ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo: prices, billing and plan limits for online stores

ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo both send email and automated flows, and both connect to Shopify. ActiveCampaign sells marketing automation with an optional sales pipeline. Klaviyo sells email, SMS and service tools on one customer profile.

They differ most on who counts toward the bill, what the cheaper plans leave out, how you pay and how SMS is sold.

About our links: we earn a commission if you buy Omnisend through this page. ActiveCampaign and Klaviyo don't pay us. This guide compares what the vendors publish; we haven't run the two side by side.

Prices come from each vendor's pricing page on November 5, 2026, in USD, before introductory discounts.

Summary

	ActiveCampaign	Klaviyo
Free plan	None listed; 14-day trial, 100 sends	250 active profiles, 500 emails/mo
Price at 1,000 contacts	Starter $15.00/mo billed yearly, $19.00 billed monthly	$30.00/mo
Counts toward the bill	All contacts, on accounts since November 2025	Profiles that can be emailed
Email sends	10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise	10× profiles
SMS	Add-on, Plus and above	Add-on, from $15.00/mo
Sales pipeline	Add-on, Plus and above	Not on its pricing page
Shopify App Store	4.5 from 256 reviews	4.7 from 3,429 reviews

Price at eight list sizes

ActiveCampaign's prices are the monthly rates its pricing page shows for yearly billing. Klaviyo's are its email plan, billed monthly.

Contacts	ActiveCampaign Starter / Plus	Klaviyo email
1,000	$15.00 / $49.00	$30.00
2,500	$39.00 / $95.00	$60.00
5,000	$79.00 / $145.00	$100.00
10,000	$149.00 / $189.00	$150.00
15,000	$231.00 / $265.00	$350.00
20,000	$311.00 / $329.00	$375.00
25,000	$391.00 / $389.00	$400.00
50,000	Not offered / $609.00	$720.00

• Starter's lead shrinks. Billed yearly, it was half Klaviyo's monthly price at 1,000 contacts, but only $1.00 less at 10,000.
• Klaviyo jumps after 10,000. It went from $150.00 at 10,000 profiles to $350.00 at 15,000, then rose more slowly, to $375.00 at 20,000. ActiveCampaign rose less over the first step, to $231.00 on Starter and $265.00 on Plus.
• Starter stops at 25,000. At that size Plus was already $2.00 cheaper than Starter.

Yearly billing means paying for the year up front. Starter at 5,000 contacts comes to $948.00 a year. ActiveCampaign's pricing page only shows yearly rates. Its Shopify App Store listing shows monthly prices at 1,000 contacts: Starter $19.00, Plus $59.00, Pro $89.00 and Enterprise $159.00. We didn't find monthly rates for larger lists.

What each plan leaves out

Klaviyo has one email plan, priced by profiles. Its App Store listing puts personalized product recommendations, send time optimization and predictive analytics on that plan. ActiveCampaign splits features across four levels, so its price table only makes sense next to this list.

Starter leaves out:

• automations with more than five actions
• landing pages and site messages
• product catalog blocks and coupons
• ecommerce and revenue reports
• generative AI
• historical Shopify sync
• the SMS and sales pipeline add-ons

Plus adds all of those, but still leaves out revenue attribution, conversion tracking, predictive sending and conditional content. Both Starter and Plus include one user.

Pro adds those, plus 12 sends per contact and three users. Pro is also where the Shopify Plus integration starts, so Shopify Plus stores should compare Pro's price, which was $79.00 at 1,000 contacts and $375.00 at 10,000.

For a store that wants product blocks, coupons and ecommerce reports in its emails, the fair comparison is usually Plus against Klaviyo, not Starter against Klaviyo.

Who counts toward the bill

This decides which price tier you land in, so check it before comparing prices.

ActiveCampaign's help center says that on accounts created on or after November 3, 2025, "all contacts, regardless of their list status" count toward your limit. It answers yes when asked whether unsubscribed, unconfirmed or bounced contacts count. Older accounts may differ by plan, and the Billing & Upgrade page shows which rule applies.

Its Shopify integration syncs customers who tick the "Accepts Marketing" box and those who don't, so a store's non-subscribers can use up contact allowance as well.

Klaviyo bills on active profiles, which it defines as any profile that can be emailed "regardless of consent status". That includes people added at checkout without subscribing, so non-subscribers can raise the bill here too. The difference is that suppressed profiles leave the count, and people who unsubscribe from email are suppressed by default.

Here's what that means for a store opening a new account, with 10,000 people it can email and 2,000 who unsubscribed. These are our calculations from the prices above:

• Klaviyo: 10,000 profiles, so $150.00 a month.
• ActiveCampaign: 12,000 contacts. Its price selector has no band between 10,000 and 15,000, so that's $231.00 on Starter or $265.00 on Plus.

You can avoid that on ActiveCampaign by archiving contacts. Archived contacts don't count toward the limit, but they're read-only, can't be messaged and are deleted after a year. You also have to wait 30 days before restoring one, and there's a monthly limit on how many you can archive.

