Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are monetised, which means Ecommerce Paradise may earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it never decides what goes in the comparison. Every price here was read off each vendor’s own live pricing page on 29 September 2026, with the subscriber band it applies to, and where a cheaper or free option wins we say so even when it pays us nothing.
If you are picking an email marketing platform and weighing AWeber against Constant Contact, you have two of the longest-running names in the category, both targeting small to mid-size businesses, both with strong reputations in deliverability. But they serve noticeably different operators. AWeber is a focused email platform built around list growth, automation and deliverability. Constant Contact is a broader small-business marketing platform that includes email but also event management, surveys, social posting and ecommerce tools. I have built and sold a lot of ecommerce stores over the years, including a three-store package that sold for $700,000, and through the work I do at Ecommerce Paradise I help people pick the right tool for the actual stage they are at. So here are these two head to head with no spin.
Two corrections up front, because between them they change the recommendation. First, Constant Contact does not offer a 60 day free trial. Its published free offer is 14 days, and an earlier version of this article said 60 days seven separate times, overstating a competitor’s trial by more than four times. Second, Constant Contact is not similarly priced to AWeber at the entry tier. It is cheaper, on both billing modes, and the old framing had that comparison pointing the wrong way rather than merely imprecise. Both are worked through below with the published figures.
Start With AWeber’s Real Free Plan
AWeber Free publishes lifetime access at no cost, up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly. Constant Contact publishes no free plan at all, only Get 14 days free, so if you want to run a small list at $0 indefinitely there is only one option here.
AWeber vs Constant Contact at a Glance
Here is the corrected side-by-side for 2026. Every price carries its billing mode, and where a figure is derived rather than printed by the vendor it says so.
| Factor | AWeber | Constant Contact |
|---|---|---|
| Platform focus | Focused email and automation | Email plus events, surveys, social, SMS and ecommerce |
| Permanent free plan | Yes, up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly, lifetime access at no cost | No free plan card on the pricing page |
| Free trial | Try AWeber free with a 14 day trial | Get 14 days free |
| Entry tier, billed annually | Lite $12.50/month at 0 to 500 subscribers, billed annually at $150 | Lite starting at $10.20/month billed annually |
| Entry tier, monthly billing | Lite $15.00/month at 0 to 500 subscribers | $12.00/month, derived from the published annual price |
| Cheaper at the entry tier | No, on either billing mode | Yes, on both billing modes |
| Event management | Not included | Event marketing is in the product nav |
| Best for | Email-focused operators who want a permanent free tier | Local businesses needing events, surveys and multi-channel, and anyone buying purely on entry price |
Both are established and credible. The decisive differences are the permanent free plan, which only AWeber has, and the entry paid price, which Constant Contact wins.
The Correction That Changes This Article’s Conclusion
An earlier version of this comparison said Constant Contact’s entry price was similar to AWeber’s, at around $12 to $13 a month for the Lite tier on each side. Both halves of that were wrong, and the second one was wrong in a direction that flattered AWeber.
Start with the AWeber half. There is no AWeber plan at $13. Lite is $12.50 a month billed annually, with a published annual total of $150, or $15.00 a month on monthly billing, both at the 0 to 500 subscribers band. The $13 figure never existed on any AWeber page, and quoting it made AWeber look a dollar cheaper on annual billing and two dollars cheaper on monthly than it actually is.
Now the Constant Contact half. Constant Contact Lite publishes starting at $10.20 per month billed annually. Against AWeber Lite at $12.50 billed annually, Constant Contact is cheaper by $2.30 a month, which is $27.60 across twelve months by my own multiplication of that gap. On monthly billing the comparison is $12.00 derived against AWeber’s printed $15.00, a gap of $3.00 a month or $36.00 across twelve months, again my arithmetic on the difference rather than a figure either vendor prints.
So the honest statement is not that the two entry prices are similar. Constant Contact is the cheaper entry tier on both billing modes, and it is cheaper by a margin that a small operator would notice. AWeber’s advantage in this matchup is the permanent free plan, not the entry price, and saying otherwise misled anyone who read the old version and was buying on cost.
