Constant Contact vs Mailchimp: Which Email Marketing Platform Should You Choose in 2024?
Table of Contents
- Quick Verdict
- Side-by-Side Comparison
- Email Editor and Template Design
- Automation and Workflow Capabilities
- List Management and Segmentation
- Deliverability and Sending Infrastructure
- Reporting and Analytics
- Pricing Deep Dive
- Customer Support Quality
- Integration Ecosystem
- Mobile App Experience
- Unique Strengths: Constant Contact
- Unique Strengths: Mailchimp
- Who Should Choose Constant Contact
- Who Should Choose Mailchimp
- Migration Considerations
- Final Verdict
Quick Verdict
Choose Constant Contact if you want exceptional phone and live chat support, prefer a simpler interface with less of a learning curve, or need strong event marketing tools built directly into your email platform.
Choose Mailchimp if you need advanced automation and segmentation capabilities, want more design flexibility with templates, or plan to scale to a sophisticated multi-channel marketing operation beyond just email.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Constant Contact | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | 60-day trial only | Up to 500 contacts, 1,000 sends/month |
| Paid Plans Start At | $12/month (500 contacts) | $13/month (500 contacts) |
| Email Templates | 100+ templates, simpler customization | 300+ templates, advanced customization |
| Automation | Basic automation workflows | Advanced automation with branching logic |
| Customer Support | Phone, live chat, email (all plans) | Email only (free), chat for paid plans, no phone |
| Best For | Small businesses, nonprofits, beginners | Growing businesses, ecommerce, tech-savvy users |
| Learning Curve | Low - intuitive interface | Moderate - more features means more complexity |
| Integrations | 400+ including Shopify, WordPress, Eventbrite | 300+ including deep Salesforce, Square integration |
| Mobile App Quality | Basic functionality (4.5★ iOS, 4.3★ Android) | Robust features (4.8★ iOS, 4.2★ Android) |
Email Editor and Template Design
Template Selection and Quality
Mailchimp provides over 300 professionally designed templates across categories like newsletters, announcements, and promotional emails. Their templates tend toward modern, image-heavy designs with bold typography. You can filter by industry, making it faster to find relevant starting points.
Constant Contact offers around 100 templates. While fewer in number, they’re specifically designed for ease of customization. The templates skew more traditional and text-focused, which actually works better for certain industries like professional services or B2B companies where simpler layouts perform better.
Drag-and-Drop Editor Capabilities
Both platforms use drag-and-drop editors, but the experience differs significantly. Constant Contact’s editor is genuinely simpler—you can add blocks, images, and buttons without hunting through nested menus. Moving elements around feels more intuitive, though you sacrifice some pixel-perfect control.
Mailchimp’s editor offers more granular control. You can adjust padding, margins, and spacing with precision. The content studio feature lets you store brand assets centrally, automatically suggesting images based on your email content. However, first-time users often find themselves frustrated by the learning curve—simple tasks sometimes require clicking through multiple menus.
Mobile Responsiveness
Both platforms automatically generate mobile-responsive emails. Mailchimp provides a mobile preview that shows exactly how your email renders on iOS and Android devices. You can even send test emails to specific device types.
Constant Contact’s mobile preview is more basic but covers the essentials. In real-world testing, emails from both platforms render correctly across major email clients, though Mailchimp’s templates tend to degrade more gracefully on older Outlook versions.
Automation and Workflow Capabilities
Automation Sophistication
This is where Mailchimp pulls significantly ahead. Their Customer Journey Builder lets you create complex automation paths with conditional splits based on subscriber behavior. For example: if someone opens your email but doesn’t click, wait 2 days then send a follow-up; if they click but don’t purchase, send a discount code after 24 hours.
You can trigger automations based on website activity (with tracking pixel installed), email engagement, purchase behavior, date fields (birthdays, anniversaries), and custom API events. The visual workflow builder makes it relatively easy to understand complex sequences at a glance.
Constant Contact offers automation, but it’s considerably more basic. You get welcome series, birthday emails, abandoned cart recovery (with ecommerce integration), and date-based campaigns. The workflows are linear—you can’t create conditional splits based on recipient behavior within the automation itself.
For a small business sending monthly newsletters and basic welcome sequences, Constant Contact’s automation is perfectly adequate. But if you’re planning sophisticated nurture campaigns or behavioral triggers, you’ll outgrow it quickly.
