Email Surveys: Constant Contact and VerticalResponse’s Survey Pricing

We recently mentioned that e-mail marketing service provider VerticalResponse added the ability to send and track surveys to their product offerings. Major competitor Constant Contact started offering a survey product about a year earlier VerticalResponse. We’ve compared VerticalResponse to Constant Contact some time back – based exclusively on their basic email marketing services. One of the big differences back then was in the way each company charged for use of its service. So, what about the survey products?

Both companies offer competitive / affordable pricing. And although Constant Contact is a little less expensive if you’re getting between 4,000 and 5,000 responses per month, VerticalResponse’s pay-per-use pricing model will appeal to most other customers.

Constant Contact has a straight forward price model: $15 a month for up to 5,000 survey responses ($.0030 per response). Note that it’s only $10 a month ($.0020 per response) if you purchase their Email Marketing product as well. It doesn’t look like they offer ‘rollover’ responses – so it’s a “use it or lose it” deal. Sounds cheap, right? But you get charged $0.05 for every additional response over 5,000 – that’s more than 16 times what they charge for the first 5,000. So if you’re running a survey campaign and expect more than 5,000 responses, Constant Contact can quickly get expensive.

VerticalResponse’s survey pricing, on the other hand, is pay-per-use, which allows your survey campaign to scale beyond the 5,000 mark without breaking the bank.

Here’s an apples to apples comparison, based on monthly response volume:

• 1,000 Responses Per Month
  • VR: $13.50 ($.0135 per response) – 10% less
  • CC: $15.00 ($.0150 per response)
• 4,000 Responses Per Month
  • VR: $27.00 ($.00675 per respons
  • CC: $15.00 ($.00375 per response) - 45% less
• 7,500 Responses Per Month
  • VR: $45.00 ($.0060 per response) – 68% less
  • CC: $15.00 + $125 overage ($.0187 per response)
• 15,000 Responses Per Month
  • VR: $67.50 ($.0045 per response) – 87% less
  • CC: $15.00 + $500 overage ($.0343 per response)

VerticalResponse has clearly won the pricing war – but as you know, that’s rarely the end of the story. You can expect us to tell you soon whether VerticalResponse’s survey product was worth the wait, or whether Constant Contact might be worth the higher price.