Item: Constant Contact
Rating: 1
Author: Stephen Sokolowski

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Prohashing had never used E-Mail marketing before. About two years ago, we added an opt-in checkbox to our website for a future mailing list, but we never got around to sending any messages. This year, I researched multiple platforms and decided that Constant Contact would be a good place to start, given that we had little experience with marketing and that their interface was easy to use. We had about 6218 subscribers.

Pros and Cons

The customer service team is friendly (but often unable to help).
The customers who received the E-Mail saw the intended design.

Their compliance department said my industry sends spam and closed my account, even though I only sent one message in 7 days.
I waited on hold for 2 hours and 47 minutes over six calls and still couldn't get a technical issue resolved.
Because they suddenly closed the account without contacting me first, I lost hundreds of dollars in salaries put into researching their API and setting up templates.
They do not offer true two-factor authentication using the TOTP algorithm, a must for any account with thousands of subscribers. Constant Contact's authentication method is vulnerable to an attack known as a "SIM swap."

Return on Investment

I lost hundreds of dollars in salaries paid to integrate our systems with Constant Contact when they closed our account without warning.

Alternatives Considered

Mailchimp is a better all-around service. It does cost $20 more, but it is easier to find what you're looking for on Mailchimp. Part of the reason is that Mailchimp doesn't oversimplify terms. Constant Contact calls "Authentication" what Mailchimp calls "DKIM and SPF" - the latter being more descriptive and helpful to find what you're trying to fix.

Constant Contact's customer service is not helpful because the departments you need to talk to are understaffed, while most of the other services have a better mix of technical people to salespeople.

Other Software Used

Mailchimp

Likelihood to Recommend

Constant Contact was one of the worst companies I've ever done business with. Mailchimp is a better alternative for E-Mail marketing at a similar price.

I spent hours on the phone with the company trying to figure out SPF and DKIM records, and the department that could answer the question had a wait time of 1 hour and 48 minutes the last time I called. I fixed the problem through a Google search several hours later.

Three days after my first message and 27 days after signup, they suddenly closed my account, stating that my industry was "prone to spam," wasting the money I paid employees to learn their system. I had specifically told them exactly what industry I was working in a month earlier and they waited until I had already invested a lot of resources into them. They never accused me of actually sending spam.

After cancelling the account, they did not respond to my request for them to permanently delete my list, worrying me that the information could be used to discriminate against my customers or be unnecessarily lost in a data breach.

Despite their frequent sales calls claiming I was a valued customer, they didn't bother to contact me to ask about the strict regulations we adhere to. I would never recommend that anyone use Constant Contact for the financial reason - this experience shows that you can invest a lot of money into working with their platform, and then have it suddenly end up wasted, with no legal recourse.

Constant Contact cancelled my account without warning after significant investment into their platform

Overall Satisfaction with Constant Contact