Constant Contact

Name: Constant Contact
Brand: Constant Contact
Price: 12500 USD

The small-business email incumbent, with events, nonprofits, and a phone number that works

Constant Contact is a marketing email and newsletter platform for campaigns sent to a subscriber list, priced on active contact count with a monthly send allowance of ten to twenty-four times your list size, aimed at non-technical small business owners and nonprofits; founded in 1995 and now owned by Clearlake Capital, it bundles event registration, social posting, SMS, and a landing page builder alongside the email.

Visit website

Overview

Constant Contact started in 1995 as Roving Software, which makes it the oldest company in this category by some distance. It went public in 2007, was bought by Endurance International in 2015, and was carved out again in February 2021 when Clearlake Capital and Siris Capital acquired a majority stake. Siris sold its half in 2024, leaving Clearlake as the controlling owner. Along the way it acquired SharpSpring for marketing automation and Vision6 for Australian SMS and email. It is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The product has always been aimed at the person who did not want to learn a marketing platform: a restaurant owner, a church administrator, a nonprofit development officer, a local retailer. That shows in what it is good at. Event registration with ticketing is built in and genuinely well done, which no other mainstream ESP bothers with. Social posting and social ads sit in the same account. There is a large template library skewed toward local business use cases, an AI content generator, SMS marketing in supported markets, landing pages, and a real phone support line with local seminars and a partner network behind it.

It also shows in what it is not good at. The automation is shallow compared with ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, or even MailerLite's newer builder, the segmentation is basic, and the reporting is thin. And the pricing is high. At 500 contacts it is $12 on Lite, $35 on Standard, and $80 on Premium. At 1,000 contacts that jumps to $30, $55, and $110. At 10,000 it is $120, $160, and $275, and at 50,000 it is $430, $460, and $575. MailerLite, Brevo, and Sender all charge a fraction of that for comparable or better email functionality.

The billing details matter and cut both ways. Constant Contact bills on active contacts, and unsubscribed contacts are excluded from the count, which is genuinely fair. But bounced addresses do count toward your limit even though they can never receive email, so list hygiene has a direct cost. Send volume is capped by a multiplier rather than billed as overage on the plan allowance, with excess emails charged at $0.002 each, and automated triggered emails are excluded from the cap entirely.

Best for

Non-technical small business owners, nonprofits, membership organisations, and anyone who runs events, especially buyers who value a phone support line and local training over feature depth or price per contact.

Not the right fit for

Price-sensitive buyers; at $120 a month for 10,000 contacts on the entry tier, Constant Contact costs several times what MailerLite, Brevo, EmailOctopus, or Sender charge for equivalent or better email functionality.
Teams that need serious marketing automation; the paths builder is shallow next to ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, or Omnisend, with limited conditional logic and weak behavioural triggers.
Developers wanting transactional email; Constant Contact is a marketing platform and application mail such as receipts and password resets belongs with Postmark, Resend, or Amazon SES.
Cold outreach and purchased lists; Constant Contact requires permission-based lists, reviews imports, and will suspend accounts whose complaint rates rise.
High-frequency senders on the entry tier; the ten times multiplier on Lite caps a 10,000-contact list at 100,000 emails a month, and excess is billed at $0.002 per email rather than absorbed.

How it works

1
You import contacts or collect them with sign-up forms, landing pages, and text-to-join keywords, and organise them into lists and tags. Billing counts active contacts across the account, so the same person appearing in several lists does not multiply your bill the way it does on AWeber.
2
Campaigns are built in a drag-and-drop editor from a large template library, with an AI content generator available for copy and subject lines and a brand tool that pulls colours and a logo from your website. Sends can be immediate, scheduled, or timed by recipient behaviour on the higher tiers.
3
Automations are set up as paths triggered by a signup, a click, a birthday, an anniversary, or an ecommerce event. Lite offers a single welcome email, Standard offers pre-built automation templates, and Premium adds custom automation paths with more branching. This is the main functional ladder between the tiers.
4
Events are handled natively: create a registration page, sell tickets, take payments, track RSVPs, and send reminders, all from the same contact base. For a nonprofit running an annual fundraiser or a business running a workshop series, this replaces a separate ticketing subscription.
5
Reporting covers opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and revenue where an ecommerce store is connected, with per-contact engagement history. Sends are capped at ten times your contact count on Lite, twelve on Standard, and twenty-four on Premium, with automated emails excluded from the cap and any excess charged at $0.002 per email.

