Tool Introduction

ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom, who remains chief executive of the privately held company. The business first sold on-premise software before consolidating into a single cloud platform, relaunching as a SaaS product in 2016 and naming the Customer Experience Automation category in 2019. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with offices across Latin America, Europe, and APAC, ActiveCampaign serves customers in more than 170 countries. The company reports over 180,000 businesses served and roughly 800 team members, having crossed 100,000 customers and $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2020 alongside a Series B round.

Demo Available?

A self-serve 14-day free trial needs only an email, no credit card. A Request a Demo form books a 30-minute expert session.

Tool's Accuracy

The one accuracy figure ActiveCampaign states with a disclosed, named method appears on its official deliverability page: it cites an independent January 2024 study by EmailToolTester.com finding ActiveCampaign achieved a 94.2% email deliverability rate versus an 83.1% industry average across the providers tested, the highest deliverability rate of any provider in that study. The site links out to the third-party study for the underlying sample size and full methodology rather than restating them.

Aggregate Rating

4.3/5 stars (based on 18,533+ verified reviews across the internet)

Detailed Overview

What ActiveCampaign Does

ActiveCampaign lets a small team run email campaigns, follow-ups, and sales outreach without manual sending. Users build multi-step automations from pre-built recipes, store contacts in a built-in CRM with custom objects for data like membership tiers or loyalty points, and add SMS and WhatsApp channels. An AI layer, Active Intelligence, drafts campaigns from a prompt and picks per-contact send times.

Who ActiveCampaign Is For

The platform fits solo operators and small businesses that have outgrown a spreadsheet of contacts, plus mid-sized marketing and sales teams needing automated lead nurture tied to a pipeline. Franchise and multi-location brands use a dedicated product, ACHQ, to push consistent automations to individual locations. Practices needing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) support and firms needing single sign-on round out the range.

Top Differentiators

AI capabilities and multi-step automation with branching appear at the lowest paid tier rather than being locked to the top plan, a framing the vendor uses to argue depth at entry. Native Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectivity lets users run the tool from inside Claude or ChatGPT. A separate Franchise and Multi-Location product, ACHQ, handles brand consistency across many locations, a niche most general email and CRM tools do not cover.

Founding Year

2003

Target Industry

B2B, SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise, Accounting & Finance, Agency & Consulting, Creators & Influencers, Ecommerce & Retail, Education & Online Courses, Events & Entertainment, Fitness & Wellness, Franchise & Multi-Location, Healthcare, Media & Publishing, Non-Profit, Real Estate, SaaS & Technology, Travel & Hospitality

Available Integrations

Salesforce: bi-directional CRM sync routing marketing-qualified leads in and pulling Opportunities back; gated to Enterprise, requires Salesforce Lightning, syncs in batches every 10 to 11 minutes.
Shopify: triggers welcome, abandoned-cart, and post-purchase automations from storefront events and embeds a Buy Now button on landing pages; included on all plans.
WooCommerce: syncs purchase history for abandoned-cart reminders, win-back campaigns, and subscription messaging; available Starter through Enterprise.
Zapier: no-code bridge to roughly 9,000 additional apps, copying contacts, deals, and notes across systems as an added middleware hop.
WordPress: official plugin embedding all four form types plus site-tracking that attributes conversions to visitors; available on all plans.
Facebook: embeds lead-gen forms on a Facebook Page; data flow is one-way outbound only, included on all plans.
Calendly: creates or updates pipeline deals when a contact books, reschedules, or cancels; bundled in Professional, Plus, and Enterprise, excluded from Starter.
Slack: posts real-time notifications to channels on triggers; bundled in Professional, Plus, and Enterprise, excluded from Starter.
Webflow: connects a Webflow site's forms and events into ActiveCampaign for lead-gen and list-management automation.
Postmark: routes transactional email such as receipts and password resets through Postmark's delivery infrastructure.
Claude: AI-category integration to retrieve insights, update records, and automate ActiveCampaign tasks from inside Claude.

Source: activecampaign.com/pricing, prices shown for the default 1,000-contact tier, billed annually, in USD. ActiveCampaign sells three parallel product lines: Email, WhatsApp, and combined Email+WhatsApp. Prices scale with contact volume and currency.

