# ActiveCampaign Pricing in 2026: Ten Numbers on the Page, Eighteen Products in the Catalogue

> ActiveCampaign's real pricing: the monthly rates the page never shows, the full contact ladder, the seat caps, the six unpriced add-ons, and why the vendor's own two price sources disagree on 468 figures.

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

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ActiveCampaign's pricing page displays ten numbers. The vendor's own billing catalogue,
which that page fetches every time it loads, contains eighteen products, fourteen metered
entitlements and contact ladders of up to forty-nine bands[3].

Nothing is hidden. The catalogue is sent to your browser, and the vendor publishes a second copy
as a static file with no authentication on it at all. This article is what those two sources say.

## The four tiers, both ways

Every plan card on the page reads "Starts at" a figure, then "/mo", then in smaller type "Billed
annually"[2]. The catalogue carries both terms.

| Plan | Month to month, $/mo | Billed annually, $/mo | Charged once a year, $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 19 | 15 | 180 |
| Plus | 59 | 49 | 588 |
| Professional | 99 | 79 | 948 |
| Enterprise | 179 | 145 | 1,740 |

The four displayed figures are the yearly totals divided by twelve. Checking that was the first
thing we did, because mixing an annual rate with a monthly one is the easiest way to get a pricing
article wrong: one hundred and eighty divided by twelve is fifteen, and the same reconciliation
holds on all four tiers[3].

Across thirty-two tier-and-band combinations, the annual discount runs between 16.9% and 21.6%,
median 20.1%[3]. There is no monthly-annual toggle on the page.

A third term exists and the pricing page never mentions it: commit annually, pay monthly, worth
"up to 10% off". It is published inside the help-centre article about cancelling[7].



> 💡 **undefined:** Work out your contact band before comparing tiers. The band moves the price more than the tier does on the lower half of the ladder.

## What the contact band does

The price is a function of the product, the tier and the contact band. Everything above is the
first band, one thousand contacts.

| Contacts | Starter, $/mo | Plus, $/mo | Professional, $/mo | Enterprise, $/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 15 | 49 | 79 | 145 |
| 2,500 | 39 | 95 | 149 | 255 |
| 5,000 | 79 | 145 | 205 | 375 |
| 7,500 | 109 | 169 | 289 | 479 |
| 10,000 | 149 | 189 | 375 | 589 |
| 15,000 | 231 | 265 | 465 | 689 |
| 20,000 | 311 | 329 | 549 | 785 |
| 25,000 | 391 | 389 | 629 | 879 |
| 30,000 | not sold | 449 | 709 | 949 |
| 50,000 | not sold | 609 | 969 | 1,169 |
| 250,000 | not sold | 2,399 | 2,399 | 2,759 |

All annual rates. Three things in that table are worth stopping on.

Starter stops at twenty-five thousand contacts, and at that last band it costs more than Plus
charges for the same number. Plus and Professional cost exactly the same at two hundred and fifty
thousand contacts, so the capability difference between them becomes free at volume. And the
selector on the page offers these twelve bands while the catalogue carries forty-eight, so the
band you actually land on may not be one you can see.

## Seats

Included seats are one, one, three and five from Starter up[3]. The caps are where it gets
interesting: Starter allows a maximum of two, every other tier allows nine hundred and
ninety-nine.

An extra seat costs ten dollars a month or ninety-six dollars a year. So two people on Starter at
one thousand contacts is two hundred and seventy-six dollars for the year, against five hundred
and eighty-eight for Plus with one seat. The second Starter seat costs about 47% of a whole Plus
subscription, and then you are out of seats.



> 💡 **undefined:** If two people need access, compare two Starter seats against one Plus seat. The second Starter seat costs about 47% of a whole Plus subscription and then the tier is full.

## Sending

The allowance is a multiple of your contact limit: ten times on Starter and Plus, twelve on
Professional, fifteen on Enterprise[2]. At the entry band that is ten thousand, ten thousand,
twelve thousand and fifteen thousand emails a month.

Beyond it, the vendor publishes two incompatible rules. The terms of service say sending stops
until the next calendar month[5]. The help centre says you are charged half a cent per email
and sending is only switched off once the overage reaches three times your limit, with the reset
tied to your billing cycle rather than the calendar[8]. The help article is nine months newer
and neither document mentions the other.

The help centre does publish the warning path, which is more than most: in-app notifications at
75%, 90% and 100% of capacity, plus an email to the primary admin at 75% and 100%.

## Hitting the contact limit

Not an overage. A stop.

