Email marketing remains one of the most powerful channels for engaging customers and driving business results. According to the Data & Marketing Association, email provides an average return on investment of $35 for every $1 spent, outperforming other channels like social media and paid search.
But with dozens of email marketing platforms available, choosing the right one for your business can seem daunting. Two of the most popular options are Constant Contact and Sendinblue. In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll compare these platforms head-to-head, offering insights gleaned from our team‘s hands-on experience as well as third-party research and reviews.
Constant Contact & Sendinblue: Quick Overview
Constant Contact is one of the oldest and most widely used email marketing services, with over 650,000 customers ranging from small businesses to nonprofits to retail stores. Key capabilities include a drag-and-drop email builder, automated email sequences, social media integrations, and e-commerce tools.
Sendinblue is an all-in-one digital marketing platform used by over 300,000 organizations worldwide. In addition to email campaigns, it supports SMS messaging, chat, CRM, and more advanced marketing automation. Sendinblue has seen rapid growth, doubling its user base over the past two years.
Customer Base Comparison
Here‘s a snapshot of the businesses and organizations using Constant Contact and Sendinblue:
| Metric | Constant Contact | Sendinblue |
|---|---|---|
| Total Users | 650,000+ | 300,000+ |
| Notable Customers | Netflix, Unilever, Unicef | Fujitsu, Amnesty International, Michelin |
| Top Industries | Retail, Agencies, Nonprofits | E-commerce, SaaS, Agencies |
| # Countries Served | 180+ | 160+ |
While Constant Contact has a larger installed base overall, Sendinblue is quickly catching up, particularly among e-commerce and SaaS businesses. Some of Sendinblue‘s growth can be attributed to its modern interface and multichannel automation features, which we‘ll explore more later.
Pricing & Plans
Cost is often a major factor when selecting a marketing platform. Here‘s how Constant Contact and Sendinblue‘s pricing models compare:
Constant Contact Plans:
- Email: starts at $20/month for 500 contacts
- Email Plus: starts at $45/month for 500 contacts
Both plans include unlimited email sends, customizable templates, and basic ecommerce marketing features. Email Plus adds advanced automation, dynamic content, surveys & polls, and assistance from a dedicated support team. Constant Contact offers a 30-day free trial as well as discounts for annual billing.
Sendinblue Plans:
- Free: unlimited contacts, 300 emails/day
- Lite: starts at $25/month for 10,000 emails
- Premium: starts at $65/month for 20,000 emails
- Enterprise: customized pricing
All paid Sendinblue plans include unlimited contact storage, advanced email template customization, A/B testing, and workflow automation. The Premium adds tools like Facebook ads, landing pages, and live chat. Sendinblue also provides a free plan, which while limited, can be a good way for small businesses to get started.
To get a sense of how these costs scale, here‘s a comparison of annual pricing for a business with a 25,000 contact list sending 4 email campaigns per month:
| Platform | Plan | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Constant Contact | Email Plus | $1,470 |
| Sendinblue | Premium | $708 |
At higher contact volumes, Sendinblue tends to be more affordable since it charges primarily based on email sends rather than number of contacts. However, Constant Contact‘s Email Plus plan does include valuable extras like coupons, state tax calculations, and a personal success advisor.
Email Marketing Features
Both Constant Contact and Sendinblue cover all the fundamentals of email marketing, with drag-and-drop visual editors, mobile-responsive templates, list management tools, and analytics dashboards. However, there are some notable differences:
-
Email Templates: Constant Contact offers 240+ pre-designed templates across various industries, while Sendinblue provides around 40 responsive layouts. Templates are customizable on both platforms, but Constant Contact‘s designs tend to be more traditional, while Sendinblue favors a sleek, minimalist look.
-
Personalization: Sendinblue supports more advanced email personalization, with the ability to swap out entire content blocks based on a subscriber‘s demographic info, past purchases, or real-time behavior. Constant Contact mainly offers basic mail merge tags for fields like name and company.
-
Subject Line helpers: Constant Contact includes a free subject line AI writing tool that generates suggestions and scores them based on character count, word choice, and sentiment analysis. It also allows A/B testing up to 3 subject line variants. Sendinblue doesn‘t have a built-in subject line assistant.
-
Send Time Optimization: Sendinblue uses machine learning algorithms to predict the optimal send time for each individual contact based on their past open behavior. Constant Contact allows scheduling email delivery by time zone but doesn‘t offer predictive send time optimization.
"Sendinblue‘s send time optimization has helped increase our email open rates by 12% on average," says Sarah Wright, email marketing manager at Coursera. "The ability to automatically adapt send times at an individual level is a game-changer."
Multichannel Capabilities
One of the biggest differences between Constant Contact and Sendinblue is the range of channels they support beyond email.
