ActiveCampaign vs MailerLite: the cost of CRM depth, and what a free plan and EU storage buy

Price by list size, with the billing basis labeled

MailerLite's figures are the monthly-billing prices its calculator showed on 7 October 2026; ActiveCampaign's are annual-billing monthly amounts read the same day. That mismatch favors ActiveCampaign slightly, since MailerLite takes 10% off yearly billing. Plus minus Power is the closest like-for-like gap, because both lift automation limits.

At 5,000 the gap of $76 a month is $912 a year; at 25,000 the $150 gap is $1,800 a year. MailerLite's page also shows the 500-subscriber entry points, $12 for Comfort and $25 for Power on monthly billing, or $10.80 and $22.50 on yearly billing. Sources: mailerlite.com/pricing and activecampaign.com/pricing.

Free plan, send limits and what Comfort caps

MailerLite's free tier is generous for a beta: up to 250 subscribers, 2 seats and 2,500 emails a month. Comfort gives 10 times the ceiling of your subscriber tier in monthly emails, so a 10,000-subscriber tier allows 100,000 sends, and its plan card lists 50 automations. Power drops the email cap and lists unlimited automations and unlimited seats. ActiveCampaign Starter and Plus both cap sends at 10 times your contact limit; Pro is 12 times.

The cheap route on MailerLite is therefore Comfort, as long as 50 automations are enough, which is a large allowance for any one product. The cheap route on ActiveCampaign is Starter, which allows 5 actions per automation and one user, and that limit is the first thing a trial sequence runs into.

A worked case: a product with 5,000 subscribers sends six emails each a month, which is 30,000 sends. Comfort's cap at the 5,000 tier is 10 × 5,000 = 50,000, so $49 covers it, and Power at $69 is only needed above 50,000 sends, beyond 50 automations or beyond Comfort's 3 seats. That makes the Comfort-versus-Power choice a $20 monthly decision, while the move to ActiveCampaign Plus at the same list size adds $145 − $49 = $96 over Comfort.

Data location and consent paperwork

MailerLite's pricing page says its data storage center is located in the European Union and has an ISO 27001 information security certificate, and that it has the controls needed for GDPR personal data processing. ActiveCampaign provides a Data Processing Addendum template and its readout does not state a hosting region. For an EU-based SaaS whose lawyer asks where subscriber data sits, that difference can settle the choice before price does.

CRM depth and SaaS billing events

MailerLite is a list-and-automation tool with landing pages, digital products and bookings. Its automation triggers work on subscriber changes, such as joining a group or an e-commerce purchase. ActiveCampaign adds contact-level CRM structure: pipelines and sales engagement as add-ons, goals, lead scoring inside the pipelines add-on and custom objects on Enterprise.

On Stripe, the two tools do different jobs. MailerLite's Stripe integration lets you sell one-time or recurring products, add the buyer to a group on purchase and run an "action after cancel" for recurring products, such as removing them from a group. That suits a paid newsletter or a course. It does not read subscriptions billed by your own app. MailerLite's webhooks, listed in its developer docs, leave MailerLite, for example on subscriber creation, unsubscribe or group changes, and they retry three more times after 10, 100 and 1000 seconds. ActiveCampaign's help article describes a sync from Stripe of customers, invoices, charges, checkout sessions and subscriptions, with a start trigger for Stripe events.

For a SaaS billed through Stripe Billing in your own app, MailerLite can still work: your server writes a plan field or a group such as "past-due" through the API when Stripe fires invoice.payment_failed, and an automation reacts. That is code you maintain, where ActiveCampaign's version is a configuration screen.

Switching either way

1. Export subscribers with groups or tags and custom fields, and keep each person's unsubscribe status.
2. On MailerLite, groups replace tags and segments replace saved searches, so plan the mapping before you import.
3. Import unsubscribed addresses as unsubscribed, rebuild the three revenue flows (trial welcome, trial ending, failed payment), and run both tools on a small cohort for a billing cycle.
4. Authenticate the sending domain on the new platform and keep the old DNS records until a week of clean sending.

Deciding

The saving from MailerLite is real and grows with the list: $720 a year at 10,000 and $1,800 at 25,000 against Plus. Take it if your needs are campaigns, onboarding sequences, landing pages and group-based segmentation, and if EU storage matters. Pay for ActiveCampaign when the CRM, the Stripe sync or conditional automation are things you will actually use in the next twelve months.

Related reading: Mailchimp vs MailerLite, MailerLite vs Brevo, Customer.io vs MailerLite, tools for B2B SaaS and the comparison hub.