ActiveCampaign pricing: what it really costs
As of 27 September 2026, ActiveCampaign's pricing page lists Starter at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts, Plus at $49, Pro at $79 and Enterprise at $145, and every one of those prices is available only on annual billing. ActiveCampaign's own billing help article confirms a true month-to-month rate exists, but that price has never appeared on any public page. Every plan, including Starter, bundles a CRM with the email tool, a strong fit for a marketing agency running email and a client pipeline from one login instead of two tools. A buyer wanting a permanent free plan under 1,000 contacts should look elsewhere; ActiveCampaign's only no-cost option is a 14-day trial.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $15/mo Starter (1,000 contacts)
- Free plan
- No
- Free trial
- 14 days
- Real bill, small team
- $149/mo 10,000 subscribers
ActiveCampaign plans and prices
ActiveCampaign's published plans as of 27 September 2026: the month-to-month price, the effective monthly price when billed annually, and what each plan is priced by (US list prices in USD).
| Plan | Monthly | Billed annually | Priced | Key limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter (1,000 contacts)Price when the contacts selector is at its default, 1,000 contacts. Starter is not sold above 25,000 contacts (confirmed on-page and in the Help Center); above that a buyer must move to Plus. | annual only | $15per month | per month1 seat included | 1,000 email contacts included at this price; Maximum 25,000 contacts on Starter; not sold above that band; 5 actions per automation; 1 user seat; up to 1 additional seat purchasable (price not published); Help Center notes existing ActiveCampaign customers do not qualify for this plan (new-signup only) |
| Starter (10,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 10,000. Still within Starter’s 25,000-contact ceiling. | annual only | $149per month | per month1 seat included | 10,000 email contacts included at this price; Maximum 25,000 contacts on Starter; not sold above that band; 5 actions per automation; 1 user seat; up to 1 additional seat purchasable (price not published) |
| Plus (1,000 contacts)Price when the contacts selector is at its default, 1,000 contacts. | annual only | $49per month | per month1 seat included | 1,000 email contacts included at this price; 1 user seat; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Plus (10,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 10,000. | annual only | $189per month | per month1 seat included | 10,000 email contacts included at this price; 1 user seat; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Plus (50,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 50,000. Cheapest plan that still covers this contact count, since Starter caps at 25,000. | annual only | $609per month | per month1 seat included | 50,000 email contacts included at this price; 1 user seat; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Pro (1,000 contacts)Price when the contacts selector is at its default, 1,000 contacts. Shown on-page as "Pro"; the Help Center and data attributes call the same plan "Professional". | annual only | $79per month | per month3 seats included | 1,000 email contacts included at this price; 3 user seats; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Pro (10,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 10,000. | annual only | $375per month | per month3 seats included | 10,000 email contacts included at this price; 3 user seats; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Pro (50,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 50,000. | annual only | $969per month | per month3 seats included | 50,000 email contacts included at this price; 3 user seats; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Enterprise (1,000 contacts)Price when the contacts selector is at its default, 1,000 contacts. Marked "Starts at" on-page. | annual only | $145per month | per month5 seats included | 1,000 email contacts included at this price; 5 user seats; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Enterprise (10,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 10,000. | annual only | $589per month | per month5 seats included | 10,000 email contacts included at this price; 5 user seats; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
| Enterprise (50,000 contacts)Price with the contacts selector set to 50,000. | annual only | $1,169per month | per month5 seats included | 50,000 email contacts included at this price; 5 user seats; additional seats purchasable (price not published) |
What you will really pay
What a business actually pays for ActiveCampaign each month at three sizes, with every line of the bill shown. Built from the prices above as of 27 September 2026; open “How we worked this out” under any total for the assumptions.
Solo operator, 1,000 contacts
$15 / month
high confidence- Starter plan — 1,000 contacts, billed annually$15
Plan: Starter (1,000 contacts) · billed annually.
How we worked this out
One person managing email marketing for about 1,000 contacts and roughly 4 campaigns/month, on the cheapest plan that covers this contact count. The pricing page shows only annual billing; no month-to-month rate is published (see unverified). Starter is capped at 1 user seat and 5 actions per automation, which is enough for a solo operator at this scale.
Small team, 10,000 contacts
$149 / month
high confidence- Starter plan — 10,000 contacts, billed annually$149
Plan: Starter (10,000 contacts) · billed annually.
How we worked this out
About 10,000 contacts and roughly 8 campaigns/month. Starter’s 25,000-contact ceiling and feature set still cover this; billed annually (no monthly rate published). Starter still allows only 1 user seat (2 with a purchased extra seat, price unpublished) and 5 actions per automation; a team wanting more seats or richer automation would need Plus ($189/month at this contact count) or higher.
