Karolina Petraškienė
Content Marketing Manager
Reading Time: 5 minutes
What used to be effective ten years ago just isn’t enough anymore. The days of bulk email blasts are well behind us, as today’s customers expect so much more. As an ecommerce business you need to create a smooth and unique experience that makes every customer feel like a VIP. Not all email service providers can help you with that, but some of them can.
Check out our latest feature-by-feature comparison of Omnisend vs Constant Contact. Here, you’ll learn all about the main differences between these tools—things that could make or break your marketing strategy and help you to make the right decisions.
A Quick Feature Comparison
Here’s a feature comparison table to help you quickly find and compare the main features necessary for every nimble marketing team.
Omnisend vs Constant Contact: Who is Each Tool Built For?
When considering a new email service provider, pay close attention to what purpose the tool is built for. Software providers mainly focus on their primary customer needs and develop features to address these first.
Constant Contact’s primary focus is on small businesses, nonprofits, and individuals, with the aim of helping them to work smarter. What does this mean? It means that the tool is mostly tailored for the needs of solopreneurs who have just started their own businesses. Constant Contact is easy to use, offers a bunch of email templates, some basic automation workflows, and a simple website builder. However, for more advanced features, like sending a welcome series, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher-priced plan. For these reasons, Constant Contact might be better suited for those just getting started.
Omnisend, on the other hand, was built specifically for ecommerce brands and offers the kind of comprehensive features necessary for both small and already developed ecommerce businesses.
For three years in a row, it was one of the most user-friendly tools in the email marketing automation field. Nevertheless, it offers advanced customer segmentation and marketing automation features and additional marketing channels which are critical for growth-led ecommerce businesses. This means Omnisend is uniquely flexible enough for companies of all sizes and stages of growth.
Let’s take a closer look at what you can expect from each.
Marketing Automation
According to our latest reports (Q3 2020, BFCM 2020), one-third of all email conversions comes from automated messages, despite them accounting for less than 2% of total email sends. Black Mango generates even more–43% of revenue from automated welcome, cart abandonment, and cross-sell messages. So if you’re serious about increasing sales, powerful marketing automation should form a significant part of your ecommerce email marketing strategy.
At this point, Constant Contact’s offering is quite limited. The platform offers several options:
- Welcome email/series
- Birthday email
- Anniversary email
- Cart abandonment email/series (for Shopify, and WooCommerce only)
- Custom email series
Meanwhile, Omnisend provides one of the most sophisticated marketing automation solutions in the current market. Here you can find:
- A long list of pre-built email automation series: welcome, post-purchase, product, browse and car abandonment, re-activation, etc. (Learn about the four most effective workflows in ecommerce)
- A conditional split logic (Learn about it more here)
- Robust customer segmentation and personalization for automated messages
- Possibility to incorporate text messages and web push notifications into the same workflow.
The broad opportunities provided by Omnisend’s marketing automation are perhaps the most significant deciding factor when comparing it to Constant Contact. With that said, let’s take a look at other important aspects.
Want automation that goes beyond cart abandonment? Try out one of Omnisend’s pre-built templates free for 14 days!
Email Campaigns
Both tools have visual editors that are flexible, intuitive, and offer many email templates that you can pick according to your business style and preferences.
While Constant Contact offers polls and quizzes in emails, Omnisend’s drag-and-drop editor offers interactive elements like a Scratch Card or a Gift Box that help to increase campaign click rates by up to 60%.
As a result, feature differences between Email Editors aren’t as significant as in marketing automation, and it probably won’t be a decisive factor while picking your new email marketing platform.
List Building
Both platforms offer very similar email capture functionality: landing pages, pop-ups (exit-intent, time-triggered), in-line forms, and sign-up boxes.
The main differences are the following:
- Omnisend provides more flexible sign-up form designs that work out of the box.
- Reporting on sign-ups is available. It helps you understand how different sign-up forms perform.
- An in-house interactive sign-up form–a Wheel of Fortune–is at your service without any additional integrations. This is an excellent add-on to list-building initiatives.
- At Omnisend, you can start using pop-ups and a sign-up box during the free trial. At Constant Contact, list-building features are for paid customers only.
Customer Support
Both platforms have a long list of online resources. However, personal contact is also very important when you meet a challenge. And I must say that both platforms perform very well on this point.
Constant Contact offers live chat and phone support during working hours.
Omnisend’s award-winning customer support offers 24/7 live chat and email support.
One important consideration is that you can’t sign up on the Constant Contact platform without entering your credit card information and there is no self-service to cancel your subscription. The only way to cancel is to call their billing team and ask. While inconvenient for most, if you are based outside the US it might be even more difficult and expensive.
With Omnisend, a credit card is not required during your sign-up process or the free trial period. And, even if you have entered your card, cancelation is available at any time via self-service or with the help of the customer service team.
Omnisend vs Constant Contact: Price Comparison
Constant Contact has two main plans starting at $20 and $45 per month respectively. No matter which one you choose, you get the first month for free. However, many features are locked until you become a paying customer.
For an annual subscription, Constant Contact offers a 15% discount.
It’s also worth mentioning that the price of Constant Contact can increase quickly as you grow your subscribers, so this tool is a good option if you’re at the very early stages of building your email list.
Omnisend offers a free 14-day trial to familiarize yourself with the product after which you can choose from several different plans depending on your needs:
- Free plan: includes sign-up forms, sales reporting, and 15,000 emails per month
- Standard plan: includes audience segmentation and email marketing automation features available for only $16/mo
- Pro plan: includes free SMS/MMS credits based on your plan’s value, marketing automation with multiple channels integrated, Google ads, and much more for $99/mo.
Similar to Constant Contact, Omnisend’s price increases as the number of subscribers grows. If you sign up for an annual subscription, prices become significantly lower. Here’s a quick price comparison table:
No of Subscribers
Omnisend
Standard
PlanOmnisend Pro
(+free SMS credits)Constant Contact
Email PlanConstant Contact
Email Plus
499
$16
$99
$20
$45
501
$20
$99
$45
$70
5001
$66
$130
$95
$125
25001
$240
$500
$225
$295
35001
$288
$600
$335
$335
Omnisend vs Constant Contact: Wrap Up
Both of these email marketing tools are user-friendly and can be a great choice, depending on your situation and business goals. However, for more ambitious entrepreneurs and ecommerce marketers, Omnisend is a better option for their more flexible marketing automation and broader possibilities to convey an omnichannel, highly-personalized marketing experience for your customers. 50 000 ecommerce businesses already rely on Omnisend. Sign up for a free 14-days trial and try it yourself!
