ActiveCampaign Review: Pricing Plans & Features (of 2021)

Gaining traction for your business can be a challenge these days, especially with the amount of email marketing out there. 

For this reason, you may be looking for the best solution for your business and even thinking about changing it up and trying something new. 

After all, there are so many options available, it doesn’t hurt to try a few options to find the right fit. 

If you’re looking for the best email marketing and CRM solution, you may have been checking out ActiveCampaign. One of the biggest competitors on the market, ActiveCampaign has a lot to offer. 

We are bringing you this article to help you understand the pricing options of ActiveCampaign as well as some of the features and how-tos involved with ActiveCampaign. 

After you read this article, you’ll know:

• What ActiveCampaign is 
• ActiveCampaign pricing plans
• How to use the basics of ActiveCampaign 
• What is included in ActiveCampaign
• FAQs about ActiveCampaign with answers 

ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool for email marketing and is one of the best solutions due to its high level of features and quality support. 

Let’s take a look and see how it can benefit you and what plan might best suit you. 

What is ActiveCampaign? 

ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform that makes it easier than ever to connect and engage with clients and website visitors. 

The platform allows you to bring customers a top-quality experience with backend automations for marketing, sales, as well as support procedures. 

No matter if your business is big or small, you’ll be able to take advantage of pre-created automations that allow you to implement segmented and personalized email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning into your business processes. 

The great thing about ActiveCampaign is that it will allow you to automate your actions, including messaging, so that they are orchestrated at exactly the right time. 

You’ll be able to find a balance of automation with customization, making your workflow easier but still connect with your clients in meaningful ways. 

ActiveCampaign is an intuitive and multi-faceted tool that can help you create marketing campaigns and automations without having a lot of heavy-duty technical experience. 

This is great because it makes automation available for those who don’t know how to develop or design these processes from scratch. 

Let’s take a look at how some of the specific functionalities of ActiveCampaign work, how much it costs, and what you’ll get when you use it. 

ActiveCampaign Pricing Plans

ActiveCampaign pricing plans have a lot of different facets and features, and there are a couple different variables. 

Overall, there are four different pricing plans: 

• Lite 
• Plus 
• Professional
• Enterprise 

The cool thing about the ActiveCampaign pricing page is that they’ll give you information not just about pricing and features, but show you features that apply to your business type.

You’ll be able to choose between three business options: digital business, B2B, and e-commerce. 

The features chart will then populate for all four of the plans accordingly, describing in detail what you’ll access with each plan. 

The main price points are affected by two things: whether you decide to pay monthly or yearly, and how many contacts you need access to. 

The base number of contacts is 500, and you can scale it all the way up to over 100k contacts, which you’ll then need to contact ActiveCampaign to discuss. 

If you’re looking for base number of contacts and are going to pay monthly, the pricing is as follows: 

• Lite: $15/mo 
• Plus: $70/mo
• Professional: $159/mo
• Pro: $279/mo 

If you pay annually, you’ll be looking at pretty substantial discounts, and the pricing scheme then becomes: 

• Lite: $9/mo ($108 billed annually) 
• Plus: $49/mo ($588 billed annually) 
• Professional: $129/mo ($1548 billed annually) 
• Pro: $229/mo ($2748 billed annually) 

These prices are subject to change based on how many contacts you have; if you’re not sure, you can always upgrade as time goes on to include more contacts. 

How to Use Active Campaign: Mini-Guide 

There are some common actions that you’ll need to take on ActiveCampaign to create successful email marketing and automation, so we’re going to walk you through some of the key processes that you’ll want to use on the ActiveCampaign platform. 

Setting Up a Campaign 

When you want to set up a campaign, you’ll find that ActiveCampaign makes it easier than ever. You’ll navigate to the campaign tab, and everything you need to finish the process is in that section. 

The most common type of newsletter campaign is standard emails. 

To begin, you’ll give your newsletter a name, and then select the type. If you decide you want to use a different type other than standard, you’ll be able to choose from other options, including:

• Autoresponder: based on subscriber actions such as subscribes, unsubscribes, email opens, events, link clicks, and more. Be sure to set up an email first so that you can set up an auto-responder.  
• A/B test
• Date-based
• RSS-triggered
• Automated

After you’ve chosen the type and named it, choose the list that you want to send it to. Another great feature of ActiveCampaign is that you can segment the list based on a variety of features, including:

• Contact details 
• Website page(s) visited
• Location
• And more 

You’ll click the next button, and the main skeleton of your campaign is set. 

