What ActiveCampaign costs
ActiveCampaign is priced on the size of your contact list, not on a flat monthly fee, and there is no free tier, so the entry point is the paid Starter plan at $15/mo (Starter). Above that, the price walks up a contact-tier ladder: every band your list crosses is a step up in the monthly bill. Plans and pricing checked July 2026, and every figure on this page is pulled live from our database rather than typed in by hand.
The billing detail to understand first is what counts as a contact. ActiveCampaign bills on All contacts (active + inactive), so a subscriber who has not opened an email in two years still costs you money every month. Klaviyo, by contrast, bills on Active profiles only (excludes suppressed). On ActiveCampaign, cleaning your list is not housekeeping, it is cost control.
ActiveCampaign plans explained
There is no free plan (No (14-day trial)). ActiveCampaign gives you 14 days on the paid product and then asks for a card. Brevo, Kit and Klaviyo all run genuine free tiers, which makes this a real decision point if you are starting a list from zero.
Starter is the entry paid plan at $15/mo (Starter). The correction worth making, since a lot of published comparisons still get it wrong: Starter does include marketing automation. It is capped, not absent. Each automation is limited to five actions, which is plenty for a welcome sequence, a lead-magnet delivery or a one-nudge abandoned-cart flow, and runs out fast on a branching journey with waits and conditional logic. Starter also carries advanced segmentation and A/B testing (Yes (all plans)), and it is only sold up to 25,000 contacts. Past that ceiling, Starter is not offered at all.
Plus is where the product becomes the one people recommend: the action cap comes off, landing pages appear (Yes (Plus+)) and the reporting adds revenue attribution. It rides the same contact ladder as Starter, so it has no single flat price. Use the calculator above to cost it at your own list size. Pro and Enterprise sit above Plus for teams that need attribution modelling and custom reporting.
Two escalators: the contact ladder and the Plus jump
ActiveCampaign's pricing model is Per contact, and there are two separate escalators inside that. The first is the ladder itself: growing from 1,000 to 10,000 contacts does not cost ten times more, but it crosses several bands, and each band is a step rather than a slope. The second is the plan jump: most businesses pick ActiveCampaign because of the automation, hit the five-action ceiling inside a year, and move to Plus, which restarts the ladder at a higher rung.
Neither is hidden. Both are routinely un-modelled at signup, which is how a merchant who chose a competitive entry price ends up two years later on a bill nobody forecast. Cost the tool at the list you expect in eighteen months, not the one you have today. That is what the calculator above is for.
Who ActiveCampaign suits
ActiveCampaign is for the business whose email genuinely is a machine: multi-step nurture journeys, behavioral triggers, lead scoring, and CRM-style pipelines running next to the campaigns. Its automation builder is the strongest in this comparison, its segmentation is Advanced (behavioral, purchase, engagement), its deliverability is Very high (94% in independent tests), and it connects to 900+ other tools with 24/7 chat. It supports SMS for US senders (Yes (US SMS add-on)) and meets CAN-SPAM obligations (Yes (unsubscribe, sender ID, address footer)).
If you send a monthly newsletter, you are paying for an engine you never start. If you run an e-commerce store where the automation is tied to store data, look hard at Klaviyo before committing: see our Klaviyo pricing guide and the head-to-head ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp comparison.
Where ActiveCampaign falls short
The honest cons, because the price only makes sense against them. There is no free plan at any size, so there is no soft landing while a list is small. Billing on every stored contact turns an unclean list into a standing monthly charge. The five-action Starter cap is a real ceiling that is easy to hit without noticing, which makes the advertised entry price a stepping stone rather than a destination. And the product is complex: the automation depth that justifies the money is exactly what a small team will not find the hours to learn. Plenty of businesses pay ActiveCampaign money and use it as a newsletter tool, which is the most expensive way in this category to send a newsletter.
Cheaper ActiveCampaign alternatives
Three rivals undercut it at the entry price, and all three have the free plan ActiveCampaign lacks. Brevo starts at $9/mo (Starter) and bills on Unlimited contacts (billed by sends), the cheapest shape for a large list that sends infrequently. Kit starts at $0 (free to 10K) and is built for creators and newsletters rather than sales pipelines. Klaviyo starts at $20/mo (Email) and is the e-commerce specialist, with automation on every paid plan (Advanced (flows, triggers, predictive on every paid plan)), though its per-profile billing climbs steeply on a large list.
None of the three matches ActiveCampaign's automation depth on a non-e-commerce list, and that is the honest trade. The live table above costs all four against your real contact count, so you can see exactly what that depth is costing you.