Email plans

Starter: starts at $15/mo, 1 user, limited segmentation, 5 actions per automation, 15 active Business Goals, standard CRM and ecommerce integrations, 10x email send limit.
Plus: starts at $49/mo, adds standard segmentation, unlimited automation actions, landing pages, 25 active Business Goals, and 5 brand kits.
Pro: starts at $79/mo, full Active Intelligence, advanced segmentation, predictive and conditional content, attribution and conversion tracking, 3 users, 200 Business Goals, 12x send limit, priority support.
Enterprise: starts at $145/mo, premium segmentation, custom objects, Single Sign-On, dedicated account team, 5 users, 15x send limit, uptime SLA.

WhatsApp plans

Core: starts at $99/mo, shared team inbox, broadcast and automated messaging, up to 2 WhatsApp lines, 3 users, 25x contact limit.
Advanced: starts at $99/mo, adds advanced flows and team assignments, up to 5 lines, 5 users, 50x contact limit, priority support.
Premium: starts at $218/mo, dedicated account team, up to 5 lines, 8 users, 100x contact limit, uptime SLA.

Email + WhatsApp combined

Plus: starts at $112/mo.
Pro: starts at $142/mo.
Enterprise: starts at $284/mo.

Trial and terms

All paid plans include a 14-day free trial with no credit card required and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The page states there are no setup costs or hidden fees. If a contact list grows beyond the plan limit, the account upgrades to the next contact band without penalties or losing access to features. Add-ons priced separately include SMS Marketing, Transactional Email, Enhanced CRM, Custom Reporting, and additional users or WhatsApp lines.

Pricing last verified: 07/08/2026
Disclaimer: Pricing is subject to change. Please confirm current pricing on the vendor site.

Features & Specs

Automation library: 950+ pre-built automation recipes and 250+ pre-built email templates.
Automation actions: Starter caps automations at 5 actions each; Plus and higher tiers allow unlimited actions.
Business Goals: 15 active on Starter, 25 on Plus, and 200 on Pro and Enterprise.
Email send limits: monthly send capacity of 10x contacts on Starter, 12x on Pro, and 15x on Enterprise.
Email designer: drag-and-drop builder for plain text and HTML, with A/B testing plus site and link tracking.
WhatsApp lines: up to 2 lines on Core plans and up to 5 lines on Advanced and Premium.
Custom objects: Enterprise stores non-standard data such as appointment history and loyalty points.
API: public REST API rate-limited to 5 requests per second per account, returning 429 with a Retry-After header when exceeded; webhooks supported.
Mobile app: native iOS app requiring iOS 14.0+ and a Google Play Android app, both needing a paid account.
Trial and guarantee: 14-day free trial with no credit card and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Security & Compliance

ActiveCampaign's security page states SOC 2 Type II compliance, independently audited by third parties with the current report available through a Trust Center on request, along with a stated focus on GDPR and HIPAA compliance and adherence to NIST-based security practices.

Access control: multi-factor authentication via SMS and TOTP (time-based one-time password) authenticator apps on all accounts, Single Sign-On as an Enterprise-tier feature, and customizable idle-session timeout.
Data architecture: single-tenancy design keeping each customer's data separate, with data classification and sensitivity-based access restriction.
Testing: daily automated vulnerability scanning, continuous penetration testing, and an internal red team performing daily offensive security testing of production systems.
Development: static code analysis and open-source dependency management built into the software development lifecycle, with stated OWASP community involvement.
Data processing: the Data Processing Addendum states ActiveCampaign acts strictly as a data processor, does not use client data for AI training or other commercial purposes, and does not sell or share it.
Encryption: data protected both at rest and in transit.
Termination: personal information returned or destroyed on contract termination, excluding backup copies deleted per the retention schedule.

Industry Use-Cases

Education-sector agency lead nurture

Palmetto Fortis, an education-focused agency, migrated from Mailchimp, connected ActiveCampaign to Salesforce, and added automated lead scoring, dynamic engagement tags, and QR-code conference intake. Email open rates climbed to 52% from 22%, click-through roughly doubled to over 4.5%, and the database grew from about 14,000 to 23,000 contacts alongside a 20% year-over-year sales increase, per the company's published case studies.