What Constant Contact Actually Charges
Constant Contact prints its prices under an annual toggle labelled with a Save 15% badge, and each plan carries a footnote that plan price is based on number of contacts and email sends, with overage fees possibly applying. So like AWeber, every one of these figures is a starting price for its lowest contact band and rises with your list.
| Constant Contact plan | Published price | Derived monthly-billing equivalent | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | Starting at $10.20/mo billed annually | $12.00, derived | Ideal for beginners, with live one-to-one onboarding |
| Standard | Starting at $29.75/mo billed annually | $35.00, derived | Recommended tier, described as great for most businesses |
| Premium | Starting at $68/mo billed annually | $80.00, derived | Ideal for pros, with priority onboarding by a dedicated team |
| Multi-Account | No price published, talk to sales | Not applicable | Teams that need 5 or more accounts |
The derived column needs its own explanation, because an earlier version of this article quoted $12, $35 and $80 as though Constant Contact printed them. It does not. Those three are arithmetic: each published annual price divided by 0.85, using Constant Contact’s own Save 15% label on the annual toggle. So $10.20 divided by 0.85 gives $12.00, $29.75 gives $35.00, and $68.00 gives $80.00. All three land exactly on round numbers, which is strong corroboration that the monthly ladder really is $12, $35 and $80, but they remain my derivation and not read prices, because Constant Contact’s monthly toggle would not switch when I tried to read it. Treat them as reliable estimates labelled as estimates.
What AWeber Actually Charges at the Same List Sizes
AWeber prices across 14 subscriber bands, and the entry three are where this comparison lives for most readers. Done For You is priced identically to Plus at every band, so it shares a column.
| Subscriber band | Lite, annual then monthly | Plus, annual then monthly |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 500 | $12.50/month, then $15.00/month | $20.00/month, then $30.00/month |
| 501 to 1,000 | $20.83/month, then $25.00/month | $37.50/month, then $45.00/month |
| 1,001 to 2,500 | $29.17/month, then $35.00/month | $45.83/month, then $55.00/month |
AWeber publishes annual totals of $150 a year for Lite and $240 a year for Plus at the 0 to 500 band, and it labels the annual discount as 16.7% savings on Lite and 33.3% savings on Plus. Above the ladder there is a flat Unlimited plan at $899 a month and an unadvertised Hold Package at $4.99 a month that pauses an account without losing data. The Done For You card on the same pricing page carries a one-off setup fee currently shown as $599 marked down to $79 on top of the monthly price it shares with Plus. The whole 14-band picture is in my AWeber pricing breakdown.
The comparison that matters is the mid-tier, and this is where AWeber wins on price rather than losing. AWeber Plus, the uncapped plan, is $20.00 a month billed annually at 0 to 500 subscribers. Constant Contact Standard, its recommended tier, is $29.75 a month billed annually. That is $9.75 a month in AWeber’s favour on the two published figures, so the price advantage flips as soon as you move off each vendor’s cheapest card.
Constant Contact’s Free Offer Is 14 Days, Not 60
This site said 60 days, in seven places, across a table cell, three body sections and two FAQ answers. That was wrong and it materially overstated what a competitor gives away, so it is worth correcting explicitly rather than quietly.
What Constant Contact actually publishes, site-wide in its header call to action, is Get 14 days free. The strings 60 day and sixty appear nowhere on its pricing page. What remains true, and this is the part the old article had right, is that there is no free plan card on that page at all. Constant Contact sells four tiers and gives you two weeks to try them.
The practical difference between 14 days and 60 days is not academic if you are a beginner. Two months is long enough to build a list, run a proper welcome sequence, send several campaigns and judge the platform on results. Two weeks is long enough to import a list and send one or two broadcasts. If you were planning your evaluation around the number this article used to print, you were planning around four times more runway than you actually get.
Against that, AWeber Free is not a trial at all. It is a plan with lifetime access at no cost, up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly, and it does not expire. So at a small list size AWeber is still the better economics by a wide margin, because $0 indefinitely beats any trial. The margin is just smaller than the old version implied, since the trial it is beating runs 14 days rather than 60.
What AWeber’s Free Plan Actually Publishes
This article used to say AWeber Free gives you full feature access and 24/7 live chat, phone and email support. Neither of those is published by AWeber, and both were doing persuasive work they had not earned.
