate the table comparison chart. I have been beta testing several of the apps and liked MailChimp best so far. It was easy to use, free, and allowed more emails per subscription campaign. Most of all it was easy to use. There is another robust tool, Send Pepper, I have not tried this one yet, but will be shortly. One of my partners uses it and has the autoresponder code, which I don’t see or know how to use yet with MailChimp that I need for webinar automation/WP tools.
Glad you found this article useful! Thank you for telling us about your experience with MailChimp and being a part of our community.
Campaigner DOES require a credit card for a free trial. No thanks.
Thanks for the update Kathy! We have corrected it in the article.
I’ve been using e-blasting dot com services for a while now. They give me excellent phone support. I’ve recently started using some of their automated features. Fair price for the level of support I get.
It’s good having so much information in one place. When you update the reviews, can you date them and also add whether or not the company offers responsive customizable templates?
Something I’ve noticed when signing up with certain company newsletters is that they start you off with the first newsletter. For example, let’s say it’s a series of newsletters about decorating your home and it starts out with a newsletter about painting. I think this would be very useful for many businesses. It would give them a chance to offer something that customers would want to sign up for, but wouldn’t require them to constantly be in front of the computer sending out separate newsletters.
When you’re approaching customers for their email address, there needs to be an incentive to get customers to sign up. Otherwise, why would they? After all, we all get tons of spam. Why would someone willingly sign up for spam? Whether it’s a discount code, informative series of emails, or other special perks, you will attract more flies with honey.
This is one reason ebooks came about. Businesses were looking for ways to attract new customers through email marketing and began offering ebooks that the target audience would find useful. For example, a company that revolved around cleaning products might have offered a free ebook on keeping your home organized and tidy. Not only did it give them a chance to promote their products within the book, but also attract more customers to their email list.
After reading this over, I think I have settled on GetResponse as my email marketing provider. The interesting thing is that they actually offer options I did not even consider before I was reading this article. I have been looking for an email marketing provider to take care of my newsletter and other email marketing needs and I was not totally sure of what I wanted until I read this article.
My goal was to get people more involved in the newsletter and email campaign in general. I have found that surveys are a great way to get the audience involved. While I do already have limited surveys on some of my sites, the idea that an email marketing service provider would provide that with the email service makes a lot more sense to me. The surveys on the sites do great, but using surveys in emails seems like it would a lot more effective since it goes directly to the audience rather than trying to get them to do it on the site. I also like some of the other services GetResponse provides, but the surveys tend to stand out the most for me at this moment.
Did you end up choosing Get Response? If so, are you happy with your choice? I am trying to decide and I’m leaning towards GR. Thanks!
It is not easy ton find an email marketing service that does everything you need it to. You only know if it is the want you want by trying it out or reading about it on sites like this. I know that I personally would never go with any kind of service provider based on their own ad campaign. I mean, I will listen to what they have to say about the services they provide, but I would never base my decision just on that. I prefer to go with a company that puts its money in the service or product rather than on marketing. That’s because once I pay for it, their marketing does not do anything for me.
To me, it says a lot about a company if they offer the first month for free. You get to try the service and play around with your email marketing campaign a bit before you make any decisions that are going to cost you any money. That tells me the company has faith in their product. They think you will like it enough to stick around and keep using it once the free service period is over. I realize this is a marketing tactic too, but at least the company is letting the product speak for itself.
First of all, I had no idea that these companies offered so many different services. I knew that you could use these companies to create and send out newsletters, but hadn’t considered surveys or any of the other services. As someone who is trying to grow her business, I know that this is a service that could greatly boost my success. My only problem is whether or not these companies offer more services than I need. I really don’t want to pay for services that I never use.
I have to say that I was overwhelmed by all the information. There was just so much I didn’t know about, such as being able to view how a newsletter will look across different email clients. There was just so much I hadn’t considered. However, I do feel that I have a better idea of what I do and do not need from such a service.
I look forward to viewing the email marketing comparison table to get a better idea of which company will work best for me. The information I share on my website is extremely time-sensitive so I will need a company that can handle a quick turnaround and get my newsletter to readers before the information is no longer useful.
As someone just starting to look into email marketing as one of the methods of reaching my audience, I found these reviews really helpful. The only problem is that there are so many companies to choose from. I also noticed that some of the comments show differing opinions involving ease of using the templates. I think this is probably a matter of ability as well as the program.
What I mean is, we tend to forget that not everyone is tech savvy and I think that many email marketing services tend to forget that as well. I personally am not all that tech savvy, so what is going to be easy for you to use is not going to be easy for me to use. I offer a great service, but I may not always know how to use the tools that I need to in order to market it.
For me, ease of use is the big deal. I want to be able to get my information out there without having an IT degree. I also need to have the option to use surveys. My service is very interactive and I value the opinions of my customers (as any business should). Other than that, I want to pay for what I am using, not what I might use.
I’ve been researching email providers for a while now. I am seeking ways to expand my online network in order to better serve my business needs. That includes keeping my customers informed and my readers interested. As such, I feel a great deal of frustration when I have to deal with poor service providers that are constantly losing information or not able to access it. I don’t want to spend any more time than I have to trying to track down documents and emails. Up until recently I have been content to use free email services, but I have gotten what I paid for.
Over the course of my research, Constant Contact has been a name that has appeared over and over with good reviews and somewhat decent pricing. I haven’t quite settled on a choice yet, but I have to give them some consideration in light of their popularity. But then, I also have to make sure that they have earned a solid reputation, so my opinion can’t be based just on the frequency of mention. I don’t want to get caught up in a successful promotional campaign that promotes a company that my not be worthy of the mentions they get.
The company where I work has been using Constant Contact for a couple of years and the design interface is frustrating and very difficult to manage.
If you are creating a completely new document every single time, it isn’t so bad. But if you have regular, recurring messages that you send to your customers, expect trouble and hair-pulling, curse-laden tirades. For instance, you can’t copy last year’s notice of your annual Labor Day party and update the date to use again this year. I mean, you can try, but the type and graphics will jump all over the place and the fonts will change color, size and alignment without warning or explanation. With the huge amount of time it takes to update an old notice with new information, you might as well start from scratch.
So I’m here shopping for another email service, but this website says that the Constant Contact templates and interface are easy to use, I’m here to say that from my personal experience, the templates and interface for Constant Contact are not easy to use.
I’m hoping someone here can tell me if the interface and graphic controls are better with any of the other services. And I’m secretly hoping that I’m not the only one having this problem with Constant Contact.
I’m looking for a provider that allows as much integrations as possible. I find that I am constantly jumping around through various email providers and social networking sites. I probably spend more time doing the jumping around than I actually get to spend doing the work I’m trying to promote. Working online is a great deal, but you really need to have the right tools to do it effectively. Otherwise, you’re essentially working for pennies.
I use around 6 social networking sites. For my social networking to be as effective as I need it be, I need to use those sites every day. That means I have to visit 6 sites a day and that’s before I ever even do any work. I’m not even social enough to appreciate the interaction. So, for me, being able to integrate my social networking with my email provider is something that is a must. If I’m going to pay for an email service rather than use a free one I don’t want to have to do everything manually. I want as much integration as possible and I don’t want to have to have a degree in technology to be able to use the service.
I’m a bit confused. I’ve thought about using email services to build my business. But when I think about it, I get this visual of all the junk mail I get in my snail mail. To me, those emails I get rank along the same lines. So maybe I’m just misunderstanding how these kind of marketing platforms work. They must be effective in some way or people wouldn’t keep using them. Or is this a whole different concept? I don’t want to spam anyone and to me that’s what this is all about.
When we talk about these kinds of providers, are we talking about a service that just regularly sends emails like newsletters to people who already subscribe? Or is this service supposed to build you a library of subscribers? If it does, how does it do that without spamming people? I can’t imagine that anyone just puts their name on a list to be sent tons of random emails.
I’m sure I’m missing something here. Maybe I just don’t get it. I’m totally willing to put money into my business, but I’m not willing to risk my reputation to take a slim chance that this kind of service will actually benefit my business in some way.
So many different companies to consider when choosing the right email marketing service to go with for my business. I just cannot decide but this article helps me narrow it down. I might try a few out with the free trials and see which one I like best. Thinking either iContact or GetResponse…but NOT Google… I tried that one before. It is seems too good to be true, it likely is and in this case, it definitely is. Don’t do it!
These email marketing services are designed to enhance existing marketing programs – not add to junk mail. So, these services allow you to set the time interval and contents of each and every newsletter you send. And the newsletters only go out to the people who have opted-in as subscribers to receive news from you, the marketer/company. In fact, many of these companies have very strict no-spam policies and actually help you create the most targeted newsletters possible for your audience to further optimize your marketing spend. We believe that one-to-one direct email marketing is one of the most cost effective tools any marketer could use to grow their business. Hope this helps!
I’m swinging back to looking at email marketing after being out of the loop since MS Outlook was in beta (not kidding).
It looks like I have the analysis tools I want without the hell my buddy went through with ConfusionSoft.
If anyone has good/bad experiences, I’m all ears.
TIA – Tcat
PS thanks for the great overview here on so many email service provider options.
Hi to all, The email newsletter content existing on this web page is truly awesome. StreamSend is my favorite. Keep up the good work fellows.
Conflicting Info – Please check:
1) Vertical Response (Table) – Newsletter Archiving = No
2) Vertical Response (Review) – Newsletter Archiving = Yes
Hi Andy,
Sorry for the confusion. Our bad. The table has been updated to reflect the correct information which is that yes, Vertical Response does offer an email newsletter service.
Thanks for your help and keep on rockin!
My company, Signal, offers a painless solution for email, mobile and social marketing. It’s free to try, so there’s nothing to lose!
Hello, I’m a co-founder of MailChimp, and your review popped up in my Google Alerts. Some things you reported about MailChimp aren’t correct. I know you probably just couldn’t find this info on our website. So I thought I’d provide some links to what you were looking for…
———–
MailChimp – Con’s
* It’s not quite as feature packed as some of its competitors.
Actually, we have more features than most in our segment:
http://www.mailchimp.com/features/
not to mention more integrations than most:
http://www.mailchimp.com/extras/
and an extremely thorough, well-documented and well-supported API:
http://www.mailchimp.com/api/
* For one, it doesn’t have the comprehensive reporting options some other email newsletter providers do.
We have a *lot* more reporting options than most.
our A/B testing reports (mailchimp.com/ab/) are patent-pending-yet-often-copied, we were the first to launch the one-click-inbox-inspector, we offer click heatmaps, worldmaps for opens, domain/ISP performance charts, and we even track tweets and re-tweets about your campaigns (mailchimp.com/twitter).
We were given beta access to the Google Analytics API, and are the only ESP listed at –
what reporting feature were you looking for?
* Importing of contact lists could be easier – the columns have to match up perfectly for the import to work.
Database columns really do need to match in order for data to be correct. I’m not aware of any email marketing service that would allow you to *not* perfectly match columns. If you’re importing columns that you don’t plan to use in MailChimp, you can skip them in our importing tool.
