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ActiveCampaign vs Constant Contact

A side-by-side comparison for teams choosing between ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact.

Last updated: December 17, 2025

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Quick Overview

Autonomous automation depth vs guided marketing simplicity

The biggest difference between ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact is how far each platform pushes automation and decisioning versus keeping everyday marketing execution straightforward. ActiveCampaign positions itself as an autonomous marketing platform designed to build and optimize cross-channel journeys with an advanced automation engine under the hood. Constant Contact emphasizes that email marketing can be easy, centering on quick creation, list-building, and light-to-moderate automation that fits common workflows.

That split is intentional: ActiveCampaign’s product bet is that richer customer data and more sophisticated logic should drive “next best” actions and orchestrated journeys across channels, so the system can reduce manual work while preserving granular control when needed. Constant Contact’s product bet is that removing complexity—through guided setup and approachable campaign creation—unlocks consistent execution, even when you’re not trying to model every behavioral edge case in a single automation map.

In practice, the stakes are operational. If your growth motion depends on deeply branched journeys, tighter targeting, and cross-channel orchestration, the platform’s automation depth and data-driven decisioning become central. If your priority is reliably producing on-brand campaigns, building your list, and running common automations without heavy configuration, simplicity and speed-to-send matter more. The rest of this page unpacks the tradeoffs around automation depth, channel reach, and ongoing setup overhead.

Quick Comparison

At a Glance

Category ActiveCampaign Constant Contact
Best for Marketers agencies entrepreneurs Small businesses digital marketing
Core strength Autonomous marketing automation platform Digital marketing simplification tools
Automation depth Multi-step cross-channel workflows Email automation features
Pricing model Tiered plans by contacts Tiered plans by contacts
Learning curve Instant setup claim Not evidenced in sources

Vendor Snapshot

Company Snapshot

Background data gathered from our market research (founding year, HQ, team size, specialties, etc.).

ActiveCampaign

Visit website
A
Team 1001-5000
HQ
Chicago, IL, USA
Team
1001-5000
Industry
Marketing Automation

ActiveCampaign is an AI-first autonomous marketing platform that helps marketers, agencies, and business owners run cross-channel campaigns and automate personalized experiences across email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Specialties

Marketing Automation Autonomous Marketing

Constant Contact

Visit website
C
30+ years operating Team 1001-5000
Founded
1995
HQ
Waltham, MA, USA
Team
1001-5000
Industry
Digital Marketing

Constant Contact provides digital marketing tools for small businesses to simplify and amplify marketing, helping drive sales, grow customer bases, and engage audiences.

Specialties

Analytics Contact Management Coupons CRM Customer Engagement E-commerce Marketing Email Automation Email Design

Why These Platforms Feel So Different

ActiveCampaign grew out of a push to give smaller teams access to marketing automation and contact management in one place. Constant Contact started earlier, in 1995, with a mission centered on making email marketing attainable for small businesses. Those starting dates mattered. Constant Contact formed in the dial‑up era, so getting reliable sending out the door was the core constraint.

Because ActiveCampaign was built around automation from the beginning, it prioritizes a flexible workflow engine tied closely to contact records. This leads to more configuration decisions, because the platform expects you to model your process before it runs. One visible result is its emphasis on building branching automations that act on contact changes and engagement signals.

Because Constant Contact began as email marketing first, it prioritizes the campaign creation and sending loop as the main organizing unit. This leads to a tighter set of paths, since the product evolved by adding tools around that core rather than rebuilding it around workflows. One visible result is the way templates, list building, and sending workflows stay central as other capabilities layer in.

These origins explain why the platforms feel different when you move beyond the basics. The next sections trace how those early priorities show up as concrete differences during day‑to‑day use.

Key Takeaways

Key Differences

ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact differ across several core dimensions that affect setup effort, automation power, and reporting depth.

Market focus

Automation-first vs newsletter-first

ActiveCampaign centers on lifecycle automation, while Constant Contact focuses on straightforward email campaigns and list outreach.

Automation model

Advanced flows vs basic sequences

ActiveCampaign supports complex, branching automations, while Constant Contact emphasizes simpler autoresponders and campaign scheduling.

CRM & sales

Built-in CRM vs limited sales tools

ActiveCampaign includes a native CRM for deals and pipelines, while Constant Contact is primarily email marketing with lighter CRM functionality.

Data & reporting

Deeper segmentation vs simpler reporting

ActiveCampaign enables granular segments and behavior-based targeting, while Constant Contact prioritizes easy-to-read campaign performance summaries.

