ActiveCampaign: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026)

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and marketing automation platform. You store your contacts, send campaigns to them, and build automations that react to what each person does: subscribing to a list, opening an email, visiting a page, buying a product or replying. It also includes landing pages, forms, SMS, a basic sales pipeline and reporting, and connects to a large marketplace of apps (the company advertises more than 1,000 integrations at the time of writing).

Its distinguishing feature has long been the automation builder. Instead of a linear autoresponder, you draw a flowchart: a trigger starts the automation, and actions, waits and if/else branches decide what each contact receives next. The newer layer on top is Active Intelligence, ActiveCampaign’s AI, which can draft campaigns and automations from a prompt, suggest segments and pick the best send time for each contact.

The problem it solves is turning a list of contacts into timely, relevant messages without someone sending each one by hand. A welcome series, an abandoned-cart reminder, a re-engagement sequence and a lead hand-off to sales can all run on their own once built.

Who it is for

• Small and mid-sized businesses with a list of a few thousand to tens of thousands of contacts and more than one type of customer journey.
• Ecommerce stores that want order-based automations, abandoned-cart flows and revenue attribution through store integrations.
• Course creators, coaches and service businesses that nurture leads over weeks before they buy.
• B2B marketers who need lead scoring-style segmentation and a hand-off to sales.
• Agencies running email programs for clients.

ActiveCampaign is not the right tool for cold outreach to people who have not opted in; use a sales engagement tool such as lemlist for that, and keep marketing email to subscribers. It is also more than you need if you send one newsletter a week with no automation; creator-focused or budget email tools will cost less. Large sales teams that live in a pipeline will want a dedicated sales CRM alongside it.

Key features

• Automations. A visual builder with start triggers (for example Subscribes to a list, Submits a form, Site visited, Replies to email, date-based and ecommerce order triggers) and actions such as Send an email, wait conditions, if/else branches, tag and field updates, Send SMS and Webhook. The Automations Map shows how automations connect.
• Email campaigns. The Email Designer builds emails from structures and blocks (image, text, button, video and more). A Text only option, an HTML builder and the Classic designer are available, along with split tests and scheduled sends.
• Active Intelligence. The AI Campaign Builder creates a campaign from a single text prompt, the AI Automation Builder drafts automations, AI-suggested segments find audiences, and an AI actions library adds AI steps inside automations.
• Predictive Sending. On Pro and above, each contact receives the email at the time they are most likely to engage, based on their own history.
• Segmentation and conditional content. Starter has limited segmentation, Plus standard segmentation, and Pro advanced segmentation with predictive and conditional content.
• Landing pages and forms. Landing pages start on Plus; forms add new subscribers to lists and can start automations.
• Attribution and conversion tracking. Pro adds attribution and conversion tracking to tie campaigns and automations to revenue.
• Integrations and AI connections. A marketplace of ecommerce, CRM and app integrations, an API, and an MCP connection that lets AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT update contacts and pull campaign stats.

Pricing

At the time of writing ActiveCampaign has four plans, and every plan is priced by the number of marketing contacts on your account. The figures below are the published starting prices on annual billing; monthly billing is more expensive. There is no free plan, but there is a 14-day free trial.

Plan	1,000 contacts (annual billing)	10,000 contacts (annual billing)	Key limits
Starter	$15/month	Not published in the sources we checked	Up to 5 actions per automation, limited segmentation, limited Active Intelligence
Plus	$49/month	$189/month	Unlimited automation actions, landing pages, standard segmentation, shared team inbox, standard CRM and ecommerce integrations
Pro	$79/month	$375/month	Adds advanced segmentation, Predictive Sending, predictive and conditional content, attribution and conversion tracking, team assignments
Enterprise	$145/month	$589/month	Highest limits; monthly email sends up to 15 times your contact limit; may be quoted as a tailored plan

Points to keep in mind:

• You pay for contacts, not sends. Every contact on the account counts, including unengaged ones. If you go over your tier, you can still create campaigns but cannot send them until you upgrade or remove contacts.
• The trial is Pro-level but small. It allows unlimited contacts but only 100 email sends, one user, no SMS and no Preference Center. Test emails go only to the trial user’s address and need a verified domain.
• Pricing pages disagree in places. Older ActiveCampaign comparison pages quote different numbers for the same tier, and some third-party sites report different 10,000-contact prices. Use the live calculator on activecampaign.com/pricing with your real contact count before you buy.

How to use ActiveCampaign: step-by-step

1. Start the trial and authenticate your domain

1. Sign up for the 14-day trial on activecampaign.com and verify your email address.
2. Before sending anything, set up your sending domain. As an account administrator, open the domain settings under Settings (Advanced Settings) and choose Configure Domain to have ActiveCampaign set up the DNS records automatically, or Set up manually to add the DKIM, SPF and DMARC records yourself at your DNS provider.
3. Wait for the domain to verify. Gmail and Yahoo require DKIM and DMARC for bulk senders, and ActiveCampaign requires a verified domain before you send.

