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Constant Contact vs. iContact vs. Vertical Response Vs...
Who's the best email marketing service provider out there?
I'm sure you're familiar with the name Constant Contact. They've spent more on marketing their brand than any other email marketing service out there. And lately they've been adding television and radio ads. The question is - are they really the best? Or are they simply spending the most? We break down the most popular email marketing companies out there and give you recommendations as to which ones suit you best depending on your specific email marketing needs. We'll start out with giving a description of each email marketing service, and will then point out some weaknesses and strengths of each, as well as provide links to special sign-up offers and promotions we're permitted to extend to our visitors.
What are my options when it comes to email marketing services?
There is a plethora of email marketing service providers out there. Here's a short list of the most well known ones along with their entry level price point and number of subscribers/ emails sent per month for that price point (at time of writing). Some also offer a free plan for a very low number of subscribers. Almost all offer a free trial period.
- Constant Contact : $15 / 500
- Free plan: Discontinued
- Vertical Response : $10 / 1000
- StreamSend : $20 / 2000
- iContact : $10 / 500
- Campaigner : $25 / 2,500
- MailChimp : $10 / 500
- Free plan: 100 subscribers/ 6 newsletters per month
- Bronto : $84 / 20,000
- No monthly option available - annual only
- Benchmark : $10 / 600
- MyEmma : $30 / 1000 (plus a $100 setup fee)
- Boomerang : $10 / 500
- Stream Send : $20 / 2000 (emails per subscriber)
- JangoMail $30 / 1000
- Big Hip : $20 / 2,500
- Free plan: 25 subscribers/ 1,500 emails per month
- mUrgent : full service outfit / prices vary depending on service
What should most email marketing services have in common?
It's important to know what email marketing services 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 email marketing service provider needs to have relationships with the major ISP's (Internet Service Providers) such as AOL, Yahoo, 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 service provider 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.
Constant Contact, iContact, and Vertical Response in-depth reviews
From our research, Vertical Response, Constant Contact, Streamsend, and iContact provide the best entry-level opportunities for small businesses, as they offer a good balance of pricing (low cost per month per subscriber and email send count), reliability (, flexibility (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.
Is Constant Contact the best email marketing service?
Constant Contact is one of the oldest email marketing services around - they have been in business since 1996. Here's a breakdown of what you get, and the pro's and con's of Constant Contact. If you'd like to give Constant Contact a whirl, click here (or on the logo at left) to receive 60 days free to try them out.
Constant Contact - What you get
The Constant Contact pricing structure has changed over the years. In other words, prices have gone up. They used to have a free option for email lists of 100 users or less. The free option is no longer available. Constant Contact is now only available as a paid service, starting out at $15/ month for 0 - 500 contacts. The pricing then increases according to the pricing schedule below.
| Email List Size | Monthly Cost |
| 0 - 500 | $15 |
| 501 - 2,500 | $30 |
| 2,501 - 5,000 | $50 |
| 5,001 - 10,000 | $75 |
| 10,001 - 25,000 | $150 |
| 25,000+ | Call for pricing |
Optional features include the ability to archive emails and host them on a Constant Contact-hosted homepage, and conducting surveys, both of which cost extra. This brings us to our pros and cons lists for Constant Contact.
Constant Contact - Pro's
- One of the oldest email marketing service providers in business - has been around since 1996.
- Well designed interface that is easy to learn and use.
- Email newsletter templates that get you up and running in minutes.
- Excellent customer service and support - including your own support agent assigned to you when you sign up.
Constant Contact - Con's
- On the more expensive side of email marketing service providers (they need to pay their advertising bills after all).
- You have one sign-up form for your entire account. This is not ideal if you are planning on maintaining multiple lists within one account, and signing up different groups of users on multiple websites using different sign-up forms. For this purpose you'll need to open multiple Constant Contact accounts, which can be a pain, as well as prove more costly.