Integration philosophy

Workflow integrations vs campaign add-ons

ActiveCampaign integrates tightly to trigger automations from app events, while Constant Contact integrations often support importing contacts and sending campaigns.

Workflow complexity

Power-user setup vs quick launch

ActiveCampaign typically requires more configuration to realize value, while Constant Contact is designed for faster setup and simpler ongoing management.

Feature Comparison

Feature-by-feature comparison

Compares core messaging, automation, data, and marketing operations capabilities.

Email marketing

Email creation, sending, and campaign management tools.

ActiveCampaign

Personalized email campaigns with advanced targeting and automation support.

Constant Contact

Drag-and-drop email templates with scheduling and list management.

Marketing automation

Workflow automation triggered by customer actions and rules.

ActiveCampaign

Advanced automation engine with branching, triggers, and cross-channel journeys.

Constant Contact

Automation for welcome, birthday, and drip campaigns; conditional paths on higher tiers.

SMS marketing

Text message campaigns and automated SMS workflows.

ActiveCampaign

SMS available, including SMS automation capabilities.

Constant Contact

SMS marketing included on Premium plan.

Social media marketing

Social posting, scheduling, and engagement management features.

ActiveCampaign

Cross-channel journeys include social messaging alongside email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Constant Contact

Post and schedule to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn with engagement tracking.

Segmentation

Audience targeting using attributes, behavior, and engagement data.

ActiveCampaign

Granular segmentation with dynamic segments, tags, and behavior-based targeting.

Constant Contact

Contact segmentation and custom segments, including activity-based segmentation.

CRM and sales pipeline

Contact records, deal tracking, and pipeline management.

ActiveCampaign

Integrated CRM add-on with pipeline management, deal tracking, and task management.

Constant Contact

—

Lead scoring

Scoring leads to prioritize sales and marketing follow-up.

ActiveCampaign

Lead scoring using AI and machine learning on behavior and engagement data.

Constant Contact

—

Website and event tracking

Tracking on-site behavior and link engagement signals.

ActiveCampaign

Site and event tracking with link tracking and engagement signals.

Constant Contact

—

Reporting and analytics

Performance dashboards and campaign analytics.

ActiveCampaign

Real-time reporting supported by AI agents and tracking signals.

Constant Contact

Analytics for opens, clicks, and engagement trends by campaign.

Integrations ecosystem

Native and third-party integrations for connected workflows.

ActiveCampaign

App marketplace with 1,000+ integrations for CRM, ecommerce, and productivity.

Constant Contact

Integrations for ecommerce, CRM, and design tools with native and third-party options.

Feature Analysis

Feature Explanation: How These Capabilities Differ in Practice

You’ve already seen what each platform claims to support. This section clarifies how the key capabilities behave when you actually implement them.

#1 Automation & Flows

ActiveCampaign centers on a visual automation builder with split and conditional actions for branching paths. It also supports site and event tracking as automation signals.

Constant Contact supports automation, but the available sources don’t describe a comparable branching workflow builder. In practice, automation details are less clearly documented in the same way.

#2 Customer Segmentation

ActiveCampaign uses tags, custom fields, and dynamic segments that automatically update based on set criteria. It also supports behavioral segmentation using engagement and site activity signals.

Constant Contact supports contact-based segmentation, but the available sources don’t describe dynamic segments that auto-update. Segmentation details are presented more at a high level.

#3 Multichannel Messaging

ActiveCampaign supports email campaigns alongside SMS automation and WhatsApp messaging, with cross-channel orchestration described in its platform materials. It also supports automating SMS via integrations such as SMSAPI.

Constant Contact supports email and SMS, but does not describe WhatsApp messaging support in the available sources. Its channel coverage appears narrower in documented execution.

#4 Testing & Experimentation

ActiveCampaign supports testing inside automations using split paths, and describes A/B testing within automation routes. This allows comparing different sequences and timing in a single workflow.

Constant Contact’s experimentation capabilities aren’t described in the available sources at the same level of workflow testing. As a result, how testing is applied to automations is less clear.

#5 Ecommerce Integrations

ActiveCampaign’s Shopify integration is positioned around lifecycle automations like welcome flows, upsell/cross-sell, review asks, and abandoned cart alerts. It also supports embedding a Shopify buy button into an ActiveCampaign landing page.

Constant Contact offers ecommerce-related integrations, but the available sources don’t describe the same set of lifecycle automation use cases. The integration depth is less explicitly documented.

