ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and automation platform for organizations that need newsletters, segmented supporter journeys, forms, CRM-style contact tools, and behavior-based automation. It is especially useful when a nonprofit has outgrown simple email blasts and wants more personalized follow-up.
- Type
- Software
- Monthly cost, 2,500 contacts
- $31.20Starter, billed yearly, after 20% nonprofit discount ($39 list)
- Nonprofit terms
- Not clearly required
- Last reviewed
- July 15, 2026
What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign can be a strong option for nonprofits that want to move beyond basic newsletters into segmented journeys, automated follow-up, and more personalized supporter communication. Use this page to decide whether ActiveCampaign fits your team’s communication maturity, what to verify before choosing a plan, and how to avoid building automations your staff cannot maintain.
Best For
Best for nonprofits that need advanced segmentation, automated welcome series, donor or volunteer nurture journeys, event follow-up, and targeted supporter communications. It fits teams with enough staff capacity to design, monitor, and maintain automation workflows instead of sending only occasional newsletters.
Where it stands out
ActiveCampaign includes A/B testing on every plan and connects to Donorbox and Donate2 for donor follow-up.
Good fit if: You want to automate donor journeys, such as welcome series and lapsed-donor follow-ups.
Watch for: No free plan; Starter limits each automation to 5 actions; every contact counts toward your plan, even unsubscribed ones.
Monthly cost, 2,500 contacts: $31.20 (Starter, billed yearly, after 20% nonprofit discount ($39 list))
Key Features
- Send newsletters, campaign emails, event follow-ups, and targeted supporter communications
- Build automation workflows for welcome series, donor journeys, volunteer onboarding, and re-engagement
- Segment audiences using lists, tags, forms, contact fields, behavior, and engagement activity
- Use CRM-style contact records, forms, landing pages, and integrations where they fit the nonprofit’s workflow
- Track campaign performance, automation results, engagement, unsubscribes, and list health over time
How It Fits
- Learning curve
- Basic campaigns are manageable, but advanced automation, segmentation, tagging, and CRM-style workflows require planning and regular maintenance.
- Setup timeModerate
- Expect time for list cleanup, consent fields, tags, forms, templates, automations, integrations, reporting, and staff training.
- Organization sizeGrowing nonprofits
- A better fit for teams that send regular communications and have enough audience activity to justify automation and segmentation.
- Technical skillModerate
- Someone should understand lists, tags, automations, forms, integrations, deliverability, unsubscribe rules, and reporting.
Before You Sign Up
Cost and access
This listing does not confirm a specific nonprofit discount for ActiveCampaign. Review current pricing, contact tiers, automation features, billing terms, and any available nonprofit or partner offers directly with ActiveCampaign before choosing a plan.
Eligibility and availability
Availability, billing terms, compliance requirements, data processing terms, integrations, and plan access may vary by country and organization. Confirm whether ActiveCampaign supports your email consent process, CRM integration, donation platform, and data export needs before committing.
Check before you apply
- Whether your nonprofit needs advanced automation, or whether a simpler newsletter tool would be easier to maintain
- How contact tiers, user limits, automation access, CRM features, and billing terms affect your total cost
- Who will manage list hygiene, consent fields, tags, automations, templates, deliverability, and unsubscribe compliance
- Whether ActiveCampaign integrates well with your donation platform, CRM, website forms, event tools, and analytics setup
- How you will avoid over-automating supporter communication or sending irrelevant messages to donors and volunteers