Constant Contact Pricing Broken Down at Every Tier (With Comparisons)

The Short Answer on What Constant Contact Costs

Constant Contact runs three plans: Lite at $12/month, Standard at $35/month, and Premium at $80/month. Those are the entry prices for up to 500 contacts.

After 500 contacts, the price climbs fast. What each plan includes versus what you need to run a real email program is where most people get caught off guard.

This article gives you the full pricing picture at every contact tier, what features you lose on each plan, how it compares to seven direct competitors, and the hidden costs that show up after you sign up.

The Three Constant Contact Plans at a Glance

Here is every plan, at 500 contacts, with the key differences that matter:

The Lite plan is a single-user, bare-bones tool. One user, one welcome automation, no A/B testing, no scheduling.

Standard adds A/B testing, email scheduling, three automation templates, and seats for up to three users. It is a reasonable starting point for small businesses that need more than one seat and basic send controls.

Premium unlocks unlimited automation templates, dynamic content, engagement heat maps, custom segments, Google Ad Manager integration, and 500 SMS messages per month. It is built for teams running multi-channel campaigns.

How Pricing Scales by Contact Count

Cost lives in the contact tiers. The entry price looks manageable. Then your list grows.

The jump from 500 to 2,500 contacts on the Standard plan takes you from $35 to $75 per month. That is a 114% price increase for adding 2,000 contacts.

Going from 500 to 5,000 contacts on Standard more than triples the cost, from $35 to $110 per month.

At 50,000 contacts, you are paying $460/month on Standard. I've watched businesses at that list size move to platforms built for scale and cut their monthly bill in half.

The Single Subscriber Trap

I see this all the time - people never spot the cost spike until it hits them.

Constant Contact uses broad contact tiers. The moment you hit 501 contacts, you leave the 0-500 tier entirely and jump into the 501-2,500 tier.

On the Standard plan, that single new subscriber takes you from $35/month to $75/month. Forty dollars more per month for one contact crossing a threshold.

List-based email tools work this way. But Constant Contact's tier gaps are wider than most competitors. That makes the jumps more punishing.

The practical fix: clean your list before it crosses a tier boundary. Removing bounced addresses is especially important here. Bounced email addresses count toward your contact limit even though they cannot receive your emails. Unsubscribed contacts do not count, but bounces do.

Discounts and How to Get Them

Constant Contact has three discount structures worth knowing:

Annual prepay: 15% off when you pay for 12 months upfront. That brings Standard from $35/month to about $29.75/month at 500 contacts.

Six-month prepay: 10% off. Less savings, but better for businesses not ready to commit to a full year.

Nonprofit discount: Up to 30% off with annual prepay. At 500 contacts, that brings Standard from $35/month down to about $24.50/month. That is the best discount Constant Contact offers to any segment.

Some nonprofits also qualify for deeper discounts through TechSoup, which can beat the 30% direct discount. The verification process takes time but the savings over a year typically exceed the administrative cost.

One thing the discounts do not change: the contact tier jump penalties. You still pay $75/month (before discount) the moment you hit 501 contacts on Standard, regardless of whether you are on annual billing.

What You Lose on the Lite Plan

The Lite plan at $12/month looks like a deal. Here is what I reach for immediately when I move to any new platform - and what Lite does not have:

• Email scheduling (you send now or you do not send)
• A/B subject line testing
• Multiple automation templates (you get one basic welcome automation)
• Advanced segmentation
• Resend to non-openers
• Social media ads integration
• More than one user on the account

If you are sending newsletters on a set schedule, you need scheduling. That is Standard, not Lite. If you are testing subject lines, that is Standard. If you have a team, that is Standard.

The Lite plan is accurate for one specific user: a solopreneur sending occasional emails to a small list with no interest in automation or testing. Anyone running an active list will run into Lite's walls within the first few weeks.