This is now the step in the process where you’ll be designing, and you have the option to design everything yourself or use a go-to template that is already designed. 

When you choose to design your own, you’ll have plenty of options including layout selection, themes, colors, text elements, image elements, buttons, HTML, spacers, video, and more. 

You’ll be able to also optimize your layout for mobile devices, which is increasingly important, as many people access information via mobile.  

The final step is to add a subject line, verify the list and recipients, and then choose metrics that you want to track from your campaign. You can track elements such as:

• Open rate 
• Replies
• Link clicks 
• Sync with Google Analytics 

You can then send tests as well as schedule your delivery; you can preview your email by client as well as on desktop. You can send test emails to yourself as well to see how it appears and how it’s received. 

There are so many options and functionalities from ActiveCampaign to create incredible campaigns and target your clients through a variety of different email newsletters. 

Creating a Subscriber List 

It’s better to create your list before you get ready to set up a campaign, and the process is simple and straightforward. 

Some information that you will need to provide to create the list include:

• Name 
• Company mailing address (used in footer) 
• Company URL 
• Note explaining why a user receives an email (to avoid spam/junk mail) 

Once you’ve got all that in, you can then import contacts to your list. 

You can create custom fields and choose which fields you do or do not want to import. 

Tags can also be added to contacts so that you are able to find them later if needed. 

The contacts tab will allow you to manage subscribers and add new ones, and this is where you can import and export your contacts via CSV files. 

There is integration with third-party services, which is a feature of ActiveCampaign that other similar services are missing. 

Tracking a Campaign 

Once you send out your campaign, you’ll want to keep tabs on it, and as we mentioned above, it’s possible to track it as well as sync your Google Analytics for tracking. 

The reports tab is where these options live, and you’ll be able to see all sent campaigns including details about opens and clicks. 

If you want more information, click on the specific campaign itself. 

Once you click a specific campaign, you’ll see who has opened your email, how many/which links were clicked, unsubscribed, and more. 

It’s a good idea to incorporate images or links in your email campaigns because this is the only way to be able to see view count, and this is the same for all email marketing services, not just ActiveCampaign. 

Easy, Powerful Marketing Automation 

ActiveCampaign isn’t one of the top marketing automation tools for nothing— it can help pretty much any business reach all kinds of goals, from basic to complex. 

Since the tool includes many pre-constructed workflows, you will have a great starting point that allows you to customize features and functions to your distinct needs. 

When designing, you’ll be able to gain access to walkthroughs that help you get the hang of things step by step. 

ActiveCampaign is a drag-and-drop tool, so you won’t have to deal with any scrolling or sifting through options, which makes it much more intuitive and user friendly, no matter how tech savvy you are. 

There are 22 contact triggers that can be added throughout the workflow to create alternate automations or to re-start an automation that a user hasn’t progressed through. 

Some useful contact triggers include website visits, birthday, email opens, link clicks, etc.). 

It’s so seamless because you can edit and adjust these workflows right on the design template. 

Your emails will be created right there, so you don’t have to navigate between automation and campaign tabs. 

It’s useful and seems like it’d be a primary feature of many companies, but this isn’t always the case. 

You can also integrate things like SMS, and there is even a split action feature that lets you decide who gets what actions based on when they’re entering the workflow. 

If you’re worried about how this might look, you’ll be able to do A/B testing for split action marketing campaigns. 

With the Pro plan and up, you’ll also be able to use the CRM software integration; once someone signs up for a deal, they’ll automatically be placed into the sales pipeline. 

You can assign them to specific sales people, add relationship tasks and notes, as well as mark deals as closed. 

This focus on marketing to sales is a great facet of ActiveCampaign. 

You’ll also be able to download a mobile app from ActiveCampaign to track all of your data, review email reports, and more. 

This feature used to be absent from ActiveCampaign, but with the focus shift to mobile access, you’ll be able to access your ActiveCampaign no matter where you are. 

Customer Support 

If you need help in ActiveCampaign, you’ll be able to get it quite seamlessly. 