Additionally, you can just use other dB systems and import to MailChimp: Salesforce, Highrise, Batchbook, WuFoo, Formspring, Pearl CRM, and on and on.
* Importing templates based on existing website layouts would be a great add-on.
Actually, import-email-by-URL (and a ton of other email import options) are covered in this post:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/guide-to-all-the-email-template-options-in-mailchimp/
Grandma can even use Outlook to send a message to MailChimp, and we’ll convert it into a proper HTML email with inlined CSS and host her images (free) on our CDN.
* It takes some work to get your email template looking like you want it to.
If you’re not a coder, then yes, it’s going to take a little work. Unless you want to just use our template gallery, and plop in your content.
You can also try our automagic email designer, where we import design and content from your website:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/tag/automagic-email-designer/
or, if you’re a web developer, just code your own template then import it to MailChimp.
* Lack of campaign segmentation –
We have unbelievable segmentation options!
Because we integrate with so many e-commerce carts, you can segment by purchase activity:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/target-emails-by-purchase-activity/
Segment by ZIP code proximity:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/segment-your-list-by-zip-code/
You can even segment by subscriber activity and engagement level:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/segmenting-your-email-campaign-based-on-subscriber-engagement/
* …each time you mail a different campaign to the same list you need to start over. At the time of this writing campaign segmentations were not saved.
Mailing a different campaign to the same list is actually easy. Just replicate your last campaign. It’s true that we don’t store your list segments under the “Lists” tab like others might, but when you replicate campaigns, the segments are replicated too.
A comprehensive, unbiased ESP review is sorely needed, and if you guys can post a review that’s accurate and thorough, it would be extremely useful. You’re off to a great start here, but I think you should go back and revise some of the information on MailChimp.
Regards,
Ben C.
I’ve been looking at MailChimp, iContact, Vertical Response and Benchmark. There are a lot of comparison charts out there and sometimes MailChimp is near the top and sometimes near the bottom. This is very confusing. One reviewer says your templates are easy to use, the next says they are not.
One of the reasons you seem to end up near the bottom is no phone support and chat and email are only available during certain hours. Maybe you should consider a pay per phone call service for emergencies. It seems to be hurting your rankings. I also have a question. We want to get moving quickly. and don’t have time to testdrive every single service we are considering.
If we have an outside agency — perhaps one of your experts — design a custom html template using your service, and say we decide MailChimp isn’t for us later, can we reuse that template in another service or is it sunk work/cost? I know you wouldn’t want us to switch, but being able to easily switch is one of our business requirements. Hopefully MailChimp would be so great we wouldn’t want to.
Am familiar with MailChimp and used it with another company. This small business I work for now is a manufacturer sales rep company for several manufacturers and the business revolves around using ACT. Does anyone know EXPERIENTIALLY how well ACT works with MailChimp? What about using the e-mail marketing service associated with ACT? Is that more limited?
I’ve also been looking at VistaPrint, as the company uses them for business cards and VistaPrint has an e-mail marketing resource. I am looking for working with what I know/very simple integration of brand image across website, e-mail campaigns and working with ACT.
Anyone help on this?
This article just popped up when I asked for a comparison. Helped me greatly in making a decision. Great work 🙂
What an amazingly thorough review of the big names in email marketing. You should consider doing a review of SnapRetail. If you haven’t heard of Snap, it is an online marketing solution specific to the retail marketing and offers some truly unique product features, like ready-to-use content and a drag-and-drop planning calendar. (disclosure: this commenter works for SnapRetail)
Does anyone know anything about bluehornet.com?
Mail chimp may have a great service but not being able to get in touch with them is a huge problem. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix a problem and was so frustrated. I am looking for another service to try.
Customer Service and connection is important.
I’ve been using e-blasting and they are great over the phone. They even gave me some marketing ideas to use for my next mailing. I had signed up for a trial account first, so it’s worth a shot. Hope that helps.
Hi Judy,
You might consider SnapRetail. It’s an email marketing solution that provides you with a dedicated marketing consultant with your subscription. Customer service and support is a top priority.
Horrible experience with Vertical Response, site worked great but exceptionally poor customer service. I would not recommend this company to anyone. Try any of the others on the list.
I found the info helpful but was disappointed to see that affiliate links are being used on recommendations. Yes, I finally found your compensation policy but that is below the fold and not fully disclosed at the beginning of the post.
This was awesome information as I was tasked to research these tools in addition to event management software. What I found is that only about three of the products listed have an event management component: Constant Contact, Vertical Response and Boomerang. Emma claims to integrate with Eventbrite, but not much detail is offered. May be worth an additional 2 lines on the matrix for others with similar needs…
Thanks again for the info – really cut down my leg word…errr key strokes? 😉
My business has a number of different niche market estores. We’ve been amazingly lax in not getting this done but we’re starting to get it. I’d like to be able to keep a masterlist of all customers who have bought from one of the stores in our group (we have over 100,000 names) and I’d also be able to get at the names on a “per store” basis. Our largest individual store has over 35,000 names; our newest store just went live in April and is just getting started and only has a handful so far. Average is probably about 10,000 names. Do any of the providers reviewed have this capability? (I know Constant Contact does not because they, in a profound example of customer service, suggested I open 11 separate accounts – at a substantial cost differential compared to a single list.) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Tim,
Excellent question. I believe some of the providers we’ve reviewed do offer multiple list management within one account, the question is can you search all of them as well as each list individually. We’re currently researching this to get you details on who offers this and to what extent.
Off the top of my head I’m not sure the answer to your question. I’m working on updating this article this week and will keep an eye out for that sort of information. It’s also possible that Alex, the article’s original author, might have info for you in the short term. I’ll make sure he sees your question.
It’s shameful you’re passing these reviews off as having been done in 2013. You’re painfully misinforming the public about current capabilities of various services. Just looking at the very first review for AWeber I know that these “con” claims are totally incorrect. All of these functions exist at AWeber.
From your review:
No image hosting – AWeber does not host your images for you. That means you’ll either need access to a hosting provider (such as the one powering your website), or an image hosting service such as Photobucket or Imageshack, in order to host (upload and save) your newsletter images.
No Social Media Integration with any of the networks. Not even Facebook.
No HTML editor – while you can’t import your website look and feel into your email newsletter template directly, you can copy and paste the source into the editor as a workaround.
At time of writing, you can’t auto-remove duplicates from your email lists, you’ll need to do this manually.
Hi Chris,
Every company on this list was carefully audited and reviewed in preparation for updating this article earlier this month, so it is indeed accurate as of April 2013. You are correct that aWeber does not offer limited social media integration with Facebook and Twitter which we have updated in our article. Thanks for the heads up. However, the other items that you mentioned are still true so far as we can tell from everything we read on aWeber’s website and conversations we have had with user. For example, while they do have more than 100 HTML email template designs, they do not allow for you to edit the html to more customize the look (with the exception of a simple color change or addition of logo). Further, we see no reference to any image hosting or ability to auto-remove duplicates in list management.
If you know otherwise please advise – we would be happy to update with any corrections that you or anyone provides. As you know, technology sometimes moves faster than we possibly can but we do our best to stay on top of things. It might take us a little time, but I promise we’re working on it.
Thanks for reading and providing feedback. We welcome reader feedback to keep us honest and current but also appreciate your understanding that we are only human 😉 Thanks!
Amazing post. That is exactly what we had been trying to find. My partner and I liked your time and effort. Your own write-up is incredibly a good choice for me personally. I’ll absolutely revisit your internet site for much more.
AWeber charges you for duplicates on email lists AND charges for unsubscribes, too. They are very sneaky – it’s not listed anywhere. You have to manually remove all the unsubscribes every single month. Also it is hard to import a list. For a major player like AWeber, this is ridiculous.
I think the above is totally wrong. What about Emailvision? Not only are they a superb email marketing service, they also provide marketing analytics and predictive recommendations. Who else is doing that and as well? How can you go wrong with solid email marketing, their Customer Intelligence platform where you can send targeted emails segmented by purchase history (etc.) ensuring to send relevant emails and their predictive recommendations for your ecommerce site. Far supersedes what everyone else is doing I must say!
I was wondering what the status was for adding the review / add next section to your comparison table? I love what you’ve done and how you’ve presented the information thus far. Hoping to see Bronto: Caters primarily to the high end market; specializing in email newsletters for e-commerce (No monthly option available – annual only), Benchmark, MyEmma, Boomerang, JangoMail, Big Hip, and mUrgent (a full service outfit). And many more will be reviewed soon! Thank you so much for your extraordinary help!
The promised new services will be added in Spring 2013 along with a complete update on this review. Stay tuned and sorry for the delay.
YourMailingListProvider has worked great for some of my smaller clients, easy-to-use, all the features we needed, great support and from what I could tell, great deliverability.
Worth a look, if you are a small business and need good pricing without compromising or skimping. Plus I’d say it’s the easiest one I’ve tried… although MailChimp was very quick to learn as well.
YMLP is awesome. Just recently they made you pay an international transaction fee!!
HonestMail is the lowest price full featured email marketing service provider on the planet and the first built on Amazon’s ground breaking email technology. You will see a detailed price and feature comparison to all of the major email service providers on our site.
Darren Spencer, CEO at HonestMail.net
Stay away from iContact if you have a large subscriber list. Inexperienced sales staff who doesn’t deliver on what they promise to make the sale and won’t work with you on your list as promised. Do. Not. Use.
I was just about to move forward with signing up for iContact until I stumbled upon your comment. I have a mid-sized list, about 4,000 emails. Could you expand on your experience with iContact? Just curious what promises were not kept.
Do you all think that email marketing is as important as it used to be? Seems like all anyone ever talks about anymore is social media this and Facebook that… just want to make sure I am spending my very limited marketing dollars in the right place. Any tips?
Great question. I personally feel that email marketing is still extremely important, maybe even more important than it was before social media. Yes, social media is proving to be a great way to communicate to customers. However, email marketing is still the only way to make sure that your message goes directly to the user that you want it to. With social media, you cannot guarantee that the people you want the message to go to will see it. It could be a day where they did not get online and there are still plenty of people who do not access their social media accounts on a regular basis. With email marketing, you know that your message will get to the persons email inbox. They might not see it right away, but it is there and I feel like there is a better chance of the user reading it. I would be curious if anybody else has conflicting views?
Thanks for your service. It is very helpful and very useful too to read all the opinions. I have two suggestions. (1) Could you include a date of your review in the matrix? (2) If possible, it would be nice to know if pay-as-you-go is an option for those of us who mail less frequently. Thanks
Thank you for your feedback. We have added the last update date in bold at the top of the best email marketing matrix page and the last update date for the table was September 20, 2012. We will have to do some digging for more info on pay as you go but will leave a comment here when we find the answer. Thanks!
