How to Use Constant Contact: A Setup Order That Does Not Move Your Price Band

This is a setup guide written in the order the decisions actually bite, which is not the order the onboarding presents them. Two of the first three choices here are expensive to reverse, one of them permanently, by the vendor's own published rule, so the sequence matters more than usual.

Everything below is drawn from the vendor's published documentation and from the pricing page. If you have not yet bought, read the band section first; it changes what you should pay.

Before you import anything: establish your band

Your price is a function of two things, and the onboarding only asks you about one. The tier you pick is reversible. The contact band is not, by the published rule: "Your pricing is based on the highest tiered number of active contacts you've had (0-500, 2501-5000, etc.), so if you go into a higher tier in your current month, your monthly subscription will reflect that going forward" ^[3].

Read that before your first import, because an import is the single easiest way to move your band by accident. If you have a 400-name newsletter list and a 900-name event list from three years ago, importing both on day one puts you in the 501-1,000 band permanently as far as any published page says.

So do this first. Decide which contacts are actually an audience you will email, and import only those. Keep the rest out of the system, in a spreadsheet, until you have a reason to mail them. The export route works in both directions ^[9], so nothing is lost by waiting.

Then, if your list is seasonal, ask support two things in the same call: what your peak band will cost, and what account suspension costs for that band, the vendor describes it as "a significantly reduced price (based on contact tiers)" ^[3] without publishing a figure. Both answers are cheap to get now and impossible to get retroactively.

## Pick the tier on two questions, not on the feature table

The comparison table makes the tiers look like three different products. They are mostly one product with different ceilings, and two questions settle which you need.

How many people need to log in? One user on Lite, three on Standard, unlimited on Premium ^[2]. This is the hardest ceiling in the product and the least negotiable.

Do you schedule? Lite cannot schedule an email send or a social post. Standard adds scheduled sends, subject-line A/B testing, subject-line recommendations and personalisation, scheduled social posts and an AI campaign builder ^[2].

Everything else is on every tier and worth knowing so you do not over-buy: the drag-and-drop editor, the AI copy generator, templates, web sign-up forms, automatic social posting, contact management, live phone and chat support, live 1:1 onboarding, and "Host events, sell products, and take payments" ^[2].

Premium is a ceiling-removal tier rather than a new class of product: unlimited users, unlimited automations and segments, dynamic content, ecommerce automation and segmentation, Google Ads Manager with a $500 Google Ads credit, SEO recommendations and the first 500 SMS messages included ^[2].

Then decide the billing period deliberately. The page shows $10.20, $29.75 and $68 "billed annually" ^[2]; month-to-month is $12, $35 and $80. Figures the vendor publishes on its own Shopify App Store listing and which its published 15% twelve-month discount ^[3] independently confirms. A prepaid year saves 15% and "Prepayments are non-refundable" ^[3]. Registered nonprofits get 20% at six months and 30% at twelve ^[3].

## Set up sending before you write anything

Take the 1:1 onboarding session. It is included on every tier, "Live 1:1 onboarding with experts to help you get started fast" ^[2], and it is the cheapest hour you will spend here, because the person on the call can answer the two unpublished questions from the first section.

Authenticate your sending domain in that session if you can. This is the single highest-leverage setup step in any email platform and it is invisible in the interface: it is what stops your campaigns landing in spam folders and what makes the vendor's "98% inbox rate" claim ^[2] relevant to you rather than to someone else. Treat that claim as a claim, since no window or method is published with it.

While you are there, subscribe to the status page's notifications, by email or text ^[19]. Seventeen of the fifty incidents the vendor has published since June 2024 are delays rather than outages, and knowing about a delay before your recipients do is worth the thirty seconds it takes to set up.

Last, find the Billing tab and look at it once now, so you know where it is. It is where your real send count lives, and the vendor is explicit that it does not match the Reporting tab: "Resends are not included in the stats on the Reporting tab, so you should always refer to your account page to see your most accurate send count for the billing period" ^[4].

## Import contacts without moving your price

Now the import, done the way that does not cost you money.

Import only the audience you will actually email, per the band logic above. The vendor's export documentation describes the shape of the data in both directions ^[9], so start with one clean list rather than everything you have.

Then decide how to organise it, because the three mechanisms are not interchangeable and the vendor documents them by list size ^[8]. Lists are for mailings, the thing a contact subscribes to. Tags are for attributes you assign. Attended, donor, volunteer. Segments are rules evaluated at send time. Opened in the last 90 days, bought twice.

The constraint to design around: Lite has one custom segment, Standard ten, Premium unlimited ^[2]. If your plan needs five audiences defined by behaviour, that is a tier decision, and it is cheaper to discover now than after you have built the campaigns.

One hygiene step that pays for itself, because of how billing works. Remove addresses that have never engaged before you import rather than after, since bounces are not free: "Even if an email bounces, it still counts as a send" ^[4]. On this product list hygiene is a billing activity as much as a deliverability one.

Send the first campaign, and read what it cost

Build it in the drag-and-drop editor, use the AI copy generator for a first draft of the subject line and body, and send to a small segment rather than the whole list. One caution from the review corpus if you are migrating existing HTML: one reviewer reports that importing HTML leaves the visual editor unusable ^[10], so if you intend to keep editing in the interface, rebuild rather than paste.

Then count what you spent, using the vendor's own arithmetic. Your allowance is "10, 12, or 24 times the highest number of contacts in your contact pricing tier" ^[4] depending on tier, and note that it applies to the ceiling of your band, not your list, so a 1,500-contact account in the 2,500 band has 25,000 sends on Lite. A send is one email to one contact: "an email sent to 10 contacts = 10 sends" ^[4].

