# ActiveCampaign for SaaS: Custom Events at Plus, Your Own Objects at Enterprise

> Which ActiveCampaign tier a software company actually needs, mapped from the vendor's own entitlement list, and why a generous free tier is the thing that moves the invoice.

_Source: https://professionalstoolkit.com/articles/activecampaign-for-saas — The Professional's Toolkit · updated 2026-10-07_

---

A software company evaluating ActiveCampaign is usually asking one question: can it hold
product data, not just email addresses. The answer is yes, from a specific tier, and the detail is
worth knowing before you commit.

**OUR TAKE:** The pieces a SaaS lifecycle needs — custom events, custom objects, database sync,
API on every tier and site tracking — are all here, but they arrive on three different tiers. Map
your data model against the tier list before you price anything.

## What a SaaS lifecycle actually needs

Four things, and ActiveCampaign carries all four under named entitlements in its vendor
catalogue[3], which is why this can be stated exactly rather than approximately.

Event ingestion, so a trial action can trigger a sequence. The custom events entitlement begins at
Plus.

Object modelling, so a workspace or a subscription is a record rather than a contact field. Custom
object records exist from Starter; custom object schemas, which is the ability to define new
object types, are Enterprise only.

Two-way data movement, so your product database and your marketing database do not drift. The
database sync entitlement begins at Plus. The API and webhooks are on every tier including
Starter.

And behavioural signal, so you can tell a trialist who logged in twice from one who logged in
twenty times. Site tracking and link tracking are in the base product; contact scoring begins at
Plus.



> 💡 **undefined:** Map your data model against the tier table before pricing anything. Custom events mean Plus; your own object schemas mean Enterprise.

## The tier map, in one place

| Capability | First tier that has it |
|---|---|
| API and webhooks | Starter |
| Site tracking, link tracking | Starter |
| Custom object records | Starter |
| Custom events | Plus |
| Contact scoring | Plus |
| Database sync | Plus |
| Custom user permissions | Plus |
| Conditional content | Professional |
| Revenue attribution, conversions | Professional |
| Predictive sending | Professional |
| Custom object schemas | Enterprise |
| Single sign-on | Enterprise |
| Account activity logs | Enterprise |
| Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics integrations | Enterprise |

Read from the vendor's billing catalogue, where each row is a named entitlement[3].

The honest reading of that table: a SaaS company doing anything beyond newsletters starts at Plus,
and a SaaS company that wants its own object model starts at Enterprise.

## The contact meter against a freemium product

This is the structural problem for software companies specifically.

Every signup is a contact. Every free user is a contact. Every churned trial is a contact, because
"All contacts, regardless of their list status, count towards your contact limit"[11].

A product-led company with a generous free tier accumulates contacts at a rate that has nothing to
do with revenue, and this pricing model charges for all of them.

| Contacts | Plus, $/mo | Professional, $/mo | Enterprise, $/mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 49 | 79 | 145 |
| 10,000 | 189 | 375 | 589 |
| 25,000 | 389 | 629 | 879 |
| 50,000 | 609 | 969 | 1,169 |
| 250,000 | 2,399 | 2,399 | 2,759 |

All annual rates, from the catalogue[3]. Note the last row: at two hundred and fifty thousand
contacts Plus and Professional cost exactly the same, so the capability difference becomes free at
that scale.

If your free tier is large, model the band against signups rather than against customers. That is
the number that moves the invoice.



> 💡 **undefined:** Schedule a monthly contact export from day one. The terms state the service is not a repository for contact data and that independent backups are your responsibility.

## What happens at the limit, and why it matters more here

Sending stops; billing does not move. "Once you reach your contact limit, you will not be able to
send any email campaigns until you upgrade your account"[9], with automations continuing to
run while their send steps are skipped.

For a SaaS product that is a specific failure mode: your onboarding sequence appears to be running
and new signups receive nothing. The automation log shows activity. The emails do not arrive.

Auto-upgrade is the opt-in that changes this[10], and for a product-led company it is close to
mandatory, because signup volume is not something you control week to week.

## The pipeline question for a sales-assisted motion

If your motion is product-led only, skip this section. If you have an inside sales team, read it
twice.

Pipeline management, deal records, account records and lead scoring are each marked "Included in
add-on" on every tier that offers them[2], and the price of those add-ons is published neither
on the pricing page nor in the vendor's own billing catalogue, where the relevant entitlements
carry empty price ladders[3].

So the common SaaS plan — marketing automation and a lightweight pipeline in one system, avoiding
a second CRM subscription — is available here at a price you cannot find out in advance.

Our suggestion is to price that add-on before you compare tiers, because it may change the
comparison entirely.



