ActiveCampaign Review 2026: Email Automation and CRM From $15 a Month, and the Fine Print Behind the 30-Day Guarantee
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and marketing automation platform with a built-in contact CRM, sold in four plans: Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise. As of Oct 26, 2026, its pricing page starts at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts, billed yearly, and every plan now includes 500 AI credits a month and a connector for Claude and ChatGPT. What the price does not tell you: the price climbs with every contact band, sends above your monthly limit cost $0.005 each, accounts created since Nov 3, 2025 pay for unsubscribed and bounced contacts too, and ActiveCampaign’s own pages give different answers on refunds and on what happens when you hit a limit.
Every ActiveCampaign link in this review goes straight to activecampaign.com, its help center or its legal pages.
| Made by | ActiveCampaign, LLC, headquartered in Chicago; says it has 800+ team members and customers in 170+ countries |
| What it is | Email marketing, multi-step marketing automation, a contact CRM, landing pages and an AI layer called Active Intelligence |
| Plans | Starter from $15, Plus from $49, Pro from $79, Enterprise from $145 a month at 1,000 contacts, billed yearly |
| Trial | 14 days, no credit card; no free plan |
| Best for | Small teams that want serious automation tied to contact data, and can live with paying by contact band |
ActiveCampaign is still one of the strongest automation builders a small team can buy. Its pricing rewards people who read the help center first.
$15 a month gets you 1,000 contacts, 10,000 sends and automations capped at five actions each.
That Starter line is the honest entry point, and it tells you what ActiveCampaign is selling. The product has never been the cheapest way to send a newsletter. It is a way to react to what a contact does: a contact joins a list, abandons a cart or has a field change, and an automation tags them, waits, branches, emails, updates a deal or pings your team. The pricing page lists 950+ ready-made automation recipes, and in 2026 the company wrapped the whole product in an AI layer, Active Intelligence, which drafts campaigns, builds automations from a prompt and can be reached from Claude or ChatGPT through ActiveCampaign’s MCP server.
The catch is the meter, not the headline price. Every plan is priced by contact band, so the bill moves when your list grows, and the four tiers grow at very different speeds: from 1,000 to 10,000 contacts, Starter goes from $15 to $149 a month, Plus from $49 to $189. Each plan also includes a monthly send allowance (10 times your contact limit on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro, 15 times on Enterprise). Go past it and ActiveCampaign’s help center, as read on Oct 26, 2026, says you pay $0.005 for every extra email. And on accounts created on or after Nov 3, 2025, unsubscribed and bounced contacts count toward the limit you pay for.
The fine print also disagrees with itself. The pricing page promises a full refund if you are not satisfied after 30 days, while the help center’s Refund Policy, updated Oct 23, 2026 and read on Oct 26, 2026, opens with “As a policy, our company does not provide partial or full refunds.” The guarantee is real, but it is a promotion with eligibility rules, exclusions and a “sole discretion” clause, and it applies to first-time subscribers only. We walk through each rule in the fine print section.
Contacts in the middle, automations around them, channels on the edge, and an AI layer on top.
Everything in ActiveCampaign hangs off the contact record. A contact has fields, tags, list subscriptions, site and event tracking, and (with the paid CRM add-ons) deals and accounts. Automations listen for changes to that record and act on it. Campaigns are the one-to-many emails you schedule. Channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, landing pages, site messages and ads sit on the outside, and most of them are either add-ons or locked to Plus and above.
Swipe sideways to see the whole diagram.
The screenshot below is the closest thing to the product you will see on ActiveCampaign’s public site: an illustration of the Active Intelligence panel next to an automation canvas. It is marketing art with sample data, not a live account, but it shows the shape of the 2026 product, where you can ask the AI panel to build or explain the automation on the right.
Same headline prices since July 2024, fewer seats, a new contact rule, a refund promotion and an AI meter.
If you last looked at ActiveCampaign before mid-2024, the plan names are different. In May 2024 the pricing page sold Lite, Plus, Professional and Enterprise, with separate Sales and Bundles tabs. By July 2024 it sold Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise. ActiveCampaign’s own blog post on the change says the new Starter plan “starts at $15 a month for 1,000 contacts and replaces our former Lite plan (which started at $29 a month for 1,000 contacts).” Its help center adds that existing customers do not qualify for Starter.
The headline prices have not moved since. The Internet Archive copies of the pricing page that show prices (Jul 9, 2024; Jun 9, 2025; Nov 6, 2025; Jul 11, 2026) all have $15, $49, $79 and $145 at 1,000 contacts, the same as the live page on Oct 26, 2026. What did change is what those prices include, and the table puts the May 2024 and Oct 2026 versions side by side.
| Plan | May 20, 2024 | Oct 26, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Lite: $29 a month yearly, 1 user | Starter: $15 a month yearly, 1 user, 5 actions per automation |
| Plus, 1,000 contacts | $49 a month yearly, 3 users | $49 a month yearly, 1 user |
| Pro / Professional, 2,500 contacts | $149 a month yearly, 5 users | $149 a month yearly, 3 users |
| Enterprise, 2,500 contacts | $259 a month yearly, 10 users | $255 a month yearly, 5 users |
| Monthly billing price | Shown on the page (Lite $39) | Not shown; cards say “Billed yearly” |
Sources: Internet Archive copy of activecampaign.com/pricing, May 20, 2024; activecampaign.com/pricing at the 1,000 and 2,500 contact bands, Oct 26, 2026.
