Unclaimed: Are you working at ActiveCampaign for Marketing?
ActiveCampaign for Marketing Reviews: 4.5/5 — Highly Rated
ActiveCampaign is an integrated marketing tool that easily automates email marketing strategies and creates targeted campaigns. While automated marketing is a core component of the system, ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool that can do so much more. The software is known for being able to deliver a personalized experience across all customer touchpoints, track buyer behavior and preferences, customize send-outs, and gather data from every stage of the customer lifecycle, just to name a few.
| Capabilities |
AI
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
ActiveCampaign for Marketing Pros and Cons
- Powerful email builder
- Machine learning enabled helps boost marketing results
- Seamlessly integrates with automations
- On-site chat is an additional, paid add on
- Advanced feature are complicated to use and navigate.
ActiveCampaign’s $15 Starter plan limits each automation to five actions. On a platform bought specifically for automation, that is the number that decides your plan — a welcome sequence, a lead-scoring flow, or an abandoned-cart journey all run past five steps quickly. And the discount you get for accepting that limit shrinks as your list grows: at 25,000 contacts, Starter is displayed at $391 a month while Plus, which has no action cap at all, is $389.
- What it is: A marketing automation platform combining email, automation, CRM, and now WhatsApp, built around a visual automation builder.
- Best for: Businesses whose value comes from behavioural automation rather than from sending newsletters.
- Pricing: Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79, Enterprise $145 per month at 1,000 contacts, billed annually. Verified July 2026.
- The honest catch: Starter and Plus are single-user plans; three users arrive at Pro.
What Is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign’s reputation rests on its automation builder, which is genuinely one of the best in the category: branching conditions, goals, split tests, wait steps, and CRM actions arranged visually. Where most email tools bolt automation onto a newsletter product, ActiveCampaign is an automation product that also sends email.
The 2026 lineup adds two structural things. Channels are now chosen before plans — Email, WhatsApp, or Email + WhatsApp are separate price families — and “Active Intelligence”, the AI layer, appears on every tier but carries unstated limits on Starter and Plus. The page also offers a results guarantee: 30 days or your money back.
Prices are set by contact count through a selector, so every published figure describes a list size rather than a plan.
How ActiveCampaign Works
- Priced by email contacts, chosen from a dropdown that runs from 1,000 to 150,000.
- Automation actions are the Starter cap — five per automation, unlimited from Plus.
- Users ladder late. One on Starter and Plus, three on Pro, five on Enterprise.
- Landing pages start at Plus, not Starter.
- Attribution and conversion tracking start at Pro.
- WhatsApp is a separate plan family, priced independently of email.
ActiveCampaign Pricing
Captured from ActiveCampaign’s pricing page in July 2026 in US dollars, Email plans, billed annually, reading the contact selector at each size.
| Contacts | Starter | Plus | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $15 | $49 | $79 | $145 |
| 5,000 | $79 | $145 | $205 | $375 |
| 10,000 | $149 | $189 | $375 | $589 |
| 25,000 | $391 | $389 | $629 | $879 |
| 50,000 | $391 | $609 | $969 | $1,169 |
What actually decides your plan:
- Five actions per automation is a hard ceiling, not a soft one. A welcome series that sends three emails with waits between them has already spent its budget. If automation is why you are here — and it usually is — Starter is an email tool with a decorative automation feature, and Plus is the first plan that does the job.
- The Starter discount evaporates with list size. At 1,000 contacts Plus costs 3.3 times more; at 10,000 it costs 27% more; at 25,000 the pricing table shows Starter at $391 against Plus at $389. Whatever the reason for that crossover, nobody with a 25,000-contact list should be choosing Starter over Plus on price.
- Starter’s displayed price stops rising at $391. It reads $391 at 25,000, 50,000, and 75,000 contacts while every other tier keeps climbing. That may be a deliberate ceiling or a quirk of the selector; either way, confirm it with ActiveCampaign before building a budget on it.
