What ActiveCampaign costs
ActiveCampaign charges on the size of your contact list rather than a flat monthly fee, and it has no free tier, so the entry point is the paid Starter plan at £13/mo (Starter). Above that, the price climbs a contact-tier ladder: cross a band, take a step up. Plans and pricing checked July 2026, and every figure here is pulled live from our database rather than typed in by hand.
The detail worth understanding before you sign up is what ActiveCampaign counts as a contact. It bills on All contacts (active + inactive), so a subscriber who has ignored you since 2024 still costs money every month. On a tool that bills active subscribers only, that dead weight is free. On ActiveCampaign, list hygiene is a budget decision.
ActiveCampaign plans explained
There is no free plan (No (14-day trial)). You get 14 days on the paid product and then a card is required. MailerLite, Brevo and Kit all run genuine free tiers, so this is a real fork in the road for anyone starting a list from scratch.
Starter is the entry paid plan at £13/mo (Starter). One correction that matters, because much of the published comparison content in the United Kingdom still has it wrong: Starter does include marketing automation. It is capped, not missing. Each automation is limited to five actions, which is plenty for a welcome sequence, a lead-magnet delivery or a single-nudge abandoned-basket flow, and is exhausted quickly by a branching journey with waits and conditions. Starter also includes advanced segmentation and A/B testing (Yes (all plans)), and it is only sold up to 25,000 contacts, above which it is simply not offered.
Plus removes the action cap and adds landing pages (Yes (Plus+)) and revenue attribution to the reporting. It sits on the same contact ladder as Starter, so it carries no single flat price. The calculator above will cost it at your own list size, which is the only figure that matters. Pro and Enterprise sit above Plus for teams needing attribution modelling and custom reporting.
The contact ladder, and the Starter-to-Plus jump
Two separate escalators run under this bill. The first is the contact ladder: ActiveCampaign's pricing model is Per contact, so growing from 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers walks you up several bands, each a step rather than a slope. The second is the plan jump: most businesses choose ActiveCampaign for its automation, hit the five-action ceiling within a year, and move to Plus, which restarts the ladder at a higher rung.
Neither escalator is hidden, but they compound, and almost nobody models them at signup. Cost the tool at the list you expect in eighteen months, not the one you have this week. That is what the calculator above is for.
ActiveCampaign and UK data rules
For a business in the United Kingdom, UK GDPR and PECR compliance is as much a buying criterion as price. ActiveCampaign supports it (Yes (consent tools, unsubscribe, sender ID)), with consent tools, one-click unsubscribe and sender identification built in. SMS is a different story: it is Add-on (paid), so text campaigns are an extra cost on top of the plan price rather than something bundled in, which is worth adding to your budget before you compare it against Brevo.
Who ActiveCampaign suits
ActiveCampaign is for the business whose email programme is genuinely a machine: multi-step nurture journeys, behavioural triggers, lead scoring, and CRM-style pipelines sitting next to the campaigns. Its automation builder is the strongest in this comparison, its segmentation is Advanced (behavioural, purchase, engagement), its deliverability is Very high (94% in independent tests), and it connects to 870+ other tools with 24/7 chat. If none of that describes how you use email, you are paying for an engine you never start.
Where ActiveCampaign falls short
The honest cons, because the price only makes sense against them. No free plan, anywhere on the range, so there is no soft landing while a list is small. Billing on every stored contact means an unclean list is a standing charge. The five-action Starter cap is a genuine ceiling and easy to hit without noticing, which makes the advertised entry price a stepping stone rather than a destination. And ActiveCampaign is complicated: the automation depth that justifies the money is exactly what a two-person team will not find time to learn. A lot of UK businesses pay for ActiveCampaign and use it to send a newsletter, which is the most expensive way to send a newsletter in the country.
Cheaper ActiveCampaign alternatives
Three rivals here undercut it, and each has the free plan ActiveCampaign does not. MailerLite starts at £9/mo (Comfort) and bills on Active subscribers, so unengaged contacts cost you nothing. Brevo starts at £6/mo (Starter) and bills on Unlimited contacts (billed by sends), the cheapest shape for a big list that sends rarely, and it includes UK SMS rather than charging for it as an add-on. Kit starts at £0 (free to 10K) and is built for creators and newsletters rather than sales pipelines.
None of them matches ActiveCampaign's automation, and that is the trade you are making. The live table above costs all four against your real contact count so you can see what the depth costs.