As I prepared to start my own marketing company, I used iContact. I loved their folder system, beautifully separating each company into it's own folder! Everything else was nightmare. My "designated account rep" only spoke to me once a month for exactly 30min. I couldn't contact him for help outside of that. Their customer service is so slow, I often figured things out on my own, looked up the answers, or gave up. The social media posts would not schedule to company LinkedIn pages, and each profile had to be scheduled separately, even if it was the same message. They only allow for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook -- no Instagram or anything else. They haven't upgraded Twitter's settings, so there's still a very strict character limit and using a picture uses a chunk of that. The images have to be very small in order to be used, or it either won't accept it or the system glitches so that you can't schedule it. They only have a few email templates to work with.
All of this we dealt with. We switched to Hootsuite for social media, which took care of a chunk of our issues. When I signed up for the account with iContact that allowed folders, I was charged twice, once for a three month trial at a reduced price all at once ($900), and then monthly at the reduced price. Despite my requests, I have yet to receive a refund. Another problem came when we saw horrible hate speech posted on one of their employee's profiles. Despite reporting it promptly, nothing was done. The employee is still posting horrible things, all under the title "marketer," including: threats to religious leaders, threats to government officials, and hatred toward people of a certain skin color. He even helps run a page on social media, where the only purpose is to mock people who believe in any religion.
This is not someone you want to handle your marketing. We switched companies and have been happier since, and we're spending less. After we switched, we saw a huge upswing in email deliverability as well. Even with a free trial account, I have a dedicated rep contacting me once a week, just to check in. If he doesn't know an answer, he directs me to someone who does or he finds out and gets back to me.
I recently attended a free webinar, and the guest speaker was from iContact. I learned more in that free webinar than I ever did as a paying customer!
If you're considering iContact, I strongly urge you to pursue a different option. I wish someone had warned me before I spent so much money. read more