Constant Contact for creators: pricing, events and who it fits (2026 guide)
Our verdict on Constant Contact for small businesses, event hosts, nonprofits and creators: what Lite, Standard and Premium cost at every contact tier, how contacts and sends are counted, the free trial, event ticketing, support, and when a cheaper tool like MailerLite makes more sense. Every fact comes from the vendors’ own public pages.
By the Creator Mail Stack team · Updated October 7, 2026
Constant Contact pros and cons
Pros
Live phone and chat support on every plan, plus live one-to-one onboarding. Premium adds a dedicated priority support team.
Events on every plan: registration forms, free or paid tickets, promo codes, check-in and payments through Stripe or PayPal.
Email, social posting, SMS (US only, as an add-on below Premium) and 300+ integrations in one account.
Sending doesn’t stop when you pass your monthly allowance. Extra sends cost $0.002 each, and automated emails don’t count toward the allowance.
A 30-day free trial with no credit card, then a 30-day money-back guarantee on your first monthly payment.
Nonprofits can get up to 30% off by prepaying for 12 months.
Cons
No free plan. Constant Contact calls itself “a paid platform”.
The trial allows only 100 email sends in total, and you can’t publish landing pages or events until you pay.
Lite has 1 user, 1 automation template, 1 custom segment and basic reporting. Email scheduling and A/B tests start on Standard ($35/month).
Your bill follows the highest number of active contacts you’ve had, and deleting contacts doesn’t lower it.
Ticket sales carry a Constant Contact platform fee (3.5% for events created on or after August 1, 2.9% for older events) on top of Stripe or PayPal fees.
Its pricing page doesn’t list paid newsletter subscriptions, which many online creators want.
Who Constant Contact is for, and who should skip it
Good fit Constant Contact is for you if…
You run a local business, studio, venue or shop and your newsletter mostly brings people back in person. (Our best email marketing for small business roundup compares it with five alternatives.)
You host classes, workshops, fundraisers or meetups and want invitations, registration, tickets and reminders in the same tool as your email.
You’re a nonprofit that can prepay to get the nonprofit discount.
You want to phone a person when something breaks, or you’d like live onboarding help.
You also want to post to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, or send texts to US customers, from one dashboard.
Poor fit Look elsewhere if…
You’re a writer, YouTuber or podcaster starting a newsletter and want to start free. MailerLite is free up to 250 subscribers, and Kit’s free plan goes to 10,000.
You’re on a tight budget past 1,000 subscribers. At every list size we compared from 1,000 to 10,000, MailerLite Comfort costs less than Constant Contact Lite.
You want to schedule a weekly issue ahead of time without paying for Standard.
Constant Contact plans at a glance
There are three self-serve plans, Lite, Standard and Premium, plus custom-priced Multi-Account plans for teams that need five or more accounts. Every plan uses the same contact tiers. Your price depends on the plan, your highest active contact count, and whether you pay monthly or prepay.
Plan
Starting price (up to 500 contacts)
Users & monthly sends
What it adds
Lite
$12/month, or $10.20/month prepaid for 12 months
1 user · 10× your contact tier
Drag-and-drop editor, AI copy generator and templates · social posting · basic reporting · 1 automation template · 1 custom segment · sign-up forms · events and payments · live phone and chat support
Standard
$35/month, or $29.75/month prepaid
3 users · 12× your contact tier
Email scheduling · subject line A/B testing · resend to non-openers · 3 automation templates · AI campaign builder · 10 segments · reports on who opens and clicks · social ads manager
Premium
$80/month, or $68/month prepaid
Unlimited users · 24× your contact tier
Custom automations · unlimited segments · dynamic content · Google Ads Manager · SEO recommendations · revenue reporting · 500 SMS a month (US) · priority onboarding and support
Source: Constant Contact pricing page (plan cards, plan table and FAQ), checked October 7, 2026. Prepaying for 12 months saves up to 15%. On Lite and Standard, SMS is an add-on starting at $10/month for up to 500 messages, for US customers only.
Constant Contact prices by contact count
Active contacts
Lite, monthly
Lite, prepaid (per month)
Standard, monthly
Standard, prepaid (per month)
Premium, monthly
Premium, prepaid (per month)
0–500
$12
$10.20
$35
$29.75
$80
$68
501–1,000
$30
$25.50
$55
$46.75
$110
$93.50
1,001–2,500
$50
$42.50
$75
$63.75
$150
$127.50
2,501–5,000
$80
$68
$110
$93.50
$200
$170
5,001–10,000
$120
$102
$160
$136
$275
$233.75
10,001–15,000
$180
$153
$210
$178.50
$325
$276.25
15,001–20,000
$230
$195.50
$260
$221
$375
$318.75
20,001–25,000
$280
$238
$310
$263.50
$425
$361.25
25,001–30,000
$310
$263.50
$340
$289
$455
$386.75
30,001–35,000
$340
$289
$370
$314.50
$485
$412.25
35,001–40,000
$370
$314.50
$400
$340
$515
$437.75
40,001–45,000
$400
$340
$430
$365.50
$545
$463.25
45,001–50,000
$430
$365.50
$460
$391
$575
$488.75
50,000+
Contact Constant Contact sales
Swipe the table sideways to see every column.
