ActiveCampaign pricing

About

ActiveCampaign is a marketing-automation, email-marketing, and sales-CRM platform aimed primarily at small and mid-sized businesses. It positions itself as an “autonomous marketing” suite: campaigns, automation flows, segmentation, CRM, and (more recently) WhatsApp messaging bundled into a single tiered product, with a “30-day guarantee” money-back promise and 1,000+ integrations (Shopify, WordPress, Stripe, Salesforce, Zapier, and more).

The product is sold self-serve to the vast majority of customers. Its pricing is organized around one core value metric — contact count — with four email-plan tiers (Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise) that each re-price as the customer selects a larger contact band. On top of that, ActiveCampaign runs a parallel WhatsApp plan ladder (Core, Advanced, Premium) that meters outbound template messages against prepaid, monthly-recurring credits, plus an “Email + WhatsApp” bundle that fuses both channels into a single three-tier family.

ActiveCampaign is a privately held company. Public revenue, valuation, and headcount figures were not read from the captured pricing surfaces and are marked unknown here; the Enterprise plan is the only tier that layers a sales-assisted motion (SSO, custom objects, dedicated account team) on top of the otherwise self-serve, credit-card ladder.

Pricing summary : contact-banded tiers, bundled seats, and prepaid WhatsApp credits

ActiveCampaign uses a tiered subscription banded by contact count, with four billing dimensions:

1. Contact-count band (the primary price lever): Every email plan’s monthly price is quoted for a specific contact band and re-prices as you step the “Email Contacts” selector (1,000 → 2,500 → 5,000 → … → 200,000 → >200,000). At the 1,000-contact band, list prices are Starter $15/mo, Plus $49/mo, Pro $79/mo, Enterprise $145/mo (USD, billed annually).
2. User seats (bundled, not add-on): Each tier includes a fixed number of users — Starter 1, Plus 1, Pro 3, Enterprise 5. Higher tiers also raise the email-send limit as a multiple of the contact cap (Starter/Plus 10×, Pro 12×, Enterprise 15×).
3. WhatsApp plan ladder + prepaid credits: A separate Core/Advanced/Premium ladder scales by WhatsApp-contact band. At 5,000 WhatsApp contacts (billed annually), Core $99/mo, Advanced $99/mo, Premium $218/mo. Outbound marketing/utility/authentication template messages draw down prepaid, monthly-recurring messaging credits, estimated via a dedicated WhatsApp credit calculator.
4. Email + WhatsApp bundle: A third plan family fuses both channels — at 1,000 email + 5,000 WhatsApp contacts, Plus $112/mo, Pro $142/mo, Enterprise $284/mo (billed annually).

What makes this different: ActiveCampaign leads with contact count as the sole scaling metric for its core email product — the same four tiers simply re-price up the band ladder — while bolting a genuinely usage-metered WhatsApp channel (prepaid message credits) alongside it rather than folding messaging into the contact-based subscription.

Pricing by product

Email marketing & automation (contact-banded plans)

Prices below are quoted at the 1,000-contact band, USD, billed annually. Every plan re-prices upward as the contact band increases.

Enhanced CRM is a paid add-on across Plus / Pro / Enterprise. Business Goals allowance steps up by tier (Starter 15, Plus 25, Pro 200, Enterprise 200 active goals).

WhatsApp messaging (separate contact-banded ladder)

Prices below are quoted at the 5,000 WhatsApp-contact band, USD, billed annually. Re-prices as the WhatsApp-contact band increases.

Outbound WhatsApp templated messages consume prepaid, monthly-recurring messaging credits on top of the plan fee (see credit calculator below).

Email + WhatsApp (combined-channel bundle)

Prices at 1,000 email + 5,000 WhatsApp contacts, USD, billed annually. Three tiers only (no Starter in the bundle).

WhatsApp messaging-credit calculator

A dedicated calculator (/wa-messaging-calculator) estimates prepaid sending credits for outbound WhatsApp template messages. Inputs: recipient country (e.g. United States), marketing template message count, utility/authentication template message count, and currency (USD). Output: Total Credits Needed plus a monthly cost (billed annually). With zero messages entered, it shows $0/mo and 0 credits; per-credit unit rates are not surfaced as a static figure — the estimate is computed from message volume and destination.

Sales motions across products: self-serve credit-card checkout (“Buy Now”) for Starter / Plus / Pro across all channels; the Enterprise tier and the dedicated /enterprise page layer a sales-assisted motion (Request Pricing / Request a Demo) on top of the published list price.