Feature breakdown

29 features in 5 modules

Email campaigns

Broad, template-heavy, and built for people who are not marketers.

Drag-and-drop editor: Block-based composer with hundreds of templates weighted toward local business, retail, restaurant, and nonprofit use cases.
AI content generator: Generates email copy, subject lines, and social captions from a short prompt, aimed at owners who freeze at a blank editor.
Brand kit: Pulls logo, colours, and fonts from your website to build a consistent template set without a designer.
Subject line A/B testing: Available from the Standard tier, with automatic winner selection on the larger portion of the list.
Send time optimisation: Delivers based on when each contact has historically engaged, available on the higher tiers.
Resend to non-openers: One-click resend of a campaign with a different subject line to everyone who did not open, which is the single most used feature by this product's audience.

Events, SMS, and social

The bundle that justifies the price, if you use it.

Event registration and ticketing: Create a registration page, sell tickets, collect payments, manage RSVPs, and send reminders from the same contact base. No other mainstream ESP does this properly.
SMS marketing: Text campaigns and text-to-join keywords in supported markets, sharing the contact base with email, available on Standard and Premium.
Social posting and scheduling: Compose and schedule posts to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn from the marketing calendar rather than from a separate scheduler.
Social and search ads: Create and manage Facebook, Instagram, and Google ad campaigns inside the account, with leads flowing straight into a list.
Landing pages and forms: Hosted landing pages, inline and popup sign-up forms, and text-to-join keywords, all writing directly into contacts.
Marketing calendar: A single planning view across email, social, events, and ads, which is the interface a non-specialist actually wants.

Automation and segmentation

The weakest part of the product, and tiered hard.

Welcome email: A single automated welcome message, available even on the Lite tier.
Pre-built automation templates: Ready-made paths for welcome series, birthdays, anniversaries, and re-engagement, available from the Standard tier.
Custom automation paths: Multi-step branching journeys with behavioural triggers, reserved for the Premium tier.
Contact segmentation: Segments built from list membership, tags, engagement, and contact fields. Functional but noticeably less expressive than ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo.
Ecommerce automations: Abandoned cart and post-purchase sequences when a Shopify, WooCommerce, or Etsy store is connected.
Automated emails excluded from send caps: Triggered and automated emails do not count against your monthly send multiplier, which is a genuinely generous rule and worth knowing before you design your flows.

Deliverability and list management

Solid, conservative, and actively policed.

Domain authentication: Guided SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup for a self-authenticating sending domain so campaigns come from your own identity.
Permission-based list enforcement: Imports are reviewed, purchased and scraped lists are refused, and accounts with rising complaint rates are contacted or suspended. Conservative, and the reason its shared pools deliver acceptably.
Automatic bounce and unsubscribe handling: Hard bounces and opt-outs are suppressed automatically, and unsubscribed contacts are removed from the billed count.
List cleanup tooling: Tools for identifying and removing inactive and bounced contacts, which matters here because bounced addresses do still count toward your plan limit.
Deliverability reporting: Delivery, bounce, and complaint rates per campaign with guidance, though without the ISP-level placement detail the premium transactional providers offer.
Managed shared IPs: Self-serve plans send from Constant Contact's managed pools; there is no self-serve dedicated IP option.

Support and services

The genuine differentiator and the thing customers cite.

Phone support: A real telephone support line with US hours, which is unusual in a category where most vendors offer chat and a help centre.
Live chat and email support: Standard channels alongside the phone line, with faster response targets on the higher tiers.
Local seminars and partner network: In-person and online training plus a large network of local marketing partners and agencies, aimed at owners who want to be taught rather than documented at.
Nonprofit discount: Nonprofits receive up to 30 percent off with prepayment, which is materially more generous than the standard 15 percent annual discount.
Done-for-you services: Paid professional services where Constant Contact's team builds templates, sets up automations, and manages campaigns on your behalf.

Use cases

4 documented

Nonprofit running an annual fundraiser

The gala needs a registration page, ticket sales, RSVP tracking, reminder emails, and a thank-you sequence, currently spread across a ticketing tool, a spreadsheet, and a separate ESP.

Constant Contact's built-in event registration handles the tickets, payments, and reminders from the same contact base, and the nonprofit discount of up to 30 percent brings the price closer to what the cheaper platforms charge everyone.

Local restaurant or retailer with no marketing staff

The owner wants a weekly promotion email and some social posts, has never used a marketing tool, and will abandon anything that requires reading documentation.

