Most email tools charge you by how many emails you send. Constant Contact charges you by how many contacts you store. That one difference catches a lot of people off guard, and it's where this whole article starts.
Constant Contact has three paid plans: Lite ($12/month), Standard ($35/month), and Premium ($80/month), all priced for 500 contacts on monthly billing (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025). There's no free plan, only a free trial. As your list grows, the price climbs. Below, you'll find the full cost breakdown by plan and by contact count, the billing gotchas to watch for, and which alternatives cost less for the same job.
Why Mailchimp Switchers Get Surprised by Constant Contact Pricing
Here's the thing most people moving over from Mailchimp don't expect: Constant Contact bills by contact count, not by emails sent, and there's no free tier. Mailchimp has long offered a free plan for up to 500 contacts and 500 sends a month (EmailTooltester, Apr 2026). Constant Contact doesn't. When you switch, you hit two surprises at once. You have to pick a paid plan on day one. And the price keeps climbing as your contact list grows, whether you email those people or not.
That billing model is the single most important thing to understand before you buy. The rest of this article is mostly about what it costs you in practice.
How Much Does Constant Contact Cost? (Plans at a Glance)
Constant Contact costs $12, $35, or $80 per month for the Lite, Standard, and Premium plans at 500 contacts, billed monthly (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025). Price scales with the number of contacts in your account. Pay annually and you save up to 15%; nonprofits save up to 30%. There's no permanent free plan, only a free trial that needs no credit card to start (Constant Contact).
The three tiers, in plain terms:
Lite ($12/mo) is the entry plan for small lists and basic broadcast emails.
Standard ($35/mo) adds segmentation, automation, and A/B testing.
Premium ($80/mo) adds advanced automation, custom reporting, and SEO tools.
Contacts | Lite (mo) | Standard (mo) | Premium (mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
500 | $12 | $35 | $80 |
1,000 | $30 | $55 | $110 |
2,500 | $50 | $75 | $150 |
5,000 | $80 | $110 | $200 |
10,000 | $120 | $160 | $275 |
25,000 | $280 | $310 | $425 |
50,000 | $430 | $460 | $575 |
Source: constantcontact.com/pricing, June 2026. Monthly billing.
Pay for 12 months upfront and you save up to 15% on every tier (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025). That's the standard lever for cutting the monthly cost if you're committed to the platform.
Constant Contact Pricing Plans: Full Breakdown
Each Constant Contact plan unlocks a different set of features, and the jump from Lite to Standard is the one most growing businesses end up making. Lite is the entry tier with the lowest send allowance (10x contacts) and basic automation only. Standard adds the segmentation and automation that make email actually work as a channel, with a 12x send allowance. Premium is for high-volume senders who need advanced reporting and custom automations, with a 24x send allowance. Here's what each tier gets you.
Lite Plan
The Lite plan costs $12/month for up to 500 contacts and is built for solopreneurs and small lists sending basic broadcast emails (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025). You get the drag-and-drop editor, basic templates, list import, and email scheduling.
The catch with Lite is the send cap. You get 10x your contact count per month: 500 contacts means 5,000 emails max (Constant Contact). Note that automated emails like welcome series and cart reminders do not count against that allowance, but campaign resends to non-openers do. Automation is limited to basic autoresponders, and A/B testing is restricted. If you email your list more than a few times a month, Lite gets tight fast.
Standard Plan
The Standard plan costs $35/month for up to 500 contacts and raises the send multiplier to 12x your contact count and removes the feature restrictions (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025). This is the tier where Constant Contact starts to feel like a real marketing tool rather than a broadcast box.
Standard adds contact segmentation, behavioral automation, A/B subject-line testing, social posting, and scheduled sends. For most growing businesses running automated welcome series and segmented campaigns, this is the plan that fits. The price jump from Lite is steep, nearly 3x, but you're paying for a higher send allowance and the full automation layer.
Premium Plan
The Premium plan costs $80/month for up to 500 contacts and targets high-volume senders who need advanced automation and reporting (Constant Contact). The send multiplier jumps to 24x your contact count, double Standard's allowance.
