ActiveCampaign

Name: ActiveCampaign
Brand: ActiveCampaign
Price: 15100019 USD

The deepest automation builder a small business can actually buy

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation and email platform for small and mid-size businesses, built around a visual automation builder with conditional branching, goals, and split testing of whole sequences, combined with site and event tracking, lead scoring, a marketing CRM with deal pipelines, and add-on channels including SMS, WhatsApp, and transactional email through its Postmark acquisition.

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Overview

ActiveCampaign is the oldest company in this category by some distance. Jason VandeBoom founded it in Chicago in 2003 as licensed software, converted it to SaaS, and is still CEO more than twenty years later, which is close to unheard of. The product's identity has always been automation depth rather than editor polish or brand recognition: while Mailchimp was teaching small businesses to send a newsletter, ActiveCampaign was giving them if-or-else branching, goals, wait-until conditions, and math operations inside a workflow canvas.

That depth is still the reason to buy it. The builder supports conditional splits, a Split action with up to five variations, goals that pull contacts forward when they convert, arbitrary event tracking from your website or application as triggers, and, distinctively, the ability to split test entirely different automation paths rather than just two versions of one email. More than 200 prebuilt recipes plus a marketplace of community-contributed ones mean you are rarely starting from a blank canvas. Roughly 180,000 customers across 170-plus countries run on it, and it raised $240M from Tiger Global in April 2021 at a valuation above $3 billion.

There is a significant caveat that most reviews have not caught up with. On 3 November 2025 ActiveCampaign changed how it counts contacts for new accounts. Accounts created on or after that date are billed on all contacts, including unsubscribed, unconfirmed, and bounced records. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025 are grandfathered onto the old active-contacts-only basis. If you are signing up today, you are on the inclusive meter, and a list with years of accumulated unsubscribes will cost meaningfully more than the same list would have a year ago. This is the single most important thing to know before comparing quotes.

The pricing page has also stopped publishing static numbers. Every plan card now reads that it starts at a rate you have to configure through a contact slider, with a request-pricing path alongside. Signup is still genuinely self-serve with a 14-day trial and no credit card, so the platform stays in scope for a small business, but you can no longer read a rate card. Widely reported figures put Starter around $15 a month at 1,000 contacts on annual billing, Plus around $49, Pro around $79, and Enterprise around $145, with 10,000 contacts running roughly $149, $189, $375, and $589 respectively. Treat those as indicative and confirm in the configurator.

Best for

Small and mid-size businesses with a real sales process rather than a checkout: consultancies, agencies, coaches, B2B services, and course sellers who need behavioral automation, lead scoring, and deal pipelines in one system and will actually use the branching depth they are paying for.

Not the right fit for

Anyone who just wants to send a newsletter; you would be buying and paying for an automation engine you never open, and MailerLite, EmailOctopus, or Kit will do that job for a fraction of the money with a nicer editor.
New accounts with large, old lists carrying years of unsubscribes; since November 2025 new accounts are billed on all contacts including unsubscribed and bounced, so historical dead weight is now a direct monthly cost.
Ecommerce brands whose priority is revenue attribution and predictive commerce segmentation; Klaviyo and Omnisend are purpose-built for that and ActiveCampaign is not.
Buyers who need to compare rate cards before talking to anyone; the pricing page no longer publishes static numbers, and extra seats and most add-ons are genuinely unpublished.
Solo operators on the Starter plan expecting full capability; Starter includes one seat and caps automations at five actions each, which is not enough to build anything real.

How it works

1
You import contacts and install the site tracking script. ActiveCampaign's data model is a single contact database with tags, custom fields, and lists, and its tracking layer records page visits plus arbitrary custom events you post from your site or application. That event stream is what makes the automation genuinely behavioral rather than just scheduled.
2
Automations are built on a visual canvas. A workflow starts from a trigger (a form submission, a tag applied, a page visited, a custom event, a date, a deal stage change), then flows through actions and control structures: if-or-else conditions, a Split action with up to five branches, wait-until conditions, goals that jump a contact forward when they convert, tag and field manipulation, score arithmetic, and webhooks that call your own services mid-flow. Starter caps automations at five actions each, which is restrictive enough to matter; Plus and above are unlimited.
3
Contacts accumulate scores as they move. Lead scoring on Plus and above lets you assign points for opens, clicks, page visits, events, and field values, then branch on the total, which is how a marketing list turns into a sales-qualified queue. The built-in CRM holds deals in pipelines, and deal stage changes are themselves automation triggers, so marketing and sales activity feed each other in one system.
4
Sending covers campaigns and automated emails, with A/B testing up to five variations, predictive sending and predictive content on Pro, and conditional content that changes blocks per recipient. Channels beyond email are add-ons: SMS credits, a separate WhatsApp product line built on the 2025 Hilos acquisition, and transactional email through Postmark, which ActiveCampaign acquired in 2022 and still runs as its own service with its own bill.

