ActiveCampaign Reviews 1,376

This platform is a scam
They force you to pay until the year of the subscription completes, even after you finish and ask to cancel the account and the plan, they still charge you.
So we contacted them to cancel the plan because the button of cancellation is not working!
Then they confirm the plan cancellation, the plan was still active and charging us for 4 months
Every month we contacted them to cancel the plan, and they refunded the amount and confirmed that it had been canceled, but it hasn't.
They still charged us 4 months after canceling the plan.
At the end, we contacted them 5 times to cancel it, and until now, it is still active

Truly awful customer service.

My subscription expires TOMORROW (a Tuesday).
I've been trying since last FRIDAY to find out what a monthly plan would cost, vs. the annual plan I'm currently on (annual plan having a special discount).

Since my plan was soon expiring, I also wanted to know by what EXACT US Central time I would have to downgrade, if I chose to do that.

The monthly plan cost info is available nowhere in my account, so I was forced to go to customer service for an answer.

This was my exact question:

"please advise whether it's possible for me to switch to monthly payment for my pro plan and if so, what would the exact monthly cost be, and how and by what day and time in US central time would I need to make the switch, if I decided to do that?"

WHAT HAPPENED:

- Friday: I pose my question in chat help. AI bot "ACE" is zero help. I ask for an agent, who I'm told will arrive in 2-3 minutes. No one arrives in 12 minutes and it's after midnight, so I leave my email address and exit the chat.

- Saturday: (~4 hours later) the live agent's email response FAILS TO ANSWER ANY PART OF MY QUESTION.

This was live human "PK's" exact reply: "I understand that you’d like to downgrade your plan from Professional Annual to Professional Monthly. To assist you more effectively, may I ask the reason for your decision to switch from the annual plan to the monthly plan? Your feedback is greatly appreciated. Please note that any downgrade will take effect from your next billing cycle. Also, keep in mind that downgrading or removing features from your plan may affect your current discount, which could be adjusted or reduced accordingly."

This reply? Literally worse than useless.

- Saturday: (a few hours later) I reply to their email, pointing out that NONE of my questions had been answered. This was my exact reply:

"I haven't made a decision. I have to have all the information. Sadly, you've provided exactly zero information that I asked for. Please carefully answer every question I asked."

- Sunday: 14 hours later, STILL NO RESPONSE. I email them AGAIN, expressing my deep disturbance at their lack of accurate, relevant response and giving them till 5pm US Central Time to reply. (The company is located in US Central time zone.)

- Monday: 3:33pm less than 90 minutes before the deadline. STILL NO RESPONSE. I go back to their live chat and have the same problem with "ACE" AI bot. I ask for a human. I get one, but again I get "answers" that DON'T ANSWER MY QUESTION. I have to pull teeth to get a simple, straightforward answer to this very basic question.

It shouldn't have taken 4 days and more than 40 minutes over 6 separate interactions, to get one simple, basic answer that should be available right in my account's billing section.

Truly horrible customer service.

I’ve been a customer of ActiveCampaign for quite some time and decided to add the WhatsApp add-on. Unfortunately, this add-on never worked for me. That can happen, but what followed is absolutely unacceptable.

You cannot cancel this add-on yourself — only ActiveCampaign can do it for you. I have tried to contact them for 2 months to cancel my subscription, but they either do not respond or simply end the conversation without providing any solution. Meanwhile, they keep charging you.

As a result, I have already paid more than €500 for an upgrade that has never worked and that I’ve been trying to cancel from the start. Now they casually tell me that I won’t receive any refund. My account has not been downgraded, my subscription is still active, and no action is being taken at all.

It honestly feels like this is being done on purpose so I will be charged again next month. It is extremely unprofessional and shows a complete lack of customer support. I am absolutely not happy with this and based on my experience, I would not recommend their service to anyone.

I’ve just wasted almost a week trying to get ActiveCampaign’s Stripe automation to work – and it’s honestly hard to describe how bad this has been.

Their own docs and templates clearly suggest you can trigger automations from Stripe events like “recurring payment created” or “invoice payment failed.” That’s the whole reason we chose the platform. I spent days setting it up, importing their templates, connecting Stripe with a secret key, and talking to four different support reps who each gave different, wrong answers – including one who literally told me to “just set the trigger to Any” instead of fixing the actual issue.

Only after all that back and forth do they finally admit the feature doesn’t even exist on the plan they sold us – it’s locked behind the Pro plan, which of course they conveniently mention after everything’s set up.

So:
– Their docs are misleading,
– Their support team has no idea what their own product does,
– And their “solutions” are just copy-paste replies that waste your time.

I’ve been using ActiveCampaign for years now and it’s been great. The automations save me so much time and help me stay on top of leads and customers. It’s easy to set up emails and track what’s working. Support has been solid too whenever I needed help. Definitely worth it!

I always look for great tech support, which is missing from so many platforms these days. Active Campaign has been good in that respect. It's a program with many capabilities I'm not taking advantage of.

They did some "quiet billing" after we thought we had cancelled, and hit us with the terms and conditions when we asked for a one month refund even though it was clear we hadn't used it for months. We are now with HubSpot and it is WAY better. I would recommend going with HubSpot from the start.

We have been locked out of our account for 4-months as the web designer who built our website has went out of business and ActiveCampaign will not provide us with access to our account to allow us to access the account and cancel the subscription, that we've never required in any event, yet they continue to charge us and have played email tennis for 4-months

I've been a customer for about 6 years, running a social impact business. In the beginning Active Campaign was really wonderful for what I needed. However, as a small business their fees have increased exorbitantly, while they add features I do not need. I just need what I needed at the beginning, for the same or a reasonable increase. Prices have more than quadrupled and what is hard is I feel locked in with all the automations. I wish they would stop improving and charging more, but keep the foundational functionality and reasonable pricing. Please let me know alternatives!