- Charges extra for additional features such as conducting online surveys and archiving email newsletters that others include at no extra charge.
- Cluttered user interface can make finding what you're looking for time consuming.
- Flexibility of template design is limited compared to some providers. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor (ie. word processing interface) is only available if you use their in-house templates; not with your own html.
- Does not allow auto-responders.
- Only 1/2 mb of online image storage is included (5 images).
Is Vertical Response the best email marketing service?
Vertical Response has been in business since 2001, and they have continued their commitment to customer service. Out of the three email marketing service providers, this is the one we use. Sign up and receive 100 free email credits to try them out by clicking here (or on the logo at left).
Vertical Response - Pro's
- No serious customer complaints from what we've found (feel free to comment below if you find otherwise).
- Excellent support community. It appears that the support community has relatively fast reponse times, is well organized, and has avid user interaction.
- Offers a whopping 25mb of online image storage for your newsletters (compared to 1/2 mb for Constant Contact and iContact).
- Online surveys and email archiving included at no additional charge.
- You can segment your mailing list, and send out newsletters to sub-groups of your mailing list.
- Free webinars and support seminars, along with video tutorials, on how to make the most of your email newsletter campaigns.
- The option to send direct mail postcards.
Vertical Response - Con's
- It's important that you don't provide a "from" address in opt-in forms as this may result in confirmation notices not reaching recipients. If you leave the "from" field blank, Vertical Response will auto fill it with one of its own. This should be more obvious.
- They have not been in business as long as some of the other providers (2001 for Vertical Response, 1996 for Constant Contact, and 1998 for iContact (formerly intelliContact).
Is StreamSend the best email marketing service provider?
StreamSend's tagline is Email Marketing by Marketers, for Marketers. They differentiate themselves from the pack by offering a private IP address, trigger-based messaging, and A/B testing. We'll describe below what all this means. If you'd like to try them out free for 30 days, click here, or the banner at left.
StreamSend - Pro's
- Very friendly and easy to use user interface
- Demographic reporting
- Filters to target specific recipients (filter by domain name, for example)
- In-depth campaign reporting that includes statistics on opens, bounces, subscriptions, and more.
- Integration with Google Analytics
StreamSend - Con's
- Costs slightly more than its competitors
- Not the best templates to choose from
- Doesn't include a spam test (to see how your email campaign might fare if sent - ie. will it end up in junk right away). Spam tests help you optimize and clean up your email campaign before sending it.
- Not the best support out of the bunch - no live support, and support tickets take time before they receive an answer.
Is iContact the best email marketing service?
iContact offers very competitive pricing plans and a wide array of features. But how reliable are they? Read the pro's and con's to find out. Want to give them a try? Click here (or on the logo at left) to receive a free trial account.
iContact - Pro's
- Very competitive pricing
- iContact offers flexible options for your subscriber sign-up forms. You can create multiple different forms on different websites with various fields for gathering unique types of data (name, email, street address, etc.).
- You can create surveys at no additional charge.
- You can archive email newsletters at no additional charge.
- Supports the creation of auto-responders.
iContact - Con's
- Slow website loading
- Supports only 1/2 mb for online image storage.
- We've heard reports that their support system is not nearly as good as the competition (ie. inexperienced support staff, long wait times, etc.).
- If you Google "iContact sucks" (feel free to use our Google search box at top right) you'll see a number of complaints. Too many for a company that is a fraction the size of Constant Contact.
- Support community appears to be more of a "content blog" where people can post content on various topics completely unrelated to email marketing - but in the end help iContact gain traction in the search results.
Is MailChimp the best email marketing service?
MailChimp is the newest contender in the ring as far as our reviews are concerned. They offer a simple and fun interface, and a free plan for a mailing list under 500 subscribers. How does MailChimp stack up against the competition? Let's find out...
MailChimp - Pro's
- Competitive pricing and a free plan for lists with 500 or less subscribers
- Straightforward contact list management and easy import of contacts via CSV file
- MailChimp includes a feature to track where your sign-ups originated from. You can use this to optimize your opt-out prevention methods.
