Constant Contact vs. Drupal

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Constant Contact
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Constant Contact is a full-featured email marketing solution with capabilities such as social media integration, drag-and-drop editing, and real-time reporting. It is a bulk email tool designed for SMB customers. Since 2019, Constant Contact also offers marketing automation features, a website and landing page builder, and other tools to support midsize businesses.
$12
per month
Drupal
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system written in PHP that competes primarily with Joomla and Plone. The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features such as account and menu management, RSS feeds, page layout customization, and system administration.N/A
Pricing
Constant ContactDrupal
Editions & Modules
Lite
Starting at $12.00
per month
Standard
Starting at $35.00
per month
Premium
Starting at $80.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Constant ContactDrupal
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe SMS Marketing tool can be added to any Standard or Premium Constant Contact account. SMS is only available in the US for Standard and Premium paid plans. SMS can be added when logged in to an account after purchase. Plans start at $10/month for up to 500 messages.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Constant ContactDrupal
Features
Constant ContactDrupal
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
8.1
118 Ratings
2% above category average
Drupal
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.4101 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content7.7102 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content8.582 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages7.876 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing7.171 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization8.686 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting9.0114 Ratings00 Ratings
List management8.3116 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences7.260 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
8.1
115 Ratings
5% above category average
Drupal
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.488 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.3113 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.558 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
8.1
67 Ratings
1% above category average
Drupal
-
Ratings
URL Validation8.231 Ratings00 Ratings
Link Tracking7.934 Ratings00 Ratings
Image Validation8.932 Ratings00 Ratings
Inbox Display8.635 Ratings00 Ratings
Email Accessibility Tools7.928 Ratings00 Ratings
Spelling and Grammar Check8.154 Ratings00 Ratings
Spam Testing6.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Email Previews9.366 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
-
Ratings
Drupal
8.2
71 Ratings
0% below category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.271 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
-
Ratings
Drupal
7.2
67 Ratings
7% below category average
API00 Ratings6.562 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings7.858 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
-
Ratings
Drupal
6.5
75 Ratings
18% below category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings6.068 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings7.872 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings6.675 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings5.674 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings5.765 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings7.269 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings7.573 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings5.970 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
-
Ratings
Drupal
6.1
74 Ratings
19% below category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings6.868 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings5.869 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings5.765 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings6.467 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings6.066 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Constant ContactDrupal
Small Businesses
Mad Mimi
Mad Mimi
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse
Score 10.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Emma by Marigold
Emma by Marigold
Score 9.3 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Constant ContactDrupal
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(133 ratings)
7.4
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(23 ratings)
1.0
(19 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(10 ratings)
7.0
(12 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.7
(3 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.9
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(9 ratings)
1.0
(5 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
6.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(5 ratings)
5.1
(4 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Constant ContactDrupal
Likelihood to Recommend
Constant Contact
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.
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Drupal.org
Overall, I would give my rating of Drupal a 7/10 because there is an easy user experience for those without a website background but there is some technology work required to build more website capabilities that aren't as user-friendly. Drupal is specifically well suited to update content (like changing Relationship Manager cards when there is employee turnover), post announcements (putting up a holiday banner to let our customers know the dates we will be closed over Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc., and creating a sophisticated website hierarchy of pages (for our firm, several dropdowns depending on if you're looking for personal banking, business banking, investment banking, about us, etc.).
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Pros
Constant Contact
  • 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.
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Drupal.org
  • It has excellent security features and consistent updates.
  • It allows for extensive customization with the integrated themes and core code, especially when you first install it. This allows our dev team to get creative with marketing initiatives.
  • There is a large online community of Drupal users that consistently help answer any questions and issues
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Cons
Constant Contact
  • 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.
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Drupal.org
  • Security and new release notifications are a hassle as they happen too often