What You Lose on the Standard Plan

In my experience, Standard covers basic and intermediate email marketing well enough until it doesn't. But it hits a ceiling too. Here is what requires Premium:

• Dynamic email content (content that changes based on who is reading it)
• Unlimited automation templates (Standard caps you at three)
• Custom automation paths
• Engagement heat maps
• Unlimited custom segments
• Facebook Lookalike Targeting
• Google Ad Manager integration
• 500 included SMS messages per month
• More than three users on the account

The three-automation-template cap on Standard is the most commonly hit ceiling. Once you want a welcome series, a re-engagement sequence, and a post-purchase flow running at the same time, you are at your limit before you have even built anything sophisticated.

The Hidden Costs That Do Not Show in the Plan Price

The monthly plan price is not the full number. These add-ons and conditions increase what you pay:

SMS add-on: SMS is not included in Lite or Standard. For those plans, SMS starts at $10/month for up to 500 messages. Premium includes 500 SMS messages per month, but additional blocks cost extra.

Inbox preview tool (Litmus): Seeing how your email renders across email clients costs extra. This is a $10/month add-on not included in any plan.

Overage emails: Each plan includes monthly sends equal to a multiple of your contact count (10x on Lite, 12x on Standard, 24x on Premium). If you send above that limit, you pay $0.002 per extra email. Sending 5,000 emails over your limit adds $10 to your bill.

Annual prepay lock-in: To get the 15% annual discount, you must pay the full year upfront. If your list grows mid-year and you need to upgrade your contact tier, you are locked into what you paid.

Cancellation process: Constant Contact does not offer self-service cancellation. You have to contact their billing team to cancel, provide your account username, and wait for email confirmation. Plan accordingly if you decide to leave.

Constant Contact vs. Mailchimp on Price

This is the most direct comparison people make. Here is what the numbers show:

Mailchimp is cheaper at every comparable tier. And Mailchimp still offers a free plan for up to 250 contacts with 500 sends per month. Constant Contact eliminated its free plan entirely.

The one area where Constant Contact pulls ahead on the Mailchimp comparison: phone support. Constant Contact includes live phone support on all plans. Mailchimp's phone support requires a higher-tier paid plan. Businesses that want to call someone when something breaks can do that with Constant Contact on any plan.

The Free Plan Is Gone

This is worth stating clearly because many older reviews still reference a Constant Contact free plan.

As of June , Constant Contact eliminated its free plan entirely. There is no free tier. The platform offers a 60-day free trial with no credit card required. After 60 days, you move to a paid plan or you stop using the platform.

The 60-day trial is genuinely generous by industry standards. I've tested a lot of these platforms - 14 to 30 days is the typical window you get elsewhere. You have enough time to build campaigns, run tests, and see results before committing money.

But it is still a trial, not a permanent free option. If you need a free plan to grow a small list over time before paying, Constant Contact is not that platform right now. MailerLite (500 contacts, 12,000 emails/month free) and Mailchimp (250 contacts, 500 emails/month free) both still offer permanent free tiers.

Head-to-Head Comparison Across Seven Platforms

Here is where Constant Contact sits in the broader market at three list sizes:

*Brevo prices by email volume, not contact count. These are approximate monthly figures for comparable send volumes.

Constant Contact is approximately 2x the price of MailerLite at every tier. At 10,000 contacts, MailerLite costs $73/month versus Constant Contact's $120/month. That is $564/year in savings for the same basic sending capability.

The comparison against ActiveCampaign flips at larger lists. At 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign at $149/month costs more than Constant Contact's $120/month. And ActiveCampaign gives you significantly more advanced automation at that price point.

Klaviyo is more expensive than Constant Contact at every tier. Constant Contact is genuinely cheaper than Klaviyo. For e-commerce brands choosing between those two specifically, the Klaviyo premium buys you tighter Shopify and WooCommerce integration, behavioral triggers off purchase data, and revenue attribution that Constant Contact does not match.

The Brevo comparison is almost unfair. Brevo prices by email volume rather than contact count, so a business sending the same volume to 50,000 contacts pays a fraction of what Constant Contact charges. If your list is large but your send frequency is low, Brevo's pricing model almost always wins.

Constant Contact's Deliverability Claim

The platform claims a 97% deliverability rate and is openly confident about it. I've worked with clients who shopped around on this metric specifically and found most other platforms either don't publish a number or bury it. Consistent deliverability at that rate matters most to businesses where inbox placement directly drives revenue, like event promoters, nonprofits with donation asks, and service businesses where a missed email is a missed booking.

