ActiveCampaign Pricing & Plans: Your Complete Cost Breakdown

ActiveCampaign is a powerful marketing automation and CRM software trusted by over 180,000 customers. Understanding its pricing can be complex, as it has evolved significantly over the years. This comprehensive guide will clarify ActiveCampaign’s plans, help you choose the right one, and highlight key factors to consider for your business.

ActiveCampaign Plans: A Quick Summary

For those short on time, here’s a concise overview of ActiveCampaign’s plans and their core features.

The ActiveCampaign free trial offers access to Pro plan features, allowing 1 user to manage 100 contacts and send 100 emails during the 14-day period.

ActiveCampaign provides a 20% discount on annual plans and an additional 20% off for non-profit organizations across all plans.

How Much Does ActiveCampaign Cost?

ActiveCampaign costs typically range from $15-$589 per month for most customers, depending on the chosen plan and number of contacts. They offer four main plans: Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. Higher-priced plans include increasingly advanced features, support more contacts, and allow for more users. Contact tiers are available from 1,000 to 50,000. If you have more than 50,000 contacts, you can request custom pricing.

While ActiveCampaign often displays the monthly equivalent of annual plans on its pricing page, this guide focuses on the actual monthly prices for easy comparison. Opting for an annual plan provides a 20% discount off these monthly rates.

The Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans unlock more advanced marketing automation, lead generation, contact management, and integration capabilities.

ActiveCampaign Postmark is a separate transactional email service that starts from $15 for 10,000 emails per month.

ActiveCampaign Monthly Prices by Contacts and Plan

ActiveCampaign also offers contact bands for 7,500, 15,000, 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000 contacts.

Free Services Included with ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign provides several complimentary services to help customers get started and succeed:

• Free online training and support
• Free digital onboarding
• Community access
• Free templates and guides for emails and automations

ActiveCampaign Plan Breakdown

Starter Plan

The Starter plan costs $19 per month for 1,000 contacts, includes 1 user, and offers live chat and email support. The email send limit is 10 times your contact limit, meaning a Starter plan with 1,000 contacts can send up to 10,000 emails per month. It features essential email and marketing automation, a drag-and-drop editor, and basic forms. You can create engaging email campaigns using over 150 email templates. The Starter plan also includes A/B testing for emails, site tracking, and a marketing CRM.

Starter Plan Pricing Tiers

Plus Plan

The Plus plan begins at $59 per month for 1,000 contacts. This tier unlocks more advanced marketing features, including robust forms, basic segmentation, site messages, landing pages with templates, and generative AI capabilities.

Plus Pricing Tiers

Professional Plan

The Professional plan starts at $99 per month for 1,000 contacts and supports 3 users. It introduces powerful features such as conditional content, A/B testing within automations, advanced segmentation, and detailed reporting. You also gain access to attribution and conversion tracking. The email send limit increases to 12 times your contact limit, and you receive priority support.

Pro Pricing Tiers

Enterprise Plan

The Enterprise plan begins at $179 for 1,000 contacts and includes 5 users. The email send limit further increases to 15 times your contact limit. This top-tier plan adds highly specialized features like custom objects, Single Sign-On (SSO), and premium segmentation and reporting capabilities, designed for large organizations with complex needs.

ActiveCampaign Add-ons & Extras

ActiveCampaign offers several add-ons to enhance its core functionality, including Enhanced CRM, SMS, Custom Reporting, and Transactional Email services.

ActiveCampaign Enhanced CRM Add-ons

The Pipelines enhanced CRM add-on integrates ActiveCampaign’s sales CRM with robust automation features. It costs $68 per month and is available for Plus, Professional, or Enterprise plans. This add-on unlocks sales automation triggers and actions, allowing you to automate your sales pipeline based on deal stages, owners, and data changes. You can automatically add deals, update statuses, titles, owners, and deal scores, plus gain access to essential sales reports, including deal forecasts.

The Sales engagement enhanced CRM add-on costs $111 per month. It encompasses all features of the Pipelines add-on, along with automated one-to-one emails, win probability scoring, and sentiment analysis for deeper sales insights.

ActiveCampaign SMS Pricing

The SMS add-on is available for Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans. It starts at $16.83 per month for 1,000 credits and enables powerful multichannel automations:

You need credits to send SMS marketing messages, with the number of credits per message varying by destination country (from 1 to 22 credits).

