Constant Contact vs Mailchimp: Features, Price, Deliverability

Mailchimp wins on automation, integrations, and the free tier. Constant Contact wins on events, phone support, and deliverability consistency for small lists. For most small businesses under 5,000 subscribers, Mailchimp is the cheaper and more capable pick. For event-heavy businesses and non-tech-savvy owners who want phone support, Constant Contact earns its premium.

Both platforms have been around since the early 2000s. Both dominate the small-business email space. And both have been playing catch-up to newer tools like Klaviyo, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), and MailerLite on automation depth and pricing flexibility.

Which is cheaper, Constant Contact or Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is cheaper for most list sizes, especially at the free and low end. Constant Contact starts paid-only at around $12/month for 500 contacts. Mailchimp has a free tier up to 500 contacts and 1,000 sends/month.

Pricing diverges fast as lists grow. At 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp Standard costs around $135/month. Constant Contact Lite costs around $110/month. So Mailchimp’s free-to-cheap advantage flips at mid-scale.

Mailchimp prices shown for Standard tier (the most commonly chosen plan). Essentials is cheaper but limits automation. Premium is priced on request. Constant Contact prices are for Lite; Standard and Premium tiers add more automation and ads features.

The real price comparison requires asking which features you actually need. If you need advanced automation, Mailchimp’s Standard tier gives more for the money. If you mostly send newsletters and event invites, Constant Contact’s Lite tier is the simpler buy.

Is Mailchimp or Constant Contact better for small businesses?

Mailchimp is better if your business is online-first, sells digital products, or needs integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe, or SaaS tools. Constant Contact is better if you run events, local services, or a non-profit where phone support matters more than advanced segmentation.

I’ve set up both for clients. Mailchimp’s onboarding is faster if you’re comfortable clicking through software. Constant Contact’s onboarding is gentler if you’re not.

Mailchimp has 300+ native integrations. Constant Contact has around 300 too, but the quality is uneven. Mailchimp integrates deeper with Shopify, Stripe, WordPress, Zapier, Salesforce, and most SaaS CRMs. Constant Contact integrates well with Eventbrite, Zoom, Canva, and QuickBooks.

For small businesses under 2,500 subscribers, Mailchimp’s free tier plus Shopify integration is hard to beat. For small businesses running workshops, classes, or local events, Constant Contact’s event tools save hours per month.

How do email templates compare between the two?

Both offer 100+ drag-and-drop templates. Mailchimp’s templates feel more modern and editorial. Constant Contact’s templates feel more corporate and traditional. Neither is strictly better, the right one depends on your brand.

Mailchimp’s new editor (redesigned in 2023) is closer to Canva in feel. Layout blocks, hover tooltips, responsive previews, and real-time collaboration. The learning curve is low.

Constant Contact’s editor is more forgiving for first-time users but less flexible for custom layouts. You can get a clean newsletter out in 15 minutes without reading documentation. But power users hit ceilings faster.

Both support custom HTML imports. Both preview across major email clients. Neither comes close to Litmus or Email on Acid for deep QA, so if you’re sending to 100K+ recipients, run external QA regardless of platform.

Which has better email deliverability?

Deliverability is roughly tied on aggregate, but the gap shows up in specific scenarios. Constant Contact generally delivers better for small, engaged lists. Mailchimp’s infrastructure handles scale better once you cross 50K+ sends.

Deliverability isn’t really about the platform. It’s about your sender reputation, list hygiene, authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), content quality, and engagement signals. Both platforms handle the technical side correctly. If you’re landing in spam, the platform isn’t usually the cause.

Third-party deliverability benchmarks from EmailToolTester and Email on Acid over the last three years show:

• Mailchimp: 85-92% inbox rate across major ISPs
• Constant Contact: 87-93% inbox rate across major ISPs

Within margin of error. Both platforms have invested in deliverability teams and sender reputation infrastructure for over 20 years.

Where Mailchimp loses points: the free tier has historically shared IP pools with less reputable senders, which can drag inbox rates down. Paid plans use better IP pools.

Where Constant Contact loses points: less transparent reporting on delivery issues. You get bounce rates and open rates, but root-cause analysis is thinner than Mailchimp’s Postmaster-style reporting.

Which has better automation and workflows?