#6 Analytics & Attribution

ActiveCampaign describes marketing attribution and supports capturing UTM parameters and landing page data via partner integrations like Attributer. This can tie lead sources to contacts for downstream reporting.

Constant Contact provides reporting, but the available sources don’t describe attribution mechanics at the same level. Attribution workflows and fields are not detailed in the same way.

Pricing

Pricing & Plans

Compare tiers, caps, and upgrade paths at a glance.

ActiveCampaign

Tiered Volume pricing

Public tiered pricing up to 50,000 contacts, with custom pricing at higher volumes.

Constant Contact

Tiered Volume pricing

Public tiered pricing up to 50,000 contacts, with custom pricing at higher volumes.

1,000 contacts

PLAN

$19

per month

What's included

  • ✓ Includes 10,000 emails
  • ✓ Email marketing campaigns
  • ✓ Marketing automation workflows
  • ✓ Forms and lead capture

Limitations

  • • SMS is available but not included as monthly credits in the base price (additional purchase/configuration may be required).

PLAN

$30

per month

What's included

  • ✓ Includes 10,000 emails
  • ✓ Email marketing sends included
  • ✓ List-based pricing by contacts
  • ✓ SMS available

Limitations

  • • SMS is available but not included as monthly credits in the base price (additional purchase/configuration may be required).
10,000 contacts

PLAN

$189

per month

What's included

  • ✓ Includes 100,000 emails
  • ✓ Higher contact capacity tier
  • ✓ Email marketing campaigns
  • ✓ Automation for segmented messaging

Limitations

  • • SMS is available but not included as monthly credits in the base price (additional purchase/configuration may be required).

PLAN

$120

per month

What's included

  • ✓ Includes 100,000 emails
  • ✓ Higher contact capacity tier
  • ✓ Email marketing sends included
  • ✓ SMS available

Limitations

  • • SMS is available but not included as monthly credits in the base price (additional purchase/configuration may be required).
50,000 contacts

PLAN

$759

per month

What's included

  • ✓ Includes 500,000 emails
  • ✓ Scaling tier for larger lists
  • ✓ Email campaigns at higher send volume
  • ✓ Automation for larger audiences

Limitations

  • • SMS is available but not included as monthly credits in the base price (additional purchase/configuration may be required).

PLAN

$430

per month

What's included

  • ✓ Includes 500,000 emails
  • ✓ Scaling tier for larger lists
  • ✓ Higher email send allowance
  • ✓ SMS available

Limitations

  • • SMS is available but not included as monthly credits in the base price (additional purchase/configuration may be required).
100,000 contacts

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

  • ✓ Includes custom emails
  • ✓ Custom plan sizing
  • ✓ Custom email send allowance
  • ✓ Support for high-volume programs

Limitations

  • • Requires contacting sales for a custom quote and plan terms at this volume.

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

  • ✓ Includes custom emails
  • ✓ Custom plan sizing
  • ✓ Custom email send allowance
  • ✓ High-volume program support

Limitations

  • • Requires contacting sales for a custom quote and plan terms at this volume.
500,000 contacts

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

  • ✓ Includes custom emails
  • ✓ Custom plan sizing
  • ✓ Custom email send allowance
  • ✓ High-volume account management options

Limitations

  • • Requires contacting sales for a custom quote and plan terms at this volume.

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

  • ✓ Includes custom emails
  • ✓ Custom plan sizing
  • ✓ Custom email send allowance
  • ✓ Enterprise-level contracting

Limitations

  • • Requires contacting sales for a custom quote and plan terms at this volume.
1,000,000 contacts

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

  • ✓ Includes custom emails
  • ✓ Custom plan sizing
  • ✓ Custom email send allowance
  • ✓ Enterprise-scale deployment support

Limitations

  • • Requires contacting sales for a custom quote and plan terms at this volume.

PLAN

Contact sales

—

What's included

  • ✓ Includes custom emails
  • ✓ Custom plan sizing
  • ✓ Custom email send allowance
  • ✓ Enterprise-scale support options

Limitations

  • • Requires contacting sales for a custom quote and plan terms at this volume.

Customer Voices

Reviews & Ratings

See how ActiveCampaign vs Constant Contact compare based on verified customer reviews (pros, cons, sentiment).