All of the email marketing companies we have reviewed here are “pay as you go” in that they do not require you to sign a contract. So, it is month-to-month for one flat fee per month unless you change the services you use. However, in most cases, if you skip a month, you may have to start over from scratch with new template designs, mailing list upload, etc. each time if you take a month off not to mention that your customers are much less likely to open an email from you if they have not heard from you in more than 45 days or so. Hope this helps!
Many people are into social media for marketing, but this really isn’t the only way to keep in contact with your audience, and it’s also not the only way to gain new customers. I actually think of the woman behind the whole “Hungry Girl,” franchise when I discuss these things.
I mean she has literally built an empire on designing low calorie recipe swaps for the types of foods you enjoy at restaurants and comfort foods that you usually can’t eat on a diet. She has been sending out this stylish, well copy written newsletter for at least 7 years that I know of. That’s when I first signed up for it, and I still get it today.
I’ve taken some of her recommendations and tried some of her foods. I have always been in shape, but I want to maintain it my whole life. Now also, I want to also lose about 5 to 10 pounds of baby weight, or maybe just somewhere around 7 pounds. I made sure that the newsletter stopped going to my junk folder and that I started reading it again several months ago. She built a whole business on her website and newsletter.
I first used Constant Contact about three or four years ago when I started collecting emails from my customers at my small business that specialized in catering to parents. It seems like this generation of parents are the first real full generation of individuals that are fully engrossed in the email technology and they use it for so many different applications you literally cannot put a number on the possible uses for it.
When I amassed about three or four hundred emails, I decided to get more organized with my email marketing efforts. Constant Contact was one of the first service providers that I came across for doing what I wanted to do. I obtained a free trial and simply took off from there.
Almost overnight, my emails went from looking hokey and amateurish to very professional and it seemed to get better and better every week. It provided me all the tools I needed to develop a list of customers and see what they responded to in order to streamline my efforts and get more efficient with each email.
Just to share my experience:
I used to use mailchimp but I’ve found Market Mailer to be much much cheaper. Personally I prefer their email marketing system as well – their editor just seems more intuitive.
I agree market mailer has the edge at the moment. But they are new on the scene and pretty small as a business. So they can afford to have efficient customer service, etc. At the moment they are offering ridiculous undercuts, and they’ve obviously put in a lot of cash and work for their editor which is as good as any I’ve seen. Judging by their prices I would guess they are looking to undercut the market. Whether it will stay that way is anybodies guess. But for now I’m sticking to MM while they’re in that sweet spot of development. bang tidy.
My small business went the email marketing and newsletter route through our web provider, who put us on MailChimp. Because our business was still relatively small and our network was not incredibly well-developed yet, we had few enough members for MailChimp to be free.
Embedding the email archives on our website is one of the best features of the plan, since it allows our users to look up information that was sent out in earlier mailers, and we have a file of all the campaigns we sent out. Unlimited image hosting is another perk for our business, since we can upload everything we need right through the service.
The winning part of the service that helped us the most was the Google Analytics integration. Using this tool, we were able to see which campaigns were the most helpful and most popular as far as bringing in web traffic (and thus, ultimately, new customers). Through the work that we put into it, we now have a much larger network and business is growing. And although we now have to pay for email service because we have too many contacts, we still opted to stay with MailChimp.
Thank you for telling us about Google Groups. I had no idea this service even existed, and it’s free?! Well, at least it’s free right now. I actually did the Constant Contact free trial, but really did not have much of a list to market to at the time; I just wanted to see if the system would work for me after I completed my whole marketing campaign.
I wanted a free option, but could not find one. Google Groups probably was not available at that time though, so this is great. I’m so glad that I stumbled onto this post because I am a small business. I only have a small opt in list. I hope it grows, but to be honest, that might take a few years. This is only my side business. I have a real world job, and not a lot of money to invest in my business, so this is going to just work so much better for me.
The only thing that is a little bit challenging is the fact that everyone must have a Google account. So many people do these days that it might be workable though.
Trying to decide between MailChimp and Constant Contact. Does anyone have any experience or recos to share on which one if the best for email newsletters?
Thanks for all the great info on email marketing newsletters and also for the price comparisons paired with features. This can help me choose the best email newsletter for me.
For small to medium sized businesses that are looking at launching email marketing campaigns, selecting the right service to get themselves started is crucial. Often times, these companies are either borrowing a budget from some other location or starting completely from scratch and require the campaign to ultimately pay for itself. For this reason, business owners often default to the best deal they can get and take the lowest number they can find. This ranking of email marketing services shows that thinking, as it usually is, is fatally flawed.
No matter how good the service is or how effective it can be, it will not make any difference whatsoever if the end user does not know how to make the most of it. This is where customer service and support comes in as perhaps the single most valuable component when measuring these providers against one another. A more simplistic service that provides a free manner of learning how to use it will be far more valuable in the short term to a small business owner that is just getting started. Spend the extra money on the people in the know, it just works.
2nd place for iContact?
I guess you have not tried their email customization. It has a major flaw that other providers don’t have: in the email they correctly insert the first name of the recipient (e.g. “Dear Mary”), but when Mary clicks on the link that says “click here to view email as a web page” they can’t do the customization, they insert “John” for everyone, so Mary sees “Dear John”.
As a business owner marketing online, one of the most valuable investments you can make is choosing an email service provider. This is basically a service that can help you to put all of your email marketing, subscriber acquisition and follow up on automatic pilot. It is truly a very powerful service and great way to harness the power of technology.
This article attempts to make this decision much easier for you. There are a number of individual company reviews that give you an excellent overview of the email marketing service provider climate. Lest you think that these will all be glowing reviews just aimed at driving you to their individual sales page, no! There are positives and negatives listed, as well as what types of services they offer.
The best way to use this article is to start with the terminology. Learning this will give you a better handle on things. You will then be more familiar with how powerful these services are. Then, identify which features are the most important for you and your business.
I have to say, I was kind of shocked to find out that Constant Contact was not your top choice. I guess, I’ve seen them around for so long that they seem like the authority to me. When they first came out, I did do a trial offer and I found the system easy to use. But I was not very business savvy at the time and did not really have a list. I bought a list, but We all know that good lists are usually organically grown, not bought.
It seems like GetResponse is a solid modern choice since it integrates social networking and such. The autoresponder is a given, but I think being able to conduct surveys is a really nice option.
I have to say that I never heard of iContact or Campaigner before now and they both even outranked Constant Contact. With icontact, the custom html and design features are a great plus. In fact, I kind of wondered why Constant Contact did not have it at the time I did their free trial. Campaigner is also worth a try at such a bargain. Whenever I see $10 for something, I always take a second look.
Anyone who is or has been considering using an email marketing service provider understands that this is a decision which should be made only after some very careful consideration. This article takes a very serious look at several of the top programs in this field and offers a lot of helpful information.
Personally, I found the comparison table to be quite helpful. Anything like this that is large enough to require its own separate page means that there is a lot of information to be had if used properly. Not only does it include all of the pricing and features data which you would expect, but the author also clearly seems to be committed to regular updates.
Another thing which really makes this article a cut above the rest is the fact that much of the reasoning for what is included in the tables and the reviews are explained in very clear language. To me, this was very helpful. Knowing that all of the providers have certain things in common makes it that much easier to focus on the differences and helps make comparisons quicker and simpler.
Get Response web templates don’t work with Internet Explorer. Really?
Campaigner botched the sign up and their templates look quite different in the set up than they do when you actually mail them.
Two strikeouts out of the “Top 3 2012 Winners”
Hi, We are sorry you had this negative experience with our recommendations. We have tested the Campaigner sign-up form and it worked fine on our end and actually did it from multiple ISPs, browsers and emails with no problems at all. So, maybe it was a fluke but either way, we certainly do apologize for this inconvenience.
As for Get Response, this is the first we have heard of this incompatibility with IE and their templates so we have followed up with them directly and are conducting our own research through third parties for more information on this and will report back/update our article with any updates. Thanks for letting us know – our user feedback means a lot to us.
Hi!
I love your comparison chart and reviews of the email marketing systems/products. I am considering EasyWebAutomation.com. I’ve heard that it is great for auto responders and having the shopping cart (which I eventually will need)all in one. Have you reviewed it or compared it to MailChimp and the other products? I’m new to all of this and would like to set myself up with the system/program that will serve me best without having to migrate my list in a year.
Thanks,
Rebecca
I used to be the marketing manager for a small furniture retailer that made good use of promotional email and the internet in general as a marketing tool. Constant Contact was the service we subscribed to for our email services and from my experience, it was a very useful tool and we were able to achieve some pretty impressive results in both the collection of email address and also the success of our campaigns.
I found the interface to be pretty simplistic, almost too much so, but it did allow for all the editing and manipulation of the content that I needed to make things both functional and aesthetically pleasing. There were some limitations in what we could do design-wise, but ultimately the value of the program came in the data we were able to retrieve from it in terms of measuring our success and finding out more about our core group of customers.
If you are not already, sign up for a free trial of one of these services and start communicating with your customers right away!
The first impression that I get from this information is that the author is really trying to help and simply give some good advice. It seems as if the writer(s) actually care about their audience and want to protect them from making any kind of mistake. I love the idea of including a list of terms to keep people from being confused or intimidated into a provider who may not really be the best choice for their business or situation.
The various categories are also very helpful. The author has taken the time to actually review each company on the basis of whether they would be a good entry level provider. It seems that they certainly really understand their audience and want to answer their common questions.
Yet, they do not stop there. If you are already using a provider, then you may be interested in switching to someone else. They include a number of helpful tips to make this transition easier and less painful. For example, using a content management system can help. They also point out that many users have added comments and other information about providers which have not been specifically reviewed.
Since someone who is new to the world of email marketing may not understand all of the jargon used it is a nice touch for this site to include a list of terminology used. The definitions and explanations offered are all given in plain English, so even a newcomer will be able to clearly understand everything going on here.
I also liked the fact that they provided a good explanation for the way they choose to organize this information. By explaining the fact that they have left off most of the common features that each provider offers make things a lot clearer. It also goes a long way towards adding to their credibility and honesty. For example, when the author says that all of these providers basically have the same types of relationships with the major ISP’s this shows that they care more for you. It also helps to clear up some confusion, since many providers advertise the fact that they have the best relationships.
The advice about archiving and SEO is also really good. I would imagine most folks have never thought about the implications of archiving their old newsletters and emails on the provider site.
This is a great email newsletter comparison review! Thanks for helping us choose, trying out iContact as it looks to suit our needs best!
Many people who are looking for a good email marketing service provider could certainly use some help in answering this question. There seems to be an ever expanding number of potential choices. Combine this together with the fact that not all of these companies actually even offer the same services and it can quickly result in either confusion, information overload or both!
The article actually provides both rankings and fairly detailed profiles on each individual provider. This makes it real easy to determine which are the most important factors and features for your situation and then simply choose the best options.
Of course, there are a number of other sites that give some good information and a few details. One of the things which really separate this from the pack is the fact that they actually give some solid pros and cons for each of the companies. In some cases, knowing the limitations of a provider are even more important, and that is definitely something you will get here.