Pre-Built Automation Templates
Mailchimp includes over 130 pre-built automation templates covering scenarios like welcoming new subscribers, re-engaging inactive customers, following up after purchases, and recovering abandoned carts. Each template includes suggested timing and copy you can customize.
Constant Contact provides about 20 automation templates focused on essential workflows. They’re easier to set up but offer less variety. For event-based businesses, their event marketing automations (reminders, post-event follow-ups) are particularly well-executed.
List Management and Segmentation
Segmentation Depth
Mailchimp’s segmentation engine lets you create highly specific audience segments using up to 5 conditions combined with AND/OR logic. You can segment by engagement (opens, clicks, campaign activity), demographics, purchase behavior, predicted demographics (age, gender based on data science models), and custom merge fields.
Their “predicted demographics” feature uses machine learning to estimate subscriber characteristics even when you don’t have explicit data. While not perfectly accurate, it adds a useful layer for businesses without extensive customer data.
Constant Contact’s segmentation is more straightforward: you can segment by engagement, contact details, custom fields, and list membership. You’re limited to simpler segment logic, which means some advanced segments require creating multiple lists or manual exports.
Contact Management Features
Both platforms let you add unlimited custom fields to track subscriber data. Mailchimp organizes these as “merge tags” and “groups”—merge tags for unique data per contact (name, company), groups for categorical preferences (interests, preferences).
Constant Contact uses a simpler custom field system where everything lives in the same place. It’s less elegant architecturally but easier for non-technical users to understand and implement.
Mailchimp automatically manages resubscribes—if someone unsubscribes then later signs up again, they’re automatically reactivated. Constant Contact requires manual handling of these situations, which can create friction.
Deliverability and Sending Infrastructure
Inbox Placement Rates
Both Constant Contact and Mailchimp maintain strong sender reputations, but recent third-party testing shows some differences. According to EmailToolTester’s 2024 study, Mailchimp achieved an 89% inbox placement rate while Constant Contact reached 85%.
The 4-point difference isn’t massive, but it matters when you’re sending to large lists. On a list of 10,000 subscribers, that’s potentially 400 more emails reaching primary inboxes with Mailchimp.
Both platforms authenticate emails using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols. They also provide guidance on improving deliverability, though Mailchimp’s documentation is more comprehensive.
Sending Limits and Restrictions
Constant Contact imposes no daily sending limits on paid plans—you can send to your entire list multiple times per day if needed (though they’ll warn you about best practices). This flexibility helps businesses running time-sensitive campaigns.
Mailchimp’s free plan limits you to 1,000 sends per month total, and even paid plans restrict how quickly you can send to large lists if you’re a new user. They gradually increase sending limits as you build sender reputation, which frustrates some users but ultimately protects deliverability.
Reporting and Analytics
Standard Reporting Features
Both platforms provide core email metrics: open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, and bounce rates. You can see which links got clicked, geographic data on opens, and device/email client breakdowns.
Mailchimp’s reports feel more modern and visual. The comparative reporting feature lets you see how a campaign performed against your account average. Click maps show exactly where in your email people clicked, with heat mapping for image-based emails.
Constant Contact’s reporting is functional but more dated in presentation. The data is accurate and complete, but you’ll spend more time navigating between screens to get complete insights. The tracking reports load faster, which matters when reviewing campaigns regularly.
Advanced Analytics
Mailchimp Standard and Premium plans include advanced analytics like click segmentation (who clicked what), comparative reports over time trends, and revenue attribution for ecommerce businesses. You can track which campaigns drove specific purchases and calculate ROI directly.
Their Content Optimizer uses AI to suggest subject lines and send times based on your historical performance data. After analyzing patterns, it provides specific recommendations: “Your audience opens emails 23% more on Tuesday afternoons.”
Constant Contact Plus plan includes A/B testing for subject lines, from names, and email content. Their reporting shows you the winner and lets you automatically send the winning version to remaining contacts. But they lack Mailchimp’s predictive analytics and AI-driven recommendations.
