Gist Comparison with

Constant Contact

• Intercom
• MailChimp
• Zendesk
• Hubspot
• Keap (Formerly Infusionsoft)
• ActiveCampaign
• FreshWorks
• Klaviyo
• ConvertKit
• Aweber
• Constant Contact
• Drip
• Drift
• Olark
• Calendly

Email Marketing

Email marketing is where Constant Contact puts the majority of their efforts.

But to be honest, you’re likely to think this comparison is overwhelming bias after reading this particular feature review.

So, please take a look at our other comparisons to see the attempt at being objective before reaching any conclusions.

Here we go.

Gist’s and Constant Contact’s email tools are similar in function. Both include:

• The ability to segment audiences
• Analytics including opens, clicks, etc.
• Resend to non-openers
• Basic scheduling

Constant Contact does have an edge when it comes to templates and media resources. They offer multiple visual templates, a drag-and-drop builder and a library of stock photos.

Gist doesn’t offer these features yet.

However, Gist wins out when it comes to affordability. We’ll cover pricing further down in this comparison, but it’s worth noting here.

Constant contact doesn’t offer a free plan and the cheapest ($20/mo) gives you only 500 contacts and limited functionality. (For full functionality, it’s $45/mo and still only 500 contacts.)

The prices go up from there.

With Gist, you get 500 contacts for free along with Live Chat, Forms to collect emails, meetings and up to 1000 contacts for $24.99/mo.

To put that in perspective, Constant Contact will give you up to up to 2500 contacts, email marketing and a touch of automation for $70/mo. Gist is also based on contacts and for 2500 contacts and our entire growth platform is $49.99/mo.

Another honest moment, if you need to have images in your email, there are other email marketing only tools that are better than constant contact.

Winner: Gist

While Constant Contact is better at helping users create visual emails, Gist wins on affordability and function. Even if visual emails are vital for your marketing, I still wouldn’t recommend Constant Contact.

Marketing Automation

Constant Contact has all of the basic automation tools we’ve come to expect from an email marketing solution.

And so does Gist.

However, Constant Contact’s automation is basically an intuitive scheduler for their emails.

If someone signs up via a form, you can start a campaign. You can then create emails to be sent out in a drip.

Gist offers these same automations in addition to many more.

You can trigger actions based on pages visited, create tags based on events that happen on your website or even have automations based on how users interact with your app.

Winner: Gist

If you want automations across your site (or app) and not just when emailing your list, Gist is the clear winner.

Forms

Both Gist and Constant Contact have a basic form creation tool — they even look very similar.

However, the forms on Constant Contact are better in a couple of ways.

1. Some forms are “dynamic pop-ups” that show up in content on a page without really being a “pop-up”. They’re less intrusive, but still very eye-catching.
2. Google’s ReCaptcha is included in all the forms, ensuring that most signups are real accounts.

Winner: Constant Contact

We could rehash the pricing, but feature is the most apples to apples we’ve seen and Constant Contacts forms are better.

Chat

Having the ability to chat live with visitors to your website could mean the difference between making a sale and not making one.

Gist’s Live Chat can also help business owners:

• Collect email addresses
• Book sales calls and appointments
• Handle customer support issues immediately

Constant Contact doesn’t offer live chat as one of their services

Winner: Gist

While Constant Contact is a well-known email marketing solution, they don’t have a Live Chat.

Meetings

Gist’s Meeting Scheduler tool allows our users to hook up their Google Calendar, set up when their available and send a custom link to anyone who’d want to have a more personal chat (e.g. a call).

In your emails, on your live chats or even via a chat bot you can send your custom link and:

• Book more sales calls
• Get a demo setup
• Schedule a call with your core audience

This is another feature Constant Contact doesn’t offer.

Winner: Gist

A meeting scheduler is a great way to get more conversations and without a similar feature — Gist is the winner.

Help Desk

Gist’s Help Desk allows you to communicate with your users and paying customers, organize team members and ensure that all customer support issues are handled quickly.

