# Constant Contact vs Mailchimp: The Ladders Cross, and One Vendor's Claim About the Other Checks Out

> Constant Contact and Mailchimp compared on published figures: $12 against $13 at entry, $35 against $20 in the middle, $80 against $350 at the top — and a send-allowance claim verified against our own Mailchimp dossier.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/constant-contact-vs-mailchimp — The Professional's Toolkit · updated 2026-10-08_

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This is the only comparison in this category that people actually run. `constant contact vs
mailchimp` and `mailchimp vs constant contact` draw 1,600 searches a month each, 3,200 across
both directions; every other rival pairing with Constant Contact adds up to under a hundred. So
it is worth answering properly rather than with a feature grid.

The short version: the two ladders cross. Mailchimp is cheaper in the middle and Constant Contact
is dramatically cheaper at the top, both of them move your bill without being asked, and they do
it by counting different things.

## The ladders cross, and that is the whole decision

Mailchimp's published month-to-month prices are $0 for Free, $13 for Essentials, $20 for Standard
and $350 for Premium. Constant Contact's are $12, $35 and $80 for Lite, Standard and Premium, with
no free tier, and the pricing page serves only the annual rate of $10.20, $29.75 and $68 [2].
The month-to-month figures come from two agreeing sources: the vendor's published fifteen-percent
prepayment discount run backwards, and the vendor's own Shopify App Store listing, which states
"Pricing From $12/month" and carries all three [21].

Line them up and the shape is unusual. At the entry rung they are within a dollar of each other.
In the middle Mailchimp is substantially cheaper: $20 against $35, for tiers that do broadly the
same job. At the top the gap reverses and becomes enormous: $350 against $80, a factor of 4.4.
That line decides most purchases.

That inversion is the decision for most buyers, and the reason behind it is structural. Mailchimp
prices Premium as an enterprise product and reserves things like multivariate testing and advanced
segmentation for it. Constant Contact's Premium is a ceiling-removal tier. Unlimited users,
unlimited automations and segments, 24x sends, Google Ads Manager, SEO recommendations and 500 SMS
messages included [2], rather than a different class of product.

Both figures above are first-band prices, and both products raise the price with list size. On
that axis Mailchimp publishes more and hides more at once: our measurement of its pages found
twenty contact bands, from 0-500 to 1,000,000+, of which eighteen are priced on no page. Constant
Contact names its bands only in passing, "0-500, 2501-5000, etc." [3], and prices none of them
above the first. Neither vendor lets you price your actual list from its website.



> 💡 **undefined:** If your list is under 250 contacts, Mailchimp's free tier wins outright and nothing else in this comparison changes that.

## What the entry price buys, which is not the same thing

A dollar apart at the entry rung, and genuinely different products for that dollar.

Mailchimp Essentials at $13 is an email tier. Constant Contact Lite at $12 carries the email
editor and the AI copy generator, plus automatic social posting to Facebook, Instagram and
LinkedIn, a social ads manager at the next rung, live phone and chat support with marketing
experts, live 1:1 onboarding with a human, and "Host events, sell products, and take payments"
[2].

That events line is the single biggest difference between these two products and it is almost
never in the comparison tables. Mailchimp has no equivalent at any price. If your list exists to
fill a room, a venue, a studio, a congregation, a festival, a membership body, Constant Contact
removes a ticketing vendor at its cheapest tier, and that comparison is against your invoice total
rather than against a $13 headline.

What Constant Contact's entry tier does not do is schedule. No scheduled email sends, no scheduled
social posts, no subject-line testing, one automation template, one custom segment, one user
[2]. Mailchimp's Essentials does schedule. For a buyer who writes on Monday and sends on
Thursday, that difference pushes them to Constant Contact Standard at $35 against Mailchimp
Essentials at $13. That is where Mailchimp's middle wins.

The live support difference runs the other way and is worth pricing. Phone and chat with a human
on a $12 plan is not something Mailchimp offers at $13.



> ⚠ **undefined:** Neither vendor lets you price your actual list from its website. Mailchimp prices 2 of 20 bands; Constant Contact prices 1.

## A claim one vendor makes about the other, checked

Constant Contact's documentation makes a competitive claim in passing, and it is the rare kind we
can actually test. In its article on the send allowance, the vendor writes that "our send allowance is the most generous of any digital marketing platform" and then names a rival
directly: "Mailchimp, for instance, has a 10-15x email send allowance based on the service tier"
[4].

We hold an independently gathered dossier on Mailchimp from September 2026, built without
reference to this claim. It records the send allowance as a multiple of the contact limit at 10x,
12x and 15x for Essentials, Standard and Premium, each stated in Mailchimp's own help centre
[14]. "Your monthly send limit is 10 times your contact limit" at Essentials and "The monthly send limit is 12 times your contact limit" at Standard [14].

