Constant Contact SMS Pricing for Shopify

What the $10 starting price covers

The email plan and the SMS tier are separate decisions. The email base varies by plan and contact tier. The SMS tier covers a quantity of billable message units in one billing cycle. You need an email plan to buy the SMS add-on, so a prospective customer cannot use $10 as the cost of a stand-alone texting account. An existing customer can treat it as the starting incremental charge if the current email plan already supports the workflow they need. Constant Contact add-on terms.

Put two questions at the top of the quote. First, can your current plan run the exact Shopify path you want? Second, what does a typical month of campaigns and automation cost on that plan? You might need more automation capabilities or a second operator even when SMS volume is low. In that case, the higher email plan is doing work besides increasing your text budget. Price the work together and show the two charges separately.

The public price card presents this schedule for US accounts. The help center also describes separate eligibility for Australian customers. Use the US quote for this comparison and have the vendor confirm your business location and recipient markets. A sender registration that works for one merchant or country does not establish eligibility for your store. Check the official account requirements before treating the tool as a viable option. Registration requirements.

Compare the three plan lines at the same contact tier

Use the same starting contact count and billing term for all three proposals. The figures below are the US starting monthly prices displayed on the public card. The subtotal assumes the account can use the displayed starting prices and stays within 500 billed SMS units and the applicable email allowance. It excludes other add-ons, taxes and contract-specific charges. Public plan prices and limits.

In that narrow case, the included SMS allowance does not make Premium the cheaper way to buy those first 500 units. It costs $35 more than the Standard starting subtotal. An existing Premium customer has a different choice. If the plan is already justified by email and the account can complete SMS registration, the included units are a reason to test the workflow before buying a separate sender.

The comparison can move when email volume is uneven. The price card lists monthly email allowances of 10, 12 and 24 sends per contact for Lite, Standard and Premium respectively. It also lists $0.002 for each additional email beyond the allowance. If two quotes at the same contact tier differ by 3,000 chargeable email sends, that changes the comparison by $6. An email send overage and moving into a higher SMS tier are different billing events. Keep both lines on your worksheet so that a finance reviewer can reproduce the difference. Email send allowances and overage.

Check the billing snapshot as well as today’s list count. Constant Contact distinguishes the contact tier, which is based on the highest active email count the account has had, from the highest billable count in the current period. SMS-only contacts are excluded from the email contact tier. A store that temporarily imported a much larger email audience may get a different next bill than a quote based on its cleaned-up list. Ask the seller to show which contact tier the sample invoice uses. How to read your account bill.

Count the messages on the bill

Start with actual campaigns and triggered messages from one ordinary month and one sale month. For each send, record eligible recipients and the number of segments in the final text. Multiply them and add the outgoing service messages the provider bills. The billing guide includes messages from automation as well as responses sent automatically when people opt in, opt out or ask for help. Keep those responses in a separate row, especially if you plan to collect a lot of new opt-ins in one week. What counts toward the tier.

For example, an eligible Shopify store has 180 SMS subscribers. It sends two one-segment campaigns, giving 360 units. The cart automation sends 65 one-segment reminders, and the store records 40 billable outgoing service units. The total is 465. During a sale, the second campaign needs two segments, 80 reminders go out and service messages total 42. That raises billed usage to 662. Audience size stayed the same. The final message length and the two automation rows changed the bill.

At 465, the first tier covers the modeled activity and leaves 35 units of headroom. At 662, the same 500-unit tier does not cover the month. The add-on documentation says usage above a tier moves the account into the tier that matches actual volume. Do not turn the difference into a per-text charge by multiplying 162 by an invented overage rate. Ask for the price for the tier your 662-unit scenario reaches.

Now test the boundary using the ordinary month. Thirty-four extra units bring it to 499. Thirty-five bring it to exactly 500. Thirty-six bring it to 501. At 501, the quote needs the next applicable tier, even if the extra unit came from a single service response or a second segment on a reminder. On the other side of the threshold, the help center says unused units do not roll into the next cycle and you still pay for the selected tier. A wider allowance can give you predictability, but you should price that decision on purpose. Below-tier and above-tier billing.

Rehearse the longest version of the text

Open the actual message editor. Put in the store name, the full destination link, the discount if one applies, and the longest realistic contact value. Look at the editor’s segment count and estimated total after you select the recipient list. The sender name and opt-out copy are included in the character count. A short text in a planning spreadsheet can become a longer billable text in the real send. Message editor and preview.

Check the variants that matter. A plain reminder for one product may stay within one segment. A promotion that adds a code or uses an emoji can change the total. Some shoppers may see different content because a personalization field expands. Use a control contact with a short name and a second with the longest value you reasonably expect. Save the editor’s result for both as evidence for your forecast. The billed segment count is a better budget input than applying a universal character rule.

For Shopify cart reminders, the provider’s tutorial describes one URL in the SMS and a cart-specific placeholder. Keep that link in the test. The version that saves a segment by dropping the shopper’s usable cart link may have a lower message cost and a worse journey. Ask whether the personalization and link your store needs can remain in a shorter version. You can then price the short and long forms and decide which one meets the customer’s need. Abandoned cart SMS setup.

Prove which Shopify events and replies the quote covers

The Shopify integration guide describes syncing contacts and running ecommerce email tasks. Its separate cart automation tutorial documents a Shopify template with email and SMS actions and points buyers to the appropriate plan and add-on. Ask to see the actual path on your intended tier. A connected store and an active SMS campaign do not tell you which cart event starts the reminder.