The template library, AI content generator, brand kit, and marketing calendar make a campaign a fifteen-minute job, and when something goes wrong there is a phone number rather than a ticket queue.

Membership organisation running a workshop series

Six events a year, each needing registration, reminders, and a follow-up, plus a monthly member newsletter to 5,000 people.

Events, email, and the member list all live in one account, and the Standard tier's twelve times send multiplier at 5,000 contacts allows 60,000 emails a month, comfortably more than the schedule needs.

Small business owner who wants to be taught

Email marketing is a task nobody in the business has done before and there is no appetite for self-directed learning.

Local seminars, the partner network, and paid done-for-you services mean the platform comes with a human path to competence, which is the thing MailerLite and Brevo do not sell at any price.

Pricing

from $12 a month (Lite, up to 500 contacts)

Contact-based subscription across three tiers, billed on active contacts, with a monthly send allowance set as a multiple of contact count and excess emails charged per message.

Plan	Price	Includes
Lite	$12 at 500 contacts per month, rising with contact count	$30 at 1,000 contacts, $120 at 10,000, $280 at 25,000, $430 at 50,000 Send allowance of 10x your contact count per month 1 user seat Single welcome email only, no automation paths Email, landing pages, forms, social posting, and events The jump from $12 at 500 contacts to $30 at 1,000 is steep, and the one-seat, one-welcome-email limits make this a starter plan in the literal sense.
Standard	$35 at 500 contacts per month, rising with contact count	$55 at 1,000 contacts, $160 at 10,000, $310 at 25,000, $460 at 50,000 Send allowance of 12x your contact count per month 3 user seats Pre-built automation templates, A/B subject line testing, and SMS Contact segmentation and send time optimisation The tier most businesses end up on, and the one to price against MailerLite and Brevo, where it looks expensive.
Premium	$80 at 500 contacts per month, rising with contact count	$110 at 1,000 contacts, $275 at 10,000, $425 at 25,000, $575 at 50,000 Send allowance of 24x your contact count per month Unlimited user seats Custom automation paths with branching Search and social ads management, revenue reporting, and dynamic content The unlimited seats and the 24x send multiplier are the practical reasons to take Premium, more than the automation depth.
Above 50,000 contacts	Custom quoted	Negotiated pricing for larger lists Dedicated account support Available by contacting Constant Contact

Billing notes

Billing counts active contacts. Unsubscribed contacts are removed from the billed total, which is a fairer posture than several competitors and means list churn does not silently inflate the invoice.
Bounced addresses do count toward your contact limit even though they can never receive email. This is the genuine hidden cost here, and it means running the list cleanup tooling has a direct financial effect.
A contact appearing in several lists is counted once, unlike AWeber, where each list membership bills separately.
Send volume is capped by a multiplier rather than sold as an allowance: ten times your contact count on Lite, twelve on Standard, and twenty-four on Premium. Emails beyond the cap are charged at $0.002 each.
Automated and triggered emails do not count against the send multiplier at all, which is a genuinely generous rule and changes how you should design your flows.
Price steps at defined contact bands, so crossing 1,000 contacts by one person on Standard moves you from $35 to $55 rather than adding a few cents.
Annual prepayment saves up to 15 percent, and nonprofits save up to 30 percent, which is one of the better nonprofit arrangements in the category.
There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial, which is unusual now that MailerLite, Brevo, Sender, and AWeber all offer permanent free tiers.

Value assessment: Modelled at this directory's three reference points: 1,000 contacts costs $30 on Lite, $55 on Standard, or $110 on Premium. Ten thousand contacts costs $120, $160, or $275. Fifty thousand contacts costs $430, $460, or $575. Those are among the highest prices in this category for the email functionality delivered. MailerLite, EmailOctopus, Sender, and Brevo all cost a fraction of it at the same list sizes and several of them automate better. The defence is that you are not buying email alone. Event registration with ticketing, social posting and ads, SMS, landing pages, a phone support line, local training, and a partner network are all in the price, and if you genuinely run events or genuinely need to be taught how to do this, the alternative is buying three subscriptions and still having nobody to call. The nonprofit discount of up to 30 percent shifts the arithmetic further. If you are only sending a newsletter, you are overpaying substantially and should look elsewhere.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