So the claim is accurate. Constant Contact has described its competitor's pricing correctly,
which is not something we can usually say.

The follow-on verdict is more nuanced than the vendor's own framing. Constant Contact's
multipliers are 10x, 12x and 24x [4]. At the entry tier the two are identical. In the middle
they are identical. Only at the top does Constant Contact pull away, 24x against 15x, and at that
top tier it also costs $80 against $350. The honest statement is not *the most generous of any
platform*; it is that the two are level until the top rung, where Constant Contact is both more
generous and far cheaper.

One difference in what the multiplier applies to, which favours Constant Contact at every rung.
Its multiplier is applied to the ceiling of your contact band, "10, 12, or 24 times the highest number of contacts in your contact pricing tier" [4], while Mailchimp's is applied to the
contact limit of the plan. On a 1,500-contact list in a 2,500 band, that is 25,000 sends rather
than 15,000.



> 💡 **undefined:** If you are heading for either product's top tier, compare $80 against $350 before anything else. That single line outweighs the rest.

## How each one moves your bill without asking

Both products raise the price automatically. They differ in what triggers it and whether there is
a way back.

Constant Contact bills on a high-water mark: "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]. One import,
one event, one successful appeal, and the band moves and stays moved by the published rule. No
readable page describes a route back down. A three-star reviewer reports exactly this: "Recently i increased the number of subscribers temporarily and the charges went up which was expected. Then the number of subscribers went down to the previous number and they still charged me for the tier above" [10].

Mailchimp bills on the current contact count rather than the peak, which is the better rule, and
it publishes a documented route for changing or pausing a plan [17]. Its problem is elsewhere:
what counts as a contact. Our Mailchimp measurement found the definition spread across help-centre
articles on non-subscribed contacts, archived contacts and cleaned contacts, each of which changes
the billable number, and the complaint profile reflects it. Billing appears 30 points more often
in negative reviews than positive, cancellation 17 points and account lockout 16.

Constant Contact's complaint profile is narrower and points at the same place. Billing appears in
11 of 100 reviews and 9 of those are one- or two-star, while only 6 reviews say the product costs
too much and 3 of those are positive [10]. Both products are complained about for movement
rather than level. One moves on the peak; the other moves on a definition. Both move without
asking.



> ⚠ **undefined:** Constant Contact's entry tier cannot schedule anything — not emails, not social posts. Mailchimp's Essentials can, and that pushes schedulers to the $35 tier.

## The free plan, and whether it matters

Mailchimp has one and Constant Contact does not, and this is the comparison's most quoted
difference and its most overstated.

Mailchimp's free tier is 250 contacts and 500 sends a month with a 250-a-day limit [14]. It
is a real tier, and for a list under 250 it is genuinely free. What it is not is a path: the free
tier's floor is also its ceiling, with no growth band, so the first time your list passes 250 you
are buying Essentials.

Constant Contact answers the same need differently, and the answer is published on every tier with
a link to its own legal terms: a "30-day-money-back guarantee" [2]. That is a stronger
consumer promise than a capped free tier in one respect, it covers the paid product at full
capability, and a weaker one in another, because it ends.

Which matters depends on your list. Under 250 contacts, Mailchimp's free tier wins outright and
nothing here argues otherwise. Above it, the comparison is $12 against $13 and the free tier is
irrelevant to the decision.

There is a second legibility difference worth putting beside it, because both vendors show
different readers different pages. Our measurement of Mailchimp's pricing page found nineteen
dollar amounts in its European copy against two in its United States copy, with the European
version publishing both the promotional and the post-promotional rate for every tier. Constant
Contact's page varies by state rather than by country: the same URL serves the annual toggle
position to every reader, so the figure you see depends on which side of the switch the server
sends rather than on where you are. In both cases the price exists and the page decides how much
of it you get, which is the single most useful thing to know about either pricing page before you
quote a number from it.



> 💡 **undefined:** Total what Constant Contact replaces — ticketing, a social scheduler, an ads manager — before comparing it to a $13 headline.

## Support, sentiment, and the gap between app and company

This is where the two products diverge most sharply, and the measurement is not close.

Trustpilot shows Constant Contact at 4.0 from 2,093 reviews [10] and Mailchimp at 2.5 from
1,538 [16]. On mobile the order reverses and the volumes explode: Mailchimp's app scores 4.9
from 74,983 ratings, Constant Contact's 4.67 from 2,401 [11].

The useful number is the gap between those two measurements for each product. Mailchimp's is 2.4
points, the application people use is rated far above the company people deal with. Constant
Contact's is 0.67. The two readings nearly agree, which is the strongest single signal in this
comparison and the hardest to fake.

