Is Constant Contact enough for your CRM needs? It might be—for a price
Best known as an email marketing platform, Constant Contact offers customer relationship management (CRM) features, such as contact management, sign-up forms, and segmentation. Launched in 1998, it now has 600,000 worldwide customers from small businesses and solopreneurs to governmental agencies, such as NASA. It’s generally well-liked, with more than 2,700 Capterra reviews putting it at 4.4 stars, and more than 5,700 reviews on G2 for an overall star rating of 4.0.
In 2021, it acquired SharpSpring and rebranded it to Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM, which expanded Constant Contact’s CRM capabilities. Below, we’ll dig into everything you need to know about Constant Contact, and whether it’s a good fit for your business. All rates and fees are current as of June 5, 2024, and are subject to change.
Constant Contact CRM
| Price: | Starting at $299 |
| Free trial length: | 0 |
| Free plan available: | No |
Pros
- Marketing automation makes it easy to automate repetitive tasks like email campaigns based on contact behavior
- Integrate email marketing with your CRM for consistent messaging
- Lead scoring
- Activity feed to show hottest leads
Cons
- It doesn’t have as many CRM features as its competition
- Limited integrations
- It’s still a bit clunky
- Pricing isn’t transparent, requiring you to sign up for a demo to get details
While primarily geared toward businesses that want to manage their email marketing campaigns, Constant Contact helps through all phases of the customer lifecycle from prospecting to acquisition and follow-up. It’s an excellent option for anyone who wants to maintain regular communication with its contacts. For example, you can run targeted email campaigns based on customer behavior and interactions, which personalizes the experience for your contact further.
Constant Contact might not be a great fit for larger organizations or for those who have more sophisticated CRM needs. While it has a ton of offerings, most of them are centered around email marketing with a side of CRM rather than it being its bread and butter.
Despite adding SharpSpring to its lineup of CRM capabilities, its integration is still in transition, which could be a little clunky for businesses of all sizes. It doesn’t yet have extensive third-party integrations or advanced predictive analytics like much of its competition, which means it’s not well-suited for multilayered, complex organizations, despite its premium starting price that makes it not as great for startups or small businesses.
Additionally, they keep all pricing details locked behind a required demo, so if you’re looking to get things going quickly, or are on a budget, look elsewhere.
Constant Contact service plan overview
To sign up for Lead Gen & CRM, you must go through a sales demo so the representative has an idea of what types of features you need in a plan. Each offering is completely customized to your needs, such as an Enterprise-level plan as competitors would. Its plans start at $299 per month and can include features, such as sales reports, an activity feed, lead organization, call recordings through its Sales Dialer, Meetings, and more.
Other services Constant Contact offers
- Sales Dialer: This lets you place outbound calls right from a contact’s details, and lets you record calls.
- Opportunity Drawer: This is where you’ll keep all your contacts organized. You can schedule tasks, create new opportunities, make and pin notes, add products, and create custom fields.
- Meetings: Connect with team members or contacts in person, via phone, or via Zoom (provided you’ve got that integrated).
- Reports: These reports include pipeline value, opportunity health, conversion analysis, won-loss, sales performance, sales optimizer, activity, and follow-up.
- CRM migration: If you have another CRM account you want to migrate to Constant Contact, you can do so with a comma-separated values (CSV) file.
The Constant Contact platform and customer support
Finding the information you need on the Constant Contact website is a lesson in patience, especially as it relates to the Lead Gen & CRM product. While this might have been complicated by its acquisition of SharpSpring’s services, it’s been three years since that purchase and for things to be this clunky beyond its first year is a bit frustrating.
For example, when clicking on the Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM pricing, you’re taken to a demo page that gives zero information about pricing. However, there is a menu button at the top that lists pricing on that page but, when you click on it, you’re taken to pricing for its email marketing stuff, which can be misleading as this is significantly cheaper than its actual CRM pricing. To get the price, I had to contact its chat support, which told me that everything is custom but starts at $299 per month.
Support is available via live chat on weekdays from 3 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. Phone support is available Monday through Saturday, although those hours vary by department. You can also search its knowledge base, reach out to its user community, watch video tutorials, or attend free webinars with live Q&A sessions for additional support.
Is Constant Contact secure?
There is one notable breach of security with Constant Contact and several smaller account-specific breaches:
- In May 2021, Russian-linked group NOBELIUM compromised USAID’s Constant Contact account to launch a spear phishing campaign targeting over 7,000 accounts across various global organizations, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental, and government organizations.
- Some users report their accounts have been compromised. For example, phishing emails disguised as legitimate invoices were sent from their Constant Contact accounts. Others say their multifactor authentication (MFA) was bypassed and the account then compromised.
Constant Contact user reviews
Constant Contact’s CRM portion has 865 reviews on G2, with 4.5 out of 5 stars. The sentiment is that the platform is easy to use, great for email marketing, and they love its drag-and-drop features. Integrations make it easier to get things done. Some users are frustrated with Constant Contact’s customization limitations, automation features, bugs, and the restrictive pricing structure.
Compare Constant Contact alternatives
 Constant Contact |
 Zoho |
 Zendesk Sell |
|---|---|---|
| Base monthly cost per user | Base monthly cost per user | Base monthly cost per user |
| Starting at $299 | Starting at $20 | Starting at $25 |
| Maximum number of users | Maximum number of users | Maximum number of users |
| Unlimited (with premium plan) | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Free trial length | Free trial length | Free trial length |
| 0 | 15 days | 14 days |
| Learn more |
Is Constant Contact right for you?
Constant Contact is ideal for a midsized business without extensive customization needs. These businesses will find it easy to use thanks to its integrated marketing tools and support. However, large organizations that need complex automations or a lot of third-party integrations should look elsewhere. Its lack of pricing transparency is a major issue. After all, without knowing which features you’re paying for, how can you decide if you need more or fewer features to fit your budget? For this reason, it can work for small businesses but be prepared to shell out for it.
Frequently asked questions
Does Constant Contact offer CRM?
In 2021, Constant Contact acquired SharpSpring’s name and brand. The CRM portion of Constant Contact is called Lead Gen & CRM and has separate pricing from its email marketing platform.
How much is Constant Contact CRM?
Pricing for Constant Contact’s Lead Gen & CRM is customized to each business but starts at $299 per month. To get a personalized quote, you must schedule a demo with its sales team.
Does anyone still use Constant Contact?
From small businesses and nonprofits to major corporations and governmental organizations like NASA, Constant Contact is a popular email marketing platform. Its CRM portion was acquired in 2021, making it one of the newest additions to its arsenal, but it’s still widely used by various types of businesses.
