Constant Contact vs MailerLite for Churches (2026)

Constant Contact vs MailerLite for Churches: Full Overview

Constant Contact and MailerLite represent two very different approaches to email for churches. Constant Contact is the established, full-featured platform with event management and phone support — built for organisations that run retreats, galas, and community dinners. MailerLite is the modern, budget-focused option with a clean editor and a free plan. Both serve small organisations, but they suit different congregations.

Constant Contact has been in the email space since 1995, making it one of the oldest providers in the market. It positioned itself early as the platform for small businesses, nonprofits, and churches, and that focus shows in features like built-in event tools, phone support, and a 30% nonprofit discount. The tradeoffs are higher prices, a dated interface, and a discount that requires both an IRS 501(c)(3) letter and a 12-month prepayment most automatically-exempt churches struggle to meet.

MailerLite launched in 2010 and built a reputation for affordability and ease of use. It is consistently rated among the easiest email platforms to learn, and its Growing Business plan starts at $10/month. The September 2025 reduction of its free plan from 1,000 to 500 members surprised many small churches, and the free tier carries MailerLite branding on every email — but it remains one of the most generous free plans in the market at 12,000 emails per month.

Core Email Features Compared

Both platforms cover the essentials a church needs: drag-and-drop editors for the weekly bulletin, contact management for the congregation database, signup forms for new visitors, automation, and analytics. The differences appear in depth and what is included at each tier.

Constant Contact's Lite plan ($12/month) covers basic email sends, templates, and contact management. Standard ($35/month) adds three pre-built automation workflows, A/B subject-line testing, and segmentation — handy for separating ministries and small groups. Event management is included on all paid plans, a genuine differentiator for churches with active calendars. The Premium plan ($80/month) adds advanced reporting and unlimited users.

MailerLite's Growing Business plan ($10/month) includes full automation, A/B testing, dynamic emails, unlimited websites and landing pages, and removes MailerLite branding from emails. The Advanced plan ($20/month) adds promotion popups, multivariate testing, and additional automation triggers. There is no event management on any tier, so retreat and dinner sign-ups need a separate tool.

For churches sending a weekly bulletin and occasional event invites, MailerLite offers more functionality per dollar. For churches where retreats, galas, and ticketed events are central, Constant Contact's bundled tools justify the higher cost.

Where Constant Contact Adds Value for Churches

Constant Contact's strongest case for churches is event management. Galas, mission-trip fundraisers, retreats, vacation Bible school registrations, community workshops, and recurring dinners can all be managed from a single platform — create event pages, sell tickets, manage registrations, collect payments, and send follow-up sequences. For churches where events drive a meaningful share of giving and engagement, this consolidation saves real volunteer time.

Phone support is another genuine differentiator. Most email platforms restrict support to email and chat. Constant Contact maintains phone support on paid plans, and the customer service is consistently praised in reviews as the kind of human-led help that has become rare. For a church secretary or older volunteer who needs to call a real person before Sunday, this matters.

The up-to-30% nonprofit discount is the most generous among major US email platforms, though it comes with conditions — 12-month prepayment, Standard plan or higher, and an IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter. For churches with predictable annual budgets and verified status, the prepay commitment is manageable. For congregations with cash-flow constraints or no determination letter on file, it can be a barrier.

The tradeoff is cost. Constant Contact's base prices are significantly higher than MailerLite's, and the discount narrows the gap without closing it. At 10,000 members, Constant Contact after discount is roughly $112/month — MailerLite after discount is roughly $51/month.

Where MailerLite Adds Value for Churches

MailerLite's strongest case is cost. The Growing Business plan starts at $10/month for 500 members, climbing to ~$73/month at 10,000 members — before the 30% nonprofit discount brings it to ~$51/month. For churches that don't run ticketed events and don't need phone support, MailerLite offers far more headroom per dollar than Constant Contact.

The free plan, even after the September 2025 reduction from 1,000 to 500 members, remains one of the most generous in the market. The 12,000 emails per month cap on the free tier is unusually high — most free plans cap sends far lower. For a small church sending a weekly bulletin to under 500 members, the free plan can serve as a permanent home, provided you can live with the MailerLite logo on each email and the loss of support after the first 14 days.

MailerLite is consistently rated among the easiest email platforms to use. The drag-and-drop editor is clean and modern, and most volunteer coordinators can build a functional bulletin within 20 minutes. For churches with non-technical staff or frequent volunteer rotation, that ease matters more than feature depth.

The 30% nonprofit discount is also more accessible than Constant Contact's. Churches apply by choosing 'nonprofit' at signup and submitting tax-exempt documentation within 14 days — there is no strict IRS 501(c)(3) determination-letter requirement and no prepayment lock-in. For automatically-exempt churches, this is a far simpler path to the discounted rate.

