ActiveCampaign Alternatives After the 2025 Billing Changes: What Your Bill Is Really Buying

ActiveCampaign has long been the default answer to “marketing automation without Marketo money.” It is a genuinely capable product - which is why the way its pricing has shifted matters. Since November 3, 2025, new accounts are billed for all contacts, including the ones who unsubscribed or bounced. If you are shopping for ActiveCampaign alternatives - or deciding whether the tool you already run still earns its invoice - this is the honest math, who should stay put, and the map of where to go.

What actually changed

The clearest public documentation comes from third-party pricing analyses, since the change was not announced. SendX’s 2026 breakdown (a competitor’s analysis - read it as such, though its figures matched what we could see) describes it plainly: “Accounts created before that date are grandfathered onto the old rule and only pay for active contacts. Accounts created on or after that date are now charged for all contacts, including unsubscribed, bounced, and unconfirmed ones.”

Current list prices at common tiers, per the same analysis (billed annually; ActiveCampaign’s own pricing page loads prices dynamically, so verify your quote there):

Here is why the billable-contacts rule matters more than it sounds. Every list accumulates dead weight - unsubscribes, hard bounces, never-confirmed signups - and after a few years that is commonly a third or more of the database. Under the new rule, that dead weight pushes you up tiers. As an illustration: a team with 10,000 active contacts fits Plus at $189/mo under the old rule; the same team on a new account, carrying 12,000 dead contacts alongside, prices at the 25,000 tier - $389/mo, more than double, for the identical active audience.

Stay, prepare, or go

Stay if your account predates November 3, 2025 (the grandfather rule protects you), your automations are stable, and the add-ons you use are priced in. Switching tools has real costs; a billing rule that does not apply to you is not a reason to pay them.

Do the math if you are on the new rule or considering any plan change. Export your list, count active versus dead contacts, add the add-ons you rely on, and compare that real number - not the 1,000-contact teaser price - against alternatives. Also weigh list hygiene: under the new rule, deleting dead contacts is now a billing activity, which is a strange incentive to hand your marketing database.

Go if you were already feeling the two structural mismatches B2B SaaS teams report: pricing that scales on list size while your revenue scales on pipeline, and a builder-canvas product where your team still writes every email, assembles every automation, and watches every reply mailbox by hand.

What to look for in a replacement (the B2B SaaS checklist)

If your ActiveCampaign usage is journeys, email, and SMS for a lean B2B team, shortlist tools that can:

• Run behavior-triggered journeys across email and text - not just date-based drips (the difference matters).
• Draft the content, not just send it. The hours were never in the sending - they were in writing and assembling every step. This is where agents that build campaigns change the math.
• Handle the replies. Automations create responses; if they land in an unwatched mailbox, the sequence leaked. One inbox with opt-outs and quiet hours handled beats a better builder.
• Charge for outcomes you control. Watch for pricing that punishes list history or meters sends against contact tiers.
• Trace revenue. Attribution tied to the exact message, not open-rate dashboards.

The best ActiveCampaign alternatives, by use case

The same structural note we made about Ortto after the Canva acquisition applies across this table: most of these are builders - they hand your team a canvas and wait. The generational shift is toward systems that do the assembling and drafting, with your approval gate on top. If you are re-platforming anyway, compare against that bar, not just against a cheaper canvas.

Migration checklist (same playbook, it keeps working)

1. Export everything first: contacts with custom fields and tags, automation maps, templates, and - above all - your suppression list.
2. Move suppression lists before anything sends. Unsubscribes and bounces must carry over on day one; compliance has no transition period.
3. Inventory automations on paper - trigger, steps, timing, goal. Migrate the handful doing real work; retire the archaeology.
4. Rebuild your top two journeys in parallel on a small segment and compare results before cutover.
5. Keep the old account read-only for one billing cycle as the safety net.

Who Marqeable is (and is not) the right move for

Marqeable fits if you are a B2B SaaS or tech team of one to five that used ActiveCampaign for email + SMS journeys and would rather approve campaigns than assemble them: agents plan and draft in your brand voice, automations run the follow-up, replies land in one inbox with STOP and quiet hours handled, and revenue traces to the exact message. We are in private beta with a small early cohort and hands-on onboarding.

Marqeable is not the right fit if you need ecommerce store events, a full sales CRM in the same tool, or deep developer-controlled messaging APIs. Those jobs belong to the platforms built for them, per the table above.

Frequently asked questions

What changed in ActiveCampaign’s billing?

Per third-party analyses: accounts created on or after November 3, 2025 are billed for all contacts including unsubscribed, bounced, and unconfirmed; older accounts stay on the active-contacts rule. No public announcement accompanied the change.

Does ActiveCampaign charge for unsubscribed contacts?

On new accounts, yes - they count toward your billable tier. Grandfathered accounts pay only for active contacts.

What is the best alternative?

By job: Marqeable for B2B SaaS journeys with agent-drafted campaigns, Mailchimp-class for simple sends, Klaviyo for ecommerce, HubSpot for suite-CRM needs, Customer.io-class for developer-controlled messaging.

Should existing customers switch?

Grandfathered accounts should decide on product fit, not billing panic. New-rule accounts should price their real list - dead contacts, add-ons, send caps - before renewing.

The bottom line

ActiveCampaign is still a capable automation builder - and its pricing now quietly bills new customers for the contacts that already left. If you are grandfathered and happy, stay. If you are pricing it fresh, do the arithmetic on your real list plus the add-ons, and ask the 2026 question while you are at it: at the same monthly cost, do you want a better canvas for your team to operate - or a system that drafts, runs, answers, and traces the campaigns itself, with your hand on the approve button?

See the second option live: Marqeable’s agents build and run your campaigns, run behavior-triggered automations across email and text, keep every reply in one inbox, and tie revenue to the exact message with attribution.

Marqeable runs your campaigns, answers every visitor, text, and email in seconds, and turns them into booked jobs and meetings - even at 9pm on a Saturday. We’re in private beta with a small early cohort. Get early access