Best Constant Contact alternatives in 2026
Constant Contact has been sending email since 1995 — older than Mailchimp, older than most of this category — and the thing it does that almost nobody else does is answer the phone on every paid plan. Reviewers rate its support 8.3/10 on G2, and TrustRadius reviewers describe staff walking them through a spam-blacklist recovery. It's beginner-friendly enough to build a first campaign in half an hour, it bundles event management and social tools, and nonprofits get up to 30% off. For a local business or a small charity, that combination is genuinely hard to replace.
Two things about the billing are worth knowing before you compare anything. Your tier is set by your peak contact count, not your current one — deleting contacts doesn't walk your bill back down within a billing period (Constant Contact's own knowledge base says so). And sends aren't unlimited: Lite gives you 10× your contact count per month, Standard 12×, Premium 24×, with overage at $0.002 per email. There's no free plan at all — just a 30-day trial, no card required.
A disclosure about this page. constantcontact.com returns 403 to automated access, so — as with Moz — we could not read their pricing from them. The tier prices below come from Capterra, G2 and several independent trackers that agree exactly, and the billing mechanics come from Constant Contact's own knowledge base, which does load. We've marked which is which. Check the live page before you buy.
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The shortlist
Brevo
Top pickThe direct answer to Constant Contact's two sharpest edges: it has a real free tier, and it bills on emails sent rather than contacts held — so list growth stops being a tax.
Pros- Free forever with unlimited stored contacts and 300 emails/day — against Constant Contact's no-free-plan
- Bills on send volume, so a big low-engagement list costs nothing to keep
- Includes SMS, WhatsApp and a basic CRM
Cons- Automation is excluded from Free and Starter — you need Standard at $18/mo to get it
- UI is less polished than Constant Contact's; no phone support at entry
- Add-ons can push the real cost above the sticker price
- AgentCeres does not connect to Brevo
- Pricing:
- Free (300 emails/day, unlimited contacts); Starter from ~$9/mo; Standard from ~$18/mo — vendor page is JS-rendered and we could not capture it, so verify
- Best for:
- Businesses with large, infrequently-mailed lists
MailerLite
The cheap, modern one. A real free tier that keeps automation, a genuinely nicer editor, and the lowest paid entry point here.
Pros- Free tier of 250 subscribers that still includes automation — Constant Contact has no free tier at all
- Comfort from $12/mo matches Constant Contact's Lite price with a better editor
- Clean, modern interface — the direct answer to the 'feels like 2015' complaint
Cons- No phone support — if that's why you're on Constant Contact, this is a downgrade
- Raised paid prices roughly 10–30% in June 2026
- Smaller integration ecosystem; enterprise scale needs sales-assisted pricing
- AgentCeres does not connect to MailerLite
- Pricing:
- Free (250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/mo); Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo
- Best for:
- Small businesses who want a modern editor at Constant Contact's entry price
Mailchimp
The brand-recognition swap, and the only tool on this page AgentCeres connects to — which matters if you want the emails written for you.
Pros- Biggest integration ecosystem in the category; familiar to every marketer you might hire
- Best template library; AI content tools on Standard and above
- AgentCeres connects to Mailchimp — a specialist can draft campaigns and build segments inside it
Cons- Bills for unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts unless you manually archive them — arguably worse than Constant Contact on this specific point
- Free tier cut to 250 contacts and 500 monthly sends as of February 2026
- Multi-step customer journeys need an upgrade; G2 flags 'Expensive' across many reviews
- Pricing:
- Free (250 contacts); Essentials $13/mo; Standard $20/mo; Premium $350/mo (500-contact tier)
- Best for:
- Teams who want the default ecosystem — or who want AgentCeres writing their email
AWeber
The closest match to what you actually like about Constant Contact. Running since 1998, phone support even on the free plan, and a genuine free tier on top.
Pros- Phone support on the free plan — this beats Constant Contact at its own differentiator
- Free tier of 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails/month
- Long track record and multi-list support; Lite is $15/mo, or $12.49 on annual billing
Cons- Reviewers repeatedly call the editor and form generator dated — you'd be swapping one 2015-era UI for another
- Ecommerce sales tracking is thin: Stripe-only landing pages, no native Shopify or WooCommerce attribution
- Automation depth is modest
- AgentCeres does not connect to AWeber
- Pricing:
- Free (500 subscribers, 3,000 emails/mo); Lite $15/mo ($12.49 annual); Plus $30/mo ($19.99 annual) at 500 subs
- Best for:
- Constant Contact users who want the phone line and a free tier
GetResponse
The one that adds webinars. If your events are the marketing, this bundles the thing Constant Contact makes you buy elsewhere — but check the tier.