- Landing pages require Plus. Starter sends and automates but does not host pages, which matters if you were planning to run campaigns end to end.
- One user until Pro. Both Starter and Plus are single-seat, so a second marketer means $79 at 1,000 contacts — a fivefold step from the headline.
- Attribution is a Pro feature. Knowing which campaign produced revenue starts at $79, which is worth weighing if proving ROI is part of the job.
Who Should Use ActiveCampaign
- Businesses running genuine behavioural automation. The clearest case, and where the builder outclasses most competitors.
- Ecommerce operators. Deep store integrations plus abandoned-cart and post-purchase flows are a core strength.
- Teams wanting email and CRM together. The built-in CRM removes an integration for smaller sales teams.
- Companies adding WhatsApp to the mix, now a first-class channel rather than an integration.
It fits poorly for simple newsletters, where MailerLite or Kit cost far less; for large lists mailed infrequently, where Brevo’s send-based pricing is structurally cheaper; and for teams needing multiple seats early, since three users requires Pro.
Honest Pros and Cons
Strengths
- The best automation builder in its price range. Conditions, goals, and split tests done properly.
- A real CRM included, not a contact list relabelled.
- Deep ecommerce integrations for cart recovery and post-purchase flows.
- WhatsApp as a native channel rather than a bolt-on.
- A 30-day results guarantee, unusual in the category.
- Transparent contact-based pricing, published across the full list-size range.
Limitations
- Five actions per automation on Starter, which undercuts the reason to buy it.
- Starter’s value collapses as lists grow, and inverts against Plus at 25,000 contacts.
- Single user on Starter and Plus.
- No landing pages below Plus.
- Attribution requires Pro at $79.
- AI limits on Starter and Plus are unstated — “limits apply” without a number.
ActiveCampaign Alternatives and How It Compares
- Mailchimp is better known and easier to start with, but weaker on automation logic at comparable prices.
- Brevo charges by emails sent rather than contacts stored, which is structurally cheaper for large, rarely-mailed lists.
- Klaviyo is the ecommerce specialist, stronger on store data and more expensive as profiles accumulate.
- GetResponse and Omnisend occupy similar ground, the latter ecommerce-focused.
- MailerLite and Kit are the cheaper options for creators and simple sending.
- HubSpot Marketing Hub is the heavier all-in-one, with costs that escalate quickly.
For a broader survey, browse our marketing automation directory.
The Verdict
ActiveCampaign earns its reputation. The automation builder handles branching logic, goals, and conditional content with a fluency that most competitors at this price cannot match, the CRM is genuinely useful rather than nominal, and the ecommerce integrations make cart-recovery and post-purchase flows straightforward. If your marketing depends on what individual contacts do rather than on what you send everyone, it belongs on the shortlist.
Ignore the $15. Starter caps every automation at five actions, and five actions is not an automation — it is a short sequence. Three emails with a wait between each has consumed the allowance before you have added a condition or a goal. Since automation is the entire reason to prefer ActiveCampaign over a cheaper email tool, buying Starter means paying for the product’s reputation while being locked out of the thing that earned it. Plus at $49 is the honest entry price.
Then set the contact selector to your actual list size, because the plan gap behaves strangely as lists grow. At 1,000 contacts Plus costs 3.3 times Starter; at 10,000 it is only 27% more; and at 25,000 the table shows Starter at $391 against Plus at $389 — the entry plan costing more than the tier above it. Starter’s displayed price then holds at $391 while everything else climbs, which is odd enough that it is worth confirming directly with ActiveCampaign rather than planning around. The practical conclusion is unchanged either way: the cheapest plan is only meaningfully cheap on a small list, and on a small list its automation limit is exactly what you cannot afford.
FAQ
How much does ActiveCampaign cost?
Captured in July 2026 in US dollars for Email plans billed annually at 1,000 contacts: Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79, and Enterprise $145 per month. Prices rise with contact count — at 10,000 contacts they are $149, $189, $375, and $589. WhatsApp and Email + WhatsApp are separate plan families with their own pricing. A 30-day results guarantee applies.
