Constant Contact vs. Instapage

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

Well-suited for simple landing pages which don't have any complex functionality. Great for creating landing pages for lead generation campaigns - as it comes with tons of excellent templates and a variety of forms. Not great for pages that contain a lot of information and can potentially be very long. We found that Instapage is not a great fit for building pages that need to be updated frequently, like a blog page.

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.

• Instapage makes it easy to frame out a landing page really quickly. They provide template blocks for various components of a landing page (header, features, testimonials, etc.) that you can easily modify for your own needs. Other tools provide whole-page templates, but I much prefer the section-level templating. It's more convenient to assemble a page this way and add the details on top of that versus taking a finished template and peeling away design and functional elements to get what I want.
• Instapage's mobile auto-resizer works better than other platforms I've used. I found that I had many fewer adjustments on their auto-resizing of the full page than I've experienced with other tools. I still had to work with text size a bit, but they generally did a better job of ordering elements for mobile the way I would want and maintain proportionality of page elements better.
• Instapage has a lot of integrations that marketers will love. I don't know if they particularly stand out in this respect, but this is a particularly important aspect of their tool that most marketers will care about.

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

• There are only a couple of minor issues that I dislike. One is offering a Drupal community-approved update to their module. We are using a slightly older version of Drupal and it appears they don't have plans to offer a Drupal-approved update to their module for that version.
• There are also random bugs when trying to format text. For example, sometimes a sans serif font appears as a serif and doesn't seem to want to change.
• If you work with a template and some code, it can be challenging to edit the default coding.
• The built-in forms can be a bit limiting.
• The program will try to automatically reformat for mobile, but it may not always be exactly the way you want it to look, so there is a bit of redesigning required when going to mobile.

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.

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

I've tried all of the other landing page services on the market, and this is literally the easiest to use. I am not a designer or software developer, just a simple guy and if I can learn how to use it, anyone can. That's what won me over. Their support and pre-made templates are awesome, but the usability is what I love!

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.

Again, support is just awesome. I've never had any issues go over 24 hours and the people are friendly and speak English really well.

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

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.

HubSpot was terrible because it required a lot of coding experience if you wanted to work outside the given 4-5 templates. If you wanted a new template built, or to rebrand existing templates, they charged you. Very inflexible program and was very challenged by it. Our main website was built using WordPress, which is great for building webpages, but more difficult to build a landing page without the distraction of the top navigation menu. Instapage literally answered all the problems we were seeking to address: simplicity, customization, ease of use.

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

• 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

• We've not had much of a conversion rate on some of our landing pages -- but this could be because we are relatively green with the marketing side of things and forget to send people to it. It's not easy for people to find on their own -- so I highly recommend you use some of the "hidden" SEO tools to increase the ROI. Without it, you're not going to be happy with your investment.

Incentivized