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Email Marketing Software · Rank #3 of 10

ActiveCampaign review and pricing

Most powerful automation in the category, without enterprise pricing.

By ActiveCampaign LLC · Founded 2003 · Chicago, IL · private

ActiveCampaign is the category's automation specialist. The platform was rebuilt from email-only into Customer Experience Automation (CXA) starting in 2017, and the visual automation builder remains the best in this list, conditional logic, deal pipelines, lead scoring, predictive sending, site tracking, and SMS all on one canvas. For B2B and SMB teams that need genuine workflow sophistication without Marketo/Pardot enterprise pricing, ActiveCampaign is the clear answer. The trade-off: per-contact pricing scales aggressively, so e-commerce brands at 50K+ profiles often migrate to Klaviyo, and the platform lacks the modern UX polish of HubSpot.

Visit ActiveCampaign Vendor pricing Compare to Mailchimp
Best for

B2B and SMB teams (10–500 employees) needing genuinely advanced automation without Marketo/Pardot enterprise pricing.

Worst for

E-commerce DTC at scale (Klaviyo wins), enterprise lifecycle marketing across channels (Iterable wins), or buyers prioritizing modern UX over feature depth.

Vendor Trust Score

Is ActiveCampaign a trustworthy vendor?

8.0/10
High trust
Pricing transparency
Published rates; no hidden fees
8.5
Contract fairness
Reasonable terms; no auto-renew traps
7.5
Incident response
How they handle outages and breaches
8.0
Post-acquisition behavior
Customer treatment after M&A or PE
7.5
Executive stability
Leadership churn over 24 months
8.0
Roadmap honesty
Public commitments held
8.5
Trust signal log
  • 2025-04-12
    Pricing held flat for 2026 across most tiers
  • 2021-04-08
    Silver Lake led $240M strategic investment
Vendor Trust is scored independently of product quality. A great product from an unfair vendor still earns a low trust score.
Review Intelligence

What 14,920 reviews actually say

Synthesized from G2, Capterra, Reddit, Trustpilot. Patterns >15% prevalence shown.

Last synthesized
2026-04-29

Praise patterns

  • Best automation builder in the category
    87% →
  • Built-in CRM with deal pipelines
    64% →
  • Made for B2B SaaS lifecycle messaging
    51% ↑

Complaint patterns

  • Per-contact pricing scales aggressively
    58% ↑
  • UX less modern than HubSpot or Klaviyo
    47% →
  • Onboarding curve steeper for non-marketers
    38% →
Sentiment trend (6 months)
86/100 +1 pts
11
12
01
02
03
04
Patterns are extracted from review corpus and human-verified. We surface trends, not anecdotes.
Verified Pricing

What buyers actually pay

312 anonymized deal disclosures · last updated 2026-04-30

Contribute your deal price
Company size Median annual
500–2.5K contacts $720
2.5K–10K contacts $2,400
10K–50K contacts $7,200
Verified pricing is crowdsourced from buyers under anonymity guarantees. Vendor-listed prices are validated against actual deals quarterly.
Compliance & Security

Auto-verified certifications

Verified 2026-04-15
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA
GDPR
CCPA
PCI DSS
FedRAMP

Editorial: Strengths

  • Best automation builder in the category, conditional logic, multi-step workflows
  • Built-in CRM with deal pipelines
  • Site tracking and behavioral data
  • Predictive sending and content
  • Strong B2B and SMB fit
  • Multi-channel (email + SMS)
  • 850+ integrations

Editorial: Weaknesses

  • Per-contact pricing scales aggressively
  • UX feels less modern than HubSpot or Klaviyo
  • E-commerce features less sophisticated than Klaviyo
  • Onboarding curve steeper than Mailchimp
  • Customer support quality varies by tier
  • Prices have crept up post-private-equity recapitalization (2021)

Key features & integrations

  • +Visual automation builder
  • +Built-in CRM with pipelines
  • +Site tracking
  • +Predictive sending and content
  • +Lead scoring
  • +Email + SMS
  • +Landing pages
  • +A/B testing
850+ integrations
ShopifyWooCommerceSalesforceMicrosoft DynamicsPipedriveZapier
Geography supported
Global
Best fit
5–500 employees · B2B SaaS, SMB, professional services
Vendor trust

ActiveCampaign trust score

6-dimension scorecard, dated, separate from product quality.
Worst for

Who shouldn’t buy ActiveCampaign

Editorial verdict on the buyers it’s the wrong fit for.
Alternatives

ActiveCampaign alternatives, ranked

9 independent picks from the same category.
Editorial deep-dive

Read our full ranking of Email Marketing Software

ActiveCampaign ranks #3 in our editorial review of 10 email marketing software platforms. The deep-dive covers methodology, comparison tables, decision matrix, migration scoring, and FAQs.

Read the full ranking

Closest alternatives in Email Marketing Software

#2
Mailchimp
The SMB email marketing default, with eroding free tier.
★ 4.4 public
#4
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Email marketing unified with HubSpot CRM and Service.
★ 4.4 public
#1
Klaviyo
E-commerce email marketing built on shopping behavior.
★ 4.6 public
Help the next buyer

Contribute your verified deal price

Pricing in B2B software is opaque because vendors want it that way. Verified buyer prices fix that, anonymously. Share what you actually paid for ActiveCampaign; we’ll add it to the verified pricing dataset on this page (with company size band only, no identifying details).

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