What is the 5-action limit on ActiveCampaign Starter?
Starter permits five actions per automation, where an action is any step — sending an email, waiting, applying a tag, updating a field, or branching. A three-email welcome sequence with waits between the emails reaches the limit immediately. Every plan from Plus upward includes unlimited automation actions, which is why Plus is the realistic entry point for anyone buying ActiveCampaign for automation rather than for sending.
Why does Starter cost more than Plus at 25,000 contacts?
That is what ActiveCampaign’s own contact selector displays: $391 for Starter against $389 for Plus at 25,000 contacts. Starter’s shown price then remains $391 at 50,000 and 75,000 while the other tiers keep rising. It may be a deliberate ceiling on the entry plan or a quirk in the pricing table, so confirm it before budgeting — but at that list size there is no price argument for Starter over Plus in any case.
How many users does ActiveCampaign include?
Starter and Plus are both single-user plans. Pro includes three users and Enterprise five. That makes Pro the practical entry point for any marketing team rather than a solo operator, and at 1,000 contacts that is $79 per month against the $15 headline — worth establishing before you compare it against competitors that include several seats lower down.
Is ActiveCampaign better than Mailchimp?
For automation, clearly yes — the builder handles branching conditions, goals, and split tests with more depth than Mailchimp offers at comparable prices, and the built-in CRM is a real one. Mailchimp is easier to start with, better known, and has a free tier. Choose ActiveCampaign when behavioural automation drives revenue, and something simpler when you mostly need to send good-looking campaigns to a list.
Compare ActiveCampaign for Marketing with other popular tools in the same category.
The webinars and other online resources are helpful.
The issues we have with ActiveCampaign are of our own doing. We need to dedicate someone to owning the platform first before we can truly be successful. Also sign in can be annoying a bit. We've gotten around this by bookmarking and otherwise, but having to know a link that we didn't create ourselves can create issues, especially with new team members.
Prospect & Customer communication!
You get so much bang for you buck! Automations, the way I can use the tags to track what my audience is interested in, and it's user friendly- all at a low cost.
No real complaints so far. It did take me a bit of time figuring out my campaign emails vs automation emails since you have to build them in separate places, but once I figured that out, it's been smooth sailing.
I use ActiveCampaign for a welcome sequence with a freebie, building my contact list, nurturing my list through regular emails, and eventually for automated launch sequences. It's a huge part of growing my business.
Am besten finde ich die simplen Automationen und die Vielfalt an Möglichkeiten
Anfangs noch sehr kompliziert zu bedienen
Automatisiertes online Business
There's so much that ActiveCampaign can do. I rated this highly a few months ago and now that I've been using it, I like it even more. I've created both automations and campaigns myself. I like the seamless operations.
Getting started was tough. The tutorials showed some features, but in pieces. When I had help, it was easy for me to go back and add on. Now that I've been using it, the one piece that I still don't necessarily understand is how to best use my contact list...and I don't think that's on ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign has allowed me to reach more people faster. It has saved me time...in turn saving me money. I don't need to personalize every single thing and using ActiveCampaign still affords me several opportunities to do so. That personal touch...without really being personal is clutch! Using both automations and campaigns allows me to give those personal messages to my list.
Ease of use and teaching others in our team how to use it. Intuitive interfaces and logical flow make it easy to use.
Hard to format RSS, should be able to customise this for inserting your own blog articles as these are what brought the most clicks from the newsletters. Recipes and how-to articles in particular. Live chat is not good if you want to be able to see and edit conversations. Stopped using it as it was too hard to find messages - they need to be flaggable.
Funnel automation and segmenting to increase conversion and CTR
I really do like the set it and forget it....well I do have to follow up later but I can set that time of the week to do that. I don't feel pressured to 'figure it out' daily.
I am not very tech savvy so I did have to get assistance to set it up. Some of it seems pretty simple though. It's much better than when I tried to send emails through my regular account and got so many rejections to my client's real emails. Thank you.