On top of everything in Standard, Premium adds advanced segmentation, custom automations, SEO tools, advanced reporting, and a dedicated account review. It's a lot of plan for a small business. Premium makes sense when you're running complex multi-step automations or need the reporting depth to justify the spend.
Teams / Enterprise Plan
Constant Contact also offers a custom-quoted plan for multi-location and multi-user workspaces (Constant Contact). There's no public price. If you're running email across several brands or locations and need team-level permissions, you'll talk to sales directly for a quote.
Constant Contact Pricing by Contact Count
Your Constant Contact bill is driven by one number: how many active contacts you store. The base prices above are for 500 contacts. Add more contacts and you move into higher pricing tiers, on every plan. Your monthly send allowance scales with both your contact count and your plan: 10x on Lite, 12x on Standard, 24x on Premium. Sends above your allowance are charged at $0.002 per email (Constant Contact).
That makes the cost predictable in one sense (the monthly rate is fixed within each contact tier) and unpredictable in another (your bill rises every time your list grows into a new tier, even if engagement doesn't).
Contacts | Lite (mo) | Standard (mo) | Premium (mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
500 | $12 | $35 | $80 |
1,000 | $30 | $55 | $110 |
2,500 | $50 | $75 | $150 |
5,000 | $80 | $110 | $200 |
10,000 | $120 | $160 | $275 |
25,000 | $280 | $310 | $425 |
50,000 | $430 | $460 | $575 |
Source: constantcontact.com/pricing, June 2026. Monthly billing.
If you want a deeper look at why list size drives cost across nearly every email tool, we break it down in our guide to how email marketing pricing works.
Constant Contact Billing Model: Contacts vs. Sends
Constant Contact charges by active contacts, not by emails sent, which is the opposite of how send-based tools work. Your monthly send allowance is your contact count multiplied by a plan-level factor: 10x on Lite, 12x on Standard, 24x on Premium (Constant Contact). Sends above your allowance cost $0.002 each. Within a contact tier, the monthly rate stays flat regardless of how many emails you send; the bill only jumps when your list crosses into the next tier.
Not every send counts the same way. Automated emails (welcome series, cart abandonment reminders, and similar triggered sequences) are excluded from your allowance entirely. Campaign resends to non-openers and bounced emails do count. That distinction matters if automation is a big part of your sending: your automated volume won't eat into your monthly cap.
There's a reason so many platforms split their plans this way, and it comes down to infrastructure economics. As SendX co-founder Varun Jain put it on a recent call, the math is brutal for high-volume senders:
Most mainstream email marketing products, the likes of Klaviyo or Omnisend or even Mailchimp, they have two plans. One plan comes with limited sends. If you're sending less than 10 emails a month, you will be on one plan. But if you want unlimited sending, you will be paying extra. Because if Klaviyo used a Mailgun to do their sends, for a high-volume sender they are on a net loss.
— Varun Jain, Co-founder, SendX
That's the logic baked into Constant Contact's Lite cap, too. The tool that quietly limits your sends is protecting its own margins.
Two more things to know about the billing model:
1. There's no free tier. Not even a permanently-free limited plan. You get a free trial, then you pay. That's the sharpest break from Mailchimp, which keeps a free plan for up to 500 contacts and 500 sends a month (EmailTooltester, Apr 2026).
2. Unsubscribed contacts may or may not count toward your billed total. This is worth confirming directly with Constant Contact before signing up, since it affects your bill as your list churns.
Is Constant Contact Worth the Price?
Constant Contact is worth it for small and mid-sized businesses that value predictable billing and live phone support, but budget-first buyers and high-frequency senders on Lite will find better value elsewhere. It's a reliable, well-supported platform with a strong deliverability track record (EmailTooltester, 2025). It's also priced on the higher side for what you get at the entry tier.
Here's the honest scorecard.
Pros:
Contacts-based billing is predictable within each tier: your rate stays flat regardless of how many emails you send
Strong deliverability track record (EmailTooltester)
Live phone support on all paid plans, which is rare in this category
15% discount for annual billing
30% nonprofit discount (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025)
Cons:
No free plan, only a trial
Lite's 10x send cap is the lowest of the three plans (Standard is 12x, Premium is 24x)
Price climbs steeply at higher contact tiers
Feature depth lags behind tools like ActiveCampaign at comparable prices
The verdict: Constant Contact is the right choice if you want hand-holding support and steady billing. It's the wrong choice if you're optimizing for price per feature, or if you need a free fallback.