Hidden costs : what real users actually pay

The advertised “$15/mo” headline understates what a growing team actually pays. Three effects compound the base subscription: your contact list keeps crossing band thresholds, the CRM you probably want is a paid add-on, and WhatsApp is billed as a whole second subscription plus prepaid credits. Two real-world archetypes:

Growing SMB marketer on Pro (10,000 contacts + CRM add-on)

The $79 headline is the 1,000-contact price; a real 10,000-contact list re-prices the same Pro tier to a materially higher band before any add-on. Exact band prices were not read at the 10,000-contact band in this capture, so figures above are directional — the lesson is that the sticker price is the floor, not the bill.

Cross-channel team on the Email + WhatsApp bundle

The bundle fee only buys the seats and features; every outbound WhatsApp marketing/utility/authentication template message draws down prepaid, monthly-recurring credits on top — a genuinely metered cost that scales with send volume and recipient country, and one the plan price hides entirely.

Want to estimate your own ActiveCampaign bill across bands and channels? Model it with the ActiveCampaign pricing calculator. For WhatsApp specifically, ActiveCampaign’s own WhatsApp messaging-credit calculator estimates credits from message volume and destination, and our usage-based pricing guide explains how metered add-ons stack on a subscription base.

Pricing evolution : narrative arc of pricing changes

Cadence

Tracked range: 2022-01 – 2026-07. Wayback archive capture returned distinct snapshots only for 2022 (Jan–Nov); 2023–2026 rows are dated from company/press sources, not archive screenshots. Quarters not listed were not independently verified and may contain unlogged activity.

Notable changes

• 2022-05-03 — ActiveCampaign acquired Postmark; the deal announcement drew a 183-point, 67-comment Hacker News thread (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31258647).
• 2024-06-03 → 2024-08 — Ladder renamed and re-cut (Lite/Plus/Professional/Enterprise → Starter/Plus/Pro/Enterprise), bundles replaced by add-ons, entry price moved $29→$15; migrating customers’ increases capped at 30% though many reported 30–40% jumps (emailvendorselection.com/activecampaign-pricing/).
• ~2025-11 — New users began being billed on total contacts including inactive ones (unsubscribes, bounces, unconfirmed), reversing the earlier “only pay for marketable contacts” promise (flowium.com/blog/activecampaign-pricing/).
• 2026-07 — Native WhatsApp automation (from the Hilos acquisition, YC S21) sold as a parallel Core/Advanced/Premium ladder with prepaid recurring credits, plus an Email + WhatsApp bundle.

The 2024 migration in detail

The 2024 restructure is the entry most worth understanding because it is where ActiveCampaign traded a legacy four-suite catalogue for a cleaner four-tier ladder and unbundled what used to be included. Sales Engagement and Pipelines became a paid “Enhanced CRM” add-on rather than plan features, and the headline entry price fell from $29 (Lite) to $15 (Starter) — but that lower sticker sat on a re-cut feature set. ActiveCampaign softened the transition with a published “increase capped at 30%” commitment on migration offers; third-party trackers nonetheless report many customers landing in the 30–40% range once band and add-on effects were included. It is a textbook example of a headline price dropping while realized bills for existing customers rose.

What’s unique : distinctive pricing mechanics

1. One value metric (contacts) re-prices every tier, rather than gating features by price. ActiveCampaign keeps the same four tiers and simply slides them up a 16-step contact-band ladder (1,000 → >200,000). Buyers pick a tier for capability and a band for scale independently — the price you see at 1,000 contacts is a floor, and the identical tier re-quotes higher as your list grows. This makes the sticker price legible but the real bill entirely dependent on list size.

2. A genuinely metered channel bolted onto a flat subscription. WhatsApp is not folded into the contact subscription — it is a second Core/Advanced/Premium ladder, banded by WhatsApp-contact count, on top of which every outbound template message draws down prepaid, monthly-recurring credits. That credit layer (priced by message type and recipient country via a dedicated calculator) is real consumption-based pricing sitting alongside an otherwise subscription product — a hybrid that most email-marketing competitors avoid.

3. AI as a packaging lever, not a meter. Unlike AI-native tools that charge per generation or per token, ActiveCampaign bundles its “Active Intelligence,” generative AI, predictive sending, and predictive/conditional content into the tier — “limits apply” on Starter/Plus, unlocked on Pro/Enterprise. AI here is an upsell reason to climb the ladder, not a line item, which keeps bills predictable but ties advanced AI to a higher fixed commitment.

