Constant Contact Pricing 2026: Lite vs Standard vs Premium

Constant Contact costs $12/mo on Lite, $35/mo on Standard and $80/mo on Premium at the smallest contact tier, billed monthly. Prepay 12 months and those drop to $10.20, $29.75 and $68 a month. There is no free plan, only a free trial with no card required, and every price climbs with your contact count.

Those figures come from Constant Contact's pricing page, read in October 2026, with billing rules from its billing FAQ. Our take after reading both: Standard is the plan most marketers end up on, Lite is fine for a list you mail weekly, and Premium only pays off once you need SMS, unlimited users or custom automations together. The send cap, not the sticker price, is what surprises people on the first bill.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 108 email marketing tools as of 17 October 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan across the 28 that publish one is $19/mo, per its email marketing ranking. Constant Contact's Lite entry sits $7 under that median. Its Toolradar profile also shows it listed as an alternative to 23 other tools. One disclosure, since this page weighs an email platform's bill: MarketingShot and Dupple's other newsletters are sent on beehiiv, not Constant Contact.

At a glance

Plan	Best for	Monthly billing	Prepaid 12 months	Users	Monthly sends
Lite	A first newsletter, one person running it	$12/mo	$10.20/mo	1	10x your contacts
Standard	Small teams that want A/B tests and scheduling	$35/mo	$29.75/mo	3	12x your contacts
Premium	Teams running SMS, ads and deep segmentation	$80/mo	$68/mo	Unlimited	24x your contacts
Multi-Account (Teams)	Franchises and groups with 5+ accounts	Custom quote	Custom quote	Per contract	Per contract

Prices are starting prices for the smallest contact tier (0 to 500 contacts), as listed in October 2026. Every plan includes live phone and chat support, the drag-and-drop editor, the AI copy generator, social posting and 300+ integrations. Where the tiers differ is automation, segmentation, users and how many emails you can send before overage kicks in.

How much does each Constant Contact plan cost?

Lite, the plan for one person sending simple campaigns

Lite suits a marketer who sends a newsletter or a promo and needs little beyond the send button. You get one user, one automation template, one custom segment, basic reporting, web signup forms and event registration with payments. Monthly sends are capped at 10 times your contact count, which at a 500-contact list means 5,000 emails a month.

What Lite leaves out matters more than what it includes. Email scheduling and subject line A/B testing are Standard features, so on Lite you hit send when you want the campaign to go. Reporting is described as basic, which means you see totals but not who opened and clicked. For a café or a solo consultant mailing a list once a week, that trade is fine. For anyone measuring campaigns, it is the reason to skip Lite.

Standard, the plan most marketers should buy

Standard is the plan Constant Contact itself recommends for most businesses, and the jump from Lite buys real working tools. You get three users, email scheduling, subject line A/B testing, automatic resend to non-openers, three automation templates, the AI campaign builder, 10 custom segments and advanced reporting that names who opens and clicks. The send cap rises to 12 times your contacts, so 6,000 emails a month at 500 contacts.

The extra $23 a month over Lite is mostly paying for resend-to-non-openers and contact-level reporting. Those two features are what a marketer uses to lift results without growing the list. If your plan is to grow a list and run a welcome series, our newsletter growth guide and the open rate benchmarks show why those features earn their keep.

Premium, worth it only when SMS, ads and segments run together

Premium is priced for teams that use Constant Contact as more than an email sender. It adds unlimited users, unlimited custom automations and segments, ecommerce automation templates, dynamic content, Google Ads Manager, Facebook lookalike targeting, SEO recommendations, revenue reporting and a dedicated priority support team. It also includes 500 SMS messages a month and a send cap of 24 times your contacts.

The honest test for Premium is whether you need three of those things at once. A team that only wants unlimited users, or only wants SMS, pays less by staying on Standard and adding what it lacks, as the cost scenarios below show. Premium earns its price when ads, SMS and segmentation all run from one account.

Multi-Account (Teams), for five or more accounts

Constant Contact Teams is built for organizations that need five or more accounts under one roof: franchises, chapters, multi-location retailers. It publishes no list price for it. Pricing is a custom quote from sales, which is normal for this kind of central-control product.

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What does a year of Constant Contact really cost?

The cheapest way to pay is to prepay 12 months, and the saving grows with the plan. These totals use the starting prices above for a list of up to 500 contacts.

Plan	12 months billed monthly	12 months prepaid	You save
Lite	$144	$122.40	$21.60
Standard	$420	$357	$63
Premium	$960	$816	$144

The billing FAQ adds a middle option: prepaying six months takes 10% off, and 12 months takes 15%. On Standard, a six-month prepay works out to $31.50 a month. That is a sensible bet for a business that wants a discount but is not yet sure Constant Contact will stay its email tool for a whole year.

Prepaying is lower risk than it sounds. Constant Contact offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on new plans, so a full refund is available if you cancel within the first month. Past that window, the subscription keeps renewing until you call or cancel online, per the billing FAQ.

The costs the plan page does not spell out

Overage is billed, not blocked. If you send more than your plan's monthly allowance, the emails still go out and Constant Contact charges $0.002 per extra send, which is $2 for every 1,000 emails over the cap. The fee lands on next month's bill. It is a small rate, but frequency adds up fast on a small plan.

Here is what that looks like for a 500-contact list mailed every day for a 30-day month (15,000 sends):

Plan	Included sends	Sends over the cap	Overage	Month total
Lite	5,000	10,000	$20	$32
Standard	6,000	9,000	$18	$53
Premium	12,000	3,000	$6	$86

The takeaway is counterintuitive: even with overage, Lite stays the cheapest bill for a daily sender at this size. Upgrading to escape overage only makes sense when you also want the features of the bigger plan. A weekly sender (about 2,200 emails a month at 500 contacts) never touches the cap on any plan.

