iContact vs. ShippingEasy

I would only recommend it if someone was a small business. I think they are the best suited for companies who will send out a coupon or offer here and there. The most recent updates made it more complicated to use for more complicated processes. It is easy to train someone on the program, and so quick to learn. But I would also only stick to the simpler things. I also think the colorful templates are great, and show great creativity. But again, it is hard to justify recommending the program when it isn't WYSIWYG.

Incentivized

ShippingEasy is perfect for a small business that needs the inventory system but doesn't want to pay through the nose. The customer service is excellent - they help you in set up, making changes, and make sure you understand how to use it. They save me time in managing our inventory and save me time when there is a problem - I call and get an answer right away. Plus if there is a system wide problem, which there rarely is, they make announcements and keep us up to date during and after

Incentivized

• Contact management. iContact is really great for entering all your contact. You are able to put them onto different lists, and let them choose which lists they would like to be a part of as well. There are many data fields provided to fill in information.
• Emailing. We use the email feature at least once a month. They are always improving and adding new features, which is very helpful in presenting content in a new and exciting way to our readers. There are many options with remade templates and themes, or you can add your own.
• Insights. It is really helpful being able to have the data to see what is working and what isn't. It is nice to be able to go back and see how things went in the past compared to now. Opens, clicks, shares, etc.

Incentivized

• ShippingEasy makes it very easy to set up shipping rules for various scenarios so that shipping is fairly automated. It really is a click and ship type set up.
• ShippingEasy integrates into our BigCommerce platform very well. We very rarely have any issues with ShippingEasy syncing orders and shipping status to BigCommerce and vise versa.
• ShippingEasy's marketing service is very easy to use. It makes email campaign design extremely easy and aesthetically pleasing and it also makes automated emails very easy to set up as well.

Incentivized

• We also would like to send transactional messages which don't require an opt-out, this is a challenge with iContact. (May be a feature with pro?)
• The regular version of iContact doesn't support event management or logic flows for automated messaging.
• Custom form fields have limited field type options (can't build a drop-down).

Incentivized

• Fails to sync with the store consistently.
• Integration with Stamps.com is problematic.

Incentivized

iContact has been a quick and easy way to send any announcements and news directly to email and social media subscribers. Its tracking and reporting capabilities turn a simple email into a marketing campaign that can be used as a tool to efficiently gauge reader response and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to reach potential customers. The consistency and excellent customer service is what makes this program a pleasant experience.

I rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.

Incentivized

iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.

They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.

Incentivized

ShippingEasy customer support is excellent. We rarely have to wait on hold, the reps are knowledgeable, well trained, well spoken, and understand technical issues. They listen carefully to make sure they understand the issue and check if they do not know something. I feel confident that I am getting correct information and rarely have to make more than one phone call to get an issue corrected.

Incentivized

The templates are difficult to customize, and they don't render well in email platforms

i wouldn't be using it if i wasn't satisfied. time is money

I didn't have a say in the decision because I wasn't with the company at the time. I listed HubSpot here because I know we used it in conjunction with iContact for email automation, but HubSpot Email was only recently built-out to the point where it is today. Now, iContact and HubSpot are no longer integrated.

ShippingEasy works well across multiple apps and offers better interface, in my opinion

iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.

• We have a template for webinars that we send every month. We just edit it and send. This couldn't be easier (once you know where to find it).
• We like the breakdown of statistics in the dashboard. They're easy to read.
• iContact isn't a comprehensive solution, so it is only one of a few products we use for marketing.

Incentivized

• ShippingEasy has really had a positive impact overall on our business. It is very simple to use and the flexibility of the shipping rules has more or less automated shipping. So for a small organization like ourselves, it allows us to reduce overhead by not having to have multiple employees to ship.
• It also has helped reduce overhead significantly by switching our email marketing from Constant Contact. It is about a 10th of the price and has more functionality. So that was definitely a no-brainer
• All in all, ShippingEasy helps us reduce overhead the most in labor. It is extremely easy to use so a lot less of our time is devoted to shipping concerns such as manually entering shipments like before and making sure shipment information is transferred over to BigCommerce, or doing return labels. Everything integrates so well it is essentially automated.

Incentivized