Deliverability is hard to verify independently, but this claim is consistent across Constant Contact's own materials and has been part of their positioning for years. It is one of the few concrete differentiators they have at the pricing level they occupy.

Who Should Pay for Constant Contact

Based purely on the feature-to-cost comparison, Constant Contact makes sense in these specific situations:

Nonprofits with phone-first teams. The 30% nonprofit discount on annual Standard brings the price to about $24.50/month for 500 contacts. Phone support on all plans matters for teams without dedicated tech staff. I've worked with nonprofit teams where the built-in event management and RSVP tools in Constant Contact solved a real problem - the cheaper tools they tried before simply couldn't handle it.

Small businesses that call customer support regularly. Constant Contact offers phone support on all plans. MailerLite and most budget alternatives do not offer phone support on entry plans.

Organizations running events. Constant Contact has built-in event management and RSVP tools that are genuinely useful for organizations running ticketed or RSVP-required events. This is not common among email platforms at any price point.

Teams needing simple collaboration without complexity. Standard's three-user access and clean drag-and-drop editor suits a team where multiple people need to draft and send emails without training time. The interface is deliberately simple. Whether that is a feature or a limitation depends on what you need.

Who Should Probably Look Elsewhere

Fast-growing lists. The tier jump penalties hit hard as your list grows. If you are adding subscribers consistently month over month, you will hit those tier boundaries faster than you expect, and each crossing costs more than it should relative to competitors.

E-commerce brands. Klaviyo and Omnisend are purpose-built for e-commerce with behavioral triggers, revenue attribution, abandoned cart flows, and deep Shopify integration. At comparable prices, they deliver more e-commerce-specific value.

Budget-conscious marketers with more than 1,000 contacts. MailerLite is 50% cheaper at most list sizes and includes automation, A/B testing, and a landing page builder. The savings add up to hundreds of dollars per year at almost every tier.

Marketers who need advanced automation. At 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign costs $149/month versus Constant Contact's $120/month. That $29/month premium buys you a CRM, lead scoring, split automations, and conditional logic that Constant Contact's automation builder does not approach.

A Note on List Quality and What It Costs You

One operator who tested cold email at scale found that how you count and clean contacts is as important as which platform you choose. The logic is simple: Constant Contact bills based on active contacts in your account. Bounced addresses count against your limit even though they cannot receive email. Unsubscribed contacts do not count.

This means a list with 500 legitimate subscribers and 200 hard bounces sitting unremoved is billing you in the 501-2,500 tier. On Standard, that is $75/month instead of $35/month - a $40/month increase for addresses that will never open an email. Cleaning bounces before your billing period resets is one of the few ways to manage cost without changing your plan.

The same principle applies before you migrate to any list-based pricing platform. Clean your list first. Even dropping from 1,100 active contacts to 950 by removing bounces could keep you in a lower tier and save $10-20 per month with no other changes.

The Upgrade Ladder Problem

Constant Contact's three-plan structure is designed to move you up. The features withheld from Lite push you to Standard. The features withheld from Standard push you to Premium, and that pressure is by design. This is not unique to Constant Contact, but the execution here is particularly aggressive.

Consider what you lose on Lite that almost every active email sender needs: scheduling, A/B testing, and more than one automation template. At $12/month, Lite is a trial tier with a price tag, not a working plan. It is a trial tier with a price tag.

Then consider what you lose on Standard that growing businesses eventually need: unlimited automations, dynamic content, and unlimited segmentation. Scheduling, A/B testing, dynamic content - platforms charging $15-20/month less than Constant Contact's Standard plan include all of it.

The result is a push from $12 to $35 to $80 faster than most buyers expect when they sign up looking at the entry price.

How to Get Maximum Value if You Choose Constant Contact

If you have already decided Constant Contact is the right tool, here is how to manage the cost:

Start on Standard, not Lite. I see it regularly - active senders hitting Lite's limitations and upgrading to Standard within weeks. Going directly to Standard saves the migration friction and lets you use the platform properly from day one.

