ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo: per-profile pricing, event APIs and Stripe sync for SaaS
Klaviyo is the cheaper of the two between 1,000 and 10,000 profiles when you compare it with ActiveCampaign Plus: $100 against $145 at 5,000, $150 against $189 at 10,000. At 25,000 profiles Klaviyo lists $400 and ActiveCampaign Plus $389. The price is not the interesting difference for a SaaS team. The way each handles billing and product events is: Klaviyo through an Events API you call, ActiveCampaign through a built-in Stripe sync plus its own event tracking.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Pick Klaviyo if your engineers will send events to an API anyway, you want a free plan for a beta, and your list sits under 25,000. Pick ActiveCampaign if you want Stripe subscriptions to flow into contacts without writing a handler, or if sales needs pipeline add-ons next to the email. On ActiveCampaign, build trial and failed-payment flows on Plus or above, because Starter stops each automation at 5 actions.
Monthly cost at six list sizes
Klaviyo's column is the email plan from its pricing calculator, priced by active profiles, read 7 October 2026. ActiveCampaign's columns are its contact-selector readouts for the email plan on annual billing, the same day. Klaviyo's readout does not state a billing term, so treat the comparison as list prices rather than a contract quote.
| Profiles / contacts | Klaviyo (emails included) | AC Starter | AC Plus | Klaviyo minus Plus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | $20 (5,000) | not read | not read | n/a |
| 1,000 | $30 (10,000) | $15 | $49 | −$19 |
| 2,500 | $60 (25,000) | $39 | $95 | −$35 |
| 5,000 | $100 (50,000) | $79 | $145 | −$45 |
| 10,000 | $150 (100,000) | $149 | $189 | −$39 |
| 25,000 | $400 (250,000) | $391 | $389 | +$11 |
At 5,000 profiles the $45 monthly difference adds up to $540 over a year. ActiveCampaign's plans send up to 10 times the contact limit, the same ratio as Klaviyo's included emails, so the sending caps match. Sources: klaviyo.com/pricing and activecampaign.com/pricing.
What a free beta looks like on each
Klaviyo's free plan has a ceiling you can plan around: up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages. A beta of 250 people receiving two emails a month uses exactly 250 × 2 = 500 sends, so there is no room for a third message. ActiveCampaign has no free plan, only a free trial, and its cheapest paid plan is Starter at $15 for 1,000 contacts, with 1 user and 5 actions per automation.
How each takes Stripe billing events
Klaviyo's route splits into two. Its Stripe integration, set up with Stripe webhooks, is charge- and invoice-based, and its help pages list out-of-the-box flow triggers for failed payments, issued invoices, refunds and successful payments. Klaviyo's developer guide for subscription platforms recommends sending your own server-side events for Started Subscription, Updated Subscription and Canceled Subscription, plus profile properties such as an active-subscriber flag and a next renewal date. In practice a SaaS maps Stripe's customer.subscription.deleted or invoice.payment_failed to an Events API call. Klaviyo community answers add a gotcha worth knowing: events without an email on the Stripe customer do not sync, because Klaviyo identifies people by email.
ActiveCampaign's help article describes a sync of customers, invoices, charges, checkout sessions and subscriptions, with a "Stripe event received" start trigger and recurring-payment triggers when you sync subscriptions. It notes that the Invoice event has no payment-status filter, and it publishes a recipe called "Stripe: Invoice Payment Failed Follow-up".
So the fork is clear. If your team will write a webhook handler anyway, Klaviyo's model is flexible and cheaper at mid-size lists. If you would rather have a connection screen than a handler, ActiveCampaign's sync is closer to that.
Events from your own app
Klaviyo's POST /api/events carries a metric name, a profile identifier (email, phone or ID) and properties, with an optional unique ID for deduplication and a backfill flag, and the same call can create or update the profile (Klaviyo Events API). Once the metric exists, a flow can use it as a trigger. When an event is flagged as backfill, flows that would otherwise trigger on it do not fire, which is exactly what you want when importing history.
ActiveCampaign's Event Tracking works differently. You turn it on, whitelist event names if you want to use them in automations, and post form-encoded data with your account ID and event key; its help article says the event is only recorded when the contact already exists. The "Event is recorded" trigger is listed for Plus and above. For a signup that arrives and an event that follows a second later, that ordering needs a guard in your code.
Moving a list
- Export profiles with consent status. Klaviyo bills on active profiles, so leave out long-dormant addresses and re-engage them separately.
- Map custom properties to fields on the new side before import, including plan name, trial end date and billing status.
- Rebuild flows from your plan on paper and give each a clear exit condition, such as "payment succeeded".
- Authenticate the sending domain on the new platform and warm up with your most engaged segment first.
Choosing
Klaviyo is the cheaper tool across the middle of the list-size range, and it fits teams that treat email as another event consumer in their stack. ActiveCampaign is the better fit when subscription state in Stripe needs to be a first-class field in the contact record, and when you want a CRM add-on later. If the numbers are close, count engineer hours: a handler you write once costs less than a plan difference only if you have the time to build and maintain it.
Related reading: Customer.io vs Klaviyo, Mailchimp vs Klaviyo, Iterable vs Klaviyo, tools for developers and the comparison hub.
ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo: common questions
Is Klaviyo cheaper than ActiveCampaign for a SaaS list?
Up to 10,000 profiles, yes, against ActiveCampaign Plus: $30 against $49 at 1,000, $100 against $145 at 5,000 and $150 against $189 at 10,000. At 25,000 the order flips, with Klaviyo at $400 and Plus at $389. Against ActiveCampaign Starter, which lists $15 at 1,000 and $149 at 10,000, Klaviyo costs more but Starter limits each automation to 5 actions.
Does Klaviyo's Stripe integration cover subscriptions?
Klaviyo's help material describes it as charge- and invoice-based, with out-of-the-box triggers for failed payments, issued invoices, refunds and successful payments. Subscription lifecycle events such as started, updated and canceled are described in Klaviyo's developer guide as custom events your server sends through the Events API. ActiveCampaign's help article describes a sync that includes subscriptions directly.
What does Klaviyo's free plan include?
According to its pricing page: up to 250 active profiles, 500 email sends a month and $5 of mobile messages a month. That is enough for a private beta. A 250-person waitlist emailed twice a month uses the whole 500-send allowance.
Which handles events from my own product better?
Both accept them. Klaviyo's Create Event endpoint takes a metric, a profile identifier and properties, can create the profile if it does not exist, and offers a unique ID for deduplication. ActiveCampaign's event tracking posts form-encoded data to a tracking endpoint, and the event is only written if the contact already exists.