ActiveCampaign: review, prices and data location
Multi-step automation and lead scoring — no free plan
The review is based on the provider’s own sources: prices from the pricing page, data location from the privacy policy and billing rules from the help pages — each one dated.
Overview
ActiveCampaign
Best when: Multi-step automation, segmentation and a sales pipeline in one
Not for you if: A small list and a simple newsletter — you pay for features you do not use
Free plan: No free plan (14-day trial) · from €15/mo (500 contacts)
Good
- Over 1,000 integrations (ActiveCampaign’s own directory)
- Conditional content from the Plus plan up, lead scoring on the Pro plan
Bad
- Gets expensive steeply: €149 at 10,000 contacts while Brevo asks €28
- The cheapest Starter plan limits automation to five actions and has no conditional content
- Price list only on annual billing — the monthly price is revealed only after creating an account
- No free plan
Prices
The table below shows what ActiveCampaign costs at three list sizes compared with the other tools.
| Tool | Free plan | 500 contacts | 2,500 | 10,000 | GDPR settings | Data in the EU | English interface | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Systeme.ioSee prices | 2,000 contacts, unlimited sending | $17 | $17 | $47 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Try (ad) |
| EmailOctopusSee prices | 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails/month (EmailOctopus branding in the emails) | €9 | €16 | €36 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Try (ad) |
| BrevoSee prices | 300 emails/day | €7 | €21 | €28 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Try |
| MailerLiteSee prices | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month | €11 | €29 | €79 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Try |
| MailchimpSee prices | 250 contacts, 500 emails/month (daily limit 250) | €11.30 | €39.11 | €95.59 | Yes | No | Yes | Try |
| GetResponseSee prices | No free plan (14-day trial) | €16 | €27 | €69 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Try |
| ActiveCampaignSee prices | No free plan (14-day trial) | €15 | €39 | €149 | Yes | Partly | Yes | Try |
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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.(ad) = ad link
- The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.
- EmailOctopus and ActiveCampaign: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.
- GetResponse and ActiveCampaign: the smallest list sold is 1,000 contacts, so the 500-contact column shows that price.
What the price covers: The price list shows only the monthly price on annual billing — the monthly-billing price is not disclosed without an account. Smallest list size 1,000 contacts. The Plus plan costs €49 / €95 / €189 at the same list sizes, Pro €79 / €149 / €375. The feature difference between plans matters more than the price difference: according to the price list Starter has marketing automation but “5 actions per automation”, while Plus, Pro and Enterprise state “Unlimited automation actions”. Conditional content (“Conditional content”) starts on the Plus plan and lead scoring (“Lead scoring”) on the Pro plan through the Pipelines add-on. Features read from the price list on 6 September 2026.
How contacts are counted
The rule depends on the account creation date. ActiveCampaign’s own help article gives two answers: on accounts created on or after 3 November 2025, all contacts count toward the limit regardless of status, i.e. unsubscribed, unconfirmed and bounced too; on accounts created on or before 2 November 2025, only active ones. A new account is therefore in the same group as Mailchimp in this comparison. The help page opens only in a browser (HTTP 403); the text was read through the help centre’s own API on 5 September 2026.
Source: the provider’s own help page, read 5 September 2026. Checked on the same 90-day cycle as the prices.
Deliverability
Deliverability is the share of sent messages that reaches the inbox instead of the spam folder. The figures come from Tooltester’s test series, which ended in January 2024 — they describe 2017–2024, not the present. The average and the range are calculated across all rounds.
Deliverability
- Latest round94.2%
- Average of 12 rounds90.8%
- Range73.0–97.0%
- Standard deviation6.1
The best of the latest round, but the series also holds a collapse to 73.0% (September 2020).
Tooltester ended the series with the January 2024 round and explained why in August 2026: seed lists proved unreliable and providers started optimising for them. The figures are therefore history, not a measurement of current deliverability.
Source: Tooltester deliverability test, 12 rounds 8/2017–1/2024. About 80 seed addresses, 28 providers, shared IP addresses. Average across all platforms in the latest round 83.1%. Average and range calculated from the published rounds.
Deliverability features from the help docs
Eight points read from each provider’s own help pages on 13 September 2026. This replaces percentages as a buying basis: a feature can be checked and dated, a seed-list result no longer can. Every cell links to the article it was read from.
| SPF/DKIM/DMARC records from the app | Yes |
|---|---|
| DMARC guidance | Yes |
| Bounces and complaints removed automatically | Yes |
| Deliverability meter in the app | No |
| Built-in list cleaning | Yes |
| Purchased lists banned | Yes |
| Dedicated IP and warm-up | Yes |
| Deliverability team | — |
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Yes = the help page describes the feature. No = the help page says it is absent or points to an external tool. — = not found in the help pages; that does not mean the feature is absent.