This would be an excellent review to recommend for anyone looking. If you are truly serious about finding an email marketing service provider, than this is the place to look.
I enjoyed reading this article since I am currently looking for an email service provider for my business. There is certainly a lot of information given here. I especially like the fact that there is a rather in depth review of each individual company, rather than just a 10 word blurb about why each company is so great.
Would very much like to see your upcoming review of MyEmma to see how it stacks up in this category of email marketing.
Please review Graphic Mail. They seem to be more robust than any of the email marketing providers you have reviewed to date.
I am the guy who was writing about using Constant Contact before, and I forgot to go into what the weaknesses were. As I said before, I felt the program overall worked very well for what we needed to do. However, there were definitely things that were not great about working with it and could have handled some serious improvements. Nothing is perfect as the saying goes, and I am sure some of these issues were addressed in past updates. It has been a couple of years since I had to delve into the nuts and bolts of it, but in general I am sure the user experience is relatively the same.
So, first things first, Constant Contact had some pretty limited style options. You had the option of starting from scratch or building off of a pre fabricated template. The templates had some nice design elements to them and were very serviceable, but there just were not very many of them. I feared that other Constant Contact users would have similar looking emails and our brand’s value would be lessened. I would have liked to see more variety to the templates, they really were time savers and they did look quite professional for the most part.
The other issue I had was with the interface itself. It was simplistic and relatively intuitive to work with, but in working with other programs, such as Photoshop and other types of applications, it would have a hard time communicating with them and made relatively simple tasks take longer than they really should have. I frequently would use the most basic program, MS Paint, to do simple image editing tasks, and moving images from Paint to the clipboard and then to the browser where I had Constant Contact open was a total nightmare sometimes.
Those two things were tough to deal with at times, but they were also largely workable. The thing that bothered me the most though, was trying to make changes to an almost finalized email design and having very minor adjustments result in large-scale disaster to the entire lay out. I have had this problem with my resume’ on Microsoft Word as well, but you make things so finely tuned, that even the slightest adjustment can send things completely out of whack and it can take hours if not days to figure out what really went wrong. With the timing of emails so important, it could lead to some pretty tight deadlines coming up and having a finicky program messing you up.
So, like I said, it is completely possible that these things have improved dramatically since I last worked with Constant Contact, but I think that a significant part of their target market are people who are looking for the lowest price they can find for that type of service, their budgets dictate it. So they purposely offer a stripped down email service program that can do what it needs to and work respectably.
Glad to see that Constant Contact is not in your top 3 – they suck! I have tried to use them in the past but they always screw everything up. I think I will try GetResponse and see how it goes… I’ll be back with a review of this email company soon.
I used to be the marketing director of a relatively small furniture retailer some years ago and I actually used Constant Contact quite extensively as a marketing tool. It was something the owner of the business had invested in prior to my joining the company and had utilized to stay in touch with their customers. They had been collecting email addresses from everyone who visited their store or their website and done some small prize giveaways and done some campaigns to advertise seasonal sales.
One thing they had done a really good job of was collecting email addresses. Small businesses often overlook the possibilities that having direct contact with their customers present. It is understandable, often small business owners are focused on a million other things at once and this seemingly small task is backburnered pretty easily. These people did a much better job and it was simply by making it easy for people to sign up. They had paper slips in the lobby of their store and a computer at the front desk where people could enter their information to win prizes and so forth.
The emails they had been sending were a little rough looking though. I took over the design and list organization duties of making the system go. I found Constant Contact to be a pretty capable program, with its strengths and weaknesses of course, and we had some great success in putting together very professional looking and productive email campaigns.
On the positive side for Constant Contact, I found the overall interface pretty simple and easy to understand. Moving from function to function and preparing the layout of the resulting email was not terribly difficult and the simplistic design of the Constant Contact website meant that you were not waiting for the pages to load too long in between refreshes.
Subscribing to the Constant Contact web service was also relatively inexpensive considering the volume of exposure you can achieve. We would set certain goals for all of the marketing investments we made in terms of return on investment and overall traffic generated. Constant Contact was one of the only things we did that never, ever did not return its cost and then some in revenue.
It also provided some great data in the form of feedback about individual campaigns. You could track how many emails were sent, how many were sent to spam folders, how many were actually opened, and even where people clicked on the email indicating interest in certain products and services. It was extremely valuable data to have so that we could tweak future emails to work more efficiently. One thing we found was that the timing of campaigns and when people get the email was crucial to getting the email opened. We never would have known that without the feedback.
All in all, I had a positive experience with it and I would recommend it to somebody else for their business.
Has anyone tried SendSmith? I just registered a free account and have managed to send out a test EDM… the reporting seems pretty good but has anyone used it for a long time? Any comments?
Please review Imnica. A relatively new service, with a “too good to be true” looking price range.
Thanks for the tip. We will look into Imnica and add it when the research is complete if they distribute wide enough for consideration by the masses.
Thank you for the review.
As someone who has been using ezines, as a subscriber and then created my own back in 1998, of course, there is no such thing as a perfect service. Especially for the price that most small business owners are seeking.
I remember using one-group and egroup, the predecessors to YahooGroups as well as Topica. You had very few options — discussion group or broadcast, and everyone marveled about their abilities. 🙂
There are also hosting companies that offer an ecommerce solution that some of my clients have used. And if your hosting company offers either Fantastico or QuickInstall (they’d be in your online control pannel), you can quickly add very basic programs (a good way to start) like DADA, PHPList, and a few others.
The problem with ESPs (email service providers) is that as soon as you start using them, you realize that you’d like to do “x” or “y”. You can suggest those changes to the company of course, but some are quicker to add features than others.
And as one of your commentors mentioned, getting your list from the company may be a difficult thing. However, you need to research and make sure that YOU can download your list, and all the information you’re compiling weekly so that you don’t lose such valuable real estate. Why weekly? In some cases (read the fine print) if someone complains that you are a spammer, even though you are of course not, they will close your account and YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING you spent your time building.
Customer service is a big key to using the program you use. There is nothing worse than having a problem and NOT getting an answer on time, or getting an answer at all.
For most, ease of use is very important, too.
Besides the online systems mentioned, there are many other oldies and goodies out there that people may want to try — simpler programs. And there are program you may want to purchase (own) if your hosting company allows you to do that. (Some do, some don’t, and some have very specific rules on how many emails can go out an hour, or at all in one time)
We’ve come very far with the options offered, and I’m sure things will look different 5 years from now. I look forward to watching the changes.
Here are some recommendations of which vendors to use: (1 = bad; 10 = best)
Cheetahmail = 9
Responys = 10
Exacttarget = 7
Vertical Response = 3
Mail Chimp = 5
Silverpop = 8
E-dialog = 6
It isn’t good idea to compare Responsys or Exacttarget with MailChimp. It’s totally different products.
This was a good review but I think the answer is different for everyone based on your company/subscribers/marketing strategy.
I have 7,000 subscribers and use Constant Contact. They are a little expensive but compare very well when you start getting bigger numbers of subscribers.
That said, I think the entire email marketing landscape will change once UserFox comes out. They are going to use smart triggers to send out emails.
I hope you will post this! This is about iContact’s outrageous behavior.
They did not answer my emails with bugs for a long period. I canceled my subscription and requested that they send me my email list. They didn’t. Now, 4 months after canceling my subscription, they bill me, for nothing! My account is closed and canceled after all. This is outrageous!
Stay away from this site! You will lose a lot of money with them as I did, and unfortunately until my bank solves this problem, I am still loosing money (doing nothing!)!!!
Apparently they don’t think it is necessary to reply either….
Hi eArt,
We are a tech community who reviews Email Service Providers (ESPs) but we do not represent iContact directly so we cannot reply to this complaint. If you or any of our readers have feedback that can help us form better reviews and opinions for the community, please submit them. In fact, we welcome them! But, if you wish for a response from the service provider company, you should contact them directly for resolution. We wish you well and keep us posted on your tech software ventures.
This is a great in-depth review with tons of information and details, but for those of us that don’t have the time to read through all this – could you please just tell us what you consider to be, say, the top 3 email marketing service providers? That would be fantastic and would save me a ton of research time. I think highly of you guys so will most likely trust whatever your opinion is.
Just something to think about – would sure make some of our lives easier. Thanks web rockers!
Great idea! Our researchers are working away to put together their recommendation of top three email service providers to better serve the needs of you, our readers. Hope to have it up by the end of May so check back soon.
I have exported my database clients (that I have had for years!!) to iContact and sent one email to my clients. Result: all of the Yahoo emails do not receive my emails, and I need to resubmit them. The status is pending confirmation to be more exact, and this applies to half of my client list (many thousands …).
I have sent email to my Yahoo clients, like iContact asked me to and I verified what happened: few answered and some emails I have tested went straight to spam (iContact said this was because my newsletters contained limited text).
After that – anything I have asked iContact about I receive no support for! But the money I’ve paid them has been entered in their accounts for many months and still there’s no answer to my request to let me use my Yahoo emails.
I have sent an email to iContact asking them to send me at least my database saved in their platform and they haven’t yet answered! This is no way to treat a client who puts thousands of USD ($) in your pocket!
I will post this non-stop until iContact understands that this is not a way to treat a client who is trying to resolve his needs calmly when they simply don’t care!
Constant Contact is a complete joke. They are by far the most expensive email service out there. What exactly are we paying so much money for? More advertising for them? We had been with CC for 5 years and finally decided to switch to a new mail provider because we couldn’t justify the monthly charges.
I like EmailDirect… they offer more hands on support and advanced features but don’t cost too much like Exact Target, Silver Pop and those companies…
I love the update you’ve done to your email comparison article! And the comparison table makes it so much easier to view the pricing at a glance. The only problem I face now is that there’s so many darn ESP’s to choose from.
It seems like there hasn’t been much chatter about Vertical Response recently, but from what I’ve read elsewhere they’re still a pretty solid choice overall.
I’m contemplating using a service called Jibbio (jibbio.com). It has not only an ESP, but also online scheduling (with Paypal connection), Form generation, and 3 or 4 other services all for a flat $20/month with unlimited email subscribers. Sounds too good to be true. Is it?
I’ve heard good things about everyone that uses Infusionsoft to send email. It looks like there’s a lot more to it too.
…Infusionsoft is the whole car.
I’ve been with Constant Contact for four years and tried to upload an email list from one of our other storefront websites and provided with a complete list showing that these people have received and reviewed other emails from our website and had to sign into the website in order to have an email sent to them. They said that they would not send the email blast to these people and have put them on a Do Not Mail List – so we can’t even add them in the future even though we have started a relationship with them – they told me the only way they can get future email blasts from us is by going into the Constant Contact Website and specifically opting in.
So in essence we are losing about 25% of our customer base if we continue to use them. If you don’t want to have the same problems. DON’T use Constant Contact – I have learned my lesson – also there templates are not very user friendly. Thanks to this website I will be looking at iContact or one of the other services. Hopefully, all of their marketing efforts will be for naught as people begin moving away from them to other better options.
