Meet Maggie, PCMag'sConstant Contact is an email marketing solution that supports both general brand and e-commerce-focused marketing. It offers a great blend of starter features, third-party integrations, and a 30-day free trial that lets you get a feel for the service. During testing, I found Constant Contact easy to use and well-integrated with other online services, though its feature set is aimed squarely at small businesses. That positions it somewhat behind our more robust Editors' Choice winners for email marketing, Brevo and Mailchimp.
Constant Contact offers three plans, which vary in price based on the package and the number of contacts you host. The service uses contact-tiered pricing, meaning you pay more based on the size of your audience list rather than the number of individual campaigns you send each month. For example, 0 to 500 contacts cost $12 per month with the Lite plan, while 45,001 to 50,000 contacts cost $430 per month with the same package. A 30-day trial is available, so you can kick Constant Contact's tires before signing up for a plan.
The entry-level Lite plan starts at $12 per month, supports a single user, and limits you to one active automation template. It includes essential tools such as drag-and-drop templates, a marketing CRM, event management, and basic social media marketing features. Note that with Lite plans, Constant Contact branding remains visible at the bottom of all sent emails.
The next step up is the Standard plan, which starts at $35 per month for up to three users (at the baseline 500-contact tier) and allows scheduled and multi-step automated sequences. It also bumps your monthly email limit to 12 times your total number of contacts. The highest tier, Premium, starts at $80 per month and adds customizable automation and segmentation, Google Ads manager, 500 SMS messages, revenue reporting, and SEO recommendations. With the Premium tier, your monthly email limit jumps to 24 times your total number of contacts.
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Constant Contact's email-oriented setup makes it particularly appealing for smaller businesses with modest contact lists. That said, I find Brevo to be a great alternative that edges out Constant Contact on pricing. Brevo’s Starter plan ($9 per month) begins with 5,000 monthly emails, though you should consider its $18-per-month Standard plan to unlock marketing automation and A/B testing. For larger businesses with mass-marketing needs or complex lead journeys, I recommend ActiveCampaign. It offers highly customizable email marketing and behavioral automation solutions, starts at $15 per month on its Starter plan, and provides a scalable platform you won't easily outgrow.
I added contacts by uploading an XLSX file, but there are multiple ways to get your subscriber lists into Constant Contact. You can copy and paste addresses, manually type them into a form, upload a file (CSV, TXT, XLS, or XLSX), directly import them from a Gmail or Microsoft Outlook address book, or import them from several compatible customer relationship management (CRM) tools, including HubSpot CRM, Nutshell, and Pipedrive.
Constant Contact’s updated data engine automatically matched and mapped almost all of my standard data fields and seamlessly merged duplicate contacts. With the service, I tagged contacts, added them to specific lists, and created segments based on behavior or contact details. However, editing individual contact records remained somewhat tedious in testing; the interface still lacks quick, inline spreadsheet editing directly within the rows of the main list view. Instead, I had to hover over an entry to trigger a slide-out preview panel or open the contact record entirely to make quick typo corrections.
The web form builder has been updated to fully support direct, compliant SMS phone number capture alongside traditional email fields. To protect my list from spam without adding subscriber friction, I was pleased to see that Constant Contact introduced an invisible Honeypot Bot Protection setting for all native signup forms. When activated, this setting inserts an invisible field to human users but is detectable by automated bots. If a bot fills out this hidden field, the submission is discarded and never reaches your contact list.
For quick audience expansion, the platform includes a drag-and-drop landing page builder intended for simple, focused promotions. This tool is handy for straightforward lead-capture forms, event registrations, and basic promotions that link back to an external store like Shopify. In my hands on testing, the builder felt fairly basic, offering limited layout customization that prevented me from creating advanced marketing funnels or highly customized graphic designs. If you are running an e-commerce store on Shopify or WooCommerce, Omnisend is a massive upgrade over Constant Contact for creating forms.
To whip up a campaign, I clicked the Create button in the top right-hand corner. It served up a menu of options, including Email, Email Automation, Social Post, and SMS. Selecting Email took me to the template screen, which featured a vast list of templates categorized by type, such as Newsletter, Announcement, and Event. Optionally, I could build a template from scratch using the Custom Code editor for tinkering with HTML.
The drag-and-drop editor is simple to navigate. The left-hand sidebar contains standard elements such as images, text, and buttons that you can drag into the template layout. I used Constant Contact's AI-powered tools to generate suggestions when I needed inspiration to craft content such as a subject line, product description, social media post, or email body copy. This tech includes a Generative AI Content Builder capable of writing copy blocks, which work alongside predictive systems that automatically schedule optimal send times. However, if you are looking to make complex design modifications, Constant Contact isn't the service for you. Its mobile options are somewhat limited, with less flexible previewing capabilities than top-tier competitors, such as ActiveCampaign's responsive layout toggles and Mailchimp's dedicated mobile assistant app.