2. Import your contacts

1. Prepare a CSV with a header row and one contact per row. Every row needs an email address or phone number. Use YYYY-MM-DD for dates, separate multiple tags with commas and multiple values in one field with double pipes (||).
2. Go to Contacts and choose Import, then upload the file.
3. Map each column to a contact field, or create a new custom field from the mapping screen.
4. Choose the list to add contacts to, add a tag (for example the source of the list) and pick the import status: active, unsubscribed or excluded. Only import people who agreed to receive email.
5. Run the import. Duplicate email addresses in the file are skipped after the first one.

3. Send your first campaign

1. Click Email in the left menu and create a new campaign. Choose Start from scratch instead if you do not want a template, and give the campaign an internal name.
2. Pick the builder. The default is the Email Designer; Text only, the HTML builder and the Classic designer are in the dropdown.
3. Build the email with structures and blocks from the Content menu. To start faster, use Active Intelligence and describe the campaign in one prompt, then edit the draft.
4. On the Campaign Summary page, fill in the subject line, From name and From email, and choose the list or segment.
5. Send a test, then send now or set a date and time in the Schedule section.

4. Build a welcome automation

1. Go to Automations, create a new automation and click Start from Scratch.
2. Click Add a start trigger and select Subscribes to a list. Pick the list your signup form feeds, and leave it on Runs Once so nobody enters twice. If your form uses double opt-in, contacts enter only after they confirm.
3. Add a Send an email action with your welcome message.
4. Add a wait step (for example two days), then an if/else condition: if the contact opened or clicked the first email, send your best offer; if not, send a short, different follow-up.
5. Add tag actions at the end of each branch so you can segment later, then activate the automation.
6. On Starter, remember the limit of five actions per automation. Plan a short flow, or move to Plus.

Tips to get better results

• Authenticate first, send second. DKIM, SPF and DMARC on your own domain make the biggest single difference to inbox placement.
• Tag at the source. Tag contacts on import and in every form so you always know where a contact came from and can segment by it.
• Start with three automations. A welcome series, a re-engagement flow and one sales or purchase flow cover most of the value. Add more only when these are working.
• Prune unengaged contacts. You pay per contact. Use an automation to track last engagement dates and clean the list every quarter.
• Use goals and conditions instead of long timers. Branch on opens, clicks, purchases or replies so contacts who act leave the sequence promptly.
• Treat AI drafts as drafts. Active Intelligence gets you a working first version of a campaign or automation; edit tone, offers and timing yourself. Our guide on how to write better prompts helps you get better first drafts.
• Check the Automations Map before adding new flows so a contact is not hit by three automations at once.

Limitations and common problems

• Costs grow with your list. Pricing tracks contact count, so a list that doubles roughly doubles the bill on most tiers. Remove unsubscribed and unengaged contacts regularly.
• Starter is a trial-run plan. Five actions per automation and limited segmentation are fine for a basic welcome email, not for real journeys. Budget for Plus or Pro.
• Sending stops at the contact limit. Hitting your tier blocks sending, not editing, which can delay a scheduled campaign. Watch the contact count before big imports.
• Learning curve. The automation builder is powerful but takes time to learn. Start from templates or the AI Automation Builder and read through each step before activating.
• Trial is too small for deliverability testing. With 100 sends and test emails limited to your own address, the trial shows the interface but not real results.
• Not built for cold email. Importing purchased or scraped lists breaks ActiveCampaign’s terms and harms deliverability. Use a dedicated outreach tool for prospecting.

Alternatives

• Kit (formerly ConvertKit) - simpler email marketing for creators, with a lighter automation builder.
• GetResponse - email, landing pages and webinars in one platform, often cheaper at similar list sizes.
• Drip - email automation focused on ecommerce brands.
• Moosend - budget email marketing and automation for small businesses.
• HubSpot Marketing Hub - a broader marketing and CRM suite with a free CRM; considerably more expensive as you scale.

Compare these and other options in our marketing tools directory. If your main channel is Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger rather than email, see our Manychat guide, and if you also need a sales CRM with calling, see our Close guide.

Verdict

Sign up for ActiveCampaign if you have an opted-in list, plan to build automations beyond a single welcome email, and want segmentation, predictive sending and AI drafting in one place. Choose Plus as the realistic starting tier and Pro if attribution and Predictive Sending matter to you. Use the trial to build one campaign and one automation with your real content. Skip it if you only send an occasional newsletter, if your list is large but low-value (the per-contact pricing will hurt), or if what you actually need is cold outreach or a full sales CRM.