The most capable platform in this category — a real marketing automation suite with a CRM — and the only one that publishes no prices at all. Here's what each tier allows, and every blank we couldn't fill.
The most capable platform in this category, and the hardest to price. Here's what each tier actually allows — and what ActiveCampaign refuses to publish.
This is the one product in this category that is genuinely a marketing automation platform rather than an email tool with automation bolted on. Workflows can read and write CRM records, deals get AI-scored, and the same contact drives SMS, WhatsApp and site-behaviour triggers as well as email. The price of that capability is opacity: ActiveCampaign publishes no dollar figure anywhere on its pricing page, has no free plan, and puts the CRM behind add-ons — so you cannot work out your real cost without talking to it.
Nothing on ActiveCampaign's pricing page answers this. Unlike rivals that publish a floor price and hide the rest, ActiveCampaign publishes no dollar figure at all — not for Starter, not for Enterprise, not at any contact count. Every number renders inside an interactive configurator. It confirms annual billing exists but never states the discount. Combined with no free plan, that means the only way to learn your cost is to start a 14-day trial and work the slider. Budget the trial for pricing discovery as much as for product evaluation.
Starter permits "5 actions per automation." That is not five automations — it is five steps inside each one, which a welcome sequence with a single branch will exhaust. Every tier above it is explicitly "unlimited automation actions." If automation is why you are looking at ActiveCampaign at all, Starter is not the tier you are shopping for, and treating its price as the entry cost will mislead you.
Contact and send allowances are expressed as a multiple of your contact limit rather than a flat number: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise. So the ceiling scales with the plan as well as with your list, and moving up buys headroom as well as features — a structure worth modelling before you pick a tier, because a heavy sender on a small list gets squeezed at the bottom.
This is the detail most comparisons miss. ActiveCampaign's pricing page lists CRM capability as Pipelines and Sales engagement add-ons available across all tiers, rather than as something you unlock by upgrading. The CRM is the main reason to choose ActiveCampaign over a cheaper email tool, so if you are pricing it against Mailchimp or MailerLite, make sure the quote you compare includes those add-ons and not just the marketing tier.
More than we would like, and all of it because ActiveCampaign chooses not to publish it. Any price, at any tier, at any contact count. The annual discount percentage. The cost of the Pipelines and Sales engagement add-ons. The number of prebuilt automation recipes. And its headline "94.2% deliverability rate, rated #1" claim, which appears with no published methodology and no independent testing we could cite — treat it as marketing, as you should with every vendor in this category. This page has no third-party ratings section for the same reason: we had no verified figures to show.
What the platform does, read from ActiveCampaign's own pricing and platform pages — including where those pages stay vague.
The core of the product and the reason to consider it. What separates this from the automation in an email tool is the range of things a workflow can react to and change: behaviour on your site, a deal moving stage, an SMS reply, a CRM field — not only whether someone opened an email.
The capability no pure email platform in this category offers. Sales pipelines live alongside marketing, on the same contact records, so a campaign and a deal are two views of one person rather than two databases you reconcile later. ActiveCampaign layers AI on top: "AI scores every deal, so you can focus on what's most likely to close."
Unusually, segmentation depth is itself a tier ladder rather than a feature you either have or don't: limited on Starter, standard on Plus, advanced on Pro and premium on Enterprise. ActiveCampaign does not publish what separates those four levels, which makes it hard to judge which one you need before buying — worth pinning down with sales during the trial.
Campaign building with AI assistance under the name Active Intelligence — generating a campaign from a prompt rather than starting from a blank template. Reporting is pitched the same way: ActiveCampaign says you can "get reporting insights with just one prompt." This is a step past the AI subject-line generators most rivals ship, though the platform page describes outcomes rather than mechanics.
Where the marketing-automation label is earned rather than claimed. Alongside email, the same contact record and the same workflows drive:
1,000+ integrations stated, including Shopify, Salesforce and WordPress — the largest published count of any platform we track in this category apart from HubSpot. Given the CRM angle, the Salesforce connection is the notable one: it means ActiveCampaign can sit alongside an existing sales stack rather than having to replace it.
ActiveCampaign advertises a "94.2% deliverability rate, rated #1." We are quoting that rather than endorsing it: no methodology is published, no auditor is named, and we found no independent testing to corroborate it. That is the same caveat we apply to every vendor here — deliverability marketing is marketing, and your own list hygiene and sending habits will move your inbox placement far more than the platform badge does.
Sourced from activecampaign.com/pricing and activecampaign.com/platform, checked 23 August 2026.
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Start the free trial →Every field we track for ActiveCampaign — and there are more blanks here than on any other page we've built.
| Entry-level paid price | Not published. No dollar figure appears for any tier at any contact count |
|---|---|
| Price at a given list size | Not published. Renders only inside an interactive configurator |
| Free plan | None |
| Free trial | 14 days |
| Plan tiers | Starter · Plus · Pro (marked "Popular") · Enterprise |
| Automation actions | 5 per automation on Starter · unlimited on Plus, Pro and Enterprise |
| Users included | 1 on Starter · 1 on Plus · 3 on Pro · 5 on Enterprise |
| Contact & send allowance | Expressed as a multiple of your contact limit: 10× on Starter and Plus · 12× on Pro · 15× on Enterprise |
| Segmentation | Limited on Starter · standard on Plus · advanced on Pro · premium on Enterprise. What separates the four levels is not published |
| CRM / sales pipelines | Available as Pipelines and Sales engagement add-ons across all tiers — not unlocked by upgrading tier. Add-on pricing is not published |
| Lead & deal scoring | AI scores every deal |
| SMS | Native channel inside automations |
| Supported — the only platform we track in this category that offers it | |
| Transactional email | Via Postmark integration |
| Site & event tracking | Yes — on-site behaviour can trigger automations |
| AI features | Active Intelligence — campaign generation from a prompt, AI-assisted content, AI deal scoring, and prompt-driven reporting |
| Reporting | Prompt-driven insights; attribution tied to CRM records |
| Integrations | 1,000+ stated, including Shopify, Salesforce and WordPress |
| Deliverability | Claims "94.2% deliverability rate, rated #1" — no published methodology, no independent verification found |
| Prebuilt automation recipes | Not published |
| Annual billing discount | Annual billing exists; the discount percentage is not stated |
| Courses & webinars | Not offered |
| Category | Marketing automation platform — not an email marketing tool with automation attached |
Sourced from activecampaign.com/pricing and activecampaign.com/platform, checked 23 August 2026.
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