Feature breakdown

31 features in 6 modules

Automation

The reason the product exists and the only category where it clearly leads.

Visual automation builder: Multi-branch canvas with if-or-else conditions, wait and wait-until steps, goals that pull contacts forward on conversion, tag and field actions, score arithmetic, and webhooks callable as a step.
Split action with five variations: Route contacts down as many as five different paths from one point, which enables genuine experimentation rather than a binary test.
Split testing whole automations: Test entirely different sequences against each other, not just two versions of one email. Very few platforms at this price can express that at all.
200-plus automation recipes: Prebuilt workflows plus a marketplace of community-contributed recipes, so common patterns are an import rather than a build.
Goals: A conversion event can jump a contact out of the remaining sequence, which stops people receiving the nurture emails for something they already did.
Starter action cap: Worth knowing as a limitation rather than a feature: the Starter plan caps each automation at five actions. Plus and above are unlimited.

Data, tracking, and scoring

What makes the automation behavioral instead of scheduled.

Site tracking: A script records page visits against known contacts, so browsing behavior becomes an automation trigger and a segmentation condition.
Custom event tracking: Arbitrary events (video watched, feature used, login, in-app action) can be posted through an API endpoint and used as triggers, which is how a SaaS product drives lifecycle messaging here.
Lead scoring: Point-based scoring on contacts and deals from opens, clicks, visits, events, and field values, available from the Plus plan up.
Advanced segmentation: Multi-condition segments across tags, fields, engagement, site behavior, and events; the deepest segmentation and attribution reporting is gated to Pro.
Deep Data integrations: A framework for pulling richer ecommerce and application data into the contact record than a standard connector provides.

CRM and sales

A real pipeline, though the deeper parts moved into add-ons in the 2024 restructure.

Deal pipelines: Visual pipelines with stages, deal owners, tasks, and notes, with stage changes usable as automation triggers in both directions.
Sales automation: Automations can create deals, move stages, assign owners, and schedule tasks, so the handoff from marketing to sales is automated rather than manual.
Enhanced pipelines and sales engagement add-ons: Since the 2024 plan restructure dissolved the separate Sales plans, the deeper CRM capability including AI deal analysis is sold as paid add-ons rather than bundled.
Seat allocation: Starter includes 1 seat, Plus 1, Pro 3, and Enterprise 5. Additional seat pricing is not published, so budget for it as a quoted item.

Sending, content, and channels

Competent email plus a growing set of separately-billed channels.

Campaigns with A/B testing: One-off sends with split testing across as many as five variations on subject, sender, and content.
Predictive sending and predictive content: Per-contact optimal send timing and dynamically chosen content variants, both gated to the Pro plan.
Conditional content: Blocks that show or hide per recipient based on their fields, tags, or behavior, so one email serves several audiences. Pro tier.
Send allowance tied to contacts: Monthly sends are capped at 10 times your contact count on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro, and 15 times on Enterprise, with overage reported at around half a cent per extra email.
Forms, landing pages, and site messages: Forms on all plans, landing pages from Plus, and on-site messages from Plus, all feeding the same contact database.
SMS and WhatsApp: SMS as metered credits, and WhatsApp as an entirely separate product line with its own Core, Advanced, and Premium tiers, built on the April 2025 Hilos acquisition.
Transactional email via Postmark: ActiveCampaign acquired Postmark in May 2022 and sells transactional sending as a separate add-on, so product email and marketing email come from the same corporate parent but different products and bills.

AI and reporting

The 2025 and 2026 investment area, branded Active Intelligence.