Pros- Webinars, funnels and automation genuinely bundled — relevant if you picked Constant Contact for its event tools
- Starter $19/mo ($15.58 annual); fast time to first campaign
- 14-day trial, no card required
Cons- Webinars are NOT in Starter or Marketer — they need Creator at $69/mo, which is the tier that matters and the one the headline price hides
- Starter caps you at a single automation workflow
- Contact-based pricing escalates fast: Starter reaches roughly $69/mo at 10k contacts, $239/mo at 50k
- AgentCeres does not connect to GetResponse
- Pricing:
- Starter $19/mo ($15.58 annual); Marketer $59/mo; Creator $69/mo (adds webinars); Enterprise custom
- Best for:
- Event-driven businesses who want webinars in the same tool
AgentCeres
Listed last because it is not a Constant Contact alternative and we don't connect to Constant Contact. It's a managed AI marketing team — specialists that write the campaigns. It's here for one case: if your problem is that the newsletter never gets written, switching ESP won't fix it.
- Growth Officer
- Research agent
- SEO agent
- Social media agent
- Ads agent
- Influencer agent
- Launch & PR agent
- GEO agent
- Community agent
- Customer feedback agent
Pros- Different problem: it writes the emails rather than hosting them
- Email sits alongside SEO, social, ads and research specialists sharing the same product context
- Flat pricing that doesn't move with your contact count
Cons- Not an ESP: no sending infrastructure, no deliverability management, no list hosting, no phone support
- We do NOT connect to Constant Contact — to have us write your email you'd have to migrate to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Kit, Resend or SendGrid, and migration has a real cost (see below)
- Does nothing about your Constant Contact bill
- Wrong answer if you already write your emails and just want a better platform to send them from
- Pricing:
- $39–$99/mo flat (annual $27–$69), on top of an ESP we connect to; 14-day trial, no card
- Best for:
- Businesses whose list is fine and whose campaigns never get written
Side-by-side
| Dimension | Brevo | MailerLite | Mailchimp | AWeber | GetResponse | AgentCeres |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shape | Volume ESP | Modern ESP | General ESP | Veteran ESP | ESP + webinars | Writes the emails |
| Bills on | Emails sent | Subscribers | Contacts held | Subscribers | Contacts | Flat |
| Free tier | Unlimited contacts | 250 subs | 250 contacts | 500 subs | None (14-day trial) | 14-day trial |
| Entry paid price | ~$9/mo | $12/mo | $13/mo | $15/mo | $39/mo | $39/mo |
| Phone support | No | No | No | Yes — even free | No | No |
| AgentCeres can connect to it | No | No | Yes | No | No | — |
| Requires migration + warm-up | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
Pick by what pushed you out. No free tier → Brevo gives you unlimited stored contacts free and bills on sends; MailerLite gives you 250 subscribers free and keeps automation. The editor feels dated → MailerLite, and note that AWeber would be swapping one 2015-era UI for another. Automation is too thin below Premium → that's an ActiveCampaign question, not a Constant Contact one. You picked it for the events tooling → GetResponse bundles webinars, but only from the $69/mo Creator tier, not the $19 headline. You're here for the phone support → AWeber is the only one on this page that matches it, and it does so on its free plan.
The honest case for staying is stronger than these pages usually admit. If you're a nonprofit or a local business, you take the 30% discount, you use the event tools, and — the part no comparison table captures — when something breaks you call a human and they fix it. None of the cheaper options here will do that. Constant Contact is a bad deal for a fast-growing list and a fair deal for a small organisation that values a phone line over an automation builder.
Two things to check rather than trust. Whether unsubscribed contacts bill you: a Constant Contact staff member states on their own community forum that only active contacts count toward your subscription, but several independent sources claim otherwise and there's specific ambiguity around bounced addresses. We could not resolve it, so confirm it against your own account rather than taking either side's word — including ours. The peak-billing rule: your tier is based on the highest active-contact count in the period, so pruning your list mid-cycle doesn't lower that cycle's bill.
And ours, listed last on purpose. AgentCeres is not a Constant Contact alternative — it's not an ESP, and we don't connect to Constant Contact. It's a managed AI marketing team whose specialists write the campaigns, and it only becomes relevant if the reason your email underperforms is that nobody writes it. Even then, there's a real catch: to have us draft inside your ESP you'd need to be on Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Kit, Resend or SendGrid — so it only stacks if you were already leaving. If you're staying on Constant Contact, we can't help with your email, and we'd rather say that than imply otherwise.
