Switch Guide: Moving from Constant Contact to Cakemail

Constant Contact is a reliable American email marketing tool, but Canadian businesses have a better option built for their specific legal environment. Cakemail, founded in Montreal in 2007, is an email marketing platform purpose-built for CASL compliance, with Canadian data hosting and a bilingual French/English interface that reflects the realities of marketing in Canada. If you're paying Constant Contact in USD, wondering whether your subscriber data is truly PIPEDA-compliant, or simply want to support homegrown tech, here's how to make the switch.

Why Canadian Businesses Are Making the Switch

Constant Contact is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, with data stored on US servers subject to US law. Your subscriber list — names, email addresses, engagement history — sits in an American company's infrastructure under PIPEDA-incompatible jurisdiction. Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) is also stricter than US CAN-SPAM rules, and Cakemail was built from the ground up with CASL compliance in mind. Cakemail stores data in Canadian data centres, invoices in CAD, and has bilingual support for English and French campaigns — a genuine advantage for businesses marketing across Canada.

Quick Comparison

Step-by-Step Migration Guide

1. Export your Constant Contact lists — In Constant Contact, go to Contacts → Lists, select each list, and export as CSV. Make sure to export: email address, first name, last name, all custom fields, and the subscription source/date if available.
2. Document your consent records — Before migrating, export your consent and sign-up source data from Constant Contact. CASL requires you to prove consent — if your list was built under CAN-SPAM, you may need to run a re-consent campaign before sending from a Canadian platform.
3. Export your email templates — Download HTML versions of your most-used email templates from Constant Contact. You'll need to rebuild them in Cakemail, but having the HTML makes recreating them much faster.
4. Set up your Cakemail account — Create your account, configure your sender domain (add SPF, DKIM records), and set up your brand colours and logo in the template editor.
5. Warm up your sending domain — If you're changing your sending infrastructure, start with a small segment of your most engaged subscribers to build sender reputation before mailing your full list.
6. Import your lists to Cakemail — Use Cakemail's CSV import to upload your subscriber lists. Map fields carefully. Tag your lists by source for segmentation.
7. Recreate your email templates — Build your master templates in Cakemail's drag-and-drop editor or paste your exported HTML. Test across email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail) before going live.
8. Migrate your automations — If you have welcome sequences, drip campaigns, or event-triggered automations in Constant Contact, recreate them in Cakemail's automation builder.
9. Send a test campaign — Run a small campaign to internal addresses and verify rendering, links, unsubscribe functionality, and tracking before mailing your full list.
10. Cancel Constant Contact — Time your cancellation to align with your billing date. Export a final copy of all data before cancelling.

Data Migration Checklist

• ☐ All subscriber lists exported (CSV, with custom fields)
• ☐ Consent/sign-up source data documented
• ☐ CASL compliance status assessed for existing list
• ☐ Email templates exported as HTML
• ☐ Campaign performance data exported (open rates, click rates)
• ☐ Sender domain DNS records updated (SPF, DKIM)
• ☐ Cakemail account configured with brand settings
• ☐ Subscriber lists imported to Cakemail
• ☐ Key templates rebuilt in Cakemail
• ☐ Automation sequences recreated
• ☐ Test campaign sent and verified
• ☐ Constant Contact subscription cancelled

Watch Out For

• CASL re-consent: If your subscriber list was primarily built through US-style implicit consent, you may need to send a re-consent campaign before continuing to email from a CASL-compliant platform. Better to do this early than risk complaints.
• Sender reputation: Moving to a new sending platform resets your sender reputation with ISPs. Warm up your list gradually — start with highly engaged subscribers (opened in the last 90 days) before emailing your full database.
• Unsubscribe history: Honour all existing unsubscribes. Export your Constant Contact suppression list before migrating and import it into Cakemail's suppression list immediately — this is both a legal and ethical requirement under CASL.
• Billing cycle: Constant Contact may have annual billing. Check your contract terms for early cancellation fees before cutting over mid-contract.

See all Canadian alternatives to Constant Contact →