Constant Contact vs. Meltwater

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
Meltwater
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Meltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from the vendor Meltwater's former Buzz, Press, and News products.)N/A
Pricing
Constant ContactMeltwater
Editions & Modules
Lite
Starting at $12.00
per month
Standard
Starting at $35.00
per month
Lead Gen & CRM
Starting at $449.00
per month
Premium
Starting at $80.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Constant ContactMeltwater
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 Core or Plus Constant Contact account. SMS is only available in the US for Core and Plus 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 ContactMeltwater
Considered Both Products
Constant Contact

No answer on this topic

Meltwater
Chose Meltwater
You can't customize your email templates as well as in Constant Contact or MailChimp. The analytics with meltwater are a great way to see what types of journalists are opening your press releases, instead of just an email address. Also, with the other two, you need to have a …
Chose Meltwater
There's a bit of a learning curve, but customer service is excellent, and their price beats their rivals handily. All draw from similar databases of media and news.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Constant ContactMeltwater
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
8.0
116 Ratings
2% below category average
Meltwater
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.199 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content7.9100 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content8.482 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages8.074 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing7.170 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization8.586 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting9.0112 Ratings00 Ratings
List management8.3114 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences7.258 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
8.0
113 Ratings
3% above category average
Meltwater
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.388 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.3111 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.458 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-Send Testing
Comparison of Pre-Send Testing features of Product A and Product B
Constant Contact
8.1
65 Ratings
5% below category average
Meltwater
-
Ratings
URL Validation8.231 Ratings00 Ratings
Link Tracking7.934 Ratings00 Ratings
Image Validation8.832 Ratings00 Ratings
Inbox Display8.635 Ratings00 Ratings
Email Accessibility Tools7.928 Ratings00 Ratings
Spelling and Grammar Check8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Spam Testing6.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Email Previews9.164 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Constant ContactMeltwater
Small Businesses
Mad Mimi
Mad Mimi
Score 10.0 out of 10
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VerticalResponse
VerticalResponse
Score 10.0 out of 10
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Emma by Marigold
Emma by Marigold
Score 8.6 out of 10
Cision Communications Cloud
Cision Communications Cloud
Score 7.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Constant ContactMeltwater
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(131 ratings)
5.4
(71 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(23 ratings)
8.0
(9 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(10 ratings)
2.2
(3 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(9 ratings)
7.5
(28 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(5 ratings)
6.1
(2 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Constant ContactMeltwater
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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Meltwater
Meltwater is well-suited for agencies that have an engagement team who is looking to service a variety of client needs such as social media reporting, public relations outreach, and community management. If you're looking to have a platform serve just one need, you can still use Meltwater but will get more bang for your buck if you are needing a variety of tools.
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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.
Read full review
Meltwater
  • Media research - you can search for relevant publications and journalists to add to your media list.
  • Earned media coverage - you can search for coverage of your brand and find news stories that also include data that may be useful (how many people did the story reach for example).
  • Building media lists - if you have no current existing list, you can build and export one in Excel for example.
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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.
Read full review
Meltwater
  • The dashboards are not user-friendly, customizable (color, font size, etc.), or worthy of presenting to a client. All of the insights from a dashboard get pulled from the platform and placed into a more client-friendly presentation.
  • Paywalls for certain publications connected to who-knows-what. DowJones racket limits media monitoring capabilities and results in manual searches for a growing number of publications.
  • TVeyes, the broadcast monitoring arm of the media monitoring capabilities, just needs TLC and to become more client-facing. Currently, the links produced to share clips look sketchy, and they have a relatively short shelf life.
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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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Meltwater
Meltwater works well for our organization and has allowed us to meet our internal goals. We are always open to new products and services that may be able to provide similar or better features; however, our experience has been that many of Meltwater's competitors are not up to the task.
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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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Meltwater
Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.
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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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Meltwater
No answers on this topic
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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Meltwater
No answers on this topic
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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Meltwater
Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.
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In-Person Training
Constant Contact
No answers on this topic
Meltwater
Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.
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Online Training
Constant Contact
No answers on this topic
Meltwater
Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
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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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Meltwater
You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.
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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
Meltwater
I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other companies are good, but Meltwater Media Intelligence is more full service.
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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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Meltwater
No answers on this topic
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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Meltwater
  • As a PR firm, we rely on the media databases that [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] supplies to deliver the media exposure that they expect from us.
  • We utilize their tracking of media hits for our overall reporting to our clients.
  • Both of these are advantageous in helping us to not only keep our existing clients happy but also to gain new clients (and, in turn - revenue), as well.
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ScreenShots

Constant Contact Screenshots

Screenshot of The AI Content Generator can be used to create content for emails, social posts, or SMS.Screenshot of Advanced Automation workflows make sure marketing is always on.Screenshot of Hundreds of pre-built email templates are available or a simple drag-and-drop email editor is available to start from scratch.Screenshot of The Social Posting tool is used to plan and post Social media messaging across platforms.Screenshot of SMS Marketing can reach customers wherever they are.Screenshot of E-commerce tools can be integrated with Constant Contact to sell more.