Constant Contact vs. GetResponse

Constant Contact is the best tool for communicating information in an attractive way to multiple people with customizable pictures, content, and links. It is also the best option for tracking information regarding what constituents received the email, clicked through, unsubscribed, etc. This platform makes keeping track of data for multiple levels of constituents manageable.

Incentivized

GetResponse is perfect for small to medium businesses. For a large business, it certainly could be used in some areas. One example would be for clients that are looking to get started with email marketing. I would not expect it to run a business as Salesforce or Keep. However, GetResponse is robust enough and has a solid suite of tools that would serve a medium or small business quite well. And of course, if a company is just looking for an email marketing solution GetResponse would be ideal. And to go even further, depending on the level of service you use, GetResponse has the potential to do things you might have been using separate tools for. Building funnels, the ability to host webinars, building landing pages. It's all there and it is priced very well.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Email creation—A simple interface and a variety of tools make it easy to create very attractive emails quickly.
• List building—GetResponse is ideal for setting-up and using any number of segmented lists/
• Forms and landing pages—These tools are also fairly strong, however, GetResponse (ironically) does not provide responsive forms for mobile, which I would think would be an urgent problem. They have so far not addressed it.
• Customer support—Customer support via chat and email is strong. It's disappointing the company has pulled the plug on live phone-in support.

Incentivized

• Drag and drop interface can be buggy. For example, when you drag in a component, sometimes the email template keeps scrolling, so you're not able to actually drop in the component.
• Reporting is a bit confusing. There are 2 different ways to access reporting and I believe only one of them allowed you to view click rates for embedded links.
• Limitations on the drag and drop interface. For example, you're not able to create a sidebar that spans the entire length of the email, which was a request from a client.

• The email editor is kind of a nightmare. Elements don't move or behave how you'd expect, the font choices are limited and pretty lame, adding new elements is difficult or often impossible... the whole thing feels 5+ years outdated. Buggy, slow, and extremely limited in functionality.
• The entire UI feels similarly outdated and slow--just seems like GetResponse hasn't kept up with the curve of the market in terms of performance or aesthetics.

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.

As I mentioned before. I believe that the platform is easy to use. Simple and easy process from start to finish. Email efficient and get to the client quickly. Catch errors that would prevent getting to where i need it to go. Overall great experience and would renew without question

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

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.

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 tried Mailchimp. We could send messages to larger groups for free with Constant Contact. And we simply found more people read the emails and responded more frequently when we used Constant Contact. I think it's because it didn't feel as much like a marketing tool as when we contacted them with Mailchimp.

Incentivized

Not the top of the heap and certainly far from the bottom. GR is arguably one of the best solutions for Home based or small shops. It is out of the box whereas some of the others are not as complete or more difficult to unpack. It lacks some features but over-delivers on others.

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

• Good email marketing option that we need to expand on
• We have not had a strong determinable ROI, but we do not always know if a donation resulted from an email
• Very affordable and we plan in keeping it as a resource

Incentivized

• Only negative. They cleaned our entire contact list.
• We had to start over with Get Response. Now that they have forcefully freed us, we'll be redownloading our actual customer and prospect list from our CRM.
• They will not refund us. We paid for a year and they gave us 5 months. So we are also out $5,000.