The 2026 changes are about money rules and AI. On Feb 3, 2026 ActiveCampaign announced it had acquired Feedback Intelligence, an AI evaluation tool. On Feb 18 it launched what it calls a Results Guarantee, a 30-day refund promotion for new customers (more on its conditions below). Accounts created on or after Nov 3, 2025 now count all contacts toward the plan limit, not only active ones. In August 2026 the AI layer got a named release, Active Intelligence 3.0: Wavelength, with scheduled tasks, competitor and brand monitoring, and the Claude and ChatGPT connectors. And sometime after Oct 1, 2026, the pricing page started showing AI credits: the Internet Archive copy of Oct 1 has no mention of them, the live page on Oct 26 does, and the help center’s AI Credits FAQ was updated on Oct 26, 2026.
| Date | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 3, 2024 | New plan structure for plans purchased from this date (Starter replaces Lite) | Help center, send limits article |
| Nov 3, 2025 | All contacts count toward the limit on new accounts | Help center, contact limit articles |
| Feb 3, 2026 | Feedback Intelligence acquired | Press release |
| Feb 4, 2026 | 30-day money-back promotion begins | Money Back Guarantee Terms |
| Jul 30, 2026 | API rate limiting handled automatically | Help center release note |
| Aug 27, 2026 | Active Intelligence 3.0: Wavelength | Press release, release notes |
| Oct 19, 2026 | Current Terms of Service dated; its usage-limits clause covers AI credits | Terms of Service |
| Oct 2026 | AI credits shown on the pricing page | Pricing page; Internet Archive copy of Oct 1, 2026 |
A long-established automation specialist with a big review footprint. Almost every number on the list is ActiveCampaign’s own.
ActiveCampaign sells to small and midsize businesses, not to enterprises that buy Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Its about page says it is headquartered in Chicago, has “800+ global team members” and customers in 170+ countries. Apart from “Join thousands of customers” on its trial forms, it does not lead with a customer count; it publishes activity and review numbers instead. Those are useful, but they measure different things, so we list them with what each one does and does not tell you.
| Signal | Value (as stated) | What it measures, and what it does not |
|---|---|---|
| Team and reach | 800+ team members, customers in 170+ countries | Company size and footprint; not a customer count |
| Activity | 120b+ “experiences orchestrated in 2025”; 4b automated interactions a week on average | Volume of automated events across all customers; not revenue, users or deliverability |
| Review volume | “14.5k+” positive reviews across aggregator platforms (about page); “14,000+” G2 reviews (free trial and guarantee pages) | How many people left reviews; not market share |
| Review score | G2 4.5 (about, free trial and platform pages) or 4.4 (home page) | Average reviewer rating as quoted by ActiveCampaign; two of its pages disagree |
| Analyst placement | Leader, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Agentic Marketing for Small Businesses 2026 | One analyst firm’s vendor assessment, announced in ActiveCampaign’s press release of Oct 6, 2026 |
| Deliverability | “94.2%” email deliverability rate, “#1” (home and platform pages) | A vendor claim; the pages do not name the test or the competitors |
Sources: activecampaign.com about, free trial, money-back guarantee, platform and home pages, and the IDC MarketScape press release, all as of Oct 26, 2026. G2, Capterra and TrustRadius figures appear in this review only as ActiveCampaign states them.
The review numbers are where you should slow down. Two ActiveCampaign pages, viewed the same day, quote different G2 averages for the same 14,500+ reviews: the platform page says 4.5, the home page says 4.4. The difference is small, but it is a reminder that these are marketing tiles, not live data.
Independent evidence is thin. The app stores are positive, and the few public comments split between praise for a lower bill than HubSpot and complaints about price.
For a platform with this many reviews on G2, surprisingly little independent discussion is easy to cite. The two numbers we can attribute to a neutral source are the mobile app ratings on the US storefronts. They rate the ActiveCampaign mobile app (contacts, deals and campaign reports on the phone), not the web platform where the real work happens, so treat them as a weak signal.
| Source | Rating | Volume | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple App Store, US | 4.6 (4.58) | 1,172 ratings | Version 3.8.1, released Oct 19, 2026; seller ActiveCampaign, LLC |
| Google Play, US | 4.3 | 809 reviews | 100K+ downloads; updated Oct 26, 2026 |
Hacker News, where developers and founders talk about their tools, has only a handful of comments about ActiveCampaign the product. We list the ones that say something concrete, with their dates. They are anecdotes, not a sample.
“For anyone that's curious, we switched to Active Campaign. So much better for us and way cheaper.”
Posted in a thread titled “Is HubSpot aggressive about collections?”.
“Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign are the two big culprits here”
The founder of Buttondown, a competing newsletter tool, naming platforms he considers expensive for technical newsletters. A competitor’s view, not a customer’s.
“Over the past two weeks, I've been overwhelmed by spam sent from activehosted.com (ActiveCampaign).”
A non-customer receiving unwanted mail sent through ActiveCampaign customers’ accounts. A reminder that shared sending infrastructure is policed by the platform’s anti-spam rules.