ActiveCampaign

4.6 / 5.0

Based on 2,545 reviews

Positive sentiment
Top Pros
  • • Automation is powerful and saves tons of time
  • • Segmentation and tagging keeps contacts organized
  • • Integrates well with our existing tools
  • • Reporting helps track campaign performance clearly
Top Cons
  • • Steep learning curve for advanced setup
  • • Pricing feels high as contacts grow
  • • Bugs and glitches disrupt workflows
  • • Pages and forms feel limited to customize

Constant Contact

4.3 / 5.0

Based on 2,889 reviews

Positive sentiment
Top Pros
  • • Easy drag-and-drop email creation
  • • Templates make campaigns quick to launch
  • • Scheduling emails is simple and reliable
  • • Analytics clearly show engagement and performance
Top Cons
  • • Formatting tools feel limited and glitchy
  • • Deliverability issues; emails land in spam
  • • Contact list editing can be frustrating
  • • Account cancellation and unsubscribe process is cumbersome

Real-World Scenarios

How key workflows behave in real campaigns

Seeing features in a matrix is helpful, but day-to-day work depends on how smoothly workflows run and how often teams need to intervene. These scenarios translate capability differences into operational impact.

#1 Ongoing lead follow-up

ActiveCampaign: Follow-up runs continuously, adapting outreach as people respond, with fewer weekly handoffs between marketing and sales to keep momentum steady.

Constant Contact: Follow-up often happens in recurring batches, with more manual weekly adjustments to timing and messaging as responses come in.

#2 List growth and segmentation upkeep

ActiveCampaign: Segments update on an ongoing basis, reducing daily list cleanup and keeping targeting consistent as contacts change behavior.

Constant Contact: Segments are typically refreshed during campaign prep, creating weekly list checks and more hand-edits when audiences shift.

#3 Coordinating multi-step campaigns

ActiveCampaign: Teams coordinate longer sequences with fewer stop-start moments, making ongoing optimization feel like small adjustments instead of rebuilds.

Constant Contact: Teams often run shorter bursts, pausing between sends to review results and coordinate next steps through recurring planning cycles.

#4 Sales and marketing handoffs

ActiveCampaign: Handoffs operate continuously, helping teams update outreach quickly when intent changes, with fewer weekly status meetings to realign.

Constant Contact: Handoffs tend to be more scheduled, relying on weekly check-ins and manual follow-through to keep contacts from stalling.

#5 Performance visibility and iteration cadence

ActiveCampaign: Visibility supports ongoing iteration, so teams make small daily tweaks while campaigns stay running without frequent restarts.

Constant Contact: Visibility often drives weekly review cycles, with changes applied between sends rather than continuously during a running sequence.

#6 Managing contact data changes

ActiveCampaign: Contact updates flow continuously, helping workflows adapt without recurring rework when details change across forms and interactions.

Constant Contact: Contact changes are commonly handled in periodic cleanups, creating weekly maintenance tasks to keep messaging aligned with current data.

Decision Guide

Which Platform Should You Choose?

Use these cues to quickly see which platform fits how you work.

ActiveCampaign

Best for

Teams running always-on lifecycle work where campaigns are treated as systems that get tuned continuously.

This platform is a good fit if:

  • ✓ You have someone on the team who owns the logic and is expected to keep refining it week to week.
  • ✓ Your team meets regularly to review performance and then changes rules, timing, and paths based on what happened.
  • ✓ Contacts are organized by behaviors and milestones, and your day-to-day work depends on those groupings staying accurate.
  • ✓ You’re comfortable investing time upfront to map processes end-to-end before you start sending at scale.

Constant Contact

Best for

Teams that work in a steady publishing rhythm and need a straightforward routine for sending consistent updates.

This platform is a good fit if:

  • ✓ You send on a predictable cadence (weekly/monthly) and treat each send as a standalone production cycle.
  • ✓ One person (or a small rotating group) assembles campaigns start-to-finish without relying on a dedicated ops owner.
  • ✓ Your team primarily reviews results to confirm the send went out and to decide what to cover next time.
  • ✓ You often build communications around calendar moments like events, announcements, or seasonal updates.

Need-to-know

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about comparing these platforms.

How much work is it to migrate lists, tags, automations, and templates from Constant Contact to ActiveCampaign (or the other way around)?

Contacts can typically be moved via CSV export/import, but tags, custom fields, and engagement history don’t always map 1:1 between Constant Contact and ActiveCampaign.

Automations and templates usually need to be rebuilt because workflow logic, triggers, and email editor elements differ, so plan time for re-creating sequences and re-linking forms, landing pages, and tracking settings.

If we switch and regret it, what does reversing the decision look like in practice?

