Change record
ActiveCampaign pricing changes
ActiveCampaign's headline price has not moved much. What moved is the definition of a billable contact, and that raised real bills without touching the pricing page.
The rule that changed
- Verified
ActiveCampaign started billing new accounts for all contacts
Accounts created on or after 3 November 2025 are billed for every contact in the account, including unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed ones. Accounts created before that date still count only active contacts. There was no public announcement, so most people find out when the contact count looks wrong.
Effect on a bill. On a new account, dead contacts push the bill into higher tiers. A 9,000 contact list carrying 2,500 unsubscribes and bounces is billed as 11,500 contacts, which moves Plus from the 10,000 tier to the 25,000 tier.
source checked 8 September 2026
What a tier jump costs
Same mailable list, two different bills, decided only by when the account was opened.
| Account contents | Plan | Monthly | Confidence | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9,000 mailable contacts | Plus | $239 | Derived | Billed in the 10,000 contact tier under the old active contacts rule. |
| Plus 2,500 unsubscribed and bounced | Plus | $489 | Derived | 11,500 total contacts under the November 2025 rule, which lands in the 25,000 tier. |
A healthy list picks up unsubscribes and bounces over a couple of years. Under the old rule those contacts were free to keep. Under the new rule they push the billable count up, and the count is what picks the tier. The gap between those two rows is $250 a month for people the account cannot legally email.
Archiving inactive contacts reduces the count, but archive storage has monthly limits roughly equal to the contact limit, and archived contacts are kept for about a year.
The other quirk is the calculator
- Starter at 1k, monthly
- $19
- what a month to month biller pays
- Starter at 1k, annual
- $15
- the headline figure, paid a year up front
- Plus at 10k, gap
- $50
- a month, between monthly and annual billing
The pricing page defaults to annual billing and prints the annual cost as a per month number. So the widely quoted 15 dollar entry price is not what a monthly biller pays. That is why every ActiveCampaign cell in this dataset records the two prices in separate fields.
The page also renders tier prices from a calculator rather than a static table, which is why most ActiveCampaign cells here are marked derived rather than verified.
Full ladder
| Plan | 500 | 1k | 2.5k | 5k | 10k | 25k | 50k | 100k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starterused in the cross vendor table | $19$15 annualDer | $19$15 annualVer | $49$39 annualDer | $99$79 annualDer | $189$149 annualDer | n/a$319 annualDer | n/aNot | n/aNot |
| Plus | $59$49 annualDer | $59$49 annualVer | $119$95 annualDer | $179$145 annualDer | $239$189 annualDer | $489$389 annualDer | $759$609 annualDer | n/aNot |
| Professional | $99$79 annualDer | $99$79 annualVer | $189$149 annualDer | $259$205 annualDer | $469$375 annualDer | $789$629 annualDer | $1,209$969 annualDer | n/aNot |
Everything else that shapes the bill
- The pricing page defaults to annual billing and shows the annual figure as a per month number, so the headline 15 dollars is not what a monthly biller pays. Both columns are recorded separately here.
- Because the page renders prices dynamically, most stops here rest on third party trackers rather than a static vendor table, and are marked derived.
- The November 2025 all contacts rule means the contact count that sets the bill can be much larger than the mailable list. A 9,000 contact list carrying 2,500 unsubscribes and bounces is billed as 11,500 and lands in the next tier up.
- Starter caps at 25,000 contacts, and neither the monthly Starter price at 25,000 nor any plan at 100,000 contacts is published.
- SMS credits, extra CRM pipelines and custom reporting are add ons with prices that are not public.