Constant Contact Review 2026: Pricing, Plans, Pros and Cons

Constant Contact is still a good choice for small businesses, nonprofits, and event organizers who want simple email tools and a person to call. It costs $12/month (Lite), $35/month (Standard), or $80/month (Premium) for up to 500 contacts, and the price climbs with your list: Standard is $160/month at 10,000 contacts. If you need deep automation or have a fast-growing list, other tools give you more for the money.

Last validated: September 2026. Prices are US list prices on monthly billing from Constant Contact's pricing page⁠ and knowledge base.

How much does Constant Contact cost?

Constant Contact costs $12, $35, or $80 a month for its Lite, Standard, and Premium plans at up to 500 contacts. Your price is set by the plan and your contact count, and it rises at each contact tier. Here's the full published schedule on monthly billing:

Pricing compared

Constant Contact plan base prices

Constant Contact plan base prices

Item	Value
Lite	$12
Standard	$35
Premium	$80

A few things change the number you actually pay:

• Prepaying: 12 months prepaid saves 15%, which brings the starting prices to $10.20, $29.75, and $68 a month. Six months prepaid saves 10%.
• Nonprofits: Eligible US nonprofits get 20% off a 6-month prepay or 30% off a 12-month prepay. There's no nonprofit discount on monthly billing.
• SMS: Premium includes 500 text messages a month. On Lite and Standard, SMS starts at $10/month for up to 500 messages. SMS is available only to US and Australian businesses.
• Send limits: Each plan lets you send 10x (Lite), 12x (Standard), or 24x (Premium) your contact tier per month. Go over and your emails still send, billed at $0.002 each. Welcome emails, abandoned-cart reminders, and automated series don't count toward the allowance.

By the numbers

Send limit (multiple of contacts)

Send limit (multiple of contacts)

Item	Value
Lite	10x
Standard	12x
Premium	24x

How the price grows with your list

The headline price covers only 500 contacts. Standard doubles from $35 to $75 by the time you reach 2,500 contacts, and hits $160 at 10,000, without any change in how you use the tool. Budget for where your list will be in a year, not where it is today.

Pricing compared

Constant Contact Standard price by list size

Constant Contact Standard price by list size

Item	Value
500	$35
2,500	$75
5,000	$110
10,000	$160

Constant Contact bills on your active contacts, and sending only adds cost once you pass your monthly send allowance. Unsubscribed contacts count as inactive, so they drop off the bill. But within the allowance, a big list you email rarely costs the same as a big list you email every week. Tools that price mainly on sends, such as Brevo, can be cheaper for that pattern. Our guide to the best email marketing for small business⁠ compares the options.

Is there a free plan or free trial?

There's no free plan. The free trial lasts 30 days and needs no credit card. You can build unlimited campaigns and upload unlimited contacts, but you can send only 100 emails in total, and one email to 10 people uses 10 of them. After the trial ends, your drafts and contacts stay, but you can't send until you pick a plan.

New paid plans also carry a 30-day money-back guarantee on the base Lite, Standard, or Premium subscription. It has conditions: you must have uploaded contacts and sent an email, and you request the refund by calling billing. Add-ons don't qualify, and prepayments are otherwise non-refundable.

What is the Constant Contact Lite plan?

Lite is the entry plan on Constant Contact's US pricing page: $12/month for up to 500 contacts, or $10.20/month prepaid for a year. It includes:

• The drag-and-drop editor, AI copy generator, and templates
• Social media posting and sign-up forms
• Event registration, ticketing, and payments
• One user, one active automation path (for example a welcome, birthday, or anniversary email), and one custom segment
• Basic reporting
• Live phone and chat support and 1:1 onboarding
• Up to 10x your contact tier in monthly sends

What Lite leaves out matters more. Scheduling emails for later, subject-line A/B testing, automatic resends to non-openers, extra users, and the fuller reporting that shows who opened and clicked all mean moving up to Standard.

When Lite is enough: you send a simple newsletter or promotion by hand, one person manages it, and one automated email covers your needs. When to move to Standard: you want to schedule sends, test subject lines, run more than one automation, or see who opened and clicked. At 10,000 contacts the gap between them is only $40 a month ($120 vs $160).

Constant Contact also sells a cheaper, email-only Starter Email plan: as of September 2026, $6/month for unlimited contacts and 2,500 sends a month. It leaves out automation, scheduling, SMS, social posting, and events, and the send cap limits it to small, occasional campaigns.

What does Constant Contact do well?

Support that picks up the phone

This is the main reason people stay. Live phone and chat support and 1:1 onboarding come with Lite, Standard, and Premium, including the $12 Lite plan. Many competitors keep phone support for their top tier; Mailchimp, for example, offers it only on Premium. If you're a florist, a church office, or a one-person consultancy that doesn't want to learn software alone, that's worth real money.

Built-in event tools

Lite, Standard, and Premium all include event registration and ticketing with free or paid tickets. You can send the invitation, collect RSVPs and payments, and follow up with attendees from the same account that sends your newsletter. For community groups, fundraisers, classes, and local businesses that run workshops, that removes a separate tool.

Made for people who aren't marketers

The editor doesn't overwhelm you, there are hundreds of templates to start from, and the defaults are sensible. A small business owner can send a decent-looking email on day one, and bounces and unsubscribes are handled automatically.

Where does Constant Contact fall short?