Native event registration with ticketing and payments, which no other mainstream email platform does properly and which alone justifies the price for organisations that run events.
Real phone support with US hours, plus local seminars, a partner network, and paid done-for-you services, aimed at owners who want to be taught rather than documented at.
Unsubscribed contacts are excluded from billing, so list churn does not quietly inflate the invoice.
Automated and triggered emails are excluded from the monthly send multiplier entirely, which is more generous than it first appears when designing flows.
Contacts are counted once across the account rather than per list, which avoids AWeber's duplicate-billing trap.
Genuine breadth for a non-specialist: email, SMS, social posting, social and search ads, landing pages, forms, and a unified marketing calendar.
Thirty years of continuous operation, with brand recognition and an agency ecosystem that means help is easy to find locally.
Nonprofit discount of up to 30 percent, materially better than the standard annual discount.

Limitations

Expensive. At $120 for 10,000 contacts on the entry tier it costs several times what MailerLite, Brevo, EmailOctopus, or Sender charge for comparable or better email functionality.
Automation is the weakest part of the product: Lite offers a single welcome email, Standard offers templates, and real branching paths are Premium-only and still shallow next to ActiveCampaign or Klaviyo.
Bounced addresses count toward your contact limit even though they cannot receive mail, so poor list hygiene costs money directly.
No free plan at all, only a 14-day trial, in a category where permanent free tiers are now standard.
Contact bands step steeply, with the jump from 500 to 1,000 contacts more than doubling the Lite price.
Segmentation and reporting are basic, with limited behavioural conditions and no meaningful predictive features.
No transactional email capability, so a software business needs a second vendor for application mail.
Private-equity owned since 2021, with Clearlake now controlling; the last five years have seen repeated repackaging of plans, and buyers should expect the price list to keep moving.

Head-to-head comparisons

5 alternatives

Constant Contact vs AWeber

from $0 free for 500 subscribers, then $12.49 a month billed annually (Lite)

The two American small-business incumbents, similar in shape and often similar in price. AWeber has a permanent free tier where Constant Contact only offers a trial, is independently owned rather than private-equity held, and bills without counting unsubscribes. Constant Contact has native event registration, social posting and ads, SMS, and a phone support line AWeber cannot match, and counts contacts once across the account where AWeber bills per list membership. Choose Constant Contact if you run events or want the phone line, AWeber if you want the free tier and the vendor stability.

Full Constant Contact vs AWeber comparison

Constant Contact vs Sender

from $0 free for 2,500 subscribers, then from $7 a month (Standard)

Not a close contest on price. Sender gives away 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails a month for free and charges single-digit dollars where Constant Contact charges $30 to $110 at 1,000 contacts. Sender's automation is also arguably better. What Constant Contact has is events, social and ads management, phone support, local training, and thirty years of institutional presence. If money is the constraint, Sender wins outright. If somebody needs to be taught how to run this at all, Constant Contact is what they will actually use.

Full Constant Contact vs Sender comparison

Constant Contact vs Mailjet

from $0 for 6,000 emails a month, then $9 a month (Starter)

Mailjet prices on emails sent with unlimited contacts, which inverts Constant Contact's model completely: a 50,000-contact list mailed once a month costs $27 or so on Mailjet against $460 on Constant Contact Standard. Mailjet also includes a transactional API and is EU-hosted. What it does not have is events, social posting, ads management, phone support, or anything resembling Constant Contact's hand-holding. For a large list mailed infrequently, Mailjet is dramatically cheaper. For a small business that needs guidance, it is the wrong product.

Full Constant Contact vs Mailjet comparison

Constant Contact vs Mailchimp

from $0 (free up to 250 contacts), then about $13/mo on Essentials at 500 contacts

The two best-known names in small-business email, and closer on price than either would like to admit. Mailchimp has the better editor, far more integrations, a proper customer journey builder, and a free tier. Constant Contact has events, phone support, social ads management, and a fairer contact-counting policy, since Mailchimp's plans have historically counted contacts you no longer mail. Mailchimp is the better product for someone comfortable teaching themselves; Constant Contact is the better product for someone who is not.

Full Constant Contact vs Mailchimp comparison

Constant Contact vs MailerLite

from $10.80/mo (Comfort, up to 500 subscribers, billed annually; $12 monthly)

MailerLite costs a fraction as much at every list size, has a cleaner interface, a better free tier at 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails, and a more capable automation builder. Constant Contact counters with events, ads management, SMS, and human support. Purely as an email marketing platform, MailerLite is better and much cheaper. Constant Contact only wins when the events module or the phone line is doing real work for you.