ActiveCampaign combines both the CRM side of things with email automations. The email automations and newsletter send-outs work really well. It's easy to make mobile friendly templates, customizations are easy, etc. The CRM side of things are a bit limited, where everything is connected to "contacts", and the connection to an "Account" is not as easy to achieve through their API. The biggest gripe, however, that we have as a growing company, and this is the reason for the 2-star rating, is that it is an absolute nightmare to get more licenses. So if you are a growing company, and you are adding people to your team, and more people need access to ActiveCampaign - this is a right pain to achieve. It has now been more than 3 weeks (!) of me asking to buy 3 more licenses, and I still have not got these or gotten an invoice for them. Needless to say, this is incredibly frustrating and time-consuming.

Had an excellent experience reviewing our current plan with ActiveCampaign (Thomas B). He took the time to understand how we are using the platform and suggested a modified plan to align with our size and marketing goals. He thoroughly answered questions on improving data analyses, automations, and other AI questions. Although it sometimes feels like it's hard to get through to a live person for help, when we can set something up, we have always been impressed with the outcome and quality of their staff.

Horrible business and product. Jacked up prices unreasonably. Unreliable product that is down alot. This is what private equity does to a company. Cancelling once my contract is up.

Poor experience. Cannot reach anybody to get a professional feedback, because the KI Support does not help at all. We pay a lot of money every month for this system and cannot get a person to speak to - I cannot recommend that platform, due to these experiences.

We’ve been using ActiveCampaign for about two years now at our branding agency, mainly for automations, CRM, and email campaigns. It’s a user-friendly platform that makes it easy to build your own funnels and automations. The integration of our entire marketing system — from downloads to tags and campaigns — works seamlessly.

What I really appreciate is the accuracy and responsiveness of their support team. Questions are answered quickly and clearly, which I find crucial for this type of software.

The reason I’m not giving five stars is that the platform can be a bit slow at times and occasionally freezes. Also, the pricing feels relatively high, especially for smaller teams.

All in all, it’s a powerful and complete system with plenty of options to make your marketing work for you. Definitely worth recommending, and if you’re serious about taking your marketing to the next level, the price is absolutely worth it.

ActiveCampaign has truly simplified the way I manage my marketing and communication. The automation features are incredibly powerful yet easy to set up, saving me hours of manual work every week. I love how flexible the platform is, from designing forms to segmenting contacts and building complete customer journeys, everything feels intuitive and professional.

The reporting tools also help me understand exactly what’s working and where to improve. It’s reliable, fast, and keeps evolving with new features that actually make sense. A great all-in-one solution for anyone serious about email marketing and automation.

They gave me great support. I actually don't use them anymore because I don't need a software that robust right now, but when I was with them, they gave me excellent customer support. I would definitely work with them again.

This company is an absolute joke. They silently charge you after I've submitted a cancellation of my subscription.

Please don't even consider using this tool. They're heartless.

Services are acceptable but the rising costs are becoming too expensive, prompting me to seek alternatives.

the worst possible CRM that i've ever used. constantly timeout, unable to login, unable to send campaign. and many more issues. this has happened since the first day i started using it.

I wish i can give this a 0 star. I have never seen a CRM that can get timeout every other week.

I’ve been a customer of ActiveCampaign for over 8 years.

In the early days, it was great.

Back then, it was the best alternative on the market for me, offering far more features at competitive prices. The email automations especially impressed me, and I really appreciated that prices for existing customers remained stable during the first years. I also gave a lot of feedback and saw that some of it was actually implemented. The platform was evolving with the customer in mind. Unfortunately, in recent years, this has gone in the opposite direction.

Now, things keep getting worse.

Pricing:

For several years, ActiveCampaign has been steadily increasing prices — even for existing customers. Depending on the plan, that quickly adds up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year. For example, I used to pay just under $2,000 annually for a plan with 25,000 contacts. After the most recent price hike in 2025, this plan shot up to nearly $7,800 per year!

Yes, as a loyal customer, I was offered a 69% discount, bringing the price down to around $2,400. But when I asked if this discount was permanent, support told me it couldn’t be guaranteed. For small businesses, that kind of financial uncertainty is a big problem. And switching to another provider is far from easy.

The plans themselves also feel out of touch. They’re increasingly packed with options I don’t need (buzzword: “AI”) — but still have to pay for. On top of that, the platform is becoming bloated and less user-friendly.

Closed system:

You can export your contacts, but that’s it. There’s no way to export emails or automations. In other words: all the resources you’ve built up over the years are essentially locked in if you want to move away.

Technical issues:

Almost every week, there are outages or disruptions. To their credit, ActiveCampaign does proactively inform users by email about issues and fixes. But the platform’s performance still suffers noticeably.

Development away from the customer:

It feels like the focus is on releasing new features as quickly as possible, without properly integrating them. For instance, a new email editor was introduced — but it cannot edit emails created in the classic editor. The classic editor is still available, but it hasn’t been improved in years and is buggy. Autosave no longer works, for example.

So you’re stuck: either rebuild all automations and rewrite hundreds of emails in the new editor, or keep using the old one and risk losing your work (with no support). Personally, I now work with a simple text editor on the side, copying my drafts there regularly so nothing gets lost when the platform crashes. Not exactly what you’d expect from a service that costs thousands per year. And while there’s no migration tool to move old emails into the new editor, they keep rolling out more unnecessary AI features.

Conclusion:

If I had to decide today, I would not choose ActiveCampaign again — especially not at these prices. There are plenty of competitors that offer the essential features in fair, well-structured plans.