Franchise campaign distribution

Pickleball Kingdom, a franchise operator, uses the ACHQ product to push targeted emails out to individual franchisees. The chain reports a 200% increase in tournament registrations from those campaigns.

Moving and storage quote conversion

After lifting email open rates from under 6% to nearly 40%, moving and storage franchise Go Mini's reports a 17% conversion rate on quote requests.

University email deliverability

The University at Albany MBA for Executives program moved to ActiveCampaign and reports 99% email deliverability, up from 47% on its previous platform.

Law firm engagement

Crediting AI reporting and testing features, Parrish Law reports email open rates rising to consistently above 35 to 40%, up from 17 to 19% previously.

Physician-marketing reactivation

MyMDAdvocate reports open rates reaching 67% on some campaigns, up from 4% previously.

Tool's Alternatives

HubSpot (Marketing Hub) comes with out-of-box bi-directional CRM sync to HubSpot's Sales and Service Hubs plus multi-touch attribution in one data model. Its full automation value depends on pairing it with those other Hubs, making the single product less self-contained than ActiveCampaign's all-in-one design. It differentiates with a named Breeze Customer Agent AI and Answer Engine Optimization tooling aimed at visibility in AI-powered search.

Klaviyo unifies email, SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, mobile push, and social into one real-time customer profile with deep ecommerce-platform support and 196,000+ brands. Its positioning as a B2C CRM centers on consumer marketing rather than the B2B sales-pipeline workflows ActiveCampaign natively supports. It differentiates with an autonomous Customer Agent AI that Klaviyo states resolves 65% of support queries.

Mailchimp offers broad self-service accessibility with 300+ integrations and heavy generative-AI content tooling. Its Marketing CRM centers on audience and tag data rather than a true multi-stage sales-pipeline object, making sales-team workflows thinner than ActiveCampaign's native deals model. Ownership by Intuit gives it proximity to Intuit's small-business financial software ecosystem that standalone competitors lack.

Keap combines CRM, invoicing and payments, and appointment scheduling with marketing automation, citing 200,000+ active users and 5,000+ integrations. It frames itself for small business owners with onboarding built around dedicated implementation managers, signaling a tier below ActiveCampaign's Enterprise offering. It differentiates with a named Lifecycle Automation framework and more than 20 years of small-business tenure since 2001.

GetResponse bundles email automation with landing pages, webinar hosting, and content-monetization tools such as paid newsletters and course creation. Its features page lists no native CRM or sales-pipeline object, positioning it as a marketing suite rather than the marketing-plus-sales hybrid ActiveCampaign provides. Built-in content monetization is its distinguishing feature.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does ActiveCampaign cost to get started?

Email plans start at $15/mo for Starter, billed annually at the 1,000-contact tier. Plus is $49/mo, Pro $79/mo, and Enterprise $145/mo, with prices scaling by contact volume and currency.

Is there a free trial or money-back guarantee?

Every paid plan includes a 14-day free trial requiring no credit card, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. The pricing page also states there are no setup costs or hidden fees.

Does ActiveCampaign support WhatsApp and SMS messaging?

Yes. WhatsApp plans start at $99/mo for Core with up to 2 lines, scaling to 5 lines on Advanced and Premium. SMS Marketing is available as a separate add-on.

What is Active Intelligence in ActiveCampaign?

Active Intelligence is the platform's AI layer offering an AI campaign builder, content and image generation, predictive send-time selection, suggested audience segments, and lead scoring through CRM add-ons.

How many apps does ActiveCampaign integrate with?

The marketplace advertises 1,000+ integrations, including Salesforce, Shopify, WooCommerce, Zapier, Slack, and Calendly. A Zapier bridge extends reach to roughly 9,000 additional apps.

Which plan includes Single Sign-On and custom objects?

The Enterprise plan, starting at $145/mo, adds custom objects, Single Sign-On, a dedicated account team, an uptime SLA, and HIPAA support for healthcare-adjacent customers.

What are ActiveCampaign's API rate limits?

The public REST API is rate-limited to 5 requests per second per account, returning a 429 Too Many Requests response with a Retry-After header when exceeded. Webhooks are also supported.

Is ActiveCampaign SOC 2 compliant?

The security page states SOC 2 Type II compliance, independently audited, with a focus on GDPR and HIPAA compliance and NIST-based practices. The report is available via a Trust Center on request.

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