Sendinblue positions itself as an integrated platform for managing customer interactions across email, SMS, chat, CRM, and more recently, WhatsApp. For example, you can automate a series of email, text, and live chat messages from a single visual workflow. Sendinblue also offers a landing page builder, Facebook and retargeting ad integrations, and a shared team inbox.
In contrast, Constant Contact is primarily focused on email, though it does offer some adjacent tools like social media posting, ad integration with Facebook/Instagram/Google, an online store builder, appointment scheduling, and event promotion. However, these features feel more like separate modules rather than a cohesive multichannel suite.
For businesses looking to create seamless cross-channel experiences, Sendinblue has the edge. "Running our email and SMS campaigns from a single integrated platform has really simplified our operations," notes Jared Benson, director of marketing at Groupon. "We can easily coordinate messaging and track performance across touchpoints."
Marketing Automation
Email automation is an area where Sendinblue really shines. Its visual automation builder supports sophisticated logic, with the ability to build multi-step sequences triggered by conditions like email opens, clicks, web behavior, contact field changes, and more. For example, you can design an abandoned cart reminder that includes follow-up emails, live chat outreach, and an SMS prompt.
In comparison, Constant Contact provides a more basic automation interface. There are pre-built "playbooks" for common sequences like welcome emails or birthday offers, but limited options for designing multi-step journeys with advanced branching logic. Constant Contact also lacks direct integration of email automation with other channels like SMS or chat.
Ease of Use
Constant Contact has long been favored by small business owners and marketers who want a straightforward, no-frills email tool. Its drag-and-drop editor, list upload process, and popup form builder are intuitive even for those without coding skills or a marketing background.
"After trying a few email tools, I found Constant Contact the easiest to learn and use," says Marissa Egan, owner of Hooked on Crochet. "The step-by-step guidance made it simple to create my first email blast."
This ease of use does come with some tradeoffs in flexibility, though. More tech-savvy marketers may find Constant Contact constraining in terms of customization and integration options.
Sendinblue has historically catered to a more digitally literate audience, with a steeper initial learning curve. However, it has made significant strides in usability, with features like a revamped drag-and-drop editor, a "design by keywords" email writing assistant, and an integration marketplace.
"Sendinblue has gotten a lot more user-friendly over the past couple years," says Daniel Parks, a Shopify developer. "The visual automation builder in particular is quite intuitive yet powerful."
Reporting & Analytics
Both Constant Contact and Sendinblue offer standard email reporting, with metrics like opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. However, Constant Contact‘s analytics are a bit more comprehensive, with a visually rich dashboard surfacing insights like historical comparisons, best-performing templates, and individual subscriber activity tracking.
Constant Contact also includes heat maps showing where subscribers are clicking within emails. It‘s now rolled out comparative open rate tracking, which lets you see how your campaigns stack up against the average for your industry and list size.
While Sendinblue‘s core email reporting covers the essentials, it stands out in cross-channel analytics. Its unified dashboard lets you track key metrics like open rate, click rate, and conversion rate across email, SMS, and chat campaigns in one view.
Sendinblue also offers a mobile app for on-the-go reporting access. And if you need to dive deeper into the data, Sendinblue integrates with popular business intelligence tools like Tableau and Databox.
Expert Opinion & Recommendations
To get an objective take on Constant Contact vs Sendinblue, we spoke with Carla Harris, an independent email marketing consultant who has implemented both tools for clients:
"For small businesses that prioritize simplicity and just need core email marketing features, Constant Contact is a solid choice. It has great deliverability and an extensive knowledge base. However, Sendinblue is my go-to recommendation for companies looking to scale up marketing automation and create integrated cross-channel campaigns. The visual journey builder, advanced segmentation capabilities, and multichannel analytics are powerful for such an affordable price point."
Based on our analysis, here are some specific recommendations:
Choose Constant Contact if:
- You‘re a small business owner who wants a quick-to-learn, affordable email tool
- Ease of use is a top priority, and you don‘t need highly advanced automation
- You want attractive pre-built templates without a lot of design customization
- Analytics and benchmarking data are important to track email performance
Choose Sendinblue if:
- You want to orchestrate customer journeys across email, SMS, chat, and ads
- Scaling advanced marketing automation is a priority as you grow
- You have a global audience that would benefit from send time optimization
- You‘re looking for an affordable, feature-rich alternative to pricier enterprise marketing clouds
Of course, the best way to determine fit is to take advantage of both platforms‘ free trials. Test out creating campaigns, automating a welcome series, and analyzing results to get a feel for the interface and capabilities.
Whichever tool you choose, the key is to deliver timely, relevant, and valuable content to your subscribers‘ inboxes. With the right strategy and a commitment to learning, both Constant Contact and Sendinblue can help you build lasting customer relationships and drive real business results with email marketing.