A respectful organization had a very similar experience with Constant Contact and also left them to not lose a portion of their mailing list. The move took hours upon hours of time. Constant Contact is a poor quality company to many.
Do not use Vertical Response. They are a rip off and will not send out emails to addresses on your list. Once you upload the list, they will find a reason to make it invalid and tell you your list is bad. You ask for a refund and will not see one for over a month if any at all.
So please do not use Vertical Response unless you want to get ripped off. Also a sales person named Christopher Li is not helpful and has no idea what customer service is about.
I have used Vertical Response for many years and on several different companies. I have been happy with the service and never experience the issues that ‘web rocker’ mentions. Just thought I’d let everyone know there is another side to the coin.
Any update on the pricing table you guys were going to add that includes an “at a glance” comparison of all these email marketing service providers and their pricing, main features, usability issues, etc.?
We’re proud to announce that our email marketing service provider comparison table is now ready, and we’ve updated the article above with the latest improvements and features ESP’s have recently released. You can see the table on our email marketing service providers comparison table page.
I completely agree with most of the comments here: Constant Contact sucks. Yet, there they are, taking over the world with their money and their marketing. I work with nonprofit organizations and most of them are using Constant Contact. Hate it. I’ve got at least five different opt-ins running right now. Couldn’t do that w/ CC.
I’ve been using iContact for almost three years now with nary a complaint. Oh there have been rare instances of delayed sending. But I have never once contacted their customer service department and not gotten immediate and satisfactory help. Takes some time to navigate – don’t they all?
Thanks for putting all the pros and cons out there in detail.
I have experience with using iContact as well and I have to say that overall I was very pleased with their service…that is until I ran across aweber. That isn’t to say that there is anything wong with the iContact service, I never had an issue with them at all, I just found aweber much easier to control and maintain than iContact.
When you wonder which ESP to use, I’d use this formula:
* Don’t use iContact or Constant Contact.
* Use Mailchimp if you need free and have less than 2,000 active subscribers.
* Use Aweber or GetResponse if you want really minimalist, text-only emails, in a cheap and unremarkable but usable interface.
* Use Bronto or Contactology if you want specific integrations with CRM or your own software.
* Contactology or CakeMail if you are white-labeling email service.
* Use MailChimp or Contactology for API integrations, MailChimp on the Free <2000 subscriber end, Contactology on the Paying for Enterprise Edition (lots of email).
* MyEmma if you are a cat or require a picture of a woman’s face on your interface. Actually, just get a free CakeMail account, and upload the myemma graphic or your own woman’s face.
Just tried to call to ask a few questions before trying them out. Office are closed on a Saturday. Deal breaker.
Agreed. I find that if I can’t contact someone from any software or resource company during “off hours” or over the weekend or even holidays that I am more reluctant to utilize their services. As a small business owner I don’t often get “breaks” or days off and emergency situations do not know the bounds of a working day. For this reason I always try to go with a company that has the same type of availability that I offer to my clients, if I’m not here to answer a question, someone else is and that is how it should be in the service industry.
I have been using Constant Contact for years and was just dropped, my account closed without warning, due to ‘illicit pornographic content.’ As I use my account for my business, this does not actually apply to me and although I called customer service they just shrugged and said there was nothing they could do for me, the ‘system’ had closed my account based on a violation of company policy.
I have been super patient with the terrible templates and once a day email spam from CC for several years, but this is just crappy customer service taken to a whole new level.
I know that there are plenty of other options to consider, and there are a lot of people on here who have given both of these companies bad reviews. But for a non-profit organization looking to just get a start, which would you consider the better deal? We have social media accounts in Twitter and Facebook, and are expanding our e-mail list.
Your facts about Constant Contact are incorrect. They still offer a trial sign up for free — 60 days for up to 100 subscribers. I wasn’t sure so I called their offices today (January 17, 2012) to confirm. Also, I have been using Constant Contact for many years. I haven’t experienced a price increase for many years. And, you didn’t mention that Constant Contact fully exploits social media opportunities more than any other ESP. There is no question in my mind that Constant Contact provides the most value for the money.
I have tried Constant Contact and MailChimp for my restaurants. Constant Contact was too complicated and cluttered. MailChimp was fun and cool, but it was like rocket science and way too many features. I have very limited time and just want to quickly create and send my emails.
For all of you needing an easy & uncomplicated email marketing software, I suggest you try RedCappi. I started using RedCappi about 2 months ago and it’s very easy to use. Interface is as simple as you can get, and the email creator is Drag & Drop and always in preview mode, so you see exactly what you are creating while doing it.
I have been reading many sources. First time to hear of this service. After using it for two months, any more information on them compared to Aweber, Mailchimp, GetResponse, and Benchmark. Did you decide about the pros and cons on this service. What did you find? I would love to hear more about this one from someone using it. Thanks.
I don’t even know where to begin. Bombarded with Constant Contact junk mail daily (approx 5 per day), clunky convoluted hard-to-use software, the website will kick you out with no notice and won’t let you log back in, and the worst thing about Constant Contact is their LACK OF SUPPORT WHEN YOU NEED IT!!! When you’re on a tight deadline, and their website fails, when you have moments to make that critical change for your client, Constant Contact sends you to voice mail and tells you to leave a message and they’ll call you back later.
WHEN MOMENTS COUNT, CONSTANT CONTACT SENDS YOU TO VOICE MAIL!!! IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WORK DAY NO LESS!!!
AAAGGGHHHH! This has happened to me far too many times. I am currently waiting as I write this review for them to call me, so I can get back into my account that I was kicked out of for no reason!!!
My client is waiting, and I’m stuck writing this review because I chose to use Constant Contact. Thanks a lot CC! You could qualify for government work!!!!
BKS
They DO suck. Their customer support is horrible, long wait times, no one knows what they are doing, expect customers to be able to work with HTML (so what do we need them for?), program is filled with errors and weird things that make it user unfriendly, have no sense of urgency (after all, these are time sensitive email blasts, no?) and worst of all, Constant Contact is blocked by many companies. Can’t wait to get rid of them, just trying to find the right replacement.
I have had nothing but problems with every aspect of that company, and today, the e-newsletter bounced for every one of my AT&T and BellSouth email contacts. I’m told the company is “having a problem” with those providers.
I have had trouble with their slow servers, their poor interface [which goes so far as to insert exclamation points in the middle of a word for no discernible reason] and their support service. One tech kept referring to me in the chat as Booby, when my name is Bobby.
I am going to try out Vertical Response. I have had it with iContact and would absolutely, positively NOT recommend them to anyone.
I have to disagree with many of the comments on CTCT. I’ve gotten great customer service.
My first experience with CTCT was a year ago when I had to step in during an emergency. It was a weekend morning. I used their online chat, explained the situation, that I had 10+ years computer design experience but no bulk email experience. They talked me through the whole process.
Today I had a problem with one client’s account, it’s the holidays, I sent an email HELP and they called me back in less than 30 minutes. We talked, they researched, and called back again 30 minutes later with a work around. Three hours later they called back to double check to make sure the work around was successful.
About six months ago they assigned a “personal” customer support person and I get an email once a month checking to see if things are going well.
I really like their new Hootsuite CTCT integrated app. They offered a free webinar to demonstrate.
I use email, surveys, and event marketing for 4 clients, each with 500-2000 members in their hub.
The analytics are great with both CTCT and the Hootsuite app to see them real time. We track ROI for events and I’m satisfied. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I haven’t got any real beefs.
I do stay on top of my lists. If I encounter contacts that aren’t opening email newsletters, after 3-4 months I send a survey that asks, among other things, if they wish to continue the frequency, or if they’d prefer fewer emails.
I also like being able to send posts to Facebook, Twitter, etc at same time I send emails.
Super rundown on several email marketing platforms! Very thorough and fair.
Would love to have you give BombBomb a try (yes, I work there). It’s an email marketing platform designed to support video since day one. Video, of course, makes your message more personal and more powerful. Pricing is kin to Constant Contact. We build two custom templates for every new customer at no cost.
I won’t belabor it or sell it any further here in this comment – would love to have you fire up a free trial (bombbomb.com).
Thanks! And thanks again for the great rundown on all these ESPs.
We are in an agency. After setting one of our clients up on Constant Contact we tested the platform and found that 30% of the time connection requests by various ISP’s to the Constant Contact image library failed. The most problematic was Gmail. This resulted in all the images of falling out of the test campaign.
Google’s Gmail team reported issues with the vendor. In fact currently there is no way from the Gmail side to enable automated delivery of content with images. Google has removed the add to safe senders list menu option for all content generated from Constant Contact’s domain. During our test Constant Contacts failure was elevated to a tier 2 support level to fix their coding error.
While waiting for support to fix this problem the account was flagged for delivery issues then locked down by yet another division freezing our list. In summary if you have a lot of time to waste, want to deal with a bureaucracy equal to the federal government and like talking to yourself this is the vendor of choice.
Good luck !
I agree and have had similar experiences. We bring them a contact list in their upper pricing table and they still manage to waste our time with really poor and rude support.
Nice article, I have been using Captivate Mail for my email marketing software. They are really good too.
I signed up for the free non-profit program with Vertical Response. Free is good. Unfortunately, after investing almost a week and trying several different templates in attempting to build a newsletter, I find that the program locks up frequently, doesn’t reliably save changes, and has problems with its cut-and-paste-from-Word feature(among other things). I don’t have this kind of time to waste, doing and redoing!
Do other people have this same experience?
Will now try Benchmark. Would love to know what anyone has to say about the Benchmark system – so far it looks promising.
I am seriously challenged when it comes to technology. I am finalizing my website and have been told that Aweber is the better solution for delivering my opt in– special report that will be on my wordpress site. I have also been told that constant contact is much easier/user friendly for the non-techie like me. I don’t want to have two different services — one to deliver my “special report” and other freebies from my website and another for email marketing. Any thoughts or help on even describing my concern in the right language would be helpful! Thanks
The last thing CC is is user friendly. I am fairly literate, and their program is a nightmare. Image library awful as well. And those are compliments compared to what I have to say about their tech support. The worst.
We send out e-newswires with advertising and news content (and promos from time to time) no less than five days a week with our biggest list at 17,000.
We’ve been using Constant Contact for a long time and while the ease of use and relatively low cost has been a plus given we’re a small b2b media company, there are limitations and we’re wondering what else is out there and if this group has any recommendations for the following:
* An email marketing provider that provides downloadable (or related) metrics reporting that is easily translatable to advertisers (meaning, a week’s or month’s worth, not just each day, and in a more ready-made report format)
* An email marketing solution that plays well with ad servers
* Nicer-looking, more professional banner-ad friendly templates than Constant Contact. We don’t want our daily newswires to be in our own customized HTML format because that would than require a non-editorial staff member to have to post the new content each day in the newswire template and we’d like to avoid that due to staff time constraints
Many thanks for any insight on the preceding!
