ActiveCampaign Pricing Explained: Plans, Contact Tiers, and Costs (2026)

What ActiveCampaign Costs in November 2026

As of November 2026, ActiveCampaign sells four plans: Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise. There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial that needs no credit card. At the smallest tier (1,000 contacts) the USD prices are $15 a month on Starter, $49 on Plus, $79 on Pro and $145 on Enterprise when billed yearly. Monthly billing costs $19, $59, $99 and $179. The bill is set by how many contacts you store, and it climbs fast: Plus is $95 a month at 2,500 contacts and $189 at 10,000, billed yearly.

All figures come from activecampaign.com/pricing, checked on November 12, 2026, in US dollars. The page can show other currencies (BRL, CAD, AUD, EUR, GBP), so your numbers may differ.

How ActiveCampaign’s Pricing Model Works

You pick a plan and a contact limit, and the price follows both. Four rules decide what you actually pay.

Contacts are the billing unit. ActiveCampaign’s help center says how the limit is counted “is determined by when you created your account.” On accounts created on or after November 3, 2025, “all contacts, regardless of their list status, count towards your contact limit,” so unsubscribed and bounced contacts are billed. Older accounts follow a different rule that depends on the plan, visible under Profile, Billing & Upgrade, Your Plan. See the contact limit article.

Email sends are a multiple of your contacts. Starter and Plus allow 10 times the contact limit per month, Pro 12 times and Enterprise 15 times. The send limits article says the limit covers campaigns and automations, not 1:1 or transactional email. Going over does not stop sending: “you are charged $0.005 per email send,” and sending is switched off until next month if the overage reaches three times your limit. The count resets on your billing cycle date.

Going over the contact limit blocks sending. The pricing page FAQ says you can upgrade to the next band “without penalties.” The help center is stricter. Per its contact limit article, once you reach the limit “you will not be able to send any email campaigns until you upgrade,” and in automations the “Send an email” action is skipped. Forms and API additions still add contacts. Limits do not rise on their own: auto-upgrade must be switched on.

Seats are capped by plan. Starter includes 1 user and allows one extra seat. Plus includes 1, Pro 3 and Enterprise 5, and each can buy more.

Annual billing is the headline price on the page (“Billed yearly”). Downgrades, including a lower contact limit, go through support, while upgrades are self-serve.

Plan Tiers and Limits

Plan	1,000 contacts, billed yearly / monthly	Users	Email sends per month	Key gates
Starter	$15 / $19	1	10x contacts	Multi-step automation capped at 5 actions each, email only, up to 5 lists, no landing pages, basic support
Plus	$49 / $59	1	10x contacts	Unlimited automation actions, cross-channel, landing pages, generative AI, 25 business goals, custom reporting as add-on
Pro	$79 / $99	3	12x contacts	Predictive sending, conditional content, automations map, attribution, 200 business goals, priority support
Enterprise	$145 / $179	5	15x contacts	SSO, HIPAA support, custom objects, Salesforce and Dynamics integrations, uptime SLA, custom reporting included

Checked at activecampaign.com/pricing on November 12, 2026. A/B testing covers email on Starter and Plus, and email plus automations on Pro and Enterprise. Every plan includes API access and webhooks.

Two details trip people up. The page calls the third tier “Pro,” while older help articles say “Professional.” And the Starter plan tops out at 25,000 contacts, so growth eventually forces a move up.

ActiveCampaign Price by List Size

Prices below are USD per month, shown as billed yearly / billed monthly, for the contact bands the pricing page offers.

Contacts	Starter	Plus	Pro	Enterprise
1,000	$15 / $19	$49 / $59	$79 / $99	$145 / $179
2,500	$39 / $49	$95 / $119	$149 / $189	$255 / $319
10,000	$149 / $189	$189 / $239	$375 / $469	$589 / $739
25,000	$391 / $489	$389 / $489	$629 / $789	$879 / $1,099

Yearly figures are the yearly total the page lists divided by 12. Prices checked November 12, 2026. At 1,000 contacts, yearly billing is roughly 17% to 21% cheaper than monthly by our math on these numbers.

Read the 25,000 row twice. Starter costs $391 a month billed yearly, which is $2 more than Plus at $389. Starter’s price advantage disappears at that size, so a team near the Starter ceiling gets more for the same money by moving to Plus.

Add-Ons and Where Costs Escalate

The plan price is only part of the bill. Extras that are priced separately:

• Extra seats. The price data the pricing page loads lists the first additional seat at $10 a month on Starter, $15 on Plus, $30 on Pro and $40 on Enterprise. Those amounts are not shown in the rendered page, so confirm them in checkout.
• Contact band jumps. Plus goes from $239 at 10,000 contacts to $329 at 15,000, billed monthly. There is no tier at 12,000, so a list of that size pays for the 15,000 band.
• Custom reporting. Included on Enterprise, an add-on on Plus and Pro. The page’s price data lists $159 a month, or $1,908 billed yearly.
• Transactional email. An add-on on every plan, delivered through Postmark. The price data starts at $15 a month for 10,000 emails.
• SMS, WhatsApp and the enhanced CRM add-ons. Sold separately; the page does not show a flat price for them.
• AI credits. Every plan includes 500 credits a month, and unused credits do not roll over. Extra packs come in 100s, starting at $10 a month. Core AI features keep working when credits run out.

On pricing changes, the one we can source is the contact counting rule. For accounts created on or after November 3, 2025, unsubscribed and bounced contacts now count toward the limit, which raises the billable count for lists with heavy churn.

Worked Cost Example: 2,500 Contacts Growing to 12,000

Take a SaaS product with 2,500 contacts from trial signups. It needs automations longer than five actions, so Starter is out, and it picks Plus billed yearly.

1. Today, 2,500 contacts: $95 a month ($1,140 a year). Send limit: 25,000 a month.
2. At 5,000 contacts: $145 a month.
3. At 10,000 contacts: $189 a month.
4. At 12,000 contacts: the next band is 15,000, so $265 a month ($3,180 a year), with a send limit of 150,000.

The same growth on monthly billing runs from $119 to $329 a month. On Pro, which adds predictive sending and conditional content, the yearly path runs from $149 to $465 a month.

A list that grew 4.8 times pushed the Plus bill up 2.8 times, from $95 to $265 a month, before any seats or add-ons. If a signup spike pushes you past a band, switch on auto-upgrade or you may find campaigns not sending.

How ActiveCampaign Compares

The billing unit matters more than the entry price when you compare tools. Figures were re-checked on November 12, 2026.

Tool	Billing unit	Entry paid price	Free option
ActiveCampaign	Contacts	$15/mo billed yearly, $19 monthly (1,000 contacts)	14-day trial, no free plan
Mailchimp	Contacts	Essentials $13/mo at 0 to 500 contacts	Free plan, limit of 250 contacts
Brevo	Emails sent	Starter $9/mo, from 5,000 emails a month	Free plan
Customer.io	Profiles (people and objects)	Essentials $100/mo billed monthly, 5,000 profiles	No free plan; startup program

Mailchimp’s 0 to 500 tier is smaller than ActiveCampaign’s 1,000-contact entry tier, so its entry price is not a like-for-like comparison. Brevo’s pricing follows send volume, which suits large, rarely mailed lists. Customer.io’s pricing starts higher but is built for event-driven SaaS lifecycle messaging. For a simpler subscriber-based option, see MailerLite’s pricing.

If the contact-tier jumps are the problem, the ActiveCampaign alternatives guide compares tools by price and fit. If you are deciding what the automation tiers are for, email automation for SaaS covers the workflows.

Frequently Asked Questions