Growing team, 50,000 contacts
$609 / month
medium confidence- Plus plan — 50,000 contacts, billed annually$609
Plan: Plus (50,000 contacts) · billed annually.
How we worked this out
About 50,000 contacts and roughly 12 campaigns/month. Starter is not sold above 25,000 contacts, so Plus is the cheapest plan that covers 50,000 contacts; billed annually (no monthly rate published). ActiveCampaign's comparison table lists an 'email sends' allowance of 10x the contact count for Plus (500,000/month). 12 campaigns to the full 50,000-contact list is 600,000 sends/month, above that figure and at Pro's 12x allowance (600,000, $969/month). We could not confirm whether that multiplier is an enforced send cap or a looser guideline (see unverified); Plus is recorded here as the cheapest plan matching the contact-capacity requirement, but Pro may be the safer real-world pick if the send allowance is a hard limit. Confidence is medium rather than high because whether Plus's limits actually cover this scenario depends on that unverified send-cap enforcement detail.
ActiveCampaign’s pricing page shows one number per plan and contact tier, and every single one of them carries the same small label: “Billed annually.” The figures below, checked on , are accurate to that label. What it leaves out, and what a buyer should know before committing a year’s payment upfront, is the rest of this page.
Which ActiveCampaign plan actually fits your contact count?
ActiveCampaign prices four plans, Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise, by how many contacts sit on the account, not by how many people use it. At 1,000 contacts the four run $15, $49, $79 and $145 a month; move to 10,000 contacts and Starter and Plus rise to $149 and $189. A solo operator emailing around 1,000 contacts a few times a month fits Starter, which caps out at one user seat and five actions per automation but still ships the same CRM and automation engine as every other plan. A small team running roughly 10,000 contacts still sits inside Starter’s 25,000-contact ceiling, so the small-team bill above stays on the cheapest plan rather than forcing an upgrade. Past that, the choice usually turns on seats and automation depth rather than contacts: Plus removes Starter’s automation-action cap and adds landing pages, and Pro raises the included seats from one to three and adds advanced segmentation and attribution reporting, useful once more than one person is building campaigns.
What actually happens once your list outgrows the plan you’re on?
ActiveCampaign’s pricing-page FAQ states plainly that crossing into a higher contact band moves your account to the next band, not a penalty or a lockout, so a growing list alone never gets an account suspended or a feature switched off. The less obvious limit is how often you email that list, not just its size. ActiveCampaign’s own plan-comparison table caps monthly email sends at a multiple of contact count: 10 times contacts on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro, and 15 times on Enterprise. A 50,000-contact list emailed roughly twelve times a month adds up to about 600,000 sends, past the 500,000 that Plus’s allowance covers at that size and right at the 600,000 Pro’s allowance provides instead. ActiveCampaign has not published whether that multiplier is an enforced cap or a looser guideline, so the growing-team bill above is recorded on Plus, the cheapest plan that covers 50,000 contacts. A business that actually sends to its full list that often should budget for $969 a month on Pro instead, the safer real-world pick if that send limit turns out to be strictly enforced.
Why does “billed annually” matter more than the sticker price?
There is no monthly/annual toggle anywhere on ActiveCampaign’s pricing page, and the number displayed for every plan is not a price you can get by paying month to month; it is only what a year of service works out to per month once you have paid for the whole year. Multiplied out, the commitment gets clearer: Starter at 1,000 contacts comes to $180 for the year, and the growing-team bill above, on Plus at 50,000 contacts, comes to $7,308 for the year. ActiveCampaign’s billing help article, visible only after you sign up, confirms that a genuine month-to-month cadence exists on the account, alongside a third option called “commit annually, pay monthly,” but it names a price for neither one. That leaves a prospective buyer with no way to compare the true cost of paying monthly against the annual figure ActiveCampaign advertises everywhere else, which is the single biggest catch on this pricing page.
What else can add to the bill beyond the plan price?
Setup is free on every plan, per ActiveCampaign’s own pricing FAQ. Past that, almost everything optional has no public price at all. Starter includes one seat and allows one purchased extra; Plus, Pro and Enterprise include more seats and can add further ones, but ActiveCampaign has never published what an extra seat costs on any plan. The same is true of its enhanced-CRM add-ons, Pipelines and Sales Engagement, both sold on Plus and above; of SMS credits, also sold on Plus and above; and of the Custom Reports and Transactional Email add-ons available more broadly across the lineup. ActiveCampaign’s Help Center confirms all of them exist and states which plans qualify to buy each one, but the actual charge only appears inside the account after you have already signed up and started the purchase. Treat the plan price as a floor, not the full bill, until you can check each add-on yourself while logged in.
