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Plans start at $12/mo but scale fast. Here is exactly what each tier costs, what it includes, and where the hidden charges live.
by Alkan Balkaya · Last updated: 2026-06-16Constant Contact has three paid plans in 2026: Lite from $12/mo, Standard from $35/mo, and Premium from $80/mo, all priced at 500 contacts and scaling steeply with list size to as much as $425/mo at 25,000 contacts. There is no free plan, only a short free trial. Constant Contact has been shortening it: the old 60-day trial is gone, and recent signups report 14 to 30 days with a 100-email send cap.
Constant Contact has been one of the most recognizable names in email marketing for over two decades. But in 2026, recognizable does not mean affordable. Their pricing structure has grown increasingly complex, with three plan tiers that scale steeply as your contact list grows and an auto-upgrade mechanism that catches many users off guard.
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This guide breaks down every Constant Contact plan, maps the real cost at each contact tier, explains the hidden charges that inflate your monthly bill, and shows you how it stacks up against alternatives. If you are evaluating Constant Contact pricing in 2026, or reconsidering whether it still makes sense for your business, this is the only reference you need. For a broader look at how leading platforms compare on features and price, see our email platform comparisons hub.
Every price in this article reflects verified data as of 2026-04-15. No estimates, no rounding, no extrapolation from older rate cards.
Key Takeaways
Constant Contact structures its product into three distinct plans. Each one unlocks progressively more features, but the real cost driver is your contact count. Lite is a basic email sender with branding, Standard adds multi-step automation and segmentation, and Premium layers on advanced workflows plus a modest SMS allowance. Here is what you get at each level.
The Lite plan is essentially a stripped-down email sender. You get basic templates, a single automation trigger, and Constant Contact branding on every email you send. For most businesses doing any kind of serious email marketing, Lite is a non-starter. The Standard plan is where most users land, gaining multi-step automations and segmentation. Premium adds advanced automation workflows and a modest SMS allocation.
Constant Contact figures are the published monthly list prices at each list size, checked on 7 September 2026; “about” marks a tier read from the pricing slider rather than a printed price. Mailsoftly is shown as the plan that covers the same number of contacts, at both billing bases. At 5,000 contacts, the cheapest Constant Contact plan (Lite) is $80 per month at its published monthly rate, against $39 per month for Mailsoftly Basic billed yearly ($468 a year) or $49 per month billed monthly.
| Contacts | Constant Contact Lite | Constant Contact Standard | Constant Contact Premium | Mailsoftly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12 per month | $35 per month | $80 per month | Free, $0 |
| 1,000 | $50 per month | $75 per month | $110 per month | Starter: $15 per month billed yearly, $19 billed monthly |
| 5,000 | $80 per month | $110 per month | $200 per month | Basic: $39 per month billed yearly, $49 billed monthly |
| 10,000 | $120 per month | $160 per month | $275 per month | Business: $79 per month billed yearly, $99 billed monthly |
| 25,000 | $280 per month | $310 per month | $425 per month | Premium: $159 per month billed yearly, $199 billed monthly |
Pick your own list size below to see the yearly difference.
At 5,000 contacts, Mailsoftly Basic billed yearly saves $492 a year against Constant Contact Lite at its published monthly rate.
Start free with Mailsoftly →The starting prices above only apply at 500 contacts. Once your list grows, so does your bill. All figures below are drawn from Constant Contact’s official pricing page and reflect monthly billing as of 2026-04-15. Here is the full pricing table across every published contact tier.
| Contacts | Lite | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $12/mo | $35/mo | $80/mo |
| 1,000 | $50/mo | $75/mo | $110/mo |
| 5,000 | $80/mo | $110/mo | $200/mo |
| 10,000 | $120/mo | $160/mo | $275/mo |
| 25,000 | $280/mo | $310/mo | $425/mo |
Notice the jump from 500 to 1,000 contacts on the Lite plan: your cost goes from $12 to $50, a 317% increase for doubling your list. This aggressive scaling is the defining characteristic of Constant Contact’s pricing model. The gap between Lite and Standard narrows as you climb, making Lite increasingly hard to justify beyond the smallest lists.
