Pricing comparison
Drip vs ActiveCampaign: Price at 1k, 5k and 10k Contacts
By Marcus Hale · Updated Oct 2026
Drip prices by active people ($39 a month for 1-2,500 of them), ActiveCampaign by a contact selector that opens at $15 for 1,000 contacts. For a coach, consultant or course creator who books calls, runs launches and follows up by tag and deal stage, ActiveCampaign is the better fit. Drip wins when your revenue comes from a store: products, carts and repeat orders.
Who should pick which
Pick ActiveCampaign if you sell services or programs and the thing your emails must react to is a person's status: booked a discovery call, attended the webinar, bought the workshop but not the mastermind. Tags, custom fields, deals and goals are the objects its automations are built on. A seven-email launch sequence cannot fit inside Starter's five-action limit per automation, so budget from the Plus column ($49 at 1,000 contacts) unless you split the build.
Pick Drip if the trigger is a purchase event: a viewed product, an abandoned cart, a second order. You get one price per list-size band with no plan ladder to climb, from $39 up to 2,500 people to $154 at 10,000. The deciding factor is the object your emails react to, a person's stage (ActiveCampaign) or a store event (Drip), and the price gap only matters after that.
Decision snapshot
| Area | Drip | ActiveCampaign |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Store activity: products viewed, carts, orders and repeat purchases | People records: tags, custom fields, deals, goals and scores |
| Price at 1,000 contacts | $39 a month (the first tier covers 1-2,500 people) | Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 a month, billed annually |
| Price at 5,000 contacts | $89 a month | Starter $79, Plus $145, Pro $205 a month |
| Price at 10,000 contacts | $154 a month | Starter $149, Plus $189, Pro $375 a month |
| What the price follows | Active people in the account, with send caps appearing only on the largest tiers | The contact count you pick on a selector, with sends capped at 10x to 15x that number by plan |
| Where it pinches | A sale that is a booked call or a deal stage rather than a store order | Starter allows one user and five actions per automation, which is tight for a real sequence |
What each list size costs per month
The two vendors price by list size but present it differently. Drip's slider returns a single number for each band of people. ActiveCampaign's contact selector returns four plans (Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise) for every contact count, and the table below leaves Enterprise out. The figures come from Drip's pricing page and ActiveCampaign's pricing page, read on 2026-10-07. ActiveCampaign's numbers are the annual-billing monthly rate; Drip's page shows a plain monthly figure.
| List size | Drip | ActiveCampaign Starter | ActiveCampaign Plus | ActiveCampaign Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $39 | $15 | $49 | $79 |
| 2,500 | $39 | $39 | $95 | $149 |
| 5,000 | $89 | $79 | $145 | $205 |
| 7,500 | $124 | $109 | $169 | $289 |
| 10,000 | $154 | $149 | $189 | $375 |
| 15,000 | $209 | $231 | $265 | $465 |
Subtracting the Drip price from each ActiveCampaign plan at the same list size shows where the money actually moves. A minus sign means the ActiveCampaign plan is cheaper per month.
| List size | Starter minus Drip | Plus minus Drip | Pro minus Drip |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | -$24 | +$10 | +$40 |
| 2,500 | $0 | +$56 | +$110 |
| 5,000 | -$10 | +$56 | +$116 |
| 7,500 | -$15 | +$45 | +$165 |
| 10,000 | -$5 | +$35 | +$221 |
| 15,000 | +$22 | +$56 | +$256 |
Starter undercuts the per-person price at small and middle sizes, ties it at 2,500 contacts and flips above it by 15,000. Plus costs more at every size shown, and Pro costs the most by a wide margin. Plus is the more honest comparison for what Drip bundles, since Drip's entry tier lists dynamic segments, onsite campaigns and up to 50 workflows, while Plus is the first ActiveCampaign plan whose listing mentions standard segmentation and landing pages.
