Constant Contact for Nonprofits: 30% Off If You Prepay, and Who You Pay For

Constant Contact gives nonprofits a straightforward discount with one firm condition: 20% off if you prepay six months, 30% if you prepay twelve, and nothing at all if you pay monthly. The bigger cost question is the contact tier you are billed on, which is set by the most active contacts you held during the billing period, does not fall when you delete contacts, and counts bounced addresses until you remove them. We read Constant Contact’s pricing page and knowledge base articles on 10 November 2026. Prices are in US dollars.

What Constant Contact costs

The starting prices come from the FAQ on Constant Contact’s pricing page and apply to lists of up to 500 contacts, billed monthly. Above that, each plan steps up through contact tiers: 501 to 1,000, then 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, and in steps of 5,000 to 50,000, after which you contact sales. We could not read the dollar prices of the higher tiers: Constant Contact shows them in the visitor’s local currency, and from where we checked they did not appear in dollars. Open the “pricing tiers” view on the pricing page from a US connection to see yours, or ask sales before you commit.

The nonprofit discount

Constant Contact’s nonprofit article offers “a 20% discount off our standard pricing when prepaying for 6 months” or “a 30% discount when prepaying for 12 months”, and is blunt about the rest: “There is no discount when you pay monthly.” For comparison, any customer gets 10% for six months prepaid and 15% for twelve, according to its prepayment terms, so the nonprofit offer roughly doubles the standard prepay saving.

Our arithmetic at the entry tier, for a full year, before tax. At larger list sizes the same percentages apply to the higher tier price.

Who qualifies. US organizations send a “Federal government Letter of Determination, 501 (c)3 or (c)6”, so trade associations and other 501(c)(6) groups qualify as well as charities. The article warns that “Your Tax Pay ID paperwork does not count”: it wants your IRS determination letter. Organizations outside the US send their country’s equivalent.

How to apply. Do not buy first: the article says not to purchase a prepay plan until your nonprofit pricing is confirmed. New customers call sales on 866-511-1966. Existing monthly customers call 855-285-0211 or email the billing adjustment team with “ATTN: Nonprofit Paperwork” in the subject line. Nonprofit status does not by itself make you exempt from the sales tax Constant Contact charges in some states; any exemption shows in your account settings once your paperwork is processed, as our sales tax exemption guide explains.

Prepaying: no refunds, automatic renewal

The discount requires prepayment, and prepayment is final. The prepayment terms say “No refunds are offered for prepayments”, except within the 30-day money-back guarantee, and the billing article adds that prepayments are non-refundable “even if you choose to cancel before the end of your billing term.” The subscription “automatically renews for the same email plan, contact tier, and add-ons”, charged to your card unless you cancel before the renewal date.

So prepay for twelve months only once you have used the free trial, built your first campaigns and are sure of the plan. Put the renewal date in a shared calendar a month ahead, and the annual cost in the budget. If your list grows during a prepaid term, Constant Contact issues “a prorated invoice to cover the additional cost for the remainder of your current term.”

Which contacts you pay for

Constant Contact’s billing article says your tier is “based on the highest number of active email contacts you’ve had in your account”, that “Deleting contacts does not lower the contact tier”, and that “SMS-only contacts do not count towards your email plan contact tier.” Its active and inactive contacts article defines which are active.

Unsubscribed contacts are inactive, so they do not count toward your tier. Bounced contacts are a different matter: they stay active “that haven’t been removed from your account yet”, so a list full of dead addresses keeps you in a higher tier. Remove bounces after each campaign, and clean the list before an import rather than after, since deleting contacts later does not lower the tier for that billing period. Our nonprofit email marketing guide covers list hygiene in more detail.

A worked example: a list of 450, growing

Take a charity with 450 subscribed contacts on Standard, which falls in the entry tier. It sends its Letter of Determination, is approved, and prepays twelve months at 30% off: about $294 for the year. Over the spring, an event adds 120 new subscribers, and 40 people unsubscribe. Its active count peaks at 570, in the 501 to 1,000 tier.