- An Inbox Inspector add-on that lets you generate over 25 screenshots of your email in all major email applications, as well as live tests from all the major ISPs to see if spam filters are triggered.
- MailChimp's HTML templates are easy to use, and you can use their WYSIWYG editor to customize your own designs.
MailChimp - Con's
- It's not quite as feature packed as some of its competitors. For one, it doesn't have the comprehensive reporting options some other email newsletter providers do. On the other hand, there's an add-on that lets you leverage Google Analytics data, which can give you insight on ROI data that you wouldn't have otherwise.
- Importing of contact lists could be easier - the columns have to match up perfectly for the import to work.
- Importing templates based on existing website layouts would be a great add-on. It takes some work to get your email template looking like you want it to.
- Lack of campaign segmentation - 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.
Changing email marketing service providers
So let's say you've decided you want to switch to another email marketing service 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 service 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. The more difficult part, depending on how your website is setup, 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 - ie. 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, as most email marketing service providers provide flexible template editing options.
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2 days 9 hours ago - Thank you
2 days 9 hours ago - Letter Me Later
2 days 9 hours ago - Lightning Strike
2 days 9 hours ago - Incredibly inefficient iContact
2 days 20 hours ago
Vertical Response is the best value
Thanks for your reviews - I ended up trying out all the services, and must say I like Vertical Reponse the best by far. Constant Contact is fine as well, but I save at least $5/ month by going with VR - even more if I'm using surveys (an additional $15/ month with Constant Contact), and email archiving (an additional $5/ month).
With Constant Contact, my total would be $25 MORE per month than with Vertical Response, and I'm getting pretty much the same stuff. Don't get me wrong - Constant Contact is solid. It's just too expensive!
I'll take StreamSend over iContact any day
I would have to agree that Vertical Response provides solid service. They're features are up to par with Constant Contact, and like you mention, less expensive. My favorite from the bunch is actually StreamSend - in particular because they offer more in-depth campaign reporting, and their user interface is by far the most intuitive. On the downside, StreamSend costs a bit more - but then again, you get what you pay for.
This last statement in particular applies to iContact - I couldn't even get a portion of my email list to receive my newsletters - junk folder or no junk folder. I've also noticed that the iContact server appears to be sluggish - it takes forever, during busy times, to create a newsletter when I'm logged in. Needless to say, I did not extend my iContact trial.
Another service for consideration - Campaign Monitor
Let me start by saying that I am just starting to research email services and have not yet used any of them. That being said, I thought I would add another company to the mix - Campaign Monitor.
The thing I find interesting about Campaign Monitor is that they don't have any monthly fee. They have a "per email campaign" cost structure($5/campaign + $0.01 per recipient). As volume increases, they provide discounts on the $0.01/recipient cost. For small or niche companies who don't send thousands of emails or who might not be using the service every month, this might be a better cost model. Probably not for everyone, but likely a better fit for some.
Ezine Director is yet another service
Let it be know there is a less expensive email list management system with many of the same features as Constant Contact and others. That service is Ezine Director (ezinedirector.com). There is even a free version, under 250 subscriptions. Full version is $20 a month.
In full disclosure, I am the founder (Brent L Livingston) of Ezine Director, which has been delivering email for thousands of organizations going on eight years. Visit the site, shoot us an email (support@ezinedirector.com), or call us 877-258-1983. We will be more than happy to answer your questions.
Customer Support: Constant Contact vs Vertical Response
I am planning on starting an Email Newsletter and had two issues that I wanted clarification on before signing up. I called both Constant Contact and Vertical Response's Customer Support, to ask these two questions:
1. Email Form - do I create it or do they provide the code for me to customize?
2. After opt-in confirmation, how can I get my subscriber to get a pdf?
CONSTANT CONTACT:
Got through to Customer Support department straight away. Knew both answers right off the bat. Impressed.