Autonomous Insights: Announced January 2026, surfaces proactive recommendations and weekly campaign analysis with suggested next steps rather than waiting for you to build a report.
Agent-to-user AI: Launched at the April 2026 Spring Innovation Keynote, the platform initiates recommendations unprompted and can personalize content to a learned brand voice.
Conversational campaign and automation generation: Describe a campaign or workflow in a prompt and have the builder assemble a starting point.
Revenue attribution and custom reporting: Attribution and conversion tracking at the Pro tier, with custom report building available as a paid add-on.

Developer surface

Solid, and deliberately made agent-addressable in 2025 and 2026.

REST API v3: Resource-oriented JSON API covering contacts, deals, automations, campaigns, lists, and tags, with API key header auth and per-account rate limits.
Webhooks: Outbound webhooks on account and contact events, plus webhooks callable as an action inside an automation.
App Studio and CX Apps: A self-serve developer portal for building and testing apps with OAuth2 and bidirectional sync, publishable to a public marketplace; Twilio, Calendly, and Slack shipped this way.
MCP server: A Model Context Protocol server so an AI assistant can query and act on the account directly.
Developer sandboxes: Free sandbox accounts for building against, with documentation at developers.activecampaign.com that serves Markdown by appending .md to any docs URL.

Use cases

4 documented

B2B consultancy nurturing a long sales cycle

Leads download a guide, then go quiet for months, and the founder has no way to tell who is warming up and no capacity to follow up manually.

Site tracking plus lead scoring surfaces who is actually reading, a branching nurture sequence adapts to what they click, a goal pulls them out when they book, and the deal is created in the pipeline automatically at the scoring threshold.

Course seller with several products

One list, five products, and everyone receives every launch email, so unsubscribes spike after each campaign and buyers get pitched things they already own.

Tag-driven branching and conditional content give each segment a different path through the same automation, and goals ensure purchasers stop receiving the sequence for a product they bought.

SaaS founder driving lifecycle messaging from product events

Onboarding emails go out on a fixed schedule regardless of whether the user has actually completed setup, which reads as tone-deaf and hurts activation.

Custom events posted from the application become triggers and wait-until conditions, so the sequence responds to what the user did rather than to how many days have passed.

Agency standardizing client workflows

Every client needs a similar nurture and qualification architecture rebuilt from scratch, and proving which sequence performs better is guesswork.

Automation recipes and the marketplace stamp out a standard architecture per client, and split testing whole automation paths gives the agency a defensible answer about which structure actually converts.

Pricing

from About $15/mo on Starter at 1,000 contacts billed annually (about $19 monthly)

Self-serve tiers priced by contact count with a 14-day trial, where monthly sends are capped at a multiple of the contact count. Critically, accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 are billed on all contacts including unsubscribed, unconfirmed, and bounced records; earlier accounts are grandfathered onto active contacts only. WhatsApp, SMS, transactional email, and deeper CRM capability are separately priced.

Plan	Price	Includes
Starter	About $15 at 1,000 contacts annually (about $19 monthly), about $149 at 10,000 per month	1 seat Automations capped at 5 actions each Sends capped at 10 times your contact count Basic forms and marketing CRM Live chat and email support The action cap makes this a trial tier in practice. Anyone buying ActiveCampaign for automation will outgrow Starter almost immediately.
Plus	About $49 at 1,000 contacts annually (about $59 monthly), about $189 at 10,000, about $609 at 50,000 per month	Unlimited automation actions Lead scoring Landing pages and site messages 1 seat included Sends capped at 10 times your contact count The real entry point. Unlimited automation actions and lead scoring are what people actually came for.
Pro	About $79 at 1,000 contacts annually (about $99 monthly), about $375 at 10,000, about $969 at 50,000 per month	Predictive sending and predictive content Conditional content Advanced segmentation and attribution reporting 3 seats included Sends capped at 12 times your contact count Where attribution reporting and the predictive features live. A real jump in price for capabilities many small businesses will not use.
Enterprise	About $145 at 1,000 contacts annually (about $179 monthly), about $589 at 10,000, about $1,169 at 50,000 per month	5 seats included Sends capped at 15 times your contact count HIPAA support with a signed BAA Uptime SLA, dedicated account rep, and phone support Custom implementation, data migration service, and deliverability monitoring HIPAA is Enterprise-only, which is the deciding factor for any healthcare-adjacent buyer.

