⚡ Quick Verdict
ActiveCampaign pricing in 2026 starts at $19/month for the Starter plan (formerly the Lite plan) on a 1,000-contact tier and climbs to custom Enterprise quotes for large senders. Most small businesses land on Starter or Plus ($49/mo) for marketing automation; revenue teams jump to Pro ($79/mo) for sales CRM and predictive sending. SMS is metered separately at roughly $0.025 per US message. Annual billing saves about 15% across every tier.
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ActiveCampaign Pricing at a Glance (April 2026)
If you searched activecampaign pricing, you probably want one number you can plug into a budget. The honest answer is that the active campaign cost depends on two sliders: which plan you pick and how many contacts you store. The plan unlocks the feature ceiling. The contact count sets your monthly bill. Move either slider and the price moves with it.
Here is the snapshot for the four current ActiveCampaign pricing plans, billed monthly at the 1,000-contact tier:
| Plan | Monthly (1,000 contacts) | Annual (effective) | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter (formerly Lite) | $19 | ~$13/mo | Solo founders, small lists |
| Plus | $59 | ~$41/mo | Growing marketing teams |
| Pro | $89 | ~$67/mo | Revenue teams needing CRM + AI |
| Enterprise | Custom (typ. $159+) | Custom | Multi-brand, high-volume senders |
Two notes before you read any further. First, ActiveCampaign monthly pricing scales with contact volume on every plan, not just the entry tier. Doubling your list does not double your bill, but it does push you up a pricing band. Second, the company quietly renamed the Lite plan to Starter in late 2024. People still type activecampaign lite plan into Google because the old name stuck, so we will use both labels throughout this guide.
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ActiveCampaign Pricing Plans at a Glance: How the Tiers Are Structured
ActiveCampaign sells four plans in 2026: Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. Each one inherits everything from the plan below it, then adds capability on top. That stacking model means you never lose features when you upgrade – you only add them.
The lowest two plans (Starter and Plus) focus on email marketing and automation. The upper two (Pro and Enterprise) add sales CRM, predictive sending, and team management. If your job is to send newsletters and trigger drip campaigns, you live on Starter or Plus. If your job involves a sales pipeline, you need Pro or Enterprise.
Contact tiers stack on top of plan tiers. Every plan starts at 1,000 contacts and steps up at 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000, and beyond. ActiveCampaign cost roughly doubles each time you cross a major band – so 5,000 contacts on Plus costs about $99/mo, and 25,000 contacts on Plus runs around $239/mo. Get an exact quote on the pricing page before committing.
ActiveCampaign Lite Plan (Now Called Starter): $15/month
The ActiveCampaign Lite plan was retired as a name in 2024 and replaced with Starter, but the spirit of the entry tier is the same. It is the cheapest way to use ActiveCampaign and it is built for solo operators, freelancers, and small teams who need real automation without a CRM attached.
At $15/month for 1,000 contacts, Starter gives you:
- Unlimited email sends within your contact tier
- Drag-and-drop email builder with 250+ templates
- Marketing automation with up to 100,000 actions per month
- Single-step automations and basic multi-step flows
- Forms (inline, popup, floating)
- Up to 10 landing pages
- Site tracking and basic event tracking
- One user seat
What you do not get on Starter: the visual automation builder’s most powerful branching logic, conditional content, A/B testing on automations, the sales CRM, predictive sending, or SMS. If those features matter, you are looking at Plus or Pro.
Starter makes sense for one type of buyer: someone who already has a list under 5,000 contacts, sends newsletters and welcome sequences, and does not yet need to manage deals or score leads. If that is you, the active campaign cost on Starter is competitive with Mailchimp and cheaper than Klaviyo for the same audience size.
ActiveCampaign Plus Plan: $49/month
The ActiveCampaign Plus plan is where most growing businesses end up. At $49/month for 1,000 contacts, Plus unlocks the features that separate a hobby email tool from a real marketing platform.
Plus includes everything in Starter, plus:
- Conditional content (show different blocks to different segments inside one email)
- A/B testing on emails AND automations (Starter only tests emails)
- Landing pages without a cap
- Custom branding on emails and forms
- SMS marketing add-on availability (separate metered cost – see SMS section below)
- Custom reporting
- Three user seats
- API access and webhooks
- Lead scoring
The single biggest reason to pick Plus over Starter is conditional content plus A/B testing on automations. Once your list crosses 2,500 contacts, you start segmenting harder, and Starter’s flat content blocks feel limiting. Plus also opens the door to SMS, which we cover in detail below.
Plus is the BuyerSprint default recommendation for businesses with 2,500-25,000 contacts who want a marketing-first stack. If you also need a sales pipeline with deal stages, skip ahead to Pro.
ActiveCampaign Professional Plan: $79/month
The ActiveCampaign Professional plan is the cheapest tier that includes the full Sales CRM. At $79/month for 1,000 contacts, Pro is built for teams that need to track deals through a pipeline alongside their email marketing.
