ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform combining email marketing, marketing automation, and a built-in CRM. It targets small and mid-sized businesses that have outgrown basic email tools like Mailchimp and need sophisticated multi-step automations, behavioral tracking, and sales pipeline management in a single platform.\n\nThe platform's automation engine is widely regarded as the most powerful in its price range. Businesses can build complex multi-branch automations triggered by email opens, site visits, purchases, form submissions, or CRM events. An e-commerce store, for example, could automatically send a cart abandonment email after 1 hour, follow up with a discount after 24 hours, tag the customer as "price-sensitive" if they convert, and add them to a loyalty nurture sequence — all without any technical configuration.\n\nActiveCampaign's contact scoring, predictive sending, and win probability features help sales and marketing teams prioritize their efforts. The built-in CRM includes deal pipelines, task automation, and a full activity history for every contact.\n\nA notable change in November 2025: ActiveCampaign started charging for all contacts, including unsubscribed, bounced, and unconfirmed contacts (for accounts created after that date). This materially changes the cost calculation for businesses with large inactive lists.\n\nThe platform offers a 14-day free trial (no free tier). Starter plan starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts (annual billing) — one of the more accessible entry points in the marketing automation category. Costs scale with both contact count and plan tier.