Mailchimp wins decisively on automation depth. Customer journeys, conditional splits, branching workflows, tag-based triggers, ecommerce-specific flows (abandoned cart, product recommendations, post-purchase follow-up), and AI-assisted subject line testing.

Constant Contact’s automation is basic by comparison. Welcome series, birthday emails, re-engagement, and a few ecommerce templates. Works for the 80% of small businesses that want set-and-forget autoresponders. Not enough for anyone running real lifecycle marketing.

I’ve built 12-step nurture sequences in Mailchimp with conditional splits based on link clicks, product views, and custom events from a SaaS app. Trying to do the same in Constant Contact means stitching together two or three platforms. Not worth it.

If automation is central to your strategy, skip both and consider Klaviyo (for ecommerce) or Kit (for creators).

Customer support: phone vs chat vs email

Constant Contact wins on support, full stop. Phone support is available on every paid tier. Real humans pick up. Training webinars are free and run weekly. The onboarding team helps migrate lists at no extra cost.

Mailchimp’s support depends on your tier. Free tier gets email only, and responses lag 24-72 hours. Paid tiers get chat support. Phone support only on the Premium tier ($350+/month). Mailchimp’s documentation is excellent, but when you need a human, you work harder to reach one.

For non-technical small business owners, Constant Contact’s support is the main reason to pick them despite the higher price. For DIY-comfortable founders, Mailchimp’s docs usually cover the problem.

List management and segmentation

Mailchimp’s segmentation is more flexible. Tags, groups, custom fields, behavior-based segments, predicted demographics, and audience insights. You can build a segment of “opened 2+ emails in the last 30 days, clicked a product link, lives in California, hasn’t purchased” in under a minute.

Constant Contact uses lists and tags but lacks the flexible query builder Mailchimp offers. You can segment by engagement, contact fields, and basic behavior. Anything more complex requires exporting data and re-uploading.

Both platforms now handle duplicate contacts across lists correctly (charge once, not per list). Mailchimp moved to this model in 2019. Constant Contact followed in 2020.

Landing pages, forms, and extras

Mailchimp bundles more free extras. Landing pages (up to 3 on free tier), signup forms, social posting, website builder, appointment scheduling, and basic CRM. If you want one tool that covers email plus a few adjacent jobs, Mailchimp is closer to all-in-one.

Constant Contact also offers landing pages, forms, and social posting, but the quality is noticeably lower. Landing page templates feel dated. The social posting tool is limited compared to Buffer or Hootsuite. The form builder works but isn’t as flexible as Mailchimp’s.

If you already have a landing page builder (Unbounce, Leadpages, Carrd) and social scheduler (Buffer, Later), neither platform’s extras matter much. Pick based on email features.

Events: the Constant Contact advantage

Constant Contact’s event tools are the single biggest reason to pick them over Mailchimp. Event registration, ticketing, guest lists, automatic follow-up, and Eventbrite integration.

If you run workshops, classes, webinars, fundraisers, or community events, Constant Contact’s event workflow replaces roughly three tools. Worth the premium alone for event-driven businesses.

Mailchimp doesn’t have a native event product. You’d pair Mailchimp with Eventbrite, Zoom, or Luma to cover the same ground. Three tools instead of one.

Ecommerce features: Mailchimp’s advantage

Mailchimp integrates deeply with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. Product recommendations, abandoned cart emails, purchase-triggered flows, revenue attribution, and predicted customer lifetime value.

Constant Contact has ecommerce integrations but the depth is shallow. Basic abandoned cart, basic product blocks, basic revenue tracking. For a general merchandise store under $500K/year revenue, workable. Anything bigger, switch to Klaviyo.

I’d pick Mailchimp over Constant Contact for any WooCommerce or Shopify store under $2M revenue. Above that threshold, switch to Klaviyo anyway.

Which should you actually pick?