VERTICAL RESPONSE:
Person who picked up, didn't know ... she was on the front desk. She transferred me to customer support who were busy, so I hung on, and on ... and on while music played. In the end gave up. Called them again, and the same thing happened. And ... upon inquiry at the front desk, was told that the Customer Support team is often busy, so the best time to call is early in the morning. Right ... next time, I'll make sure that any problem I have occurs at that time!
Obviously, my one individual experience is not the basis for a sound conclusion, but I would be most interested (and grateful!) for other people's experience(s).
Thanks,
Ray
Vertical Response Customer Support
I agree, even the customer support by email is not helpful at all. It took 3-4 days until we got a response to an error that has happened sending out our first survey. In fact, the link that did work in test did not work in live.
So, this is a 100% loss of the send out. Besides the 3-4 days it took, they were not looking into the issue and blamed the user making failures, without saying what failure. Another issue came up with the csv download of a survey report. The fields were not accurate in columns so everything got mixed up. After 3 days we got an email that we should clean up the csv file and upload it. So they did not even read our email. As a result, we are not very satisfied with the support.
Thomas
Canceling Constant Contact is a pain!!
Okay, so after demo'ing I've decided Vertical Response is just as good if not better than Constant Contact - and of course, it's less expensive, or I probably wouldn't be switching. I was able to cancel my Constant Contact email archive product by logging into my account, but in order to actually cancel the email marketing service ($15/ month) I had to call their support number, and was on hold for 20 minutes!
The one plus was when I finally got through to a rep she was courteous and got my account canceled without hassling me or trying to convince me to stay (but that may be because the reason I gave was that I simply don't use the service, who knows). At this point I had been signed up with them and had not sent out a newsletter in months, so $20/ month was simply going down the drain.
My email newsletter service review
I've used them all... Constant Contact, iContact and Vertical Response.
I started off using Constant Contact. I received A LOT of complaints and I got blacklisted. Maybe because all my email was ending up in my contact's junk mail. I had to handle the situation and get my company removed from the list. They kept charging me even after they shut down my account. I have to call them to get a refund.
Next was iContact. I loved how they worked. Liked it much better than Constant Contact. It was even cheaper! The thing is, AOL is very strict with them. You can't receive more than 3% bounced emails from AOL. They had to shut down my account. Too bad. They were perfect... I guess not perfect enough.
Then I moved to Vertical Response, which is the company I currently use. ALL my emails go directly into my contact's Inbox. It is a little more expensive than the previous 2, but I'm satisfied. Well worth the extra $ to know your emails are getting where they need to.
Vertical Response is less expensive
Thanks for the informative review! I'm sure that will help our users
You mention that Vertical Response is more expensive. It's actually cheaper than Constant Contact, especially if you take into account that you don't pay extra for Surveys. Constant Contact is one of the priciest of the bunch.
E-mails
I use SuddenValues.com. Not only do they have a 99.9% delivery, they have the necessary agreements with Yahoo, AOL etc. They do all the work for me, I do not have to create the database with tedious entries of addresses. Saves me hours per week.
They also send out my coupons 2X a month, no limit on how many. They also send out a weekly update to all other merchants customers where I have picked up several new clients. They have a 90 day plan, I get to see the the marketing manager every 90days and plan my attack for the next three months. I can see how individual campaigns have succeeded, know how many of my coupons were printed etc.
Service is amazing and employees are friendly. Take a look at their website and find out who the person is to contact under locations. This far outweighs anything I have done in the past. I had a mini website the first year, but now they are building a 14 page custom website which I can take with me if i choose to cancel.
What about free services like Yahoo and Google
What benefit do the above have over free services like Yahoo groups and Google groups?
Thanks
David
Yahoo and Google groups - user lists vs email marketing
Yahoo and Google groups are more about creating mailing lists for a group that is centered around a common activity. The above services are specifically for sending newsletters to a list of subscribers about your product or service.
