We’ve had it with Constant Contact, the service that offers to manage your newsletter mailing.
We’ve been using it for the Digital-Lifestyles newsletter for the last 18 months and initially found it good to use. Over time its performance has dropped lower and lower, to the point that we now feel we have no alternative but to find another solution.
We only use it once a week while we’re editing the content of the newsletter, which we’re pretty quick at doing these days. Even in this short amount of time we’re exposed to it, we’ve found in the last few months that the service simply stops responding, with the server just timing out.
We’ve been taking this up with Constant Contact over the last month. Over a lot of emails, their approach is to simply refuse to accept that they have a problem with the service, trying to tie us up with question of unrequited detail, which we felt was an attempt distract us from answering our questions.
For us, it appears that they’ve grown so large that their servers are falling over with their attempt to keep up with demand.
The long and the short of it? – We’d suggest that you steer clear of it. Watch these pages for our quest to find an alternative, hopefully from the open source world.
We’d be really interested to hear from you if you have had problems with Constant Contact too.
I would love to offer you an alternative to Constant Contact. We have had other clients
of theirs switching to us in previous months for the same reason. Please contact me when
you can.
Kevin
916-439-6948
An interesting comment. I just recently signed up for Constant Contact under their so-called free offer. Of the discussion at hand, I suspect you are right: they probably have overloaded servers. Fortunately, I haven’t really started using their system.
What immediately concerns me, however, was the warning when endeavoring to upload our email list that if you exceed 100 records that your free offer becomes void. After the fact, I reviewed their contract, that you have to agree to when you sign up, and it implies this at least (it says it explicitly for the survey system). Frankly, I find it quite unethical of a company to get you to sign up under a so-called free option only to bait and switch you when you actually try to use their system.
Of the issues mentioned in this article, it doesn’t surprise me. Unfortunately, as also noted, it’s hard to find an alternative. Nevertheless, I did send the company an email commenting that I thought their bait and switch tactics to be unethical and, if they will do that, I question the integrity of the company overall. (And I’d be surprised if they reply.) To be sure, at this point I AM looking for other options. If I end up going with Constant Contact, I at least intend to do so with my eyes opened.
a.judycki
for Energy in Motion: The Natural Healing Center, LLC
I, too, am fed up with Constant Contact. I spent hours today trying to get our latest newsletter ready, and it was taking an hour or more per photo. I have incredibly fast internet, and every website and service is instantaeous, but CC is like Molasses, and ultimately failed. They can’t seem to keep their server running. And you call them and it is Customer No-Service.
Everyone I know who works with Constant Contact is completely fed up with it. It takes hours just to try and produce a simple newsletter.
The final product NEVER comes out the way it looks when you’re previewing it. The spacing problems are impossible to deal with, and I’ve tried everything the Chat helpers have suggested.
Basically, Constant Contact is in denial about the horrendous formatting issues, and we are currently seeking alternatives.