Constant Contact vs. Gist vs. Robly

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.

Incentivized

If your marketing model is selling products, services, or SAAS where you are doing inbound marketing and your website will do most of the lead generation and conversion, this is a great product. From live chat, support, event tracking, and automation, you could almost put your entire business on autopilot. If your marketing model is mostly outreach to cold leads and conversion, this software currently does not have any type of sales stages or task generation. I would still use Gist for website inbound but use another software for outreach and cold leads then when they become a lead put them into Gist for marketing automation.

Incentivized

I would absolutely recommend Robly to my colleagues. I have used Robly for over six years now and have found so many positives over my years of using it! It provides an easy way for us to keep our contacts organized, and we can easily embed forms into our website. When comparing Robly's pricing options with other email platforms, it won by a landslide. Some small aspects of the program may seem a little outdated, but I have everything I need and more!

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.

• Customer service via a unified inbox so you dont have to separately monitor your twitter, Facebook or IG account for consumer communication there. Gist unified all into one inbox, better than anyone else I've seen in the market. They archive all communications and tie them back to a single user so you get unified customer history / data.
• Marketing segmentation and automation: they track user history and behavior across the site and have super detailed segmenting capability, on par with ActiveCampaign's, but better I'd say. Better UI for the marketing admin person, and more unified data than in AC.
• Live chat and chatbot. Usually it's either one or the other but with Gist you can do both seamlessly.

Incentivized

• Robly constantly updates the status information of each email that is sent from its platform, which helps to ensure that there are no problems reviewing the number of people among the targets that could be interested in our service or product, and become customers, when it is necessary to identify them from those who are not, and that otherwise would cause high error margins in the reports.
• The software has a visual power that is very easy to extend through third-party platforms, allowing us to create content in services such as Photoshop, which we can then include in mailings, although it is also feasible to import the content in the traditional way, through image formats. Among these, the best one to work with is PNG, which allows us to remove the background content so that the important section of the image fits better with the format of the e-mails.
• Robly works with services based on the optimization of group projects, whose integration serves to send emails to all participants equally, and that these are kept constantly notified about updates to the work, and can be coupled well in advance to these updates, so that no confusion arises at the time of unifying the work sent and points within the same should not be exposed.
• In reality, Robly's technical support is something we have never had the opportunity to interact with, as the platform is not so buggy that we would need to contact them for advice. In any case, they are likely to show promising results considering the quality of the service.
• It has been very easy to get familiar with the functions Robly has to work with advanced email address database configurations without losing track of the progress of each campaign, and this is thanks to the well-optimized structure of the platform.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Plan limits can be confusing. For example, there is a monthly charge for support and a monthly charge for "growth," plus there's a separate charge depending on how many contacts and seats you have. Perhaps this is normal in the industry, but it can make it a little challenging to understand the bill every month.
• The vast amount of features means development will never be as fast as you'd like it to be (even though they release updates all the time). This may not actually be a valid concern, and it certainly isn't unique to Gist (who doesn't have a wishlist they're waiting on their favorite SaaS to get to?), but I do believe the likelihood of being stuck without your desired feature being developed goes up a lot as the product gets bigger and bigger.
• Email deliverability has been less than perfect in the past, but it has improved drastically in the last year.

• I don't have many cons for Robly. One thing that would be helpful is concerning adding a set of emails to the contact list. It would be nice to receive a list of emails that are not added and a reason why (e.g., duplicate, etc.).
• I have noticed that when I am editing an email campaign, at times it will unexpectedly stop showing me the text editing menu bar, and there doesn't seem to be a way to call it back up. This can be resolved by saving and exiting the campaign and then reopening, but it breaks into my work flow and is an inconvenience. I have not been able to find a pattern for the occurrence of the glitch.

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.

Gist is a quite reliable service with a lot of added values. We don't need to pay for different Saas for these important features. If I had an issue the team was super responsive and helpful, that is essential for every business. The email delivery is great, so virtually no email has landed into spam folder

Incentivized

Because we like the price and value. The annual subscription model allows us to maximize usage without worrying too much about cost, being a small mom and pop outfit.

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

It’s pretty simple, but it does a lot so there are more complicated features which depend on an individuals ability for software implementation. I am not an IT expert and I’ve managed to implement everything myself, others that are more tech-minded may find everything easier.

Overall Robly's usability can be considered easy and intuitive. For experienced marketing professionals this program would not be challenging to navigate even on the first uses. There may be a slight learning curve for amateur users but overall it is fairly simple and easy to use and creates professional results.

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.

Fantastic support. Ask a question, get an answer within 24 hours every time. And sometimes within a few minutes. They've always come through for me, helpful and, even when it's an issue on my end, they point me in the right direction.

Incentivized

We sometimes got through to a message taking service but they were not able to resolve our issue with a one-call solution necessarily always.

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 should have been granted a MOBILE RESPONSIVE email template from the get-go. We were never offered any alternatives.

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.

Gist combines all our previous products into one application and adds many more features that would require more apps. Gist is excellent and a no-brainer all-in-one application when compared to having to manage multiple applications at higher cost. The support from the whole Gist team has been extremely responsive.

Robly has much of the same functionality as Constant Contact. I find Robly's interface to be more intuitive. Robly allows us to upload as many images and documents as we want, without charging us extra. Robly's subscription price is lower than Constant Contact. Their newsletter archiving is also more robust. With Constant Contact, I felt "nickled and dimed." Not only is Robly's base price lower, it's the price! You can upgrade to unlock more sophisticated features.

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

• 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.

Incentivized

• They are perfect for me as a someone who needs a lot of bang for the buck. The chat messenger device on my website alone has brought me new prospects that I did not have to spend money recruiting.
• I am able to save hours of time with the automated emails that are GDPR compliant.
• I don't have to pay for a designer to have excellent looking emails either.

• There has been an increase in revenue in the last month, which is reflected in our ROI of 300%.
• Results are shown quickly, although this depends directly on the investment made in the platform (the $15 price is only for the base plan).

Incentivized