What AWeber publishes for AWeber Free is short and specific: lifetime access at no cost with the upgrade optional, manage up to 500 subscribers, send 3,000 emails monthly, a single list profile, and a single workflow automation or autoresponder campaign. It also states that exceeding 500 subscribers prompts an upgrade to a paid plan.
What it does not publish is a feature list beyond those two entitlements, a landing-page allowance for the free tier, or any support level for the free tier. The chat, email and phone support rows on AWeber’s pricing page cover Done For You, Plus and Lite, with priority support on the top two, and the free plan is not a column on that table. So the honest version is that AWeber publishes 24/7 support across chat, email and phone on every paid plan, and publishes nothing about free-plan support. One list and one automation is the whole documented free entitlement.
That still beats a 14 day trial for anyone who wants to run a real list at zero cost, and it is the single strongest argument for AWeber in this matchup. It is just a narrower plan than this page used to claim.
Get a Focused Email Platform With a Real Free Plan
AWeber Free runs indefinitely at up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly, with one list and one automation. Constant Contact gives you 14 days, then a card. If you want to test email without a clock running, that is the difference.
Why Operators Choose AWeber Over Constant Contact
The Permanent Free Plan
This is the clearest reason and the corrections above do not weaken it. AWeber gives you a plan that never expires at up to 500 subscribers, while Constant Contact gives you 14 days and then charges regardless of list size. For a beginner, a side project or anyone testing an email program without budget, an indefinite free plan removes the clock entirely.
The Uncapped Tier Is Cheaper
Once you move past each vendor’s entry card the price advantage reverses. AWeber Plus at $20.00 a month billed annually gives you unlimited email lists, unlimited landing pages, unlimited email automations, unlimited custom segments and unlimited users. Constant Contact Standard, the tier it markets as right for most businesses, is $29.75 a month billed annually. If you already know you want the uncapped plan, AWeber is the cheaper platform by $9.75 a month on the published figures.
A Focused Tool Rather Than a Suite
If you do not need event marketing, surveys, social posting and a website builder bundled into your email tool, paying for Constant Contact’s breadth means paying for capability you will not use. AWeber stays in the email lane and prices accordingly, which is better economics for an operator who already has separate tools for events and social, or simply does not run those programmes. The same logic applies when choosing tools around a high-ticket niche, where depth in the one channel that converts beats breadth across five that do not.
Deliverability Tenure
AWeber’s copyright line runs from 1998, which puts roughly 28 years of relationship with mailbox providers behind it. Tenure is not a measurement of inbox placement and I have no deliverability test of my own to cite, so treat this as a reasonable prior rather than a result. Constant Contact’s deliverability reputation is genuinely good as well, and anyone claiming a decisive gap between these two should be showing you data.
Where Constant Contact Is Genuinely the Better Choice
I am not going to pretend AWeber is the answer for every operator, and the corrected pricing makes the case for Constant Contact stronger than the old version of this article allowed.
The first reason is now price. Constant Contact Lite at $10.20 a month billed annually is the cheaper entry tier, by $2.30 a month against AWeber Lite on annual billing and by $3.00 a month on the derived monthly comparison. If you are going to pay from day one and the entry tier is where you will stay, Constant Contact costs less. Its Lite tier also includes live one-to-one onboarding with experts, which AWeber does not offer at any price short of the Done For You setup fee.
The second reason is breadth, and it is the classic one. Constant Contact’s product nav covers event marketing, SMS marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, AI, automation and reporting. If you run a restaurant, retail shop, nonprofit or service business that hosts classes, fundraisers or workshops and needs RSVPs and registrations managed alongside email, that is a real capability AWeber does not match. Having events, surveys, social and email in one dashboard genuinely reduces tool sprawl for that profile.
The third is fit for non-technical owners. Constant Contact’s onboarding and support are oriented toward a traditional small-business owner who wants one platform for most of their marketing, and its Premium tier adds priority onboarding by a dedicated team. That is a legitimate reason to choose it, quite separate from any feature checklist.
Which One Should You Choose?