Annual prepay saves approximately 15% across all plans. If you are committed to Constant Contact for a full year, it softens the blow slightly, but the per-contact cost still trends well above most competitors.
The auto-upgrade trap is when Constant Contact automatically moves you to the next, more expensive contact tier the moment your list crosses a threshold, with no warning email and no confirmation prompt. If your contact list exceeds your current tier’s limit at any point during a billing cycle, you simply see a higher charge on your next invoice. For growing businesses, this is where Constant Contact pricing becomes genuinely problematic.
Scenario: You are on Lite at 5,000 contacts ($80/mo). A signup form brings you to 5,001 contacts mid-month. Constant Contact bumps you to the 10,000-contact tier at $120/mo for that entire billing period. You did not add 5,000 new subscribers. You added one. Your bill went up $40.
This auto-upgrade behavior means you need to actively manage your contact list to avoid surprise charges. Unsubscribed contacts, bounced addresses, and duplicate entries all count toward your total unless you manually clean them. Constant Contact does not exclude inactive contacts from your billable count the way some competitors do.
Beyond the tier jumps, there are other costs that do not appear on the main pricing page. Add-ons for advanced e-commerce integrations, premium template libraries, and additional SMS credits beyond the 500 included in Premium all carry separate charges. If you need more than the included user seats on Lite or Standard, expect to pay for those as well.
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At every contact tier, Constant Contact costs more than Mailsoftly, Mailchimp, and Klaviyo for comparable email functionality. Below is a direct comparison against four major email platforms at the contact tiers that matter most to small and mid-size businesses. All prices are monthly billing rates as of 2026-04-15.
| Platform | Free Tier | 1,000 contacts | 5,000 contacts | 10,000 contacts | 25,000 contacts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Constant Contact (Standard) | No free plan | $75 | $110 | $160 | $310 |
| Mailsoftly (annual) | 500 contacts free | $39* | $39 | $79 | $159 |
| Mailchimp (Standard) | 250 contacts | $40 | $100 | $135 | $270 |
| ActiveCampaign (Plus) | No free plan | $59 | $179 | $239 | $489 |
| Klaviyo (Email) | 250 profiles | $30 | $100 | $150 | $400 |
*Mailsoftly Basic covers up to 5,000 contacts. Prices shown are annual billing rates.
At every contact tier, Constant Contact Standard costs more than both Mailsoftly and Mailchimp Standard. The gap widens as your list grows. At 5,000 contacts, Constant Contact charges $110/mo while Mailsoftly charges $39/mo on the annual Basic plan. That is $852 per year in savings for equivalent functionality.
ActiveCampaign is more expensive than Constant Contact at higher tiers, but it also delivers significantly more powerful automation capabilities. If you are paying Constant Contact prices, you are getting Constant Contact features, which sit in the middle of the market. The value equation does not work in their favor.
Mailsoftly is cheaper than Constant Contact at every contact tier, and the gap grows as your list scales. Switching email platforms is a significant decision, so let us compare the two on the dimensions that actually affect your daily workflow and monthly budget.
The pricing difference is substantial at every level. At 25,000 contacts, you would pay $310/mo with Constant Contact Standard or $159/mo with Mailsoftly Premium (annual billing). That is a difference of $1,812 per year, enough to fund an entirely separate marketing channel.
Beyond price, Mailsoftly includes AI-powered subject line optimization, smart segmentation, and a visual automation builder on all paid plans. Constant Contact reserves its most useful automation features for Standard and Premium. You can review the full Mailsoftly pricing page for complete feature breakdowns at each tier.