If you go over, nothing stops. You are charged "$0.002 for every send over the maximum send allowance" ^[4], which is two dollars per thousand. That is small, and it is the reason the risk here is a creeping bill rather than a blocked account, the opposite of the free tiers on rival products, which stop sending instead of charging.

Check the Billing tab after the first send and compare it to what you expected. Doing that once, early, calibrates everything afterwards.

## Build the automations that do not count against your allowance

This is the step most guides put last and it belongs here, because of a specific billing fact: "Automated emails, such as Welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and automated email series, are excluded from the email send allowance and overage fee calculation" ^[4].

Automated sends are free of the meter. Scheduled campaigns are not. So the work you move into automation is work that costs you nothing in allowance, and on a product that bills the way this one does, that is a real design principle rather than a tip.

Start with a welcome email on your sign-up form. Lite gives you one automation template, Standard three, Premium unlimited ^[2], so on the entry tier the one template you get should be the welcome.

Then note the exception, because it is the one that catches people. "Only campaigns that can be scheduled in advance, including automatic resends to non-openers, are included in the email send allowance" ^[4]. Resend to non-openers is a Standard feature and it does consume your allowance, and the vendor states its volume cannot be forecast: "Since you don't know how many contacts won't open your original email, you won't know for sure how many resends to non-openers there will be" ^[4]. Resends also land on a different day, so they can fall into a different billing cycle than the original ^[4].

Use it, but leave headroom in the month you turn it on.

Put the sign-up form and landing page to work

Web sign-up forms are on every tier ^[2], and they are the part of this setup that keeps working while you do not.

Place one form where people already are, the website footer, the booking confirmation, the event page, and wire it to the welcome automation from the previous section. That pairing is the whole growth loop, and both halves are available on the $12 plan.

Landing pages are a named component of the platform ^[19], which is worth knowing because a landing page plus a form plus a welcome email is enough to run a campaign without a website at all. For an organisation whose web presence is somebody else's responsibility, that matters more than any feature in the comparison table.

One reason to get the form in early that has nothing to do with marketing: if you ever suspend the account, the vendor states that suspension "allows certain automated functions of your account (such as sign-up forms and welcome emails) to continue while you're not actively making new ads, social media posts, emails, etc." ^[3] The two things that survive a suspension are precisely the form and the welcome email. Build them well and your quiet months still accumulate audience.

## Run an event, because you are already paying for it

If your organisation does anything with a date and a room, do this in week one rather than week twenty, because it is the capability most Constant Contact users never find and the one its rivals do not have.

"Host events, sell products, and take payments" is on Lite, Standard and Premium identically ^[2], with registration forms and payment collection. Event Campaigns is a named component on the status page ^[19], so it is a first-class part of the platform rather than an add-on.

The practical sequence is short. Create the event campaign, add the registration form, connect payments, and promote it with an email to a segment plus a social post. Both of which are in the same subscription. Registrations come back attached to the contact record, which means your next campaign can segment on who came.

Then do the comparison that justifies the subscription: whatever you currently pay a ticketing platform, per event or per ticket, is a line you can retire. Nothing else in this category carries event registration with payments at any price, so for this shape of organisation the honest comparison for Constant Contact is against your total invoice rather than against a rival's entry price.

## Use the social and advertising side, which you are also paying for

Most people set this product up as an email tool and never open the rest, which is the single biggest waste available here.

Automatic posting to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn is on every tier ^[2], and Social Media is a named component on the status page ^[19], so it is part of the platform rather than a bolt-on. Scheduling posts in advance arrives at Standard, along with social reporting and a social media ads manager ^[2]. If you currently pay a separate scheduler, that is a line you can retire on the $35 plan.

Premium adds the advertising surface proper: Facebook lookalike ad targeting, Google Ads Manager, SEO recommendations, and a one-off $500 Google Ads credit ^[2]. The credit is worth mentioning in a setup guide because it expires in the sense that it goes unused. If you are on Premium and have not claimed it, that is real money sitting in the account.

The practical setup is ten minutes. Connect the social accounts during your onboarding session, then schedule the social post that accompanies your next campaign at the same time you schedule the campaign. One subscription, one calendar, and the campaign calendar is itself a named feature ^[2].

One honest limit. The vendor claims "300 integrations" with nine named — Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Canva, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Zapier, Shopify and Eventbrite ^[2] — and its directory was not a page we could read, so nine is what a buyer can verify. If a specific platform matters to your workflow, confirm it by name with support during onboarding rather than assuming it sits inside the number.

## Two numbers to read every month, and what to do in week two

Read your send count on the Billing tab, not the Reporting tab, because the vendor says the two differ by construction ^[4]. You are looking for how close you are to your allowance, and whether resends are pushing you toward it.

Read your active contact count, because it sets your band — and the band is the high-water mark ^[3]. Watch it before a list import, not after. If it has crossed into a new band and your list has since shrunk, that is the moment to call and ask whether the price comes back down, since no published page says it does.

In week two, do three things. Turn on one automation beyond the welcome, since automated sends do not consume your allowance ^[4]. Test one subject line if you are on Standard or above, because A/B testing is one of the few things the tier actually buys you ^[2]. And if you are considering SMS, draft a real message in the editor before subscribing — the vendor lets you use the full feature without buying it ^[6] — then count its segments at "around 160 characters each, or 70 characters when using emoji" ^[5] and multiply by your opted-in contacts, because that product is billed on segments rather than messages ^[5].

And if anything looks broken, check the status page before you touch the campaign. The vendor's own advice during a sending delay is to leave it alone: "We recommend leaving your campaign scheduled, as unscheduling and rescheduling may result in further delays." ^[19]