Most people who search for ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot have already noticed the pricing pages work in completely different ways. ActiveCampaign charges you for the size of your list. HubSpot charges you for the people on your team, then asks for a one-time onboarding fee when you step up to Professional. That difference shapes almost everything else, so it’s where this comparison starts.
The prices below come from both official pricing pages, which we read on 5 November 2026. HubSpot was running a limited-time discount on Starter for new customers that week, and we’ve shown both the offer and the standard price so you can budget for year two.
Short answer: in ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot, choose ActiveCampaign if email automation is the engine of your business and your team is small. Choose HubSpot if you need one CRM that sales, marketing and service teams all work in, with strong reporting, and you can afford per-seat pricing as you grow.
The real difference in one table
| ActiveCampaign | HubSpot | |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Contacts on your list | Seats (users), plus marketing contact tiers on Marketing Hub |
| Free plan | No, 14-day trial | Free CRM for up to 2 users |
| Entry price | $15/mo billed yearly at 1,000 contacts | $20/seat/mo standard; $7 yearly or $10 monthly on the new-customer offer |
| Serious automation | Plus ($49) or Pro ($79) at 1,000 contacts | Marketing Hub Professional from $800/mo with 3 seats |
| Onboarding fee | None | $3,000 on Marketing Hub Professional, $7,000 on Enterprise |
| Sales pipelines | Enhanced CRM add-on | Included from the free CRM |
| Landing pages | From Plus | Yes, with a full CMS in Content Hub |
| Integrations | 1,000+ listed | Large app marketplace |
| Best for | Email-first small and mid-sized businesses | Teams that want one CRM for every department |
How each one charges you
If you only read one section, make it this one. The ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot decision usually comes down to whether your costs grow with contacts or with people.
ActiveCampaign: a bigger list costs more
ActiveCampaign sells four plans, and each one gets more expensive as your contact count rises. These are the yearly-billed monthly prices from the ActiveCampaign pricing page:
| Contacts | Starter | Plus | Pro | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $15 | $49 | $79 | $145 |
| 2,500 | $39 | $95 | $149 | $255 |
| 5,000 | $79 | $145 | $205 | $375 |
| 10,000 | $149 | $189 | $375 | $589 |
Starter is deliberately basic: email-only automations with up to five actions each, and no landing pages. Plus opens up landing pages and multi-channel marketing. Pro adds predictive sending and three user seats. SMS, WhatsApp and the Enhanced CRM (deal pipelines and sales engagement) are paid add-ons on top.
HubSpot: a bigger team costs more
HubSpot’s free CRM covers two users, 1,000 contacts and up to 2,000 branded emails a month, with no time limit. Starter costs $20 per seat a month at the standard rate (HubSpot was offering new customers $7 billed yearly or $10 billed monthly when we checked). Marketing Hub Starter includes 1,000 marketing contacts, with email sends capped at five times your contact tier.
The step most businesses feel is Professional. On the HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing page, Professional starts at $800 a month with three seats and 2,000 marketing contacts, plus a $3,000 one-time onboarding fee. Enterprise starts at $3,600 a month with a $7,000 onboarding fee. Sales Hub Professional is $90 per seat a month billed yearly, with $1,500 onboarding.
Don’t compare Starter with Starter. ActiveCampaign Starter and HubSpot Starter are both entry tiers, but HubSpot’s automation workflows come into their own at Professional. If advanced automation is the reason you’re buying, compare ActiveCampaign Plus or Pro with HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional.
What three typical businesses would pay
These are estimates from the published prices, billed yearly, before tax and add-ons.
| Business | ActiveCampaign | HubSpot |
|---|---|---|
| Solo consultant, 2,500 contacts, nurture sequences and a landing page | Plus = $95/mo | Starter, 1 seat = $20/mo standard, but advanced workflows need Professional |
| Ecommerce store, 10,000 contacts, two people | Plus = $189/mo | Marketing Hub Pro from $800/mo + $3,000 onboarding; contacts beyond 2,000 cost extra |
| B2B team of 5, 5,000 contacts, sales pipeline and email | Pro = $205/mo, plus the Enhanced CRM add-on | Sales Hub Pro 5 × $90 = $450/mo + $1,500 onboarding, with Marketing Hub priced separately |
For email-led businesses, ActiveCampaign is usually far cheaper. HubSpot earns its price when several departments share one system and the reporting across them is the point.
Automation: who builds the better journeys?
ActiveCampaign was built around its automation builder, and it shows. You can branch a journey on almost anything a contact does (opens, clicks, page visits, purchases, form fields, custom events), add goals that pull people forward the moment they convert, and swap blocks of an email based on who’s reading it. Pro adds predictive sending, which times each email to the contact’s likely open window. Its AI layer, Active Intelligence, is included on every plan and can draft automations and emails from a plain description.
HubSpot’s workflows are powerful too, and they reach across the whole CRM: a workflow can update a deal, create a ticket, rotate a lead to a salesperson or enrol a contact in a sales sequence. The catch is price. To get the full workflow toolkit for marketing, you’re on Professional.
