ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts on the Starter plan. Plus plans begin at $49/month, Pro at $79/month, and Enterprise at $145/month. However, pricing scales dramatically with contact growth. For 10,000 contacts, expect $149-589/month depending on plan tier. At 25,000 contacts, Plus plans reach $399/month and Pro plans hit $649/month. There is no free plan, only a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

ActiveCampaign launched 25+ specialized AI agents in Fall 2025 for autonomous marketing. The Campaigns Agent creates complete campaigns from simple prompts, generating subject lines, copy, and scheduling. The Automations Agent builds multi-step nurture flows automatically with behavioral triggers. The Insights Agent analyzes performance and provides recommendations. The Personalization Agent tailors content for each subscriber based on behavior. These agents work within the Active Intelligence workspace, providing context-aware assistance that reduces campaign creation time by 3x and cuts execution time by approximately 15 days.

Automations are multi-step sequences triggered by specific events like form submissions or website visits, designed for nurturing contacts over time with personalized journeys. Campaigns are one-time email broadcasts sent to lists or segments, perfect for newsletters, promotions, or announcements. 1:1 emails are personal messages sent to individual contacts directly from deal records or contact profiles without using automations or campaigns, ideal for direct sales communication.

When you reach your contact limit, you cannot create or send new email campaigns, and new contacts won't be added to automations. However, contacts already in automations will continue through existing steps. You can still add contacts via API or ActiveCampaign forms, but they won't receive campaigns until you upgrade. Starter plans have a maximum capacity of 10,000 contacts. You must upgrade to a higher plan to restore full functionality and continue adding contacts.

Automation limits depend on your plan. Starter plans allow only 5-step automations, which is quite restrictive for complex workflows. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans offer unlimited automation steps, enabling sophisticated multi-stage nurture sequences. There's a limit of 10 runs per "Go to" action within 24 hours to prevent infinite loops. Contacts can cycle through the same automation multiple times unless specific conditions prevent it.

Yes, ActiveCampaign includes native SMS marketing on Plus plans and higher for US, UK, and Australian numbers, with MMS support in the US and Australia. A2P 10DLC registration is required for US SMS messaging, with potential fines up to $10,000 for non-compliance, so ensure proper registration before launching SMS campaigns. WhatsApp messaging automation was also introduced in 2025. SMS messages are usage-based with additional costs beyond your plan fee.

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial with full platform access including email marketing, automation capabilities, CRM features, and up to 1,000 contacts. The trial includes personalized onboarding sessions, access to 250+ email templates, site tracking, AI agents, and integration capabilities. No credit card is required to start the trial, making it risk-free to test whether the platform meets your needs before committing.

ActiveCampaign maintains industry-leading email deliverability at 93.4%, significantly outperforming major competitors like HubSpot at 79.8%, Mailchimp at approximately 85%, and most other email marketing platforms. This higher deliverability rate means more emails actually reach recipient inboxes instead of spam folders, directly improving campaign ROI and engagement rates. The platform achieves this through domain authentication, dedicated IP options on Enterprise plans, advanced reputation monitoring, and predictive sending optimization.

Common import failures occur due to non-UTF-8 encoded CSV files, files exceeding size limits, missing email addresses in rows, duplicate contacts without "update existing" enabled, or too many custom fields. Ensure your CSV file is properly formatted and saved from Google Sheets for UTF-8 encoding, contains valid email addresses for each contact, and doesn't exceed ActiveCampaign's file size limitations. Check that custom field names match exactly if updating existing contacts.

ActiveCampaign tracks opens using invisible 1-pixel images embedded in HTML emails. When recipients display images, the download is recorded as an open. Opens may also be tracked through link clicks even if images aren't displayed. Plain text emails cannot track opens, and some email clients that block images by default may not register opens accurately. This means open rates may be underreported, especially with privacy-focused email clients like Apple Mail.

ActiveCampaign offers 900+ integrations with popular business tools including Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, and Stripe. Native deep data integrations are available for major e-commerce platforms and CRMs. The platform provides a comprehensive RESTful API v3 for custom integrations with a rate limit of 5 requests per second. Most common business tools connect either directly or through integration platforms like Zapier.

Yes, ActiveCampaign offers free migration services that transfer contact lists, email templates, automation workflows, custom fields, tags, and historical data from platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, Constant Contact, and others. The migration team recreates automations in ActiveCampaign's system and ensures no disruption to ongoing campaigns during the transition process. However, be aware that you cannot export automations or templates back out of ActiveCampaign if you later decide to switch platforms.

ActiveCampaign has a steep learning curve, particularly for advanced features like complex automation workflows, CRM pipeline management, and sophisticated segmentation. Basic email campaigns are straightforward, but mastering the platform's full capabilities requires significant time investment. The extensive feature set can feel overwhelming for users coming from simpler email marketing tools. However, the new AI agents launched in 2025 help accelerate learning by automating complex tasks and providing contextual guidance. ActiveCampaign offers personalized onboarding sessions with the 14-day trial to help new users get started.