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ActiveCampaign Pricing Guide 2026: Every Plan Explained

ActiveCampaign is one of the more capable email marketing platforms on the market, but its pricing structure takes some work to understand. Costs scale with your contact count, plans unlock features in a non-obvious order, and the jump from one tier to the next can be steep. This guide breaks everything down so you know what you're actually paying for before you commit.

What ActiveCampaign Actually Is

Before getting into pricing, it's worth being clear about what you're buying. ActiveCampaign is primarily an email marketing automation platform with a built-in CRM. The automation builder is its strongest feature — you can create multi-step sequences based on contact behavior, tags, custom fields, deal stages, and site activity. It's genuinely good at this.

What it isn't: a simple newsletter tool. If you're sending a monthly update to a few hundred people, ActiveCampaign is overkill and you'll pay for features you'll never use. For that use case, Mailchimp's free plan or Kit's free plan will serve you better and cost less.

ActiveCampaign makes the most sense when your email strategy involves conditional logic — different messages for different segments, lead scoring, follow-up sequences that vary based on what someone clicked, or connecting email behavior to a sales pipeline.

ActiveCampaign Pricing Plans at 1,000 Contacts

All prices below are based on a 1,000-contact list, billed annually. Month-to-month billing adds roughly 20-25%.

| Plan | Price/mo (annual) | Contacts | Key Features | |---|---|---|---| | Starter | $15 | 1,000 | Basic automation, email campaigns, 1 user | | Plus | $49 | 1,000 | CRM, lead scoring, SMS, 3 users | | Professional | $79 | 1,000 | Predictive sending, site messaging, 5 users | | Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom reporting, dedicated support, SSO |

These are entry-level prices. The number that matters more for most businesses is what happens when your list grows.

How Contact-Based Pricing Works

ActiveCampaign charges based on the number of contacts in your account, not the number of emails you send. Every plan has a base contact tier, and you move up as your list grows.

Here's how the Starter plan scales:

| Contacts | Starter | Plus | Professional | |---|---|---|---| | 1,000 | $15/mo | $49/mo | $79/mo | | 2,500 | $23/mo | $59/mo | $99/mo | | 5,000 | $45/mo | $89/mo | $149/mo | | 10,000 | $69/mo | $135/mo | $219/mo | | 25,000 | $135/mo | $225/mo | $349/mo | | 50,000 | $229/mo | $375/mo | $559/mo | | 75,000 | $299/mo | $479/mo | $699/mo | | 100,000 | $369/mo | $549/mo | $849/mo |

All prices are approximate, billed annually. ActiveCampaign's pricing page gives exact figures for your specific contact count.

The scaling is where ActiveCampaign starts to feel expensive compared to alternatives. At 50,000 contacts on the Plus plan, you're looking at $4,500/year. Kit's Creator Pro plan covers 50,000 subscribers for around $1,788/year. If you don't need the CRM or advanced automation, that gap matters.

Starter Plan — $15/mo at 1,000 Contacts

The Starter plan gives you access to email campaigns, basic automation, landing pages, and one user seat. The automation builder is included, which is the most important thing — you can set up welcome sequences, basic drip campaigns, and behavioral triggers.

What Starter doesn't include: the CRM, lead scoring, SMS messaging, or integrations with major CRM tools like Salesforce. You also get limited reporting and only one user, which is a constraint if you're working with a small team.

Starter is a reasonable starting point if you want to learn the platform before committing to a higher tier. It's not a plan you'd stay on long-term if ActiveCampaign is a core part of your sales process.

Plus Plan — $49/mo at 1,000 Contacts

Plus is where ActiveCampaign starts to earn its reputation. This tier adds the built-in CRM, deal pipelines, lead scoring, contact and deal scoring, SMS marketing, and three user seats.

The CRM integration is the differentiator here. Contacts in your email list are connected directly to deals in the pipeline, so sales and marketing activity share the same data. When a lead clicks a specific link or reaches a certain score threshold, you can automatically move them to a new deal stage or assign them to a rep. That kind of native connection between email automation and CRM is harder to replicate by integrating separate tools.

Lead scoring is also useful if you're qualifying leads before sales reaches out. You can assign positive and negative point values based on email opens, clicks, page visits, form submissions, and deal activity. When a contact crosses a threshold, trigger an automation.

For most businesses that are genuinely using ActiveCampaign as a sales tool rather than just a newsletter platform, Plus is the practical starting point.

Professional Plan — $79/mo at 1,000 Contacts

Professional adds predictive sending (ActiveCampaign's AI-driven send time optimization), predictive content, site messaging, and five user seats. You also get access to attribution reporting, which tracks which campaigns and automations are actually driving conversions.

Predictive sending uses machine learning to determine the best time to deliver email to each individual contact based on their historical open patterns. Whether this materially improves open rates in practice depends on your list quality and volume. The feature works best with larger, more active lists — at 1,000 contacts, the data set is limited.

Site messaging adds on-site popups and notification bars that connect to your automation data. This can be useful for personalizing on-site experiences based on what segment a visitor belongs to, but it's a feature most businesses won't fully exploit.

Professional is worth it if you're doing serious volume and want the reporting and send-time optimization. For most businesses at the 1,000-5,000 contact range, Plus does the job.

Enterprise Plan — Custom Pricing

Enterprise is for organizations with complex compliance requirements, high volumes, or a need for dedicated onboarding and support. It adds custom reporting, SSO, HIPAA compliance options, unlimited users, and a dedicated account rep.