USD, from the “See pricing tiers” fee schedule on the Constant Contact pricing page, monthly and annual views, checked October 7, 2026. “Prepaid” is the per-month price when you pay for 12 months up front. Add-ons such as SMS and Inbox Preview change the total.
How Constant Contact counts contacts and sends
This is where most surprises on a Constant Contact bill come from. According to its billing and send-allowance help articles:
You pay for active contacts. Unsubscribed contacts, contacts without an email address, and contacts waiting to confirm are inactive and don’t count. Bounced contacts you haven’t removed still count as active.
Your tier follows your peak. Constant Contact sets your contact tier from the highest number of active contacts you’ve had, and deleting contacts doesn’t lower it. If your count rises during a billing period, the higher price shows on next month’s bill.
No contact cap per plan. Every plan offers the same tiers, so you never have to upgrade just to store more contacts.
Your send allowance uses the top of your tier. Lite allows 10×, Standard 12× and Premium 24× the top of your contact tier each billing cycle. On Lite at 0–500 contacts that’s 5,000 sends. One email to one contact is one send, and bounces count.
Going over costs money, but sending doesn’t stop. Each send over the allowance costs $0.002, or $2 per 1,000.
Automated emails are excluded. Welcome emails, abandoned-cart reminders and automated series don’t count toward the allowance. Scheduled campaigns and resends to non-openers do.
You pay even in quiet months. The monthly fee applies whether or not you send a campaign.
What this means for a weekly newsletter: four or five issues a month to your whole list uses about 4–5× your list size, which fits inside Lite’s 10× allowance. Before importing an old list, clean out contacts you no longer email. If the import pushes you into a higher tier, deleting them afterward won’t bring the price back down.
The free trial and the money-back guarantee
Constant Contact has no free plan, but it does offer a free trial that doesn’t need a credit card. Per its free trial help article:
The trial lasts 30 days. You can’t pause or cancel it, and it ends on its own.
You get up to 100 email sends in total, so 25 contacts can receive four emails. You can upload as many contacts as you like and create segments.
You can build automated emails, landing pages, survey pages and events during the trial, but you can only publish them once you’re on a paid plan.
When the trial ends, your contacts, drafts and reports stay in the account.
After you buy, the 30-day money-back guarantee terms refund your first monthly subscription payment if you cancel. To qualify, you must have uploaded contacts and sent at least one email. It’s for new paying customers only and doesn’t cover add-ons. You also have to call the billing team within 30 days, because canceling online won’t trigger a refund. Constant Contact’s billing help also says prepayments are non-refundable. If you want the guarantee as a safety net, our suggestion is to start on monthly billing and switch to prepaying once you’re sure.
Running events or a local business? The trial is the cheapest way to see whether Constant Contact fits: build an event page and a test email, then decide.
Affiliate link: if you buy a paid Constant Contact plan through it, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. No credit card is needed for the trial (checked October 7, 2026).
Event tools: where Constant Contact stands out
Events are the clearest reason to choose Constant Contact over a newsletter-first tool. Its plan table lists hosting events, selling products and taking payments on all three plans. According to its event marketing page and its event payments help article, you can:
Run in-person or virtual events, or both. For a virtual event, you add the join link from Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex or GoTo Meeting.
Build invitations, a branded event page and tickets. Events use tickets, which can be free or paid, and a $0 ticket or ticketless event doesn’t need a payment method.
Add promo codes and early-bird or VIP pricing, collect RSVPs, and add registrants to your email list automatically.
Send reminders and follow-ups with automations, check attendees in, and track registrations, payments and attendance in one dashboard.
Take payments through Stripe (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link) or PayPal (PayPal, cards, Venmo and Pay Later, if eligible).
Fees on paid tickets: Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per order, and PayPal 3.49% + $0.49 (which can vary with your PayPal agreement). On top of that, Constant Contact collects a platform fee of 3.5% for events created on or after August 1 (2.9% for older events). The help article gives the cutoff only as “8/1”; it was last updated July 31, 2026. You can pass the Constant Contact fee to registrants, but not the processor’s fee. By our arithmetic, a $20 ticket paid through Stripe costs you about $1.58 in fees if you absorb both: $0.88 for Stripe and $0.70 for Constant Contact.