  • Allowing them to write PHP modules is a big advantage, but sometimes integrating them is a small challenge due to the version the developer is working on.
  • Steep learning curve, but worth it
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Likelihood to Renew
Constant Contact
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.
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Drupal.org
The time and money invested into this platform were too great to discontinue it at this point. I'm sure it will be in use for a while. We have also spent time training many employees how to use it. All of these things add up to quite an investment in the product. Lastly, it basically fulfills what we need our intranet site to do.
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Usability
Constant Contact
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
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Drupal.org
As a team, we found Drupal to be highly customizable and flexible, allowing our development team to go to great lengths to develop desired functionalities. It can be used as a solution for all types of web projects. It comes with a robust admin interface that provides greater flexibility once the user gets acquainted with the system.
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Reliability and Availability
Constant Contact
No major problems in sending out the email campaigns and accessing the analytics
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Drupal.org
Drupal itself does not tend to have bugs that cause sporadic outages. When deployed on a well-configured LAMP stack, deployment and maintenance problems are minimal, and in general no exotic tuning or configuration is required. For highest uptime, putting a caching proxy like Varnish in front of Drupal (or a CDN that supports dynamic applications).
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Performance
Constant Contact
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
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Drupal.org
Drupal page loads can be slow, as a great many database calls may be required to generate a page. It is highly recommended to use caching systems, both built-in and external to lessen such database loads and improve performance. I haven't had any problems with behind-the-scenes integrations with external systems.
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Support Rating
Constant Contact
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.
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Drupal.org
As noted earlier, the support of the community can be rather variable, with some modules attracting more attraction and action in their issue queues, but overall, the development community for Drupal is second to none. It probably the single greatest aspect of being involved in this open-source project.
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In-Person Training
Constant Contact
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
I was part of the team that conducted the training. Our training was fine, but we could have been better informed on Drupal before we started providing it. If we did not have answers to tough questions, we had more technical staff we could consult with. We did provide hands-on practice time for the learners, which I would always recommend. That is where the best learning occurred.
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Online Training
Constant Contact
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
The on-line training was not as ideal as the face-to-face training. It was done remotely and only allowed for the trainers to present information to the learners and demonstrate the platform online. There was not a good way to allow for the learners to practice, ask questions and have them answered all in the same session.
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Implementation Rating
Constant Contact
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
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Drupal.org
Plan ahead as much you can. You really need to know how to build what you want with the modules available to you, or that you might need to code yourself, in order to make the best use of Drupal. I recommend you analyze the most technically difficult workflows and other aspects of your implementation, and try building some test versions of those first. Get feedback from stakeholders early and often, because you can easily find yourself in a situation where your implementation does 90% of what you want, but, due to something you didn't plan for, foresee, or know about, there's no feasible way to get past the last 10%
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Alternatives Considered
Constant Contact
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
Drupal.org
Drupal can be more complex to learn, but it offers a much wider range of applications. Drupal’s front and backend can be customized from design to functionality to allow for a wide range of uses. If someone wants to create something more complex than a simple site or blog, Drupal can be an amazing asset to have at hand.
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Scalability
Constant Contact
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
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Drupal.org
Drupal is well known to be scalable, although it requires solid knowledge of MySQL best practices, caching mechanisms, and other server-level best practices. I have never personally dealt with an especially large site, so I can speak well to the issues associated with Drupal scaling.
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Return on Investment
Constant Contact
  • 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.
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Drupal.org
  • Given the endless possibilities that Drupal can have, we tend to have great support going on when we get a website launched
  • It has become much much faster and easier for us to launch a new project due to reusability
  • Configuration management in Drupal helps greatly with CI/CD, saves us costs
Read full review
ScreenShots

Constant Contact Screenshots

Screenshot of the AI Content Generator that can be used to create content for emails, social posts, or SMS.Screenshot of Curate Advanced Automation workflows to make sure your marketing is always on - even when you're not.Screenshot of Edit one of our hundreds of pre-built email templates or start from scratch with our simple to use drag-and-drop email editor.Screenshot of Plan and post your social media messaging across platforms with our Social Posting tool.Screenshot of Reach your customers wherever they are with SMS Marketing.Screenshot of Integrate with powerful  tools to grow more using Constant Contact.