The bottom line is that Mailchimp is better but Constant Contact is cheaper.
Editor’s note: We updated this information on February 10, 2023.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: 1-minute summary
The deal is that Mailchimp offers better and more features. Still, Constant Contact is a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars cheaper annually than Mailchimp, depending on the number of subscribers.
The thing is that although Constant Contact is cheaper than Mailchimp, they both are relatively expensive compared to other email marketing companies. You know there are more email tools than Mailchimp and Constant, right? 🙂
If a free plan is crucial to you, then Mailchimp wins that battle since Constant Contact doesn’t have a forever free plan. Remember that Mailchimp doesn’t offer the best free plan compared to other email tools.
For quick reference:
Constant Contact website link (Constant Contact review)
MailChimp website link (MailChimp review)
Alternatives:
MailerLite website link (MailerLite review) (cheaper alternative)
GetResponse (GetResponse review) (more robust alternative)
ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review) (more robust alternative)
Klaviyo website (focused on ecommerce)
What is the best email marketing software? I’ve thoroughly tested the 10 most popular email marketing tools. Read out my FULL roundup review here or watch the video below.
If you sign up for a paid plan for any of the tools we partnered with using our link, you can request a free 1-hour consultation. You can also signup for the free plan first and switch to a paid plan later. When you switch to a paid plan, you can request your free 1-hour consultation. Do keep in mind to use our link to signup to claim the free consultation. Go to creatoregg.com/free and fill in your details to request the free consultation. We can give you a 1-hour free consultation because we receive compensation when you click on a marketing software link and purchase it at no extra cost. We use that to pay for our team and website. You can trust our reviews.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: Pricing
- Both are relatively expensive
- Mailchimp is more expensive than Constant Contact but also offers more features
Constant Contact Different Plans
- Free plan (60-day free trial)
- Core (starting from $9.99/mo – 30-day money-back guarantee available)
- Plus (starting from $45/mo – 30-day money-back guarantee available)
Mailchimp Different Plans
- Free plan (forever free)
- Essentials (starting from $13/mo – no trial available)
- Standard (starting from $20/mo – no trial available)
- Premium (starting from $350/mo – no trial available)
Best Free Email Marketing Plan
Although Mailchimp doesn’t offer the best free plan compared to all popular email tools, it offers a better free plan than Constant Contact.
| Constant Contact | Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Forever free plan | ❌ (only a 60-day free trial) | ✔️ |
| Maximum subscribers/contacts | Unlimited | 500 |
| Maximum emails | 100 emails in total | 2,500 |
| Maximum daily emails | n/a | 500 |
| Email automation | Only single-step automation | Only access to 1-step-automation |
| Support | Email & phone support | Email support first 30 days |
| Remove branding | ❌ | ❌ |
| Maximum signup forms | ❌ (cannot publish a signup form) | Maximum 3 forms |
| Maximum landing pages | ❌(cannot publish a landing page) | Unlimited |
| Can add custom domain | ❌ | ❌ |
| Email scheduling | ❌ | ❌ |
| Create a website | ❌ | ✔️ |
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: Newsletter Features
- This section only covers Mailchimp’s newsletter features and not its automation features
Winner: Mailchimp
Why is Mailchimp the winner? In a nutshell, Mailchimp is the winner because it automatically adds Google Analytics UTM parameters to links in my emails. However, Constant Contact doesn’t offer this even though customers have been asking for this for years. This feature is crucial because it will save you tons of time whenever you send a newsletter with links to your website.
I would have called it a draw if it weren’t for this. Why a draw? Mailchimp offers more newsletter features (see explanation below), but with Constant Contact, you can send way more monthly emails. Moreover, Mailchimp is more expensive than Constant Contact. This would have resulted in not having a clear winner regarding their newsletter features if it wasn’t for that automatic Google Analytics UTM parameter builder.
Looking for alternatives?
If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative, I suggest looking at MailerLite (MailerLite review).
If you’re looking for a tool that offers more marketing features, I suggest considering the GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing plan (GetResponse review) or the ActiveCampaign Plus or Professional (ActiveCampaign review). These last two are more expensive, though.