Automation is shallow below Premium

Lite allows one active automation path and Standard three, all from prebuilt templates. Custom automation paths, ecommerce automations, and unlimited paths need Premium at $80/month and up. If you want behavior-triggered sequences with branching logic, you'll hit the ceiling quickly. Our guide to drip campaigns⁠ shows what those sequences usually involve.

Testing and reporting are basic

A/B testing starts on Standard and covers subject lines only: you test two subject lines, and the one with more opens goes to the rest of your list. You can't test layouts, content, or calls to action against each other. Lite's reporting shows campaign-level results; to see who opened and clicked, Lite users need to move up to Standard, and revenue reporting needs Premium.

The price climbs with your list

The $12 start is fair. The slope is the problem. Standard more than doubles between 500 and 2,500 contacts, and a large, quiet list costs as much as an active one. Once you pass a few thousand contacts, Constant Contact stops looking cheap. Our Constant Contact vs Mailchimp⁠ comparison puts the two price curves side by side.

The interface shows its age

Constant Contact has been around since 1995, and parts of the product feel like layers added over time. Menus can take more clicks than newer tools, and the editor can feel slower. It works, and you'll get used to it, but it isn't a modern interface.

Ecommerce and integrations are fine, not deep

Constant Contact connects to around 300 apps, including Shopify, Eventbrite, Canva, and Zapier. The connections cover the basics, but product and order data doesn't drive personalized campaigns the way it does in ecommerce-first tools like Klaviyo.

Who should use Constant Contact?

Constant Contact fits a small business or nonprofit with a list under a few thousand contacts, someone who runs events, and anyone who values a phone number over a long feature list. For that person, the dated interface is a fair trade for the help, and the price is reasonable at the bottom of the range.

It's also a sensible choice for a team that tried a heavier tool and never got a campaign out. The tool you actually use beats the one with the better feature list.

Who should look elsewhere?

• Fast-growing lists: Contact-based pricing climbs quickly. Brevo prices mainly on sends, and MailerLite is cheaper for simple newsletters. See our Mailchimp alternatives⁠ roundup, since most of those tools are also Constant Contact alternatives.
• Automation-heavy senders: Mailchimp Standard or ActiveCampaign give you branching flows for less than Constant Contact Premium.
• Online stores: Klaviyo is built around order and product data.
• Sales-led B2B teams: HubSpot ties email to a CRM. See our HubSpot review⁠.

Where Dreamlit fits

Dreamlit, the company behind this blog, isn't a Constant Contact alternative for newsletters or events. It handles activation email so your team doesn't have to. Our experts work out where signups stall, run the onboarding, trial, and win-back emails, and own the outcome. Built for apps with 500+ signups a month. If you run a shop, a nonprofit, or a local business, Constant Contact or one of the tools above is the better fit.

The verdict

Constant Contact in 2026 is a friendly, slightly old-fashioned tool that knows who it serves. Phone support from the $12 Lite plan up is real, the event tools are a genuine reason to choose it, and a beginner can get going fast. Against that, automation stays basic until Premium, testing is limited to subject lines, and contact-based pricing climbs faster than the value.

Is it worth it? For a non-technical small business or nonprofit that runs events and wants support on the line, yes. For a growing, automation-hungry sender, you can do better for the money. Use the 30-day trial with your real list, check what your bill would be at next year's contact count, and decide from there.

References

• Constant Contact pricing and fee schedule⁠
• Constant Contact free trial⁠
• Constant Contact prepayment guidelines⁠
• Constant Contact 30-day money-back guarantee⁠
• How you're billed for Constant Contact⁠
• Constant Contact send allowance and overage fee⁠
• Constant Contact plan comparison (Lite, Standard, Premium)⁠
• Constant Contact active versus inactive contacts⁠
• Register your Constant Contact account for SMS marketing⁠
• Constant Contact nonprofit discount⁠
• Constant Contact system status⁠

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Constant Contact cost in 2026?

Constant Contact costs $12/month for Lite, $35/month for Standard, and $80/month for Premium for up to 500 contacts, billed monthly. Prices rise with your list: at 10,000 contacts Lite is $120, Standard $160, and Premium $275 a month. Prepaying for 12 months saves 15%. A separate email-only Starter Email plan costs $6/month for unlimited contacts and 2,500 sends a month. Prices checked September 2026.

What does the Constant Contact Lite plan include?

Lite costs $12/month for up to 500 contacts and includes the email editor, templates, social posting, event tools, one user, one active automation path, one custom segment, basic reporting, and live phone and chat support. It sends up to 10 times your contact tier each month. Scheduling and subject-line A/B testing start on Standard.

Does Constant Contact have a free plan?

No. Constant Contact has a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. You can build unlimited campaigns and upload unlimited contacts, but you can send only 100 emails in total before you pick a paid plan.

Is Constant Contact good for beginners?

Yes, that's where it does best. The editor and templates are simple, onboarding help is included, and live phone and chat support come with Lite, Standard, and Premium, so even the $12 Lite plan gets them.

What is Constant Contact used for?

Small businesses, nonprofits, and event organizers use Constant Contact to send email newsletters and promotions, run simple automated emails such as welcome and birthday messages, post to social media, and handle event registration and ticketing from one account.

What happens if I go over my Constant Contact send limit?

Your emails still go out. Each plan includes a monthly send allowance of 10x (Lite), 12x (Standard), or 24x (Premium) your contact tier, and sends above that are billed at $0.002 each, or $2 per 1,000 extra emails.

How can I tell if Constant Contact is down?

Check Constant Contact's official status page at status.constantcontact.com. It shows the current status of login, email campaigns, email delivery, contacts, and other services, plus recent incidents.