Constant Contact’s email send allowance and overage fee

How many emails you can send in a month and how much you’ll be charged if you exceed the allowance

To help maintain Constant Contact’s strong sending reputation, we are implementing a monthly email send allowance and overage fee if the allowance is exceeded. We don’t take this change lightly, which is why our send allowance is the most generous of any digital marketing platform. For more information, please take a look at our frequently asked questions below:

How many emails can I send?

Depending on your selected email plan, Constant Contact customers can send up to 10, 12, or 24 times the highest number of contacts in your contact pricing tier during a given billing cycle. For example, if you’re in the 0-500 contact tier, your email send allowance could be 10 x 500 = 5,000 email sends.

You can find your monthly send allowance and current contact tier by clicking the profile name in the upper-right corner of your account and selecting Plans & pricing from the drop-down.

Important: One send is defined as one email sent to one contact, so an email sent to 10 contacts = 10 sends. Even if an email bounces, it still counts as a send.

What are overage fees?

Overage fees are charged when an account sends more than the maximum email send allowance during a given billing cycle.

How are overage fees calculated?

Overage fees are assessed at $0.002 for every send over the maximum send allowance. A send is defined as an email per contact. So for every 1,000 sends over the monthly allowance, there will be a $2 fee.

Example 1: No overage fee

Let's say an account has a monthly send allowance of 10x their contact tier and has 1,500 contacts during the billing cycle, so the highest number of contacts in their contact tier is 2,500. This makes the email send allowance 25,000 sends. If the account sends 20,000 emails, the account is not assessed an overage fee, as it is below the send allowance of 25,000.

2,500 contacts x 10 = 25,000 sends allowed

Example 2: Overage fee

If that same account sent 40,000 emails during the billing cycle, they would be 15,000 over their maximum send allowance. At $0.002 per additional send, the account would be charged an overage fee of $30.

40,000 sends - 25,000 send allowance = 15,000 over send allowance
15,000 send overage x $0.002 overage rate = $30 overage fee

Why do you charge overage fees?

We charge overage fees to help cover the costs associated with managing our high deliverability standards. Our deliverability is what ensures your emails are delivered successfully to your contacts.

Do automated emails count towards the email send allowance?

Automated emails, such as Welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and automated email series, are excluded from the email send allowance and overage fee calculation. Only campaigns that can be scheduled in advance, including automatic resends to non-openers, are included in the email send allowance. 

Because of this, please keep in mind:

• Since you don’t know how many contacts aren’t going to open your original email, you won’t know for sure how many resends to non-openers there will be. However, you may be able to get a general idea if your previous emails have a consistent open rate.
• Resends to non-openers occur on a different day than the original email, so it’s possible the resends could count towards a different billing cycle than the original.

Where can I see the number of sends each month so I know if I’m near my monthly allowance?

You can view your email send usage for the current billing period on the Billing tab within your account settings.

Important: Resends are not included in the stats on the Reporting tab, so you should always refer to your account page to see your most accurate send count for the billing period.

What can I do if my account is about to exceed the number of allowed sends?

Since bounced emails count towards your send allowance, consider cleaning up your contact list to remove any outdated or disengaged contacts. List hygiene should be something you check periodically to ensure you’re sending to the contacts who want to hear from you, as well as ensuring you have high deliverability rates. Learn how to clean up your list. 

You might also want to consider segmenting your contacts so that you can send more targeted content to smaller groups of your audience, instead of sending every email to your entire contact list. For instance, you may be sending a monthly newsletter to your entire list once a month. Instead, you could be sending it to a more targeted list of contacts who have shown they’re interested in receiving an email from you every week. Not segmenting yet? Here’s how you can get started. 

Another way to reduce sends is to use dynamic content to personalize your emails. 
 

I’m worried I might be close to or over my allowance. What should I do?

If you’re worried that you’re about to exceed your send allowance, consider cleaning your list by removing contacts who have not engaged with your emails in some time. Then, consider how often you’re sending emails. Do you need to send every campaign? Can you send that campaign to a segment of your contacts? With our segmentation tools, you can easily find your most engaged contacts and only send to them.

What do other email platforms charge? 

Other email platforms also charge overage fees for sends. Mailchimp, for instance, has a 10-15x email send allowance based on the tier of service.

I have a prepaid plan. If I have an overage fee, does the fee come out of that payment?

Overage fee charges will be deducted from the account balance. If there is an insufficient balance to cover the overage fees, the charges will be collected from the payment method you have on file in your account.

Questions?