Full Constant Contact vs MailerLite comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: An afternoon to import a list, authenticate a domain, and send a first campaign. The template library and brand kit mean the design step is fast, which is deliberate given the audience.
Learning curve: The lowest in this category, by design. Everything is arranged around a marketing calendar and the terminology avoids jargon. The tradeoff is that the ceiling is low: once you want conditional automation or expressive segmentation, the simplicity becomes a constraint.
Onboarding: Fully self-serve with a 14-day trial and no credit card required to start. Beyond that, Constant Contact sells structured onboarding, local seminars, a partner network, and paid done-for-you services, which is a more human on-ramp than any competitor offers.
Migration notes: Contacts import as CSV and imports are reviewed for permission, so lists of doubtful provenance are refused. Because contacts are counted once across the account rather than per list, you do not need to collapse your list structure the way you would migrating to AWeber. Run a bounce cleanup before importing, since bounced addresses count toward your billed contact limit even though they can never receive mail. Automations, forms, and landing pages do not migrate and must be rebuilt, and the automation you had elsewhere may not be expressible here, so check that before committing. Authenticate SPF and DKIM before the first send and start with your most engaged segment.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web applicationiOS and Android appsREST APIWebhooks
API: REST API v3 covering contacts, lists, tags, custom fields, campaigns, and reporting, plus OAuth 2 and webhooks for contact events. It is an integration API for a marketing platform and does not send transactional application mail.
Compliance: GDPR with a data processing agreementCAN-SPAMCASLCCPASOC 2
Data residency: US-hosted infrastructure with a GDPR data processing agreement for EU customers. Vision6, its Australian sibling, serves the Australian market separately.
SSO: Not published as a self-serve feature; account access uses standard credentials with two-factor authentication and per-seat roles on the higher tiers.
Security notes: TLS in transit, two-factor authentication, and role-based seats with unlimited users on Premium. The most consequential control is procedural: imports are reviewed for permission and accounts with rising complaint rates are contacted or suspended, which protects the shared sending pools everyone on the platform uses.

Support & resources

Channels: Phone support with US hoursLive chatEmail supportPaid professional services
Documentation: Large knowledge base and a community forum at community.constantcontact.com, plus a long-running blog and a library of guides aimed at small business owners and nonprofits rather than at marketers or developers.
Community: An active community forum, a substantial partner and agency network, and a long-running programme of local seminars and online training.

Company

Founded: 1995
Headquarters: Waltham, Massachusetts, United States
Ownership: Privately held, majority-owned by Clearlake Capital Group
Founders: Randy Parker
Employees: Roughly 1,000 to 1,500
Funding: Went public on NASDAQ in 2007, was acquired by Endurance International Group in 2015 for approximately $1.1 billion, and was carved out in February 2021 when Clearlake Capital and Siris Capital acquired a majority stake. Siris sold its 50 percent stake in 2024, leaving Clearlake in control.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
IPO	Public listing	2007	Listed on NASDAQ as Constant Contact Inc after twelve years as Roving Software.
Acquisition by Endurance	Approximately $1.1B	2015	Taken private as part of Endurance International Group.
Carve-out to Clearlake and Siris	Undisclosed	2021	Majority stake acquired in February 2021 as Endurance was broken up.
Siris exit	Undisclosed	2024	Siris sold its 50 percent stake; Clearlake and co-investors increased their ownership.

Timeline

1995Founded by Randy Parker as Roving Software, one of the first companies to sell email marketing to small businesses.
2007Goes public on NASDAQ under the Constant Contact name.
2015Acquired by Endurance International Group for approximately $1.1 billion and taken private.
2021Carved out of Endurance in February when Clearlake Capital and Siris Capital acquire a majority stake, then acquires SharpSpring for marketing automation.
2022Acquires Vision6, an Australian email and SMS platform, extending into the Asia-Pacific market.
2024Siris sells its 50 percent stake, leaving Clearlake Capital in control, and the plan structure is reorganised into Lite, Standard, and Premium.
2026Continues as the small-business incumbent, competing on events, human support, and breadth rather than on price or automation depth.

Integrations

Shopify, WooCommerce, and Etsy
WordPress
Salesforce and Zoho CRM
QuickBooks
Eventbrite
Zapier and Make
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google Ads
Canva
Donation and nonprofit platforms including Bloomerang and DonorPerfect
REST API with OAuth and webhooks

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

What is Constant Contact?

