Mailchimp vs Constant Contact for a local business

Summer email season has arrived. Restaurant patios are open, AC tune-up offers need to reach last year’s customers before the first heat wave, and med spas want their lists to hear about summer packages. For a lot of local businesses the list of past customers is the most underused thing they own, and the question we keep getting this June is which tool should send to it: Mailchimp or Constant Contact.

Both are established, both are good at sending email, and either will get a newsletter out the door this afternoon. The differences are in who each was built for and in how each helps when you get stuck.

Before you pick either one

Something changed this year that matters more than the brand of tool. Since February, Gmail and Yahoo have been stricter with anyone sending mail in bulk. The sending domain needs to be authenticated, unsubscribing should take a single click, and spam complaints need to stay low. Sending your newsletter from a free email address, or from a domain nobody has set up, is now one of the quickest routes into the spam folder.

So whichever platform you choose, set aside an hour for the domain setup and send from an address on your own domain.

After that, four things decide the choice:

1. How much of your email is one-off newsletters, and how much is automatic: welcome series, reminders, win-back messages.
2. Whether you sell online, because a store connection changes what the email can do.
3. How much help you want from a real person when something breaks.
4. Whether you already run a CRM that can send email on its own.

Mailchimp, in plain words

Mailchimp is an email and marketing automation platform used by everyone from one-person bakeries to large online stores. Its strengths are a big template library, a flexible editor, segmentation by behavior and tags, automated journeys that branch on what a customer does, A/B testing, and reports that show opens, clicks and, once a store is connected, revenue.

Its list of integrations is long, which matters if your bookings, shop or point of sale run through other software. It also offers landing pages and sign-up forms. Texting is available in some countries and on some plans, so check whether it applies to you before you count on it.

The trade-off is depth. Features that make Mailchimp attractive to an online store are features a salon owner may never touch, and the menus reflect all of them.

Constant Contact, in plain words

Constant Contact has long pitched itself to small businesses and nonprofits that want email to stay simple and want a person to call when it does not. It has templates, a straightforward editor, tools for growing a list, automations for welcome and birthday messages, event registration, and tools for posting to your social accounts from the same place.

Support is a large part of its pitch, with help by phone and chat. What support comes with which plan can vary, so ask directly. For an owner who will send one newsletter a month and wants someone to walk them through the first few, that hand-holding can be worth more than any feature.

At a glance

	Mailchimp	Constant Contact
Built for	Small businesses and online stores that want automation and testing	Small businesses and nonprofits that want email kept simple
Standout	Segmentation, branching journeys, store integrations, testing	Guided setup, support, event registration, social posting
Automations	Journeys that react to what a customer does	Welcome, birthday and other common sequences
Help when stuck	Varies by plan; ask what yours includes	Central to the offer; ask what your plan covers
Your list	Exportable; check how tags and history come across	Exportable; check how tags and history come across
Ask before signing	Contact and sending limits, which features need a higher plan	Contact limits, support hours, which features need a higher plan

Strengths and weaknesses

Mailchimp

• Strength: automation that responds to behavior, not only to a date on the calendar.
• Strength: connects with a wide range of other business software.
• Strength: testing tools that show which subject lines people actually open.
• Weakness: a lot of interface for a business sending one newsletter a month.
• Weakness: the more advanced features sit on higher plans, so read what yours includes.

Constant Contact

• Strength: easy to learn for someone who has never built a campaign.
• Strength: event registration built in, handy for classes, tastings and open houses.
• Strength: support treated as part of the product rather than an afterthought.
• Weakness: its strengths lean toward simplicity, so an owner planning heavy segmentation should confirm the plan supports it first.
• Weakness: advanced features also depend on the plan, so check before you rely on them.

One caution for both: open rates have been inflated since Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection arrived, so judge a campaign by clicks, replies and bookings.

When the CRM should send instead

There is a third answer many local businesses miss. If you already run a CRM such as GoHighLevel, email can live inside it, next to texts, calls, the calendar and the pipeline. That changes what email is for. A reminder goes out because an appointment was booked. A review request goes out because a job was marked complete. A win-back message goes out because a customer has not been in for nine months.

The dedicated email platforms put more into newsletter design and template choice. A CRM puts the email right beside the booking, which is where most local businesses make their money. Plenty of the businesses we work with use both: the CRM for automatic messages and a newsletter tool for the monthly note, provided unsubscribes sync between the two.

Who should use which

A café or bakery with an online shop. Mailchimp, for the store connection and the ability to email people based on what they bought.

A yoga studio or community nonprofit running classes and events. Constant Contact, for the event tools and a gentler learning curve.

A home service company that lives on maintenance reminders. Neither on its own. Those reminders belong in the CRM that knows when the last visit happened.

A clinic or med spa with booking software. Start with what the booking system and CRM can already send, and add a newsletter tool only if you want a designed monthly email.

Where Beyaoshy comes in

We are not an email platform, and we do not ask anyone to leave one they are happy with. What we have done for local businesses since 2015 is build the messages that ought to be automatic inside the client’s CRM, usually GoHighLevel, and wire them into the rest of the work: the ads that bring the lead, the profile that brings the call, the review request after the visit.

The list and the account belong to the business from the first day, so nothing gets trapped with us. The same team that runs the ads and the reviews writes the email flows, which means the welcome message repeats what the ad promised. We report what those messages produce in booked appointments and repeat visits rather than open rates. Other agencies white-label this work for their own local clients.

The short version

Pick Mailchimp if you want automation and testing and do not mind a busier tool. Pick Constant Contact if you want simple email and a person to help. And if your email is mostly reminders and follow-ups, look at the CRM work we do in GoHighLevel before buying either, or see how we work with local businesses across the whole account.