Likelihood to Recommend If someone only runs a campaign using email and telephone communication, Autoklose is perfect, and I highly recommend it. If someone uses a more diverse set of tools and wants a more complex type of sequence, Autoklose does not allow their users to program communication tools that some other tools and software allow.
Read full review Constant Contact is an excellent tool for sending out flyers and newsletters. However, I feel the content's appearance is typically all the same. When I receive an email from Constant Contact, I can immediately identify it - the templates usually all look the same. When sending out communications with images, it is easy to use Constant Contact and link webpages. However, the email layout is always vertical and can get very lengthy. I prefer a more flip-book approach with options to flip the page.
Read full review Pros It is helping in editing, managing, and send[ing] out large marketing campaigns. It is easy to handle multiple emails in appropriate sequence. Our company [has been] using this for a very long time. It is one of the perfect email solutions we found for our organization. I have been very much impressed by their support staff. Ryan Dury Senior Manager Strategic Accounts & Sales Support
Read full review Market segmentation is great: my main segmentation is by region because that's how our sales team is divided. Lists: making customized email lists is easy and intuitive; the custom fields allow some flexibility in case our fields don't exactly line up with Constant Contact's. Campaigns: creating campaigns is quick and simple. I especially appreciate the 'resend to non-openers' option. I am constantly using this feature. Subject line generator: I like using the recommended subject lines. I'm able to plug in their recommended ideas, or sometimes, this feature helps me generate my own ideas. Read full review Cons AutoKlose uses your own email, (e.g. Microsoft Outlook), so it runs the risk of exceeding the Microsoft Message Rate Limit, which can be problematic for your Outlook account. Additional throttling limits for the SMTP Authentication protocol are: 30 messages per minute Recipient rate limit of 10,000 recipients per day. Exceeding these limits will cause the following issues: Exceeding the per minute limit causes email delivery delays, any excess in message submission will be throttled and successively carried over to the following minutes. Exceeding the per day limit causes the following error message: 554 5.2.0 STOREDRV.Submission.Exception:SubmissionQuotaExceededException. Read full review It would be nice if we had more customizable options for emails - like moving around pictures and text boxes, rather than a set spot for everything to go. I would like it if multiple people could work on a document at one time. So if I'm in charge of graphics, I can get those updated while someone else is entering content, etc. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We love it and it works
Read full review There is no doubt that we are going to renew Constant Contact. We have not just invested a lot of time in learning and creating a great looking product but we have developed a strong database of information that allows us to track how we are doing for each newsletter. This supports our goals of creating products that residents desire and are excited to receive.
Read full review Usability Whether it's setting up integrations, creating email campaigns, managing conversations with prospects, Autoklose is a well-designed tool that provides clarity along the way for users to find their bearings, and understand what to do. The help documentation is excellent, the support is great, but the tool is built in a way that simply makes sense when you're using it.
Read full review There is always room for improvement. I don't know how they test their systems, but they should invite not-so computer savvy people to test it. If I, as an expert have problems, they need to think like the technophobe. Since I've used Constant Contact in the past as part of my former employment, I have not viewed any of the tutorials and just jumped in to work on my client's newsletter. With that said, I found some areas easy and some a bit cumbersome
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have really had no issues.
Read full review No major problems in sending out the email campaigns and accessing the analytics
Read full review Performance Always loads fast.
Read full review The system seemed quite slow sometimes. Specifically, there was sometimes a delay in sends if it was during a high traffic period. There were time-outs when uploading new code for an email, and a lag in reporting analytics which was sometimes as long as 72 hours
Read full review Support Rating Our Autoklose rep is amazing! Jelena has always gotten back to us within 24 hours, despite living on a different continent. She is completely proficient with the tool and is usually able to answer our questions with a brief email or short virtual meeting.
Read full review I think the overall support for Constant Contact has always been incredible; I have nothing negative to say. Our customer support representative was attentive, easy to understand, and very knowledgeable. I never felt like I wasn't a priority of his and my issues, while very small, were fixed in a very short time frame.
Read full review In-Person Training Jelena is amazing! Very knowledgable. Great instructor.
Read full review Online Training Jelena is fantastic. She always responds to emails immediately.
Read full review Implementation Rating It is extremely easy to implement and start using right away
Read full review Implementation is very easy for someone who wants to send out the “batch and blast” type newsletters. If you want to use their templates with no customizations, the product works fine. However, the more customizations you get into involving link color, etc, that’s where things can get tricky for someone who may not be familiar with coding
Read full review Alternatives Considered I think that I have already said it, Autoklose has much better support and is really quick to set up and use compared with any of the other systems that I have used over the years.
Read full review Constant Contact is much more intuitive for people who are not tech-savvy. Also, while
sendgrid offered more options in it's drag and drop interface, it displayed differently across different email clients, which made it very cumbersome to use. It also took much longer to upload contact lists and it was harder to manage existing contacts. Performance in
sendgrid was much slower as well, and the Preview feature was quite buggy. Our team initially chose
sendgrid because of the integration options that it's API offered, but we ultimately switched to Constant Contact because it was much easier to build campaigns and better suited our requirements.
Read full review Scalability It's expensive to have a single seat for each salesperson, so the alias feature will be the perfect addition to this product.
Read full review Very reliable in sending email campaigns and controlling the recipients so that no contact is sent the same email more than once, even if they are on a resent list
Read full review Return on Investment I feel the increased prospect engagement and business opportunities created supported the cost. In my industry 1 customer can support positive ROI. I saw an overall increase in mass emailing effectiveness and we were able to automate majority of our campaigns which increased productivity for marketing & sales. Read full review I have had nothing but positive impacts from using Constant Contact. The church is large, and there are many subgroups and axillary groups within the church. Setting up specific groups based on responsibility, interest, member goals, and service needs allows me to send information quickly, saving valuable time for other tasks. Constant Contact allows leadership to stay personally engaged with the members I work with, without over-taxing my time. It feels so seamless. Read full review ScreenShots Constant Contact Screenshots