> ⚠ **undefined:** At the contact limit the onboarding sequence appears to run while its send steps are skipped, so new signups receive nothing and the log looks healthy.

## Transactional email and the product itself

Most SaaS products send two streams. Lifecycle mail, which belongs in a marketing tool, and
product mail, which belongs somewhere reliable and fast.

ActiveCampaign's catalogue carries Postmark as a separate product at fifteen dollars a month for
ten thousand emails[3], which is the vendor's answer for the second stream. The send allowance
on your plan explicitly excludes transactional mail: "This does not include 1:1 or transactional
emails"[8].

That is a clean separation and it is one more line that is not on the pricing page.

## Security and compliance, which gate at the top

Single sign-on is an Enterprise entitlement. So are account activity logs, which is the audit
trail most security reviews ask for. HIPAA support appears in the platform section of the feature
matrix[2].

If your buyers run vendor security reviews, those three items probably decide your tier before any
feature does, and the Enterprise tier at your contact band is the real price of the product.

Note that Enterprise here is still self-service: the pricing page generates an ordinary signup
link with tier=enterprise, so it is a purchasable tier rather than a quote, although a separate
request-pricing path exists alongside it.



> ⚠ **undefined:** A lightweight sales pipeline requires an add-on whose price is published neither on the pricing page nor in the vendor's billing catalogue.

## Integrations, including one unusual line

The vendor's marketplace counts 1,056 apps and integrations, rendered as a filter result rather
than claimed in copy[16], and the API and webhooks are on every tier.

Two entries matter for software companies. Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are Enterprise-only
entitlements[3], so a company already running Salesforce should price Enterprise from the
start. And the integrations accordion names "Claude & ChatGPT (via MCP)"[2], which no other
product in our set publishes.

One oddity we report without resolving: the catalogue carries a Zapier entitlement on the Plus
tier and on no other, while the pricing page lists Zapier with no tier marked at all.

## The exit, which a SaaS company should model

Three published facts.

No refunds of any kind[6]. A cancellation lands at the end of the current period, and on a
commit-annually plan it requires contacting support rather than clicking[7].

Automations have no file export. The only published route is a share link that carries none of the
campaigns, lists, scores, deals, pipelines, events or whitelisted domains the automation
references[14]. For a company whose lifecycle logic is a competitive asset, that logic is not
portable.

And access to contact data ends at cancellation: "Upon cancellation or termination, you will not
have access to or be able to restore any Contact Data"[5]. The terms add that the service
"does not serve as a repository for Contact Data" and that independent backups are your
responsibility.

The last one is easy to satisfy and easy to forget. Schedule a monthly contact export from day
one.

There is a second-order version of the same problem worth naming. A software company's lifecycle
logic usually encodes product knowledge: which activation event predicts retention, which trial
behaviour signals intent, which sequence recovers a stalled onboarding. That knowledge lives in
the automation, and the automation is the one asset here that leaves no file behind. If it matters
to you, document the logic outside the tool as you build it rather than reconstructing it later
from an interface you no longer have access to.

## Where the entry tier fails a software company

It is worth being specific, because Starter is cheap enough to tempt an early-stage team.

Eleven entitlements in total[3]. No custom events, so a trial action cannot trigger a
sequence. No database sync, so your product database and your contact database drift from week
one. No contact scoring, so every trialist looks the same. No custom user permissions, so everyone
who logs in sees everything.

Then the fixed ceilings. Five lists, and five actions per automation, both recorded with maximum
units equal to included units, which means money does not raise them[3]. A standard onboarding
sequence of welcome, activation nudge, a condition on whether they completed setup and two
branches is already at or past five actions.

That last constraint is the one that catches technical teams, because it is invisible until you
build. The five actions are not five emails. A condition is an action. A wait is an action. A
webhook back to your own system is an action. So the entry tier runs linear sequences and nothing
that branches, which is most of what a product-led lifecycle needs.

And two seats maximum, against nine hundred and ninety-nine on every tier above.

The honest summary is that Starter is a newsletter plan. For a software company it is not a
cheaper version of the product; it is a different one.

## The billing term, and what it costs you to save

The annual term is between 16.9% and 21.6% cheaper across the bands we measured[3], which on a
Plus plan at ten thousand contacts is a meaningful line in a small budget.

It also removes two options. An annual account cannot be paused: pausing is three months maximum,
once every twelve months, and "The Pause option applies to monthly plans only", with
commit-annually accounts explicitly excluded[12]. And a commit-annually plan "must contact our
Customer Experience team to cancel"[7] rather than cancelling from the dashboard.

For a company whose own product is sold on monthly terms, that asymmetry is worth noticing before
signing it.

There is also a third term the pricing page never names: commit annually, pay monthly, worth up to
ten per cent, published only in the help-centre article about cancelling[7].