Pricing Deep Dive
Constant Contact Pricing Structure
Constant Contact uses contact-based pricing with two plan tiers:
Lite Plan starts at $12/month for 500 contacts, scaling to $35/month for 2,500 contacts and $80/month for 10,000 contacts. This includes:
- Unlimited emails
- Email templates and editing tools
- List growth tools
- Automated welcome email
- Social media posting tools
- Event marketing (up to 100 registrants)
Standard Plan starts at $35/month for 500 contacts, $80/month for 2,500 contacts, and $330/month for 10,000 contacts. This adds:
- Email automation (beyond welcome emails)
- Dynamic content for personalization
- Polls and surveys
- A/B subject line testing
- Google Ads integration
- Free stock images from Shutterstock
They offer a 60-day free trial on all plans (no credit card required), which is genuinely useful for fully testing the platform.
Mailchimp Pricing Structure
Mailchimp offers four tiers:
Free Plan: 500 contacts, 1,000 monthly email sends, 1 audience, basic templates, marketing CRM, website builder, one-step automations. Includes Mailchimp branding on emails.
Essentials Plan: Starting at $13/month for 500 contacts ($53/month for 2,500 contacts, $175/month for 10,000 contacts). Adds:
- Remove Mailchimp branding
- 3 audiences
- A/B testing
- 24/7 email and chat support
- All email templates
- Custom branding
Standard Plan: Starting at $20/month for 500 contacts ($80/month for 2,500 contacts, $250/month for 10,000 contacts). Adds:
- 5 audiences
- Customer journey builder (advanced automation)
- Behavioral targeting
- Predictive segmentation
- Send time optimization
- Content studio
Premium Plan: Starting at $350/month (10,000 minimum contacts). Adds:
- Unlimited audiences
- Multivariate testing
- Advanced segmentation
- Phone support
- Comparative reporting
- Unlimited seats
Value Analysis
For basic email marketing (newsletters, promotions), Constant Contact’s Lite plan offers better value under 2,500 contacts. You get phone support and unlimited sending at a lower price point than comparable Mailchimp plans.
At 5,000+ contacts, Mailchimp’s Standard plan becomes competitive if you need advanced automation. The customer journey builder and predictive features justify the similar pricing.
For sophisticated marketing operations, Mailchimp’s Standard plan ($250 for 10,000 contacts) delivers significantly more automation and analytics capability than Constant Contact’s Standard plan ($330 for 10,000 contacts).
Neither platform charges separately for extra users, which is increasingly rare. Both include team collaboration features at all paid tiers.
Customer Support Quality
Support Channel Availability
Constant Contact provides phone, live chat, and email support on all paid plans, including the entry-level Lite plan. Phone support operates Monday-Friday 8am-8pm ET, and live chat extends slightly later. This accessibility is genuinely valuable when you’re stuck before sending a time-sensitive campaign.
Their support team has a reputation for patience with less technical users. Multiple small business owners report that Constant Contact reps will walk them through entire campaign setups rather than just answering specific questions.
Mailchimp offers email support on free plans (expect 24-48 hour response times), 24/7 chat support on Essentials and Standard plans, and phone support exclusively on Premium plans starting at $350/month. This is a significant limitation—you can’t call anyone unless you’re spending at least $350 monthly.
Knowledge Base and Self-Help Resources
Mailchimp’s knowledge base is substantially more comprehensive, with detailed articles, video tutorials, and marketing guides. Their “Getting Started” resources could function as a standalone marketing course.
Constant Contact’s help center covers the essentials adequately but with less depth. The search functionality feels dated, and articles sometimes lack step-by-step screenshots that would clarify processes.
Both offer webinars, though Constant Contact runs more frequent live training sessions for beginners. Mailchimp’s on-demand content is higher quality but assumes more baseline marketing knowledge.
Integration Ecosystem
Popular Integration Support
Mailchimp offers around 300 direct integrations including deep connections with Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, QuickBooks, Canva, and Typeform. Their Shopify integration is particularly robust—it automatically syncs customer data, purchase history, and enables sophisticated abandoned cart automations based on specific products.
Constant Contact connects with over 400 platforms including Shopify, WordPress, Eventbrite, Salesforce, and Facebook. The Eventbrite integration stands out—you can promote events, track registrations, and automatically segment contacts who attended vs. registered but didn’t show.
Both integrate with Zapier, expanding possibilities to thousands of additional apps. However, Zapier connections count against your Zapier task limits and introduce a slight delay compared to native integrations.
