Brevo vs. ActiveCampaign: cost, automation, and who each one fits

Ecommerce marketers should look to Brevo for storing a large list and sending infrequently due to paying for email volume. ActiveCampaign’s contact-based pricing is higher at the same list size, but with more sends included.

What does that mean? That you pick based on how often you email when cost is the important factor. Brevo (Sendinblue up to May 2023) stores 500,000 contacts for $32/month with 20,000 sends. ActiveCampaign supports 10–15 emails per contact.

The two also diverge in ecommerce fit, and they have plan feature restrictions and add-ons that change the value proposition.

Below: a Brevo vs. ActiveCampaign comparison of costs per 1,000, 2,500, 10,000, and 20,000 contacts, plans, features, and use cases.

Brevo or ActiveCampaign: the short answer

ActiveCampaign is suited to ecommerce and a list that you message frequently, such as 10 times each month. Brevo is a cheaper pick for storing thousands of contacts and sending to them infrequently, such as two or three times each month.

Table accurate as of September 2026. * denotes plan-dependent.

Brevo and ActiveCampaign pricing comparison

We’ve compared Brevo’s Starter and Standard plans with ActiveCampaign’s Starter and Plus plans below as of September 2026.

Prices are based on monthly billing without discounts. Brevo has 10% off annual plans, and ActiveCampaign has 20% off.

Brevo’s Starter tier at 20,000 sends holds up to 500,000 contacts. Both 10,000 and 20,000 contacts are inside that cap, so the price and send allowance don’t change. That’s what makes Brevo such good value for large lists.

Difference at 1,000 contacts

There’s a $2/month difference in Brevo’s favor for 1,000 contacts when comparing their entry-level plans: $17 versus $19/month.

ActiveCampaign costs $19 for Starter, $59 for Plus, $89 for Pro, and $159/month for Enterprise at 1,000 contacts. The number of emails you can send per month is limited to 10x, 10x, 12x, and 15x the number of contacts per plan, respectively.

Storing 1,000 contacts in Brevo costs $17 for Starter, $35 for Standard, or $499/month for Professional. Brevo’s Starter and Standard plans store 1,500 contacts at those tiers and have a 10,000 monthly email volume. Professional plans store 2,000,000 contacts.

ActiveCampaign’s lowest tier holds 1,000 contacts, so 1,000 is the smallest list the two can be compared at directly. Brevo starts at 500 contacts, but because it prices on sends rather than contacts, a smaller list only cuts your bill if you also drop to a smaller send allowance.

Difference at 10,000 contacts

Storing 10,000 contacts increases Brevo’s cost advantage to $157/month. Brevo comes in at $32/month to ActiveCampaign’s $189/month.

Because ActiveCampaign charges for contacts, your plan price increases up those bands, and you pay to store your list rather than contact it. Brevo works the other way; you pay to contact them, with generous storage included for cheap email marketing.

What factors can increase your bill?

ActiveCampaign’s segmentation levels and Brevo’s Professional-only ecommerce features are the most likely to push you up a plan. Both also sell add-ons that sit outside your base price.

There are four segmentation levels in ActiveCampaign: limited, standard, advanced, and premium, which you move up with a higher plan. Plan-based restrictions also apply to the AI workspace, business goals, conditional content, and premium ecommerce integrations.

The Enhanced CRM, SMS, WhatsApp, and custom reporting add-ons are only available from the Plus plan, so the entry-level Starter plan is a no-go if you want those.

Brevo’s Starter plan restricts automations to 2,000 contacts and only allows one user. Those are lifted in Standard, but only the Professional plan has email frequency management, dynamic coupons, AI product recommendations, and contact scoring.

Brevo vs. ActiveCampaign for online stores

Even though Brevo is cheaper than ActiveCampaign for a large list, ActiveCampaign’s ecommerce-first toolkit has more capabilities below $100/month. Brevo Professional at $499/month has the complete feature set for online stores.

Features accurate as of September 2026.

Add-ons, SMS, and transactional email

The sales pipeline

Brevo has a sales CRM with pipelines in all plans. Sales Free has 50 open deals. Sales Essentials is $31/month per seat, and Sales Advanced is $65/month per seat, with unlimited open deals, stage rules, and automation capabilities.

ActiveCampaign requires the Enhanced CRM add-on starting at $77/month. It has two options: Pipelines Enhanced CRM for deals and lead scoring, and Sales Engagement Enhanced CRM from $125/month, with automated 1:1 email and win probability.

SMS and WhatsApp

Brevo SMS is available in all plans via prepaid SMS credits that don’t expire. SMS pricing starts at $1.09 for 100 message credits, depending on volume and destination country.

ActiveCampaign has an SMS add-on available in Plus plans and above. It starts at $19/month for 1,000 additional SMS credits. Unused credits don’t roll over.

WhatsApp is a Professional plan feature in Brevo. Credits don’t expire. They’re sold in prepaid bundles, in packs of 100, from $3.27 for the United States/Canada.

ActiveCampaign’s WhatsApp messaging is available from the Plus plan. Credits expire monthly, with prices starting at $79/month for 1,000 messaging credits and 5,000 contacts.

Transactional email

Brevo supports transactional email in all plans through an application programming interface (API) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Transactional emails count toward your monthly email volume.

ActiveCampaign requires a paid add-on for transactional email regardless of your base marketing plan. Prices start at $15/month for 10,000 transactional email sends.