Add-ons

Dedicated IP ($750 setup per IP): Available on any plan but gated by volume: ActiveCampaign wants roughly 100,000 active, opted-in, engaged contacts to keep the IP warm, and says about 99 percent of customers do better on shared.
Transactional email (Postmark) (From roughly $15 per 10,000 emails): A separate product with its own bill, acquired by ActiveCampaign in May 2022.
WhatsApp (Separate Core, Advanced, and Premium tiers): An entirely separate product line built on the April 2025 Hilos acquisition, priced by WhatsApp contact count.
Enhanced CRM and sales engagement (Not published): Deeper pipeline capability and AI deal analysis moved into paid add-ons when the separate Sales plans were dissolved in the 2024 restructure.
Additional seats (Not published): Genuinely unpublished. Treat extra seats as a quoted item and ask before committing, particularly on Starter and Plus which include only one.

Billing notes

The contact-counting change is the headline. Accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 are billed on all contacts, including unsubscribed, unconfirmed, and bounced records. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025 keep the old active-contacts-only basis. A new account importing a list with years of accumulated unsubscribes now pays for every one of them.
Modelled monthly bill on Plus, billed annually: about $49 at 1,000 contacts, about $189 at 10,000, and about $609 at 50,000. On Pro the same bands run about $79, $375, and $969. Starter caps out before 50,000 contacts.
Monthly sends are capped at 10 times contacts on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro, and 15 times on Enterprise, with overage reported at around half a cent per additional email. Send frequency, not just list size, therefore drives your plan choice.
Annual billing saves roughly 15 to 20 percent against monthly. Non-profits are offered a further 20 percent discount.
The pricing page no longer publishes static figures. Every plan reads that it starts at a rate you configure through a contact slider, with a request-pricing path alongside, so the numbers above are widely reported rather than quoted from a rate card and must be confirmed in the configurator.
Seat counts are tight and extra seat pricing is unpublished. Starter and Plus include one seat each, Pro three, and Enterprise five, which is a real constraint for any team of more than a couple of people.
SMS credits, WhatsApp, transactional email through Postmark, and the enhanced CRM capability are all separate line items. The plan price is a floor, not a total.

Value assessment: If you genuinely use the automation, ActiveCampaign is worth its price and there is nothing comparable at this level of the market. Split testing entire automation paths, wait-until conditions, goals, arbitrary event triggers, and lead scoring feeding a real pipeline is a combination that Mailchimp, MailerLite, and Brevo simply cannot match. The problem is that most buyers do not use it. A business that ends up sending broadcasts and one welcome sequence is paying roughly $189 a month at 10,000 contacts for capability it never touches, when MailerLite would charge a fraction of that. Two 2025 and 2026 changes have also degraded the value proposition: billing new accounts for unsubscribed contacts, and pulling deeper CRM capability out of the bundle into add-ons. Buy it deliberately, on the basis of specific workflows you have already sketched, and it earns its keep. Buy it because it appears near the top of comparison articles and you will overpay considerably.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

The deepest automation builder available to a small business: conditional branching, five-way splits, wait-until conditions, goals, score arithmetic, and mid-flow webhooks on one canvas.
Split testing entire automation sequences against each other, not just email variants, which almost nothing else at this price can express.
Arbitrary custom event tracking makes lifecycle messaging genuinely behavioral, and is what lets a SaaS product drive onboarding from real product usage.
Lead scoring feeding a built-in CRM with deal pipelines, where stage changes are themselves automation triggers, closes the marketing and sales loop in one system.
More than 200 prebuilt automation recipes plus a community marketplace, so common architectures are an import rather than a build.
Serious developer surface: REST API v3, webhooks including as automation actions, an App Studio with OAuth2 for building publishable apps, free sandboxes, and an MCP server.
Twenty-plus years old with the founder still as CEO, roughly 180,000 customers, and $240M raised from Tiger Global at a valuation above $3 billion, so it is not going anywhere.
HIPAA support with a signed BAA on the Enterprise plan, which very few products in this category offer at all.