The 40 unsubscribes do not help, because they leave after the peak and the tier is set by the highest active count. Deleting contacts would not lower it either. Constant Contact issues a prorated invoice for the higher tier for the rest of the term, on the next monthly invoice date. If 30 of the original addresses had also bounced and were never removed, the charity would have reached the higher tier sooner. The fixes are routine: remove bounces after every send, confirm new sign-ups before importing them, and expect a list that grows to cost more mid-term, so budget for the tier you expect to reach, not the one you start in.

Lite, Standard or Premium?

Lite allows one user and one automation template, which suits a single volunteer sending a monthly newsletter. Standard is the plan most charities need: three users, email scheduling, subject line testing, automatic resends to people who did not open the first email, three automation templates and ten custom segments for separating donors, volunteers and event attendees. Premium adds unlimited users, unlimited automations and segments, and 500 SMS messages a month, at more than twice Standard’s price; with the nonprofit discount at the entry tier, that is about $672 a year against $294.

Choose Standard unless you need more than three people sending, or automated journeys beyond three, such as separate welcome series for donors and volunteers. Resends to non-openers are worth having for appeals, which is one more reason Lite is usually a false economy for fundraising.

Sending limits and overage

Each plan allows a number of sends a month tied to your tier: 10 times the tier on Lite, 12 on Standard and 24 on Premium. The send allowance article says the allowance is based on the top of your tier, not your actual count, and that sends above it cost “$0.002 for every send over the maximum send allowance”, $2 per 1,000. Its example: a 2,500-contact tier on a 10-times plan allows 25,000 sends, and 40,000 sends costs $30 extra. Automated emails, such as welcome emails and automated series, do not count; resends to non-openers and bounced emails do. Most charities stay well inside it, but a busy December of appeals, reminders and resends to non-openers adds up, so check your usage before year-end campaigns.

Events and donations

Constant Contact can take event registrations through Stripe or PayPal. Its event payments article says Constant Contact adds a platform fee of 3.5% for events created on or after 1 August, or 2.9% for older events, on top of Stripe’s 2.9% plus $0.30 or PayPal’s 3.49% plus $0.49. You can pass Constant Contact’s fee to registrants, but not the processor’s. On a $50 registration that is about $3.50 in fees if you absorb them. Our event software comparison and Eventbrite for nonprofits guide set that against the alternatives.

For donations, Constant Contact’s nonprofit page points to integrations with DonorPerfect, Blackbaud, Neon CRM and Qgiv rather than its own donation tools. In practice that means taking gifts on your donation platform or CRM and using Constant Contact for the emails, including the thank-you that keeps donors giving, as our donor retention guide explains. Dedicated fundraising software often includes email for small lists.

The free trial and the guarantee

The pricing page offers a free trial with “no credit card required”. Constant Contact’s trial article describes 30 days and up to 100 email sends, enough to build templates and test a small campaign. The money-back guarantee refunds the first monthly payment for new customers who have uploaded contacts and sent at least one email and who call billing within 30 days; cancelling online does not trigger it. Use the trial and a first month to be sure, then apply for nonprofit pricing before you prepay.

Is Constant Contact right for a charity?

It suits a charity that can prepay a year, wants phone support, and already uses one of the donor systems it integrates with. It is less suited to a very small or seasonal list, because the discount needs prepayment and the tier never falls within a billing period. Several competitors offer free plans or larger nonprofit discounts without prepayment, compared in our nonprofit email marketing software guide. If your website runs on Squarespace or Wix, compare their built-in email tools too. How to check any offer at source is in our nonprofit software discounts guide. Constant Contact has no commercial relationship with this site, and we take no referral fees.

This is reference information, not legal or tax advice. Rules vary by state and change over time. For a decision that carries real consequences, check the current text at irs.gov or your state registry, and talk to a nonprofit attorney or CPA.