ActiveCampaign is not really competing with Substack or Beehiiv in spirit, even though it can send a newsletter — it's a marketing automation and light CRM platform that happens to include email. That distinction matters when deciding if it fits your workflow.
We assessed ActiveCampaign alongside the rest of our newsletters & email reviews, including Beehiiv, Ghost and Kit, so the score below is relative to that field.
The automation builder is the most powerful of anything in this roundup: multi-branch conditional logic, lead scoring, and CRM-style deal tracking let you build genuinely sophisticated funnels — welcome sequence branches based on whether someone clicked a specific link, tagged differently based on product interest, routed into a sales pipeline if they hit a pricing page.
That power comes with real setup overhead. Onboarding takes meaningfully longer than MailerLite or Kit, and the interface — an email builder, CRM pipeline view and reporting dashboards in one place — takes longer to feel native.
For a creator selling one course through a simple newsletter, this is overkill both in cost and complexity. For a small business or creator running multiple products, affiliate funnels, and a sales team who needs the emails and CRM in the same platform, ActiveCampaign's depth pays for itself.
| PLAN | PRICE | WHAT YOU GET |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $15 /mo | basic email marketing, limited contacts |
| Plus | $49 /mo | CRM, lead scoring, more automations |
| Pro | $79 /mo | predictive sending, split automations |
Creators and small businesses running complex multi-channel funnels — and anyone who wants ActiveCampaign to do the heavy lifting in this category.
you just want to send a simple weekly newsletter without a CRM layer — if that's a dealbreaker, see every newsletters & email tool we've tested.
- Is ActiveCampaign worth it in 2026?
- A CRM-grade automation platform that outgrows "newsletter tool" fast, best suited to creators who are really running a small marketing operation. We rate it 8.2/10, and it's the strongest pick for creators and small businesses running complex multi-channel funnels.
- How much does ActiveCampaign cost?
- ActiveCampaign lists Starter at $15/mo, Plus at $49/mo, Pro at $79/mo. List prices change often, so confirm with the vendor before you buy.
- What are the downsides of ActiveCampaign?
- Steep learning curve for non-marketers Pricing climbs quickly with list size and features Interface can feel cluttered with enterprise-oriented menus Overkill for a simple weekly newsletter
- How did BestCreates review ActiveCampaign?
- Editorially reviewed: Evaluated against our documented editorial framework — features, ease of use, pricing accuracy, support and integrations — using vendor documentation, pricing pages and published user evidence rather than hands-on testing. The score is relative to the other tools we cover in this category.
Editorially reviewed. Evaluated against our documented editorial framework — features, ease of use, pricing accuracy, support and integrations — using vendor documentation, pricing pages and published user evidence rather than hands-on testing. Read our review standards.
BestCreates is written and edited by Carlos Gil. Every tool is assessed against the same documented framework — the jobs creators hire it for, ease of use, pricing accuracy, support and integrations — and each review states in the open how it was assessed.
LAST CHECKED SEP 16, 2026
SIGNED BY CARLOS GIL · FOUNDER & EDITOR, THE BEST NETWORK · OUR DISCLOSURE POLICY