Mailchimp if any of these apply:

• Budget-conscious, list under 2,500
• Running ecommerce on Shopify or WooCommerce
• Need advanced automation or segmentation
• Comfortable with self-service (docs, community, no phone support)
• Want one tool to cover email, landing pages, and forms

Constant Contact if any of these apply:

• Run events (workshops, fundraisers, classes)
• Non-profit or local service business
• Non-technical owner who wants phone support
• Small engaged list under 5,000
• Already bought into Eventbrite or QuickBooks ecosystem

Neither if any of these apply:

• Ecommerce over $500K/year (pick Klaviyo)
• Creator or course business (pick Kit)
• B2B SaaS with complex lifecycle marketing (pick Customer.io or HubSpot)
• Budget-focused, list over 10K (pick MailerLite)

Alternatives worth considering

Don’t default to either until you’ve checked these:

Kit (formerly ConvertKit). Best for creators, course sellers, and newsletter writers. Visual automation builder, subscriber-based pricing (not list-based), deep integrations with Substack-adjacent tools. Starts free up to 10,000 subscribers. $29/month at 1,000 paid subscribers.

Klaviyo. Best for ecommerce over $500K/year revenue. Purpose-built for Shopify and the ecommerce stack. Expensive, but the revenue attribution and product recommendation engine pay back fast at scale. Free up to 250 contacts.

MailerLite. Best for budget-conscious senders who want decent features without paying Mailchimp prices. Clean editor, solid automation, good deliverability. $9/month at 500 contacts. Free up to 1,000 contacts and 12,000 sends/month.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue). Best for transactional + marketing combined. Pay per send instead of per contact. Works for unusual list patterns. Free up to 300 sends/day.

Beehiiv. Best for paid newsletters. Built for creators who want to monetize via subscriptions and ad networks. Free up to 2,500 subscribers.

Migration between the two

Moving from Constant Contact to Mailchimp (or vice versa) is straightforward: export your list as CSV, import into the new tool, rebuild segments and automations, migrate templates manually.

Plan for 4-8 hours of rebuild time per account. Templates don’t export cleanly between platforms. Automations have to be rebuilt from scratch. Custom fields mostly transfer but sometimes need cleanup.

The expensive part is re-warming your sender reputation. If you move from Constant Contact to Mailchimp, your new IP has no history. Engagement and deliverability can dip for 2-4 weeks. Send to your most engaged subscribers first to rebuild reputation, then expand to the full list.

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp FAQ

Reporting and analytics compared

Mailchimp’s reporting is more granular. Open rates, click rates, unsubscribes, bounces, revenue (with ecommerce integration), predicted CLV, engagement scoring, A/B test results, comparative campaign reports, and a click map overlay on every email.

Constant Contact’s reporting covers the basics well: opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and a contact-level engagement view. Missing: revenue attribution depth, predictive analytics, and cross-campaign benchmarking against your own history.

For most small businesses, Constant Contact’s reports are enough. For anyone optimizing funnels, testing subject lines systematically, or tracking ROI per segment, Mailchimp gives you more data to work with.

Both platforms integrate with Google Analytics 4 via UTM parameters. Neither replaces GA4 for conversion reporting, just augments it with email-specific context.

Compliance: GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CCPA

Both platforms handle compliance baselines correctly. Double opt-in support, unsubscribe link injection, CAN-SPAM footer generation, GDPR-compliant signup forms, CCPA data export and deletion requests, and data processing agreements available on request.

Mailchimp’s compliance tooling is slightly more flexible. You can enforce double opt-in per list, customize consent language per signup form, and build region-specific signup flows for GDPR vs CAN-SPAM jurisdictions.

Constant Contact’s compliance is simpler but works. Single or double opt-in per list, customizable consent checkboxes, and automatic unsubscribe handling. Sufficient for most small businesses, constraining for anyone running multi-region campaigns with different regulatory requirements.

Both platforms handle the technical compliance (SPF, DKIM, DMARC authentication, and the upcoming BIMI support) by default. Neither requires you to configure anything to send legally compliant email.

The honest recommendation

Most small businesses should pick Mailchimp first. The free tier, modern editor, deep automation, and Shopify integration cover the needs of 80% of small businesses under 5,000 subscribers. The learning curve is real but manageable.

Pick Constant Contact when events are core to your business, when phone support matters more than advanced features, or when your list is 5,000-50,000 and the mid-range pricing saves real money each month.

But if you’re starting fresh today and your list will grow past 10,000, consider skipping both. Kit for creators. Klaviyo for ecommerce. MailerLite for budget. The legacy tools are fine. They’re just not where the best value lives in 2026.