Strengths & weaknesses

Billing UX : contact-band selector, channel tabs, currency picker, and a credit estimator

• “Choose your plan” channel tabs — a three-way toggle (Email · WhatsApp · Email + WhatsApp) swaps the entire plan table between the email tiers, the WhatsApp ladder, and the combined bundle.
• Contact-count band selector — an “Email Contacts” (or “WhatsApp Contacts”) dropdown lets you pick your list size (1,000 / 2,500 / 5,000 / … / 200,000 / >200,000); every displayed plan price recalculates to that band.
• Currency selector — a dropdown switches displayed pricing across six currencies: USD, BRL, CAD, AUD, EUR, and GBP.
• Annual/monthly framing — all headline prices are shown “billed annually,” and each plan card carries a “Buy Now” self-serve checkout button.
• WhatsApp messaging-credit calculator — a standalone estimator (linked from the WhatsApp plan view) computes Total Credits Needed and monthly cost from message volume, recipient country, and currency before purchase.
• 30-day money-back guarantee — a “See results in 30 days or get your money back” refund promise is surfaced directly on the pricing page.

Strategic wins : why specific decisions worked

1. Making contacts the single scaling metric kept the catalogue legible through years of feature growth

By pinning price to one metric — contacts — ActiveCampaign could add landing pages, CRM, predictive AI, and WhatsApp without inventing a new pricing axis for each. The buyer’s mental model stays “pick a tier, pick a band,” which is far easier to shop than a per-feature matrix. Choosing a value metric that grows naturally with customer success is the central lesson of our value-metric selection guidance; ActiveCampaign is a clean case study in sticking to one.

2. Bundling AI into tiers keeps bills predictable while still driving upgrades

Rather than metering generative AI or predictive sending per use, ActiveCampaign gates them behind Pro/Enterprise with “limits apply” on lower tiers. That converts AI into an upgrade reason without exposing customers to variable AI bills — a deliberate contrast to per-token or per-generation AI pricing. For teams wary of unpredictable AI spend, this packaging is a feature; see our take on why unpredictable AI costs push buyers toward predictable packaging.

3. Adding a metered WhatsApp channel expanded revenue without repricing the core product

The WhatsApp ladder and its prepaid credits let ActiveCampaign open a genuinely consumption-based revenue stream while leaving the contact-based email subscription untouched — existing customers weren’t forced onto a new meter. Isolating the metered surface to a clearly separate channel is a low-friction way to introduce usage pricing into a subscription base, a pattern we unpack in migrating a SaaS product toward usage-based pricing.

Areas to improve : specific gaps with proposed fixes

1. The published price is the 1,000-contact floor, not the bill

Every tier’s headline ($15/$49/$79/$145) is quoted at the smallest band, and the identical tier re-prices silently as the list grows — a gap that surfaced sharply when 2024 migrants saw 30–40% increases despite a “capped at 30%” promise. Fix: surface a band-aware “your estimated price” widget inline on the pricing page (not just the WhatsApp credit calculator) so prospects see their real band price before signup, reducing post-purchase surprise.

2. Billing inactive contacts undercuts a long-standing trust promise

The 2025 move to charge new users for unsubscribes, bounces, and unconfirmed contacts directly reverses the earlier “only pay for marketable contacts” pledge that ActiveCampaign advertised as recently as 2022. Fix: offer a one-click “bill only marketable contacts” toggle (even at a small premium) so the metric stays aligned with realized value; charging for contacts a customer can’t email is the kind of misalignment our usage-metric fairness guidance warns against.

3. WhatsApp credits are invisible until after purchase

The subscription ladders publish clear list prices, but the prepaid credit cost — the part that genuinely scales with usage — is only discoverable by opening a separate calculator, and no per-credit unit rate is shown as a static figure. Fix: surface an indicative “credits from ~$X per 1,000 messages (US)” range on the WhatsApp plan cards themselves so buyers can size the metered layer at the point of decision, the way our value-metric transparency guidance recommends.

Key takeaways

1. The sticker price is a floor, not a bill. Starter $15 / Plus $49 / Pro $79 / Enterprise $145 are all quoted at 1,000 contacts; the same tier re-prices up a 16-step band ladder as your list grows, so model your actual band before comparing to competitors.
2. There is no free tier. ActiveCampaign’s entry point is a paid $15 Starter plan behind a 14-day trial — a meaningful difference from Mailchimp, Brevo, or MailerLite, which all keep free plans.
3. WhatsApp is a second product, not a feature. It has its own Core/Advanced/Premium ladder, its own contact band, and prepaid metered credits per outbound message — budget it separately from your email subscription.
4. AI is bundled by tier, not metered. Generative AI, predictive sending, and predictive/conditional content unlock on Pro/Enterprise (“limits apply” lower down), so advanced AI is a reason to climb tiers rather than a variable line item.
5. Trust promises have moved. ActiveCampaign once advertised a “2-year price lock” and “only pay for marketable contacts”; by 2024–2025 it restructured the ladder (30–40% migration increases reported) and began billing new users for inactive contacts — read the current terms, not the reputation.