Is the 14-day trial enough to decide, and what if it isn’t?
ActiveCampaign has no permanent free plan; its only no-cost option is a 14-day trial that needs no credit card and runs on Pro-plan features, so a trial account can test advanced segmentation and attribution reporting even if Starter or Plus is the plan you would actually buy. ActiveCampaign’s Help Center adds that the Sales Engagement add-on and a Salesforce integration can be tested during that same window. What neither the pricing page nor the Help Center says is what happens to an account, its contacts and its automations once the 14 days end without a paid plan in place. If you do buy and the plan turns out to be wrong, the real safety net is the 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans, not the trial, since it gives a full refund window that runs well past what 14 free days can show you. A business that wants to stay on a free tool indefinitely under 1,000 contacts will not find one here; Kit publishes a permanent free tier that covers up to 10,000 contacts, well past that mark, while Mailchimp‘s free tier stops at just 250 contacts, too small for most businesses approaching 1,000. Neither one bundles a CRM the way ActiveCampaign does.
How does ActiveCampaign’s bill compare with the other tools people put next to it?
Klaviyo is the closest comparison in shape: it also prices by contact count rather than seats, but its Email plan bills monthly with no annual option at all, the opposite pattern from ActiveCampaign’s annual-only pricing; the Klaviyo vs ActiveCampaign page lines up both tools at the same contact counts. Mailchimp is the more common budget comparison: its Standard plan runs to $135 a month at the small-team contact count above, close to ActiveCampaign’s own Starter bill at that size, though Mailchimp’s CRM tools are thinner than ActiveCampaign’s built-in pipeline. For a business that has outgrown a light CRM entirely, HubSpot starts to make sense: its small-team bill runs to $1,100 a month, far past ActiveCampaign at the same size, and only worth paying once you need HubSpot’s fuller sales and service tools rather than the automation-plus-CRM combination ActiveCampaign sells.
Add-ons, usage and other costs
Other costs that change the real bill: fees, processing and one-time charges.
| Cost | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Setup / onboarding fee | $0 — none on any plan | Pricing-page FAQ: 'There are no setup costs or hidden fees when you start with ActiveCampaign.' The onboarding-services page FAQ adds: 'Onboarding is included free with all paid ActiveCampaign plans. Depending on your plan, it may be through a live, 1:1 session or through an AI course.' |
Billing rules worth knowing
- The public pricing page shows only the annual-billing, monthly-equivalent rate ('Billed annually') for every plan and contact tier, with no visible monthly/annual toggle. The Help Center's billing-information article confirms three billing cadences exist in-account — Annual, Monthly, and 'Commit annually pay monthly' — but does not publish the Monthly-cadence rate, and it was not found anywhere on the public marketing site (see unverified).
- Contacts are sold in named bands (1,000 / 2,500 / 5,000 / 7,500 / 10,000 / 15,000 / 20,000 / 25,000 / 30,000 / 40,000 / 50,000 / >50,000). The Starter plan has a maximum of 25,000 contacts and is shown as unavailable ('Only available on plans with 25,000 contacts or less') at higher bands — confirmed both on the pricing page and in the Help Center's plan-overview article.
- If a contact count grows past the current plan's contact band, ActiveCampaign upgrades the account to the next band/plan rather than penalizing or locking it out (pricing-page FAQ).
- Each plan includes a fixed number of user seats (Starter 1, Plus 1, Pro 3, Enterprise 5). Starter can add at most 1 extra seat; Plus, Pro and Enterprise can buy additional seats with no stated cap — but no seat add-on price is published anywhere on activecampaign.com or its Help Center (see unverified).
- A 30-day money-back guarantee applies to paid plans ('We're so confident you'll grow with us, we'll give you a full refund if you're not satisfied after 30 days' — pricing page).
- The pricing page includes a Currency selector (USD $, BRL R$, CAD $, AUD A$, EUR €, GBP £); this record captures only the default USD selection.