There is a longer HN thread from May 3, 2022, when ActiveCampaign bought Postmark, the transactional email service now sold as its Transactional Email add-on (story 31247296, 183 points). Postmark users worried about the new owner; one wrote “I hope ActiveCampaign is a better new owner than most.” In December 2022 another HN post reported that ActiveCampaign raised Postmark’s lowest tier price by 50% from January 3, 2023 (story 33902010). That is an old data point, but it is the only public record we found of how the company has handled pricing on an acquired product.
Four plans priced by contact band, from $15 to $145 a month at 1,000 contacts, billed yearly.
ActiveCampaign’s pricing page asks one question, how many contacts you have, and prices four plans from it. On Oct 26, 2026, every card at every band says “Billed yearly”, so read each price as a monthly figure on an annual contract. The help center and the Terms of Service still describe monthly plans (the send-limit article, for example, explains what happens “If you are on a monthly plan”), but the pricing page does not show a monthly price; third-party guides quote higher monthly figures that we have not confirmed on an ActiveCampaign page.
a month at 1,000 contacts, billed yearly ($180 a year)
- 1 user seat
- 10,000 sends a month
- 5 actions per automation
- Up to 5 lists, 25,000 contacts max
a month at 1,000 contacts, billed yearly ($588 a year)
- 1 user seat
- 10,000 sends a month
- Unlimited automation actions
- Landing pages, AI content and images
- Can add SMS, WhatsApp and CRM pipelines
a month at 1,000 contacts, billed yearly ($948 a year)
- 3 user seats
- 12,000 sends a month
- Predictive sending, conditional content
- Attribution and conversion tracking
a month at 1,000 contacts, billed yearly ($1,740 a year)
- 5 user seats
- 15,000 sends a month
- SSO, HIPAA support, custom objects
- Uptime SLA, dedicated account team
Source: activecampaign.com/pricing and its comparison table, Oct 26, 2026 (US dollars). Yearly totals are the monthly figure times 12.
The card prices only hold at 1,000 contacts. Here is every band the selector offers. Above 50,000 contacts, all four plans switch to “Talk to Sales”, and Starter disappears above 25,000.
Swipe sideways to see every plan.
| Contacts | Starter | Plus | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $15 | $49 | $79 | $145 |
| 2,500 | $39 | $95 | $149 | $255 |
| 5,000 | $79 | $145 | $205 | $375 |
| 7,500 | $109 | $169 | $289 | $479 |
| 10,000 | $149 | $189 | $375 | $589 |
| 15,000 | $231 | $265 | $465 | $689 |
| 20,000 | $311 | $329 | $549 | $785 |
| 25,000 | $391 | $389 | $629 | $879 |
| 30,000 | not offered | $449 | $709 | $949 |
| 40,000 | not offered | $549 | $879 | $1,095 |
| 50,000 | not offered | $609 | $969 | $1,169 |
| More than 50,000 | not offered | Talk to Sales | Talk to Sales | Talk to Sales |
Price per month, billed yearly, in US dollars, as shown on activecampaign.com/pricing for each contact band on Oct 26, 2026.
What costs extra
The pricing page marks several features as add-ons “Sold separately” without printing their price, so you see the cost only at checkout or in Billing & Upgrade. The help center’s plan overview lists them: Enhanced CRM in two versions (Pipelines, and Sales Engagement, which adds automated 1:1 email and win probability) on Plus and above; SMS on Plus and above, with US senders required to register for A2P 10DLC; WhatsApp as an add-on on Plus and above or as its own plan; Transactional Email, which “uses Postmark”, on every plan; and Custom Reporting on Plus and Pro (included in Enterprise). The one add-on with a public price is AI credits: packs of 100 “starting at $10 per month”, according to the help center’s AI Credits FAQ.
Starter is cheap per contact until 25,000, where it costs more than Plus; and an extra send costs a third of a cent.
Three things decide what you actually pay: the contact band, the send allowance and the plan’s feature floor. Here is how they interact.
1. Plus catches up with Starter as your list grows
At 1,000 contacts, Plus costs $34 a month more than Starter. The gap is widest at 5,000 contacts ($66) and then shrinks: $40 at 10,000, $18 at 20,000, and at 25,000 contacts Plus is $2 a month cheaper than Starter, $389 against $391. Above 25,000, Starter is not offered at all. If your list is heading past 15,000, compare the two directly at your band; at the top of Starter’s range you would pay more for fewer features.
2. Three worked examples
| Who | Plan and band | Yearly cost | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo coach, 1,000 contacts, one welcome sequence and a weekly newsletter | Starter, 1,000 | $180 | 5 actions per automation; 10,000 sends a month covers about 10 emails per contact |
| Online shop, 5,000 contacts, abandoned-cart flow, SMS later | Plus, 5,000 | $1,740 | SMS and WhatsApp are add-ons; 50,000 sends a month |
| Three-person team, 10,000 contacts, needs predictive sending and attribution | Pro, 10,000 | $4,500 | 3 seats included; 120,000 sends a month |
Calculated from the Oct 26, 2026 pricing page: monthly price times 12, before tax and add-ons.
