Pricing guide
Category
CRM Email Marketing in 2026: Official Prices, and When a Combined Stack Fits
Official USD prices and published limits for tools that combine CRM and email marketing, checked on November 14, 2026. Honest that ActiveCampaign is a marketing and sales automation platform with a CRM, not a full HubSpot or Salesforce suite replacement.
On this page
The short answer
“CRM email marketing” usually means you want contact records, a pipeline or deal view, and email in one official stack — not a standalone inbox tool bolted onto a separate CRM later. Official ActiveCampaign can fit that brief. Official FAQ describes it as a marketing and sales automation platform that includes a CRM built for small- and medium-sized businesses, with two official add-ons: Pipelines and Pipelines & Sales Engagement. It is not a full HubSpot or Salesforce suite replacement, and the official comparison grid does not include those CRM add-ons on Starter.
On November 14, 2026 (America/Denver), official USD figures and published limits included:
- ActiveCampaign: no official free plan; a 1,000-contact minimum. At 1,000 contacts, official Starter was $19 a month or $15 yearly-billed; Plus $59 or $49; Pro $99 or $79; Enterprise $179 or $145. Official send caps are 10× contacts on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, and 15× on Enterprise. Included seats are 1 / 1 / 3 / 5 (Starter’s official maximum is 2 seats and 25,000 contacts). A 14-day trial with email sign-up, no credit card needed, and “Guaranteed results in 30 days or your money back” were advertised. Details: ActiveCampaign pricing and ActiveCampaign CRM.
- Enhanced CRM add-ons: the official pricing grid marks Pipelines and sales engagement as available on Plus, Pro, and Enterprise, and not included on Starter. The same grid marks lead scoring as included in the Pipelines add-on and win probability as included in the Sales Engagement add-on. The official USD catalog lists those add-on products, but the public price-step arrays we loaded were empty. We are not inventing add-on dollar figures.
- Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit, Brevo, and GetResponse: official email or marketing plans with published free or low paid entry points, checked the same day (see the table below). Those official cards are email-marketing plans. We are not treating them as equivalent CRM suites, and we did not invent CRM-pipeline prices for them.
- HubSpot and Salesforce: commonly compared for CRM plus email. Official HubSpot dollar figures were not usable from the public pricing page we opened today (the response did not include a recordable rate card). We omit those dollars rather than guess. Official ActiveCampaign documents a Salesforce integration for Enterprise; that is not the same product as Salesforce itself. See HubSpot alternatives and ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot.
This is a dated comparison of official pages and catalogs, not a ranked “best CRM with email marketing” score and not a hands-on implementation test. Related keyword research treats best crm with email marketing as a narrower supporting term than the head category query.
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How we researched this guide
On November 14, 2026, we recorded official ActiveCampaign prices and limits from activecampaign.com/pricing and the official USD catalog at https://www.activecampaign.com/marketing/api/v1/pricing-catalog?c=ac2024¤cy=USD. CRM positioning, add-on names, and trial wording also come from activecampaign.com/about/faq and the official Sales CRM product page. Other vendors’ official email entry points come from their pricing pages or official price APIs, as cited in Sources. We did not invent missing add-on prices, testimonials, or a timed CRM rollout of our own.
All dollar amounts below are USD.
When a lighter official email plan still fits
If you mainly need campaigns and simple automations, and you do not need official deal pipelines or lead scoring, a dedicated email plan can still be the honest official starting point:
- Official Mailchimp Free covers up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. Official Essentials starts at $13 a month and Standard at $20 at 500 contacts. There is no official paid Mailchimp row at exactly 1,000 contacts (the next published step is 1,500). See ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp.
- Official MailerLite Free covers 250 subscribers, 2 seats, and 2,500 emails a month. Official Comfort starts at $12 a month ($10.80 yearly-billed) at 500 subscribers.
- Official Kit (formerly ConvertKit) Free goes up to 10,000 subscribers. Official Creator was $33 a month or $390 billed yearly at the 1,000-subscriber display, with a 14-day trial and no credit card required, as advertised.
- Official Brevo has a free-forever plan (no credit card needed, as advertised) and official Starter at $9 a month or $97 a year, from 5,000 emails a month.
- Official GetResponse Starter is $19 a month or $15.58 annually at 1,000 subscribers, with unlimited monthly sends and 1 custom automation workflow on the Starter card.
Those official entry points can be enough if “CRM email marketing” in your search really meant “email plus a contact list.” They are not, on the cards we recorded, a substitute for ActiveCampaign’s official Pipelines or Sales Engagement add-ons.