"We do not automatically increase your contact limit unless you have enabled auto-upgrade in your
account"[10]. Without it, "you will not be able to send any email campaigns until you upgrade
your account"[9]. Automations keep running and their send steps are skipped. Contacts keep
arriving through the API, through integrations and through your forms.

Turn auto-upgrade on and the terms say fees "will increase immediately according to usage",
pro-rated for the rest of the period, with every renewal thereafter at the new amount[5].

Unsubscribed and bounced contacts count. The vendor says so in a dedicated article: "All contacts,
regardless of their list status, count towards your contact limit", for accounts created on or
after 3 November 2025[11]. Lowering the limit again is not self-service.



> ⚠ **undefined:** Every figure on the pricing page is an annual rate. There is no control anywhere on the page to show the monthly one.

## The add-ons

Six are named on the pricing page and none is priced there[2]: Pipelines enhanced CRM, Sales
Engagement enhanced CRM, Custom Reporting, SMS, AI Activities and WhatsApp Messaging. Every
mention is "Available add-on" or "Included in add-on".

The catalogue fills in three. SMS is twenty-one dollars a month for a thousand credits, which do
not roll over. Postmark, for transactional sending, is fifteen dollars a month for ten thousand
emails. The WhatsApp add-on has a full ladder. The two CRM add-ons carry empty price ladders on
every tier[3], so the billing system does not state their price either.

This matters because of what is behind them. Pipeline management, deal records, account records
and lead scoring are each marked "Included in add-on"[2]. If you are evaluating
ActiveCampaign as a CRM, the price of the CRM is unpublished.

The AI meter is the same story with a number attached. The catalogue's Activities entitlement has
zero included units on all four tiers and a ladder starting at a dollar a month for two
hundred[3], while the page marks AI translations and AI actions "Available add-on" even on
Enterprise.

## WhatsApp, and the arithmetic of the bundle

The page offers three tabs: email, WhatsApp, and both. WhatsApp alone is displayed at ninety-nine,
ninety-nine and two hundred and eighteen dollars a month under the names Core, Advanced and
Premium — names the catalogue does not use, where the same three objects are coded plus,
professional and enterprise[3].

The bundle numbers are exactly the email plan plus the WhatsApp add-on.

| Bundle tier | Email, $/mo | WhatsApp add-on, $/mo | Total, $/mo | Page shows, $/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plus | 49 | 63.00 | 112.00 | 112 |
| Professional | 79 | 63.00 | 142.00 | 142 |
| Enterprise | 145 | 138.92 | 283.92 | 284 |

There is no bundle discount on top of that. The struck-through price the page shows beside each
bundle is the difference between the add-on price and the standalone price — which is the real
finding here. The same WhatsApp costs 57% more bought on its own than bought attached to an email
plan[3].



> ⚠ **undefined:** The commit-annually, pay-monthly term worth up to 10% off is published only inside the help article about cancelling.

## The vendor's two price sources do not agree

The pricing module fetches the live catalogue and falls back to a published static file if the
catalogue does not answer within 1,500 milliseconds[4].

We compared the two across every priced entitlement and every band: 4,664 pairs. Three thousand
one hundred and sixty-two agree. One thousand and thirty-four bands exist only in the live
catalogue. And four hundred and sixty-eight carry a different price for the same quantity.

Every one of those four hundred and sixty-eight is a WhatsApp meter, where the published fallback
is around 45% higher than the live price and in places more than three times it. The email plans
agree on all 1,954 of their own pairs[4].

So an email buyer is unaffected, and a WhatsApp buyer's displayed price can depend on how quickly
an interface answered. Worth knowing before you screenshot a quote.

Our first version of that comparison looked at three meters across twelve bands and found zero
differences. Narrowing a check to the parts you care about is how a clean result hides a third of
the disagreement.

## What the entry tier actually includes

Price is only half of a pricing question. The other half is what the money buys, and on Starter
the answer is narrower than the ladder suggests.

The catalogue lists eleven entitlements on Starter and fifty-six on Plus[3]. The eleven are
contacts, email sends, activities, user seats, campaigns, lists, business goals, custom object
records, the ecommerce core, the Pipedrive integration and the automation action fence. That last
one is not a feature. It is the mechanism that caps automations at five actions each.

What Plus adds is most of the product: landing pages, site messages, modal forms and preference
centres, contact scoring, segment logic that combines conditions, custom branding, custom user
permissions, database sync, AI content and image generation, the AI brand kit, ecommerce coupons
and product catalogue, and the named integrations for Slack, Calendly, Eventbrite, Google Ads,
LinkedIn, TikTok and Facebook.