Using Brevo and ActiveCampaign: review

I signed up for ActiveCampaign’s 14-day free trial and Brevo’s Standard plan and built an email and automation in each. Plus, I reviewed each tool’s AI assistant, automation builder, and content generator.

Building an email in each

Brevo’s builder is easier to navigate, but ActiveCampaign’s AI templates save the most time.

Brevo has 50+ pre-built email templates, including ready-to-use and basic designs. The basic designs are plain text. Uploading brand assets, such as a logo, to the brand library pulls those into any email templates edited.

Its drag-and-drop email builder places blocks and sections inside a left-hand sidebar with large icons to make them distinguishable. Finding the right elements took seconds.

ActiveCampaign has 250+ pre-built email templates and also generates branded templates with AI automatically when viewing the library. Additionally, when selecting a pre-built template, there are options to edit in the email editor or with AI.

AI templates are ActiveCampaign’s most helpful feature for designing emails. They pull in branding and images from your website and match the tone of voice.

The editor is drag-and-drop, with a right-hand sidebar menu for content that lists elements in series. It is not as visually understandable as Brevo’s editor because you have to look further down the page to find elements, and the icons are smaller.

Building an automation in each

I found that building an automation in ActiveCampaign is faster and feels more collaborative than in Brevo because of the Active Intelligence tool.

ActiveCampaign has AI to build automations or 950+ automation templates (it calls these recipes) to build from scratch. The fastest route is the AI builder.

I asked it to create an automation for “abandoned cart visitors who added $500 or more to their carts.” It created the sequence in 11 seconds and presented it for editing. The trigger, emails, and delays were built without any additional edits needed.

Building an automation from scratch opens an editor with blank elements that say Add a start trigger and Add contacts to this automation, which helped me understand what to do next. I clicked the + symbol to add channels, delays, if/else logic, and more.

Building an automation in Brevo can be done from scratch, with assistance from AI, or with one of the 15 pre-built templates.

I asked Brevo’s AI automation builder to do the same as ActiveCampaign: “create an automation for abandoned cart visitors who added $500 or more to their carts,” but it failed to produce what I asked and gave me a blank canvas instead, so I switched to the pre-built template.

The pre-built abandoned cart template had all steps filled in by default. I only had to complete a guided setup for the trigger, delay, and email.

The AI tools in each

Brevo and ActiveCampaign both include AI in every plan, but ActiveCampaign offers its advanced features at a lower tier.

Brevo’s Aura AI is available in all plans. It includes four agents, one of which (sales agent) is available with the cheapest sales package add-on. Those agents filter into the chatbot and standalone features, such as an automation builder.

ActiveCampaign’s AI is called Active Intelligence. It’s also available in all plans, with restrictions to some features depending on tier.

I tested the AI assistant, automation builder, and email content generator in both tools for this Brevo vs. ActiveCampaign comparison.

AI assistant

Brevo’s Aura AI is available in an Ask AI button at the top of the dashboard for questions, support, feature clarifications, and other queries.

I used it at least 15 times during my review to discover information. It returned answers in around five seconds, with links to resources and steps.

Active Intelligence in ActiveCampaign is available as a button in the dashboard. It loads as a dashboard overlay and links to fewer resources for most questions, serving up more steps than Brevo’s Aura AI for creation-based queries.

Automation builder

ActiveCampaign’s AI automation builder uses natural language inside a conversational tool. I prompted it for a “Welcome series of three emails for purchasers over $200,” and it delivered the flow with a detailed breakdown of the triggers and series.

Brevo’s AI builder for automations uses a Guided mode with a dropdown selection for actions, triggers, and channels. It also has a toggle to Write your own.

I entered the request “Create an automation that [sends] a message via [email] when [customers buy over $200].” It took 13 seconds and generated an automation with the correct trigger and an email element, but left me to add the delay between them.

Email content generator

ActiveCampaign’s AI content generator lives inside the email editor, or it’s available within Active Intelligence during AI campaign creation. I asked Active Intelligence to rewrite an entire email to be more conversational, and it edited four blocks with good copy.

Brevo’s AI content generator is available in the email editor. Clicking any heading or text block loads a floating settings bar with a Use AI button. The AI is conversational, so I asked it to make the heading longer and more conversational.

Choosing between Brevo and ActiveCampaign

If automation is why you’re switching

ActiveCampaign’s Plus or Pro plans are worth budgeting for to use AI-generated automations, segments, email templates, and forms in your marketing.

If you have a large list you email occasionally

Brevo stores up to 500,000 contacts from $32/month in Starter or $69/month in Standard, then up to 2,000,000 in Professional plans at $499/month. Select a send volume that’s realistic for your list, and that’s your price.

If you need a sales pipeline as well as marketing

Brevo is the lowest-cost option. Even free plans have a CRM with 50 open deals and one sales pipeline, and its sales package add-ons cost less than ActiveCampaign’s.

If you run an online store

ActiveCampaign is better value below $100/month, with pop-ups, AI segments, and coupons available well below Brevo’s $499/month Professional plan for those.

What if neither Brevo nor ActiveCampaign fits?

Omnisend is an ecommerce-first Brevo and ActiveCampaign alternative, with competitive contact-based pricing and access to core features in all plans.

Check out the table below comparing feature availability per plan as of September 2026 between Omnisend, Brevo, and ActiveCampaign.

FAQs