VerticalResponse vs Constant Contact Comparison

VerticalResponse and Constant Contact are both pioneers in the email marketing industry. They’ve been on the market for over 20 years, which is excellent proof that they’re both well-loved by their users. The two companies have expanded their services throughout the years and now provide an all-in-one platform. This means you can manage not only your email campaigns but also your social media profiles, landing pages, and web forms in one place. What’s more, regardless of the service you end up going for you’ll get a lengthy free trial period to test all the features available.

Due to VerticalResponse’s simplicity, creating new segments is straightforward. There are plenty of conditions, layers, and exclusions to select from, making it effortless to create complex segments. However, being simple doesn’t always work in VerticalResponse’s favor. The contact custom fields are a fine example of that because the platform only accepts text strings. This is far from perfect as it’s impossible to make your subscribers insert a specific type of data.

There are three different VerticalResponse plans available: Basic, Pro, and Pro+. The third one is reserved for VerticalResponse’s consulting services, which includes assigning a marketing expert to manage your email marketing and social media. The lowest price you can get Vertical Response for is $9.35 per month with annual payments which provides 500 subscribers, unlimited email sends, and all features (excluding the ones related to marketing automation, testing, and analytics). To get these tools you’ll have to upgrade to the Pro plan, which costs $13.60 per month with an annual billing cycle.

There are over 100 email templates for you to play with and the list is updated quite often. In other words, whenever something important is happening in the world, you can be sure to find a theme designed specifically. Like the rest of the platform, the email, sign-up form, and website drag-and-drop builders are user-friendly and provide enough sections to come up with original designs. Constant Contact also offers extensive marketing automation where you can easily create thorough message strings and set up transactional emails. What’s more, segmenting subscribers with Constant Contact is a breeze, and the platform allows you to come up with complex queries based on subscribers’ characteristics and behaviors.

You can get Constant Contact by opting for either the Email or the Email Plus plan. The main difference between the two is that the latter offers marketing automation while the former does not. Annual plans offer a flat discount of 15% on both subscriptions, and you can get the Email plan with up to 500 subscribers and unlimited email sends for as low as $17 per month.

Conclusion

If you consider price alone, VerticalResponse comes in first with more competitive subscriptions, where the higher-tier plan is less expensive than Constant Contact’s most basic subscription. However, if you want the email marketing service that provides the best price-quality ratio, things get a bit more complicated. There’s no way around the fact that Constant Contact offers more thorough features. Whereas VerticalResponse’s simplicity sometimes backfires, Constant Contact is proof that you can maintain comprehensive tools while remaining easy to navigate. This way, if you need a more comprehensive email marketing platform then Constant Contact might be worth the extra investment. The best way to learn which software is right for you is by taking advantage of the companies’ extended free trials, as both companies provide ways to test their platform risk-free for 60 days.