Limitations

New accounts since 3 November 2025 are billed on all contacts including unsubscribed and bounced, a straight monetization tightening that makes an old list materially more expensive to bring across.
The pricing page no longer publishes static prices, and extra seats, enhanced CRM, and most add-ons are genuinely unpublished, so total cost is hard to establish before committing.
The Starter plan's five-action cap per automation makes it unusable for the thing the product is bought for, so the real entry price is Plus.
Seat allocations are stingy: one seat on Starter and Plus, three on Pro, five on Enterprise, with unpublished pricing for more.
Overkill for simple sending. If your plan is a newsletter and a welcome email, you are paying several times over for a canvas you will not open.
The email editor and template library are unremarkable and feel dated next to MailerLite, Kit, or Mailchimp.
The 2024 restructure dissolved the separate Sales plans and moved deeper CRM capability into add-ons, so the CRM story is less bundled than it used to be.
Dedicated IP costs $750 to set up and effectively requires around 100,000 engaged contacts to be worth having, so it is not a practical option for most buyers.
March 2025 saw abrupt layoffs reported with six weeks of severance, which is worth noting for anyone weighing organizational stability alongside product capability.

Head-to-head comparisons

5 alternatives

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp

from $0 (free up to 250 contacts), then about $13/mo on Essentials at 500 contacts

ActiveCampaign has the far deeper automation builder, real lead scoring, custom event triggers, and proper deal pipelines; Mailchimp is easier to hand to a non-marketer and has better creative and design tooling. Both now bill new accounts for unsubscribed contacts, so neither escapes the dead-weight problem. Choose ActiveCampaign if you have sketched workflows you cannot build elsewhere, Mailchimp if breadth and approachability matter more.

Full ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp comparison

ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo

from $0 (free up to 250 profiles), then roughly $30/mo at 1,000 active profiles

Klaviyo has the deeper commerce data model, predictive purchase analytics, and revenue attribution; ActiveCampaign has the deeper general-purpose automation and a real CRM. The dividing line is clean: if a checkout produces your revenue, take Klaviyo. If humans close your deals and the automation has to reflect a sales process, take ActiveCampaign.

Full ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo comparison

ActiveCampaign vs Brevo

from $0 (free, 300 emails per day), then $9/mo on Starter at 5,000 emails

Brevo is dramatically cheaper for large lists because it bills emails sent rather than contacts stored, includes transactional email on the same plan, and hosts in the EU. ActiveCampaign has a substantially more capable automation builder and better scoring. Take Brevo on cost, breadth, and data residency; pay the premium for ActiveCampaign only if the branching depth is genuinely the purchase reason.

Full ActiveCampaign vs Brevo comparison

ActiveCampaign vs Omnisend

from $0 (free up to 250 contacts), then $16/mo on Standard

Omnisend is an ecommerce specialist with prebuilt cart and post-purchase flows and unlimited sends on its Pro plan; ActiveCampaign is a general-purpose automation platform with a CRM attached. A store should take Omnisend and spend less. A business with a consultative sales cycle should take ActiveCampaign, because Omnisend has nothing resembling lead scoring or deal pipelines.

Full ActiveCampaign vs Omnisend comparison

ActiveCampaign vs Loops

from $49/mo (up to 5,000 subscribed contacts)

Loops is a modern, developer-friendly product email tool with a clean API and a much simpler mental model, aimed at SaaS teams sending lifecycle and transactional email. ActiveCampaign can do more but asks far more of you, and its interface shows its age. Take Loops if you are a software team wanting product email to feel like part of the codebase; take ActiveCampaign if marketing, scoring, and sales pipelines all need to live in one system.