How we checked this
ActiveCampaign: Read ActiveCampaign's pricing page (Email tab, the default active tab) in a US-locale headless browser at its default 1,000-contact selection, then set the page's native contacts <select> element to 10,000 and to 50,000 (a real dropdown, not a slider, so clicking the visible tier numbers does not change the selection; Playwright's selectOption was used instead) to capture Starter/Plus/Pro/Enterprise pricing at all three required contact tiers; also expanded both collapsed pricing-page FAQ answers, and read the Help Center's plan-overview, SMS add-on and billing-cadence articles plus the onboarding-services page's cost FAQ. Snapshots saved for every page/state. Last verified . Prices are US list prices in USD; The pricing page offers a Currency selector (USD, BRL, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP). We captured only the default USD selection, per this site’s US-list-price convention, and did not test whether the other currencies are simple FX conversions of the USD price or independently set regional prices.
- Pricing page, Email tab (default active tab), contacts selector at its default 1,000 contacts, billed annually — read 26 September 2026
- Pricing page, Email tab, native contacts <select> set to 10,000, billed annually — read 27 September 2026
- Pricing page, Email tab, native contacts <select> set to 50,000, billed annually (Starter shown as 'Only available on plans with 25,000 contacts or less') — read 27 September 2026
- Pricing page FAQ, 'Are there any setup costs or hidden fees when starting with ActiveCampaign?' expanded — read 27 September 2026
- Pricing page FAQ, 'How does ActiveCampaign help ensure you only pay for what you actually use...' expanded — read 27 September 2026
- Help Center: Overview of ActiveCampaign plans — read 27 September 2026
- Onboarding services page FAQ, 'What's the cost?' expanded — read 27 September 2026
- Help Center: Purchase the SMS add-on — read 27 September 2026
- Help Center: How do I view and update my billing information (billing cadence options) — read 27 September 2026
Automated re-check on : all 4 prices we re-read were still on ActiveCampaign's pages.
- Month-to-month (non-annual) billing rate for any plan or contact tier: the public pricing page shows only the annual-billing monthly-equivalent price. The Help Center's billing-information article confirms 'Monthly' is one of three billing cadences available in-account (the others being Annual and 'Commit annually pay monthly'), but no Monthly-cadence rate is published on the marketing site, so it could not be captured.
- Price of an extra/additional user seat beyond each plan's included seats (Starter can add 1 extra seat; Plus, Pro and Enterprise can add more) — the Help Center confirms the ability to purchase seats but never states a price; it only appears inside the billing/upgrade flow after signing up.
- Enhanced CRM add-ons — Pipelines and Sales Engagement (available on Plus, Professional and Enterprise) — have no published price on activecampaign.com or its Help Center. Third-party review sites cite roughly $68/month and $111/month respectively, but those figures could not be confirmed on an ActiveCampaign-owned page, so they are not included.
- SMS add-on and SMS-credit pricing: the Help Center's 'Purchase the SMS add-on' article confirms Plus, Pro and Enterprise accounts can buy SMS credits, but the cost is shown only inside an in-app purchase modal after logging in; no per-credit or per-message rate is published on any page we could read.
- Custom Reports add-on price (sold separately on Plus and Professional; included free with Enterprise) and Transactional Email add-on price (available on all four plans, built on Postmark) — both are listed as purchasable in the Help Center's plan-overview article with no price shown anywhere public.
- Exact meaning and enforcement of each plan's 'Email sends: Nx contact limit' figure (Starter/Plus 10x, Pro 12x, Enterprise 15x) shown in the pricing page's comparison table — it is never explained whether this is a hard monthly send cap, a fair-use guideline, or a maximum list size. See the growing scenario's note for why this matters.
- Whether the other five display currencies the pricing page offers (BRL, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP) are simple FX conversions of the USD price or independently set regional prices; only the default USD selection was captured.
- ActiveCampaign HQ (a separate franchise-specific product) is reported by third parties to carry a one-time fee around $4,500; this is a different product line from the four Email plans in this record and was not verified on an ActiveCampaign-owned page, so it is not included.
We re-check every price against the vendor's page each Monday; changes are logged on the changes page. See a price that's wrong? Tell us and we will correct it the same week.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ActiveCampaign cost per month?
The price depends on contacts, not people: each of ActiveCampaign's four plans includes a fixed number of seats (Starter and Plus one, Pro three, Enterprise five) and then scales up with how many contacts you store, not how many of those seats you actually fill. At the default 1,000-contact tier, that seat allowance comes bundled into $15 a month on Starter up to $145 on Enterprise. Contacts push the bill up far faster than seats do: at 10,000 contacts Starter reaches $149 and Plus $189, and by 50,000 contacts Starter is no longer sold at all, leaving Plus as the cheapest option at $609 a month or Pro at $969 for a team that needs its higher email-send allowance. Decide on seats and automation depth first, then check what your real contact count costs on that plan.
What's the difference between ActiveCampaign's Starter and Plus plans?