During testing, I was pleased to see that the platform's old 2GB space restriction was removed, expanding the total storage to 10GB for Standard and 25GB for Premium.
Beyond inbox outreach, Constant Contact provides a unified social media dashboard. Using it, I easily composed, scheduled, and monitored engagement across major networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The workflow has been modernized through an expanded Canva partnership, allowing me to export my design assets directly into my social queues, along with native TikTok Ads integration that automatically imports new video leads straight into my targeted marketing lists. While I found this convenient for basic multi-channel brand management, the underlying social analytics remain surface-level compared with dedicated standalone management software such as Sprout Social, which offers advanced competitor tracking and reporting.
If you operate an online store, Constant Contact offers direct integrations with major storefront platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce. The data engine goes beyond basic roster syncing. In fact, it let me deploy automated, multi-step behavioral campaigns, such as triggering a three-part email nurture sequence when a customer abandons a shopping cart.
The platform features a native Lead Gen & CRM lead-scoring system that automatically ranks contacts based on form submissions, email opens, and link clicks. However, I noticed that the platform still lacks advanced web tracking and lead-scoring mechanisms. If you require granular segmentation based on passive user behavior, such as tracking someone who simply browsed a specific item page without adding it to their cart, you will still need to pair Constant Contact with a more technically robust tool, like Google Analytics. Likewise, if these analytics are essential to your storefront, consider an e-commerce platform like Klaviyo, which offers better native tracking.
To create an automated series, I selected Email Automation from the Campaign menu, then chose a trigger from the following options: new sign-up, email open, or link click. You can create a new email or use an existing one to be sent automatically based on that action. During testing, I appreciated that the tool allowed me to set wait times between emails and build a multi-step series within a specific multi-step visual workflow.
Constant Contact has steadily improved its Automation Path Builder since I last looked at it. Originally, it supported integrated email and SMS scheduling on a single timeline. It is now a fully unified campaign planning and integrated email, social, and SMS scheduling flow, bringing much-needed modern value to the software. That said, it still stops short of the hyper-advanced behavioral workflows found in powerhouse platforms like HubSpot Marketing Hub and Mailchimp. Nonetheless, it's a massive step forward for the platform, letting me easily drag and drop time delays and basic contact-tagging rules into a unified campaign flow.
Constant Contact provides standard performance metrics, including open rates, click rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates, displayed on a redesigned Reporting tab. The main screen layers in automatic industry benchmarking, allowing me to instantly compare my open and click rates against real-world metrics for my specific business vertical.
The platform has notably solved a long-standing limitation by introducing a native Report Builder. It allowed me to construct and filter custom email or SMS analytics reports from scratch instead of relying strictly on canned summaries. Additionally, visual tracking has been upgraded with an interactive click heatmap overlay to display shifts in audience engagement, alongside side-by-side campaign comparison charts that place original email metrics right next to automated follow-ups. For tracking on the go, I found the mobile application (available on Android and iOS) handy for getting a real-time pulse on campaign metrics while traveling.
Constant Contact provides multiple avenues for live help. You can reach support via live chat Monday through Friday from 3:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET, or speak to a representative via telephone Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET, and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET. For specialized list-cleaning or compliance guidance, you must contact the dedicated List Review Team during daytime operational hours. New users can also use the "Ask a Trainer" feature, which offers free virtual drop-in sessions with a product expert, Monday through Friday, between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. ET.
If you prefer independent troubleshooting, I found the self-service ecosystem a great help. The knowledge base provides 24/7 access to written how-to articles, video tutorials, and QuickStart guides. Additionally, the Constant Contact Community serves as a peer-to-peer forum where you can post questions and trade advice with other business owners.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Constant Contact)
Constant Contact
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
Constant Contact remains an excellent, accessible gateway for small businesses and beginners aiming to launch campaigns quickly. It shines with strong email deliverability, extensive third-party integrations, and automated workflows powered by AI-driven generation tools. However, the contact-based pricing spikes as your lists scale, and its rigid template editor lacks design flexibility. The lack of local-time-zone delivery and recurring calendar scheduling further limits its utility. Ultimately, Constant Contact is an admirable choice for reliable, straightforward use, and it's backed by stellar live help. But for scaling teams needing advanced multi-channel features and flexible design at a lower cost, our Editors' Choice winners, Brevo and Mailchimp, remain superior alternatives.
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About Our Expert
In 2014, I began my career at PCMag as a freelancer. That blossomed into a full-time position in 2021, and I now review email marketing apps, mobile operating systems, web hosting services, streaming music platforms, and video games as a senior writer. I'm a graduate of Hunter College, a hard-core gamer, and an Apple enthusiast.
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