Pay annually if you plan to stay. The 15% discount on annual billing saves roughly $60/year at the 500-contact Standard tier. At larger list sizes, the savings scale with the base price. If you are confident in the platform after the free trial, annual billing is worth it.

Clean your list before every billing period. Remove hard bounces. Bounced addresses inflate your contact count and bill you for contacts you cannot reach.

Stay aware of tier boundaries. If you are sitting at 480 contacts with a growing list, you have maybe two to four weeks before you hit the 501 boundary and your Standard bill jumps from $35 to $75. Plan for it. Either segment aggressively to stay under the tier or budget for the jump.

Use the full 60-day trial before committing. No credit card is required. Two months is enough time to build real campaigns, see deliverability, test automations, and know whether the platform fits how you work.

Building Your List Before You Pay for a Platform

One pattern worth noting: the businesses that get the most value from any email platform are the ones that arrive with a clean, targeted list rather than building the list inside the platform.

If you are doing B2B outreach or building a cold list to warm up into an email program, the cost of finding the right contacts matters as much as the platform you use to email them. Tools like ScraperCity let you search millions of B2B contacts by title, industry, location, and company size, then verify those emails before they ever hit your list. Starting with verified contacts means fewer bounces, lower contact counts sitting in your tiers, and cleaner deliverability from day one.

Constant Contact Value: What You're Actually Paying For

Constant Contact charges a premium over most competitors. That premium buys you: a 97% claimed deliverability rate, phone support on all plans, event management tools, a 60-day free trial, and a 30-day money-back guarantee after you pay.

It does not buy you the most advanced automation (that is ActiveCampaign). It does not buy you the cheapest price for large lists (that is MailerLite or Brevo). Klaviyo and Omnisend have the e-commerce tools beat.

What Constant Contact does well is deliver reliable email marketing with a straightforward interface, good support, and no technical complexity. For businesses where email is a support channel rather than a core growth engine, that trade-off makes sense.

Above 1,000 contacts, the better-featured alternatives are cheaper and more capable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Constant Contact have a free plan?

No. As of June , Constant Contact eliminated its free plan entirely. The platform offers a 60-day free trial with no credit card required. After the trial, you move to a paid plan starting at $12/month.

What happens when I go over my contact limit on Constant Contact?

Constant Contact uses broad contact tiers. The moment you cross a tier boundary, your price jumps to the next tier immediately. For example, going from 500 to 501 contacts on the Standard plan moves your bill from $35/month to $75/month. There is no gradual increase.

What is the cheapest way to use Constant Contact?

Start on the Lite plan at $12/month for up to 500 contacts and pay annually to get a 15% discount. Clean hard bounces from your list regularly so you do not cross the 501-contact boundary by accident. Nonprofits can also apply the 30% annual discount, which brings Standard down to about $24.50/month at 500 contacts.

Does Constant Contact include SMS?

SMS is not included in the Lite or Standard plans by default. On those plans, SMS is an add-on starting at $10/month for up to 500 messages. The Premium plan includes 500 SMS messages per month. Additional message blocks cost extra on all plans. SMS is only available in the US.

How does Constant Contact pricing compare to MailerLite?

MailerLite is significantly cheaper at every contact tier. At 10,000 contacts, MailerLite costs approximately $73/month versus Constant Contact's $120/month on the comparable plan. That is a $564/year difference. MailerLite also offers a permanent free plan for up to 500 contacts and 12,000 emails/month, which Constant Contact no longer provides.

What is the overage fee on Constant Contact?

If you send more emails than your plan's monthly limit (10x contacts on Lite, 12x on Standard, 24x on Premium), Constant Contact charges $0.002 per email above that limit. Sending 5,000 emails over your limit adds $10 to your bill that month.

Can I cancel Constant Contact easily?

Constant Contact does not offer self-service cancellation. You need to contact their billing team directly, provide your account username and reason for cancellation, and wait for a confirmation email. After cancellation, you have 120 days to export your data before it is permanently deleted. Constant Contact does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on new paid subscriptions.