Full ActiveCampaign vs Loops comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: A day to send, two to four weeks to be using the product properly. Importing contacts and sending a campaign is straightforward. Designing a tag and custom-field taxonomy that will not need rebuilding in six months, installing site and event tracking, and constructing genuinely branching automations is the real project, and it is the work that determines whether the subscription is worth anything.
Learning curve: The steepest in this category, and unapologetically so. The automation canvas rewards people who think in flowcharts and frustrates everyone else. The specific traps are building an unstructured tag sprawl early, and not understanding that goals exist, which leads to people receiving nurture sequences for things they already bought. Budget real learning time or use an agency.
Onboarding: Self-serve signup with a 14-day trial, no credit card, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Free migration and onboarding is advertised on the pricing page, though the depth is tier-dependent and the full white-glove data migration with custom implementation is an Enterprise inclusion. ActiveCampaign runs its own training courses.
Migration notes: The most important migration consideration is the contact-counting rule. A new account is billed on all contacts including unsubscribed and bounced, so re-importing an old list wholesale inflates your billed count from day one. Clean before you import, not after. Beyond that, automations do not port from any other platform and must be rebuilt by hand, tag and custom-field taxonomy needs redesigning rather than translating, and deliverability restarts on ActiveCampaign's shared pool with a warmup period. Import attestation of opt-in is required and risky imports may trigger a manual account review.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: Web applicationiOS and Android appsSite tracking scriptPostmark for transactional sending
API: REST API v3, resource-oriented JSON covering contacts, deals, automations, campaigns, lists, and tags, with API key header auth and per-account rate limits; outbound webhooks plus webhooks callable as an automation action; App Studio with OAuth2 and bidirectional sync for building publishable CX Apps; a Deep Data framework for richer ecommerce and application data; free developer sandboxes; and an MCP server. Docs at developers.activecampaign.com, which serves Markdown if you append .md to any docs URL.
Compliance: SOC 2 report available self-serve through the Trust CenterGDPR with a DPAHIPAA with a standard BAA on the Enterprise plan only
Data residency: Multi-regional data centers including EU and APAC hosting, with migration to multi-location data centers begun in Q1 2024 and single-tenancy data separation claimed. Details are published at activecampaign.com/data-centers.
SSO: Available on Enterprise arrangements rather than on entry self-serve tiers.
Security notes: Trust Center with a self-serve SOC 2 report and penetration test attestation. The acceptable use policy bans purchased and rented lists outright and prohibits sending initial opt-in emails to improperly collected lists. Bounce, abuse, and unsubscribe rates are continually monitored, abnormal rates trigger manual account review, and spam complaints can lead to immediate suspension or termination without refund.

Support & resources

Channels: Starter and Plus: email and live chat, with 24/7 chat claimedPro: faster response, onboarding consultations, and some one-to-one trainingEnterprise: priority phone, chat, and email, a dedicated account rep, an uptime SLA, and deliverability and reputation monitoring
Documentation: Help center at help.activecampaign.com, developer documentation at developers.activecampaign.com, and structured training at courses.activecampaign.com.
Community: Official community forum plus a large ecosystem of certified consultants and agencies, and a marketplace of community-contributed automation recipes.

Company

Founded: 2003
Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Ownership: Private, venture and growth-equity backed
Founders: Jason VandeBoom
Employees: Around 1,000 as of 2022; current headcount not disclosed following 2025 reductions
Funding: Raised a $20M Series A from Silversmith Capital Partners in 2016 after thirteen years of bootstrapping, a $100M Series B led by Susquehanna Growth Equity in January 2020, and a $240M Series C led by Tiger Global in April 2021 at a valuation above $3 billion. Revenue reported at roughly $250M in 2024 with around 180,000 customers across more than 170 countries.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
Series A	$20M	2016	Led by Silversmith Capital Partners, the first outside money after thirteen years of bootstrapping.
Series B	$100M	2020	Led by Susquehanna Growth Equity in January.
Series C	$240M	2021	Led by Tiger Global in April at a valuation above $3 billion.

Timeline

2003Founded in Chicago by Jason VandeBoom as licensed on-premise software, later converted to SaaS; VandeBoom remains CEO more than twenty years later.
2016Takes its first outside investment, a $20M Series A led by Silversmith Capital Partners, after thirteen years of bootstrapping.
2021Raises a $240M Series C led by Tiger Global in April at a valuation above $3 billion, following a $100M Series B in January 2020.
2022Acquires Postmark in May, adding a respected transactional email service that continues to run as its own product.
2024Restructures plans on 3 June: Lite and Professional become Starter and Pro, the separate Sales plans are dissolved, and deeper CRM capability moves into paid add-ons.
2025Acquires Hilos in April for native WhatsApp automation, and on 3 November changes contact counting so new accounts are billed on all contacts including unsubscribed and bounced.
2026Launches Autonomous Insights in January and agent-to-user AI plus brand-voice personalization at the April Spring Innovation Keynote, repositioning around autonomous marketing.