SMS Credits Per Message by Country

Additional SMS credits can be purchased as needed:

Extra SMS Credit Pricing

It’s important to note that you cannot use your own custom SMS sending number; ActiveCampaign’s SMS provider selects the source phone numbers, which can vary.

ActiveCampaign Custom Reporting

Custom reports enable you to answer specific data-driven questions. You can create, save, and share these reports with other users in your account. Custom reports can utilize almost any data within your ActiveCampaign account, including information about contacts, deals, automations, campaigns, and e-commerce stores.

ActiveCampaign includes custom reports as a standard feature in the Enterprise plan. For Plus and Professional plans, it can be purchased as an add-on. Custom reporting costs $159 per month, which includes up to 50 reports and 25 dashboards.

ActiveCampaign Transactional Email

Postmark is ActiveCampaign’s dedicated transactional email service. It can be integrated with ActiveCampaign to set up and trigger essential transactional emails directly from your automations. These include:

• Account creation confirmations
• Double opt-in messages and subscription confirmations
• Review and feedback requests
• Order confirmations and shipping updates
• Delivery notifications
• Password recovery emails
• Medical, financial, and legal statements

Here are Postmark’s monthly rates:

Postmark Monthly Rates

ActiveCampaign Discount Opportunities

ActiveCampaign offers a 20% discount on all annual plans. This can lead to significant savings, such as $20 per month on a Pro plan with 2,500 contacts, or even $134 per month on a Pro plan with 50,000 contacts. Additionally, ActiveCampaign provides a 20% discount on all plans for non-profit organizations.

Understanding ActiveCampaign Pricing Factors

ActiveCampaign’s pricing structure is primarily influenced by four key factors:

• Plan (Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise)
• Contact tier (number of active contacts)
• Add-ons (Enhanced CRM, SMS, Custom Reporting, Transactional Email)
• User seats

1. Plan

Your chosen plan is the most significant factor affecting your ActiveCampaign bill. While affordable to get started, you’ll pay more for advanced features like conditional content, A/B testing in automations, and conversion tracking. Higher plans, specifically Pro and Enterprise, also offer increased email send limits.

Starting Prices and Key Features by Plan (1K Contacts)

2. Contact Tier

ActiveCampaign bases its plan costs on the number of active contacts in your account. Only active contacts contribute to your contact limit.

ActiveCampaign Monthly Costs by Contact Tier and Plan

If your contact count exceeds your current plan’s limit, your account will automatically move to the next contact tier for the subsequent billing cycle. The number of contacts is the second most crucial factor influencing your ActiveCampaign cost.

3. Add-ons

ActiveCampaign offers various add-ons to extend its capabilities, including enhanced CRM, SMS marketing, custom reporting, and transactional email services. CRM add-ons start at $68 per month. 1,000 SMS credits cost $16.83 per month. A transactional email service through Postmark starts at $15 for 10,000 emails.

4. User Seats

The Starter and Plus plans include 1 user, the Pro plan includes 3 users, and the Enterprise plan includes 5 users. You can purchase additional users for any plan at a cost of $12 per month per user.

Is ActiveCampaign Really Free?

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial. During this trial, you can have 1 user, add up to 100 contacts, and send 100 emails, with access to features typically found in the Pro plan. While there isn’t a permanent free plan, the trial is usually sufficient to thoroughly test ActiveCampaign’s capabilities. If 14 days isn’t enough, you can often contact their support team for an extension.

Comparing ActiveCampaign Pricing with Alternatives

ActiveCampaign stands out as a robust email marketing tool with advanced automation and an integrated sales CRM. Let’s see how its pricing compares to similar services in the market.

ActiveCampaign vs. HubSpot

HubSpot offers a comprehensive Customer Platform that includes various “Hubs” (Marketing, Sales, Service, CMS, Operations). The HubSpot Customer Platform has three main plans:

• Starter: From $20/month per user for 1,000 contacts
• Professional: From $1,300/month for 2,000 contacts and 5 users
• Enterprise: From $4,300/month for 10,000 contacts and 7 users (billed yearly)

Here’s a comparison of ActiveCampaign Pro with the sales engagement CRM add-on, versus HubSpot CRM Suite Professional:

ActiveCampaign Pro + CRM vs HubSpot Professional Customer Platform

HubSpot offers a wider range of features than ActiveCampaign, making it a better option for larger organizations that prefer a unified platform for their CMS, CRM, marketing, and service tools. It also provides phone support on Professional and Enterprise plans, though its cost scales significantly with increased contact numbers. ActiveCampaign is generally a more cost-effective choice for companies that have a website and social tools, and need powerful email marketing software with a CRM and advanced automation without the premium price tag of a full-suite platform.