As a fledgling online presence building a new list, I have used Constant Contact in the past and now use Aweber. There is one comment above about using Google Groups and it dismisses this option for not having much for Analytics nor page design.
But you really can’t argue with free.
I have gone a few months in lapse on my emails and perhaps this would signify that I need to really step up my business (no argument) but it is extremely frustrating to spend $20 a month on a service not being used.
So for people just getting started or if you are not sure you want to commit to $20 a month ($240 a year), I recommend Google Groups. You CAN do just newsletters.
Interested in your feedback.
That’s a good point. If you’re just starting out and don’t have any mission critical newsletters or lists to cater to, it’s never a bad idea to try a free or low cost service first. All depends on the amount of time you have to test a particular service and see how it may help meet your business needs.
The only downside I can see is that the sign up process for people without Google groups accounts (or at least a Google account) could turn some people off. You are essentially forcing people to signup with Google.
We agree. This is a similar issue in the e-commerce realm, where Paypal provides one of the simplest payment solutions, but forces guests to create a Paypal account upon checkout, which you then have to remember the credentials to when purchasing again using the same email address or credit card.
Google is known for not having the best account/user access control. In their Adsense publishing system for example, there is no way to add a second authorized user to an account. If you want to give an employee access, they’ll need to login with your Google account, and if you’re subscribed to any other Google services (Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, Groups, Calendar, etc.), they will have access to these as well.
I recently found a new ESP named NewPanda and they have some pretty interesting stuff.
Pros: large number of customizable templates, several “auto-pilot” choices (like auto birthday and customer anniversary), integration of email, mobile tools (SMS) and social networking. So, you can create one message and have it emailed as a template, sent to an SMS subscriber base (with a short URL to an auto-created online page) and posted to Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.
Cons: while their editor provides a lot more flexibility than the other “drag & drops,” it can get a little confusing if you want to get into detailed customizing.
Overall, I’d say check ’em out. They seem eager to respond and help with questions.
Thanks for the feedback on NewPanda! We’ll check them out in more detail and see if we can write up a detailed review.
I first used CC about three years ago when I was merging my business with a new partner to form a new art gallery. We had an email list of approx 5000 people after combining. When we sent out our first emails, some customers were confused by the new business name and spam reported us (even though we sent a newsletter explaining the merge – so many people miss emails or just don’t open them). Because there was an adjustment period, we had an average of 22 spam reports per 5000 emails, which happened twice. Because of that Constant Contact canceled our subscription. After that I signed on to a small company called Digital Street out of Austin Texas.
After my bad experience with constant contact I was ready for a smaller company who could provide one-on-one attention. I was very happy with them until they began having problems and switching servers multiple times resulting in a loss of my image data (twice) and lots of website downtime. I recently tried to go back to Constant Contact, my only beef with them was the Spam thing and our email list has hardly any ‘unsubscribes’ these days (no spams). I was told ‘sure come on back, no problem, lets set you up an account…’ So I paid, and spent DAYS transferring over data and re-learning their software.
Once I had that all squared away and my first email designed and ready to go out I hit ‘send’ and got an alert that my account was put on hold. I called and was told the only way to re-activate it would be to place all prior email addresses on a DO NOT MAIL list! I said of course I can’t do that! Those are my customers! If I were a spammer who bought lists and sent out junk mail, then I wouldn’t care, I wouldn’t need them…it made no sense to me. I cannot believe that I was not told this on the first, second or third time I called and before I spent so much time switching over! Also alarming is that they actually saved my contacts from the first time I was signed up with them! So if you use constant contact know that they will keep your contacts on file for YEARS after you no longer use their service.
We just experienced the same thing and they put us on hold but still wanted to charge us. Does anyone know or have great experience with another email company?
The key word you used in your comment was YOUR contacts -not Constant Contacts. I had a similar expense and was glad to find MY constant where I left them. And they were very well protected. It made it a whole lot easier to switch and remember whom I was talking to. I downloaded that list? Compare it to my new one, made additions and then uploaded it to Constant Contact. No worries. They don’t share lists, sell lists, or invade my list privacy. Nice to know!
My biggest issue with all the providers is no one is offering an easy way to reuse content. You can copy your email from week to week, but what if you want to use an offer from email #2, text from email #15, text from email #37, and an event from email #7. It’s a lot of time consuming cutting, pasting and reformatting to efficiently reuse content from prior emails.
Anyone have a suggestion, other than building my own CMS?
Also, Constant Contact’s image directory is awful. Who has a better interface for managing stored images?
Everything about it is awful.
That’s an excellent point. We’ve been meaning to give this review a much needed facelift/ upgrade. When we do that, we’ll delve into content management capabilities – thanks for bringing this to our attention!
This service takes forever to load pictures and WYSINWYG (What you see is not what you get). I’ve spent hours trying to get a mailing to look right and when I send a test email it looks completely different from what it did during editing. I am also not a web designer and find MailChimp to be frustrating to use unless you know all of the HTML codes because their templates have limited options to choose from. I tried to call customer support to help with the issue and they were only able to refer my problem to technical support but unable to provide me with any other assistance(and I still have not seen any results from that).
You should take a look at ListRocket. It’s been out there for 5+ years. The feature set is much “deeper” than most other offerings out there. It’s strengths are in team-based campaign management and CRM-like email profile management. I really like it.
One thing that I did want to note, how many successful marketers use Constant Contact? I haven’t seen any. The inability to have more than one opt in form is enough reason to not chose them.
I’ve been using iContact for over two years and have to say that I’ve very happy with their pricing, their service, their deliverability – AND their customer service totally rocks IMO. At any time when I’ve had a question I’ve used online chat and gotten instant response.
Aweber is also excellent.
Have you ever looked into GroupMail? It is a reliable program, let’s you create your own templates (or use theirs), import lists, include surveys/metrics, use remote locations for inserting images, etc. I find very few cons when using the program. But please, if anyone knows of a better program, or feedback to GroupMail, I would love to hear it.
Group Mail ROCKS! We have been using it for years… Very powerful and flexible email lost management program with tons of free add-on features as well, like ‘Subscriber’, which can automatically keep track of subscribe/unsubscribe requests.
Also, checkout “Live Email Verifier Pro” if you have text files, emails or any other machine-readable file with customer addresses you need to automatically import – We then use a output text file from Live Verifier to load these addresses into Group Mail – It Works!
We have also been using Group Mail and Live Verifier Pro for the past 12 years – awesome combo. With 25,000 subscribers, we have saved over $36,000 – and all the hassles of dealing with ESP’s!!! Live Verifier is particularily cool, as it can extract email addresses from any (and we mean any) data file! txt, dbf, xls, doc, even folders within Pegasus Mail!
I found this while searching to compare MailChimp and CampaignMonitor – came here straight from MailChimp.com so immediately noticed some of the data at the top is waaaaay out of date but the article indicates it was last updated 8/1/2011?
Anyways, MailChimp’s free plan currently allows 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month: http://mailchimp.com/pricing/free/ Haven’t made a decision yet and will evaluate a couple of the others above. Would be useful to know who can be used for transactional emails in addition to newsletters.
There is one critical piece of information missing from this review, and that is deliverability rates. I don’t care if an email service provider PAYS me to use their service. If their servers are blacklisted by 20% of my list, I simply can’t use them.
At least CTCT has the cajones to tell you when your emails bounce because their service has been blocked. MailChimp is super-strict about their bounce rates, but won’t tell you how much of your bounce rate is their fault, though they hold you accountable for the full number.
Vertical Response is the way to go. I have seen much better ROI and results from this. Direct Response Marketing is really helping businesses out.
John
Direct Response Agency
Back in February, you indicated you were looking at Campaign Monitor? Any results? Thanks!
This is only my first day using it (and I’ve been rushed to find an email marketing provider so granted I’ve only spent an intense two days researching this), but after trying Vertical Response and Stream Send, to me there’s no comparison.
Both seemed rigid in the formatting of my company address and the inclusion of their own logo within my message. Stream Send forces you to include social media links at the top of all messages – racked my brain and couldn’t find a way around it! How could that not be optional?
Tried Campaign Monitor and it’s awesome. Straight from the site: “You know those services that have the hide to include their own logo in the footer of every email they send for you? We hate that stuff and never add our own content or change the look and feel of any emails you send.”
Tons more flexibility. Interface is clean, simple, and intuitive.
No WYSIWYG editor, so if you want more than plain text email you need to know/learn some html/css. (It’s aimed at web designers, but I think it’s accessible to non-designers as well.)
First email marketing provider I’ve looked at that feels 100% legitimate, adequate, and just no-nonsense.
PRICE IS RIGHT – it’s on par with the other sites reviewed here.
Already sending campaigns and monitoring them – so far I’m sold.
I recently started working for a company that uses CM, however coming from larger ESPs like Epsilon’s DREAM and DREAMmail; and ExactTarget I found that CM is definitely not a model suited to comply/dynamic messaging. It doesn’t have a dynamic content module, so if you wanted to send multiple versions of the same message to your database, with say, a heading offer different per subscriber/group, this has to be done in a roundabout way via list management. I have also been trying to get someone from support to respond to me since early November – to no avail. I unfortunately wouldn’t recommend these guys for scalable marketing solutions. 🙁
Thank you I will check out campaign monitor as vertical response email is not showing up in my gmail – it’s just blank. The vertical response graphical editor is a joke.
I was looking for a replacement for VR and Campaign Monitor just may be it!
Sorry for the delay on that. For some reason that review never got completed. I’ll take another look and make sure it gets posted soon, thanks for the heads up!
Great comparison, I agree with most of it, my personal preference is iContact, purely for the API and integrations out there. On some of my sites I’ve started to use fb2icontact.com which lets users add themselves to my iContact lists by clicking a Facebook Connect button, very useful script!
My power company seemingly sent me an email asking to update my information. The usual phishing plea. What tipped me off is that the email was from the wrong state, not where I live. It was also hooked into Facebook, so I checked out the websites there. On the surface, they looked OK and connected through to the real website. What I as a customer do not like is the attempt to get my personal information through an update of a profile that I have never entered. How did Bronto get my info? Apparently from another company that uses them for their email newsletter mailings. So I am going to cancel that newsletter and tell that company too that they are being ripped off by an unscrupulous scammer.
Sorry to hear about what happened. However, Bronto has a strict permission based email policy and any clients found to be violating that policy are terminated.
Would be happy to investigate if you could email me to discuss.
Caroline Riddle
Community Marketing Manager at Bronto
Caroline [AT] Bronto.com
Please, please, please think twice about Vertical Response. We have been with this company for years, spending thousands of dollars. We are considered to be in their Platinum Circle. I don’t know what happened but in the last 6 months the technical issues are through the roof and all I’ve been offered is useless apologies. The issues were so severe that the CEO sent out an email addressing the issues and thanking us for our patience. 2 months since that email and I am still experiencing issues that delay my work an hour or more, depending on the day. I am officially in the market for a new email delivery system.