Here is my straight take, rebuilt on the current figures. Choose AWeber if you want to run a list at $0 for as long as possible, because a permanent 500-subscriber free plan beats a 14 day trial and there is no contest on that dimension. Choose it as well if you know you want the uncapped tier, because Plus at $20.00 a month billed annually undercuts Constant Contact Standard at $29.75.
Choose Constant Contact if you will be paying from day one and intend to stay on the entry tier, because Lite is the cheaper of the two entry plans on both billing modes. Choose it also if you run a local business or event-driven organisation that genuinely needs events, surveys and multi-channel marketing bundled with email, which is a specific profile rather than a default for an ecommerce or content operator.
Either way, match the platform to the features you will actually use and to where your list will be in twelve months, which is the same discipline I apply to every part of a store buildout. The supplier side of that is covered in my guide to finding vetted suppliers. For the wider field beyond these two, there is my roundup of the best email marketing platforms for beginners.
Start Your Email Marketing on AWeber Today
AWeber Free is a plan rather than a trial: up to 500 subscribers, 3,000 emails monthly, one list and one automation, with lifetime access at no cost. Start there and pay only when a published cap forces it.
Frequently Asked Questions: AWeber vs Constant Contact
Does Constant Contact have a free plan?
No. Constant Contact’s pricing page carries no free plan card, and its only free offer is Get 14 days free. Earlier versions of this article said 60 days, which was wrong. AWeber, by contrast, publishes a permanent free plan at up to 500 subscribers and 3,000 emails monthly with lifetime access at no cost, so if a real free plan matters to you there is only one option in this matchup.
Is Constant Contact more expensive than AWeber?
Not at the entry tier, and this is where an earlier version of this article had the direction wrong. Constant Contact Lite publishes starting at $10.20 a month billed annually against AWeber Lite at $12.50 billed annually, and $12.00 derived against AWeber’s printed $15.00 on monthly billing, so Constant Contact is cheaper on both modes. It reverses at the next tier up, where AWeber Plus at $20.00 a month billed annually undercuts Constant Contact Standard at $29.75. The free plan is a separate question and AWeber wins that one outright.
What are Constant Contact’s actual prices?
As published, Lite is starting at $10.20 per month billed annually, Standard is $29.75, and Premium is $68, with a Multi-Account tier that carries no price and is aimed at teams needing 5 or more accounts. Each line carries a footnote that plan price is based on number of contacts and email sends and that overage fees may apply, so all three are entry figures that rise with your list. The commonly quoted $12, $35 and $80 are monthly-billing equivalents derived from those annual prices and the published Save 15% label, not figures Constant Contact prints.
Is AWeber or Constant Contact better for beginners?
For a beginner with no budget, AWeber, because of the permanent free plan at up to 500 subscribers against a 14 day trial. For a beginner who is going to pay anyway and wants hand-holding, Constant Contact has a case: its Lite tier is cheaper and includes live one-to-one onboarding with experts. You can start free on AWeber and decide without a clock running.
Does AWeber give free users 24/7 live chat and phone support?
Not as far as AWeber publishes, and this article used to claim otherwise. The chat, email and phone support rows on AWeber’s pricing page cover Done For You, Plus and Lite, with priority support on the top two, and the free plan is not a column on that table. The accurate claim is 24/7 support across chat, email and phone on every paid plan, with nothing published about the free tier.
Do I need Constant Contact’s event management?
Only if you regularly host classes, workshops, fundraisers or community events and want RSVP and registration handling integrated with your email. If you do, event marketing is in Constant Contact’s product nav and AWeber has no equivalent. If you do not, you are paying for capability you will not use. The full strategy for picking and stacking marketing tools is something I work through directly in my 1-on-1 coaching.
Related Articles
AWeber pricing in 2026: the complete 14-band ladder in both billing modes
AWeber vs Mailchimp: contact bands, promotional pricing and feature gates
AWeber vs MailerLite: why the free plan comparison has reversed
AWeber vs Klaviyo: when ecommerce automation depth is worth the extra cost
The best AWeber alternatives in 2026, with published prices by list size
Pricing and feature details change frequently. Always verify current pricing directly with each platform before subscribing. Ecommerce Paradise may earn affiliate commissions from purchases made through links in this article.
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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