The mechanism behind it is visible in the feature tables. "Live phone and chat with marketing experts" and "Live 1:1 onboarding with experts to help you get started fast" are on Constant
Contact's cheapest tier [2]. In its review corpus, support appears in 27 of 100 reviews and
splits 18 positive to 8 negative, the only product in this category where that theme splits rather
than condemns. A five-star reviewer names the person: "Shannon was a huge help in answering my question about contact teir" [10].

Neither product escapes the cancellation complaint. Constant Contact's corpus has "After looking everywhere online for the cancel button, and after two chat bots, I had to CALL" [10];
Mailchimp's has cancellation running 17 points more negative than positive.

## What each one does that the other has no answer for

Four capabilities exist on one side of this comparison and not the other, and they decide more
purchases than the price does.

Constant Contact has events. "Host events, sell products, and take payments" on Lite, Standard
and Premium identically [2], with registration forms and payment collection. Mailchimp has no
equivalent at $13 or at $350. It also has a social ads manager from Standard, Google Ads Manager
and SEO recommendations at Premium with a one-off *$500 Google Ads credit* [2] — an
advertising surface Mailchimp does not match.

Mailchimp has transactional email, as a separately priced product with published block pricing:
six steps from $20 down to $10 per block of 25,000 emails, with a dedicated IP at $29.95 a month.
If you send receipts, password resets or order confirmations from an application, that is a
different job from marketing email and Constant Contact has no product for it.

SMS exists on both and is restricted on both, differently. Constant Contact's add-on starts at
*$10 USD/mo.* with 500 messages included on Premium [2], bills segments rather than messages —
"around 160 characters each, or 70 characters when using emoji" [5] — and is available only
to US customers with a TIN or EIN and Australian customers with an ABN [5]. Mailchimp's SMS
runs on a credit system documented separately from its plans. Neither is a reason to choose
either product, and both are a reason to read the eligibility rules before assuming the column in
the comparison table applies to you.

Integrations is where both vendors publish a number and neither publishes a list a buyer can
check. Constant Contact claims "300 integrations" with nine named [2] and its directory was
not a page we could read. We scored it 3.3 on that axis for exactly this reason: nine is what is
verifiable, with Zapier covering a long tail by proxy.



> 💡 **undefined:** Registered nonprofits should compare at $24.50 for Constant Contact Standard on a prepaid year, not at $35.

## Which one to buy

Buy Mailchimp if your list is under 250 and you want to pay nothing, if you sit squarely in the
middle of the ladder where $20 beats $35 for a comparable job, or if your contact count genuinely
fluctuates — billing on the current count rather than the peak is the better rule and it is
Mailchimp's clearest structural advantage.

Buy Constant Contact if your marketing is broader than email. Events with payments, social
posting and scheduling, a social ads manager, Google Ads Manager and SEO recommendations in one
subscription, with a human on the phone at the entry price, is a different proposition from an
email tool. Buy it too if you are heading for the top of either ladder, because $80 against $350
is not a close call, or if you are a registered nonprofit, where thirty percent off a prepaid
year is the largest published charity discount in this category [3].

Do not buy Constant Contact if your list size swings, which is the mirror image of the first
recommendation and the same fact seen twice.



## FAQ

**Which is cheaper, Constant Contact or Mailchimp?**

It depends entirely on where you sit. At the entry rung they are a dollar apart, $12 against $13 month-to-month. In the middle Mailchimp is substantially cheaper, $20 against $35. At the top Constant Contact is dramatically cheaper, $80 against $350. And both prices are first-band prices: each product raises the charge with list size, and neither publishes enough of its ladder for you to price your actual list from its website.

**Is Constant Contact's claim about Mailchimp's send allowance true?**

Yes. Constant Contact's documentation states that Mailchimp has a 10-15x email send allowance based on the service tier. Our independently gathered Mailchimp dossier, built in September 2026 without reference to that claim, records exactly 10x, 12x and 15x for Essentials, Standard and Premium, each from Mailchimp's own help centre. The accompanying claim to be the most generous of any platform is weaker: the two are level at the first two rungs and Constant Contact pulls ahead only at the top, 24x against 15x.

**Does Constant Contact have a free plan like Mailchimp?**

No. Mailchimp's free tier is 250 contacts and 500 sends a month with a 250-a-day limit, and its floor is also its ceiling — there is no growth band, so the first time your list passes 250 you are buying Essentials. Constant Contact answers the same need with a thirty-day money-back guarantee published on every tier with its own legal terms. Under 250 contacts the free tier wins; above it the comparison is $12 against $13.

**Which has better support?**

Constant Contact, on every measurement we could take. Live phone and chat with marketing experts and live 1:1 onboarding are on its cheapest tier. In its hundred-review corpus support appears in 27 reviews and splits 18 positive to 8 negative, which is the only product in this category where that theme splits rather than condemns. Trustpilot shows 4.0 from 2,093 reviews against Mailchimp's 2.5 from 1,538.