3. Sends above the allowance
Each plan includes a monthly send allowance tied to your contact limit. ActiveCampaign’s help center article on send limits, updated Oct 17, 2026, says: “We won't disrupt your service if your total email sends exceeds your monthly limit.” Instead, “If your email sending limit is not increased once you’re at capacity, you are charged $0.005 per email send.” That is $5 per 1,000 extra emails, and the same article adds: “Note that if the overage value of sends reaches three times your limit, email sending functionality is turned off until next month.” Transactional and 1:1 emails do not count toward the limit.
Two examples from those rules. A Starter account with 1,000 contacts that sends 14,000 emails in a busy month pays $20 in overage on a $15 plan. A Plus account with 10,000 contacts that sends 120,000 emails pays $100 in overage on top of $189, which is still less than the $375 Pro plan that includes those sends; so pick Pro for its features, not to avoid overage. In-app warnings appear at 75%, 90% and 100% of the allowance, and the Primary Admin gets an email at 75% and 100%.
4. Auto-upgrade raises the renewal price too
Contact limits work differently. ActiveCampaign does not raise your contact band automatically unless you switch on auto-upgrade, and its help center recommends you do. Read the Terms first: with auto-upgrade on, “your subscription fees will increase immediately according to usage”, the increase is pro-rated, and “each renewal subscription period thereafter will be charged at such upgraded subscription fee amount.” To go back down a band you have to contact ActiveCampaign’s Customer Experience team.
The 30-day guarantee, the refund policy, cancellation and your data: the exact rules.
This is the part of ActiveCampaign most buyers skim, and the part where its pages pull in different directions. We quote each rule from the page that sets it.
The 30-day guarantee is a promotion, not a policy
The pricing page ends with a dark box that promises a full refund “if you’re not satisfied after 30 days”, linking to a guarantee page with the same promise and an asterisk. The February 2026 press release goes further: a full refund for new customers who do not see results “within their first month for any reason”.
The asterisk leads to the Money Back Guarantee Terms and Conditions, last updated Feb 4, 2026. They describe a promotion that began that day and “will end on the Termination Date”, which ActiveCampaign can set “at any time, in its sole discretion”. The conditions that matter:
- First purchase only. “The Promotion only applies to the first time Customer purchases a subscription for the Services and is not valid for subsequent purchases.” Current or former paid subscribers are not eligible, including those who subscribed through a third party.
- Cancel first, then ask, inside 30 days. You must cancel the subscription, then open a support ticket that refers to the 30-Day Money Back Guarantee, and you must complete the cancellation within 30 days of the purchase date.
- Not everything is refundable. SMS credits, WhatsApp credits, one-time purchases, paused subscriptions and anyone who files a chargeback are excluded.
- Discretion. “Any refunds in connection with the Promotion are made at the sole discretion of ActiveCampaign.”
Then there is the help center. Its Refund Policy article, updated Oct 23, 2026, says: “As a policy, our company does not provide partial or full refunds.” It does not mention the promotion and points readers to the free trial instead. Our reading: the guarantee terms are the more specific document and apply to first-time direct customers while the promotion runs; everyone else (renewals, upgrades, add-ons, returning customers) should assume no refund. If the guarantee matters to your decision, take a screenshot of the terms on the day you buy.
Cancelling, and what happens to your contacts
ActiveCampaign’s Terms of Service, last updated Oct 19, 2026, make three points about leaving. First, “Inactivity does not constitute automatic cancellation”: an unused account keeps billing. Second, “All cancellation requests will take effect at the end of then-current subscription period in which the cancellation request is made”, so cancelling an annual plan in month two does not stop the year you have paid for. Third, the notice has to come from the designated account owner or an authorized signatory. ActiveCampaign may offer to pause your subscription instead; during a pause it keeps your data.
The data rule is stricter than most. Archived contacts sit in a deletion queue and may be restorable from backup for up to a year, but section 6.6 ends: “Upon cancellation or termination, you will not have access to or be able to restore any Contact Data.” Export your contacts, automations you want to rebuild elsewhere and any reports before the cancellation takes effect.
The trial, and who can buy Starter
The free trial lasts 14 days and needs no credit card. ActiveCampaign’s plan overview says “Trial accounts are based on the Professional plan”, so you will be testing Pro features, but a trial can send only 100 emails and gets 100 AI credits. A one-time extension is possible on request, though the help center warns “we may not be able to grant all trial extension requests.” And if you have been a customer before, check your options: the help center’s plan overview says existing customers do not qualify for the Starter plan.
| Rule | Where it is written | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Refunds only under the promotion, at ActiveCampaign’s discretion | Money-back terms (Feb 4, 2026); Refund Policy (Oct 23, 2026) | High for returning customers and renewals |
| $0.005 per email above the send allowance | Help center, send limits (Oct 17, 2026) | Medium for heavy senders |
| All contacts count toward the limit on accounts from Nov 3, 2025 | Help center, contact limit articles | Medium for lists with many unsubscribes |
| Auto-upgrade raises renewals to the new band | Terms of Service 5.4 | Medium |
| No restore of contact data after cancellation | Terms of Service 6.6 | High if you forget to export |
| Cancellation runs to the end of the paid period | Terms of Service 6.2 | Medium on annual plans |
Six places where two ActiveCampaign pages give different answers.
None of these is a scandal on its own. Together they mean you should ask ActiveCampaign to confirm, in writing, the rule that matters most to you before you sign an annual plan.