Maximum contacts and monthly emails
One other thing that might be an issue when using Mailchimp is its monthly sending limitation of 10X to 15X your contact number, i.e., if you have 1,000 contacts, you can send 10,000 monthly emails. If you do the math, this isn’t that much and comes down to roughly 1-3 newsletters per week, depending you have welcome emails or not. Constant Contact, on the other hand, has a relatively high number of monthly emails (24X) compared to its competitors.
One thing that annoys me about both tools is the maximum number of contacts on their plans. For example, why is the maximum number of contacts on the Essentials plan 50,000? What does the number of contacts has to do with the fact that I do or don’t need more features? Constant Contact’s Core plan does the same thing; why add a limit of 50,000 contacts? It doesn’t benefit the customer; it only results in more revenue for Mailchimp and Constant Contact when they require their customers to upgrade to a higher tier when reaching that contact number.
| Mailchimp | Premium | Standard | Essentials |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max contacts | n/a | 100,000 | 50,000 |
| Max monthly emails | 15X | 12X | 10X |
| Constant Contact | Core | Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Max contacts | 50,000 | n/a |
| Max monthly emails | 24X | 24X |
Newsletter
In a nutshell, on user-friendliness, both tools are equally good.
When looking at the number of different features, Mailchimp is the winner. While Constant Contact newsletter features are acceptable, it’s not extraordinary. Mailchimp, on the other hand, has some cool features, e.g., Creative Assitant, Recent subject line performance, Advanced Segmentation options, Surveys, Send Time Optimization, and Timewarp. You’ll find an explanation of these features here.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: Email Marketing Automation
Pricing
It is crucial to remember that Mailchimp Essentials and Constant Contact Core, i.e., their first paid plans, offer barely any email marketing automation features.
To access all their automation features, you must subscribe to Mailchimp Standard or Constant Contact’s Plus plan. Cheaper alternatives like MailerLite (MailerLite review) DO offer automation features for a lower price.
Mailchimp wins but …
Even though Constant Contact’s automation features are easy to use, it’s hard not to beat them in terms of functionalities since it’s all very basic and limited. In other words, Mailchimp offers more automation features than Constant Contact.
Example 1
The screenshot below shows a Mailchimp automation Splitter that allows you to split your audience into two branches. There’s no similar option inside Constant Contact.
Example 2
With Mailchimp, you can use if/else branching rules so contacts can follow different paths depending on the conditions you set. There’s no similar option inside Constant Contact.
Mailchimp offers just way more automation features than Constant Contact.
In a nutshell, Constant Contact only allows you to do two things: add a time delay and an email. You can’t automatically update a contact, add them to a list or remove them from a list, automatically tag them, etcetera.
Conclusion Email Marketing Automation
Both tools offer an easy-to-use interface for building an email automation. The difference is that Constant Contact’s automation tool is the most basic I’ve come across, and Mailchimp beats it by just offering more functionalities.
Winner: Mailchimp
Here’s the kicker:
If you read my Mailchimp review, you’ll notice that I’m not the biggest fan of Mailchimp’s automation features.
Why?
Mailchimp charges a premium price but doesn’t offer the best automation features. Yes, it’s better than Constant Contact, but there are other (good) fish in the sea. First and foremost, to get access to all of Mailchimp’s automation features, you must subscribe to its Standard plan, which can be hundreds if not thousands of dollars more expensive than MailerLite (MailerLite review), which also offers plenty of automation features.
On the other hand, other email tools offer more/better automation features than Mailchimp, like ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review) and GetResponse (GetResponse review). When considering tools like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse, I suggest the highest plans, i.e., GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing and ActiveCampaign Plus or Professional.
At <20,000 subscribers GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing is, in most cases, a few hundred dollars annually more expensive than Mailchimp Standard but comes with plenty of more features. Tip: make sure to purchase GetResponse during these special discount moments. This can turn the table resulting in GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing being cheaper than Mailchimp.
ActiveCampaign Professional, on the other hand, is a different beast in terms of its features, user-friendliness, and pricing. It’s one of the most expensive email marketing plans on the market, but you’ll get what you pay for; one of the best email marketing tools.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: Landing Page Features
The bottom line is that Mailchimp wins regarding landing page features. You can find my explanation below.