While Yahoo and Google groups encourage list user participation, newsletter services exist simply to bring readers up to speed on new website content and to bring them back to your website.
The advantage of the above services is that you can create newsletters using graphic templates, add and subtract subscribers at any time, and get advanced reporting on how many people opened your newsletter, how many did not, what the probability of your newsletter getting spammed is, etc.
Many of the above services also offer surveys and other email marketing functionality.
Vertical Response doesn't respond
I can get help from Constant Contact 24-7. Vertical Response closes on the weekends. Hmmm. Lots of my customers get their email campaigns written in the off hours. You talk about that higher cost going for advertising, but it seems to me that you get more service with Constant Contact.
Hmm...24/7 from Constant Contact?
Hello, I just tried calling Constant Contact this Saturday afternoon, and they were closed.
Benchmark Email seems to be the best
After trying Constant Contact and iContact, I found Benchmark Email to be far better, with more powerful features at a lesser price.
Mail Chimp?
Has anyone heard of Mail Chimp? A friend of mine uses them and can't stop raving about how much they like their service over Constant Contact. Apparently they're cheaper too. Any chance you've had, or will have, time to review Mail Chimp?
Mail Chimp Review
Thanks for the gentle nudge - we need it! We've been meaning to post a Mail Chimp review for weeks now and keep putting it off. I'll make it a point to get to it soon. If you don't see it up in the next week or so feel free to contact us and give us another nudge.
Vertical Response DOES charge extra for surveys
Hi.
Thank you for the reviews.
It looks like Vertical Response does indeed charge separately for surveys with a monthly fee based on the number of responses.
We just spoke with them and confirmed it. Bummer!
- The Purple Store Staff
Contactology
You might want to look at Contactology. We have a lot of people coming over to us from Constant Contact. We are a smaller company, and we emphasize good service - dedicated account managers and no call queues. Plus all the features, deliverability, and autoresponders features.
Try someone other than Constant Contact.
I am very upset with Constant Contact, as I know others are as well. We have done a dozen newsletters over the past year, and send to currently 5401 contacts a month. Over the past three months the company has been impossible to work with. I received 15 spam reports from a recent mailing, to people who typed their name on my site, opt in, and you guys cancelled my account. Maybe these were competitors looking to shut me down. Well, they succeeded. And Constant Contact helped.
As your company pushes customers like me away, you will realize the powers that small companies yield. Word travels quickly, and we will together locate another, more customer service focused provider.
I am trying Vertical Response.
Same thing happened to me with them
Constant Contact has a really bad opt-in form to put on your website. I received an attack from someone that entered in quite a few bad emails. I received spam reports because of it.
I told Constant Contact to fix this problem.
Well - they said I was a spammer, said they were going to cancel my account and hung up on me. Then they charged me for an additional 3 months.
I've never experienced anything like this before.
Careful on the sign up form on your website.
I'm still looking for a good provider.
Constant Contacts? Have you found a provider?
Hello, Q: Have you found a quality email marketing provider for you or your company? I am doing research online for email marketing companies. Because I need an email marketing company to help me with my email campaigns, tracking, hosting, responding and also not to get blacklisted. Please can you point me in the correct direction? Thank you for your time.
Multiple lists within one account
Our work in stream and wetland mitigation is very "state" specific - information I send to prospective purchasers in one state is not the same information I will use in another state. So I need a system to set up lists by state.
In your first review on Constant Contact, you stated they have one sign up form for the entire account and if you needed more than one group, you would need to open multiple accounts. You didn't address that in reviewing the other companies. Do any of the others have a way to create separate email groups?
Thanks - Mary
Vertical Response and iContact
Hi Mary,
Yes, most other services allow this. Vertical Response, for example, lets you segment your lists into groups. iContact takes this a step further and lets you specify drop-downs on individual sign-up forms to create sub-groups within individual mailing lists. For example, you might have a group "West Coast," and within that, they'll be able to subscribe to the "CA" newsletter, or "NV" newsletter, etc.