Reversing generally means exporting contacts and key fields from ActiveCampaign or Constant Contact, then importing into the other platform and re-establishing subscription status and segmentation rules.

You should expect to rebuild automations, signup forms, and templates, and to re-warm sending reputation on the new system rather than assuming deliverability carries over unchanged.

Do we fully own our data, and can we export everything we need without getting stuck?

Both ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact allow exporting contacts (and commonly lists/segments) so you can take subscriber data with you, but not every dataset is equally portable.

Items like automation history, send-level engagement events, and certain report views may be limited to in-app access or available only in aggregated form, so confirm which fields and event logs you can export before committing.

We have GDPR obligations—how do consent, deletion requests, and regional rules get handled?

ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact both support storing subscriber fields you can use for consent tracking and provide workflows for unsubscribes and suppression so you can honor opt-out requirements.

For GDPR-style deletion or access requests, the practical expectation is manual or admin-driven actions (exporting a contact record, deleting it, and ensuring it’s suppressed where required), and you’ll still need your own documented process for proving consent and handling requests on time.

Can we manage multiple stores or brands without mixing audiences, emails, and reporting?

Multi-brand setups are usually done by separating lists/segments, sender identities, and templates, but the level of separation differs depending on how you structure accounts in ActiveCampaign versus Constant Contact.

If you need strict isolation (separate logins, separate reporting, separate compliance boundaries), confirm whether you’ll use multiple accounts/workspaces and what that means for cross-brand suppression and shared contacts.

What happens if we rely on integrations—are there API limits or constraints that could break our workflows?

If you depend on custom integrations, check each platform’s API coverage for the specific objects you need (contacts, tags/segments, events, campaign reporting) because some actions available in the UI aren’t always exposed the same way via API in ActiveCampaign or Constant Contact.

Also plan for rate limits and batching: high-volume syncs (e.g., frequent updates from a CRM or ecommerce platform) may require queueing, backoff, and retry logic to avoid throttling or partial updates.

We send SMS in multiple regions—what are the constraints around regulations and country availability?

SMS is heavily regulated (opt-in rules, sender identification, quiet hours, and carrier filtering), and availability can vary by country, so you should confirm supported regions and compliance tooling before choosing ActiveCampaign or Constant Contact for SMS-related messaging.

Even with platform features, you’re responsible for maintaining consent records and honoring STOP/HELP keywords and local requirements; cross-border campaigns often need separate policies and segmentation to avoid accidental sends into restricted regions.

How do we protect deliverability—what controls exist if we see spam complaints or sudden bounces?

Both ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact apply unsubscribe handling and suppression mechanisms, and you can reduce risk by using double opt-in where appropriate and maintaining list hygiene (removing invalids and chronic non-engagers).

If deliverability drops, the practical levers are tightening acquisition sources, pausing risky segments, adjusting sending cadence, and reviewing authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) rather than expecting the platform alone to “fix” reputation issues.

What should we expect from support when something breaks—are response times and access predictable?

Support access can differ by plan and channel (ticket, chat, phone), so confirm what’s included for your subscription in ActiveCampaign and Constant Contact before you rely on real-time help during launches.

For time-sensitive issues, plan internal runbooks (rollback steps, list freeze, resend rules) because even with vendor support, investigation and resolution can take longer when deliverability, integrations, or compliance reviews are involved.

Are there scaling ceilings we’ll hit as our list and automation volume grows?

As databases grow, the operational constraints tend to show up in segmentation complexity, sync volume from integrations, and the time it takes for large imports, re-segmentation, or bulk updates in ActiveCampaign or Constant Contact.

If you anticipate rapid growth, pressure-test high-volume scenarios (frequent field updates, many concurrent automations, and large sends) and verify any contractual or technical limits around throughput, API usage, and account performance expectations.

Final Thoughts

Our Recommendation

This choice is about how your team runs communication: coordinated, iterative execution versus steady, repeatable outreach with minimal handoffs.

Choose ActiveCampaign when your marketing and sales rhythms are tightly linked and you manage many moving parts across segments, stages, and owners. It fits teams that can sustain ongoing optimization cycles and accept added coordination overhead to keep everything aligned.

Choose Constant Contact when you need a straightforward workflow that stays consistent week to week and is easy to maintain with limited staff time. It suits organizations that value predictable execution, lighter process, and fewer internal dependencies to get campaigns out the door.

Map the decision to your operating cadence and the amount of coordination you can support, and the right platform becomes clear. Pick ActiveCampaign for complex, continuously managed programs; pick Constant Contact for simple, dependable outreach.