iContact Conclusion

iContact has a very straightforward email editor that makes creating a simple mass email relatively easy. They also include survey email templates, which allow you to poll customers, for free. However, limited image hosting and the expense associated with removing the iContact brand from your emails detract from your ability to create a fully customized email. They also do not offer A/B testing, which some consumers find useful when preparing an email campaign for a large contact list.

iContact: Email Creation

iContact offers an easy and flexible way to create emails for your email marketing campaign. Their WYSIWYG editor allows you to make changes directly into your email’s template, which is useful since it provides you with an instant idea of what your email will look like. The 358 included templates are just above market standard, and each one is professionally designed and high quality. They also include survey email templates free of charge. There are two notable downfalls in their email creation process. First, you are very limited in the amount of images you can host (500kb, or 8 images at a time). Second, it costs 10% of your monthly/annual plan to remove iContact’s branding from your email campaign. Although these two points are worth noting, they do not affect the functionality of iContact’s email creation program.

iContact: Contact Management

iContact makes it easy to import/load contacts into their system. You can import from CSV format, copy and paste contacts, download their “QuickImport” tool, or import from previous versions of Excel (the newest Excel format is not supported). The above mentioned formats import with ease however it should be noted that if you choose to copy and paste your contacts you will not be able to transfer any information other than email addresses. Another issue is that you cannot easily delete email addresses that bounce. You must delete them one at a time, which is very tedious relative to most of the other interfaces. List segmentation options and reporting are thorough, but you must do the actual segmentation manually. Also, instead of the standard unsubscribe link usually present on email marketing campaigns, there is a link saying “manage your subscription.”

iContact: Email Deliverability

Emails sent using iContact had a 100% deliverability rate to all major email servers that we tested. There is a standard wait time for all email campaigns to be sent out in order for iContact to monitor the content of the email to ensure that they will not be marked as spam. According to their customer support, this wait time is usually between 10-15 minutes, but in rare circumstances it can take up to 45 minutes. iContact also saves a record of every email sent through the system, as well as captures the IP addresses and subscription date for every new subscriber.

iContact: Analyzing Reports

iContact offers in-depth statistical reporting but lacks some of the more advanced features seen in other email marketing services. You can view statistics such as bounces, spam reports, opt-outs, opens, clicks and forwards, and you are able to view this information in either list or pie chart format. You can also export these reports, but they contain limited data. iContact does not offer A/B (split) testing, nor does it integrate with Google Analytics. Although, depending on your situation, you may not necessarily need these features. (See our Provider Reviews page to read about other email marketing providers who offer these features.)

iContact: Customer Support

iContact has good phone support as well as a great deal of tutorials. Their live chat was knowledgeable, and they responded to our all of our email inquiries quickly. Live chat and phone support are available for 12 hours a day M-F. Overall iContact’s customer support is on par with, if not above, market standard.

iContact: Pricing

iContact charges a monthly fee, based on the number of contacts you add to your list. With all of iContact’s plans you are limited to a maximum of 6 email campaigns per month. If you sign up for a free trial, you can test all of iContact’s email marketing features for 15 days, but you are limited to only 250 emails.