iContact is an email marketing solution that was acquired by Vocus in 2012. The product is integrated with Facebook and Twitter and is aimed at SMBs with unlimited sending as a key feature.
$14
per month
Omnisend
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
Omnisend (formerly Soundest) is an email marketing solution built specifically for eCommerce platforms, from the London based company of the same name.
$0
Pricing
iContact
Omnisend
Editions & Modules
1500 Users
$15.00
per month
2500 Users
$25.00
per month
5000 Users
$45.00
per month
Free plan
$0
Standard plan
$16
Pro plan
$59
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
iContact
Omnisend
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
$16 Month
Additional Details
—
Omnisend offers three pricing plans: Free, Standard and Pro.
Using Free plan you'll be able to explore all of Omnisend's features (emails, SMS, push notifications, popups, segmentation, analytics, etc), send up to 500 emails and push notifications, plus 60 SMS per month at no cost.
The standard plan starts at $16 per month, you get everything in Free, unlimited web push notifications, a customer success manager and 24/7 support.
From $59 per month, you can use Pro plan and send unlimited emails and push notifications, get advanced reporting features, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, and priority 24/7 support. You'll also get free SMS credits equal to the price of your plan.
I would only recommend it if someone was a small business. I think they are the best suited for companies who will send out a coupon or offer here and there. The most recent updates made it more complicated to use for more complicated processes. It is easy to train someone on the program, and so quick to learn. But I would also only stick to the simpler things. I also think the colorful templates are great, and show great creativity. But again, it is hard to justify recommending the program when it isn't WYSIWYG.
It's kind of an automation workflow, but for example you can set up a popup to appear at a specific time on a specific product page and offer the visitor something. The visitor then signs up and then (after you've set up your automation sequence) that visitor gets a specific welcome page based on the popup they signed up through, and then a specific order confirmation email and everything else flows from that specific popup. That's great because it's allowed us to sort of fine-tune our offerings to get our visitors' emails in the first place and offer, for example, someone browsing a product page for 3 minutes something different than someone staying 20 seconds on the homepage and then leaving.
Contact management. iContact is really great for entering all your contact. You are able to put them onto different lists, and let them choose which lists they would like to be a part of as well. There are many data fields provided to fill in information.
Emailing. We use the email feature at least once a month. They are always improving and adding new features, which is very helpful in presenting content in a new and exciting way to our readers. There are many options with remade templates and themes, or you can add your own.
Insights. It is really helpful being able to have the data to see what is working and what isn't. It is nice to be able to go back and see how things went in the past compared to now. Opens, clicks, shares, etc.
Initial setup wasn't firing right, support issue was handled pretty quickly and easily.
It does not go back and put previous orders/customers into the automation. It will only work with go-forward customers from the time you install the product. (At least that's what the outcome of our support inquiry told us...).
Would like to see more sample templates and campaigns.
iContact has been a quick and easy way to send any announcements and news directly to email and social media subscribers. Its tracking and reporting capabilities turn a simple email into a marketing campaign that can be used as a tool to efficiently gauge reader response and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to reach potential customers. The consistency and excellent customer service is what makes this program a pleasant experience.
I rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.
iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.
They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.
Support is weird. They ask you to keep everything in one thread, but they can't see your replies if they forward it to tech, and things easily get lost. Also tech support is HORRIBLE, they just seem snobby, and give horrible advice liek to test things on a live version vs staging
I didn't have a say in the decision because I wasn't with the company at the time. I listed HubSpot here because I know we used it in conjunction with iContact for email automation, but HubSpot Email was only recently built-out to the point where it is today. Now, iContact and HubSpot are no longer integrated.
We can create marketing campaigns that can span across multiple channels so that we can reach more customers regardless of the platform they are using. The system combines multiple channels into a single workflow for maximum engagement. Comes with various features that make it easy to personalize messages based on the customer's journey.
iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.
ROI has gone up when compared to other email marketing. Our open rates have increased and naturally also our conversion rates. Both in absolute and percentage terms. I don't have hard figures with me, but I'd say we've almost doubled what we've done with other email marketing apps.