Who ActiveCampaign suits
Best when: Multi-step automation, segmentation and a sales pipeline in one
Not for you if: A small list and a simple newsletter — you pay for features you do not use
Four plans, and the price climbs the steepest in the whole comparison
| Contacts | Starter | Plus | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | €15/mo | €49/mo | €79/mo | €145/mo |
| 2,500 | €39/mo | €95/mo | €149/mo | €255/mo |
| 10,000 | €149/mo | €189/mo | €375/mo | €589/mo |
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From the price list on 3 September 2026. All prices are monthly prices on annual billing — the monthly-billing price is not shown on the price list at all.
Starter multiplies tenfold from a thousand contacts to ten thousand: from €15 to €149. Over the same distance Brevo rises from €7 to €28. The difference is not in the features but in the steepness of the pricing — ActiveCampaign is built for a customer whose list already makes money.
The price list shows only annual billing
This deserves saying separately, because it makes comparisons unfair. On ActiveCampaign’s price list every figure has “Billed annually” beneath it, and the monthly-billing price is not shown without creating an account. When you see ActiveCampaign’s figure in some comparison next to the other services’ monthly prices, the figures are not on the same line: the others can be paid month by month, this one commits you for a year.
The sending limit is a multiple of the contact count
ActiveCampaign does not sell a sending quota separately but ties it to list size: according to the price list, Starter and Plus allow ten times the contact count in emails, Pro twelve times and Enterprise fifteen times. On a thousand-contact Starter account that is 10,000 emails a month.
For an ordinary newsletter the limit never comes up. It comes up when automations send several emails to the same person — that is, in exactly the use ActiveCampaign is bought for.
When the price is justified
ActiveCampaign’s selling point is not the newsletter but the automation: conditional branches, lead scoring, paths that react to website behaviour and a sales pipeline in the same view. If you build a path where the email depends on what the recipient did last week, the other tools in the comparison do not stretch to it — EmailOctopus and MailerLite do not even try.
If, on the other hand, you send a monthly newsletter to the same list, at 10,000 contacts you pay €149 a month for features you never open. Brevo does the same job for €28.
The data location is the most complicated in the comparison
ActiveCampaign is a US company, and its own privacy policy says data may be transferred to the United States, Australia, Ireland, Brazil and Costa Rica. The transfer rests on the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Read from the policy on 3 September 2026.
Lawful, but it is the longest entry in the comparison for your own privacy documentation: five countries instead of one data centre. If you work with the public sector or answer customers’ data protection questions, this is where the work increases.
The most integrations in the whole comparison
ActiveCampaign states over 1,000 apps, the widest library in the comparison: Mailchimp states 300+, GetResponse 170+ and MailerLite 130+. Brevo, EmailOctopus and Systeme.io publish no total at all. Highlighted are Webflow, Postmark for transactional emails and, on the AI side, Claude, among others.
The breadth is part of the same logic as the price: ActiveCampaign is sold as a tool that sits in the middle of an existing system stack and reads signals from it as conditions for its automations. If there is no stack, the library is of no use. The figures are the services’ own; checked 4 September 2026.
How ActiveCampaign compares with the alternatives
- On price: the most expensive in the comparison at a 10,000-contact list (€149) — at a small list the gap is smaller, €15 at a thousand contacts. Brevo handles the same list for €28 and MailerLite for €79 — but neither does conditional automation branches.
- On automation: the only one of the tools compared that is built for this. EmailOctopus does not even try, and Brevo’s automation requires the Standard plan.
- On billing: the only one whose price list does not show the monthly-billing price at all. In the comparison that means its figure is not on the same line as the others.
All head-to-head comparisons featuring ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse · Brevo vs ActiveCampaign · EmailOctopus vs ActiveCampaign · Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign · MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign · Systeme.io vs ActiveCampaign.
If you are considering switching away: ActiveCampaign alternatives — when switching pays, to what, and for whom the current tool is still right.
Its place in the comparison: best email marketing software 2026.
What we do not know yet
The figures above were read from the service’s own price list and privacy policy, and they are dated. On usability and support response time we say nothing: they cannot be read from the documentation, and a guess would harm the reader more than a missing fact. The deliverability figures above were measured by a third party, not by us. The full method →
ActiveCampaign: try 14 days without a card
No free plan (14-day trial).
Frequently asked questions
How much does ActiveCampaign cost?
Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?
Why is ActiveCampaign the most expensive in the comparison at 10,000 contacts?
When is ActiveCampaign worth it?
How does the sending limit work?
Where is ActiveCampaign’s data stored?
Alternatives
Mailchimp
The most expensive at a 2,500-contact list, and the data does not stay in the EU
MailerLite
One price tier without feature gating, data in the EU
GetResponse
Email, webinars and funnels from a Polish EU provider
Changelog · Show changes
- Prices read from the price list in euros. Starter €15 (1,000) / €39 (2,500) / €149 (10,000), all on annual billing.
- Finnish interface: the “No” mark corrected to “Partly”. The guide (11 June 2026) says Finnish is no longer maintained but can still be chosen as the account language — the same status as Danish, which was already marked partial.