Constant Contact vs. Epicor Kinetic

Constant Contact is great when trying to target specific market segments. We typically like to segment our master list by region, but also have product segments, as well. They do provide pre-made segments to start you off too. We don't usually use their email builder, we find others to be more flexible, intuitive, and have more variety. We do prefer emailing from Constant Contact, however.

Epicor Kinetic has been a wonderful system of record that I can rely on for consistent tracking of our quote to cash transactions. I have complete confidence in the data that is being processed at the Core of the Epicor Kinetic system. Customizing Epicor Kinetic has been a true game changer for us to allow our team to maximize the unique needs of our customers, vendors and users.

Incentivized

• Constant Contact allows the users to send unlimited emails and just pay per list size.
• The software does welcome emails pretty well and allows you to set up all sorts of automation.
• The branded templates and starter templates are very useful and look good.

Incentivized

• When compared to the Smart Client, grids and searching are so much faster.
• As a developer, the way that the forms are laid out in Application Studio in an easy to read way is fantastic
• Having Epicor Kinetic forms load in a browser window is good. Being able to right click on the menu path and choose 'Open in new tab' is awesome.

Incentivized

• Sometimes some software provides outdated and useless features and functions, but this email marketing tool gives advanced kinds of functionalities with modern features.
• I like the ease of use of this platform also appreciate its professional customer support team.
• I am no longer desperate after getting this tool at my work.

Incentivized

• In Application Studio, there are quite a few things that you just have to know in order to really get it to work right. Such as when you are updating a dataview you have to save them refresh and then go back to the wizard to get the added fields that you may have added from a BAQ.
• When running MRP it has a tendency to stall or not finish on occasion. This is a problem as we do not get any PO Suggestions when this happens.

Incentivized

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.

Easy to use, reliable, known product, best product configurator, Epicor continues to offer improvements every year.

Incentivized

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

There is always room for improvement! I've used Great Plains ERP/MS Dynamics and Epicor my entire career. both do some things really well. Both could learn from each other. The KInetic user interface is much better than the classic windows overall. Please keep adding more functionality to the core financials!!! You need the accountants to be on your side.

Incentivized

No major problems in sending out the email campaigns and accessing the analytics

Incentivized

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

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.

If the answer to your problem is not readily available in an answer book, your response or solution will take months, if you get one at all. Problems need to be sent to support and duplicated by them before they try to fix it. This is extremely frustrating because you have to prove to Epicor that you are having an issue. If by some miracle you get by this barrier, your problem is submitted to development for review. You can't speak to them or communicate in any way directly. This group appears to be completely unconcerned about user issues or customer service. Our experiences have been negative across the board.

Incentivized

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

We selected Constant Contact due to pricing constraints. However, if the pricing were to increase, we may look at alternative products that offer more features. We are looking for a product that will allow us to stand out from other organizations like ours that are appealing to the same customers—a product that will set our company apart from the others.

Incentivized

Viewpoint is our current ERP provider, but they pushed all of their customers to the cloud (which we didn't want to do). They also pushed all customers to a single product with a corresponding significant increase in price, while not providing additional value to our company. As a result, we considered some other options, but given that our sister company had been on Epicor for several years and we have shared IT resources, it made sense to all be on the same system.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Using the word Scalability usually implies an increase of use, or adding the use of other features. Making the product put to good/proper use for small companies without the need for full-time support, whilst integrity is maintained it is an entirely different topic. In my view, the current company may have acquired a full truck with options, where initially a small pick-up may have been better suited.

Incentivized

• I can't report hard numbers, however, being able to execute sales and marketing campaigns led to a noticeable increase in brand awareness in our industry.
• We were able to offer white-labeled email communication services to clients, which is not something that other administrators typically offer. This helped us win and retain business.

• We have increased our lead time of orders by about a week.
• We have increased our output of product by 10% with the same amount of staff.
• We were able to leverage Kinetic to optimize our business while moving two facilities.

Incentivized