What happens at the limits

ActiveCampaign contact limit: the limit doesn't rise on its own unless you turn on auto-upgrade. Without it, its help center says you can't send campaigns once you reach the limit, and automations skip their "Send an email" steps. To lower your limit, you contact its support team.

ActiveCampaign send limit: plans bought since June 2024 allow 10 to 15 sends per contact, depending on the level. Going over costs half a cent per email, and sending turns off for the month if the overage reaches three times your limit. It sends notices at 75%, 90% and 100% of your allowance.

Klaviyo profiles: you move up to a plan that fits your count at the end of the billing cycle. The plan doesn't move back down by itself. You can pick a lower tier that covers your active profiles, and it takes effect the next billing cycle.

Klaviyo sends: Klaviyo can cancel a campaign or skip messages when you reach your limit, and a canceled campaign doesn't restart when you upgrade. You can turn on automatic upgrades, and it offers flexible overages on some plans.

If you use either platform for order-related flows, turn on the automatic upgrade or watch your count closely, because both can stop sending.

SMS

ActiveCampaign sells SMS as an add-on for Plus and above. Its Shopify App Store listing shows SMS under Starter, but its pricing page and help center both exclude Starter, so we'd go by those.

Its pricing page doesn't list an SMS price; the help center points you to the Billing & Upgrade page. Unused credits don't roll over. Broadcast campaigns are listed for the US, UK and Australia. US senders must register for A2P 10DLC, and your first few messages go through a manual review that can take up to two business days.

Klaviyo's App Store listing shows SMS from $15.00 a month for up to 1,250 credits, carrier fees included. Its free plan includes $5.00 of mobile messages a month. Its help center lists SMS in the US, UK, Australia and many European countries. It has its own setup step: a US toll-free number has to pass carrier verification, and a rejected number can't send. We didn't find whether unused credits roll over.

If SMS matters to you, Klaviyo is the easier one to price before you sign up, because it publishes a starting price.

Shopify sync

ActiveCampaign's integration brings in orders, products, customers and abandoned carts, for logged-in customers and guests. Starter gets new data only, since historical sync starts on Plus. Abandoned carts can't be synced historically on any plan, and historical data doesn't trigger purchase automations.

Klaviyo says it syncs historical email subscribers during the first Shopify sync. Historical SMS subscribers don't come across automatically, so you upload those yourself.

Support and refunds

ActiveCampaign lists email and chat support on every plan, marked "Basic" on Starter and Plus and "Priority" on Pro and Enterprise. Contact migration is listed as a free service. A dedicated account team comes with Enterprise.

Klaviyo's free plan includes email support for the first 60 days, then the Help Center, Community and Academy. Its pricing FAQ lists chat with its support team, onboarding and agency partners among its support options.

ActiveCampaign advertises "see results in 30 days or get your money back". Its guarantee terms are narrower than that line suggests:

• only first-time paid customers qualify
• SMS and WhatsApp credits are excluded
• you have to cancel and request the refund within 30 days of purchase
• refunds are at ActiveCampaign's "sole discretion", and it can end the offer at any time

Its general refund policy says it doesn't provide partial or full refunds. On a yearly plan, read both first.

What else you get

ActiveCampaign leans toward sales and marketing together:

• pipelines, deals and lead scoring through the Pipelines add-on, from Plus
• landing pages and site messages, from Plus
• WhatsApp as an add-on
• more than 950 automation recipes and more than 1,000 integrations
• a connection to Claude and ChatGPT over MCP, listed on every plan

Klaviyo sells more store-facing products on the same customer profile, some with a free allowance:

• product reviews, from $25.00 a month for 250 orders
• a helpdesk and a self-service Customer Hub
• social marketing, WhatsApp and RCS
• Composer, an AI agent, at $20.00 a month with a smaller free allowance

A third option

If email cost is the main concern, Omnisend listed Standard at $44.00 for 2,500 contacts and $132.00 for 10,000 on November 3, and it doesn't bill unsubscribed contacts. SMS needs the Pro plan, which was $150.00 at 10,000 contacts, the same as Klaviyo's email plan. Product recommendations also need Pro, or an add-on on Standard. Our Omnisend vs Klaviyo guide has the details, and Klaviyo alternatives covers more tools.

Which one to pick

Our take, based on what each vendor publishes:

• Pick Klaviyo if you run a store and want product recommendations and SMS without working through plan levels, want to start free, or want reviews and a helpdesk on the same profile. Watch the price if your list is close to 10,000.
• Pick ActiveCampaign if you also run a sales process and want pipelines and deals next to your email, or if your list is 15,000 or more and Plus covers what you use. On a new account, count every contact before comparing, including unsubscribed ones.
• Consider ActiveCampaign Starter only if your automations are short and you don't need product blocks, coupons or ecommerce reports.
• Before you pay, export your contact list and count it under both rules. On a new ActiveCampaign account, unsubscribed and bounced contacts can change the answer.