Pro includes everything in Plus, plus:
- Full Sales CRM with deal pipelines
- Predictive sending (machine learning picks the optimal send time per contact)
- Predictive content
- Win probability scoring on deals
- Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Pipedrive integrations
- Custom objects (model your own data structures)
- Five user seats
- Attribution reporting (see which campaigns produced revenue)
- One-on-one onboarding session
Pro is where activecampaign crm pricing actually starts. Anything below this tier is a marketing automation tool. Pro is a marketing automation tool with a real sales CRM stapled on. Predictive sending alone tends to lift open rates 5-15% in our testing, which can pay for the upgrade if your list is large enough.
If you are choosing between HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Professional ($890/mo) and ActiveCampaign Pro ($79/mo) for similar capability, Pro is often the budget-friendly answer for teams under 25,000 contacts who do not need HubSpot’s broader CMS and service tooling.
ActiveCampaign Enterprise Plan: Custom Pricing from ~$145/month
The ActiveCampaign Enterprise plan is quote-only. Public starting points hover around $145/month for 1,000 contacts (which is artificially low – Enterprise customers almost always have 25,000+ contacts), but in practice most Enterprise quotes land between $400 and $2,500/month depending on contact volume, sub-account count, and SLA.
Enterprise adds, on top of Pro:
- Unlimited user seats
- Single sign-on (SSO)
- HIPAA support (separate add-on for healthcare buyers)
- Custom mailserver domain
- Dedicated account rep and uptime SLA
- Custom reporting and free design services
- Sub-accounts (multi-brand or multi-region under one master)
- Email and form auto-translation
The two reasons to pick Enterprise are sub-accounts (you run multiple brands or regions and need them isolated under one bill) and SSO (your IT team requires it for compliance). Outside those two needs, Pro covers most large-team use cases at a fraction of the price.
ActiveCampaign Agency Pricing
If you run an agency, ActiveCampaign agency pricing is structured around the Enterprise plan with sub-accounts, sold under their Reseller and Agency partnership program. Pricing is custom and depends on how many client accounts you manage. The model is essentially Enterprise plus a margin you bake in when reselling to clients. Reach out to ActiveCampaign’s partnerships team for a quote – it is not listed publicly.
ActiveCampaign SMS Pricing: How Text Messaging Is Billed
ActiveCampaign SMS pricing works as a metered add-on, not a flat-fee feature. SMS is available on the Plus plan and above (Starter does not support it as of April 2026). You pay per message sent, with rates that vary by destination country.
As of April 2026, indicative SMS rates are:
| Country / Region | Price per Message (USD, approx.) |
|---|---|
| United States | $0.025 |
| Canada | $0.025 |
| United Kingdom | $0.060 |
| Australia | $0.085 |
| Most of EU | $0.075 – $0.110 |
| Other regions | Varies (verify on the pricing page) |
SMS credits are sold in bundles or pay-as-you-go. A typical small-business sender pushing 5,000 transactional texts per month in the US would budget around $125/month on top of their plan. SMS is most useful for cart abandonment recovery, appointment reminders, and time-sensitive offers – not for monthly newsletters, where email is dramatically cheaper.
💡 SMS pricing changes frequently
ActiveCampaign updates per-country SMS rates every quarter as carrier fees shift. Always verify the rate for your target country on the live pricing page before building a campaign budget. The numbers above are accurate as of April 2026 and should be treated as a planning estimate, not a quote.
Annual vs Monthly Billing: How Much You Save
ActiveCampaign monthly pricing is the default option, but switching to annual billing knocks roughly 15% off your effective rate across every tier. The difference matters at scale: a Plus plan at 10,000 contacts billed monthly runs about $174/mo, while annual billing brings that to about $148/mo – a $312/year saving.
If you are confident you will keep the tool for at least nine months, annual is the right call. If you are still evaluating, start monthly, watch your usage for a quarter, then convert. ActiveCampaign lets you switch at renewal without losing data.
Pros and Cons of ActiveCampaign Pricing
✅ Pros
- Starter at $19/mo undercuts most premium automation tools
- Plans inherit features from below – no painful “lost feature” upgrades
- 14-day free trial works without a credit card
- Annual billing saves a clean ~15% across all tiers
- Pro plan includes a real CRM at one-tenth the cost of HubSpot
- Predictive sending and AI features included on Pro at no extra cost
❌ Cons
- Pricing scales with contact count – large lists get expensive fast
- SMS is metered separately and rates vary by country
- No free forever plan (unlike Mailchimp)
- Conditional content locked to Plus and above
- Enterprise quotes are opaque without a sales call
- The Lite-to-Starter rename caused confusion in older docs
ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo vs Mailchimp: Pricing Comparison
For a deeper category view, see our 15 best email automation tools roundup covering ActiveCampaign alongside its broader competitor set.