When official ActiveCampaign may fit the CRM-plus-email brief
Consider official ActiveCampaign when all of the following are true:
- You are already at or above the official 1,000-contact minimum, or you accept that official paid prices still start at that band.
- You want the official combined positioning (marketing automation plus a CRM for small- and medium-sized businesses) rather than email alone.
- You can start on Plus or higher if you need the official Enhanced CRM add-ons, lead scoring (Pipelines add-on), or win probability (Sales Engagement add-on). Official Starter includes contact profiles on the comparison grid; that is not the same as pipelines or lead scoring.
- You can live with official Starter automation limits if you stay on Starter (5 automation actions, 5 lists, 15 business goals, email-only sending on the official grid), or you budget for Plus or Pro if you need official Plus-and-up items such as landing pages or Predictive Sending (Pro and Enterprise in the official catalog).
Related: CRM, ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot, Zoho alternatives (official Zoho Campaigns is a different product from Zoho CRM; ActiveCampaign is not a full Zoho suite replacement), and email marketing for small business. Official lead-scoring availability and the empty public add-on price steps are also in lead scoring software.
Official prices at sizes people actually quote
Month-to-month official ActiveCampaign rates, with the yearly-billed monthly equivalent in parentheses. Competing email plans are shown only at official published steps. Empty or “no official row” cells are intentional.
| Contacts or closest official step | AC Starter | AC Plus | Mailchimp Essentials | Mailchimp Standard | MailerLite Comfort (500-subscriber official start) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | no official AC price below 1,000 | no official AC price below 1,000 | Free ($0) if you stay inside official Free limits | Free ($0) if you stay inside official Free limits | Free ($0) if you stay inside official Free limits |
| 500 | no official AC row | no official AC row | $13 (5,000 sends) | $20 (6,000 sends) | $12 ($10.80 yearly-billed) |
| 1,000 | $19 ($15) | $59 ($49) | no official MC paid row (next step 1,500) | no official MC paid row (next step 1,500) | confirm the current official Comfort band on the vendor page |
| 2,500 | $49 ($39) | $119 ($95) | $45 (25,000 sends) | $60 (30,000 sends) | confirm the current official band |
| 10,000 | $189 ($149) | $239 ($189) | $110 (100,000 sends) | $135 (120,000 sends) | confirm the current official band |
Do not force a tie: official ActiveCampaign does not publish a paid price below 1,000 contacts, and official Mailchimp does not publish a paid row at exactly 1,000 contacts. Official CRM add-on dollars are omitted because they were not in the public catalog steps we loaded.
Official limits that change a CRM-plus-email quote
- Lead scoring is listed as a capability on the official Sales CRM page, and as included in the Pipelines add-on on the official pricing grid — not as a free built-in on official Starter.
- 1:1 email from the CRM is, on official help cited in our CRM guide, a Sales Engagement item, not a Starter inclusion.
- Automation depth is plan-dependent in the official catalog: Starter is fenced at 5 automation actions; Plus adds a long list of automation entitlements; split automations, connected automations, and the automations map appear on Professional and Enterprise in the catalog we loaded, not on Starter or Plus.
- We did not record a public HubSpot or Salesforce rate card today, and we did not time a CRM implementation ourselves. Official CRM FAQ language about setup time is the vendor’s, not a result we measured.
FAQ
What is the cheapest official way to do email plus contacts?
If you only need official email and a contact list, official free plans at Mailchimp, MailerLite, Kit, and Brevo are the published $0 starting points, with different caps. Official ActiveCampaign has no free plan and a 1,000-contact paid minimum.
Does official ActiveCampaign replace HubSpot or Salesforce?
No. Official FAQ positions it as a marketing and sales automation platform with a CRM for small- and medium-sized businesses, plus optional pipeline add-ons. That is not a full enterprise suite replacement. Official HubSpot prices are omitted here because we could not record them today.
Do you rank a single “best CRM with email marketing”?
No. This page compares official published prices and limits. We do not invent a winner score.
Do you offer coupons for these tools?
No. We do not publish unofficial coupons or trial extensions. Vendor promotions, where we mention them elsewhere, are the vendor’s offers, not ours.
Sources and method
Checked November 14, 2026 (America/Denver): ActiveCampaign pricing and official USD catalog; ActiveCampaign FAQ; Sales CRM; Mailchimp and https://mailchimp.com/forms/pricing/?currency=USD&locale=en; MailerLite; Kit; Brevo; GetResponse. Official HubSpot pricing HTML we opened did not include a recordable public rate card.