Looking for a place to jump in. For the past 15 years, Dundee Internet List Hosting services with Lyris ListManager, has successfully hosting lists world wide. They have an answer for every issue brought up on this board, from lack of security to segments, reports, no refunds and so on.
Cost effective, does everything and great personal support. And if they don’t do something you need, they’ll find a way to do it or recommend a company that can.
Azaliagirl
You should tell Lyris to put a price on the website for their software. I can only assume since they don’t, that it costs way too much.
I don’t work for lyris, we’re an ESP and our pricing is on our site. mailinglistservices.com/pricing/index.htm. We also have live support, free customer templates and been around for 16+ years.
Azaliagirl
Why is AWeber not mentioned?
Glad you asked. We just finished our AWeber review, which has been added to the article above. Enjoy 🙂
Have a number of issues with iContact lately. First a number of months ago, they “upgraded” their HTML editor. I know this has been touted as a benefit over Constant Contact, but we’ve had nothing but trouble with the editor. I’ve had support tell me recently that I needed to completely recreate my newsletter from scratch as “errors accumulate over time when editing.” I’d rather use the HTML editor I have on my workstation and which I use for website creation than the hassle I currently have.
We have also had an issue with contacts being automatically classified as “DO NOT CONTACT.” I was told by iContact that they are having an issue with certain e-mail provider/hosts and contacts using those hosts were automatically being changed to DNC. When I asked what process could be used to restore the contacts mailing status as they neither requested it nor did we, I was told “you cannot change the status once they are made DNC. You’ll have to ask them to change e-mail addresses or provide a different one.” After looking into Constant Contact I discovered they already have a procedure in place where you work with the contact to change their status, pretty much the process I laid out to iContact.
At this point, although a little more expensive, with the added capabilities of Event Management which we were also looking into, it looks like we’ll be moving to Constant Contact.
I switched from Constant Contact to iContact about a year ago. I maintained my account at Constant Contact because I have all of the emails archived and linked to from my website.
I agree 100 percent with you regarding the new (and improved) iContact editor. It is horrible to work with. You simply cannot even copy a successfully sent previous email to spring board off, without text issues like suddenly your Verdana text is now 20pt times new roman… Also, compatibility issues with Outlook. You have to manually go in to the HTML to add image align text, so your word wrap around an image will actually work for outlook… (hey, it’s the largest email client out there)
So, I find myself ready to export my HTML template to Constant Contact, or, simply paying someone to input my copy and images and meet my objects of correct display on the web, in outlook 2003 to 2010 etc.
The hours of my life and speaking to no less than 5 customer service people to make my standard email template consistently formatted from month to month has been a nightmare. I’ve had to factor in at least twice as much time to do my monthly email since the HTML editor “update.”
I hate and rue IContact. Looking into switching to Vertical Response.
Any reviews on Campaigner?
Our Campaigner Review is now published, enjoy. Next up: we’re working on pricing charts for each provider that will make it easier to eye-ball pricing for different plans based on provider.
I am the Director of Administration for a nonprofit. We currently use Constant Contact (and it has been a good relationship). However, I just found out that Vertical Response offers 10,000 email credits per month for free to nonprofits, which is why I was looking up reviews of their service and came across this site. I signed up with them and then submitted our 501c3 status and, within the day, we were approved and had 10,000 email credits in our account. I’m feeling warm and fuzzy.
Are you happy with Vertical Response? I am looking into their service for a nonprofit (dog rescue). Thanks!
Free is nice but we are moving from Vertical Marketing because it is a pain to define and maintain segments. Also it has limited design options and we have difficulty in receiving html for certain email addresses. I have spent time with their online chat (which is a nice feature) but they often say ‘they don’t offer that feature’. I have used Constant Contact for some other clients but feel they are over priced. Their archive is way too difficult to maintain. I am using MailChimp for my newer clients – it doesn’t appear to have the drag and drop block option that constant contact has but placing horizontal lines helps to separate articles. The archive is simple to set up and maintain!
The problem with the companies covered in this comparison is that they send millions of emails per month which inevitably leads to blocking problems. I use a small company out of Atlanta called EmailEvation (EmailEvation.com). They’re strictly full-service (I send them my content and they do everything else), have a delivery rate of around 98%, and have never been blacklisted (low volume sender). EmailEvation has the best customer service I’ve ever encountered and makes me fill like I’m their only customer.
You might be their only customer.
I had to respond after the “You may be their only customer” comment. I’ve used this company for over a year to send out around 60,000 emails per month and I agree with a previous poster about Emailevation offering the best customer service I’ve ever experienced. I’ve used various email companies in the past and none come close to Emailevation. They respond to any problems I’ve had within an hour or less and I especially like not having to deal with building the emails or managing my lists. I send them my content, they send me tests and send the email after I approve it.
The problem with most of the companies reviewed is their size. If you’re considered a smaller customer, as I am, and you’re using one of these companies reviewed, be ready to have your project deferred while they work on a bigger customer project.
I’m an Account Rep for Emailevation and our customer list includes Saddlebrook Resort in Tampa, Texas Ear Nose and Throat and Wickers Performance Wear plus about 10 smaller customers. We’ve picked up companies who were unhappy with Constant Contact, Vertical Response and Mail Chimp and our prices beat all of the ESP’s reviewed in this article.
Omnistar Mailer is the best email marketing software around. I increased by sales by 15 %
2008 is over!! It is now 2011. Why would anyone in their right mind PAY anything (above and beyond normal web-hosting fees) for a web-based mail service like these. All of these things can be accomplished from your own web-host with the proper scripts in place to simplify all the repetitive tasks. If your hosting service won’t let you, get into the fine print of your contract and find out why. Then, find a new host that WILL let you use the bandwidth that you are paying dearly for in the first place.
It’s a crying shame that companies like these mentioned are extracting a profit from an uninformed market. I wonder (and I will look into) how many of these companies are Asian-based entities. Seems like I am seeing a lot of foreign based companies selling free, public technology all over the Internet to anyone willing to pay for it. Maybe I should get in the business too and start selling online html document storage space for $15 a month. (For those who don’t find that hilarious, you deserve to get burned by every online offer you come across).
Xenospark
Are you joking? Web hosting servers, especially shared servers, are the most unreliable thing out there for sending out newsletters. Not only that, but these email marketing service providers have constructed all kinds of advantages that you can’t get with our own setup. Reporting and analysis, list creation and segmentation, template editors, servers registered with email ISP’s, etc. etc.
Go ahead, try your own setup for a while – or simply send a newsletter using MS Word and Outlook. And see how your click-throughs and conversion rates are affected. For most people, the monthly fees are paltry compared to the gain in customers we get from a reliable email marketing service provider.
How do I know? Because I was in your boat at one point, and learned the hard way.
That’s totally ridiculous. Actually you got it reversed. 10 years ago you could have a developer code a site with mailing capabilities. I agree with you there a script, a database and you were on your way. Although maybe for a few hundreds emails but not a few thousands as your script will time out before finishing the job anyway. Now try it again and after a few spam reports from users your server will get blacklisted, I know I did it. From there it’s a nightmare to get off the list…
iContact is a horrible service. They have next to no security which opens up your contacts to spam delivered from them with your name on it – so much for email marketing campaign. HORRIBLE SERVICE.
I had a dispute with constant contact. They where going to have someone contact me to discuss the matter. Instead I get the following. If you say you are going to have someone call, then have them call. Do not hide behind an e-mail and call the case closed.
Hello ***
My name is Emily. Please find my response to your question in the ‘Response Section’ below.
If after reading my response you require any further assistance at all, you can either reply between the lines below or click this link to update your question online.
[===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]
[===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]
Subject
Account Cancellation Notice and Refund Request
Response Section
Response (EmilyR) 06/14/2011 10:48 PM
Hello ***,
Thank you for contacting us about your account. Your account has been canceled and reviewed to determine if a refund is appropriate. Constant Contact has a no refund policy in our Terms and Conditions, we are unable to honor your request for a refund. Your account will remain open through the end of the payment period, you will have access until 07/5/2011.
Kind Regards,
Emily R.
Billing Support Specialist
Customer (***) 06/14/2011 01:59 PM
This is an automatically generated record of your phone call to Constant Contact Customer Care on June 14, 2011 1:59:51 PM EDT
If you need additional help with this matter, you have 14 days to update the question online by clicking the “Update Question” button below. A member of our Email Support team will be in touch with you. Otherwise, please click the “Help and Support Overview” tab to review our various customer support offerings.
Thank you for using Constant Contact.
I started with Constant Contact, and when the challenges of using them became more than I could stand (blocking , changing formatting, poor tech support,) I switched to RatePoint… their tech support is great, but they are challenging to use, and have limited options in terms of opt-in boxes…which are necessary for my 2 websites and auto responders that I need now. Ratepoint is not that easy to use and doesn’t have a whole lot of options in terms of fonts, styles and functionality, but the people are helpful, friendly and try to be accommodating when called upon for help. That said I do need an easy to use auto responder that can be attached to a webpage, e-mail, etc. and can have more than one group to opt-in for… does this even exist??? any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Loren
Yesterday I got notice from RatePoint that they have been bought out by Constant Contact. Since my paid contract is up in November, I am looking for a totally new company since I believe Constant Contact is overpriced. It doesn’t seem like any one service gets me all I am looking for, so I guess I keep searching.
I have a different take on Constant Contact than many of the other posters; I like them. I’ve always had excellent customer service and found it pretty easy to set up and send emails. (I code them in another program, then cut and paste into CC.)
But I’m also leaving them. That’s partly because they’re pretty expensive and there appear to be less expensive alternatives. It’s also because later this month or early next they will no longer support IE7. I’ve grown out of the “I have to upgrade because an upgrade is available) stage of my life, and I’m still using Windows XP. That means I can’t use IE8. And I don’t have any particular desire to load and learn other browsers just so CC will let me be their customer. So I’m shopping.
This article and these comments have been very helpful and have given me some leads. However, I might add that GoDaddy has an email marketing tool that I haven’t played with yet. Much, much less expensive than CC. Has anyone else tried it?
Awesome comparison. Was considering the big players like iContact and Constant Contact when I saw everyone’s comments. Now am divided between CampaignMonitor (seriously, they power Yahoo, Apple and Facebook? Is this true? Source: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/customers/) and Exabytes Ebuzzzz (http://www.exabytes.com.my/services/emailmarketing/) which is hosted in Malaysia, where I am.
Per-email of Ebuzzz is as low as 0.00075 USD, as compared to MailChimp’s 0.005. That’s nearly 7x cheaper! But Ebuzzzz doesn’t seem anywhere near as professional as the big boys. Customer support is pretty zippy though. What do you guys think?
Our small company (3 different contact lists totaling about 700 contacts, and we send about an e-mail a week) is debating whether to go with iContact or Vertical Response.
I was just wondering if anyone knows of any updates to Vertical Response since some of the last reviews. I really like how iContact lets subscribers who fill out the form choose what newsletter(s) to receive, but overall the reviews seem to be leading me to believe Vertical Response is the better option overall.