Constant Contact vs Alternatives: Pricing Comparison
If Constant Contact's no-free-tier model or its higher entry price gives you pause, you have cheaper, more flexible options. Here's how it stacks up against three common alternatives on price. For a wider field, our full email marketing software comparison covers more tools side by side.
Constant Contact vs Mailchimp
Mailchimp has a permanent free plan for up to 500 contacts and 500 sends a month. Constant Contact has no free tier at all. At smaller list sizes, Mailchimp is generally cheaper on equivalent tiers: Mailchimp Standard runs $45/month at 2,500 contacts and $75/month at 5,000 contacts (see our Mailchimp pricing breakdown). At 25,000+ contacts, Constant Contact becomes more price-competitive.
Constant Contact vs ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign starts at a comparable entry price but offers significantly deeper automation than Constant Contact. If your main reason for buying an email tool is sophisticated, multi-branch automation, ActiveCampaign generally gives you more for the money. We cover the exact tiers in our ActiveCampaign pricing guide.
Constant Contact vs SendX
SendX starts at $9.99/month for up to 1,000 contacts with unlimited email sends (SendX). That's cheaper than Constant Contact's Lite plan, with twice the contacts and no send cap.
The bigger difference is feature gating. Every SendX plan includes automation, segmentation, and landing pages, features that Constant Contact locks behind its Standard or Premium tiers. There's no per-tier feature locking on SendX. You get the full toolset at every price point. If you want to see how the broader category lines up, our roundup of the best email autoresponders is a good place to start.
Constant Contact Free Trial: What You Get
Constant Contact offers a free trial with no credit card required to start (Constant Contact). It's a trial, not a free plan, so when it ends you'll need to pick a paid tier to keep using the platform.
Trial length and send limits during the trial period change periodically, so confirm the current terms at constantcontact.com/pricing before you sign up.
Not sure Constant Contact is the right pick? It's worth comparing a few platforms before you commit. Our email marketing software comparison lays out the trade-offs so you don't lock into the wrong billing model.
FAQ
Does Constant Contact have a free plan?
No. Constant Contact does not offer a permanent free plan. It offers a free trial with no credit card required, but all ongoing use requires a paid subscription. This differs from Mailchimp, which has a free tier for up to 500 contacts (EmailTooltester, Apr 2026).
How does Constant Contact billing work?
Constant Contact bills based on the number of active contacts in your account, not the number of emails you send. As your contact list grows, your monthly cost increases. Each plan includes a monthly send allowance based on your contact count: 10x on Lite, 12x on Standard, and 24x on Premium. Sends above your allowance are charged at $0.002 each. Automated emails (welcome series, triggered sequences) are excluded from the allowance; campaign resends to non-openers count against it (Constant Contact).
Is Constant Contact cheaper than Mailchimp?
At smaller list sizes (under 10,000 contacts), Mailchimp is generally less expensive. At larger list sizes (25,000+), pricing becomes more comparable. Mailchimp also has a free plan that Constant Contact lacks (EmailTooltester, Apr 2026).
Does Constant Contact offer discounts?
Yes. A 15% discount applies when you pay annually instead of monthly, and nonprofits qualify for a 30% discount (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025).
What is the cheapest Constant Contact plan?
The Lite plan starts at $12/month for up to 500 contacts on monthly billing (EmailTooltester, Dec 2025). It's the entry-level plan and caps sends at 10x your contact count per month.
The Bottom Line
Constant Contact is a reliable, contacts-based email platform with three clear tiers and no free fallback. It's a solid fit for small and mid-sized businesses that want live phone support and predictable billing, and are willing to pay a bit more for both.
It's not ideal for budget-first buyers, for Mailchimp Free users who need a free safety net, or for senders who need a higher monthly send allowance without jumping to a more expensive plan. The price also climbs faster than some alternatives as your list grows.
Before you commit, run the numbers against a couple of other tools at your actual contact count. Our email marketing software comparison and our roundup of the best email autoresponders will help you find the plan that fits your list and your budget, not just the one with the friendliest sales page.
