Constant Contact vs. SocialBee

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

SocialBee is very ideal for busy individuals or small agencies that are not privileged with time. Social media management can be one of the most tedious tasks in anybody's business. SocialBee covers the majority of the tasks. Set it up once and you're done (practically forever) With all its powerful features though, it can be a little more complicated for a non-techie person. If your requirements are just simple post-scheduling, you can use other alternatives.

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.

• All major social platforms are available.
• Posts can be organized per category, per client.
• Hashtag organizer.
• Links manager, with integrations to popular link shortener tools (we use Switchy, and it works smoothly)

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

• Though it's not clunky, it can improve on the loading speeds while working.
• The UI/UX can be further improved (nice and neat instead of big cards especially on the categories page)
• I would love it if the scheduler can be expanded into 2-weeks or monthly range. So we can post categories that are on a 2x a month and 1x a month frequency.

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

Currently, SocialBee is the only software that we use for our social media clients, the confidence that we have for SB is above the fold. It saves us a lot of time and business management is easy because it's highly quantifiable with the client as to the number of posts, schedules, and 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.

I have encountered their support just a couple of times since the platform is very straightforward for me. But on those occasions, it was so smooth. They responded to my concerns in just a few hours. Not too many companies offer that convenience nowadays. Plus, they do live webinars regularly which is totally amazing!

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

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.

SocialBee provides multiple features that you can get from other multiple different tools. It's kinda all in one solution for social media management. So cost-wise, it saves us a lot of money. It is also from a stable company with a sufficient MRR that helps with the security and development of the software.

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

• It provides us higher margin because it requires minimal resources.
• Lesser working time means more marketing and leads generation time.
• Very cost efficient solution.

Incentivized