ActiveCampaign doesn't publish Enterprise pricing. You negotiate based on contact volume and feature requirements. If you're at this stage, the conversation is worth having — Enterprise contracts often include negotiated discounts for annual commitments.

The Automation Builder: The Core Reason to Pay

The automation builder is the thing that makes ActiveCampaign worth evaluating seriously. It's visual, logic-based, and handles conditional branching well. You can build sequences like:

• Contact submits form → wait 1 day → if they visited pricing page, send email A; if not, send email B
• Contact opens email → tag them as "interested" → notify sales rep via internal notification
• Deal reaches "Proposal Sent" stage → start 5-day follow-up sequence → if deal closes, remove from sequence and add to customer onboarding

This level of conditional logic is where ActiveCampaign outperforms Mailchimp. Mailchimp's automation is simpler and works fine for basic sequences, but it gets awkward when you need branching logic or CRM-connected triggers.

Compared to Klaviyo (which is e-commerce focused), ActiveCampaign handles B2B service businesses and mixed models better. Compared to HubSpot, ActiveCampaign is significantly cheaper at equivalent feature levels, though HubSpot's CRM is more mature.

Honest Pros and Cons

What ActiveCampaign does well:

• The automation builder is genuinely flexible and powerful
• Native CRM integration without needing a separate tool
• Lead scoring works as advertised
• Contact segmentation is detailed
• Integrations with most major tools (Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, Zapier, etc.)
• Active user community and documentation

What ActiveCampaign doesn't do well:

• Pricing scales quickly — gets expensive at 25,000+ contacts compared to Kit or MailerLite
• The UI has improved but still has rough edges in some areas
• Email template editor is functional but not as polished as some competitors
• Reporting on lower tiers is limited
• Onboarding can feel overwhelming — the feature set is broad and not all of it is well surfaced
• No free plan — only a 14-day trial

Who Should Not Use ActiveCampaign

If you're sending a monthly newsletter with no automation, ActiveCampaign is the wrong tool. You're paying for an automation engine you won't use.

If you're primarily an e-commerce business with Shopify or WooCommerce, Klaviyo is purpose-built for that model and will serve you better — its revenue attribution, abandoned cart flows, and purchase-based segmentation are more native than ActiveCampaign's.

If budget is tight and your list is growing fast, run the contact-scaling numbers before committing. At 50,000+ contacts, Kit or MailerLite may cover 80% of what you need at half the price.

ActiveCampaign vs. Key Competitors

| Factor | ActiveCampaign | Mailchimp | Kit | Klaviyo | |---|---|---|---|---| | Automation depth | High | Medium | Medium | High (e-commerce) | | Built-in CRM | Yes (Plus+) | No | No | No | | Free plan | No (14-day trial) | Yes | Yes (10k subs) | Yes (250 contacts) | | Price at 10k contacts | $135/mo (Plus) | ~$135/mo | $25/mo | ~$150/mo | | Best for | B2B, complex funnels | Simple newsletters | Creators, courses | E-commerce |

The Kit comparison is the most relevant for businesses evaluating whether ActiveCampaign's price premium is justified. Kit at $25/month for 10,000 subscribers includes solid automation, tag-based segmentation, landing pages, and a commerce layer. If you don't need the CRM or lead scoring, Kit is significantly cheaper for comparable email features.

Is There a Free Plan?

No. ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial with access to most features, but there's no ongoing free tier. This is a meaningful disadvantage compared to Mailchimp (free up to 500 contacts) and Kit (free up to 10,000 subscribers).

The trial is long enough to build out a few automations and test the platform properly. Use it before committing.

How to Get a Lower Price

A few things worth knowing:

• Annual billing saves 15-25% compared to month-to-month. The prices throughout this guide are annual rates.
• Negotiating on Enterprise is standard practice — don't pay list price for high-contact-count deals.
• Nonprofit discounts are available. Contact their sales team directly.
• Bundle pricing — if you need the CRM functionality but are primarily on it for the sales pipeline, check whether HubSpot's free CRM plus a cheaper email tool works out to less.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does ActiveCampaign charge per email sent or per contact? Per contact. There's no sending limit — you pay based on how many contacts are in your account, regardless of how often you email them.

Can I downgrade my plan later? Yes, though you'd lose access to features from the higher tier immediately. On annual contracts, refunds are not standard — read the terms before committing.

Does the contact count include unsubscribed contacts? Unsubscribed contacts still count toward your total unless you delete them. It's worth periodically cleaning your list to avoid paying for contacts who will never receive another email from you.

Is there a limit on how many emails I can send? No sending cap on any plan. You can email your full list as often as you want.

What happens at the end of my trial? Your account pauses and contacts are retained, but you can't send campaigns until you select a paid plan.

Can I use ActiveCampaign without the CRM? Yes. The CRM is an add-on feature within the platform. You don't have to use it. On the Starter plan, it isn't even included.

Conclusion

ActiveCampaign earns its reputation as one of the better automation platforms on the market. The automation builder is flexible, the CRM integration is genuinely useful for B2B businesses, and the platform handles complex conditional logic better than most alternatives in the price range.

The trade-off is cost. It's not cheap, and the scaling curve means the bill climbs meaningfully as your list grows. If your business has sales funnels with multiple steps, lead qualification requirements, or a sales team that needs email and CRM data in one place, the price is likely justified. If you're running simple campaigns or a creator-style newsletter, look at Kit or MailerLite first.

The 14-day trial is the right place to start. Build out a real automation, import a sample of your contacts, and see how the platform actually works for your use case before committing.

Try ActiveCampaign →