**Should I switch from Mailchimp to Constant Contact?**

Switch if your marketing is broader than email — events with payments, social posting and scheduling, an ads manager and SEO recommendations in one subscription — or if you are heading for a top tier, where the gap is $80 against $350, or if you are a registered nonprofit, where the prepaid discount reaches thirty percent. Do not switch if your list size swings: Mailchimp billing on your current contact count rather than your highest is the better rule and it is its clearest structural advantage.

## How we scored them

Constant Contact scores 3.63 on our rubric and Mailchimp 3.46, on the same weights: value for
money and capability at 0.229 each, ease of use and integrations at 0.146, AI and support at
0.083, sentiment and documentation at 0.042.

The margin comes from three axes rather than from price. Ease of use at 4.2, user sentiment at
4.1 and support at 3.6 are all above what Mailchimp earned, and all three rest on the same
measurements: the narrow app-to-company gap, the splitting support theme, and phone support on
the cheapest tier.

Mailchimp holds its ground on depth and on the thing it does that nothing here matches — a
transactional email product with its own published block pricing, and an ecosystem the size of
its install base. Constant Contact gives ground on integrations, 3.3, where "300 integrations" is
claimed with nine named [2] and the directory refused every reader we have, and on AI, 2.9,
where the features are on every tier and nothing about them is specified.

Neither score is a verdict on which is better software. They are measurements of how much of each
product a buyer can establish before paying for it, weighted for what this category is for.



> ⚠ **undefined:** Both products move your bill automatically. Constant Contact moves on your peak contact count with no published way back; Mailchimp moves on a contact definition spread across several help articles.




## Sources

[1] Constant Contact vendor pricing page — https://www.constantcontact.com/pricing (2026-10)
[2] Constant Contact vendor billing FAQ — https://community.constantcontact.com/t5/FAQs/Billing-FAQ/ta-p/386088 (2026-10)
[3] Constant Contact vendor documentation on the email send allowance and overage fee — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/email-digital-marketing/articles/KnowledgeBase/46046-Constant-Contact-s-email-send-limit-and-overage-fee?lang=en_US (2026-10)
[4] Constant Contact vendor documentation on the SMS marketing add-on — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/email-digital-marketing/articles/KnowledgeBase/46517-Add-SMS-to-your-Constant-Contact-email-plan?lang=en_US (2026-10)
[5] Constant Contact vendor documentation on trying SMS features — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/email-digital-marketing/articles/KnowledgeBase/54070-Try-Before-You-Buy-SMS-Features?lang=en_US (2026-10)
[6] Constant Contact vendor documentation on payment options — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5775-payment-options-for-your-account?lang=en_US (2026-10)
[7] Constant Contact vendor documentation on lists, tags and segments — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5963-difference-between-tags-and-lists?lang=en_US (2026-10)
[8] Constant Contact vendor documentation on exporting contacts — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/articles/KnowledgeBase/5295-exporting-a-contact-list-from-constant-contact (2026-10)
[9] Trustpilot aggregate score and review corpus for Constant Contact — https://www.trustpilot.com/review/constantcontact.com (2026-10)
[10] Google Play listing for the Constant Contact Marketing App — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.constantcontact.toolkit (2026-10)
[11] WordPress.org plugin directory listing for Constant Contact Forms — https://wordpress.org/plugins/constant-contact-forms/ (2026-10)
[12] Mailchimp vendor pricing page — https://mailchimp.com/pricing/ (2026-09)
[13] Mailchimp vendor documentation on pricing plans — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-mailchimp-pricing-plans/ (2026-09)
[14] Mailchimp vendor plan comparison page — https://mailchimp.com/en/pricing/marketing/compare-plans/ (2026-09)
[15] Trustpilot aggregate score for Mailchimp — https://www.trustpilot.com/review/mailchimp.com (2026-09)
[16] Mailchimp vendor documentation on changing or pausing a plan — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/change-or-pause-your-pricing-plan/ (2026-09)
[17] Mailchimp vendor documentation on contacts — https://mailchimp.com/en/help/about-your-contacts/ (2026-09)
[18] Constant Contact public status page and its incident history — https://status.constantcontact.com/ (2026-10)
[19] Constant Contact vendor documentation for Lead Gen & CRM, a separate product — https://knowledgebase.constantcontact.com/lead-gen-crm/articles/KnowledgeBase/51158-Account-Import-History-Overview?lang=en_US (2026-10)
[20] Constant Contact's own Shopify App Store listing, which publishes the month-to-month prices its pricing page does not — https://apps.shopify.com/constant-contact-2 (2026-10)