ActiveCampaign Pricing 2026: Plans, Send Caps and the Starter Limit That Breaks Automations

How much does ActiveCampaign cost? The short answer

As of November 3, 2026, ActiveCampaign starts at $15 a month for Starter, $49 for Plus, $79 for Pro and $145 for Enterprise, each billed yearly for 1,000 contacts. That's $180, $588, $948 and $1,740 a year. The price goes up with your contact count. Plan choice usually comes down to three limits, not the headline price: Starter caps each automation at 5 actions, Starter and Plus include one user, and every plan caps email sends at 10 to 15 times your contact limit each month.

All prices and limits here come from ActiveCampaign's pricing page and its full feature comparison, read November 3, 2026. The page only prints the 1,000-contact price, so for a bigger list, enter your count in the page's contact box before you budget.

ActiveCampaign plans side by side

Every plan includes 500 AI credits, API access and webhooks, Zapier, 1,000+ integrations, and a connection to Claude and ChatGPT through MCP. SMS, WhatsApp, transactional email and the Pipelines CRM add-ons cost extra. Their prices aren't on the main pricing page.

The Starter limit that breaks a follow-up sequence

Starter's automation row reads "5 actions per automation." Count the steps in a basic lead follow-up: three emails, a tag that marks the lead as nurtured, and an alert to the owner. That's five, before any branch for people who reply. A fourth email, a CRM update or an if/else split won't fit in one automation. You'd have to split the flow into chained automations or move to Plus, which jumps from $15 to $49 a month at 1,000 contacts.

Starter also leaves out landing pages, the SMS add-on, the Calendly and Stripe integrations, and cross-channel automation (its automations are email only). If your follow-up needs to text a lead or react to a booking, Starter isn't the plan to price.

A worked month: 1,000 contacts, three people

Take a home-services company with 1,000 contacts. The owner, an office manager and a salesperson all need logins. In a typical month it sends:

• A weekly newsletter to the whole list: 1,000 × 52 ÷ 12 ≈ 4,330 sends.
• A four-email follow-up to 120 new leads: 480 sends.
• A reminder and a thank-you email for 250 jobs: 500 sends.

That's about 5,310 sends, well inside the 10,000 cap on every plan. Switch the newsletter to twice a week and it's about 8,670 plus 980, or 9,650. That's 350 short of the cap on Starter and Plus, so one extra promotion goes over. Pro's 12,000 gives you room.

The seats settle it before the sends do. Starter and Plus include one user, and ActiveCampaign's main page doesn't price extra seats. Pro includes 3, so this company's real price is $79 a month, or $948 a year, at 1,000 contacts. Add a contact tier as the list grows, plus any SMS add-on.

ActiveCampaign vs Brevo and HubSpot on price

Brevo is the cheaper sender. At our October 20, 2026 read, Brevo Standard was $18 a month on monthly billing, with unlimited automations, but inbound webhooks only on its $499 Professional plan. ActiveCampaign is the reverse: API access and webhooks are on every plan, but automations are capped on Starter and seats are tight below Pro. Our Brevo pricing page has the full tier math. If you also need a CRM with sales seats, HubSpot pricing covers HubSpot's per-seat jump from Starter to Professional, the number to set against ActiveCampaign Pro's three included users.

Is ActiveCampaign worth it?

For a small business whose follow-up is mostly email and needs branching logic, Plus or Pro is fair value. You get unlimited automation actions, webhooks to connect your other systems, and 950+ automation recipes to start from. It's poor value if you only send a newsletter, since Starter's price buys little that a cheaper sender doesn't. It's also poor value if your follow-up depends on data ActiveCampaign doesn't hold, like a rescheduled job in your field-service software or a quote status in your accounting tool. Then you're paying for the plan and for a connector. Zapier's task meter adds to the bill on every run, as our how much Zapier costs breakdown shows.

Who can build email and SMS automation on ActiveCampaign for my business?

Set up the newsletter and a simple welcome sequence yourself. Bring in a builder when the follow-up has to react to other systems, such as a booking, a payment or a job status, or when an AI step writes the message from your own records. SuperDupr, the AI ops shop Justin McKelvey runs, builds that as an AI email and SMS marketing project. The published price is $8,000 to $15,000, with $200 to $2,000 a month ongoing depending on volume, and most AI builds go live in 2 to 4 weeks. We build on ActiveCampaign when your team already lives in it, and we don't resell it. The first step is a free 30-minute strategy session, and the full price ranges are in our AI automation pricing guide.

Sources

• ActiveCampaign, pricing page and "Compare every feature" table, activecampaign.com/pricing, read November 3, 2026: plan prices billed yearly at 1,000 contacts, email sends per plan, users, AI credits, automation actions, lists, integrations, add-ons, SSO and HIPAA.
• Brevo pricing, read October 20, 2026, via our Brevo pricing page: Standard $18 a month on monthly billing, inbound webhooks on Professional.
• Worked example: SuperDupr's arithmetic on the published prices above for an assumed 3-user company with 1,000 contacts.
• SuperDupr published solution pricing, superdupr.com/solutions/ai-email-marketing, read November 3, 2026.