ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit (Kit): a CRM-style automation suite against a creator-first list tool

Monthly price at four list sizes

These are the figures each pricing page showed on 7 October 2026. Kit quotes Creator and Pro at its yearly rate, and ActiveCampaign states "billed annually", so the basis matches. The last column is ActiveCampaign Plus minus Kit Creator, the closest pair on features because both include unlimited automations.

Kit Pro is $66 at 1,000 subscribers (with a first-year offer showing $50), $158 at 10,000 and $233 at 25,000. ActiveCampaign Pro is $79 at 1,000 and $375 at 10,000. Details: kit.com/pricing and activecampaign.com/pricing.

What the 10,000-subscriber gap buys

At 10,000 the monthly difference is $189 − $116 = $73, and across twelve months that is $876. At 25,000 it is $389 − $166 = $223, or $2,676 a year. Neither tool's pricing page gives a feature-for-feature match, so here is what the extra money covers on the ActiveCampaign side.

• Automation depth on cheaper tiers. ActiveCampaign Starter limits each automation to 5 actions, and Plus lifts that. Kit's Creator lists unlimited Visual Automations and unlimited sequences, which is why Creator is the fair comparison for Plus and not for Starter.
• CRM objects. ActiveCampaign's pricing page lists custom objects on Enterprise, deal pipelines as an add-on, and lead scoring inside that add-on. Kit's plan lists, as I read them, mention none of these and describe subscribers through tags, forms and segments.
• Seats. ActiveCampaign gives one user on Starter and Plus, three on Pro and five on Enterprise. Kit's Pro plan lists unlimited users.
• Selling inside the tool. Kit's free plan lists selling digital products and subscriptions. That helps a creator selling a course and does nothing for a SaaS product that bills through Stripe on its own pages.

Support, branding and the Pro tier

Kit's Creator plan lists removal of Kit branding, A/B tests on subject lines and round-the-clock email and chat support, so the $33 entry price is not a stripped-down plan. Pro, at $66 for 1,000 subscribers or $158 for 10,000, adds Subscriber Signals, unlimited users, deliverability reporting and a newsletter referral system. If a growth person and a founder both need logins, the step from Creator to Pro is $158 − $116 = $42 a month at 10,000 subscribers. On the ActiveCampaign side the same seat problem costs more: going from one user on Plus to three on Pro is $375 − $189 = $186 a month at 10,000 contacts.

The free plan, and where it ends

Kit's free plan is the strongest argument on this page for a small team. Up to 10,000 subscribers cost $0, with unlimited landing pages, forms and broadcasts. A waitlist of 8,000 people therefore costs nothing on Kit, while ActiveCampaign Starter at 7,500 contacts lists at $109 and has no free plan, only a trial. The catch is automation. The moment you want a welcome series, a trial-ending nudge or a reaction to a purchase, you need Creator, and the 14-day trial on Kit's paid plans needs no credit card.

Billing events in each tool

ActiveCampaign's Stripe help article describes a sync of Stripe customers, invoices, charges, checkout sessions and subscriptions into contacts, orders and recurring payments, with a "Stripe event received" start trigger. Its Event Tracking handles events from your own app, and the "Event is recorded" trigger is listed for Plus and above.

Kit's developer reference describes webhooks that leave Kit, such as when a subscriber is activated or a tag is added, and a purchases endpoint (Kit developer docs). That is a different shape: your server listens to Stripe, then tags the subscriber in Kit, for example "past-due" or "churned", and a Visual Automation reacts to the tag. It works, but you own the handler, its retries and its duplicate-event checks.

Moving from Kit to ActiveCampaign, or back

1. Export subscribers with their tags. Kit's pricing page promises free migrations into Kit; the other direction is a CSV export and import, with tags becoming ActiveCampaign tags or fields.
2. Carry unsubscribed and bounced addresses across as suppressed, never as active.
3. Rebuild forms and embed the new ones, because signup endpoints do not transfer.
4. Recreate sequences, and run the first send to a small segment while the old tool still sends to everyone else.

Which to pick

If your growth comes from writing, a podcast or a community, and billing state can be a tag, pick Kit and spend the difference elsewhere. If Stripe subscription state should segment the list and a person follows up with trials, pay for ActiveCampaign. Where you land in between, run both through one billing cycle with a small list before committing.

Related reading: ConvertKit vs Brevo, ConvertKit vs Drip, Mailchimp vs ConvertKit, tools for bootstrapped SaaS and the comparison index.