Mon expérience avec iContact en 2024 (Review)

Last Updated on août 30, 2024 by Ewen Finser

In this review I’ll break down my personal experience with iContact pour marketing par courriel who SHOULD use it, and who SHOULD NOT use it.

But first, here’s my history with this company…

Some Context on iContact

I first used iContact 8+ years ago when I was just getting started online. It was one of the early movers in the email marketing space, getting started in 2003 as a basic email campaign sender.

They kind of fell off my radar for a bit as newcomers like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Drip, and others filled the automation void and really democratized advanced marketing automation for SMBs.

iContact was basically dead to me.

BUT, I recently was looking to launch a new brand and heard some good things about iContact… I was surprised at how DIFFERENT the suite is today.

It’s not perfect (I’ll get to that later), but here are some value props that made an impression…

What I Like About iContact Today

• Best in Class Affordability: Price is a HUGE factor for many business and iContact is among the most cost effective of the modern automation email marketing services I’ve personally tried. iContact get’s started at just $9/month for 500 subscribers and outprices similar competitors at virtually every pricing tier.

• SpamCheck Pre-Filters: I’m not sure why more email marketing platforms don’t do this, but I really appreciated iContact’s spam checking capabilities BEFORE pushing the send button on a campaign. All it takes is 1 or 2 “bad campaigns” that trip some filter and all of a sudden your email list is in the wrong neighborhood. iContact saves a lot of heartache here!
• Fully Featured: Given the price, I kept expecting iContact to come up short somewhere. While it’s not the snazziest UX and doesn’t a super complex multi-purpose pricing scheme (with CRM features, etc…), iContact also doesn’t really skimp anywhere. Great value!
• Unlimited Users on Premium Plan: Most of our email marketing operations are “team” events these days. There’s nothing worse than trying to hotseat an admin account OR coming up short on seats for company stakeholders. This is one of those more subtle “under the radar” ways iContact stans out as a great value to me.
• Social Media Posting: This is a feature I came to appreciate as a longtime Mailchimp user., the ability to co-distribute marketing messages on social media platforms with a one-shot kill. To be honest, I haven’t seen it implemented elsewhere, so it was nice to see this included on the Premium plan. Again… a great value compared to a more expensive Mailchimp plan.

Some Drawbacks to Consider

While I clearly love the value prop with iContact, there are some drawbacks worth mentioning here.

• No Frills UX: I personally do not mind that iContact has a bit more “rustic” appeal compared to some of the latest new marketing “gamified” platforms, but it’s definitely a bit more retro than I expected. Nothing wrong with that, but could use some work around the edges.

• No SMS Texting: For brands – particularly ecommerce – that rely on integrated email and SMS marketing, iContact isn’t the right fit as it doesn’t have these features.
• A Generalist: And really, iContact is one of the original breeds of “generalist” email marketing platforms. By this I mean it wasn’t built for ecommerce like Klaviyo, Omnisend, and others… OR for newsletter creatives like Beehiiv and ConvertKit, or the sales CRM features of ActiveCampaign and Hubspot. Again, there is nothing wrong with having a really cost effective and capable generalist (there’s a lot of businesses in the messy middle), but if your business is fairly niched into one of these categories, iContact doesn’t have many of these specialist features an accents.
• Integrations Could be Better: iContact has a decent library of integrations, but doesn’t quite measure up to market leads like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and others. They DO have a flexible API endpoint process, but this is a fair bit more technical than direct integration partners.

How iContact Pricing Works

Like I’ve discussed above, one of my favorite things about iContact is it’s fairly straightforward pricing structure.

BUT, there’s a few things I should run through about the two different core paid plans before going further.

Here’s the high level:

But this honestly doesn’t tell me a whole lot, other than that, the Premium plan has unlimited users, social media, and AI.

Let’s drill down into the full feature comparison a bit further:

We start to see a few more differences here come to the surface. The “send limits” is interesting. So if you have 500 contacts, you can send up to 5,000 emails per month, or 10 sends per month.

I don’t have any businesses where I’m intentionally sending 10 separate campaigns per month, but I do have a fair number of automated emails for new customers, abandoned carts, send to un-opens, etc… This isn’t the entire list obviously, but would incrementally count towards me “limit”.

12x contacts adds some, but I’m not sure it’s a distinction worth a difference unless you are alraedy on the cusp. I would guess most businesses are either nowhere near this cap, or regularly on the border.

Then it starts to become clear where the main differences are:

My take on this is that basically if you want to do any serious automations, the basic plan isn’t going to cut it beyond maybe a “welcome sequence.” Still, probably fine for getting started with list building.

My bottom line on pricing: Even the Premium plan is very affordable and competitive with peers, but most established brands should consider the Premium option as the real choice here. That said, if you are just starting your brand or list, the base plan is a great affordable starting point.

iContact Competitive Landscape

In today’s business world, I never make decisions about critical software without evaluating the competitive landscape first. For iContact there’s a number of in-market peers worth contrasting against:

• Constant Contact: Very similar in their value-based broad spectrum email marketing capabilities and even how long they’ve been in market, a few more plans and pricing customizations to work with.
• ConvertKit: If you do any type of brand story telling, primarily run a blog, or want to build out a “newsletter as a business”, ConvertKit has some of the best tools in market, including SparkLoop (for newsletter monetization and referrals). They also are a good fit for digital product sellers (courses, downloadables), as they have a built-in checkout cart (ConvertKit Commerce). More pricey than iContact, however.
• ActiveCampaign: If you are absolutely bonkers about automations and behavior-based triggers, ActiveCampaign is one of the OG’s of automations. Also, if you have a sales orientation, AC has lightweight CRM features for lead scoring and contact management.
• Aweber: Similar to iContact, another longstanding (but revamped) email service platform, now with solid automations. Check to price compare as they sometimes have good deals and promos.
• Mailerlite: I love MailerLite as a simple, entry-level email collection and basic automation builder. It has a free tier up to 1000 subs rivals some of the largest platforms in terms of third-party integrations (I personally love their WordPress integration and WordPress-friendly email opt-in tools).
• Klaviyo: If you are an ecommerce based business – specifically Shopfiy – Klaviyo is the market leader for a reason. It has dozens of preset automations, templates, and workflows for almost instant uplift for established stores.

Who Should NOT Use iContact

There are some specific instances where I do NOT think brands should settle for iContact, despite it’s strong value proposition:

• Shopify Store Owners: While iContact isn’t a bad fit for ecommerce per se, there are just so many excellent dedicated ecommerce email service providers right now that I’d be hard pressed to recommend something else like Klaviyo (or near peers like Omnisend, Sendlane, etc..).
• Sales Teams: If you are running a sales operation, I’d similarly lean more towards a solution like ActiveCampaign or Hubspot here. Not because iContact can’t work, but because these other platforms have customized workflows and CRM functionality to better support Sales goals out of the box.

Who SHOULD Use iContact

That leaves iContact as a solid option for pretty much everyone else.

I particularly like iContact for brands in need of a cost effective substitute for an overpriced peer (ahem… Mailchimp) OR for brick-and-mortar businesses in need of a solid email automation platform without the fuss.

For email deliverability purists, iContact is excellent rails with their SpamCheck tech.