When Act! Advantage launched earlier this year, it brought together a powerful suite of tools designed to elevate your marketing strategy. From web forms and surveys to online appointment scheduling, email list verification, and event management, it’s a comprehensive platform built to do more than just send emails.

The email marketing module—formerly known as Act! Marketing Automation—was reimagined and fully integrated into the new Act! Advantage tiers, making it a core feature rather than an add-on.

Together, these tools form a complete lead generation and conversion engine:

• Audience segmentation is handled through Groups in Act!, allowing you to target contacts based on purchase history, behavior, industry, location, role, and more.
• Email verification ensures your campaigns reach valid inboxes, reducing bounce rates and protecting your sender reputation.
• Email campaigns drive traffic to your website, where visitors are met with compelling calls-to-action like forms, surveys, and scheduling tools.
• Event management helps you register attendees for webinars and other engagements seamlessly.
• Sales teams gain from a consistent stream of interested leads and automatic follow-ups based on how prospects interact, along with tools for creating quotes that make managing sales easier.

📉 Why most people pay more for less? 

So if Act! Advantage offers all this, why do 70–80% of CRM users still opt for third-party email tools like Constant Contact and MailChimp? The answer often comes down to three key factors:

1. Affordability
2. Ease of use
3. Monthly billing flexibility

Let’s take a closer look at each of these—and explore why Act! Advantage might be the smarter choice for your business.

💰 Affordability: A Closer Look

Comparing Act! Advantage’s email marketing pricing to third-party platforms isn’t straightforward. MailChimp and Constant Contact offer low entry-level pricing and modest monthly send limits, but they restrict the number of contacts you can reach. In short, they support frequent emailing—but only to small audiences.

For example, all three services charge around a quarter of a cent per email ($0.0002 - $0.0003), suggesting similar costs, but because the rate plans for these popular email services are designed to send daily emails to a small distribution list, the real-world costs are much higher. The problem? Most small businesses don't want to pummel a small group of people with daily emails, they'd rather send weekly or biweekly emails to a much wider audience. Make sense?

Act! Advantage pricing is based on monthly send volume, meaning you get to choose how many people you want to email, and how often. For instance, a single-user Act! Advantage Professional accounts include 25,000 monthly sends for just $45/month, which allows you to send one email to 25,000 contacts, bi-weekly emails to 12,500, or weekly emails to 5,000 contacts. The choice is yours.

For context, MailChimp's benchmarks suggest the average small business distribution list is around 4800. If most small businesses want to send weekly emails at most, they would need approximately 20,000 - 25,000 sends per month. While sends may fluctuate from month to month, these numbers generally reflect peak seasonal marketing needs and provide a realistic framework for comparison.

Considering these ratios, we can now examine the pricing chart based on weekly distribution for the specified number of contacts (where X's indicate unavailable amounts).

As you can see, when it comes to real-world use of email marketing, both MailChimp and Constant Contact are 3–4 times as expensive as Act! Advantage. This pricing disparity underscores why Act! Advantage is the more equitable choice, aligning with actual usage patterns—substantial sends without arbitrary contact limitations.

✅ Ease of Use

When comparing Advantage's ease of use with that of Constant Contact and MailChimp, most users find that all three platforms offer a similarly intuitive experience. Users can quickly create professional emails using a drag-and-drop editor, access pre-built templates, and automate campaigns with minimal setup. However, Act! Advantage seamless integration with Act! CRM eliminates the need to manage contacts across multiple systems.

Consider the following steps to create an email campaign with Act! Advantage, compared to the other two:

1. Intuitive Email Builder: Act! Advantage features a drag-and-drop email editor that mirrors the simplicity of Constant Contact & MailChimp's interface. Users can easily design professional-looking emails without needing HTML or design skills. Pre-built templates and customizable blocks make it quick to create branded communications.
2. Seamless Contact Integration: Unlike Constant Contact, which requires users to manually sync or import contacts from external data sources, Act! offers native integration with Act! CRM. This means users can access, segment, and target their contacts directly from their CRM database—saving time and reducing errors.
3. Guided Campaign Setup: Act! Advantage offers step-by-step campaign wizards that guide users through the process of creating, scheduling, and sending emails. These workflows are designed for non-technical users, making it easy to launch campaigns with confidence.
4. Automation Made Simple: While Constant Contact provides basic automation, Act! Advantage includes visual automation builders that allow users to set up drip campaigns, follow-ups, and conditional workflows with ease. These tools are designed to be user-friendly, even for those new to marketing automation.
5. Real-Time Reporting: While both platforms provide real-time analytics, Act! Advantage's reporting directly links to CRM records. Users can track opens, clicks, and conversions while seeing how each contact interacts with campaigns over time—without switching platforms.
6. Email list verification: I know we mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. Act! Advantage features an easy-to-use email verification system that improves your distribution list hygiene and ensures you hit the target audience you're aiming for. This feature safeguards your sender reputation, helps avoid spam traps, and improves your overall deliverability.

📆 The Appeal of Monthly Billing

Monthly billing certainly "feels" safer. It’s flexible, low-commitment, and easier to manage for businesses with tight cash flow or uncertain growth. For a small business owner, the idea of locking into an annual contract—even with a discount—can feel risky. However, statistics show most of these customers pay for monthly services for more than one year, forsaking significant savings in the process.

Summary

Act! Advantage is unquestionably a more affordable, feature-rich, and equally user-friendly alternative to third-party platforms like Constant Contact and Mailchimp. While those platforms offer basic email marketing capabilities, Act! Advantage goes further—combining intuitive tools like marketing automation, web forms, surveys, appointment scheduling, event management, and CRM integration.

Unlike Mailchimp or Constant Contact, which often limit contact reach and charge based on list size, Act! Advantage uses a monthly send-based pricing model that better aligns with actual marketing needs—especially for small businesses with growing contact lists. 

In short, Act! Advantage delivers more value and functionality—all in a platform that’s just as easy to use as the big-name competition. If you're looking to get more features at a better value, Act! Advantage could be the ideal fit for your small business—especially if you're open to switching from monthly billing.