Winner: Mailchimp
Custom domain not available with Constant Contact
With Constant Contact, you cannot connect a custom domain to your landing pages. You’re required to use its default landing page URL, which looks unprofessional and fishy.
Constant Contact URL example: lp.constantcontactpages.com/cu/cxpGuOn/
Custom domain example: http://creatoregg.com/ or http://creatoregg.com/landing-page-1
Mailchimp does allow you to connect a custom domain to your landing pages, but it requires an additional subscription to one of its Website & Commerce paid plans, which is a bit odd, in my opinion. So, anyhow, it’s better than Constant Contact, which doesn’t even allow us to connect a domain.
Limited Landing Page Designs Constant Contact
Mailchimp provides nine different email design templates for you to use. Remember that you can customize more elements of a Mailchimp landing page than you might think, i.e., use these designs for inspiration and then change it to your liking.
On the other hand, Constant Contact only offers one landing page design (see screenshot below). Moreover, the editing options are minimal compared to Mailchimp’s landing page editor.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: signup Form Features
Despite Constant Contact’s form builder being worse than Mailchimp’s form builder, I can’t bear to call Mailchimp a winner.
Winner: no winner
Limited to 1 Opt-in Form
Mailchimp and Constant Contact have weird limitations regarding their signup forms, which is that you can only create one popup form, and one inline/embedded form.
Some people may want to experiment with an exit popup, a welcome popup, and maybe a popup for specific pages. If that’s you, you’ll be disappointed when using either of these tools since you can only create one popup and one inline/embedded form.
And I’m not the only one who thinks this is weird; there are community threads on Constant Contact’s forum dating back to 2018.
If you’re looking for alternatives, I would like to point out that MailerLite (MailerLite review) is far less expensive and allows for unlimited popups and signup forms.
Limited design functionalities
First, it is confusing that Mailchimp has a different builder for its popup forms compared to its inline/embedded forms, especially for beginners.
Moreover, its inline forms are very basic, and there’s only one way to change the styling: CSS coding (see screenshot below).
The screenshot below shows Mailchimp’s popup builder, which has a more customization options than its inline form builder but it’s still relatively basic. Moreover, there’s only one design, which is the one you see on the screenshot below. You can change the position of the image, though.
The screenshot below shows Constant Contact’s builder for both inline and popup forms. There are options to change the styling of the text and the text itself, but that’s about it. You can’t add images, etcetera.
But that’s not all; Constant Contact adds a text below every signup form you create (see screenshot below), and you cannot delete this text. Note that Mailchimp offers a similar feature called GDPR, but Mailchimp doesn’t force us to add this text.
Lastly, there’s no option to add/change a thank you page to Constant Contact’s forms.
Looking for a better alternative?
Compared to GetResponse (GetResponse review), Mailchimp’s and Constant Contact’s form builders are a joke.
GetResponse offers 100+ pre-designed form templates, + they are all highly customizable. They have one of the best and most user-friendly form builders I’ve ever used. Click here to see more of GetResponse’s form builder.
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: Support
Constant Contact offers chat support from Monday to Thursday between 3 am – 10 pm ET. On Friday, between 3 am – 9 pm ET. They also provide phone support between certain hours. Lastly, there’s a community where you can find answers and ask questions.
Mailchimp, on the other hand, offers 24/7 chat support and only offers phone support to Premium plan users.
In my experience of using multiple email marketing tools over the last decade, 24/7 chat support is (almost) mandatory. When you’re stuck and need to wait a few days for an answer is counterproductive.
Winner: Mailchimp
Mailchimp vs Constant Contact: Reporting Features
Reporting features are convenient when reporting monthly results to a manager or customer.
The bottom line is that both tools aren’t necessarily the best at showcasing a clear monthly overview of all the metrics (see explanation below). But because Mailchimp lacks a clear overview of my subscriber growth month-over-month while Constant Contact offers a clear dashboard for it, I feel Constant Contact is the winner.
Winner: Constant Contact
Mailchimp does have a cool feature called Comparative Reports that allows you to create reports of custom segments and see how they perform compared to other segments in your audience (see screenshot below). Constant Contact doesn’t have a feature similar to this.
The drawback of Comparative Reports is that it is only available for Premium Mailchimp customers, one of the market’s most expensive email marketing plans.