There is a button with a question mark available on each page, and this will take you to information to training resources, live chat support, as well as the general knowledge bases. 

One great thing about ActiveCampaign support is that you’ll occasionally be able to access a walkthrough when carrying out certain actions, like designing an email. 

You’ll see a blinking dot that offers you a walkthrough when you click on it. 

In terms of knowledge bases, you’ll be able to view not only articles and FAQs but also video support to help you navigate the features of ActiveCampaign. They also offer webinars that you can register for to help you develop your ActiveCampaign skills. 

Unfortunately, you won’t have any access to phone support unless you’re looking to get in contact with the sales department. 

What’s Included in ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has some of the most competitive email marketing automation and CRM tools available on the market. 

Their platform, while busy and packed with features, is streamlined through drag-and-drop and helps all users to create successful campaigns. 

Here are some of the tools that you’ll have access to with ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign: Solid Marketing Tools 

The ActiveCampaign user dashboard can be a bit overwhelming if you’re checking it out for the first time, but it gets easier once you get used to it. 

On the dashboard, you’ll have access to features including:

• Contacts
• Campaigns
• Automations 
• Deals (CRM— only with some plans) 
• Lists
• Forms
• Reports 
• Pipelines 
• Top Contacts
• And more 

ActiveCampaign describes their features in different categories. 

Marketing features on ActiveCampaign include email marketing, unlimited email sending, SMS integration, split automations, segmentation, and more. 

Your features will depend on the plan you choose. 

Sales features on ActiveCampaign include sales emails, lead capture forms, segmented outreach, autoresponders, reporting, and more for advanced plans. 

Service features include customer newsletters, automation recipes, integrations, analytics, and more. 

Finally, the platform and support describes how many users you can have (3 users for lite, and it increases from there), chat and email support, unlimited inactive contacts, advanced e-commerce integrations, and more. 

As you can see, there are almost endless features that you can enjoy when you use ActiveCampaign, so knowing your business needs and choosing the right plan will depend heavily on your intention and how you want to use the tool. 

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial so that you can see how it works for you and then select the plan that would best suit your business needs. 

ActiveCampaign FAQ

With so many features and options, ActiveCampaign leaves people with many questions yet to be answered. Below you’ll find some of the most common questions with straightforward responses to help you resolve any doubts. 

Is ActiveCampaign Right for Me? 

ActiveCampaign is a top-quality email marketing solution for all businesses, no matter how big or small. As you can see, with such customizable and varying features, you’ll have pretty much everything you need at your disposal to make your email campaigns a success. 

Can I Migrate to ActiveCampaign from Another Service?

ActiveCampaign will help you to bring over all of your contacts, templates, and automations at no additional charge. 

They also offer a webinar that will explain how the migration process works, which is accessible through their website. 

How quick your migration happens depends on how much volume they have and how complex your migration will be, and they’ll contact you to let you know. 

They only import active opt-in contacts, so make sure that you prepare yourself in advance

Is my Contact Limit Automatically Increased? 

No. If you need more contacts for your plan, you’ll have to go into the billing section to make that update yourself. 

Remember, when you choose your initial plan, you’ll have to select a contact limit. If you need more than that limit, you’ll be able to adjust that later to keep growing. 

They’ll alert you when you’re getting close to your current limit. 

Can I change my ActiveCampaign Plan? 

Yes, you can change your ActiveCampaign plan at any time. There is an option called “billing and upgrade,” the same that you’d select to increase your contact limit. 

If you’re in between billing cycles, there will be a prorated cost to cover the difference in your upgrade price. 

What is the difference between automations, one-to-one emails, and campaigns? 

These are some of the main features of ActiveCampaign, and here is a quick breakdown:

• Automations: a sequence of events, such as presale relationship building, touch points, and more. 
• One-to-one emails: personal emails sent to a single contact
• Campaigns: one-time emails delivered to contacts that are opted in. 

Final Thoughts: ActiveCampaign Pricing in 2021

On the whole, ActiveCampaign is an affordable and expansive email marketing solution for businesses of all sizes. 

While there are a lot of features and the dashboard can get a bit busy, the overall functionality and drag-and-drop editing of ActiveCampaign is unmatched in the industry.