So in ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot on automation alone, ActiveCampaign gives you more depth per dollar. HubSpot gives you more reach across departments.
CRM and sales: HubSpot’s home ground
HubSpot started as a marketing tool, but its CRM is now the centre of the product. Contacts, companies, deals and tickets are connected, and the free CRM already includes pipelines and deal tracking. Sales Hub adds sequences, forecasting, calling, task queues, quotes and AI tools such as a prospecting agent and a note-taker. For a sales team, it’s one of the most complete systems you can buy.
ActiveCampaign’s contact records, tags and lead scores are excellent for marketing. Deal pipelines and sales engagement features arrive through its Enhanced CRM add-on, and teams that already use Salesforce can connect it on the Enterprise plan. If your salespeople live in their CRM all day, HubSpot is the more natural home.
ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot, feature by feature
| Feature | ActiveCampaign | HubSpot | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | Yes, 2 users | HubSpot is free to start. |
| Email automation depth | Excellent from Plus | Excellent at Professional | Same depth, very different price points. |
| Landing pages | From Plus | Yes, full CMS in Content Hub | HubSpot can run your whole website. |
| Sales pipelines | Add-on | Included | HubSpot suits sales-led teams. |
| Service desk | No | Service Hub | HubSpot covers support teams too. |
| Onboarding fees | None | $1,500 to $7,000 | Budget for it on HubSpot Professional. |
| Ecommerce integration | Shopify on every plan | Via its marketplace | Both connect to online stores. |
Ease of use
HubSpot is the more approachable of the two on day one. The interface is consistent across hubs, the free CRM lets you try it with no deadline, and HubSpot Academy offers free courses for most features.
ActiveCampaign has a steeper first week if you use it properly, because you design your own structure of tags, custom fields, goals and scoring rules. That’s not a flaw; it’s what makes the automations so flexible. But it does reward someone who enjoys building systems.
Can you use both?
Yes, and some businesses do: HubSpot as the sales CRM, ActiveCampaign for email automation, connected through an integration platform. It works, but you pay for two systems and need one clear source of truth for contacts. For most small teams, picking one is simpler and cheaper.
Switching from HubSpot to ActiveCampaign (or the reverse)
- Export contacts with consent status, lists and custom properties. Never re-import unsubscribed contacts as active.
- Recreate fields, tags and pipeline stages before you import anything.
- Rebuild your three most valuable automations by hand; workflows don’t transfer.
- Authenticate your sending domain (SPF, DKIM and DMARC) and warm up with your most engaged contacts.
- Keep the old account read-only for a month so nobody loses email history.
Who should choose something else
If you sell through text messages, phone calls and appointments, both tools will leave gaps; look at GoHighLevel vs HubSpot or GoHighLevel vs ActiveCampaign. If you run an online store, read ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo. And if HubSpot’s pricing is the problem, our list of HubSpot alternatives has cheaper options.
Choose ActiveCampaign if…
- Email is how you win and keep customers
- Your team is small but your list is growing
- You want deep automation without a four-figure plan
- You already have a CRM, or a simple pipeline is enough
Choose HubSpot if…
- Sales, marketing and service need one shared CRM
- You want to start free and grow into paid seats
- Reporting across departments matters to you
- You can budget for onboarding at Professional
How we researched ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot
We read both vendors’ pricing pages and plan tables on 5 November 2026, set ActiveCampaign’s contact selector to four list sizes, and switched HubSpot’s billing toggle to record both monthly and yearly prices. Cost examples are estimates based on those figures. We haven’t scored either tool here; scores come from the standard hands-on job described on our how we test page.
Sources: ActiveCampaign pricing, HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing, HubSpot Sales Hub pricing, HubSpot free CRM.
OUR PICK
ActiveCampaign for email-first businesses. HubSpot for teams that need one CRM for everything.
Our ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot verdict: ActiveCampaign gives small and mid-sized businesses professional-grade email automation for a fraction of HubSpot Professional’s price. HubSpot is the better platform when sales, marketing and service teams all need the same records and reports, and the per-seat cost is justified by that shared view.
FAQ
ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot: which is cheaper?
For email marketing, ActiveCampaign is usually much cheaper: Plus is $49 a month at 1,000 contacts billed yearly, while HubSpot Marketing Hub Professional starts at $800 a month plus a $3,000 onboarding fee. HubSpot is cheaper only if the free CRM or Starter covers what you need.
Is HubSpot better than ActiveCampaign for sales teams?
Generally yes. HubSpot includes pipelines from the free CRM and adds sequences, forecasting and calling in Sales Hub. ActiveCampaign sells pipelines and sales engagement as an add-on.
Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?
No. It offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. HubSpot has a free CRM for up to two users.
Can ActiveCampaign replace HubSpot?
For email marketing and automation, yes. For a full sales CRM with service desk and cross-team reporting, not on its own.
Does HubSpot charge an onboarding fee?
On Professional and Enterprise editions, yes: $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional, $3,000 for Marketing Hub Professional, and more on Enterprise, according to HubSpot’s pricing pages.