Constant Contact is a marketing email and newsletter platform for small businesses and nonprofits, priced on the number of active contacts you store. It sends campaigns to a subscriber list and bundles event registration with ticketing, SMS, social posting and ads, landing pages, and sign-up forms into the same account. Founded in 1995, it is one of the oldest companies in the category and is majority-owned by Clearlake Capital.

How much does Constant Contact cost?

At 500 contacts it is $12 on Lite, $35 on Standard, and $80 on Premium. At 1,000 contacts it is $30, $55, and $110. At 10,000 contacts it is $120, $160, and $275. At 50,000 contacts it is $430, $460, and $575. Above 50,000 contacts pricing is quoted. Annual prepayment saves up to 15 percent and nonprofits save up to 30 percent. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial.

Do unsubscribed contacts count toward my Constant Contact bill?

No. Billing counts active contacts, and unsubscribed contacts are excluded from the total, so list churn does not silently inflate your invoice. Bounced addresses are a different story: they do count toward your limit even though they can never receive email, which means running the list cleanup tooling has a direct financial effect. A contact in several lists is counted once, unlike AWeber.

How many emails can I send on Constant Contact?

Your monthly allowance is a multiple of your contact count: ten times on Lite, twelve on Standard, and twenty-four on Premium. A 10,000-contact list gets 100,000, 120,000, or 240,000 sends respectively. Emails beyond the cap are billed at $0.002 each. Importantly, automated and triggered emails do not count against the multiplier at all, which is more generous than most competitors.

Is Constant Contact good value?

Not if you only send email. At $120 a month for 10,000 contacts on the entry tier it costs several times what MailerLite, Brevo, EmailOctopus, or Sender charge for comparable or better functionality. It becomes defensible when you use the events module, the social and ads management, or the human support, since the alternative is three subscriptions and no phone number. Nonprofits, with their 30 percent discount and heavy event use, get the best of the deal.

How good is Constant Contact's automation?

It is the weakest part of the product. Lite gives you a single welcome email. Standard adds pre-built templates for welcome series, birthdays, and re-engagement. Only Premium offers custom multi-step paths with branching, and even those are shallow next to ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, or Omnisend. If sophisticated automation is why you are shopping, this is the wrong platform at any tier.

Can I run events through Constant Contact?

Yes, and it is the most distinctive thing about the product. You can build a registration page, sell tickets, collect payments, track RSVPs, and send reminder and follow-up sequences from the same contact base. No other mainstream email marketing platform does this properly, and for a nonprofit running a fundraiser or a business running workshops it replaces a separate ticketing subscription entirely.

Can I import a purchased or cold list?

No. Constant Contact requires permission-based lists, reviews imports, and refuses lists whose provenance it does not believe. Accounts whose complaint rates rise are contacted and can be suspended. This conservatism is why its shared sending pools deliver acceptably. Cold prospecting belongs on a dedicated outreach tool with its own domains and inboxes.

Does Constant Contact do transactional email?

No. It is a marketing platform, and its API manages contacts, lists, and campaigns rather than sending your application's receipts and password resets. A software business running Constant Contact for marketing still needs a transactional provider such as Postmark, Resend, Mailgun, or Amazon SES, and keeping those on separate infrastructure is good practice anyway.

Who owns Constant Contact?

Clearlake Capital Group holds the controlling stake. The company went public in 2007, was acquired by Endurance International in 2015 for roughly $1.1 billion, and was carved out in February 2021 when Clearlake and Siris Capital bought a majority position. Siris sold its half in 2024. Private equity ownership since 2021 has meant repeated plan repackaging, so expect the price list to keep moving.

Editorial verdict

Constant Contact is the most expensive way to send a newsletter in this category and the best way to run a small organisation's marketing if you are not a marketer. Those two statements are both true and they resolve into a simple test. If you run events, sell tickets, manage social and ads alongside email, and want a phone number to call when something breaks, the bundle is worth the money and the nonprofit discount of up to 30 percent makes it genuinely competitive. If you are sending a monthly newsletter to 10,000 people, you are paying $120 for what MailerLite or Sender will do better for a fraction of it, and you should leave. The billing is fairer than most, with unsubscribes excluded and contacts counted once across the account, though bounced addresses still count and the send multiplier caps frequency on the lower tiers. The automation is the real ceiling: shallow at every tier and barely present below Premium. Buy it for events, for the support line, and for the fact that the owner will actually use it. Do not buy it as an email platform on the merits of the email.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.