ActiveCampaign's pricing page sells four marketing plans and prices them by contact count. The figures it publishes - Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month - are for 1,000 contacts billed annually, and they move with the list. Starter covers multi-step marketing automation, email marketing, limited segmentation, landing pages and standard CRM and ecommerce integrations; Plus adds standard segmentation and customer insights; Pro adds advanced segmentation and conversion tracking; Enterprise adds SSO and a dedicated account team. A 14-day trial needs only an email address, no card, and the page advertises a full refund if you are not satisfied after 30 days.
TL;DR
ActiveCampaign is marketing automation priced on contacts: at 1,000 contacts billed annually its page lists Starter $15, Plus $49, Pro $79 and Enterprise $145 a month, with a 14-day trial by email sign-up and a 30-day money-back promise. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a CRM priced on seats: Free Suite at $0, Starter Suite at $25, Pro Suite at $100, then Core at $195, Advanced at $395 and Max at $550 per user a month billed annually, most of it on annual contracts. The two overlap only where email meets pipeline. Choose ActiveCampaign when campaigns and automation are the centre of the business; choose Salesforce when the CRM is the system of record and marketing is one department of it.
Salesforce's Sales Cloud page prices six tiers. Free Suite is $0 per user a month. Starter Suite is $25 per user a month, billed monthly or annually, and lists lead, account, contact and opportunity management, built-in sales AI, automatic syncing of emails, events and contacts, and dynamic email marketing and analytics. Pro Suite is $100 per user a month billed annually. Above that sit the Sales Cloud editions: Core at $195, Advanced at $395 and Max at $550 per user a month billed annually, with Core bringing Slack Business+, Tableau Next and Premier Success. The page's own FAQ states that most Salesforce products use annual contracts.
Read those two paragraphs side by side and the scope gap is obvious. ActiveCampaign's top plan for a thousand contacts costs less per month than a single Starter Suite seat, because it is selling campaign tooling to a marketing team, not a system of record to a company. Salesforce's entry tier already includes email marketing and analytics, but it is a per-user CRM expense with an annual contract behind it. The honest comparison is not which product is better - it is whether the thing you need to buy first is automation or a database of record.
| Feature | ActiveCampaign | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | 14-day trial with email sign-up, no card | Free Suite at $0 per user a month |
| Entry paid plan | Starter $15/month for 1,000 contacts, billed annually | Starter Suite $25 per user a month, monthly or annual billing |
| Mid plan | Plus $49/month for 1,000 contacts | Pro Suite $100 per user a month billed annually |
| Upper plan | Pro $79/month for 1,000 contacts | Core $195 and Advanced $395 per user a month billed annually |
| Top published plan | Enterprise $145/month for 1,000 contacts | Max $550 per user a month billed annually |
| What the price scales with | Contacts: the figures above are for 1,000 and move with your list | Seats: the figures are per user and do not move with your data |
| Marketing automation | Multi-step automation, email marketing and landing pages from the $15 plan | Dynamic email marketing and analytics in Starter Suite; wider marketing is a separate product |
| Contract terms | Annual billing on the published rates; a 30-day money-back promise is advertised | Most Salesforce products use annual contracts, per the pricing page FAQ |
Pick ActiveCampaign if
If the job is sending automated sequences, scoring engagement and turning behaviour into follow-up, ActiveCampaign does it from $15 a month at a thousand contacts and does not charge you per person who logs in. The ceiling is that it is a marketing tool with a light CRM attached: sales, service and reporting beyond the campaign will need something else. Budget by list size, because that is the axis the price actually moves on.
Pick Salesforce if
Salesforce is the system of record: leads, accounts, contacts and opportunities with AI that syncs activity automatically, Slack and Tableau bundled from Core, and a free tier to start on. You pay for that with per-seat pricing, an annual contract and a step from $25 to $195 once you need more than the Starter Suite. For a company where pipeline, forecasting and reporting must live in one auditable place, that is the correct purchase - and for a marketing team that only needs sequences, it is the wrong one.
No independent ratings, review scores or user quotes were collected for this pair; ActiveCampaign's own review count and rating shown on its pricing page are the vendor's claim and are not treated here as independent evidence. Prices were read on 2026-10-15 from salesforce.com/sales/pricing directly, and from the indexed text of activecampaign.com/pricing because that page renders its figures with JavaScript.
Because they scale on different axes. ActiveCampaign's $15, $49, $79 and $145 a month are for 1,000 contacts on annual billing and change as the list grows. Salesforce's $0, $25, $100, $195, $395 and $550 are per user a month and change as you hire. A five-person team on a small list and a one-person team on a large list reverse the answer.
Starter Suite lists dynamic email marketing and analytics alongside lead, account, contact and opportunity management, plus automatic syncing of emails, events and contacts. Marketing automation beyond that - journeys, segmentation at scale, cross-channel campaigns - is sold as separate Salesforce products, which is where ActiveCampaign's $15 plan competes.
ActiveCampaign, on these published figures: its listed rates are already for 1,000 contacts and do not charge per person, while Salesforce would bill two Starter Suite seats at $25 each, $50 a month. You should re-check ActiveCampaign's rate for 5,000 contacts on its own selector, since that is the number the list size will actually produce.
Salesforce does: a Free Suite at $0 per user a month. ActiveCampaign publishes a 14-day trial reachable by email sign-up with no credit card, plus a 30-day money-back promise on paid plans, but no permanent free tier.
Salesforce's pricing page FAQ states most of its products use annual contracts, though Starter Suite can be purchased monthly or annually from the trial. ActiveCampaign presents its published rates as billed annually and advertises a 30-day refund if you are not satisfied, which is the softer of the two commitments.
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