Professional adds sixteen more, most of them about prediction and attribution: predictive sending,
predictive content, conditional content, revenue attribution, conversions, the automations map,
split automations, and the premium ecommerce connectors for BigCommerce, Magento and Shopify Plus.
Enterprise adds eight, and they are the ones a large buyer will recognise: single sign-on, account
activity logs, custom object schemas, and the integrations for Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and
Zendesk.

Two fixed ceilings sit on Starter and nowhere else. Five lists and five actions per automation,
both recorded in the catalogue with maximum units equal to included units[3], which is to say
no amount of money raises them. The page states both plainly, as "Lists — Up to 5" and "5 actions
per automation".

One oddity we report without resolving. The catalogue carries a Zapier entitlement on the Plus
tier and on no other, including the two above it, while the pricing page lists Zapier among its
integrations with no tier marked at all[2]. Both statements are the vendor's.



> ⚠ **undefined:** The two CRM add-ons carry empty price ladders in the billing catalogue, so even the billing system does not state their price.

## WhatsApp as its own product

The second tab on the pricing page sells WhatsApp on its own, with three tiers of its own and a
separate contact ladder. The displayed figures are ninety-nine, ninety-nine and two hundred and
eighteen dollars a month, at five thousand WhatsApp contacts.

Two of the three show the same price because their underlying contact ladders are identical. What
differs between them is seats and lines: three seats and five lines against five seats and five
lines[3]. The top tier has eight seats.

The catalogue prices three separate WhatsApp meters rather than one: contacts, messages and lines.
Lines are four hundred and eighty dollars a year each with five included on the upper tiers.
Messages run a hundred and eighty dollars a year per thousand. Contacts carry a forty-six-step
ladder.

This is the part of ActiveCampaign's price surface where the vendor's own two sources disagree
most, and where a buyer should check the figure twice.

## What a first year actually costs

One seat, the entry contact band, annual billing:

| Plan | Committed up front, $ | Effective, $/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | 180 | 15 |
| Plus | 588 | 49 |
| Professional | 948 | 79 |
| Enterprise | 1,740 | 145 |

At ten thousand contacts those same four become one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, two
thousand two hundred and sixty-eight, four thousand five hundred, and seven thousand and
sixty-eight dollars for the year.

Add the things the page does not price: a CRM add-on if you need a pipeline, an AI Activities
meter if you want the AI to do anything, SMS at twenty-one dollars a month, and transactional
sending at fifteen. And remember that there are no refunds of any kind, so an annual commitment is
a year[6].



## FAQ

**Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?**

No. There is a fourteen-day trial with no credit card required, one user, features matching the Professional tier and a limit of one hundred email sends. The cheapest paid entry is $15 a month on annual billing, which is $180 committed up front, or $19 a month without the commitment.

**Why is my ActiveCampaign price higher than the website says?**

Three likely reasons. The website shows the annual rate and you may be paying monthly, which is about a fifth more. The website shows the first contact band of 1,000 and your band may be higher. Or you have an add-on, and the website prices none of its six.

**How much does ActiveCampaign cost for 10,000 contacts?**

On annual billing, $149 a month on Starter, $189 on Plus, $375 on Professional and $589 on Enterprise. Those are $1,788, $2,268, $4,500 and $7,068 for the year. Month to month the same bands are $189, $239, $469 and $739.

**What is the cheapest way to use ActiveCampaign?**

Starter on annual billing at your real contact band, with one seat. Check two ceilings first: the tier allows a maximum of two seats and a maximum of 25,000 contacts, and at 25,000 it costs more per month than Plus does for the same contacts.

## Three questions to settle in writing

Which send-limit rule applies to your account, given that the terms and the help centre describe
different consequences for the same event. What the CRM add-on you need actually costs. And which
contact band you will be on, since the catalogue carries forty-eight and the page shows twelve.

The vendor's own minimum advertised price policy binds its resellers to "the prices listed for
each individual plan, tier, and contact amount at ActiveCampaign's pricing page"[2]. It treats
that page as the price of record. On the add-ons, the page has no price to be the record of.



## 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] 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
[20] ActiveCampaign's anti-spam policy, which governs suspension and is stamped September 2021 — https://www.activecampaign.com/legal/anti-spam-policy
[21] 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
[22] The vendor's trial signup page: fourteen days, no credit card — https://www.activecampaign.com/free
[23] Software Advice's profile, which files this product under CRM and publishes the same pool as percentages — https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/activecampaign-profile/