iContact

Pros

iContact is easy to use in most cases. There are tons of different templates and creating your own email template is a breeze. If you get one of the Pro plans they'll even help you make templates for future use, so that's great, too.

There are plenty of ways to upload data and keep track of that data. In fact I tend to use iContact to export my data for use on other platforms because it keeps everything so nicely. My point of sale doesn't even allow the breadth of exports and options that iContact does, so it's more than just an email platform to me.

Automation is visually very simple and means that I know I'm reaching my audience at the correct times. I no longer have to manually send each email, and with the automation there are tons of options to segment in addition. This means I'm not sending frivolous emails, so that keeps our open rate high.

Cons

I have three businesses that have to be kept separate and my only big complaint is that I can't copy automation plans or other things back and forth between them. So a lot of time is wasted redoing certain campaigns between the locations.

I also think the social connectivity needs to be updated. Twitter for one is outdated and the actual website allows much more text to be posted than in-app. They're several updates behind on Twitter.

Pros

When I want to send out an email, I go into my list of prior emails, make changes, and send. It's very easy. It has all of the functionality we need for sending out bulk emails.

Cons

The editor is a bit clunky. It does take a bit of time to create a new email format. Sometimes it doesn't behave like it is supposed to. But once you save that new format you can use it over and over.

Pros

iContact is a low cost solution for basic email marketing. You have access to a strategic advisor. My strategic advisor always provides thorough answers and/or solutions when requested. iContact offers automation with workflows that are easy and quick to build. The user interface is easy to understand.

Cons

The response time to fix API issues can be slow. iContact does not offer a post unsubscribe survey. I'm not able to download user profile information when exporting email send statistics - this is important for me when I want to do a quick analysis on my data.

Pros

My favorite thing about iContact was how much control we had over the design of the emails using only the visual builder and not having to go into much code. This is way better than most of the biggest competitors that I've used.

Cons

While organizing contacts was good I feel like it could have been better. Would have been great to have more ways to categorize.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

iContact is a very user friendly product for anyone. My company sends thousands of emails a week and we are always very pleased with how easy it is to create an email and send it immediately. I also really enjoy the dashboard, it helps me keep track knowing what emails have been sent and what emails I have yet to send. i also appreciate that iContact technology can delete any duplicate people in a contact list. That saves me time from having to go through thousands of people making sure I don't have any duplicates. My customer support is also amazing. My iContact rep. is always so good about getting back to me when I have questions or concerns.

Cons

Sometimes when I am creating a contact list in iContact, I have several excel sheets I need to upload to that one contact list...iContact doesn't let me select multiple excel sheets to upload at once, I have to do one at a time which takes a lot of extra time for me to do.

I also wish I could delete more than one contact list at once.

On the "upload contact" box, I want to be able to see the whole title of my contact list. Sometimes iContact cuts off my list title if it's too long, I would like to see the whole title...