Support: phone, chat and live help
Support is the other big difference from cheaper tools. Constant Contact’s pricing page lists live phone and chat with “marketing experts” and live one-to-one onboarding on every plan, and a dedicated priority support team on Premium. Its contact support page lists these channels and hours:
Phone (US and Canada): Monday to Friday, 8am–8pm ET, and Saturday, 10am–6pm ET.
Live chat: Monday to Friday, 3am–8pm ET.
“Ask a Trainer” live help: Monday to Friday, 10am–4pm ET.
Knowledge base and community: available around the clock.
For comparison, MailerLite’s pricing page lists no phone support. Its Free plan gets community support after the trial, Comfort gets 24/7 email support, and Power adds 24/7 live chat.
Constant Contact vs MailerLite for creators
If you don’t need events, ticketing or phone support, MailerLite is the cheaper choice for most online creators. It has a free plan and a lower price at most list sizes. Here’s each tool’s entry plan at the same list sizes:
List size (up to)
Constant Contact Lite, monthly / prepaid
MailerLite Comfort, monthly / billed yearly
250
$12 / $10.20
$0 on MailerLite Free (2,500 emails a month)
500
$12 / $10.20
$12 / $10.80
1,000
$30 / $25.50
$19 / $17.10
2,500
$50 / $42.50
$33 / $29.70
5,000
$80 / $68
$49 / $44.10
10,000
$120 / $102
$89 / $80.10
Constant Contact from its pricing page fee schedule; MailerLite from mailerlite.com/pricing. Both checked October 7, 2026. MailerLite Power starts at $25/month ($22.50 billed yearly).
At 500 contacts the monthly prices match. Above that, MailerLite Comfort costs less at every size in the table, and it includes paid newsletters through Stripe, RSS campaigns and a website builder. MailerLite also lists a 30% discount on every paid plan for nonprofits. What Constant Contact adds is phone support, event ticketing built into the email tool, and US SMS. If those don’t matter to you, read our MailerLite guide, see every tier in MailerLite pricing, or check what you get for $0 in MailerLite free plan explained. You can also start MailerLite free (affiliate link).
Weighing Constant Contact against Mailchimp instead? Our Constant Contact vs Mailchimp comparison covers prices from 500 to 10,000 contacts, the free plan vs the 30-day trial, events and support.
If you choose Constant Contact: a sensible first week
Start the 30-day trial and use some of the 100 trial sends on a small test list before emailing customers.
Clean your list before importing. Your highest active contact count sets your tier, so remove old and unsubscribed addresses first.
Build your first event during the trial, including the registration form and tickets, so it’s ready to publish when you upgrade.
Pick a plan by features, then by list size. If you want to schedule a weekly issue in advance, the plan table puts email scheduling on Standard.
FAQ
Is Constant Contact free?
No. Constant Contact calls itself a paid platform. It offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card and up to 100 email sends in total. After that, plans start at $12/month for up to 500 contacts (checked October 7, 2026).
How much does Constant Contact cost for 1,000 contacts?
At 501–1,000 active contacts, Lite is $30/month, Standard $55 and Premium $110. Prepaying for 12 months brings those to $25.50, $46.75 and $93.50 a month. Full tiers are in the price table above.
Does Constant Contact charge for unsubscribed contacts?
No. Unsubscribed contacts are inactive and aren’t billed. But your tier follows the highest number of active contacts you’ve had, and deleting contacts doesn’t lower it.
What happens if you go over the email send limit?
Your emails still go out, and Constant Contact charges $0.002 per extra send, which is $2 per 1,000. Automated emails such as welcome emails don’t count toward the limit.
Can Constant Contact sell event tickets?
Yes, on every plan, through Stripe or PayPal. Besides the processor’s fee, Constant Contact takes a 3.5% platform fee on events created since August 1, which you can pass on to registrants.
Is Constant Contact good for newsletter creators?
It works, but it isn’t built for online creators: there are no paid newsletter subscriptions on its pricing page, and from 1,000 subscribers up it costs more than MailerLite. If you’re just starting, see our best email marketing tools for beginners.
Does Constant Contact have phone support?
Yes. Live phone and chat support are on every plan. Its support page lists US and Canada phone hours as Monday to Friday, 8am–8pm ET, and Saturday, 10am–6pm ET.
Constant Contact is a registered trademark of Constant Contact, Inc. We run Creator Mail Stack independently, and it is not endorsed by Constant Contact. We’re in Constant Contact’s and MailerLite’s affiliate programs, as described in the disclosure. Found something out of date? Tell us.
Creator