Constant Contact vs. Pabbly vs. WooCommerce Subscriptions

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

• It is great for companies or people that are using software that is mainstream and would like to extend the capability of that software with added features.
• Also great for companies that use more than 1 software and need to have them interact with each other to make them more efficient
• Great for companies that need to automate functions that are repetitive throughout the organization

Incentivized

WooCommerce Subscriptions is a solid option for WordPress based eCommerce sites, particularly if you are already using WooCommerce as your eCommerce platform. It works for simple subscriptions, allows for customization in terms of email notifications, pricing, coupons, etc. It obviously would not be a good fit for non-WordPress websites, and it may be too much if all you need are very simple subscription plans.

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.

• Connect software applications that are not already integrated or connected
• Automate processes within a single software
• Transform data and then using that data across different software applications

Incentivized

• Recurring payments
• Dunning / retrying of payments if it fails the first time
• Automatically removing access if payments fail
• Keeping records of who is on which subscription
• Users can manage their own subscription

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

• The trigger action needs improvement
• The method of connecting different software also needs to be simplified
• The actions for some software applications need to have more capability (things that can be done between different software)

Incentivized

• Better syncing to ActiveCampaign for renewal reminders
• Make it easier for clients to update their credit cards and have it automatically apply to all subscriptions

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.

We are very likely to renew our Woo Commerce subscriptions add on. We are dedicated to WordPress and plan to grow our business significantly. Woo Commerce subscriptions enables us to manage and extend our subscription revenue easily. We did not have this a few years ago and we have seen the uplift in revenue from using it!

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

I like almost everything about WooCommerce Subscriptions EXCEPT one of the main reasons we started using it has never worked out. When we started this subscription box company, I discovered that it was difficult to track how many of each unique product we needed to order to fulfill subscriptions. In my naivete, I thought it was a simple task . 4 years later, I have recently developed my own custom solution (after learning 5 different programming languages) and I now use the WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions API to get the data I need from the store en masse. Basically, I offer multiple selections that customers can make as part of their subscriptions. WooCommerce does not offer totals or reports for anything up that is not tracked using a 'variation ID' which you have to manually generate. My products have 80 or so variations per product sometimes and the WooCommerce system was actually a little buggy when I tried setting them all up at once so I gave up. Now I know that without that info, the selections in orders are treated as metadata and handled almost as if they are not relevant to the order

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.

The ticketing system of WooCommerce and WooCommerce Subscriptions is not state of the art. I wish it were an intercom type of support, But I honestly very rarely need support so it's partially a non-issue. Documentation is also very good so it preemptively addresses things that you might typically need support on. One thing I hate about WooCommerce plugins' support MO is that you're always asked to reset to the standard WP theme and deactivate all plugins, which is near impossible to do in a production environment. So their preliminary steps for offering support are highly onerous.

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

It was a smooth and easy implementation for us. Downloaded the add-on and made a few integrations to salesforce and shipstation and we were up and running within a day

Incentivized

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.

Most platforms do one thing well so you are limited to that one thing. And then those platforms add some functionality later, plus most systems don't have native integration between other systems. From our experience, Pabbly Plus was birthed by connecting different platforms/software so it works well in that regard. It is also easier than most systems as most other platforms charge a premium for integration systems, where as Pabbly doesn't.

Incentivized

We liked that WooCommerce Subscriptions was easier to implement, use, and (slightly) modify over Shopify's subscription model. We can implement and grow Wordpress and WooCommerce (with subscriptions) on our micro-sites fairly quickly and without much long term hassle. The UI is pretty easy to navigate, and the code is a bit simpler than Shopify's (from what we reviewed).

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

• Saved us thousands of dollars in manual labor costs
• Made us more profitable due to automating our marketing effort
• Allowed us to meet with more prospects by reducing our effort
• Made us more intelligent by capturing important information that we were not able to capture

Incentivized

• Increased recurring monthly/yearly revenue
• Decreased time spent managing billing and subscriptions manually
• Eliminated manual onboarding time, creating accounts by hand, etc.

Incentivized