The same prices as a yearly bill
Multiplying each monthly figure by 12 shows what you commit to over twelve months at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 contacts.
| List size | Drip (12 x monthly) | Starter | Plus | Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | $39 x 12 = $468 | $15 x 12 = $180 | $49 x 12 = $588 | $79 x 12 = $948 |
| 5,000 | $89 x 12 = $1,068 | $79 x 12 = $948 | $145 x 12 = $1,740 | $205 x 12 = $2,460 |
| 10,000 | $154 x 12 = $1,848 | $149 x 12 = $1,788 | $189 x 12 = $2,268 | $375 x 12 = $4,500 |
So at 5,000 contacts Drip costs $120 a year more than Starter and $672 a year less than Plus. At 10,000 it costs $60 a year more than Starter and $420 a year less than Plus. The Pro column is where ActiveCampaign gets expensive, $4,500 a year at 10,000 contacts against Drip's $1,848 a year, which matters because Pro is the first plan that lists three users and advanced segmentation.
Per-person pricing against a contact selector
Drip's pricing page says your cost depends on the number of active people in the account and the volume of email you send in the month. In the readouts the send half of that sentence stays out of sight until the largest lists. Every band from 1-2,500 people up to 30,000 is labelled unlimited sends, and the 40,000 and 50,000 readouts list 480,000 and 600,000 sends, which works out to 12 per person. For a coach or a small shop, that means a Drip bill moves with list size alone, and the steps can feel abrupt: the 2,501st person takes you from $39 to $49 on the 3,000-person readout, ten dollars for one extra subscriber, and by 5,000 people you are at $89.
ActiveCampaign puts the contact count on a selector and limits sends by plan instead: 10 times the selected contacts on Starter and Plus, 12 times on Pro, 15 times on Enterprise. At 1,000 contacts that is 10,000 sends a month on Starter. A 14-day launch that emails the whole list every day uses 14,000 of them before your weekly newsletter, so either segment the launch so buyers and non-openers drop out, or plan for a higher plan. At 5,000 contacts the allowances become 50,000 on Starter and Plus and 60,000 on Pro. Four weekly newsletters to the whole list use 20,000 (4 x 5,000), which leaves room for six more full-list sends on Starter or Plus (30,000 divided by 5,000).
The consequence is a different kind of risk on each side. ActiveCampaign's risk is a send allowance you can outgrow by mailing the same people often, as a daily-offer store would. Drip's risk is paying for list size you are not mailing. Drip's page ties cost to active people, ActiveCampaign's selector to contacts, so on either tool the cheapest saving is to clear dormant records before importing a cold list.
What each ActiveCampaign plan lists
| Plan | Starting price at 1,000 contacts | Users | Listed on the pricing page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $15 a month | 1 | Email marketing, marketing automation and standard CRM; 5 actions per automation; sends capped at 10x contacts |
| Plus | $49 a month | 1 | Standard segmentation and landing pages; sends capped at 10x contacts |
| Pro | $79 a month | 3 | Advanced segmentation; sends capped at 12x contacts |
| Enterprise | $145 a month | 5 | Premium segmentation and a dedicated account team; sends capped at 15x contacts |
A consultant who has an assistant logging into the account is on Pro at a minimum, because Starter and Plus each list a single user. That one line moves a $15 account to $79 at 1,000 contacts, and it is easy to overlook when you compare list prices against a single price per list size.
Pick by what you sell
A coach or consultant booking discovery calls: ActiveCampaign
The funnel is a lead magnet, a nurture sequence and a booked call. In ActiveCampaign the booking form can apply a tag, create a deal in your pipeline, notify you, and exit the lead from the nurture, and a goal can end the sequence the moment the call is booked. You need Plus ($49 at 1,000 contacts, $95 at 2,500) before the build stops running into Starter's five-action cap, and Pro ($79 or $149) if a second person works the pipeline. Drip can run the nurture as a workflow with tags, but the deal stage has nowhere to live.
A course creator running two or three launches a year: ActiveCampaign, unless the course is a store product
A launch is a short burst: a waitlist tag, five to seven emails over a week, a cart-open day, and an exit when someone buys. On ActiveCampaign that is one automation with a purchase goal, and a buyer tag keeps customers out of the follow-up. On a 5,000-contact list ActiveCampaign Plus is $145 a month against Drip's $89, which is $1,740 a year against $1,068 a year. If the course is sold through a store that sends order events, Drip's lower band price and order-driven exits make a fair case for it.
A product store: Drip
A shop selling candles, templates or supplements wants the reminder when a cart goes quiet, the cross-sell after an order, the win-back after two months. Those are store events, and they are what Drip's workflows (up to 50 on the entry tier) and onsite campaigns are listed for. The cost is one number per list: $89 at 5,000 people, with sends unlimited up to 30,000. A store that mails three times a week sends about 13 emails per person a month, 65,000 at 5,000 contacts, which overshoots ActiveCampaign's 50,000 allowance on Starter and Plus and its 60,000 on Pro.
A small service business with 1,000 to 2,500 contacts: ActiveCampaign Starter
A trainer, clinic or accountant run by one person has short automations: a welcome, an appointment reminder, a rebooking nudge. ActiveCampaign Starter at $15 for 1,000 contacts and $39 at 2,500 matches or beats Drip's $39 in that range, and five actions per automation is enough for chains that short. Move to Plus when a second sequence needs segmentation, not before.
A large, lightly segmented list at 15,000 and up: Drip
Drip is the cheaper of the two in every large readout on the pricing pages. Drip's $209 at 15,000 people sits against ActiveCampaign Starter's $231, Drip's $289 at 20,000 people against Starter's $311, and Drip's $369 at 25,000 people against ActiveCampaign Plus at $389 and Starter at $391 (Plus is the cheaper of those two ActiveCampaign plans at that size). If the program at that scale is mostly broadcasts and a few store-style flows, the savings are real. If it depends on deal stages, they are not enough to replace the CRM.
Where the bill surprises people on each tool
| Moment | Drip | ActiveCampaign |
|---|---|---|
| Trying it | 14-day free trial, no credit card required, no ongoing free plan shown at drip.com/pricing | No free plan on activecampaign.com/pricing; Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise are all paid |
| Crossing a list boundary | $39 covers 1-2,500 people; 3,000 people reads $49 and 5,000 reads $89, so a growing list pays in steps of $10 to $40 | The selector re-prices every plan at once: Plus goes from $49 at 1,000 contacts to $95 at 2,500 and $145 at 5,000 |
| Doubling the list | 5,000 to 10,000 people moves $89 to $154, an extra $65 | 5,000 to 10,000 contacts moves Starter $79 to $149 (+$70), Plus $145 to $189 (+$44), Pro $205 to $375 (+$170) |
| Upgrading a plan | No ladder in the readouts; one tier per list size | Moving Starter to Plus at 5,000 adds $66 a month ($145 minus $79), Plus to Pro adds $60 |
| Billing cycle | The pricing page shows one monthly figure per band | The listed prices are billed annually, so the monthly rate assumes a twelve-month commitment |
The doubling row is the one worth keeping in your head. A coach who goes from 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers after a successful challenge moves from $89 to $154 on Drip and from $145 to $189 on ActiveCampaign Plus, so growth is cheapest on Plus and dearest on Pro. At 10,000 contacts ActiveCampaign Plus costs $189 against Drip's $154.
What a Drip to ActiveCampaign switch rebuilds, and the reverse
Contacts move easily in either direction as a CSV. Everything that made those contacts behave does not. Plan the rebuild around the objects below, in this order, because each one depends on the one above it.
| Object | Moving Drip to ActiveCampaign | Moving ActiveCampaign to Drip |
|---|---|---|
| People and fields | Create each custom field in ActiveCampaign first, then import so values land in the right column | Create the matching custom fields in Drip before importing; deal values and owner fields have no home and become plain fields or are dropped |
| Tags | Carry over as an import column; keep the names identical so segments can be rebuilt by tag | Carry over the same way; tags become the only status marker once deals are gone |
| Segments | Drip's dynamic segments are rules, not data, so they are rewritten as ActiveCampaign segments (standard segmentation starts on Plus) | Segments are rewritten as Drip dynamic segments; scores do not travel |
| Automations | Every Drip workflow becomes an ActiveCampaign automation; a long one will not fit Starter's five actions | Every automation becomes a Drip workflow; goals turn into exit conditions |
| Store events | Cart, order and product triggers must be reconnected through ActiveCampaign's ecommerce integration, and until they are, abandoned-cart flows are silent | Store events arrive through Drip's store integration; this is the part that gets better |
| Forms and popups | Drip onsite campaigns are replaced by ActiveCampaign forms; landing pages are listed from Plus | ActiveCampaign forms are replaced by Drip onsite campaigns and forms |
| Unsubscribes | Export unsubscribed and bounced people from the old account and import them as suppressed in the new one before the first send, or the new tool will mail them again. | |
Drip's 25,000-person readout lists free migration and personalised onboarding. Below that size, treat the rebuild as your own project. Run both tools side by side for one full automation cycle, meaning the length of your longest nurture sequence, and move sending over only once the new exit conditions stop people who have already bought.
Revenue reporting and sender reputation
Whichever way you move, the numbers you watch change meaning. In Drip the revenue figure comes from orders flowing in from a store, so a workflow's value is the sum of purchases that followed it. In ActiveCampaign the closest equivalent is the deal value you or an integration writes onto a deal, plus a goal count, which is only as accurate as the habit of updating deals. A coach who sells through a checkout page should decide which of those two is the source of truth before building the first report, otherwise the two tools will each show a different revenue number for the same launch.
Sender reputation travels with the sending domain rather than the tool. A dormant list of 10,000 contacts performs very differently from an engaged list of the same size. Authenticate the domain in the new account, mail the most recently engaged segment first, and widen from there, whichever product you land on. Drip's readouts from 10,000 people upward list chat and email support, and the 5,000-person readout lists email support, which is the channel to use when a first send underperforms.
Who can log in, and who answers when something breaks
ActiveCampaign's plan ladder sets how many people can work in the account: one user on Starter and Plus, three on Pro, five on Enterprise. For a solo coach that is irrelevant; for a consulting practice with an assistant who edits automations it decides the plan, and the jump from Plus to Pro is $60 a month at 5,000 contacts. Drip's pricing readouts do not tie users to a plan; they tie support to list size, with email support listed at 5,000 people, chat and email at 10,000, and free migration plus personalised onboarding at 25,000.
The practical reading: if two people will build and review automations, price ActiveCampaign from the Pro column ($79 at 1,000 contacts, $205 at 5,000) and Drip from its single figure ($39, $89). That reverses the headline comparison: ActiveCampaign Pro is $79 against Drip's $39 at 1,000 contacts, and $205 against Drip's $89 at 5,000.
Choosing in an afternoon: three questions
- What does your most valuable email react to? If it is "this person booked a call" or "this person joined the waitlist but has not bought", the object is a person and ActiveCampaign is built for it. If it is "this cart has sat for a day", the object is a store event and Drip is.
- How many people will edit automations? One user fits Starter or Plus. Two or three put you on ActiveCampaign Pro, which at 5,000 contacts is $205 against Drip's $89.
- How often do you mail the whole list? More than about ten times a month per contact runs into ActiveCampaign's 10x allowance on Starter and Plus. Drip's readouts stay unlimited to 30,000 people.
If the answers split across the two tools, start with the one that serves the highest-value email, run that email's automation for one cycle, and only then move the rest of the list. Cost differences of $5 to $56 a month at 5,000 to 10,000 contacts rarely justify rebuilding a working funnel.
Mistakes that are specific to this pair
- Comparing Drip's $39 with ActiveCampaign Starter's $15 and stopping there. Starter lists one user and five actions per automation, so a launch sequence with seven emails and waits between them needs Plus, and Plus at 1,000 contacts is $49, ten dollars above Drip.
- Reading ActiveCampaign's monthly figures as month-to-month prices. The listed numbers are billed annually, so $145 for Plus at 5,000 contacts means $1,740 billed across the year.
- Importing a Drip list into ActiveCampaign without recreating custom fields first. Values with no matching field are dropped, and tags are the only thing left to rebuild segments from.
- Letting abandoned-cart or order-based flows go dark during a move to ActiveCampaign because the ecommerce connection was not finished before the old workflows were switched off.
- Assuming Drip will hold a deal stage. A coach who moves from ActiveCampaign to Drip to trim a Plus bill of $145 down to $89 at 5,000 contacts loses the pipeline view and ends up tracking calls in a spreadsheet.
Verdict: ActiveCampaign for coaches, consultants and course sellers
For the audience this site is written for, ActiveCampaign is the winner. The jobs a coaching or consulting business automates are person-shaped: a booked call, a waitlist, a buyer who should stop receiving the pitch. Tags, deals and goals cover them, and its entry price is the lowest in the comparison, $15 at 1,000 contacts. Budget realistically from Plus ($49 at 1,000 contacts, $145 at 5,000 contacts, $189 at 10,000) because Starter's five-action limit and single user are tight for a launch.
Drip wins in two cases. The first is a store where carts, products and repeat orders drive the revenue, where its single price per band ($39, $89, $154 at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000) and unlimited sends to 30,000 people are easier to forecast. The second is any list from 15,000 contacts upward, where Drip's $209 undercuts every ActiveCampaign plan shown. Prices come from drip.com/pricing and activecampaign.com/pricing.
Related comparisons
For the guides behind these tools, see the ecommerce email automation guide, the tools for online courses list and the alternatives hub.
- Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign: The same ActiveCampaign price ladder set against Mailchimp's free plan and its first-year promotion, for newsletter-first lists.
- Klaviyo vs Mailchimp: The store-owner comparison to read if Drip's ecommerce focus is what attracted you.
- Omnisend vs Klaviyo: Two more store-centred tools, useful when you want a third name beside Drip.
- Kit (formerly ConvertKit) vs Mailchimp: The creator-side view for course sellers who care more about audience tagging than store events.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, Drip or ActiveCampaign?
It depends on which ActiveCampaign plan you hold Drip up against. Starter is the cheapest option up to 10,000 contacts, but at 15,000 contacts Drip's $209 is below ActiveCampaign Starter's $231. Plus runs $95, $145, $189 and $265 a month at 2,500, 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 contacts, against Drip's $39, $89, $154 and $209 at the same sizes, and Pro is the priciest of the three ActiveCampaign plans priced here at every list size.
Does either one have a free plan?
No. Drip lists a 14-day free trial with no credit card required and no ongoing free tier. ActiveCampaign's pricing page likewise shows only paid Starter, Plus, Pro and Enterprise plans. If you want a permanent free tier for a very small list, Mailchimp's Free plan (250 contacts, 500 sends a month) is the one in this family of comparisons that has one.
Which is better for a store with carts and repeat orders?
Drip. Its workflows are written around store events such as a viewed product, an abandoned cart or a second order, and its pricing page lists up to 50 workflows and onsite campaigns on the entry tier. ActiveCampaign lists ecommerce integrations too, but its automations are organised around the contact, so an order tends to become a field or a tag instead of being the thing the workflow reacts to.
Which is better for a coach or consultant who books discovery calls?
ActiveCampaign. A booking form can add a tag, create a deal, notify you and stop the nurture sequence when the call is booked, which is the shape of a coaching funnel. Drip's tiers list workflows, dynamic segments and onsite campaigns rather than a deal pipeline, so the same follow-up would lean on tags alone.
What happens to my Drip workflows if I move to ActiveCampaign?
They do not travel. People, tags and custom fields can be exported and imported as contacts, but each workflow has to be rebuilt as an automation, and every store-event trigger has to be re-created through whatever ecommerce or checkout connection you set up on the ActiveCampaign side.
Do send limits matter at my list size?
Only on ActiveCampaign. Its plans allow 10x contacts (Starter and Plus), 12x (Pro) or 15x (Enterprise) sends a month, so a 1,000-contact list on Starter has 10,000 sends. Drip's readouts show unlimited sends through 30,000 people and a 12-per-person cap appearing at 40,000 and 50,000.