Free Plan Comparison

MailerLite has a free plan; Constant Contact does not. This is the simplest difference and often the deciding factor for small churches.

MailerLite's free plan supports 500 members and 12,000 emails per month. It includes the drag-and-drop editor, basic templates, signup forms, a website, and limited automation. Two limits matter for churches: the MailerLite logo appears on every email sent from the free tier, which looks out of place beside a Sunday bulletin, and live support is available only for the first 14 days — after that, free-plan users lose chat and email help entirely.

The September 2025 reduction from 1,000 to 500 members caught many small churches off-guard. The 12,000 emails per month cap remained, which is generous: a church sending one bulletin per month to 500 members uses only 6,000 emails, well within the limit.

Constant Contact removed its free plan in 2023 and now offers only a 60-day trial in select markets. For churches with zero budget and fewer than 500 active members, Constant Contact is not an option. Groupmail also offers a free plan at 500 members and 1,000 emails per month — lower send volume than MailerLite, but no third-party branding on your emails and human support on every plan, including free.

Migration Considerations for Churches

Switching between Constant Contact and MailerLite is straightforward. Both platforms allow CSV export of contacts including email addresses, names, ministry tags, and custom fields. Neither exports email campaign history or automation workflows — those need to be rebuilt manually.

If you are leaving Constant Contact for MailerLite, expect to spend 2-4 hours rebuilding bulletin templates and recreating any automations, ideally during a quiet liturgical week rather than the run-up to Christmas or Easter. The good news: MailerLite's editor is significantly easier than Constant Contact's, so the rebuild often goes faster than expected. You will also need to move retreat and event sign-ups to a separate tool, since MailerLite has no events module.

If you are leaving MailerLite for Constant Contact, the migration is similar, but you will need to build event pages from scratch in Constant Contact's events module — there is no direct import path.

If considering Groupmail as an alternative to either platform, the migration is simpler: export your members as a CSV, import into Groupmail, and start sending. There are no automations to recreate because Groupmail focuses on member updates rather than marketing workflows, and migration assistance is included on the Continuity plan ($29/month) — useful if your church secretary is doing the move alongside their day job. One critical note: both Constant Contact and MailerLite may have unsubscribed members on your list — export only active members to avoid paying for dead contacts on any new platform.

Deliverability Track Records

Email deliverability — the percentage of emails that reach the inbox rather than spam — matters more than features for church communication. A beautifully designed bulletin is worthless if it lands in spam the morning of a service. Both Constant Contact and MailerLite maintain strong reputations, though each has trade-offs.

Constant Contact has a long-established sender reputation built over 30 years. Industry tests consistently place it in the 85-95% inbox placement range. The platform actively monitors sender reputation and may suspend accounts with high bounce rates or spam complaints — strict but generally fair, and a risk for churches with old, unmaintained lists.

MailerLite also maintains strong deliverability, though its newer infrastructure means slightly less established reputation with some inbox providers. Its manual approval process for new accounts (1-3 business days) is designed specifically to protect deliverability by filtering out high-risk senders, which can delay a church's first send.

Groupmail handles deliverability through managed email delivery — the platform manages the technical infrastructure (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and sending reputation on behalf of each church. This means church staff and volunteers do not need to configure DNS records or monitor deliverability metrics themselves. Constant Contact and MailerLite both require some DNS configuration for best results, particularly when sending from a custom church domain. For congregations without a technical volunteer, managed delivery removes a category of problems entirely.

For Churches Specifically

Neither Constant Contact nor MailerLite was built specifically for churches. Constant Contact was built for small businesses and added nonprofit discounts and event tools as the market demanded. MailerLite was built for creators and small marketers and added a nonprofit discount more recently. Both platforms reflect their origins in the dashboards and features they emphasise — conversion tracking, ad tools, and marketing automation most congregations will never use.

The core fit question for churches comes down to events. If your church runs more than one or two ticketed events a year — retreats, galas, VBS, mission-trip fundraisers — Constant Contact's bundled event management is genuinely useful and may justify the higher price. If your church is primarily bulletin-driven, MailerLite is significantly cheaper and easier to use, as long as you can accept its logo on free-tier emails.

Both platforms charge based on member count, though MailerLite's treatment of unsubscribes (excluded from the active count) is more favourable than Constant Contact's historical approach. For churches with lists carrying years of unsubscribes from former visitors, this difference adds up.

Volunteer turnover is the pain point neither platform addresses. Church secretaries, communications coordinators, and tech-volunteer roles often turn over every 1-3 years, and neither Constant Contact nor MailerLite offers structured transition support — the outgoing person hands over login credentials and the new person figures it out between Sunday services. Groupmail was built for exactly this scenario: organisations with members (not customers), volunteer-led teams, and tight budgets. Flat $15/month pricing for unlimited members, no charge for unsubscribes, and annual handover calls when your secretary or coordinator changes. Pricing last verified May 2026.