ActiveCampaign Review 2026: No Free Plan, and the Price It Won’t Show You

ActiveCampaign has no free plan — only a 14-day trial. Its pricing page publishes annual-billing rates only: at 1,000 contacts, Starter is $15/month, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145, each marked “billed annually”. There is no monthly toggle, so the monthly rate is not disclosed until checkout.

Figures read directly from ActiveCampaign’s live pricing page on 8 August 2026, in the USD view, at the 1,000-contact tier. ActiveCampaign was not used to produce this page, so nothing here is a claim about how the product performs — only about what it publishes. No numeric rating is given.

Quick Verdict

ActiveCampaign is the automation-first option in this category, and it prices like one. It is the only platform we have reviewed with no free tier at all, and the only one whose pricing page declines to show a monthly rate. In exchange you get automation depth the cheaper tools do not attempt — including behavioural triggers, conditional content and attribution tracking — plus a CRM the others simply do not have.

If your funnel depends on what people do on your website rather than what they click in an email, this is the tool the cheaper platforms keep losing to. If it does not, you are paying for machinery you will not run.

ActiveCampaign Pricing 2026

Every price below is the annual-billing rate, because that is the only rate ActiveCampaign publishes. There is no monthly/annual switch on the pricing page — all four plans are labelled “billed annually”. Budget on the assumption that paying monthly costs more, and confirm the figure at checkout before committing.

PlanFrom (1,000 contacts)UsersEmail sendsSegmentation
Starter$15/mo billed annually110× contact limitLimited
Plus$49/mo billed annually110× contact limitStandard
Pro$79/mo billed annually312× contact limitAdvanced
Enterprise$145/mo billed annually515× contact limitPremium

Two limits are easy to miss. Starter caps automations at five actions each — the same practical ceiling MailerLite applies to its free plan, except here you are paying $15/month for it. And Plus still only includes one user seat; the jump to a second seat means Pro at $79/month, which is a steep step for a two-person team.

ActiveCampaign also sells plans by channel — Email, WhatsApp, or Email + WhatsApp — so the plan grid changes depending on which you select. The figures above are the Email plans.

The Free Plan Question

There isn’t one. ActiveCampaign offers a free trial and nothing else. Every other platform in our library — MailerLite, Mailchimp, Brevo, Omnisend and Kit — has a permanent free tier of some size. If you want to validate an idea before paying, ActiveCampaign is structurally the wrong starting point.

Where ActiveCampaign Earns Its Price

The gap that keeps coming up in every other review on this site is the website-visit trigger. MailerLite, Kit and Brevo can all start an automation when someone submits a form or clicks a link; none can start one when someone views a pricing page and leaves. ActiveCampaign can, and that single capability is why it stays in the conversation at four times the price.

Beyond that: conditional and predictive content, attribution and conversion tracking, custom objects, premium CRM and ecommerce integrations, and unlimited automation actions from the Plus tier upward. This is marketing-automation software that also sends email, rather than an email tool with automation bolted on.

What to Watch Before You Buy

The pricing page geo-serves currency. A selector offers USD, BRL, CAD, AUD, EUR and GBP. Confirm you are reading the USD column before comparing against anything else — the same trap Mailchimp sets.

Prices scale with contact count, and the entry figures above apply only at 1,000 contacts. The published tiers run to 200,000 and above, so model your own list size on their calculator rather than assuming the headline rate holds.

Who It Suits

Businesses with a genuine sales motion — behavioural targeting, lead scoring, a CRM in daily use, several people working the same list. If you are a solo creator sending a weekly newsletter, almost anything else on this site will serve you better for less.

ActiveCampaign FAQ

Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?

No. ActiveCampaign offers a free trial only, with no permanent free tier. It is the only platform in this library without one.

How much does ActiveCampaign cost?

At 1,000 contacts, as of 8 August 2026: Starter from $15/month, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 — all billed annually. The pricing page does not publish a monthly-billing rate.

What is ActiveCampaign’s send limit?

A multiple of your contact limit: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.

Why is ActiveCampaign more expensive than MailerLite or Kit?

It is a marketing-automation and CRM platform rather than an email tool. The practical differentiator is behavioural triggers — starting an automation from a website visit — which the cheaper platforms do not offer.

How this vendor presents its prices, set against six competitors captured the same day, is covered in our pricing-page audit.

How We Researched This

All pricing and plan limits were read directly from ActiveCampaign’s live pricing page on 8 August 2026, in the USD view at the 1,000-contact tier. No account was opened, so this page reports what ActiveCampaign publishes rather than how the product performs, and carries no score. See our sources and method.

Disclosure

RightToolHQ has no affiliate relationship with ActiveCampaign at the time of writing, and this page contains no affiliate links. If that changes, this notice will be updated and any affiliate link clearly marked. See our editorial policy and affiliate disclosure.