Ecommerce-Specific Features
Mailchimp treats ecommerce as a core use case. Beyond abandoned cart emails, you get product recommendations in emails (based on purchase history), revenue attribution, customer lifetime value calculations, and predictive insights about likely repeat purchasers.
Constant Contact’s ecommerce features are more basic—abandoned cart recovery and promotional email templates designed for products. You can include product blocks in emails, but the platform doesn’t offer Mailchimp’s level of purchase behavior analysis.
For serious ecommerce operations doing $10K+ monthly revenue, Mailchimp’s Standard plan delivers substantially more value through its commerce features alone.
Mobile App Experience
Mailchimp Mobile App
Mailchimp’s iOS and Android apps let you create campaigns, check reports, view subscriber lists, and manage automations from your phone. The interface translates their desktop experience reasonably well to mobile screens.
You can actually build complete campaigns on mobile, though complex layouts are easier on desktop. The campaign review process works smoothly—you can send test emails, check mobile previews, and schedule sends entirely from the app.
Real-time reporting notifications alert you when campaigns go out and how they’re performing. The app has a 4.8-star rating on iOS and 4.2 stars on Android.
Constant Contact Mobile App
Constant Contact’s mobile app covers core functions: checking campaign performance, viewing contact lists, and sending test emails. However, you can’t create or edit campaigns in the mobile app—it’s primarily for monitoring rather than creating.
This limitation frustrates users who want to make quick tweaks on the go. The app essentially serves as a reporting dashboard rather than a full platform experience.
It maintains solid ratings (4.5 stars iOS, 4.3 stars Android) because the reporting features work reliably, but the functionality gap compared to Mailchimp is noticeable.
Unique Strengths: Constant Contact
Event Marketing Tools
Constant Contact includes built-in event marketing and registration tools that Mailchimp simply doesn’t offer. You can create event registration pages, collect attendee information, process payments, send automated reminders, and follow up after events—all within the platform.
For businesses running regular workshops, seminars, networking events, or fundraisers, this integration eliminates the need for separate event management software. The Lite plan includes up to 100 registrants per event; Standard plan removes limits.
Simplified Social Media Publishing
While both platforms offer social media features, Constant Contact makes it easier to simultaneously post to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter when sending an email campaign. The interface for scheduling social posts is more intuitive for users who aren’t social media experts.
Mailchimp’s social features are more powerful but require more setup and understanding of how to leverage them effectively.
Nonprofit-Specific Features
Constant Contact offers specific pricing discounts (typically 30%) for qualifying nonprofits and provides templates, guides, and features designed for fundraising campaigns and donor communications.
Unique Strengths: Mailchimp
Marketing CRM Functionality
Mailchimp has evolved beyond email into a full marketing CRM. Their audience dashboard shows a complete picture of each contact: email engagement, website visits, purchase history, predicted demographics, and engagement scoring.
This centralized view helps you understand customers across channels, not just their email behavior. For businesses treating email as one piece of a larger marketing strategy, this context is invaluable.
Postcard and Landing Page Tools
Mailchimp lets you design and mail physical postcards directly from the platform—they handle printing and mailing. While not cheap (starting around $0.74 per postcard), the ability to coordinate physical and digital campaigns from one system helps integrated campaigns.
Their landing page builder is also more sophisticated than Constant Contact’s, with better templates and more customization options. You can create complete opt-in funnels without needing a separate landing page tool.
Creative Assistant (AI Content Generation)
Mailchimp’s Creative Assistant uses generative AI to suggest email subject lines, preview text, and body copy based on your campaign goals. While you shouldn’t use AI-generated content verbatim, it provides useful starting points that speed up campaign creation.
The feature learns from your past campaigns, making suggestions increasingly relevant to your brand voice over time.
Who Should Choose Constant Contact
Small business owners who prioritize support accessibility will appreciate Constant Contact’s phone support on all paid plans. If you’re not tech-savvy and want to call someone when stuck, this accessibility justifies the platform choice alone.
Event-based businesses (workshop hosts, seminar organizers, conference planners, fundraisers) benefit enormously from the integrated event marketing tools. Creating this functionality through Mailchimp plus a separate event platform costs more and requires managing data across systems.
Organizations wanting simpler, faster campaign creation find Constant Contact’s streamlined interface lets them build and send emails more quickly. If you’re sending relatively straightforward newsletters and promotions without complex automation, the simplicity is an advantage rather than a limitation.
