When it comes to any business or organization, accounting and billing are top priorities. Especially these days, carefully managing your budget is key to success. For this reason, we wanted to make sure that visitors to the Community are provided an easily noticeable guide to our relevant Billing articles. Additionally, we want to make sure some frequently asked questions regarding Billing are addressed with some more detail.
For security reasons, we cannot go into a lot of account specifics in the Community. While we can provide basic insight and answer general questions, it’s typically better to call Billing directly. That way they can securely discuss your account’s billing details much more thoroughly.
If you're unable to call Billing to address an issue, you're also welcome to post here in the Community (with respect to our Terms and Guidelines), or email our team at social_support(at)constantcontact(dot)com. If you're emailing us, please make sure to include your account username, and try to email us from an address verified on your account, such as your main sending or billing address.
Additionally, the features and prices available may vary depending on your plan. To view the features available in your plan, please view the plans and pricing page within your account. For an overview of your account's billing page, make sure to check out this article.
Billing and all other support inquiries for Pro accounts are handled by the specialty Pro team, as it uses a wholly different system from standard account plans. If you're needinganyassistance with your Pro account, please check our Knowledge Base for articles tagged as Pro (easily searched for byincluding "Pro" in the search terms). We ask that Pro users needing to get in touch with the Pro support teamsubmit an email formdirectly to the team. These requests can expect a follow up within 24 business hours.
We are a subscription-based system, which means that each month your account renews its subscription, regardless of how much the account was used. Your subscription will continue to renew unless we have received a call or online request to cancel the account. The email address you have set for your account’s billing email will be sent an invoice each month to let you know what your charges were. Your pricing is based on the tiered number of contacts you actively have (0-500, 2501-5000, etc.), so if you go into a higher tier in your current month, your next monthly subscription will reflect that. Our system will always try to charge your account’s balance (from prepayments, credits, etc.) before trying to charge your billing info.
Plans have a monthly send limit of 10-24 times your total contacts, depending on your plan. Beyond this, an overage fee of $0.002 per email is applied toward next month's bill. So for example, if you have a send limit of 24x and 10,000 total contacts, you can send up to 240,000 total emails before the overage fee of one-fifth of a cent per email would kick in. Make sure to check out this article for a full overview of how the send cap and overage fees work.
To compare available features between plans, and to view their respective contact tier subscriptions, you can check out the Plans & Pricing page in your account (found in the drop-down menu when selecting your name in the top-right corner).
For a full breakdown of common “how does billing work” type questions, we’d recommend checking out this article.
Please also make sure to read back over the Terms & Conditions agreed to at the time of sign up and payment for an account. The terms cover billing policies, as well as a lot of other important legal and Compliance information.
Make sure to check out our main article on the Billing tab in your account, if you're needing visual reference on any particular areas or further clarifications on their functions.
If you’d like to take a look at your previous invoices and payment receipts, you can access them through the My Account page – through the Billing subtab. From there you can view your invoices, print/download them, and manually send them in an email. Click here for a detailed guide. If you're looking to generate an invoice for a 6- or 12-month prepayment setup, you can generate one from the same page.
If you're not receiving the automated monthly invoice notifications, make sure the address you want it sent to is both verified on the account and currently set as the account's billing address. If your email address is the account's billing address already, then please check your promotions and subscription updates inbox tabs (if applicable) and spam / junk folder to see if the emails are being received there instead of your normal inbox.
If the recipient of your account's billing information changes, you'll want to make sure their address is no longer being sent invoices and other billing info directly. The account owner canupdate an account's billing addressvia the My Account page. The address they're changing to will need to beverified on the accountbefore it's available as an option. The owner can thenremove the old addressfrom the account, once it's no longer being used as the billing address.
If you ever need to update your account's payment info, the account owner can change this via the My Account page as well.
What if I accidentally go into a higher tier, but don’t want to pay the higher amount?
Accidents can happen, and we understand that. One thing we’ll always suggest is to remove any Recommended for Removal bounces from your most recent email(s), to see if that will lower your contacts enough. The next step would be to segment and remove contacts that have consistently not opened your emails (we recommend adding them to a new Delete list after segmentation to efficiently mass-delete). Otherwise the next suggestion will be to simply remove those most recent contact uploads through the list(s) they were added to, or from your main active contacts view. Once you’ve gotten your contacts back down to the lower tier, please call our Billing team so they can review the contact and send activity, and manually lower your tier.
Please bear in mind that if you send any emails after increasing your contacts to this higher level, our Billing teamwill notbe able to manually lower your tier for your upcoming billing cycle.