While you could create an email account specifically for support issues, Constant Contact’s tool is more for marketing content — not support. They also don’t have any help desk functionality.

Winner: Gist

Between the two, Gist is the only platform that offers a help desk.

Knowledge Base

A knowledge base allows business to create a database of articles that;

• Explain complicated features, step-by-step, in a way that customers can understand
• Reduce the number of support tickets so customers can find solutions for themselves
• Help support reps direct customers to the knowledge base

Gist users can easily create articles that are immediately searchable and well-designed.

This is another feature that Constant Contact does not offer.

Winner: Gist

If you have complicated products or processes, Gist is the only two between the two that allows you to explain things in a knowledge base.

Chat Bots

Gist Chat Bots are like having reps 24/7.

When you’re not their, they can:

• Collect contact data, like email addresses
• Qualify leads by asking questions to find your target customers
• Answer common questions on popular web pages, like your pricing

Our bot creator is simple-to-use and doesn’t require any coding.

Constant Contact does not offer a chat bot tool.

Winner: Gist

There’s not tool to compare here, which means the win goes to Gist.

Event Tracking

Constant Contact allows basic events to be tracked, when those events occur in and around the emails you send. Since this falls more under the typical email marketing features, it’s not really event tracking.

Gist’s Event Tracking allows you to see virtually every move that happens on site, in app and in emails.

You can even create custom events and use those tags to create automations with our marketing automation tool.

Winner: Gist

Gist is the only one out of the two companies to offer comprehensive event tracking.

Pricing

We already mentioned a little bit of the pricing, but we’ll describe both Gist’s and Constant Contact’s plans more in-depth.

There are two types of plans “Email” and “Email Plus”. There are multiple price points within each plan based on the number of contacts you have.

Here’s a screenshot to help you see (Email plan is on the left, Email Plus on the right).

Features between the two plans are quite different.

Most automation features don’t kick in unless you are on the Plus plan (except for abandoned cart and resending to non-openers).

Gist’s pricing is a bit less complicated. We have 4 plan options.

Free

Our free plan rivals many paid plans from competitors. Really. Here’s what you get:

• Live Chat
• Email Marketing (up to 500 contacts)
• Forms
• Meeting Scheduler
• Unlimited Pages, Chats and Visits
• Customization
• Drip Campaigns
• And up to 2 Users!

Free forever.

Growth (starts at $24.99/mo)

Growth gets you everything in the free plan and up to 1000 contacts. It also opens up our marketing automation and visual workflows.

In addition to all the free features, the Growth Plan includes:

• 1000 Contacts
• Automation Rules
• Workflow Builder
• Behavioral Emails
• Event Tracking
• Re-Send to Unopens
• Email Scheduling
• Reporting

Support ($9/mo per user)

This plan also includes everything in the free version. In addition to those free tools, you’ll also get:

• Knowledge Base
• Chat bots (and snippets
• Insert those KB articles into chat
• Team Inboxes for Chat
• Routing Rules
• Office Hours
• Reporting

The All-in-One (Based on number of contacts and number of users)

With our “All-in-One Plan”, you get everything. And the pricing is $9 per user plus the Growth Plan price, based on the number of contacts you have.

So, if you have fewer than 1000 contacts and 2 users, the price would be $24.99 + $18 = 42.99.

It’s really some of the most affordable pricing on the market. The power of 8 tools for the price of 1 (with more coming soon).

Winner: Gist

Even if Gist only offered the same features as Constant Contact, we’d still be the more affordable option. Factor in all of the tools we have that they don’t and Gist takes the win on pricing.

Summary

Not trying to be overly negative, but if you decide that an email marketing tool is more your speed and you don’t need the functionality offered by Gist — you may want to try another service besides Constant Contact.

That said, the full platform of Gist is geared to be the all-on-one solution for most businesses.

Winner: Gist

Gist wins against Constant Contact overall.

Interested in switching from Constant Contact to Gist? Here’s a guide for migrating specifically from Constant Contact.