## Documentation, which is a real advantage here

Software companies evaluate vendors partly on how much they have to ask, and this one asks little.

The help centre publishes the overage rate, the shutoff threshold, the warning percentages, the
reset rules for both billing terms, the export columns, the download link validity, the pause
limits, the trial ceiling, and a dedicated article on how contacts are counted[8]. Each
article carries a last-updated date and most are current within weeks.

Against that, two defects worth knowing. The terms of service and the help centre give different
answers about what happens when you exceed the send limit[5][8]. And the anti-spam policy
that governs automatic suspension is stamped September 2021, five years older than the terms
beside it.



## FAQ

**Can ActiveCampaign handle product events?**

Yes, from the Plus tier. Custom events and database sync are both Plus entitlements in the vendor's catalogue, and the API and webhooks are available on every tier including Starter.

**Does ActiveCampaign support SSO?**

Single sign-on is an Enterprise entitlement, as are account activity logs. If your buyers run vendor security reviews, those two items will probably decide your tier before any marketing feature does.

**Is ActiveCampaign expensive for a freemium product?**

It can be, because every signup is a billable contact and all contacts count regardless of list status. Model the contact band against signup volume rather than against paying customers.

## The shortest useful summary

Map your data model to the tier table first. Custom events and database sync mean Plus. Your own
object schemas, single sign-on and audit logs mean Enterprise.

Then model the contact band against signups rather than customers, decide auto-upgrade on purpose,
and price the CRM add-on if you have a sales team.

And treat the automation logic as something you own only while you are paying, because it is the
one asset in this account that does not come out in a file.



## Sources

[1] ActiveCampaign vendor pricing page, read from the United States — https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing (2026-10)
[2] ActiveCampaign billing product catalogue, the vendor's own price list — https://billing-product-catalog.cluster.app-us1.com/api/v1/read/products?currency=USD&billing_interval=1&billing_interval=12&c=ac2024&referer=/pricing (2026-10)
[3] ActiveCampaign published fallback price file — https://www.activecampaign.com/dist/pricing/fallback/USD.json (2026-10)
[4] ActiveCampaign terms of service — https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/terms-of-service (2026-10)
[5] ActiveCampaign vendor refund policy — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/218253598-Refund-Policy (2026-10)
[6] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on cancelling — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/218790117-How-do-I-cancel-my-account (2026-10)
[7] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on send limits and overage — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/10918125380764-About-email-send-limits-and-overage-fees (2026-10)
[8] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on the contact limit — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000364264-What-happens-when-I-reach-my-contact-limit (2026-10)
[9] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on auto-upgrade — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000337284-Does-ActiveCampaign-automatically-increase-my-contact-limit (2026-10)
[10] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on contact counting — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000337324-Do-unsubscribed-unconfirmed-or-bounced-contacts-count-against-my-contact-limit (2026-10)
[11] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on pausing billing — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/13613456314652-Pause-billing-for-your-ActiveCampaign-account (2026-10)
[12] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on exporting contacts — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/221393808-How-do-I-export-all-contacts (2026-10)
[13] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on the free trial — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/218789987-Free-trial-capabilities (2026-10)
[14] ActiveCampaign vendor documentation on account reviews — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/221362648-About-account-reviews-and-suspensions (2026-10)
[15] ActiveCampaign vendor app marketplace, counted with its own filter — https://www.activecampaign.com/apps (2026-10)
[16] Trustpilot profile and its own distribution table — https://www.trustpilot.com/review/activecampaign.com (2026-10)
[17] GetApp profile and published distribution — https://www.getapp.com/marketing-software/a/activecampaign/ (2026-10)
[18] TrustRadius rating — https://www.trustradius.com/products/activecampaign/reviews (2026-10)
[19] Mailchimp vendor pricing page, read from the United States — https://mailchimp.com/pricing/ (2026-10)
[20] GetResponse vendor pricing page, read from the United States — https://www.getresponse.com/pricing (2026-10)
[21] Brevo vendor pricing page, read from the United States — https://www.brevo.com/pricing/ (2026-10)
[22] The vendor's documentation on sharing an automation, the only published way to take one out of the account — https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001963270-How-do-I-share-an-automation
[23] ActiveCampaign's anti-spam policy, which governs suspension and is stamped September 2021 — https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/anti-spam-policy
[24] ActiveCampaign's minimum advertised price policy, which names its own pricing page as the price of record — https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/minimum-advertised-price-policy
[25] The vendor's trial signup page: fourteen days, no credit card — https://www.activecampaign.com/free
[26] Software Advice's profile, which files this product under CRM and publishes the same pool as percentages — https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/activecampaign-profile/