I don't have to go through all of the rejected emails, figure them out, resend, or just feel blocked from being able to communicate with my clients.
Active Campaign is easy to use and provides useful, specific data.
Overall, Active Campaign is great! If I had to choose a downside, it would be all the steps it takes to create a solid campaign (but the rewards are worth it).
Active Campaign is instrumental in creating my email list and weekly email threads to my customers.
The automations and ability to create a thorough customer profile, allowing you to segment and directly target your audience with what matters to them most.
Currently, I have an issue with my html email creator but the support team has already begun working on it and send me regular updates.
Helping our business segment and target our database with tailored marketing and content. This will allow us to further improve our customer journey and raise engagement.
The automations are like hiring another person or two that watches what is happening with your communications and automatically sends the right messaging at the right times.
Not much to dislike. ActiveCampaign is constantly improving its software.
Tracking customers through tagging, and communication automation.
I find it quite simple to pop into Active Campaign every week, to create my marketing emails for the upcoming week. I love that I can re-use other previously created emails, and quickly update them to create my new ones! I also like that it's easy to schedule my emails for when I'd like them to send. Seeing the analytics afterward is helpful for me to know how many people opened my email, clicked on links, etc.
I find when I want to change a photo in an existing email template, it's very slow.
Having a program that collects and stores my email list is necessary for my business. Also being able to quickly create emails and segment groups makes Active Campaign the perfect choice!
I love that I have all my subscribers and clients in the same place and all my emails are sent to every subscriber regardless when they have subscribed.
The price. It's in the high price for me at this point in my business.
This problem hasn't been solved.
We love it for our work emails!! its super easy to use and recreat past deigns
nothing right now! we use the templats a lot
nothing yet
The automation, tagging, and reporting are super easy. Forms and automation are easy to create.
It can have a bit of a learning curve but once you get it, it's a good product.
Easy tagging, automation and list building. Reporting is super easy and very robust
I like the clear ability to segment by tags, not just on the entire email contact scale, but within automation. It makes my work so much simpler. I couldn't do all I can in Active Campaign with MailChimp. AC integrates so easily into all my other systems.
It could be an operator error, but I don't like that you can't find old emails easily. You have to be in the right automation or some campaigns are hard to see the actual email text.
I needed mulitple segmentation options. And better automation. I feel like my customers now get a more personalized experience than before. I find it much easier to connect with clients.
It was one of the best email marketing tools we have used. The whole process is easy. Tracking, sending mail, designing email templates everything is easily accessible.
They can improve in the help center. A live chat option can be better. They do their best to reply but it would be best if you solve the issue right at that moment.
Active campaign is helping us with our email marketing.
The sophistication of funnel capabilities in Active Campaign is what keeps me using it. I love that you can share funnel templates with friends.
It runs and loads SO SLOWLY!! I would spend double time using it if it responded at a normal speed. Why oh why does it load and run like a program from 1994? It's killllllling me.
The very complex funnel and automation setup. Super cool and useful in endless ways, truly game-changing for my business.
The dashboard is handy. And by far, the tool that made me choose ActiveCampaign was the Automation workflow. This workflow makes so much sense to be shown visually. And it's pretty easy to follow.
The e-mail editor! I understand that it's hard to create an editor that is seamless to use. But man. Between the process of uploading and using a picture. The clunky sidebar with some options is sometimes hidden, sometimes not. And the overall UX experience of it... Sure, You can do it better! Ohh... and please! MORE FONTS !!!!!!
I can engage with my different audiences with ease. I also have the pleasure of keeping in contact with them. Now that my templates are created, it's an excellent process to send come new content to them.
The ease of creating campaigns for my list + the automations available
It can take some time to learn how to properly utilize all the features
It helps me to market to my email list and that brings new sales for the business
The monthly 1:1 zoom guidance to help set up campaigns and automations makes it easier to pull value out of the platform, knowing what it's capable of
Some of my links have recently been going haywire with additional things being added but I think it's the beta email testing platform
I can keep my client notes on there after calls and see which emails they have and haven't opened to direct my messaging
I like that it has been able to grow with me, it has an intuitive interface and that you can achieve a lot without any tech skills.