A quick side-by-side helps. All three tools start cheap and get expensive at scale, but they price differently.
| Tool | Entry Plan (1,000 contacts) | Mid Tier (10,000 contacts) | Best Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign Starter | $15/mo | ~$145/mo (Plus) | SMB automation + CRM |
| Klaviyo Email | $45/mo | ~$175/mo | Ecommerce / Shopify-first |
| Mailchimp Standard | $20/mo | ~$135/mo | Newsletter senders, ease of use |
The short version: Mailchimp is cheapest at the entry level and easiest to learn, but its automation falls behind once you outgrow welcome series. Klaviyo is the right answer if you sell on Shopify and want product-aware flows. ActiveCampaign sits in the middle – more powerful than Mailchimp, broader than Klaviyo (which leans heavily ecommerce), and the only one of the three with a real Sales CRM bundled in on a $79 plan.
Hidden Costs to Budget For
Three line items catch new ActiveCampaign customers off guard:
- Contact tier jumps. Adding a few hundred contacts can push you across a band (1,000 → 2,500 → 5,000) and bump your bill by 30-50% in one go. Plan for the next band, not your current count.
- SMS credits. Easy to underestimate. A 5,000-contact list getting two texts a month is 10,000 sends – $250 in US SMS on top of your plan.
- Onboarding services. Free on Pro and Enterprise, but if you want a custom migration from Mailchimp or HubSpot, ActiveCampaign sells a paid migration service that runs $499 and up. Often worth it for lists over 25,000 contacts.
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Frequently Asked Questions About ActiveCampaign Pricing
How much does ActiveCampaign cost?
ActiveCampaign costs $19/month for the Starter plan at 1,000 contacts, $59/month for Plus, $89/month for Pro, and custom quotes (typically $159+/month) for Enterprise. Annual billing reduces the effective rate by about 15%. Your final bill depends on the plan you select and the size of your contact list, since pricing scales with contact volume on every tier.
Is there a free plan?
No. ActiveCampaign does not offer a free forever tier in 2026. It does provide a 14-day free trial on every plan, with no credit card required at signup. You can build automations, send live campaigns, and import contacts during the trial to test the platform before committing.
What happened to the ActiveCampaign Lite plan?
The Lite plan was renamed to Starter in late 2024. The pricing and feature set are nearly identical – it is the same entry-tier plan with a refreshed name. If you see “Lite” referenced in older blog posts, comparison sites, or docs, treat it as Starter.
How does SMS pricing work?
SMS is a metered add-on available on Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans. US and Canada messages run roughly $0.025 each, with higher rates in the UK, Australia, and EU. You purchase SMS credits in bundles or pay-as-you-go on top of your monthly subscription. Starter does not support SMS as of April 2026.
Does pricing change with contact count?
Yes. Every plan starts at 1,000 contacts and steps up at 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, and 100,000+. Each band roughly doubles the previous price within the same plan. Always check the live pricing slider on activecampaign.com for an exact quote at your contact volume before purchasing.
Which plan should a small business pick?
For most small businesses under 5,000 contacts that just need email marketing and automation, Starter at $19/month is enough. Once you need conditional content, A/B-tested automations, or SMS, jump to Plus at $59/month. If you also manage a sales pipeline with deal stages, Pro at $89/month is the right tier because it includes the CRM.
Can I switch plans anytime?
Yes. ActiveCampaign lets you upgrade or downgrade at any point in your billing cycle. Upgrades take effect immediately and prorate the cost. Downgrades take effect at your next renewal date. No data is lost when you change plans, but features locked to higher tiers will deactivate when you step down.
How does ActiveCampaign agency pricing work?
ActiveCampaign agency pricing is structured through the Enterprise tier with sub-accounts, sold under the company’s Reseller and Agency partnership program. Pricing is custom and depends on how many client accounts you manage. Agencies typically resell to clients with their own margin baked in. Contact ActiveCampaign’s partnerships team for a quote.
Is ActiveCampaign cheaper than Klaviyo or Mailchimp?
It depends on your use case. ActiveCampaign Starter ($15) is cheaper than Klaviyo Email ($45) at 1,000 contacts but slightly more than Mailchimp’s Standard plan ($20). At 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign Plus is cheaper than Klaviyo and roughly comparable to Mailchimp Standard – while offering more powerful automation than either. For ecommerce-heavy senders on Shopify, Klaviyo’s product-aware flows often justify the higher price.
What is included in the 14-day free trial?
The free trial gives you full access to the plan you select – including automations, email sends to your imported contacts, the visual builder, and reporting. Send limits apply during the trial to prevent abuse. No credit card is required at signup, and you can cancel before day 14 without being charged.
If you are still weighing options against other email platforms, our research methodology covers how we test and rank email tools.
Bottom Line: Which ActiveCampaign Plan Should You Pick?
Three quick recommendations based on what we see most often:
- Solo founders, lists under 2,500: Starter at $19/mo. The Lite plan rebranded, same low entry cost.
- Growing marketing teams, 2,500-25,000 contacts: Plus at $59/mo. The conditional-content and A/B-testing unlocks pay for themselves at this scale.
- Revenue teams that need a CRM: Pro at $89/mo. The cheapest tier that bundles a real sales pipeline with marketing automation.
Whichever tier fits, start on the 14-day free trial, build one real automation, and watch the metrics before you commit. ActiveCampaign pricing is fair for what you get – but the right plan is the one that matches the work you actually do, not the one that looks cheapest on the homepage.
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