We make Drry, which includes email automations, so read this with that in mind. How much does ActiveCampaign cost? At 1,000 contacts, billed annually, Starter is $15 a month, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145; billed monthly they are $19, $59, $99 and $179. Every plan climbs with your contact count, so at 10,000 contacts Plus is $189 a month. Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan? No: there is a 14-day trial with no card required, then a paid plan. Every figure here was read from activecampaign.com/pricing and ActiveCampaign's help centre, as checked September 2026.
ActiveCampaign is one of the best automation builders ever made, and people pay for it for good reason: branching automations of real depth, site and event tracking, contact scoring, a built-in CRM with an enhanced version sold as an add-on, and more integrations than most teams will ever connect. Its pricing reflects that it is built for a business with a marketing function. The question for a smaller one is how much of that you will use at the size your list is heading for.
ActiveCampaign plans: Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise
- Starter is email marketing with automation limited to 5 actions per automation, limited segmentation and one user. It stops at 25,000 contacts.
- Plus removes the action limit, adds standard segmentation, landing pages and the standard CRM and e-commerce integrations, still with one user. For most people who want automation, this is the real entry point.
- Pro adds advanced segmentation, predictive and conditional content, attribution and conversion tracking, and three users, and raises monthly sends from 10x to 12x your contact limit.
- Enterprise adds premium segmentation, custom objects, single sign-on, a dedicated account team and five users, with sends at 15x your contact limit.
SMS, WhatsApp, transactional email, the enhanced CRM and extra users are sold as add-ons on top, so the plan price is a floor rather than the whole bill if you need any of them.
How much does ActiveCampaign cost as your list grows?
Here is the ladder, read band by band from the pricing page's own contact selector. Each cell is the per-month price billed annually, with the price billed monthly in brackets.
| 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) |
| 5,000 | $79 ($99) | $145 ($179) | $205 ($259) | $375 ($469) |
| 10,000 | $149 ($189) | $189 ($239) | $375 ($469) | $589 ($739) |
| 25,000 | $391 ($489) | $389 ($489) | $629 ($789) | $879 ($1,099) |
Three things are worth reading off it. Annual billing saves roughly a fifth at every band, so the monthly price is the one to budget if you are not sure you will stay a year. The plans converge as the list grows: Plus costs $34 a month more than Starter at 1,000 contacts and $40 more at 10,000. And at 25,000 contacts, Starter's ceiling, Starter is $391 a month against $389 for Plus, so the case for the limited plan weakens the bigger your list gets.
Worked example: 2,500 and 10,000 contacts on Plus
Contact limits, send limits and overages
- Who counts. On accounts created on or after November 3, 2025, every contact counts toward the limit whatever its status. On older accounts, bounced and unsubscribed contacts do not. Archived contacts never count.
- At the contact limit. You cannot send email campaigns until you move up a band, unless you have switched on auto-upgrade, which does it for you. Contacts can still arrive through forms, the API and integrations meanwhile.
- Send limits. Starter and Plus send up to 10x your contact limit a month, Pro 12x and Enterprise 15x. The limit covers campaigns and automated emails, not one-to-one or transactional email.
- Send overages. Past the send limit, each extra send is $0.005: 10,000 over is $50. If the overage reaches three times your limit, sending is switched off until the next month.
Is ActiveCampaign worth the price?
If you will use the automation, yes, and it is worth being clear about who that is. A business running contact scoring, a sales pipeline, site tracking and multi-branch journeys gets more from ActiveCampaign than from almost anything else at the price, and the trial plus the money-back guarantee make it cheap to find out.
It is poor value when the automation you need is a welcome sequence and a weekly email. You pay by the contact for depth you do not touch, and if what you sell is a course, a membership or coaching, that product lives on another platform you also pay for. Our ActiveCampaign alternatives guide covers the lighter tools, and moving an email list covers the export, tags and unsubscribe status included. For the other big contact-priced tool, see Mailchimp pricing.
How Drry compares (the disclosed pitch)
Our side, stated plainly so you can discount it. Drry is a community platform for coaches that sends your email too, and it is priced by plan rather than by contact band. The free plan holds 500 contacts and 700 sends a month; Creator, at $29 a month, holds 25,000 contacts, 60,000 sends a month and email automations: welcome journeys, lead-magnet delivery and win-backs, with waits and branches. Members of your community never count toward the contact number.
So the 10,000-contact list above is $29 a month, $348 a year against $2,268 on ActiveCampaign Plus billed annually, with 4 emails a month to all of them inside the allowance. The same plan hosts the courses, community and 0% checkout the emails are selling. For the side-by-side, see Drry vs ActiveCampaign.
The trade-offs are real. Drry keeps a record of each person rather than a sales CRM: no deal pipelines, no lead scoring and no SMS, and its automations are journeys for a coach's own people rather than a marketing team's engine. If that engine is what you are paying ActiveCampaign for, keep paying for it.
Questions coaches ask
How much does ActiveCampaign cost?
At 1,000 contacts, billed annually: Starter $15 a month, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145. Billed monthly, the same plans are $19, $59, $99 and $179. Every plan rises with your contact count: at 10,000 contacts Plus is $189 a month billed annually, or $239 billed monthly. As checked September 2026 against activecampaign.com/pricing.
Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?
No. ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required, and after that you choose a paid plan. The pricing page also advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee, subject to its terms, which is a second way to try it without committing.
Do unsubscribed contacts count toward ActiveCampaign's contact limit?
It depends on when you signed up. ActiveCampaign's help centre says that for accounts created on or after November 3, 2025, all contacts count toward the limit whatever their status; for accounts created on or before November 2, 2025, bounced and unsubscribed contacts do not. Archived contacts do not count on either, so archiving the people who left is how a newer account keeps its band down.
What happens when I hit my ActiveCampaign contact or send limit?
At the contact limit, the help centre says you cannot send email campaigns until you upgrade, unless you have switched on auto-upgrade, which moves you to the next band for you. Past the monthly send limit, extra sends cost $0.005 each, so 10,000 sends over is $50, and sending is switched off until next month if the overage reaches three times your limit.
Is ActiveCampaign Starter enough?
For a simple newsletter, perhaps. Starter limits each automation to 5 actions and gives you one user, so a real welcome or nurture sequence usually needs Plus. The gap narrows as the list grows: at 1,000 contacts Plus costs $34 a month more than Starter billed annually, at 10,000 only $40, and at 25,000 Starter ($391) costs more than Plus ($389).
Is there a cheaper alternative to ActiveCampaign?
For most solo businesses, yes, because few of them use everything ActiveCampaign charges for. Our ActiveCampaign alternatives guide compares the dedicated email tools. Drry, which we make, includes email automations on its $29 Creator plan with 25,000 contacts, alongside a community, courses and payments, which only makes it the cheaper option if you want those too.