UBP implications

1. A single, list-linked value metric can carry a product for years — but hides realized cost. Contacts scale with customer success, which is why ActiveCampaign could keep one axis through Postmark, CRM, AI, and WhatsApp additions. The tradeoff is that banded re-pricing makes the headline price a poor predictor of the bill, so a clean metric still needs a transparent estimator to stay fair.
2. Hybrid models work: a metered channel can live beside a flat subscription. WhatsApp credits sit on top of the contact subscription rather than replacing it, letting ActiveCampaign monetize genuine consumption (messages) without forcing the whole product onto a meter. This “flat base + metered edge” pattern is a common resolution to the predictability-vs-fairness tension in usage-based pricing.
3. Bundling AI into tiers is a valid alternative to per-token pricing. For features whose cost per use is small and hard to attribute, packaging AI as a tier-unlock keeps bills predictable and reduces buyer anxiety — a reminder that not every AI capability needs to be metered to be monetized.

Sources

• ActiveCampaign pricing page (accessed 2026-07-12)
• ActiveCampaign WhatsApp messaging-credit calculator (accessed 2026-07-12)
• ActiveCampaign Enterprise solution page (accessed 2026-07-12)
• ActiveCampaign blog (accessed 2026-07-12)
• ActiveCampaign “What’s new” / product updates (accessed 2026-07-12)
• Wayback Machine: activecampaign.com/pricing, 2022-01-19 (accessed 2026-07-12)
• Wayback Machine: activecampaign.com/pricing, 2022-11-09 (accessed 2026-07-12)

Bottom line

ActiveCampaign sells one of the cleaner pricing stories in marketing automation: four transparent email tiers ($15–$145 at 1,000 contacts) that re-price up a contact-band ladder, a genuinely metered WhatsApp channel bolted on via prepaid credits, and AI packaged into higher tiers rather than metered. The catch is that the headline is always the floor — banded re-pricing, the paid CRM add-on, and the 2025 shift to billing inactive contacts mean your real bill can sit well above the sticker. Model your band and your channels before you compare.

Want to compare ActiveCampaign against other marketing-automation pricing? Browse the pricing blueprint.

Pricing timeline : Major events on a vertical axis

Each milestone below corresponds to a public pricing change, product launch, or material adjustment. Major events use a filled marker; minor adjustments use a faded one.

Contact-band tiers + parallel WhatsApp ladder captured

Jul 2026

Email plans Starter $15 / Plus $49 / Pro $79 / Enterprise $145 per month (1,000 contacts, billed annually); separate WhatsApp Core/Advanced/Premium ladder ($99/$99/$218 at 5,000 WhatsApp contacts) and an Email+WhatsApp bundle (Plus $112 / Pro $142 / Enterprise $284), WhatsApp priced via prepaid recurring messaging credits. AI ('Active Intelligence', predictive sending, predictive/conditional content) gated to Pro/Enterprise. Source: activecampaign.com/pricing (captured 2026-07-12).

New-user billing now counts inactive contacts

Nov 2025

From ~November 2025, ActiveCampaign began charging new users on total contacts including inactive ones (unsubscribes, bounces, unconfirmed) — a reversal of the earlier 'only pay for marketable contacts' promise. Approximate date; not Wayback-verified. Source: flowium.com/blog/activecampaign-pricing/

Major restructure — Lite/Plus/Professional/Enterprise → Starter/Plus/Pro/Enterprise

Jun 2024

New accounts moved to the current ladder on 2024-06-03; existing accounts migrated from August 2024. Bundles were discontinued in favour of add-ons (Sales Engagement, Pipelines / Enhanced CRM); the entry price was recut from $29 (Lite) to $15 (Starter) at 1,000 contacts. Migrations were capped at a 30% increase, though many customers reported 30–40% jumps. Not independently Wayback-verified (archive capture returned only 2022 snapshots); corroborated by multiple third-party pricing trackers. Sources: emailvendorselection.com/activecampaign-pricing/ ; slickbusiness.co/activecampaign-pricing-help/

Postmark acquired — transactional email joins the ladder

May 2022

ActiveCampaign acquired transactional-email provider Postmark (Wildbit). By the 2022-11-09 Wayback snapshot the pricing page had added a 'Transactional Email' tab and Enterprise had shifted from a list price to 'Talk to Sales' (Lite $29 / Plus $49 / Professional $149 held). Announcement drew a 183-point, 67-comment Hacker News thread. Source: web.archive.org/web/20221109183417/https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing ; news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31258647

Four-suite 'CXA' ladder: Lite / Plus / Professional / Enterprise

Jan 2022

Wayback snapshot (2022-01-19): at 1,000 contacts (billed yearly), Lite $29/mo, Plus $49/mo, Professional $149/mo (MOST POPULAR), Enterprise $258/mo. Predictive Sending / Predictive Content already present on higher suites. Page advertised a '2-year price lock' and 'only pay for marketable contacts.' Source: web.archive.org/web/20220119022450/https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing