Alternatives for coaches, course creators and consultants

ActiveCampaign Alternatives for Coaches and Course Creators

If you coach, sell a course or consult and ActiveCampaign now costs more than your sequences justify, move to Kit: Creator is $116 a month at 10,000 subscribers against $149 for ActiveCampaign Starter and $189 for Plus, and it is built around forms, sequences and selling a digital product. With under 10,000 on the list and mostly newsletters, MailerLite Comfort is $89. If your month revolves around deals and invoices, compare Keap and HubSpot before you leave.

Why people leave ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign sells four email plans and bills them by contact count, paid annually. At 1,000 contacts its pricing page reads Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month, and the contact selector then climbs fast. Starter and Plus are $39 and $95 at 2,500 contacts, $79 and $145 at 5,000, $149 and $189 at 10,000, and $391 and $389 at 25,000. That last pair is odd, because Starter costs $2 more than Plus, and Starter is only offered up to 25,000 contacts, so at 50,000 the first plan on the page is Plus at $609. Moving from Plus to Pro at 10,000 contacts adds $186 a month ($375 minus $189).

Three limits push coaches out sooner than the headline price does. Starter allows 1 user and 5 actions per automation, and Plus is also 1 user, which is tight for a launch that tags, waits, branches on a purchase and sends. Pro adds users (3) and Enterprise has 5. Email sends are capped at 10 times your contact limit on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro and 15 times on Enterprise, so a 10,000-contact list gets 100,000 sends a month, which an eight-email cart-open sequence to the whole list uses 80% of.

The second reason is upkeep. If the only automations you maintain are a lead-magnet delivery, a welcome series and a launch sequence, a canvas built for scoring and sales routing carries more than you use, and a tool that gives you sequences and tags directly takes less time to keep tidy. Consultants have the opposite problem, because deals and pipeline stages are exactly what a simpler tool drops.

ActiveCampaign pricing page, captured Oct 2026 — ActiveCampaign pricing page as of 2026-10-07. Source: https://www.activecampaign.com/pricing

What the alternatives cost at 5,000, 10,000 and 25,000 contacts

Each vendor counts something different, so the table keeps each vendor’s own unit and billing period. Every figure comes from the vendor’s own pricing page as it stood on October 7, 2026.

Tool and plan	Unit and billing	5,000	10,000	25,000
ActiveCampaign Starter	Contacts, billed yearly	$79	$149	$391
ActiveCampaign Plus	Contacts, billed yearly	$145	$189	$389
Kit Creator	Subscribers, billed yearly	$75	$116	$166
MailerLite Comfort	Subscribers, monthly billing	$49	$89	$179
MailerLite Power	Subscribers, monthly billing	$69	$129	$239
Mailchimp Standard	Contact bands (2,501-5,000, 5,001-10,000, 20,001-25,000)	$100	$135	$310
Drip	People, monthly	$89	$154	$369
Keap platform	Contacts with 2 users, billed monthly	$449	$539	$719

Against Starter, Kit Creator is $4 cheaper at 5,000 ($79 minus $75), $33 cheaper at 10,000 ($149 minus $116) and $225 cheaper at 25,000 ($391 minus $166). Against Plus the 25,000 gap is $223 a month ($389 minus $166), which is $2,676 over a year. So switching for price alone is a small win on a small list and a large one on a big list. Mailchimp’s figures are the prices that start after its 12-month half-price offer, so its first year is lower than shown, and its Free plan is 250 contacts and 500 sends a month.

Fifteen ActiveCampaign alternatives at a glance

Tool	Best for	Pricing context	Main trade-off
Kit	Coaches and course creators who want sequences, not a CRM	Free to 10,000 subscribers (no sequences); Creator $116 at 10,000 subscribers, billed yearly	There is no deal pipeline, so a consultant who tracks proposals inside ActiveCampaign would need a separate CRM.
MailerLite	A smaller list that mostly sends newsletters and a welcome series	Free to 250 subscribers; Comfort $89 and Power $129 at 10,000 (monthly billing)	Lead scoring and deal logic from ActiveCampaign have to be re-expressed as tags and groups, so list them before you choose.
Keap	Coaches who want CRM, payments and automation in a single paid plan	$299 a month at 1,500 contacts and 2 users; $539 at 10,000 (billed monthly)	Required implementation services and a $299 early termination fee on annual contracts make it a commitment rather than a trial.
Customer.io	A coaching app or membership site that sends its own events	Essentials $100 at 5k profiles, $145 at 10k, billed monthly	Each profile beyond the plan’s count costs $0.009 on Essentials, which is $9 per extra 1,000.
Userlist	Cohort programs sold to companies, where the company is the customer	Basic $149 for up to 10,000 users; Professional $349	Its message allowance is 5 times your tracked users, so check that figure against your biggest launch.
HubSpot	Consultants who want sales and marketing on one CRM	Free tools; Marketing Hub Starter $7, Professional $800, Enterprise $3,600 a month (per seat)	The automation ceiling is the catch: the free tools allow 1 automated action, Starter up to 10, and unlimited actions begin on Professional.
Loops	A coach who also ships software and wants the simplest sequences	Free for the 1,000 newest contacts; $99 at 9,998 subscribers	On the free plan only your 1,000 newest contacts receive email, so a bigger list is partly out of reach until you pay.
Brevo	Low-cost sending for a large list that rarely mails	Free 300 emails a day; Starter from $9, Standard from $18 a month	A 10,000-contact broadcast takes about 34 days to finish at the free plan’s 300 a day, so test that cap against your biggest send.
Klaviyo	Course sellers whose revenue runs through an online store	Free to 250 profiles; Email plan $150 at 10,000 profiles	Nothing on its price list undercuts Kit or MailerLite at 10,000, so the only reason to move is the store data.
Drip	A course or product seller who has turned into a store	$39 a month for up to 2,500 people; $154 for 10,000; 14-day trial	Pricing follows the active people in your account and your monthly send volume, so ask how a long-dormant list is counted before you import it.
Resend	Receipts and course-access emails sent from your own code	Free 3,000 emails a month; Pro $20 for 50,000; Marketing free at 1,000 contacts	A coach without a developer gains little, because setup assumes comfort with domains, API keys and DNS records.
Postmark	Purchase receipts and course-access mail that has to arrive	Free 100 emails a month; Basic $15 for 10,000 emails a month	It does not run promotional sequences at all, so leaving ActiveCampaign for Postmark alone would leave your nurture unsent.
Mailgun	Developers who want sending logs and inbound parsing	Free 100 emails a day; Basic $15, Foundation $35 a month	Someone has to supply the audience, sequence and unsubscribe layer that ActiveCampaign used to provide.
SendGrid	A split between developer-sent mail and marketer-sent campaigns	Marketing Campaigns free to 2,000 contacts; Basic from $15, Advanced from $60	The two products have separate plans and limits, so decide which one owns each message before cutover.
Braze	Large organisations running app, push and SMS programs	No public price; billed on engaging users (quote-based)	Pricing is on request (quote-based), so there is nothing to budget until you have spoken to sales.

1. Kit

Best for: Coaches and course creators who want sequences, not a CRM. Kit is the closest fit for the coach who opened ActiveCampaign to run a lead-magnet delivery, a welcome series and a launch, and who now pays for a canvas with more branches than the business uses. Its free plan covers forms, landing pages and broadcasts for up to 10,000 subscribers and lets you sell digital products and subscriptions, while Visual Automations and sequences begin on Creator. The working model is a subscriber with tags, which is how most coaching funnels are already described on a whiteboard.

Trade-off: There is no deal pipeline, so a consultant who tracks proposals inside ActiveCampaign would need a separate CRM.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Kit offers free migrations and a 14-day trial without a card, so the cheapest test is to hand over one list and rebuild the welcome sequence and the launch sequence before you cancel anything. ActiveCampaign tags and custom fields map to Kit tags, but anything driven by lead scores or deal stages needs a tag rule that you write yourself.

What it costs: Creator reads $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers, $75 at 5,000, $116 at 10,000 and $166 at 25,000, billed yearly. Kit Pro, which adds Subscriber Signals, unlimited users and deliverability reporting, is $158 at 10,000 and $233 at 25,000. See the Kit pricing page.

2. MailerLite

Best for: A smaller list that mostly sends newsletters and a welcome series. MailerLite is the budget exit for a coach whose list sits under 10,000 and whose automations are a lead-magnet delivery and a short nurture. The editor is built around newsletters and landing pages, and the Free plan lets you test it on 250 subscribers before anyone is moved. Even with ActiveCampaign quoted yearly and MailerLite monthly, Comfort at 10,000 subscribers is $60 under Starter ($149 minus $89).

Trade-off: Lead scoring and deal logic from ActiveCampaign have to be re-expressed as tags and groups, so list them before you choose.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Export contacts with their tags from ActiveCampaign, import them as groups, and rebuild each automation by hand in MailerLite; nothing is carried across automatically. The pricing page states that MailerLite’s data storage center is in the European Union with ISO 27001 certification, which helps if your clients are European.

What it costs: Free allows 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month and 2 seats. Comfort on monthly billing reads $19 at 1,000 subscribers, $49 at 5,000, $89 at 10,000 and $179 at 25,000; Power is $39, $69, $129 and $239 at the same sizes and has unlimited monthly emails. See the MailerLite pricing page.

3. Keap

Best for: Coaches who want CRM, payments and automation in a single paid plan. Keap is the option to weigh when you are leaving ActiveCampaign for completeness rather than for price. Its pricing page describes one platform that bundles CRM, automation, email and text, a pipeline and landing pages, so a consultant who keeps proposals and invoices in the same place avoids stitching tools together. At 10,000 contacts it costs $539 against $189 for ActiveCampaign Plus, which makes it a decision about consolidation, not savings.

Trade-off: Required implementation services and a $299 early termination fee on annual contracts make it a commitment rather than a trial.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Keap’s pricing page says its implementation services cover data import and migration along with strategy calls, so ask what is included before you sign. The free trial is limited to 25 emails, no payment processing and no texts, which means a realistic pilot has to run on the paid plan.

What it costs: Keap starts at $299 a month for 1,500 contacts and 2 users, billed monthly, then reads $335 at 2,500, $449 at 5,000, $539 at 10,000 and $719 at 25,000. Extra users are $39 a month each, and the first text tier of 500 messages and 100 voice minutes is included. See the Keap pricing page.

4. Customer.io

Best for: A coaching app or membership site that sends its own events. Customer.io suits the rare coaching or course business that has built its own app and wants a message to fire on in-app behaviour, such as a lesson completed or a login streak broken. It is fed by developers: someone has to send the events, and the payoff is journeys that react as the behaviour happens. On a hosted course platform it is more machinery than the job needs.

Trade-off: Each profile beyond the plan’s count costs $0.009 on Essentials, which is $9 per extra 1,000.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Replace tags with events: write down what a lesson-complete, a payment and a cancellation look like as event names your app can send. Customer.io’s billing docs count a profile that existed at any point in the month toward that month’s bill, so a clean-up after the import will not shrink the first invoice.

What it costs: Essentials starts at $100 a month for 5k profiles and moves to $145 at 10k, $235 at 20k, $325 at 30k, $415 at 40k and $505+ at 50k and above, with 1 million emails a month and transactional sending included. Premium starts at $1,000 a month, billed yearly. See the Customer.io pricing page.

5. Userlist

Best for: Cohort programs sold to companies, where the company is the customer. Userlist is relevant for a consultant who sells to teams, such as a corporate training cohort in which a company admin and several learners need different messages. It treats the company as an object next to the person, a shape that a tag-based tool can only approximate. For an individual coaching practice it is the wrong shape and the price is well above the other entries here.

Trade-off: Its message allowance is 5 times your tracked users, so check that figure against your biggest launch.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Map each ActiveCampaign contact to a Userlist user and each client company to a Userlist company, and decide who the admin of every cohort is before you import. Contacts that belong to no company are the ones that will not fit the model.

What it costs: Basic is $149 a month for up to 10,000 users plus $10 per additional 1,000, which puts 18,000 users at $229. Professional is $349 at 10,000 users plus $12 per extra 1,000, and messages beyond the allowance cost $1 per 1,000 (the allowance has a 500,000 floor). See the Userlist pricing page.

6. HubSpot

Best for: Consultants who want sales and marketing on one CRM. HubSpot is the exit for a consultant whose real problem is that leads, calls and proposals live in one tool and email lives in another. The free tools cost nothing and Starter is $7, so you can move the pipeline first and decide about email later. For a coach who only sends sequences it is more suite than the work needs.

Trade-off: The automation ceiling is the catch: the free tools allow 1 automated action, Starter up to 10, and unlimited actions begin on Professional.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Map ActiveCampaign tags and custom fields to HubSpot contact properties before the import, and turn each deal stage into a pipeline stage. Rebuild automations in descending order of revenue, so the first one you move is a sequence that fits inside Starter’s 10 actions.

What it costs: The free tools cost nothing, and a paid seat then climbs from Starter at $7 to Professional at $800 and Enterprise at $3,600 a month on HubSpot’s marketing pricing page. Going from Starter to Professional is a $793 jump, so the number of automated actions you need matters more here than your list size. See the HubSpot pricing page.

7. Loops

Best for: A coach who also ships software and wants the simplest sequences. Loops is aimed at SaaS onboarding, so it fits a coach only when the coaching business sits next to a product with sign-ups. Its feature list is deliberately short, so confirm that the pieces of ActiveCampaign you actually use, such as CRM records, forms and scoring, have somewhere to live before you move.

Trade-off: On the free plan only your 1,000 newest contacts receive email, so a bigger list is partly out of reach until you pay.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Send events from your app to Loops and rebuild each sequence as a loop. Transactional sending is included on paid plans, so receipts and access links can move in the same week.

What it costs: Paid plans scale by subscribers: $48 a month at 4,788, $99 at 9,998, $198 at 24,339 and $249 at 49,989 on Loops’ slider, with unlimited sends to subscribers and no seat fees. See the Loops pricing page.

8. Brevo

Best for: Low-cost sending for a large list that rarely mails. Brevo prices by the email volume you choose rather than by contacts, which changes the arithmetic for a coach with a large, quiet list: 10,000 contacts that receive two newsletters a month are 20,000 sends, not a 10,000-contact plan. The free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts and sends 300 emails a day, though only 2,000 contacts are allowed in marketing automation.

Trade-off: A 10,000-contact broadcast takes about 34 days to finish at the free plan’s 300 a day, so test that cap against your biggest send.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Count your monthly sends in ActiveCampaign first, because Brevo’s tier follows that number. The Standard line on Brevo’s own pricing help page lists automation, A/B testing and advanced reports, so plan on Standard if you rebuild a full launch sequence.

What it costs: Starter starts at $9 a month and Standard at $18, both from 5,000 emails a month, with the first tier storing up to 500 contacts. Paying yearly lowers them on the pricing page to $8.08 and $16.17, and Professional starts at $499 for 150,000 to 10 million sends. See the Brevo pricing page.

9. Klaviyo

Best for: Course sellers whose revenue runs through an online store. Klaviyo is the commerce specialist, so it makes sense for a coach who sells physical or digital products through a store and wants segments built on orders and browsing. For a purely service-based consultant its catalogs and carts go unused, while its price at 10,000 profiles lands $1 above ActiveCampaign Starter.

Trade-off: Nothing on its price list undercuts Kit or MailerLite at 10,000, so the only reason to move is the store data.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Connect the store first, then rebuild the welcome and post-purchase sequences against order events. Course-enrolment emails that ActiveCampaign sent on a tag need a purchase or tag trigger in Klaviyo.

What it costs: Klaviyo’s free tier stops at 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month. Past that, the Email plan costs $20 at 500 profiles, $30 at 1,000, $100 at 5,000 and $150 at 10,000, so a 10,000-contact coach pays $1 more than on ActiveCampaign Starter. See the Klaviyo pricing page.

10. Drip

Best for: A course or product seller who has turned into a store. Drip belongs on this list for the seller whose business has become a store: its pricing page names Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Stripe among its integrations and advertises revenue attribution and onsite campaigns. At 10,000 people it is $154 against $149 on ActiveCampaign Starter, so choosing it is a data-model decision, not a savings one.

Trade-off: Pricing follows the active people in your account and your monthly send volume, so ask how a long-dormant list is counted before you import it.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Drip has no ongoing free plan, only a 14-day trial with no credit card, so the test must fit inside two weeks: connect Stripe, rebuild one purchase-triggered sequence and compare it with the original.

What it costs: The slider reads $39 up to 2,500 people, $49 at 3,000, $89 at 5,000, $154 at 10,000, $209 at 15,000, $289 at 20,000 and $369 at 25,000, with unlimited email sends on the lower tiers and up to 50 workflows. See the Drip pricing page.

11. Resend

Best for: Receipts and course-access emails sent from your own code. Resend replaces the transactional side only when a developer owns your site: purchase receipts, password resets and access links can move to code-owned templates while marketing stays elsewhere. It also has a Marketing tab for broadcasts and automations, so a very small list can run on a single vendor.

Trade-off: A coach without a developer gains little, because setup assumes comfort with domains, API keys and DNS records.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Verify the sending domain with SPF and DKIM before you send a live message, and move transactional mail first. Leave sequences running in ActiveCampaign until the new domain has built some reputation.

What it costs: The free plan allows 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day. Pro is $20 a month at 50,000 emails and $35 at 100,000, while Scale is $90 at 100,000 and $160 at 200,000. The Marketing tab is $0 at 1,000 contacts, $40 at 5,000 and $80 at 10,000. See the Resend pricing page.

12. Postmark

Best for: Purchase receipts and course-access mail that has to arrive. Postmark is a transactional specialist: it keeps message streams apart, so a promotional spike never touches the stream carrying receipts. For a course business it is a companion to a marketing tool and never a replacement for the sequences ActiveCampaign runs.

Trade-off: It does not run promotional sequences at all, so leaving ActiveCampaign for Postmark alone would leave your nurture unsent.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Create one transactional stream and one broadcast stream before sending anything, then point checkout and enrolment mail at the transactional one.

What it costs: Postmark’s free tier is 100 emails a month. At 10,000 emails Basic is $15, Pro $16.50 and Platform $18; the slider reads $55, $60.50 and $66 at 50,000 emails, and $115, $126.50 and $138 at 125,000. See the Postmark pricing page.

13. Mailgun

Best for: Developers who want sending logs and inbound parsing. Mailgun is infrastructure: an API and SMTP relay with logs, validation and inbound routing, and no marketer-facing automation builder. It only fits when a developer maintains your course platform and would rather build the plumbing than pay for a tool.

Trade-off: Someone has to supply the audience, sequence and unsubscribe layer that ActiveCampaign used to provide.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Point the application at the API or SMTP credentials, authenticate the domain, and keep a marketing tool for newsletters. The pricing page says one account can send through the US or the EU, which settles the region question early.

What it costs: The free plan is 100 emails a day. Basic starts at $15 a month for 10,000 emails and Foundation is $35 for 50,000 after a free first month; Foundation at 100,000 emails reads $75, and Scale starts at $90 for 100,000. See the Mailgun pricing page.

14. SendGrid

Best for: A split between developer-sent mail and marketer-sent campaigns. SendGrid pairs an Email API for application mail with a separate Marketing Campaigns product for broadcasts. For a consultant with a small list the free Marketing Campaigns plan, with 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, is workable, though it does not replace ActiveCampaign’s CRM.

Trade-off: The two products have separate plans and limits, so decide which one owns each message before cutover.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Put subscribers and broadcasts in Marketing Campaigns and keep receipts on the Email API, then write down which product sends which message so nothing goes out twice.

What it costs: A consultant’s list of 2,000 contacts or fewer can sit on the free Marketing Campaigns tier, which also allows 6,000 emails a month, before Basic at $15 or Advanced at $60 becomes necessary. Receipts through the separate Email API begin with a 60-day trial, then Essentials at $19.95 (it reads $34.95 at 100,000 emails) or Pro at $89.95. See the SendGrid pricing page.

15. Braze

Best for: Large organisations running app, push and SMS programs. Braze is an enterprise engagement platform for mobile, in-app, push and SMS programs run by dedicated lifecycle teams. A coaching or course business will almost never need it, and it stays on this list only so that nobody assumes it is the next step up from ActiveCampaign.

Trade-off: Pricing is on request (quote-based), so there is nothing to budget until you have spoken to sales.

Moving from ActiveCampaign: Expect a scoped project in which the data pipeline, identity model and channel priorities come before any template work.

What it costs: Braze publishes no list price; its pricing article ties the bill to how many users engage with your brand and to the edition you choose, so you only learn the number on a sales call. Pricing is on request (quote-based). See the Braze pricing page.

What to inventory before you leave ActiveCampaign

An ActiveCampaign account tends to hold years of small decisions. Walk through the list below while the account is still live, and keep it live until each row has passed in the new tool.

What you have in ActiveCampaign	Where it goes	Pass condition
Automations with more than 5 actions (the Starter ceiling)	A sequence in Kit or MailerLite, or a workflow in Keap or HubSpot	The launch sequence runs end to end on a test address, including the exit after purchase
Tags and custom fields such as lead-magnet source or program level	Kit tags, MailerLite groups, HubSpot properties	A sample of 20 contacts shows the same tags before and after import
Lead scores	A tag you set by rule, such as clicked-3-launch-emails	The tag is applied automatically and the sales follow-up still fires
Deals and pipeline stages	Keap or HubSpot pipeline, or a proposal-sent tag in a simpler tool	Every open proposal has a stage and an owner after cutover
Forms and embedded signup boxes on your site	The new tool’s forms, with the embed swapped on every page	A test signup arrives with the right tag and triggers the welcome email
Unsubscribes and suppressions	Imported as unsubscribed or suppressed before any send	A person who opted out last year is still excluded

A worked example: an eight-email launch to 5,000 contacts

Take a coach with 5,000 contacts who opens the cart with eight emails and removes buyers after each send. Eight emails to everyone is 40,000 sends. ActiveCampaign Starter at 5,000 contacts is $79 and allows 10 times the contact limit, so 50,000 sends, which covers the launch with 10,000 to spare. Kit Creator at 5,000 subscribers is $75, and MailerLite Comfort at $49 allows 10 times the ceiling of its subscriber tier, so the same launch fits there too.

Double the list to 10,000 and the same launch is 80,000 sends. That still fits inside Starter’s 100,000 allowance, but Kit Creator is $33 a month cheaper, which is $396 over a year ($33 times 12). The honest summary is that moving for price is a small gain at 5,000 contacts and the argument rests on the 5-action ceiling and on how much of the canvas you actually use. At 25,000 contacts the monthly gap against Plus grows to $223, and that is where the price case stands on its own.

Verdict

Kit is the pick for coaches and course creators who are leaving because of price or because the canvas has become more than the work requires: it is cheaper at every size we compared from 5,000 contacts up, it is free for broadcasts up to 10,000 subscribers, and its sequences cover the lead magnet, welcome and launch flows that most coaching businesses run. Consultants whose month revolves around proposals should look at Keap, which bundles the pipeline at $539 a month for 10,000 contacts, or at HubSpot if the first step is a free CRM.

The exceptions are narrower. Pick Klaviyo or Drip if the business is mostly a store, Loops or Customer.io if a product with sign-ups drives the messages, and Postmark or Resend for receipts and access links that developers send. Stay on ActiveCampaign if you rely on deals and scoring and your automations genuinely need more than 5 actions: Plus is $189 at 10,000 contacts, only $73 above Kit Creator ($189 minus $116), and may be cheaper than the weeks of rebuilding. Our Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign and Drip vs ActiveCampaign comparisons cover two of the tools above head to head.

Which reason for leaving points to which tool

You are leaving ActiveCampaign because…	Try first	Check before you commit
The monthly bill rose with a bigger list	Kit Creator or MailerLite Comfort	That your busiest launch fits the send allowance of the cheaper plan
You hit the 5-action ceiling on Starter	Kit sequences, or ActiveCampaign Plus at $189 for 10,000 contacts	Whether Plus alone would solve it without a migration
You want one tool for proposals, invoices and email	Keap, with its required implementation services	The $299 early termination fee on annual contracts
You only need a free CRM next to a light email tool	HubSpot free tools with Kit or MailerLite for sending	That the 1 automated action on the free tools is enough
Your course now sells physical goods too	Drip or Klaviyo	That the store connects natively and orders can trigger a tag

Moving a coaching list off ActiveCampaign in three weeks

Schedule the move between launches, never in the middle of one, so that a half-moved list cannot be mailed from two tools on the same day.

Week	What you do	Done when
1	Export contacts with tags, custom fields, unsubscribes and the deal list, then screenshot every automation you plan to keep	You can name the three automations that earn money and the ones nobody has opened in a year
2	Start the new plan’s trial, import one segment of about 500 people, and rebuild the welcome sequence and the lead-magnet delivery	A test signup gets the right email within minutes and the tags match the old account
3	Move the rest of the list, swap every form embed on your site, and rebuild the launch sequence for the next cart opening; pause ActiveCampaign automations only after the new ones are live	No contact sits in both sequences, and unsubscribes carried over intact

What to compare after the first launch on the new tool

Comparison	Why it can mislead	Better way
Open rate before and after the move	Opens depend on how each tool counts image loads, so the two numbers are not like for like	Compare clicks on the sales link and the number of checkouts the launch produced
Monthly bill on the first invoice	Kit and ActiveCampaign are billed yearly while MailerLite Comfort is quoted monthly	Put every plan on a yearly total before deciding which is cheaper
Subscriber counts across tools	Each tool counts unsubscribed, bounced and unconfirmed people differently	Reconcile the numbers after import and clean the list in the old tool first
Judging on Kit’s free plan	Visual Automations and sequences are not part of it	Trial the Creator plan, which is the one a launch needs

Mistakes that cost coaches a launch

Moving the list in the same week the cart opens, which leaves some buyers in two sequences and some in none
Importing contacts without their unsubscribe status, so people who left last year are mailed again
Leaving an old ActiveCampaign form embedded on a sales page, so new signups land in an account you have stopped watching
Paying for Keap’s implementation package and then keeping ActiveCampaign running for months because nobody finished the rebuild

FAQ

Which tool suits a coach who has outgrown ActiveCampaign’s price?

Kit. Creator is $116 a month at 10,000 subscribers against $149 for ActiveCampaign Starter, the free plan covers broadcasts, forms and landing pages up to 10,000 subscribers, and sequences and Visual Automations begin on Creator. Consultants who run a deal pipeline should compare Keap or HubSpot first.

Why does ActiveCampaign Starter cost more than Plus at 25,000 contacts?

On the contact selector, Starter reads $391 a month and Plus $389 at 25,000 contacts, and Starter is not offered above that size. Read the selector at your own list size before choosing a plan, because the entry plan is not always the cheapest one.

Is there a free ActiveCampaign alternative?

ActiveCampaign’s pricing page lists no free plan. Kit is free up to 10,000 subscribers for forms, landing pages and broadcasts, MailerLite is free up to 250 subscribers with 2,500 emails a month, and Brevo sends 300 emails a day on its free plan. None of the free tiers includes the full sequence tooling you may be used to.

Will my ActiveCampaign automations move to the new tool?

No. Plan to export contacts, tags and custom fields and to rebuild each automation by hand, starting with the one that earns the most revenue. Run the old and new tools side by side for one journey before you cancel the plan.