On migration, whichever way you go: contacts and consent records export, though check the receiving platform captures your original consent proof (IP, timestamp, source) or you're rebuilding an audit trail. Sending reputation does not transfer — budget 2–4 weeks of warm-up and up to eight to fully re-establish at Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo, ramping volume with your engaged segments first. Templates and automations get rebuilt by hand.
Related reading: Mailchimp alternatives, ConvertKit (Kit) alternatives for the creator end, and Klaviyo alternatives for e-commerce. Tier details are on the pricing page.
What AgentCeres does for you
Three jobs your team takes off your plate, each one you can see working.
Builds and hosts your website
Describe your business and it builds the site, publishes it, and changes it whenever you ask.
See the AI website builder →FacebookMon 9:00 
The rust herringbone throw is back on the loom. Pure wool, woven here in the studio.
LinkedInTue 12:00 
Gifting clients this year? We weave wool throws and ship them for you, each one wrapped by hand.
Plans and posts your social media
Posts and images about your business on one calendar. Each one waits for your approval, unless you turn on Auto mode.
See the AI social media manager →Runs your Google ads
It finds the searches your buyers make, writes the ads, and runs the campaign once you approve the plan.
See the AI ads manager →
Describe your business. Your team takes it from there.
Write a sentence about what you do, or paste your website. In a minute or two your AI growth team is set up and starts on its first piece of research. From then on it works on a schedule, briefs you every morning and brings you drafts to approve.
- 0:00You describe the businessA sentence, or your website address.
- A minute or twoYour team is set upA Growth Officer and every specialist, in your own workspace.
- Minutes laterFirst findings in your chatWhat it learned about your market, with sources.
- Next morning, 8:00Your first daily briefBy email: what moved, and what to do next.
FAQ
- What is the best Constant Contact alternative?
- Depends which edge pushed you out. If it's the lack of a free tier, Brevo is free forever with unlimited stored contacts and bills on emails sent rather than contacts held. If it's price with a modern editor, MailerLite is $12/month with a 250-subscriber free tier that keeps automation. If you're here for the phone support — Constant Contact's real differentiator — AWeber is the only one that matches it, and offers it even on its free plan. If you want the biggest ecosystem, Mailchimp. Pricing checked July 2026; note we could not read Constant Contact's own pricing page, which returns 403 to automated access.
- How much does Constant Contact cost in 2026?
- At 500 contacts, monthly billing: Lite $12, Standard $35, Premium $80. At 5,000 contacts, trackers consistently report Standard around $110 and Premium around $200. We have to be straight with you about sourcing: constantcontact.com returns 403 to automated access, so these come from Capterra, G2 and several independent trackers that agree exactly — not from Constant Contact. The billing mechanics below ARE from Constant Contact's own knowledge base, which does load: your tier is set by your peak contact count in a period (deleting contacts doesn't lower that cycle's bill), and sends are capped at 10× your contacts on Lite, 12× on Standard and 24× on Premium, with overage at $0.002 per email.
- Does Constant Contact have a free plan?
- No. There's a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, and it preserves your draft work after the trial ends — you just can't send. Some third-party sites mention a 60-day trial; Constant Contact's own knowledge base says 30, so treat 30 as the baseline and any longer offer as a promotion worth verifying. The absence of a free plan is one of the most-cited switching triggers, especially against Brevo (free forever, unlimited contacts), MailerLite (250 subscribers) and AWeber (500 subscribers).
- Why is Constant Contact hard to cancel?
- Cancellation is phone-only — there's no self-service option in the account — and that's the sharpest complaint cluster we found. It concentrates on the complaint-focused sites: Sitejabber sits at 1.3 stars across 82 reviews and the BBB lists 151 filed complaints, with reports of long hold times and charges after cancellation attempts. Worth reading that in context, though: on the general review sites Constant Contact rates 4.1–4.3 stars (G2, Capterra, TrustRadius), and Trustpilot's 3.9 sits between. The pattern is a product people are broadly satisfied with and a billing exit that generates real grievance. If you sign up, know going in that leaving means a phone call.
- How is AgentCeres different from Constant Contact?
- It's not an alternative to it, which is why it's last on this page. Constant Contact is an email service provider: it hosts your list, renders your templates, manages deliverability, sends the mail and answers the phone when it breaks. AgentCeres is a managed AI marketing team whose specialists write the campaigns — alongside SEO, social and ads specialists sharing the same product context — with anything outbound waiting on your approval. It has no sending infrastructure, no list hosting and no phone support, and importantly we do not connect to Constant Contact: having us draft inside your ESP requires Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Kit, Resend or SendGrid. So it only makes sense if you were already migrating, and it never lowers your platform bill. If your emails get written and sent fine, this isn't for you.
Try AgentCeres for Constant Contact alternatives
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