Thanks for the suggestion - I'm going to add this to our article.
Cheers,
- CWD Team
MailChimp
A July post asked about MailChimp. Would also like to hear your reviews. Nudging!
MailChimp
Thanks for the nudge! And we apologize for slacking
I'll get someone on the MailChimp review asap.
MailChimp review is up
Our MailChimp review is live. Enjoy!
Opt-In Mailing List
Hi!
Great article. I've been trying to get information about different email marketing companies and this was the perfect place to find a comprehensive list of pro's and con's.
I do have a question, though. When they say your contacts have to opt-in, how will they know if you upload an excel file with contact information if those contacts opt'ed in or not?
Thanks!
Amanda
Importing Opt-in Contacts
They're assuming you have gotten permission from those customers (ie. that they've already opted-in with you or asked to receive your newsletter). If they haven't, the newsletter contains an unsubscribe button. Worse, if they're not opted in and you receive enough complaints from non opted in users, your account may be closed.
AWeber + GetResponse Reviews?
Hi CWD,
First, this is a killer review; even the comments are informative! According to this review, I'll be deciding between Vertical Response and StreamSend.
Second, any chance you might add AWeber and GetResponse to your review? GetResponse, I hear, is pretty good. AWeber, on the other hand, is popular but blocked by major e-mail providers, such as AOL, Yahoo! and HotMail. This is common knowledge. But an in depth review here would be awesome.
Thanks CWD and cheers to those who shared their experiences!
To Your Freedom,
--Dave
Absolutely think you should Include Aweber & GetResponse
Hey CWD,
Great review, extremely informative but there is no doubt in my mind that you've forgot to mention Aweber & GetResponse to your Review Arsenal. Those 2 e-mail marketing services are extremely well known & recommended in the Internet marketing industry. It would be nice for folks to get some insight of the pros & cons of those 2 services.
But great review, hope to be able to come back on here sometime in the future and see you've added the two. Take care!
-Brandon
AWeber & GetResponse reviews
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for your suggestion. It's getting tough keeping up with all the newsletter services popping up (and those that have already been around for a while). We'll have one of our writers check out these two services and post reviews.
Cheers,
- CWD Team
Multiple logins
Hi, thanks for the great article - most useful!
My organization is spread internationally, and I would need to give permissions to the contact point in each country to send out mails only to their designated portion of the global mailing list.
I've tried Constant Contact and iContact, but those two don't seem to support this. I wonder if any of the others are able to provide flexible delegation of permissions to multiple user accounts at all? (We currently achieve this with a custom PHPList installation, which we'd like to replace.)
Thanks!
MailChimp review not totally up-to-date
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/power_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, as you can see here:
http://www.mailchimp.com/reports
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 - http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataGallery.html
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:
http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/email-template-language/
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.
Mail Chimp Pricing
I just went to their web site and it's $30.00 a month for 501 subscribers! Bummer ...
What about Omnistar Mailer
As far as email marketing is concerned I like Omnistar Email Marketing Software.
Why Omnistar
Why?
My Newsletter Builder is the best
I've tried them all. MyNewsletterBuilder is the best for my projects. I highly recommend it.
Some of the distinguishing features:
MailChimp 500 *FREE*
I was a Constant Contact user and stopped after my account was frozen due to unpaid months because I was over the limit (50 contacts??????????). I actually went to MailChimp after reading the comment by the guy who says he's a co-founder and I'm glad I did, very easy to use, nice features and it's cool enough for me! I just have about 200 subscribers so it's perfect! Thanks for the review by the way it was VERY helpful!
Vertical response terrible customer service
We've used vertical response for over 3 years now; however, last week we've had an issue with our account being unavailable for "scheduled maintenance" for over 48 hours, which totally puzzled their tech support.
