Mailchimp vs Constant Contact for nonprofits (2026)

Our recommendation: most small nonprofit teams should pick Constant Contact and prepay for 12 months. Pick Mailchimp if someone on staff wants to build real automations or you can't prepay. And if your email list and your donor database disagree about who your donors are, a new email tool won't fix that.

Most comparisons of these two tools are written for an online store. You aren't selling candles. You send appeals, impact updates, event invitations and acknowledgments to people who give because they believe in the work. Your list mixes recurring donors, lapsed donors, volunteers who have never given and board members. Every software dollar is a dollar that didn't go to programs.

So here is the comparison from the nonprofit side of the table: what each tool costs after the nonprofit discount, where each one fits, and the question most of these posts skip.

The short version

• Choose Constant Contact if your team is small and not very technical, you run several events a year, you want phone support, and you can prepay 12 months to get 30% off.
• Choose Mailchimp if someone on your team will build multi-step automations and segments, you need a specific integration, or your budget runs month to month.
• Fix your data first if your email tool, donor database and event platform each hold a different version of the same supporter. Switching email tools moves that problem. It doesn't solve it.

Nonprofit pricing, side by side

Both tools price by plan and contact count. Both look cheap at 500 contacts. The gap shows up as your list grows and the discount terms kick in.

US list prices from public sources, checked October 2026. Both vendors change pricing often. Confirm on their sites before you budget.

What that looks like at 10,000 contacts

On each tool's Standard plan:

• Mailchimp: $135/mo list, about $115/mo after 15%. About $1,380 a year, paid monthly.
• Constant Contact: $160/mo list, about $112/mo after the 30% prepay discount. About $1,345 a year, paid up front.

That is a $35 difference over a year. Price shouldn't decide this. Fit should. Two things can still tip it:

1. List hygiene. If 3,000 of your 10,000 Mailchimp contacts are unsubscribed or cleaned and still sitting in your audience, you are paying for people you can't email. Archive them, then compare.
2. Cash flow. If your organization can't prepay a year of software, Constant Contact's nonprofit discount doesn't exist for you. Compare list price against Mailchimp's discounted price instead.

Where Constant Contact wins for nonprofits

It fits the person who does email as one part of a bigger job. That describes most nonprofit communicators. The editor is easy to learn, there are nonprofit templates, and a new hire or volunteer can send a clean newsletter on day one.

Events are built in. Registration, RSVPs, ticketing and reminders live in the same tool as your email. If your year includes a gala, a 5K and volunteer orientations, that is one less tool and one less export.

You can call someone. Phone and chat support come with paid plans. That matters most on the day the person who set everything up has moved on.

Nonprofits are its biggest customer group. About 10% of Constant Contact customers are nonprofits, its largest single industry (technologychecker.io). Integrations with DonorPerfect, Blackbaud and Neon CRM reflect that.

The trade-offs: custom automation is a Premium feature, A/B testing is limited below the top tier, there is no free plan, and the discount requires a prepay.

Where Mailchimp wins for nonprofits

More room for automation and segmentation. The Standard plan includes multi-step journeys, dynamic content and better segmentation. If you want a welcome series for first-time donors and a separate path for event attendees, Mailchimp gives you more to work with.

A large integration library. Most donation forms, event platforms and website builders have a Mailchimp connector. Check what the connector actually syncs. Moving an email address is not the same as moving a gift amount and a fund.

No prepay. The 15% discount applies to monthly billing.

The trade-offs: the free plan no longer works for an active organization. Billing for unsubscribed contacts inflates costs quietly. Much of the interface is built for ecommerce, not donors. Mailchimp has raised prices or cut free-plan limits in most years since Intuit bought it in 2021, so budget for another change.

Which one fits your organization

The question most comparisons skip: where your donor data lives

Both tools send email. Neither one is where your donor relationships live. That is a donor database, a spreadsheet, a giving platform or all three. The useful question isn't which email tool is better. It is this: when someone gives, volunteers and opens your appeal, does one system know all three things?

When the answer is no, it shows up the same way every time:

• The email tool says someone is a subscriber. The donor database says they gave $2,500 last year. Neither knows about the other, so that donor gets the same appeal as someone who signed a petition once.
• Year-end segmentation means exporting from three places and matching rows in a spreadsheet.
• Nobody can say which appeal raised the money, because email engagement and gift data never meet.
• The organization pays for two or three systems that hold different versions of the same donor.

Moving from Mailchimp to Constant Contact, or the other way, doesn't change any of that. It moves the same disconnected list to a new tool.

One large humane society we worked with had about 80,000 contacts, most never deduplicated, and twelve copies of one online store template. A new email platform would have inherited every one of those duplicates. The plan started with the data: move marketing into one system, consolidate the twelve stores into one, and sync the gift system both ways so marketing and development worked from the same supporter.

Key lesson: choose your email tool for how your team works today. If your list and your donor data live in different places, fix that on purpose, before or alongside the switch.

When to stop shopping for an email tool

A standalone email tool stops being the right layer when:

• You pay for an email platform, a form tool, an event tool and a donor database, and reconcile them every month.
• You want to segment by giving history (first-time, recurring, lapsed, major gifts) and can't without an export.
• Your board asks which campaign worked and the honest answer is "we think."

At that point the decision is about your system of record, not your email tool. We believe a nonprofit should run fundraising, marketing and finance from one supporter record, and that HubSpot can be that record. HubSpot offers eligible nonprofits 40% off, and gift entry, receipting, soft credits, recurring gifts and GL export all run inside HubSpot for our clients today. An international relief organization we worked with moved 600,000+ gift records out of Blackbaud into HubSpot, cut software cost about 80%, and its own staff built 130+ segments and workflows within 90 days of launch.

That is not the right answer for every organization. If you send a monthly newsletter to 1,500 supporters and your donor database is in good shape, a well-run Constant Contact or Mailchimp account is the right tool. Keep it. Our HubSpot for nonprofits guide includes a section on when HubSpot is the wrong call.

FAQ

Is Mailchimp free for nonprofits? Mailchimp's Free plan is open to anyone, but since February 2026 it covers only 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, with no automations or scheduling. Most active nonprofits need a paid plan. Verified nonprofits can request 15% off paid plans.

Does Constant Contact have a nonprofit discount? Yes. Eligible nonprofits get 20% off a 6-month prepay or 30% off a 12-month prepay. There is no nonprofit discount on monthly billing.

Is Constant Contact free for nonprofits? No. Constant Contact has no free plan for anyone, only a free trial. Nonprofits save through the prepay discount.

Which is cheaper for a nonprofit, Mailchimp or Constant Contact? At 10,000 contacts on Standard plans, the discounted prices land within about $3 a month of each other. Mailchimp is cheaper if you can't prepay. Constant Contact is cheaper if you prepay a year and use its event tools instead of paying for a separate one.

Which is easier for a small nonprofit team? Constant Contact, for most teams. It is simpler to learn, includes nonprofit templates and offers phone support. Mailchimp rewards teams with someone who wants to build automations.

Can I switch from Mailchimp to Constant Contact, or back? Yes. Contacts move by CSV. Tags, segments, automations, templates and engagement history usually don't, so plan to rebuild them. Clean your list before you import, and decide which fields you actually need.

Your donors live in three systems. They should live in one. Book a working session with Lake One and we'll tell you which parts of your setup are worth keeping, and what it would take to connect the rest.