12 min read

Our verdict

ActiveCampaign

Best for: The headline $15 is real and almost nobody pays it for long. Three things move the number: the contact band, which rises as the database grows; the plan, because Starter's five-action automation cap pushes serious users to $49 or $79; and the add-ons, because pipelines, SMS and transactional email are separate products. Budget the plan you need at the contact count you expect in a year, then add what you will actually buy on top.

Overall score

7.6/ 10

What we liked

Pricing is published per plan at each contact band rather than hidden behind a sales call, which much of the marketing-automation market still is
Going over the monthly send allowance triggers an overage charge rather than cutting service off mid-campaign
Contact auto-upgrade prevents campaigns stopping when the list grows past the limit
The 14-day trial needs no card, so you can price a real configuration before committing
At 1,000 contacts, Pro at $79 includes predictive sending, attribution and automation A/B testing that competitors reserve for far higher tiers

What to watch

Accounts created from 3 November 2025 count unsubscribed and bounced contacts toward the limit, so you pay to store people you will never email
Starter's five-action cap per automation makes the $15 plan unsuitable for the thing most people buy the product for
Pipelines and Sales Engagement are enhanced CRM add-ons on Plus, Pro and Enterprise rather than included
SMS credits refresh monthly and do not roll over, so unused credit is lost
Custom reporting is an add-on on Plus and Pro and only included at Enterprise

Price1,000 contacts: $15 / $49 / $79 / $145 · 10,000 contacts: Plus about $189, Pro about $375

Price it on the 14-day trial →Affiliate link — we may earn a commission.

ActiveCampaign pricing 2026: what you'll really pay

Starter is $15 at 1,000 contacts and Plus is $189 at 10,000. Pipelines, SMS and transactional email are extra. Here is the whole bill.

By Claire Whitman · Senior Software Editor

14 October 2026

How we pay for this

We buy the hardware and pay for the subscriptions we write about. Claim a deal through our link and we may earn a commission — our readers sometimes get a discount or a freebie out of it too, but it never pushes the price up, and it never changes what the review says.

ActiveCampaign starts at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts, and the figure that matters is what your configuration costs in a year. Three variables move it: how many contacts you hold, which plan you need, and which add-ons you end up buying. This page works through all three.

The four plans, at the smallest contact band

Plan	Monthly at 1,000 contacts	Users	Send allowance
Starter	$15	1	10× contact limit
Plus	$49	1	10× contact limit
Pro	$79	3	12× contact limit
Enterprise	$145	5	15× contact limit

The single most important line on this page: Starter limits an automation to five actions. An email, a wait, a tag, a condition and a second email is five. If automation is the reason you are buying ActiveCampaign, Starter is not the plan, and the real entry price is $49.

Plus adds unrestricted automations and landing pages. Pro adds predictive sending, conditional content, attribution and A/B testing on automations. Enterprise adds SSO, custom objects and HIPAA support.

What it costs as the list grows

Plan	1,000 contacts	10,000 contacts
Plus	$49/mo	About $189/mo
Pro	$79/mo	About $375/mo
Enterprise	$145/mo	From about $589/mo

Those are ActiveCampaign's own published comparison figures. Pro going from $79 to $375 as the list multiplies by ten is the shape to plan around — this is contact-based pricing and it scales with your database, not with your revenue.

Check live checkout pricing before committing, because contact bands and billing cadence both move the number.

The contact-counting rule, which changes the arithmetic

For accounts created on or after 3 November 2025, every contact counts toward the limit regardless of list status — unsubscribed, unconfirmed and bounced included. Accounts created on or before 2 November 2025 count only active contacts.

If you are signing up now, this is your rule. A database of 12,000 records where 4,000 unsubscribed years ago puts you in a higher band than the 8,000 people you can actually email, and you pay for the difference every month.

Two consequences worth acting on. Clean the list before you import rather than after, because the import sets your band. And decide deliberately whether ActiveCampaign is also your CRM archive, because storing history here now has a price per record.

The send allowance, which is a second quota

Separate from contacts, each plan caps monthly email sends at a multiple of your contact limit: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.

At 1,000 contacts on Plus that is 10,000 emails a month. A weekly newsletter uses 4,000. Add a three-email welcome sequence running to new subscribers, a monthly re-engagement send to a segment, and an abandoned-cart flow, and the pool goes faster than people expect — every automation email counts.

ActiveCampaign charges an overage rather than stopping service, which is the right behaviour and still an unplanned invoice. Work out your real monthly send volume across broadcasts and automations before picking a band.

The add-ons, which is where budgets break

Pipelines and Sales Engagement. Enhanced CRM packages on Plus, Pro and Enterprise. Deal stages, sales tasks, forecasting and automated one-to-one sales email live here, not in the base plan.
SMS. Requires Plus or above plus an SMS add-on. Credits refresh monthly and unused credits do not roll over, so buying a large bundle for an occasional campaign wastes most of it.
Transactional email. Postmark by ActiveCampaign, a separate product, even though it can be used inside automations. Password resets and receipts belong here rather than on your marketing reputation.
WhatsApp. Its own plans, which can also be added to eligible email plans.
Custom reporting. An add-on on Plus and Pro; included only at Enterprise.

None of these are unreasonable individually. Together they mean the plan price is a floor, and anybody comparing ActiveCampaign against an all-in competitor should price the specific add-ons they need rather than the base plan.

Three worked examples

Who you are	What you need	Roughly per month
Consultant, 800 contacts, nurture sequences	Plus at the 1,000 band	$49
Ecommerce store, 9,000 contacts, abandoned cart and post-purchase flows	Plus at the 10,000 band	About $189
B2B team, 9,000 contacts, lead scoring, pipelines and attribution	Pro at 10,000 plus the CRM add-on	$375 plus the add-on

The third row is the one people under-budget. A B2B team buying ActiveCampaign as a combined marketing and sales system is well past $400 a month at a modest list size, which is the territory where HubSpot becomes a fair comparison rather than an obviously more expensive one.

The trial, and the money-back terms

There is no permanent free plan. The trial runs 14 days, needs no credit card and exposes roughly Pro-level functionality. It allows one user and 100 email sends — enough to build and test an automation, nowhere near enough to judge deliverability.

A 30-day money-back guarantee exists on eligible new paid subscriptions under separate promotional terms. Eligibility conditions apply, so treat it as a conditional refund rather than a blanket one, and read the terms at the point of purchase.

Four ways to pay less

Clean the list before importing. Under the current counting rule, dead contacts set your band. Removing them afterwards does not refund the month.
Pick the plan from the automation ceiling, not the price. Starter's five actions is the constraint; discovering it in week two means paying for two plans in one month.
Send transactional mail somewhere else. Receipts and password resets through a dedicated service keep them off your marketing send allowance and off your marketing reputation.
Set auto-upgrade deliberately. It prevents campaigns stopping and it also raises your own bill without asking. Choose it knowingly rather than accepting the default.

Our full review covers whether the automation depth justifies any of this, and Starter vs Plus vs Pro works through which tier a given job actually needs.