Starter and Plus differ mainly in automation depth and a few feature gates, not in what they cover. At 1,000 contacts, Starter costs $15 a month against Plus at $49, and a similar gap holds higher up the scale, $149 versus $189 at 10,000 contacts. Starter caps every automation at five actions and includes one user seat with room for one purchased extra; Plus removes that automation-action cap, adds landing pages and standard segmentation, and ships the same CRM and automation engine underneath. ActiveCampaign's Help Center also notes that Starter is a new-signup plan only; an existing ActiveCampaign customer cannot buy it. A solo operator running a handful of simple automations rarely needs what Plus adds; an agency or a business chaining several multi-step automations across triggers usually does, and that need, not contact count, is what should decide between the two plans.
Will ActiveCampaign charge me more if my contact list grows?
Yes, but not as a penalty. ActiveCampaign's pricing-page FAQ states that crossing into a higher contact band moves your account to the next band or plan automatically, without locking you out of features or billing a surprise fee. The less obvious limit is how often you email your list, not just its size. ActiveCampaign's plan-comparison table caps monthly email sends at a multiple of contact count: 10 times contacts on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro, and 15 times on Enterprise. A 50,000-contact list emailed around twelve times a month adds up to roughly 600,000 sends, past what Plus's allowance covers at that size and in range of what Pro's allowance provides instead. ActiveCampaign has not published whether that multiplier is a hard send cap or a fair-use guideline, so budget one plan tier up if you actually email your full list that often.
Can I try ActiveCampaign before paying, and what happens after the trial?
Yes. ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial that needs no credit card to start, and the trial account runs on Pro-plan features regardless of which plan you would actually buy, so you can test advanced segmentation, attribution reporting and the Sales Engagement add-on before committing to any tier. ActiveCampaign's Help Center adds that a Salesforce integration can also be tested during the trial window. What isn't published on ActiveCampaign's pricing page or Help Center is what happens to your account, contacts and automations once those 14 days end without a paid plan in place; neither source states whether data is deleted, frozen or simply locked behind a required upgrade. If you do buy a plan and it turns out to be the wrong fit, the trial isn't the real safety net for that, the 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans is, since it gives a full refund window well past the trial itself.
What add-ons and extra fees does ActiveCampaign charge on top of the plan price?
Several, and none of them has a public price. Every plan beyond Starter's single included seat can add more users, but ActiveCampaign has never published what an extra seat costs, on any plan. The same is true of its enhanced-CRM add-ons, Pipelines and Sales Engagement, both sold on Plus and above; of SMS credits, also sold on Plus and above, which let an account send broadcast text messages; and of the Custom Reports and Transactional Email add-ons available more broadly across the lineup. ActiveCampaign's Help Center confirms each of these exists and lists which plans qualify to buy it, but the actual charge only appears inside the account after you've signed up and started the purchase, not on any page the public can read. That means the plan price you see advertised is a floor, not the full bill, until you've logged in and checked each add-on for yourself.
Is there a setup fee, and can I get a refund if ActiveCampaign turns out to be the wrong fit?
No setup fee, and yes, within a window. ActiveCampaign's pricing-page FAQ states there are no setup costs or hidden fees on any plan, and its onboarding-services page adds that onboarding is included free with every paid plan, delivered as a live session or an AI-guided course depending on plan. On the refund side, ActiveCampaign backs every paid plan with a 30-day money-back guarantee: its pricing page states it will give a full refund if you're not satisfied after 30 days. That guarantee, not the 14-day trial, is the real protection against picking the wrong plan, since it applies after a month of real use, not just a trial sample. Neither the pricing page nor the Help Center states whether that refund is prorated for an annual payment made partway through its contract year, so confirm that with ActiveCampaign directly before relying on it late in a paid year.
Which ActiveCampaign plan should a small business or agency pick?
It depends on team size and automation complexity more than raw contact count. A solo operator or freelancer with around 1,000 contacts and a few campaigns a month fits Starter, at $15 a month, since its one-seat limit and five-actions-per-automation cap rarely bind at that scale. A small agency or team of two or three, still around 10,000 contacts, usually needs Plus at $189 a month for unlimited automation actions and landing pages, or Pro at $375 with more people actively building campaigns. Once contacts climb toward 50,000, Starter is no longer sold at all, so Plus, at $609 a month, becomes the effective entry point, with Pro at $969 for teams sending past Plus's send-volume allowance. Pick by seats needed and automation complexity; contacts mainly decide which price column you land in once you've settled on a tier.
First published 27 September 2026 · Last updated