The short answer
Mailchimp gives you more automation and a slicker builder. Constant Contact gives you phone support on every plan, strong deliverability, and event tools, but it locks real automation behind its top tier. For a simple newsletter business that wants a human on the phone, Constant Contact fits. For anything automation-heavy, Mailchimp pulls ahead. Both charge by contact count.
Pricing, and one quirk to know
At around 10,000 contacts, Mailchimp Standard is about $135 a month and Constant Contact Standard about $160. Constant Contact has a habit worth knowing: if you exceed your send limit two months running, it moves you to a higher billing tier automatically, without asking first. Several users also report that cancelling requires a phone call during business hours. Read the terms before you commit to an annual plan.
Where Mailchimp wins
- A real visual automation builder with branching, available on the mid Standard tier.
- A far larger template and integration ecosystem.
- Built-in content AI and send-time optimization.
Where Constant Contact wins
- Phone support on every plan, which is rare at this price.
- Among the best inbox placement rates measured in independent tests.
- Native event registration and ticketing, which most email tools do not have at all.
Constant Contact for events and hand-holding, Mailchimp for automation. Just budget for the tier where each actually unlocks what you came for.
The shared blind spots
Both bill by list size. Neither gives you a deliverability score you can read before sending. Constant Contact has no transactional email at all, and Mailchimp's is a separate product. And neither lets you run multiple brands cleanly from one account.
A third option worth a look: SmartMailing
SmartMailing prices by emails sent rather than contacts, so a growing list does not raise your bill on its own. It puts marketing and transactional email on one stack, surfaces a per-brand deliverability score before you send, and handles multiple brands from a single login. Its AI builder reads your website and produces an on-brand email in seconds, and you can import your existing Mailchimp or Constant Contact list in a click. You can try it on your own brand for free before moving anything.