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Constant Contact vs SendGrid: What are the differences?
Pricing: Constant Contact offers tiered pricing based on the number of contacts, starting from $20 per month. SendGrid, on the other hand, has a flexible pricing structure that depends on the volume of emails sent, starting from $14.95 per month. So, Constant Contact's pricing is based on the number of contacts, while SendGrid's pricing is based on the number of emails sent.
Features: Constant Contact provides a range of features including email marketing, event management, surveys, and social media integration. In contrast, SendGrid primarily focuses on email delivery and provides features like email templates, email analytics, and email API. Therefore, Constant Contact offers a broader range of features beyond just email delivery compared to SendGrid.
Automation: Constant Contact offers an easy-to-use automation feature that allows users to set up automated email campaigns based on triggers like sign-ups, purchases, or birthdays. SendGrid also provides automation capabilities, but it requires integration with external tools for setting up complex sequencing and workflows. So, Constant Contact offers a more seamless and built-in automation feature compared to SendGrid.
Customer Support: Constant Contact offers phone, chat, and email support for all customers, including their basic plan. In contrast, SendGrid's customer support varies based on the plan level, with phone support available only for higher-tier plans. Therefore, Constant Contact provides more accessible customer support options for all users compared to SendGrid.
Email Deliverability: SendGrid is a well-known and reputed email delivery service that specializes in providing high deliverability rates and reliable email infrastructure. Constant Contact, although also reliable, focuses more on holistic marketing solutions and may not have the same level of expertise and specialization in email deliverability as SendGrid. Thus, SendGrid has a stronger emphasis on ensuring deliverability compared to Constant Contact.
Integration Options: Constant Contact integrates with a wide range of third-party tools and platforms, including popular CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and event management tools. SendGrid also offers integrations but primarily focuses on email-related integrations with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Twilio. So, Constant Contact provides more diverse integration options beyond just email-related integrations compared to SendGrid.
In Summary, Constant Contact offers tiered pricing based on the number of contacts, provides a broader range of features beyond email delivery, offers an easy-to-use built-in automation feature, provides accessible customer support for all plans, focuses more on holistic marketing solutions rather than email deliverability specialization, and offers diverse integration options. On the other hand, SendGrid has flexible pricing based on email volume, specializes in high email deliverability rates, offers email-related integrations, and provides automation capabilities through external tool integration.
For transactional emails, notifications, reminders, etc, I want to make it so writers/designers can set up the emails and maintain them, and then dynamically insert fields, that I then replace when actually sending the mail from code.
I think the ability to use a basic layout template across individual email templates would make things a lot easier (think header, footer, standard typography, etc).
What is best for this? Why would you prefer Mailgun, SendGrid, Mandrill or something else?
The only transactional email service that I've been able to stomach is Postmark! It is by far the easiest (and quickest to get feedback from) service that I have come across. While drowning in attempts to debug Mandril, Mailgun and others I get quick feedback from Postmark in what I need to do.
Postmark for the win!
If you need your emails to be sent in a time-sensitive manner, I'd recommend SendGrid. We were using Mailgun and the lag because they aren't "transactional" in nature caused issues for us. SendGrid also has the ability to do dynamic templates and bulk send from their API. I don't know that they have the shared layout ability you mentioned, though.
We are using more extensively Mandrill.
It is a ok tool, which gives you the power for emailing with nice set of features.
The templates editing and management is a bit tricky, but this is mostly related to email templates in general, which are hard to create and maintain.
I do not think you can share the parts of the templates. You can have your predefined templates with possibility to insert dynamic content.
They provide a limited possibility to preview and test your templates.
The template editor is text only. For the better editors checkout http://topol.io or https://mosaico.io
Unfortunately, I do not have experience with the other tools and possibilities to manage templates.
At this stage, all of the tools you mentioned do email delivery pretty well. They all support email templates as well. Here are some considerations:
- Twilio owns SendGrid. If you're an existing Twilio customer, in my opinion that's a good reason to use SendGrid over the other solutions. The APIs are solid, and Twilio has excellent developer tools that allow you to create interesting automations (which is important for scaling).
- Mandrill was created by MailChimp, who have massive experience with email delivery and specifically with emailing beautiful email templates.
- Mailgun is a tool on its own. Like the other two, it supports mail templates and is built to be controlled almost exclusively via APIs.
SendGrid and Mandrill have pretty nice WYSIWIG template editors as part of their platform. Not so sure about Mailgun.
So for me the considerations would be: 1. How easy is it for you to integrate with their API? How complete is their API in terms of your own specific needs? 2. Prices: Which one works best for my budget? 3. Am I OK with editing the templates elsewhere (or even by hand), and then pasting the code into Mailgun? Or do I want the comfort of Mandrill or Sendgrid with their WYSIWYG editors?
Personally I'd go with Twilio, simply because it's such a massive ecosystem they are less likely to go bankrupt, and their APIs are rock solid.
Pros of Constant Contact
Pros of Twilio SendGrid
- Easy setup190
- Cheap and simple137
- Easy email integration!107
- Reliable86
- Well-documented58
- Generous free allowance to get you started28
- Trackable25
- Heroku add-on21
- Azure add-on15
- Better support for third party integrations13
- Simple installation6
- Free plan6
- Helpful evangelist staff4
- Great client libraries4
- Great support3
- Better customer support than the competition3
- Great add-ons3
- Nice dashboard2
- Scalable2
- Web editor for templates1
- Cool setup1
- Within integration1
- Easy set up1
- Free1
- Great customer support1
- Google cloud messaging1
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Cons of Constant Contact
Cons of Twilio SendGrid
- Google analytics integration is not campaign-specific3
- Shared IP blacklist removal takes months1
- Shares IP blacklist removal0
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