Their follow through was non-existent, and I personally had to spend well over 3 hours in an attempt to get them to correct the problem. Timing of this mail blast had been critical, but all involved (including supervisors) seemed completely apathetic.
We're definitely not going to go back to Vertical Response!
What about Kmailer?
How do these reviewed products compare with Kmailer?
MailChimp ROCKS
Not affiliated in any with the monkey, just have to use Constant Contact & iContact for many clients and the process is painful compared to MailChimp. They make it simple for our nontechnical clients to use, feature packed for our web dev team, and they offer integration with everybody. Plus, they have a great sense of humor.
Thanks, but more confused
Thanks for the info. Now I'm more confused as ever though! Why not try a ranking method?
Email Marketing: Pay per email options and a single sign up?
Here's my situation. I have many different websites where my customers are usually members of at least a few of them, as they are related. Currently, I send out bulk mailings through the website's interface...which means that the customers that are members of several of the websites are receiving it more than once. Often times, my server times out on me before all the messages are sent so I have to complete the process again. So my subscribers are receiving duplicate messages and from each site they are a member of.
I liked the way Constant Contact had the option for the subscriber to choose the groups they wished to subscribe to, all in one form. I have also tried Vertical Response. While I did enjoy the option to do a pay as you go plan by email instead of a monthly fee, I didn't see a way for my subscribers to choose multiple lists. If they wanted to subscribe to 3 of my lists, for example, they would have to sign up with the same email address 3 separate times from the various opt-in forms. (This is to my own knowledge, I could be wrong...and hope I am) I found this to be way too tedious. I would like my subscribers to be able to select all of the lists they are interested in joining all in one sign up...and with the ability to change these groups later on, if possible.
Is there an email marketing program out there that charges by emails sent (pay as you need them type of thing) and allows subscribers to pick from a list of interest groups during a single sign up?
Mailchimp
I use Mailchimp and their customer service is slow to respond. Also, if your list size doesn't fit into their predefined buckets (ie. 25k or 50k) they don't have flexible pay as you go options. They've also started charging for services that used to be free (tracking metrics, etc).
I WOULD NOT recommend Vertical Response to my worst enemy!
Between poor customer service and delayed mailings because of their paranoia with spam, I wouldn't recommend Vertical Response to my worst enemy. Just down right sorry company!!
Looking for Better Ecard Service Than Constant Contact
I have been using Constant Contact for about a year for e-newsletters. Starting this year, and each year after, I want to send out an anniversary card to all my clients on their specific anniversary date of their first order. The card would be the same for everyone except the variable data for their name.
I'd like to be able to import my list of clients' name, email address and anniversary month/day/current year and have that date be the date that the e-card gets sent out and NOT have to schedule a send date for each client which is around 1000. And, I want the ecard to appear in the email, not a link that connects to the ecard.
Any suggestions for a service that offers something like this?
Letter Me Later
We're not aware of a newsletter service that offers this, but a quick Google search revealed a service called LetterMeLater.com that appears to offer some of what you're looking for. If anyone else knows of a recurring email newsletter service that sends out individual emails, please comment!
Incredibly inefficient iContact
I've been using iContact for a regular emailing campaign in a professional environment. As any other provider (I think) they add a "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of any email.
The problem is that, if any of my contacts finds my campaign attractive (which is the point...) he will surely forward it to some of his contacts. Of course I have no problem with that. The thing is that if any of the contacts he forwarded my email to decides to use the "unsubscribe" link... he will MY contact from my list.
After using iContact a few times, I definitely lost a few contacts. After several emails to customer support to ask for explanations, Mr Greg B (iContact Support Manager) apologized but could not do anything to add these contacts to my list once again.
To summarize: the more efficient my campain is, the more people will forward it. If one of these new contacts decides to use the unsubscribe button, he/she will not remove their own address but MY contact's address. This non-sense and the opposite result of any efficient marketing service. I stopped using iContact after promising to Mr Greg B that I would precisely explain my problem on any platform I could find.