Also, regarding the Joomla reference in a previous post, we also work with the Joomla platform. Will any of these be unable to integrate that I should know about before signing up and giving our web guy a heart attack?
Thanks for your help and we are open to insight, but would like to make a move within the next few hours, LOL!
It seems like people are pounding on CC a lot. I too am seeking to possibly migrate from CC to another service and want to find a service that better meets my needs.
CC has froze my account, unexpectedly about 3-4 times. I felt violated to a small extent. It angered me that I had to spend about an hour on the phone to look into what the hell was going on and then get scolded and negotiate with them to turn the service I’m paying for back on!
I am not digging the whole, “pay per contact” pricing model? That penalizes you for success? I am paying for an email marketing service and I want to pay per email! That is very attractive to me, as well as pay as you go.
I have a need to manage totally different businesses in the same account, something you cant do at CC and is such an obvious need. No way am I going to open up a 2nd CC account to get this done.
I would like an auto responder and the ability to do nice professional, custom designed templates, services that CC has, but I have not tried yet.
I have to admit, I never felt that the CC design user interface was all that intuitive. Overall, the experience of making a CC newsletter is clunky and slow.
CC is expensive.
I think customer service thus far has been ok with me.
I noticed that Benchmark has this service called, “We Do It All For You”. You pay $100/ month and they build your emails and manage your campaigns for you. Now THAT sounds great! I’m too busy and really need a campaign manager on my business running the email marketing. I’m going to look into that tomorrow.
Mailchimp sounds compelling.
If anyone has any advise, its greatly appreciated.
We have used Topica for years, but are now concerned by the fact that they have no integration for Joomla. We wrote them years ago to request this, as it is tedious to have to upload new site members to Topica. We prefer to have one universal sign-up.
We are using JomSocial with Joomla. What is your opinion on Topica, and what do you recommend for sending mass email messages while allowing Joomla registration.
We have 2 main lists of 3K and 5K each and we send about 2 mass mailings a week to each list.
I’ve been assisting various companies with their email marketing for a couple of years now. In my experience, I’ve found Benchmark Email Marketing Company easiest to use, and they supply detail reports standard with any plan.
However, Silverpop has caught my attention as of recent with their new ‘Snooze’ action that can help save you from unsubscribes. I’m sure they have every other email marketing company thinking “Why didn’t I think of that?!?”.
We purchased 100,000 Email credits for $750 in order to promote our company without having to constantly repurchase email credits. In the first year, we used fewer than 20,000 of these credits and BAM, we were informed our credits were expired. This was NEVER mentioned in the purchase agreement when we bought the credits. We have filed a complaint with the BBB. We recommend you find someone else to do your business with.
I used VR and have always gotten an expiration date on my credits. Look a little harder next time you spend $750.
Pinpointe offers a pay-as-you-go plan that is less expensive than Vertical Response and MailChimp. The company also caters to B2B Email Marketing companies.
Pay-as-you-go plan – pricing info: Email Marketing Prices
I find that the people at constant contact are not customer support driven and arrogant! I have a small business where I pre-purchased 6 months of use for the service. After the 6 months they kept on billing me and told me to go pound salt!!! Our marketing plan and strategy was changing where we were not using the service on a consistent basis. I asked if it could be suspended or credit for the months we didn’t use. Too Bad! They keep on billing. They also don’t provide a link on their site where you can cancel your service. It’s obvious to me – make it so difficult that once you sign-up make it impossible to cancel the service and keep billing the revenue stream. If you call the support number they use a line system and script lines like the teleco’s do so that you get frustrated and hang-up. They will keep on billing you! Often I find that many of the sites will change the legal language to screw the customer while they keep pump highing revenue streams into their profit pits.
There is also technical problems with the templates and html. The site doesn’t support a good HTML editor to change and edit your news letter. The programmers are typical arrogant types where they just re-create the page with fix your newsletter. This can only be done on line with a pop-up messenger texting back and forth. While some people may like this approach I prefer to know what changed and how to better use the tool. What companies need to remember is that customer support drives sales and revenue. There is also a cost to our business beyond the service. Companies need to get back to driving great customer support that is personalized with a service attitude and touch points that lead to a great experience. This will lead to more referrals and business at the end of the day. Bleeding the customer only drives frustration and anger that only hurts the provider’s service business will lose market share and cut profitability. It seems this is only way to get them to change. I know I am not the only one who this has happened too. How unfortunate 🙁
Hi,
I’ve been using Vertical Response for three years now, and I’m concerned about the deliverability. Reporting doesn’t include hard or soft bounces, and my business’s open rates seem very low. Yes, it could be due to multiple reasons, but I can’t help but wonder about Vertical Response deliverability.
Is anyone else concerned? Anyone have insights?
Thanks!
Omnistar Mailer has helped increase my click-throughs because I can check for spam before I send.
I know how fast things change, but Constant Contact DOES offer free trails, and has offered an auto responder for some time now. Thanks for these helpful comparisons.
Hi there,
Thanks for your feedback. The Constant Contact “free plan” we mention that was discontinued is different from a free trial, which just about all email newsletter providers offer. The auto responder feature has indeed been added, thanks for pointing that out 🙂
Omnistar Mailer is the best email marketing software around. I increased sales by 15%.
Which one lets you use large opt-in lists without asking for proof of how you got them?
What about Campaigner.com?
We’re currently reviewing their service and will add it to the mix as soon as we’re done 🙂 If you subscribe to our newsletter (top left sidebar) or follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll be notified when the review is ready.
I’ve heard fantastic things about Campaign Monitor and I’m surprised to see them left off this list. One of the things I like is the pay by the drink rather than being forced into a monthly subscription, though you can do that too if you want to. Any feedback on this service?
Mail chimp has a pay as you go plan as well. Works perfectly for my business.
Yes, we’re in the process of reviewing Campaign Monitor. Our results should be ready shortly.
I complained to Constant Contact about their nickel and dime pricing, and said I would not be using them in the long term, and they should know why. The customer assistant’s response was to immediately cancel my policy. That’s pretty rude. I am glad there are plenty of competitors to choose from – and once I find one I like, I will be sure to tell all my clients and business friends who to switch to.
In addition, the emails did not save and I had to log in and out again and again to start over, AND when I finally sent the email out, the formatting was not the same as on the preview.
I was wondering whether you’ve switched or not. If you did, then kindly share to what? And how do you compare the two?
I have the same problem with Constant Contact. What you type and save is not what saves after all. It can be centered one minute and then left justified the next. Their fonts change all the time. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of CC. Which is why I’m looking at this site to begin with…I’m considering dumping them.
I can’t even begin to describe the amount of curses I’ve directed at Constant Contact. I haven’t tried other providers yet but I truly loath the CC service. The templates are terrible, and they react as if they are full of bugs. I agree with what you said about the fact that what you see in the previews has no relation to what you see when the email finally arrives. It crashes constantly. Forcing me to log back into my account.
Our account was frozen for no apparent reason. It’s slow and cumbersome. Their customer support is polite but unhelpful. I find myself working for 2-3 days on each newsletter just to align it – something which is unacceptable. The problem is I use a WordPress website which converts browsers to applicants for the mailing list. I don’t have the time to readjust everything.
Does anyone have a recommendation about a company which provides good service and works with Word Press?
Good comparison of email marketing companies. I think what people need to remember is that it’s not just about price. In other words, you get what you pay for. Then again, the behemoth that is Constant Contact doesn’t appear to be the best solution either. I think for now I’ll stick with VR (Vertical Response). Tried Omnistar, iContact, etc., and while they were fine, they weren’t as intuitive to me, especially when it came to template design, as VR. Cheerio people!
One of the best email marketing tools around is Omnistar Mailer. I used it for a week, and I seen my sales increase by about 8% which is pretty good. The features are very powerful and it is priced right.
Researching email marketing systems can be a pain, I really appreciate all the feedback!
One of the email tools that I recommend is Omnistar Mailer because it will automatically manage every aspect of your email marketing.
Look at SilverPop. Nuff said.
Some important things to consider:
When a customer opts out, on mail chimp if you have that customer on 3 different lists, then you need to go in manually and take them out from those other lists. The customer does NOT get the option of what list to stay in or out of as each list is totally independent. You can have one list with multiple categories – but then they have to all be from the same company.
With Aweber and Benchmark, you can have multiple lists, all different companies, yet all linked together. The best thing is, if someone opts out, and they are listed on all 3 lists, it gives them chance to chose, opt out of all the lists or just some of them. We have a doctor news letter and then product lines, one cheaper and one elite – most customers just want 2 out of the 3 lists.
Aweber on the websign up, address/country the country is a pull down and pick, in Benchmark the country they write in, it took me about 5 hours doing through all my contacts as we mail different news letters per country – but when people signed up on Benchmark they put USA, or United States, or America, US – it was a nightmare. In Aweber they don’t have a choice from the pull down, there is just one United States! (and not a write in option.) This is nice if you segment your lists.
Benchmark – little easier on the forms creation, easy to have where they can tick multiple answers to the one question. In Aweber it is more set up for just one answer per question. ‘how did you hear about us’ might be two from the list of answers.
Aweber has a cool feature you can collect a birthday, and then set up auto mailers per month for birthdays in that month to send out a little something to those special people. They cannot set it up to go out on the specific birthday date though.
With Benchmark, you have the option of them putting in their birthday date, but it only does it the American way, with the month first. So anyone outside of the U.S. would get their birthday email 6 months earlier. (ie. on 12/6 versus 6/12 for Europe).
If you have a shopping cart, there’s the advantage that Aweber can integrate the contacts and have them put directly in your contacts with a note that they ‘bought.’
Mailchimp is a great cool system, fun to use, but if you are doing more than just one list you will end up doing so much work and manual labor. Plus, it’s restricting if you want a mail to go out from two different companies or products.
Benchmark has amazing survey forms which are so easy to put up.
I have not tried exporting my lists yet back in to my CRM – Batchbook. If anyone else has please let me know.
Many thanks. Great feedback.
Wow, this is quite the detailed feedback on these three email newsletter service providers. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this and share your experiences with our readers! We are all much obliged 🙂
my pleasure. just add. constant contact you have only one list.. so if you want to send from different companies you will need different accounts. has a great event planner and surveys though.
Get response, has a great feature where people can ‘listen’ to your written email, cool. but little clunky for me to work it.
for me for the whole package, of surveys and mailers, auto responders, and easy of use, it is benchmark – though wish they had a cool a/b testing like icontact or get response.
Cleaning emails.. how do you do that?
Very cool of you to add so much extra info and experience to this post — it really made it so, so much more helpful than what I’ve been able to find — many thanks, wish you’d left your twitter name at least so I could follow you~!
Misinformation in your analysis. I have 214 images in my ConCon library and have used only 6% of my 50 mb available storage space.
Any comments on GraphicMail? I am about to start my first campaign (pay-as-you-go), and I am considering GraphicMail, Mail Chimp, Sharper Email and Campaign Monitor. Any comments would be very helpful!