SMS is an add-on on Lite and Standard. Text marketing on those plans starts at $10/mo for up to 500 messages, with higher tiers above that, and it is available to US customers on paid plans only. Premium bundles the first 500 messages. So Standard plus the starter SMS tier comes to $45 a month, well under Premium's price, which makes it the better buy for a team that only wanted texting. For how other platforms charge for SMS, see our SMS marketing cost guide.

Inbox Preview costs $10 a month on every plan. It is the tool that renders your email across clients before you send. Agencies and anyone with a heavily designed template will want it, which quietly makes Lite a $22 plan.

Your contact tier sets the price, and unsubscribes are free. Constant Contact bills by contact tiers (0 to 500, then larger bands such as 2,501 to 5,000), and the send cap is a multiple of the top of your tier. Its knowledge base states that unsubscribed contacts don't count towards your billing. That is friendlier than Mailchimp, whose contacts help page counts unsubscribed contacts toward the plan limit (our Mailchimp pricing breakdown covers that rule). The price for each larger tier sits in the tier selector on Constant Contact's pricing page, so check the current price on Constant Contact's site for your exact list size before you budget.

Nonprofits save up to 30%, but only on prepay. A verified nonprofit gets 20% off for a six-month prepay and 30% off for 12 months, and nothing on monthly billing. At starting prices, 30% off puts Standard at $24.50 a month. Constant Contact asks for a 501(c)(3) or (c)(6) determination letter in the US, and warns not to buy a prepay plan before the discount is confirmed.

Constant Contact vs MailerLite at 500 contacts

MailerLite is the cheapest well-known comparison for the same small list, and its October 2026 pricing page puts its Comfort plan at the same monthly price as Constant Contact Lite for 500 subscribers and 5,000 emails, and for that money MailerLite gives you three user seats instead of one and 50 automations instead of one template. MailerLite's Power plan, at $25/mo for 500 subscribers, adds unlimited emails and unlimited seats, still $10 under Constant Contact Standard.

Where Constant Contact earns the difference is support and channels. Every Constant Contact plan includes live phone support, events with payments and social posting, and Premium bundles SMS. MailerLite's Comfort plan lists email support only. If phone help and an all-in-one small-business toolkit matter more to you than automation count, the higher price has a reason. The Mailchimp vs MailerLite and Brevo pricing pages cover the other two budget options in the same detail.

Is Constant Contact worth it in 2026?

For a local business that wants a human on the phone when a campaign breaks, yes, and Standard is the plan to buy. It is the first tier with scheduling, A/B testing, resend to non-openers and click-level reporting, the features that move results on a small list.

It is a harder sell for a pure newsletter. A writer who only sends one email a week gets more automation per dollar from MailerLite and does not need events, social posting or ads tools. And Premium is rarely the right first purchase: price out Standard plus the SMS and Inbox Preview add-ons before paying for the top tier.

For the full product read, including deliverability claims and what users say, see our Constant Contact review. To compare it against the wider field, the best email marketing for small business ranking and the Mailchimp alternatives list are the next stops.

How we verified this

Plan prices, features, send multipliers, overage, SMS, Inbox Preview and nonprofit terms come from Constant Contact's pricing page, read in October 2026. The six-month prepay discount and renewal rules come from Constant Contact's billing FAQ, and the unsubscribe billing rule from its knowledge base; the Mailchimp contrast comes from Mailchimp's own help center, read on 18 October 2026. MailerLite figures come from its pricing page, read on 18 October 2026. The Toolradar figures come from its live email marketing ranking and Constant Contact profile on 17 and 18 October 2026. The yearly totals and overage scenarios are our own arithmetic on those published prices. Contact-tier pricing changes, so re-check before you buy.

FAQ

How much does Constant Contact cost per month in 2026?

Lite starts at $12/mo, Standard at $35/mo and Premium at $80/mo on monthly billing, for the smallest contact tier. Prepaying 12 months brings them to $10.20, $29.75 and $68 a month. Prices rise as your contact count moves into larger tiers.

Does Constant Contact have a free plan?

No. Constant Contact is a paid platform with a free trial that needs no credit card. Every new paid plan also carries a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can cancel in the first month for a full refund.

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

Your emails still send. Constant Contact bills $0.002 for each email over the allowance, or $2 per 1,000 extra sends, on the next month's bill. The allowance is 10x your contacts on Lite, 12x on Standard and 24x on Premium.

Is Constant Contact Standard worth the extra over Lite?

For most marketers, yes. The extra $23 a month buys three users, scheduling, subject line A/B testing, resend to non-openers, 10 segments and reporting that shows who opens and clicks. Lite fits a single person sending simple weekly campaigns.

Does Constant Contact include SMS?

Only Premium includes it, with 500 messages a month. Lite and Standard can add SMS from $10/mo for up to 500 messages. SMS is available to US customers on paid plans only.

Do unsubscribed contacts count toward the Constant Contact bill?

No. Constant Contact's knowledge base states that unsubscribed contacts don't count towards your billing, so you do not need to delete them to stay in a lower tier. This differs from Mailchimp, which bills for them.

Does Constant Contact offer a nonprofit discount?

Yes, on prepaid plans only: 20% off for six months and 30% off for 12 months, with no discount on monthly billing. You need to send proof of nonprofit status, such as a 501(c)(3) letter in the US, before buying the prepay plan.

Cite this: MarketingShot, "Constant Contact Pricing 2026: Lite vs Standard vs Premium", October 2026.

MarketingShot is the daily brief for marketers who want to know what a tool costs before they sign up. Join at marketingshot.com.

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