Integrations

Shopify
WooCommerce and WordPress
Salesforce
Stripe
Zapier and Make
Calendly
Slack
Twilio
Facebook Custom Audiences
Google Analytics
Typeform and Webflow
Postmark (in-house, for transactional sending)

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation and email platform for small and mid-size businesses, founded in Chicago in 2003 and still led by its founder. It is built around a visual automation builder with conditional branching, goals, and split testing of whole sequences, combined with site and custom event tracking, lead scoring, and a CRM with deal pipelines. SMS, WhatsApp, and transactional email are sold as separate add-ons.

Does ActiveCampaign charge for unsubscribed contacts?

For new accounts, yes. On 3 November 2025 ActiveCampaign changed its contact counting so accounts created on or after that date are billed on all contacts, including unsubscribed, unconfirmed, and bounced records. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025 are grandfathered onto the old active-contacts-only basis. If you are signing up now, clean your list before importing rather than after, because dead weight is billed from day one.

How much does ActiveCampaign cost at 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 contacts?

On Plus billed annually, roughly $49 a month at 1,000 contacts, roughly $189 at 10,000, and roughly $609 at 50,000. On Pro the same bands run roughly $79, $375, and $969. Starter is roughly $15 at 1,000 contacts but caps out before 50,000. These figures are widely reported rather than quoted, because the pricing page no longer publishes static numbers and requires you to configure a contact slider.

Is ActiveCampaign still self-serve or has it gone quote-only?

Still self-serve. You can sign up, take a 14-day trial without a credit card, and buy a plan without speaking to anyone, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. What has changed is that the pricing page no longer shows a static rate card, so prices must be configured through the slider and a request-pricing path sits alongside. Enterprise does push to sales, and extra seat and add-on pricing is genuinely unpublished.

Is there a free plan?

No. ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required and a 30-day money-back guarantee, but there is no permanently free tier. If a free plan is a requirement, look at Brevo, MailerLite, or EmailOctopus instead.

What is the catch with the Starter plan?

Each automation is capped at five actions, and you get one seat. Five actions is not enough to build anything with meaningful branching, which means the Starter plan does not do the thing people buy ActiveCampaign for. Treat Plus as the real entry point, which roughly triples the price at the 1,000-contact band.

Are there limits on how many emails I can send?

Yes. Monthly sends are capped at ten times your contact count on Starter and Plus, twelve times on Pro, and fifteen times on Enterprise, with overage reported at around half a cent per extra email. A 10,000-contact account on Plus therefore gets about 100,000 sends a month, so a high-frequency sender can be pushed up a tier by volume rather than by list growth.

How does ActiveCampaign's automation compare to competitors?

It is the deepest available to a small business. Conditional if-or-else branching, a Split action with up to five variations, wait-until conditions, goals that pull contacts out on conversion, score arithmetic, mid-flow webhooks, and arbitrary custom events as triggers is a combination Mailchimp, MailerLite, and Brevo cannot match. Most distinctively, you can split test entirely different automation paths against each other rather than just two versions of one email.

Can ActiveCampaign handle transactional email?

Through Postmark, which ActiveCampaign acquired in May 2022 and still runs as a separate product with its own bill, starting around $15 per 10,000 emails. So marketing and transactional email come from the same corporate parent but are not one integrated plan the way they are on Brevo. If unified sending on one invoice matters, that is a point against.

Should I get a dedicated IP with ActiveCampaign?

Almost certainly not. It costs $750 to set up per IP, and while it is available on any plan, ActiveCampaign wants roughly 100,000 active, opted-in, engaged contacts to keep it warm and states that about 99 percent of its customers do better on shared pools. A dedicated IP without enough consistent volume damages deliverability rather than improving it.

Editorial verdict

ActiveCampaign is the right answer to a narrow but real question: how does a small business get genuinely sophisticated behavioral automation without buying enterprise marketing software. The builder is the best in its class, custom event triggers make it properly behavioral, and lead scoring feeding a real deal pipeline closes a loop that most ESPs leave open. It is also the most commonly over-bought product in this category, because the depth that justifies the price is depth that most buyers never use, and two recent changes have made the deal worse rather than better: new accounts are now billed for unsubscribed contacts, and the deeper CRM capability was pulled out of the bundle into add-ons. Buy it if you can already name the branching workflows you intend to build and Plus or above is in budget. If your honest plan is broadcasts and one welcome sequence, buy MailerLite or Brevo and keep the difference.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.