Swipe sideways to see both sides.
| Topic | One page says | Another page says | What we would assume | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Refunds | Pricing and guarantee pages: full refund “if you’re not satisfied after 30 days” | Refund Policy: “As a policy, our company does not provide partial or full refunds.” | Refund only for eligible first purchases while the promotion runs | High |
| Guarantee scope | Press release: refund “for any reason” | Terms: refunds “at the sole discretion of ActiveCampaign”, with exclusions | The terms govern | Medium |
| Going over the send allowance | Help center: “We won't disrupt your service”, $0.005 per extra email, sending off at three times the limit | Terms 5.4: you “will not be able to send any more messages” until the next period | Expect overage charges, and expect sending to stop at some point | Medium |
| Going over the contact limit | Pricing FAQ: “You’ll never be locked out of your account or forced to pay unexpected fees” | Help center: “you will not be able to send any email campaigns until you upgrade”, and automations skip email steps | You will not be locked out, but sending stops until you upgrade | High for scheduled campaigns |
| Billing period | Pricing page: every price “Billed yearly” | Help center and Terms: monthly plans exist | Ask for a monthly quote before you buy | Low |
| G2 rating | Platform page: 4.5 average | Home page: 4.4 average | Treat both as marketing copy | Low |
Sources: activecampaign.com pricing, money-back guarantee, platform and home pages; help center articles on refunds (Oct 23, 2026), send limits (Oct 17, 2026) and contact limits (Sep 11, 2026); Terms of Service (Oct 19, 2026); press release of Feb 18, 2026.
One more detail for anyone who opened an account in early November 2025. The contact limit article splits the counting rule at Nov 3, 2025 (accounts created on or after that date count every contact) but splits the import rule at Nov 4, 2025 (only accounts created on or after Nov 4 can import a CSV while over the limit). If your account dates from Nov 3, 2025, ask support which rule applies.
Answer five questions.
The automation builder is the reason to buy. The AI layer is new, metered, and mostly ActiveCampaign’s claim so far.
ActiveCampaign’s automations are visual flows: a trigger, then actions, waits and if/else conditions, built on the contact record and its tags, fields and tracked activity. The pricing table lists 950+ ready-made recipes and multiple triggers on every plan. The plan differences are where you will feel the limits: Starter allows only 5 actions per automation and email-only flows; Plus adds unlimited actions, cross-channel steps and sales automation; Pro adds A/B testing inside automations and the automations map that shows how flows connect.
ActiveCampaign now builds its pitch around Active Intelligence, an AI layer that can draft a campaign from a prompt, build an automation, answer questions about your account, generate on-brand images, translate a campaign into “75+ languages” and, with the August 2026 Wavelength release, run scheduled tasks and watch competitors and your own website for changes. ActiveCampaign’s release notes say its image generation “is powered by OpenAI Image Gen 2.”
How much of it you get depends on the plan. The comparison table gives Pro and Enterprise “Unlimited access” to the Active Intelligence workspace and sidebar, while Plus and Starter get “Limited access”. Every other AI line (translations, AI actions, scheduled tasks, proactive drafts, automation health monitoring, external intelligence) is marked “Limited” on all four plans, which reflects the AI credit meter described below. Content and image generation are missing from Starter.
AI credits: what 500 a month buys
The AI Credits FAQ, updated Oct 26, 2026, sets the rules. “Every ActiveCampaign plan includes 500 AI credits per month.” Credits are pooled across users, do not roll over, and extra packs of 100 cost from $10 a month. Running out does not stop your account: core features drop to their standard versions, while image generation, translation, AI actions inside automations, external intelligence and scheduled tasks pause until credits reset. ActiveCampaign says “We will not charge you for AI credits without your say.” Plan discounts do not apply to credit packs, and the Terms call AI credits “non-transferrable and non-refundable”.
| AI action | Typical credits (ActiveCampaign’s estimate) |
|---|---|
| Create or refine a campaign (enhanced) | About 1 to 3 |
| Create or refine an automation (enhanced) | About 5 to 15 |
| Generate or edit an image | About 3 per operation |
| Send a translated campaign | 0.04 per contact |
| Run an AI action inside an automation | 0.04 per contact |
| External intelligence run (brand monitoring, competitor analysis, web search) | About 3 per run |
| Claude, ChatGPT or other tools through the MCP server | No credits |
Source: help center, AI Credits FAQs, updated Oct 26, 2026. ActiveCampaign notes that rates may change.
The per-contact items are the ones that add up. Translating one campaign for 5,000 contacts uses about 200 credits; four translated sends a month to that list use about 800, which is 300 more than the plan includes, or three extra packs, from $30 a month. A newsletter writer who mostly drafts with the AI will rarely notice the meter.
Two cautions from ActiveCampaign’s own Terms. “The AI Features are not error-free, may not work as expected and may generate incorrect information”, and you are told to review every output before using it. And generated content “may not be unique across users”. Treat Active Intelligence as a fast first draft and an account assistant, not as an autopilot.
The official launch video below is the clearest look at the 2026 AI features in the product itself, including scheduled tasks, proactive drafts and the Claude and ChatGPT connectors.
From trial to a first live automation, in five steps.
This is the path ActiveCampaign’s help center and guarantee page describe for a new account. The human review in step 4 is not optional: the Terms put responsibility for every AI output on you.
