ActiveCampaign pricing, price hikes and cheaper alternatives
ActiveCampaign (activecampaign.com) is a newsletter platform. Four plans priced by contact count in bands, with email sends capped at 10x-15x the contact limit; annual billing is cheaper.. No free plan.
What ActiveCampaign costs
- 1k subscribers: $19/mo (Starter, 1,000 contacts, $19/mo monthly ($180/yr annual = $15/mo))
- 5k subscribers: $99/mo (Starter, 5,000 contacts, $99/mo monthly ($948/yr annual))
- 10k subscribers: $189/mo (Starter, 10,000 contacts, $189/mo monthly ($1,788/yr annual); 10x sends = 100,000 emails covers 43,000)
- 25k subscribers: $489/mo (Starter, 25,000 contacts, $489/mo monthly (Plus is also $489 at this tier))
- 50k subscribers: $759/mo (Starter tops out at 25,000 contacts, so Plus at 50,000 contacts: $759/mo monthly ($7,308/yr annual))
- 100k subscribers: $1,499/mo (Plus, 100,000 contacts, $1,499/mo monthly ($14,388/yr annual))
Plan compared: Starter. Cheapest paid plan that can send a weekly newsletter to the whole list, billed monthly. Plans priced by emails sent assume one issue a week, about 4.3 emails per subscriber a month.
ActiveCampaign price hikes
No price hikes on record for ActiveCampaign.
Cheaper alternatives to ActiveCampaign
At 10k subs, ActiveCampaign costs $189/mo. 12 newsletter platforms cost less:
- Sendy + SES: $4.30/mo (Self-hosted, SES à la carte at $0.10 per 1k)
- MailCheap: $39/mo (Plan for one issue a week (~4.3 emails per subscriber))
- Flodesk: $72/mo (Lite plan (Pro above 25k))
- Buttondown: $79/mo (Base plan, no add-ons)
- Bento: $79/mo (Marketing Platform)
- MailerLite: $89/mo (Comfort plan)
- Ghost(Pro): $105/mo (Starter (Publisher above 1k))
- Mailchimp: $110/mo (Essentials (Standard above 50k))
- Campaign Monitor: $117/mo (Lite (10,000-contact tier, 50,000 emails/mo))
- beehiiv: $139/mo (Lite plan)
ActiveCampaign alternatives: 12 cheaper newsletter platforms compared, at every size.
Every change we logged
- Apr 7, 2026 · Price cut: Temporary promotion of 25% off the first year (Plus shown at $37/mo instead of $49/mo annual); removed on 2026-05-04.
- Apr 2024 · Repriced: ActiveCampaign replaced its Lite/Plus/Professional/Enterprise plans with Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise; Starter starts lower ($15/mo annual) than the old Lite plan but with tighter feature and seat limits.
Sources
Pricing page: activecampaign.com/pricing. Prices last checked Oct 16, 2026. Prices come from ActiveCampaign's own fallback price file (activecampaign.com/dist/pricing/fallback/USD.json) that the pricing page loads when its live price API is unavailable, so they may lag the live API slightly. Reports of 30-40% migration increases in 2024 and of billing for unsubscribed contacts from late 2025 come from secondary or competitor sources and were not verified.