Businesses with contact lists under 2,500 get better value from Constant Contact’s Lite plan ($35/month for 2,500 contacts) compared to Mailchimp Essentials ($53/month for 2,500 contacts), especially when you factor in phone support and unlimited sending.
Nonprofits should consider Constant Contact’s specific nonprofit discounts and fundraising-focused templates, which feel purpose-built rather than adapted from commercial use cases.
Who Should Choose Mailchimp
Ecommerce businesses need Mailchimp’s product recommendation engine, purchase behavior automations, and revenue attribution features. The Standard plan essentially functions as an ecommerce marketing platform, not just an email sender.
Growing businesses planning sophisticated automation will quickly outgrow Constant Contact’s linear automation capabilities. If you’re mapping customer journeys with behavioral triggers and conditional paths, Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder is essential.
Multi-channel marketers treating email as one piece of a larger strategy benefit from Mailchimp’s CRM approach, landing pages, ads management, and cross-channel reporting. The platform thinks in terms of customer experiences rather than just email campaigns.
Data-driven marketers who make decisions based on analytics appreciate Mailchimp’s comparative reporting, predictive features, and deeper segmentation capabilities. The platform helps you understand not just what happened but why and what to do next.
Budget-conscious solopreneurs or startups can operate indefinitely on Mailchimp’s free plan (500 contacts, 1,000 monthly sends), then upgrade as they grow. Constant Contact requires paid plans after the 60-day trial.
Businesses with existing Shopify or WooCommerce stores benefit from Mailchimp’s deeper native integrations, which sync more data and enable more sophisticated ecommerce automations than Constant Contact’s basic connections.
Migration Considerations
Switching from Constant Contact to Mailchimp
Both platforms let you export contact lists as CSV files. Mailchimp’s import wizard handles Constant Contact CSV formats reasonably well, mapping fields semi-automatically. Expect to spend 30-60 minutes cleaning data and confirming field mappings for a typical list.
You’ll need to recreate automation workflows manually—there’s no direct export/import option. Document your Constant Contact automations before switching, then rebuild them in Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder.
Template designs don’t transfer directly. You’ll either need to rebuild emails in Mailchimp’s editor or export your Constant Contact templates as HTML and import them (which requires technical knowledge to clean up the code).
Switching from Mailchimp to Constant Contact
The same CSV export/import process applies in reverse. Constant Contact’s import wizard is slightly less sophisticated, so plan for more manual field mapping.
If you’ve built complex automations in Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder, you may not be able to replicate the same logic in Constant Contact’s simpler automation system. Evaluate whether you actually use the advanced automation features before switching—if you’re only using basic welcome series, the transition is straightforward.
Both platforms let you import email history data, though opens and clicks from the previous platform obviously won’t carry over to the new one. Your engagement-based segments will need time to rebuild based on activity in the new platform.
Final Verdict
For most small businesses sending regular newsletters and promotions: Constant Contact wins on simplicity, support accessibility, and value under 2,500 contacts. The straightforward interface means less time learning software and more time running your business.
For ecommerce operations and growing online businesses: Mailchimp is the clear choice. The advanced automation, behavioral targeting, and revenue attribution features pay for themselves through better-performing campaigns. The $75/month price difference at 5,000 contacts is negligible compared to the additional revenue enabled by sophisticated automation.
For event-based businesses: Constant Contact’s integrated event marketing tools eliminate the need for separate event software, making it the better choice despite some limitations in other areas.
For budget-limited startups: Mailchimp’s genuinely useful free plan lets you start immediately and grow into paid plans. Constant Contact’s 60-day trial is generous, but you’ll need to commit to a paid plan before seeing long-term results.
For teams prioritizing support: Constant Contact’s phone support on all paid plans (versus Mailchimp’s Premium-only phone support) makes troubleshooting faster and less frustrating, especially for less technical users.
The honest truth is that both platforms are competent email marketing tools that will serve most businesses well. Your choice should depend on your specific situation: How much automation complexity do you need? How important is ecommerce integration? Do you run events? How confident are you with technology?
Try Constant Contact’s 60-day trial if you want simplicity and strong support. Start with Mailchimp’s free plan if you want to test advanced features and have patience for a learning curve. Neither choice will sink your email marketing—but matching the platform to your actual needs will make your campaigns significantly more effective and less frustrating to manage.
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