Constant Contact is the right choice for event-driven businesses with small lists, and the wrong choice for cost-conscious teams growing past 5,000 contacts. It is not a bad product. It is a mature platform with a reliable editor, solid deliverability, and strong event management tools that few competitors match. With email still delivering some of the strongest returns of any channel, as the email marketing statistics from HubSpot show, the real question is value, not capability.
Constant Contact may still work for you if your primary need is event-driven email marketing. Their built-in event management (registration pages, ticketing, automated reminders) is genuinely well-integrated and requires no third-party tools. If events are central to your business and you have a modest list under 1,000 contacts, the Standard plan at $75/mo provides a focused, all-in-one solution.
Constant Contact is likely the wrong choice if you are a growing business with a list north of 5,000 contacts. The per-contact pricing becomes punishing, and the feature set does not scale proportionally. You are paying more for the same automation capabilities that competitors offer at lower price points. The auto-upgrade mechanism compounds this problem by making cost planning unpredictable.
The annual discount helps, but it does not close the value gap. Constant Contact offers roughly 15% off when you pay annually. At 5,000 contacts on Standard, that brings the effective monthly rate from $110 down to approximately $93.50. Over twelve months, you save about $198.
However, the annual commitment locks you in. If you discover a better alternative mid-contract or your list shrinks after a seasonal campaign, you cannot downgrade or get a prorated refund. You are paying for twelve months of a pricing tier that may not reflect your actual needs for most of that period.
Compare that to Mailsoftly’s annual pricing at the same contact level: $39/mo for up to 5,000 contacts. Even Constant Contact’s discounted annual rate at 5,000 contacts is more than double what Mailsoftly charges at full annual pricing. The 15% discount softens the sticker shock without solving the underlying value problem.
Before committing to any plan, run this mental calculation to estimate your true annual cost with Constant Contact:
Most businesses underestimate their email marketing costs because they look at the starting price, not the tier they will actually occupy six months from now. Constant Contact’s pricing structure punishes growth. Every new subscriber pushes you closer to the next billing threshold, and once you cross it, there is no going back until you manually clean your list.
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For the broader picture, our email marketing service comparisons cover every major platform side by side, so you can benchmark Constant Contact against the full market before you commit to a contract.
Looking for a simpler Constant Contact alternative? See why teams switch to Mailsoftly as a Constant Contact alternative. Free hands-on migration in 1 to 2 hours, no contracts, real human support.
No. Constant Contact does not offer a free plan. They provide a free trial (14 to 30 days, with a 100-email send cap), after which you must choose a paid plan starting at $12/mo (Lite, 500 contacts). If you need a permanent free tier, Mailsoftly offers one with 500 contacts and 2,000 emails per month at no cost, no credit card required.
Constant Contact automatically upgrades you to the next contact tier mid-billing-cycle. This happens without a confirmation prompt. For example, going from 5,000 to 5,001 contacts on the Lite plan jumps your bill from $80/mo to $120/mo. The only way to return to a lower tier is to reduce your contact count below the threshold and wait for the next billing cycle.
For most small to mid-size businesses, Constant Contact is overpriced relative to its feature set. At 5,000 contacts, Constant Contact Standard costs $110/mo while Mailsoftly Basic offers comparable features at $39/mo (annual billing). The exception is businesses that rely heavily on event management, where Constant Contact’s integrated tools may justify the premium.
Savings depend on your contact count. At 5,000 contacts, you save $852/year. At 10,000 contacts, you save $972/year (comparing Constant Contact Standard at $160/mo to Mailsoftly Business at $79/mo annual). At 25,000 contacts, the gap grows to $1,812/year. Every tier shows meaningful savings, and you gain access to AI-powered features included at no extra charge.
Constant Contact counts all contacts toward your billable total, including unsubscribed and bounced addresses, unless you manually remove them. This means your billable contact count can be significantly higher than your actual reachable audience. Regular list hygiene is essential to avoid paying for contacts you can no longer email.
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