ActiveCampaign vs. Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Kit (formerly ConvertKit) offers two paid plans:

• Creator: Starting at $39/month for 1,000 subscribers
• Pro: Starting at $79/month for 1,000 subscribers

Let’s compare the monthly pricing of ActiveCampaign Starter with Kit Creator:

ActiveCampaign Starter vs Kit Creator Pricing

Kit is specifically designed for creators, offering unlimited landing pages, forms, broadcasts, and support for 1 user on its Creator plan. It enables automated email sequences and allows users to sell digital products and subscriptions. It’s an excellent choice for content creators, publishers, bloggers, and small businesses focused on audience engagement and monetization. In contrast, ActiveCampaign is a better choice for companies that require more sophisticated automation capabilities and a robust CRM. Integrating a CRM with Kit can be more complex than utilizing ActiveCampaign’s built-in CRM features.

ActiveCampaign vs. GetResponse

GetResponse offers three primary pricing plans:

• Email Marketing: From $19/month for 1,000 contacts
• Marketing Automation: From $59/month for 1,000 contacts
• Ecommerce Marketing: From $119/month for 1,000 contacts

Here’s how the monthly prices of ActiveCampaign Plus and GetResponse Marketing Automation compare:

ActiveCampaign Plus vs GetResponse Marketing Automation Pricing

GetResponse is perhaps the most similar alternative to ActiveCampaign in terms of features. Both Plus and Marketing Automation plans include newsletters, advanced automation, and lead generation tools, offering unlimited landing pages, monthly emails, and forms. However, GetResponse typically does not become as expensive as ActiveCampaign as your contact numbers grow, even on its Ecommerce Marketing plan. This makes GetResponse a better choice for budget-conscious B2B and e-commerce businesses with large lists, or if you prefer a European provider. ActiveCampaign’s Plus plan also includes robust e-commerce automations and integrations, such as for Shopify and WooCommerce. To get similar e-commerce features in GetResponse, you often need to upgrade to its Ecommerce Marketing plan, which can be more expensive for smaller list sizes. Therefore, ActiveCampaign Plus is often better suited for e-commerce businesses with smaller lists that require deep integrations and automations.

ActiveCampaign vs. AWeber

AWeber offers three paid plans:

• Lite: Starting at $15.00/month for 500 subscribers
• Plus: Starting at $30.00/month for 500 subscribers
• Unlimited: Starting at $899/month for unlimited subscribers

Here’s a comparison of monthly fees for ActiveCampaign Plus and AWeber Plus:

ActiveCampaign Plus vs AWeber Plus Pricing

AWeber effectively covers basic email marketing needs but does not offer the same level of functionality or advanced automation as ActiveCampaign. If your requirements are limited to newsletters, lead generation, and basic automation, AWeber can be a cheaper option. It also provides phone support on all paid plans and unlimited user accounts on its Plus and Unlimited plans. However, if you’re looking for advanced automation, ActiveCampaign is the superior choice.

For more options, explore other email marketing software that includes lightweight CRMs suitable for small businesses.

Which ActiveCampaign Pricing Plan Should You Pick?

Choosing the right ActiveCampaign plan depends on your business size, specific needs, and growth aspirations.

• The Starter plan is ideal for startups and small businesses needing effective email marketing automation. At $19/month for 1,000 contacts, it includes 1 user, chat and email support, a drag-and-drop email template builder, basic forms, over 150 email templates, and site tracking.
• The Plus plan is best suited for small to mid-size e-commerce and B2B businesses. It comes with a suite of e-commerce automations and integrations, such as cart abandonment emails and the ability to embed product blocks directly into emails. This plan allows you to create and test entire automation workflows, and its features like landing pages, lead scoring, social media integration, and SMS capabilities enable comprehensive lead generation and multichannel campaigns.
• The Professional plan works well for scaling businesses that require advanced automations and tracking. Key features like automation splitting, conversions, automation maps, site messaging, predictive sending, and attribution provide powerful tools to create highly sophisticated and effective automation strategies.

ActiveCampaign Pricing FAQ