ActiveCampaign Pricing: Plans, Contact Tiers, Seat Caps
ActiveCampaign starts at $15, $49, $79, or $145 per month billed annually for Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise.
The word doing the work there is “starts.” ActiveCampaign prices on two axes at once: which plan you pick, and how many contacts you hold. Every number above is the floor at the smallest contact tier, and the plan page makes you choose a contact band before it will show you a real price.
The plans at a glance
| Plan | Starts at (per month, billed annually) | Users included |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $15 | 1 |
| Plus | $49 | 1 |
| Pro | $79 | 3 |
| Enterprise | $145 | 5 |
Contact bands run from under 500 all the way past 200,000, so a business with 25,000 contacts pays substantially more than these figures on any plan.
Starter
$15 a month at the entry contact tier. Marketing automation, email marketing, standard CRM and ecommerce integrations, and limited segmentation.
The cap that bites is automation depth: Starter allows 5 actions per automation. That is enough for “someone subscribed, send a welcome email, wait, send another.” It is not enough for branching logic, and branching is usually why people buy marketing automation.
Plus
$49 a month at the entry tier. This is where automation stops being rationed: unlimited automation actions, standard segmentation, and landing pages.
Still one user. If two people need to log in, Plus is not your plan regardless of what features you need.
Pro
$79 a month at the entry tier, and 3 users. Advanced segmentation, predictive and conditional content, and attribution and conversion tracking.
For most teams the reason to be here is the seat count or attribution reporting, not the automation, which Plus already covers.
Enterprise
$145 a month at the entry tier, and 5 users. Premium segmentation, premium CRM and ecommerce integrations, custom objects, single sign-on, and a dedicated account team.
What the pricing page glosses over
The headline price is a floor, not a price. Prices scale with your contact count across bands that reach beyond 200,000. Any comparison of ActiveCampaign against another tool is meaningless unless both are quoted at your actual list size.
Your list grows, so your bill grows. This is the structural thing to understand. A successful year of list building is also an automatic price increase, on a curve you do not control and did not agree to at signup.
Seats are capped tightly and low. One user on Starter and Plus, three on Pro, five on Enterprise. A three-person marketing team is on Pro at minimum, which means the seat count, not the feature list, is choosing the plan.
Unsubscribed contacts can still count. Contact-based pricing rewards list hygiene. If you have never pruned inactive contacts, you may be paying for a band you do not need.
Starter’s 5-action automation cap is the real upgrade trigger. It is easy to buy Starter for the price and discover within a week that the automation you had in mind needs a branch.
Is ActiveCampaign free?
No. ActiveCampaign has no free-forever plan. Pricing begins at $15 a month billed annually on Starter at the smallest contact tier, and there is a free trial rather than a free tier.
When ActiveCampaign isn’t worth it
ActiveCampaign is a strong marketing automation platform, and if you are running segmented campaigns to a large list, the contact-based pricing is at least aligned with the value you get from it.
It is the wrong tool when the job was never marketing. A lot of small businesses end up on ActiveCampaign because they wanted follow-up to happen reliably: the client who did not reply, the proposal that went quiet, the enquiry that needs an answer today rather than in the next campaign. That is one-to-one work, and paying for it on a contact-count meter means your bill rises with your list while the actual job stays the same size.
Carly is priced for that shape instead. It connects every Gmail and Outlook account you own as its own authorized connection, so one assistant reads and replies across all of them from the address that owns the thread. The follow-up sequence, the routing, the “chase this if nobody answers in three days” logic is a workflow, and Carly’s Zapier-style workflow steps are free rather than priced against how many contacts you happen to hold. The AI assistant that drafts, replies, and schedules on top starts at $35 a month rather than per seat.
FAQ
How much does ActiveCampaign cost per month? It starts at $15, $49, $79, or $145 per month billed annually for Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise, at the smallest contact tier. The price rises with your contact count.
Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan? No. There is a free trial, but no free-forever tier.
How many users do ActiveCampaign plans include? One on Starter and Plus, three on Pro, and five on Enterprise.
Why is my ActiveCampaign quote higher than the advertised price? Because the advertised figures are floors at the smallest contact band. Selecting your real contact count on the plan page raises the price on every tier.
Which plan removes the automation limit? Plus. Starter caps automations at 5 actions each; Plus and above have unlimited automation actions.
Does ActiveCampaign charge for unsubscribed contacts? Contact-based pricing counts the contacts held in your account, so pruning inactive records is worth doing before you renew.
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