Run the same checkout four ways. Start with an eligible test subscriber who leaves a cart and can receive a reminder. Next, complete the purchase before the reminder is due. Use a separate contact who can receive email but has never opted into SMS. Finally, leave another eligible cart while the old sender or Shopify native reminder is still configured in the test environment. Before enabling a live path, look at the logs for the event, who was eligible, which system queued each send and what happened after purchase. Your purchase-stop and single-owner criteria are buyer acceptance checks, not assumptions about defaults.

If someone replies to ask whether an item fits, the price and flow preview tell you very little about who sees the question or answers it. Ask the vendor to show the reply route, the product information visible to the operator and whether the next scheduled message can be paused. When the store is buying shopper conversation support, Start growing revenue is relevant to that narrower job. Compare the actual reply and handoff with your existing campaigns kept in scope. An email or SMS campaign replacement is a different purchase.

Budget the period before you can send

Constant Contact lets customers try the editor and preview the message before buying. The help center separates that trial from sending a registered campaign. It also states that the chosen paid tier can be charged even if you have not registered or sent any texts. Draft your real text and estimate its segments first. Check sender requirements and who will own the approval before adding the paid feature near a campaign deadline. What the preview lets you try and add-on billing questions.

The registration guide lists business identity and online policy requirements and gives an estimated approval period of seven to ten business days. Treat that as provider guidance. A typo or a rejected application may push a planned send past a promotion, so agree on a fallback channel and keep the old sender until the new workflow passes. Do not switch both at once. In the vendor’s documented mid-cycle purchase, the add-on is prorated. Ask which bill will show the first charge and what the next full cycle will cost. Registration timing.

Include the cost of leaving in the decision. The add-on help page says removing the add-on deactivates registration and forfeits the SMS number immediately. If the number matters, verify your options in writing before removal. Ask for a snapshot of current permission states, identify any messages still queued, and have your replacement team prove the next send on a controlled profile first. Cancelling a subscription and pausing future sends are separate choices. Someone should be able to explain the effect of each before you agree on a cutover date.

Price the work you would keep either way

Suppose the store already pays for Constant Contact email and plans to keep it. Compare the SMS add-on with a separate sender on incremental cost. In both columns, keep the existing email bill where it is. In the add-on column, include the SMS tier, any required email-plan upgrade and time to own the path. In the separate-sender column, include that provider’s rate and the work of moving consent, matching the order event and monitoring two systems. The email invoice only becomes a saving if the proposed change really removes it.

Now run the reverse case. The store is replacing both email and SMS. This time, the entire email base belongs in the comparison. Take the low-usage starting case from the table. If Standard plus the add-on is $45 and Premium is $80, the price difference is $35 before any other items. In a month where Standard has 3,000 chargeable email sends beyond its allowance and Premium has none, the documented overage adds $6 to Standard. That narrows the difference to $29. At 662 SMS units, you need both exact higher-tier amounts before repeating the calculation. The public starting figures do not settle the peak-month choice.

Check the term on each proposal. Constant Contact describes an account balance for some prepaid plans and says added services or contact-tier changes can use that balance faster than expected. The billing guide also says prepayments are non-refundable. A buyer who expects to move in three months should compare the real amounts due and the value left in the current commitment. Do not assume that an add-on selected partway through the term creates a new free month or a refund of the existing term. Prepayment and plan changes.

Keep three lines separate in the final quote. Record cash due this month, recurring costs in a full cycle and one-time migration work. Name the people responsible for the Shopify path and reply queue. That gives finance a number it can reconcile and the operator a scope they can actually test.

What to ask for before upgrading

Ask each finalist for two quotes based on the same inputs. Give them the billable email contact tier, scheduled email sends, ordinary and sale SMS units, sender requirements and the Shopify paths you must retain. Request the monthly base, the exact tier that applies at each usage level, any pass-through charges or included allowances, and the cost and ownership of replying to customers. Compare cash outlay over the same term, especially if one plan prepays and another bills monthly.

Use the Constant Contact SMS quote worksheet to record those inputs and the expected bill lines. Ask the vendor to show where you can retrieve the same totals after a campaign. Reconcile the first full invoice to the email tier, the text units and any upgrade from usage. If the numbers differ, determine whether the contact count, length, automated messages or a commercial term moved. That explanation helps next month’s budget more than an average cost from the public price card.

Keep the current email plan and add SMS when it supports the needed path, the normal and peak quotes are affordable, and one person can own the send. Consider Premium when its additional email or operating features justify the price on the same usage assumptions. Compare a separate service when the store mainly needs a reply workflow, or when its existing email and cart setups are already working and only one job is missing. A failed purchase-stop test, unclear number handling or an unanswered quote line is a reason to pause the purchase even if the starting monthly number looks attractive.

Download the buyer worksheet to keep the quote and test results together.

Sources and method

We read Constant Contact’s US pricing, billing, add-on, registration and Shopify workflow documentation. Prices and account rules are documented as of November 10, 2026. The worked store examples show the arithmetic on stated assumptions. Obtain the actual tier amounts and terms for your account before committing.

Zobi publishes this guide and offers shopper conversation services for Shopify stores. Our SMS segmentation guide explains how message length changes the number of units that get billed.

Publisher disclosure

Zobi publishes this guide and offers shopper conversation services for Shopify stores.