I haven't experienced any downsides of this product worthy of note.
It allows me to easily and efficiently segment customers, communicate with customers and deliver improved experiences.
The support - great help articles on their community pages; quick chat support & live webinar trainings/monthly meetings. Much better than the competition in my opinion.
Honestly, at this point, nothing. It's a great platform and super user friendly.
They had a tech issue recently and the account was down (I think across the board) but there were regular updates, great communication about it and solved quickly. I don't know of other updates - but the platform serves our business well.
I love the automation feature and the structure of the platform. I really love how attentive they are to their clients. Excellent customer service and also take into account our suggestions and ideas on ways to improve the app.
There is nothing I can think of that I particularly dislike about the website / app. I will conntinue to use and where I find it is lacking, I will continue to make recommendations on their suggestions box on ways they can improve it. If anything I would say the way they present data and feedback on analytics could be improved but that is personal preference.
Active Campaign is helping us achieve new heights with our email marketing by assisting us with delivering new campaign automations, which is brand new and uncharted territory for our company. Thanks to Active Campaign, we are accomplishing a lot more email communication with less effort.
What I like best and what our company uses the most is the automations within AC. It allows us to set things once, and then forget it until we need to alter something
The Deals inside AC have been the biggest learning curve for us. Although, there are a ton. of resources put on by AC that have helped us learn faster and get up to speed so we can treat it more like a CRM.
Allowing our business to become more automated on the backend and also keep track of our leads within our marketing and sales team, which before there was some missing communication
Clear Structure, good support, easy to use, lot of functions.
Nothing at the moment. All works good and we are happy.
E-Mail Mareting. Re-Marketing. Automations.
ActiveCampaign is very user friendly and has all of the tools we need to operate as in depth or simple of a CRM & email tool as we need at any given time.
I would appreciate more of an account manager, but they have good resources and FAQs that suffice.
CRM and data tracking issues within our membership.
I have been using Active Campaign for over a year now as I needed a system that could keep up with all the things I needed to run my online business. we have some complex funnels including a quiz funnel that sends out over 21 different responses depending on the answers and Active Campaign can manage it with ease.
I went through the onboarding and didn't feel this was worth the money as my requests and questions seemed more complex than they onboarder had knowledge about.
It allows me to be more personal with my contacts through tracking and tagging. It also talks to more systems than Kajabi did, making the integration more seamless
ActiveCampaign is very user-friendly and setting up campaigns and automations is quite easy after you get familiar with how things work around the platform. The support is also helpful.
For someone who has never worked with automations before, it might be a little hard in the beginning, so I would say that having tutorials for inexperienced users is an improvement I would like to see in the platform.
I especially use the campaigns feature and the automations one. The campaigns feature has been helping me keep in touch with my audience and the automations have helped me categorize my leads.
The structure of the tools is easy to understand.
There is some space in optimizing the reporting menus and how each report is viewed. Otherwise, it is a great tool, my email marketing works great now.
It allows me to create great e-mail marketing automation to target relevant users
I like the functionality and ability to build out simple to complex funnels with multiple actions. And how it integrates with all other web platforms that I use for my business.
If you're not tech savvy then I wouldn't recommend this as your first email marketing or CRM tool. There are a lot of features that can be overwhelming. Active Campaign is for the entrepreneur who has been up and going for a while and wants to take things to the next level. So, either hire someone for this role or create time to learn their platform first. It can also be a little pricy because their plans are based on number of contacts.
Active Campaign helps us create that passive/automated approach for setting up all the backend emails that go along with free resources, sales funnels and newsletters.
Automations and how easy it is to manage my Email List with Tags
There is nothing that I do not like about AC
Client Email Tracking and Prospect Communications