We offer a wide variety of add-ons, as well as specialty services to assist with your marketing. Some of these services and add-ons have additional costs, and are continuous monthly charges. All paid add-ons and services require explicit agreements to pay for those services, whether that’s a clearly audible “yes” when agreeing to charges over the phone, or explicitly clicking the checkmark boxes and subsequent large agreement buttons online. Some add-ons, such as Inbox Preview or SMS marketing can be cancelled directly through our Billing team. However some services, such as the Marketing Manager and Marketing Advisor services, either have contracts or have particular ways their teams manage billing elements, and require contacting your service agent to get everything taken care of.
That said, we’re here to help through any of our support channels. If you’re unable to get ahold of Billing or your assigned service agent to cancel the add-on for whatever reason, just let us know by emailing social_support(at)constantcontact(dot)com. We’ll make sure your request is recorded and submitted to the proper people to take care of.
Do you offer package deals or bulk subscription payments?
We offer 6- and 12-month prepayment options, with reduced monthly charges as part of those prepayments. The discounts are 10% and 15% off per month respectively (or 20% and 30% off if your account is set up for non-profit status). You can switch into and out of prepayment from within your account. Prepayment subscriptions function like the standard monthly subscriptions, so if you decide you don’t want to renew your next prepayment cycle, make sure to change it within your account before the system charges you for another 6 or 12 months!
When setting up your prepayment, if you wish to use your existing online payment method (card, Amazon, PayPal, etc.), then you'll do this by selecting the "Edit payment plan" button in the Billing tab of your My Account screen. If you wish to pay by paper check (United States only), or wish to generate a prepayment invoice to have on hand, you'll select the button that says "Generate a pre-payment" and print/download it.
Please remember that prepayment doesn’t necessarily “lock in” your price. If you prepay for 0-500 contacts on a lower level plan and then switch to higher level plan or increase your contacts to a higher tier, the prepayment / credit pool in your account will drain faster. Similarly, if you prepay at 5k-10k on a higher level plan, but later downgrade your plan or reduce your contacts to a lower tier, your pool will last longer. You’ll still be “charged” monthly and receive monthly invoices breaking down your subscription, but you’ll still see the prepayment discounts reflected in those invoices.
Our Billing team is able to collect specific documents related to Non-Profits and non-taxable statuses. Please review this guide, and its corresponding links to more specific articles, to make sure you’re collecting and sending the proper info in. Once Billing receives these details, they’ll make sure to notify you regarding your account’s updated status.
Please note, some trial accounts may not have the option to submit paperwork directly through their account until payment info is submitted and subscription agreed to. In these cases, you'll need to provide your tax documentation through the email or physical mail options listed in the article. For more info or for assistance, please call the Billing team.
I have regional / country-specific fees, where do I find how to set those up in my account?
Many countries and regions have their own taxes and online fees. This can vary significantly, so we’d recommend looking up the name or acronym of your particular system in our Knowledge Base, or call Billing for more details. For example, some EU customers may have a Value-Added-Tax (VAT) number that needs to be applied to their account. Another example is that some US states have taxes for online purchases (including subscriptions), so your invoice may automatically reflect that if you’re in an applicable state.
Sometimes you may only need to use your account for a few months out of the year, or perhaps you need to reduce your costs and account functions during slower periods, but still want to access your account. We understand, and that’s why we have account suspension available. For a significantly reduced price (based on contact tiers), suspension allows certain automated functions of your account (such as sign up forms and welcome emails) to continue while you’re not actively making new ads, social media posts, emails, etc.
If you no longer wish to use our services, or you need to “pause” your account without having to pay, you can cancel your account online or by calling our Billing team. Please keep in mind that some accounts may not have the online option available due to having a billing or review flag on their account, or because they're billed through a 3rd party service they signed up through. If you're not seeing the option to cancel your account online, please call our Billing team, or send us an email so we can assist further.
When you cancel, it’s based on the current billing cycle you’re paid for, so you’ll still have full access to your account for the remainder of your current cycle. Please bear in mind that if you choose to cancel while you still have credits / a prepayment pool, they will be surrendered. Any automated functions (sign up form submissions, integration syncs, auto emails, etc.) will also cease functionality.
Accounts are still available for reactivation for at least 120 days post-cancellation, after which they’ll enter a queue for purging. Our system will automatically email you when your cancelled account is close to purging. If you reactivate prior to being purged, all your emails, reporting, contacts, etc. will be as you left them, but previous automation series will need to be copied to “reactivate” them.
We hope this post can help efficiently answer some common billing questions you may have. We’re always happy to help here in the Community if you have any general questions regarding billing. If you’re unable to call one of Billing’s phone lines, we can also submit callback tickets to the Billing team on your behalf. Please email social_support(at)constantcontact(dot)com with your account username and billing request. Make sure that the email is coming from either the account’s main email address or its billing email address.