If budget isn’t an issue, make sure also to take a look at ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review) or HubSpot Marketing Hub (HubSpot review).
Keep track of subscriber growth
Constant Contact has a handy reporting tab to keep track of your contact growth (see screenshot below). The best thing about this tab is that you can add a custom timeframe, something Mailchimp doesn’t offer on its audience growth tab. Mailchimp only allows you to select the past seven days, 30 days, or year, which doesn’t help online marketers since one usually reports month-to-month results.
Email Reporting
Both Mailchimp and Constant Contact offer a decent dashboard where you can select a custom timeframe to see the metrics of the newsletters you have sent.
Sadly, both tools do not have a great solution to report on automated emails, e.g., Mailchimp doesn’t showcase automated emails, and Constant Contact combines the two; the automated emails and regular newsletters in one dashboard.
Ideally, you want to split the regular newsletter and automation data, so you know what’s happening.
The screenshot below shows Constant Contact’s dashboard of your emails, which also includes the automated emails you have sent.
The screenshot below shows Mailchimp’s email dashboard, which doesn’t include automated emails.
As you can imagine, both solutions aren’t great because there isn’t an excellent way to keep track of your automated email metrics.
Landing page reports
The screenshot below shows Mailchimp’s reporting dashboard of an individual landing page. As you can see, it shows the number of visits, clicks, orders, and revenue.
Mailchimp doesn’t offer a dashboard to see all your landing pages, visits, clicks, orders, etcetera.
Let’s say your manager or customer asks for an overview of the latest month compared to the previous month for the total visits, clicks, etcetera, generated. It’ll be time-consuming and error-prone to come up with such a report since you have to generate these numbers manually.
Constant Contact isn’t any different from Mailchimp in that regard. The screenshot below shows Constant Contact’s reporting dashboard for an individual landing page and shows somewhat the same metrics as Mailchimp. Sadly, Constant Contact doesn’t offer an overview of all your landing pages and metrics.
Signup form reports
Weird enough, both Mailchimp and Constant Contact don’t offer any metrics or statistics for your signup forms, i.e., there’s no way to know how your signup form/popup performs. Note that I’m not referring to the signup form on a landing page because you CAN see the performance of those. Instead, I’m referring to an inline signup form, i.e., embedded form, or a popup.
The screenshot below shows two popup forms of the cheaper email tool MailerLite (MailerLite review) where you can clearly the number of views, subscribers, and conversion rate.
I wonder, why has an email tool that’s way cheaper than both Mailchimp and Constant Contact these insights and they don’t?
Frequently asked questions
Which one is better, Mailchimp or Constant Contact?
Mailchimp is better than Constant Contact. Remember that there are other (good) fish in the sea, and compared to those, Mailchimp isn’t the best; i.e., check out Mailchimp’s alternatives.
What is easier to use, Mailchimp or Constant Contact?
Constant Contact is easier to use than Mailchimp because Mailchimp is confusing in some of its features, e.g., its signup forms. Moreover, Constant Contact offers fewer features, which most often means (also, in this case) that it’s easier to use.
Which is cheaper, Mailchimp or Constant Contact?
Constant Contact is a few hundred to thousands of dollars cheaper than Mailchimp annually, depending on the number of contacts in your account. Keep in mind that Mailchimp offers more features. Also, don’t forget that both are relatively expensive compared to other email marketing tools.
Alternatives
I have spent a great deal of time using and testing Mailchimp and Constant Contact, and they don’t offer the best email marketing solution. Moreover, they both are relatively high priced.
If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative, I suggest MailerLite (MailerLite review). It offers many email marketing features for a great price.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a more robust email tool, take a look at GetResponse (GetResponse review) or ActiveCampaign (ActiveCampaign review).
At <20,000 subscribers GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing is, in most cases, a few hundred dollars annually more expensive than Mailchimp Standard but comes with plenty of more features. Tip: make sure to purchase GetResponse during these special discount moments. This can turn the table resulting in GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing being cheaper than Mailchimp.
ActiveCampaign Professional, on the other hand, is a different beast in terms of its features, user-friendliness, and pricing. It’s one of the most expensive email marketing plans on the market, but you’ll get what you pay for; one of the best email marketing tools.