A contact CRM on every plan; deals, pipelines, SMS and WhatsApp are paid extras.
Every plan includes contact profiles, custom fields, tags and lists (up to five lists on Starter). That is enough for marketing segmentation. If you want a sales pipeline with deals, account records and lead scoring, you need the Pipelines add-on, and the Sales Engagement add-on adds automated 1:1 emails and win probability. Both are available from Plus. Premium CRM integrations (Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and more) are Enterprise-only; standard ones such as Pipedrive, Zoho and Freshsales work on every plan.
For other channels, SMS needs Plus or above, and US senders must register for A2P 10DLC before sending. WhatsApp Messaging comes as an add-on to Plus or above, or as a standalone plan in three tiers (Core, Advanced and Premium) with their own seats, lines and message allowances. WhatsApp templated messages are paid with prepaid message credits; ActiveCampaign’s help center notes that Meta decides which message types are charged. SMS and WhatsApp credits are both excluded from the 30-day guarantee, and unused SMS credits do not roll over.
Claude and ChatGPT can read and change your account through ActiveCampaign’s MCP server, on every plan, without using AI credits.
ActiveCampaign lists 1,000+ integrations, an API with webhooks, and Zapier on every plan. The 2026 addition is its MCP server. In the help center’s words, “ActiveCampaign’s MCP Server allows AI tools such as Claude and ChatGPT to securely access and manage ActiveCampaign data through natural language commands.” You copy a Remote MCP URL that is unique to your account from Settings, then Developer, and add it as a connector in Claude or ChatGPT. No code is needed. The pricing table lists “Claude & ChatGPT (via MCP)” on all four plans, and the AI Credits FAQ says operations run through the MCP server do not use AI credits.
What the connection can do, per the help center: create and update contacts, lists, tags and custom fields; add contacts to or remove them from automations; and pull campaign details and performance. If your Claude or ChatGPT account is a company account, “your account administrator must set up and approve this connection for your organization”, and the Remote MCP URL appears only when ActiveCampaign branding is switched on. For the client side of this, our Claude MCP connectors guide explains how connectors and permissions work in Claude.
Swipe sideways to see the whole diagram.
The MCP connector is not unique to ActiveCampaign any more: on Oct 26, 2026, Brevo’s pricing page lists “MCP for ChatGPT & Claude” on its Starter plan and MailerLite lists MCP on its free plan. For developers, the help center’s release notes add that since Jul 30, 2026, “API rate limiting is now handled automatically”. The short official tutorial below shows the Claude connection from start to finish.
SOC 2 and HIPAA claims, SSO only on Enterprise, OpenAI and AWS Bedrock on the subprocessor list, and a 99.5% SLA for Enterprise only.
ActiveCampaign’s security page says the company “is heavily focused on GDPR, SOC 2, and HIPAA compliance”, describes a single-tenancy architecture (“each person’s data is kept separate from everyone else’s”), daily vulnerability scans and an in-house red team, and points to a Trust Center that offers its latest SOC 2 report. Multi-factor authentication by SMS or authenticator app is available on every account; single sign-on and HIPAA support are Enterprise-only.
For privacy reviews, the subprocessor list (last updated Sep 25, 2026) names Amazon Web Services for data storage in the US, EU and Australia, Cloudflare, Snowflake, Zendesk, Zight and Twilio, and two AI subprocessors: “Amazon Web Services (for AWS Bedrock and open-weight models)” and OpenAI. Anthropic is not on the list; if you connect Claude yourself through MCP, that data flow runs under your own Claude account. The Terms also say that by using the service you consent to processing and storage in the United States and other countries.
The uptime commitment is modest and narrow. The SLA covers only customers “with active enterprise level subscriptions”, promises “commercially reasonable efforts” to reach 99.5% availability a month, and pays a service credit of 5% of that month’s fees between 99.5% and 98%, or 10% below 98%. Starter, Plus and Pro have no SLA.
| Control | Starter | Plus | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MFA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom user permissions | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSO | No | No | No | Yes |
| HIPAA support | No | No | No | Yes |
| Uptime SLA | No | No | No | 99.5% |
Sources: pricing comparison table, security page and SLA, as of Oct 26, 2026.
Work pattern, fit and likely plan.
| If you are | Fit | Likely plan |
|---|---|---|
| A solo creator or coach with a welcome sequence and a weekly email | Good, if five-step automations are enough | Starter at your band |
| An online shop with abandoned-cart, post-purchase and win-back flows | Strong; Shopify, WooCommerce and Square work on every plan | Plus; Pro for BigCommerce, Magento or Shopify Plus |
| A course seller or service business that also tracks deals | Strong with the Pipelines add-on | Plus with Enhanced CRM |
| A marketing team of three or more that tests and reports revenue | Strong | Pro |
| A healthcare or regulated business that needs HIPAA support, SSO or an SLA | Possible | Enterprise |
| A newsletter publisher with a large, low-touch list | Weak value; you pay per contact for automation you will not use | Consider a newsletter-first tool |
| A team already using Claude or ChatGPT daily | Good; the MCP connector is on every plan and uses no AI credits | Any plan |
Eight real drawbacks.
