Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover email marketing & automation. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| ActiveCampaign | Constant Contact | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $15 | From $12 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Annual only | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Not stated | Web |
| Covers | Email Marketing & Automation | Email Marketing & Automation, Social Media Management |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Email automation with a CRM underneath it
ActiveCampaign is what people move to when the sequences outgrow a newsletter tool, and its conditional logic goes deeper than anything at this price. The CRM underneath means a sponsor conversation and a subscriber record are the same object. It takes a weekend to learn, and the cheapest plan caps automations at five actions, which is not enough to try the thing it is good at.
Our note
Budget for Plus rather than Starter. The five-action cap on the cheapest plan blocks exactly the branching logic that justifies choosing ActiveCampaign over a newsletter tool, and discovering that after migrating a list is a bad afternoon.
Email marketing aimed at small businesses
Constant Contact is the one a local business gets recommended by its accountant, and that shapes the product: templates, an event tool, social posting, and support you can telephone. A creator running a list will find it plainer than the platforms built for newsletters. What it does well is stay out of the way of somebody who does not want to learn marketing software.
Our note
The list price rises after the introductory period, so quote yourself the second-year number before comparing. For a creator this is rarely the right pick against MailerLite or Brevo; for a business that will phone somebody when a send fails, it earns its keep.
Only on this side
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.