- Deep, visual automation with 950+ recipes on every plan
- Contact CRM included; deal pipelines available as add-ons
- Headline prices unchanged since July 2024 at 1,000 contacts
- Claude and ChatGPT connector on every plan, outside the AI credit meter
- 14-day trial with no card, based on Pro features
- Written rules for overage, AI credits and contact limits in the help center
- Pricing by contact band, with every contact counted on newer accounts
- Extra sends at $0.005 each, and refunds limited to a promotion
- Seats per plan halved or cut since May 2024
- Pricing page shows only yearly billing
- Thin independent evidence beyond app stores
- SLA, SSO and HIPAA only on Enterprise
- The price follows your list, not your use. Contact bands set the price, so a large list you rarely email still costs money. On accounts created since Nov 3, 2025, unsubscribed and bounced contacts count too, so list hygiene (archiving) becomes a billing task.
- Overage is easy to trigger on small plans. At $0.005 per extra send, a busy month on Starter can cost more in overage than the plan itself.
- The refund promise is narrower than the headline. First purchase only, cancel and ask within 30 days, credits excluded, and refunds “at the sole discretion of ActiveCampaign”; the help center’s general policy is no refunds.
- Fewer seats for the same money. Plus went from 3 users in May 2024 to 1 today, Pro (Professional) from 5 to 3, Enterprise from 10 to 5.
- Starter is a trap past 15,000 contacts. Its price rises faster than Plus and overtakes it at 25,000, where Starter also ends.
- AI is metered, and its benefits are vendor claims. 500 credits a month cover drafting, but translation and AI steps inside automations charge per contact; the 75% engagement and 10-hours-saved figures come from ActiveCampaign.
- Cancellation is final for your data. No restore after cancellation, and annual plans run to the end of the term.
- Pages disagree. Refunds, send limits and contact limits are described differently on different ActiveCampaign pages; see the table above.
Mailchimp, Brevo, MailerLite, HubSpot and Klaviyo, priced on the same day.
Each competitor counts something different (contacts, subscribers, profiles, sends or seats), so the entry prices below are not like-for-like. They tell you where each tool starts; your own list size and send volume decide what you pay.
Swipe sideways to see every column.
| Need | Product | Entry paid price (Oct 26, 2026) | Free plan | JAVIS review |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automation-heavy small business with CRM | ActiveCampaign | Starter $15 a month, billed yearly, 1,000 contacts | No (14-day trial) | This review |
| The best-known all-rounder | Mailchimp | Essentials from $13, Standard from $20 a month (0 to 500 contacts) | Under 250 contacts | Not yet |
| Pay by sends, not contacts | Brevo | Starter $8.08 a month yearly or $9 monthly, from 5,000 emails a month | Yes | Not yet |
| Simple, cheap newsletters with automation | MailerLite | Comfort $10.80 a month yearly or $12 monthly, 500 subscribers | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails | Not yet |
| Marketing tied to a full CRM suite | HubSpot Marketing Hub | Starter from $7 a month per seat (list $20), 1,000 marketing contacts; Professional $800 a month plus $3,000 onboarding | Yes | Not yet |
| Ecommerce stores, email and SMS | Klaviyo | Free plan shown by default; paid prices not compared here | 250 profiles, 500 emails a month | Not yet |
| Newsletter publishing and monetization | beehiiv | See our review | See our review | beehiiv review |
Sources: each vendor’s pricing page on Oct 26, 2026 (mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing, brevo.com/pricing, mailerlite.com/pricing, hubspot.com/pricing/marketing, klaviyo.com/pricing), default settings as displayed. HubSpot’s $7 Starter price is a time-limited offer for new customers.
One more name comes up often: GetResponse also sells email marketing with automation, and its pricing page says its plans include “Unlimited monthly email sends”. We have not priced it in this review. If what you really need is a website or landing pages rather than email automation, our Webflow review covers a builder that ActiveCampaign’s forms and tracking can plug into.
This review has no affiliate links.
Every ActiveCampaign link here goes straight to activecampaign.com, its pricing page, its Terms of Service or its help center, without tracking parameters. The score, the drawbacks and the alternatives would be the same either way.
How this review was put together: ActiveCampaign’s pricing page at every contact band with its comparison table and FAQ; help center articles on plans, send limits and overage fees, contact limits and contact counting, refunds, trial extensions, AI credits, the MCP server, SMS, WhatsApp and the Wavelength release; the Terms of Service, Money Back Guarantee terms, SLA, subprocessor list and security page; product, about, news and press pages; two official ActiveCampaign videos; Internet Archive copies of the pricing page from May 20, 2024 to Oct 1, 2026; the US App Store and Google Play listings; Hacker News; and the Mailchimp, Brevo, MailerLite, HubSpot and Klaviyo pricing pages, as of Oct 26, 2026. This review is not hands-on tested: no ActiveCampaign account, no trial, no campaign, no deliverability measurement and no support contact, so nothing here describes ActiveCampaign’s performance or support from our own use. Screenshots show public pages only.
Other ways to reach your list, build your site and run marketing with AI.
Each card opens a published JAVIS review, routed by where you are.
Questions people ask before choosing ActiveCampaign
Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?
No. As of Oct 26, 2026 it offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card, based on the Professional plan, limited to 100 email sends and 100 AI credits. A one-time extension can be requested but is not guaranteed.
How much does ActiveCampaign cost?
At 1,000 contacts the pricing page shows Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month, billed yearly. At 10,000 contacts the same plans cost $149, $189, $375 and $589. Above 50,000 contacts all plans are priced by sales. Add-ons such as SMS, WhatsApp, Enhanced CRM and transactional email cost extra.
Can I get a refund?
Only under the 30-Day Money Back Guarantee promotion, which began Feb 4, 2026: first-time direct subscribers who cancel and request a refund within 30 days of purchase, with SMS and WhatsApp credits and other items excluded, at ActiveCampaign’s sole discretion. The help center’s general Refund Policy says the company does not provide partial or full refunds.
What happens if I go over my send limit or contact limit?
The help center says extra sends are charged at $0.005 each and sending is turned off if overage reaches three times your limit; the Terms say you cannot send more until the next period. If you pass your contact limit without auto-upgrade, email campaigns and automation email steps stop until you upgrade.
Do unsubscribed and bounced contacts count toward my limit?
On accounts created on or after Nov 3, 2025, yes: all contacts count regardless of list status. On older accounts, only active contacts count.
Does ActiveCampaign work with Claude and ChatGPT?
Yes. Every plan includes a connection through ActiveCampaign’s MCP server: you add your account’s Remote MCP URL as a connector, and the AI tool can read campaign results and create or update contacts, tags and automation enrollments. These operations do not use AI credits.
Which plan should I choose?
Starter for one person with simple email automations and fewer than about 15,000 contacts; Plus for most small businesses that want unlimited automation steps, landing pages and add-on channels; Pro for teams of three or more that need predictive sending and attribution; Enterprise for SSO, HIPAA support or an SLA.
Where this came from, and when.
Every price, limit, rule and rating in this review comes from the pages below, as of Oct 26, 2026 unless another date is given. Expand for the full list, the scoring method and what the review does not cover.
Show sources, scoring method and scope
Pricing: activecampaign.com/pricing at every contact band from 1,000 to more than 50,000, with the full comparison table and FAQ (US dollars, billed yearly); Internet Archive copies of activecampaign.com/pricing from May 20 and Jul 9, 2024; Jun 9 and Nov 6, 2025; Feb 4, Apr 2, Jul 11 and Oct 1, 2026.
Help center (help.activecampaign.com): About email send limits and overage fees (Oct 17, 2026); What happens when I reach my contact limit? (Sep 11, 2026); Do unsubscribed, unconfirmed, or bounced contacts count against my contact limit? (Aug 27, 2026); Does ActiveCampaign automatically increase my contact limit? (Aug 12, 2026); Refund Policy (Oct 23, 2026); Can I extend my trial? (Jun 26, 2025); Overview of ActiveCampaign plans (Aug 20, 2026); AI Credits FAQs (Oct 26, 2026); Get started with the ActiveCampaign MCP Server (Aug 24, 2026); Purchase the SMS add-on (Jul 22, 2026); Purchasing WhatsApp Messaging through ActiveCampaign (Oct 14, 2026); Active Intelligence 3.0: Wavelength release notes (Sep 4, 2026); Automated Rate Limiting release note (Aug 18, 2026).
Legal: Terms of Service (Oct 19, 2026); Money Back Guarantee Terms and Conditions (Feb 4, 2026); Service Level Agreement (effective Oct 30, 2020); Subprocessor list (Sep 25, 2026); Privacy Policy; Acceptable Use Policy; Legal Center.
Product and company: activecampaign.com home, platform, Active Intelligence, AI MCP, free trial, money-back guarantee, about, news and security pages; press releases of Feb 3, Feb 18, Mar 18, Aug 27 and Oct 6, 2026; blog post on the 2024 plan change.
Video: two official videos from the @ActiveCampaign YouTube channel, which activecampaign.com links in its footer: NA5vncVs7pk (Introducing Active Intelligence 3.0, Oct 1, 2026) and caOq2PdOAYE (How to Connect Claude to ActiveCampaign, Aug 21, 2026).
Independent evidence: Apple App Store US listing of the ActiveCampaign app (4.58, 1,172 ratings); Google Play US listing (4.3, 809 reviews); Hacker News comments 46947977, 42395144 and 31251567 and stories 39521724, 31247296 and 33902010. G2, Capterra and TrustRadius figures appear only as ActiveCampaign states them.
Competitors: mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing, brevo.com/pricing, mailerlite.com/pricing, hubspot.com/pricing/marketing and klaviyo.com/pricing, all Oct 26, 2026, at their default settings.
Fit score, 63 out of 100: five criteria worth 20 points each. Price clarity 12 (yearly-only display, per-band pricing and overage rules written down but spread across pages); capability 17 (automation, CRM, AI and MCP on every plan, with Starter limits); independent evidence 9 (app stores and a few HN posts); terms, data and security 12 (conflicting refund pages, no data restore after cancellation, SLA only on Enterprise, clear subprocessor list); cost and fit 13 (good value at small lists, steeper with growth and add-ons). Editorial judgment from published facts, not a hands-on test.
Not covered: deliverability, support quality, the speed of the editor, the quality of AI output and the mobile app experience, none of which can be judged without an account. Add-on prices that ActiveCampaign shows only at checkout (SMS, WhatsApp, Enhanced CRM, transactional email, extra seats) are not in this review.
