Encharge vs ActiveCampaign: SaaS flows with open seats, or a CRM-backed suite
At 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign Plus lists $189 a month and Encharge Growth $249, so the SaaS-specific tool costs $60 more at the entry tier and about $24 more at the second. What that buys you is unlimited team members, unlimited flows and a catalogue of twelve Stripe triggers; what ActiveCampaign gives for less is a built-in CRM, landing pages and conditional content, with a cap of one user on its Plus plan.
By Julian Pryor · Updated 7 Oct 2026
Short answer
Choose Encharge if your emails hang off trial, subscription and product events and several people need to build flows. Choose ActiveCampaign if you want a sales pipeline, landing pages and email in one product and can live with one to three seats at the lower tiers. At 25,000 contacts the two entry tiers cost exactly the same, $389 each, so by then the decision turns entirely on features and seats.
Four audience sizes, matched plans
Encharge Growth and ActiveCampaign Plus both allow 10 times the contact count in monthly sends. Encharge Premium and ActiveCampaign Pro both allow 12 times. Encharge's rows are monthly-billed slider readouts. ActiveCampaign's rows are its contact selector readouts, labelled billed annually, so read them as annual-billing rates set against Encharge's monthly ones. The first row compares the nearest sizes each vendor shows. Read on 7 Oct 2026.
| Audience | Encharge Growth | ActiveCampaign Plus | Encharge Premium | ActiveCampaign Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 (Encharge) and 2,500 (ActiveCampaign) | $99 ($79 billed yearly) | $95 | $159 ($129 billed yearly) | $149 |
| 5,000 | $179 | $145 | $269 | $205 |
| 10,000 | $249 | $189 | $399 | $375 |
| 25,000 | $389 | $389 | $649 | $629 |
ActiveCampaign's cheapest tier, Starter, reads $79 at 5,000 contacts, $149 at 10,000 and $391 at 25,000, and it is not offered above 25,000. It limits automations to 5 actions each and offers limited segmentation and no cross-channel marketing, so it is a newsletter tier rather than a lifecycle one. Encharge's pricing page lists overages at $100 for every 100,000 emails sent.
Why the same dollars buy different things
The seat rule is the difference most buyers underestimate. Encharge's two paid plans both list unlimited flows and unlimited team members. ActiveCampaign gives 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro and 5 on Enterprise. A product team that wants an engineer, a marketer and a support lead in the same workspace pays for ActiveCampaign Pro at 10,000 contacts ($375) while Encharge Growth ($249) already covers them. Taken together with the 5-action cap on Starter, ActiveCampaign's low prices come with real structure limits.
Encharge Premium is where its integrations sit: HubSpot, Salesforce, Segment, WooCommerce and Shopify connections, transactional email, API events with event-based segmentation, and custom objects. Growth lists Zapier, Stripe and Chargebee integrations, webhooks, the flow builder, behavior-based emails and free email verification. ActiveCampaign Enterprise at $589 for 10,000 contacts adds premium segmentation, custom objects, single sign-on and a dedicated account team.
Trials, renewals and payment events
- Encharge. Its Stripe integration page lists twelve triggers: trial started, trial ends, trial converted, trial expired, subscription activated, past due, reactivated, scheduled cancellation, cancelled, expanded, contracted, and new Stripe payment. It says historical billing data is imported when you connect and that billing data syncs as it updates. The same page's integration list also names Chargebee, Chargify, Recurly and Paddle (Encharge for Stripe).
- ActiveCampaign. Its help center describes a Stripe integration that syncs Customer, Order and Subscription data and can start automations on a Stripe event, with limits: Stripe fields map only to existing ActiveCampaign fields and the sync will not add contacts straight to a list (ActiveCampaign's Stripe article). Ask which plans include it before you buy.
Whichever tool you pick, decide who sends the failed-payment email. If Stripe already sends its own, a second dunning message from the lifecycle tool doubles up.
What ActiveCampaign brings that Encharge does not headline
ActiveCampaign's plan cards list landing pages from Plus upward, attribution, conversion tracking and predictive and conditional content from Pro, business goals (15 on Starter, 25 on Plus, 200 on Pro and Enterprise), and cross-channel marketing from Plus, with an Email plus WhatsApp option on the selector. Its CRM integrations include Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Gmail and Outlook, and it advertises more than 1,000 apps. If a salesperson needs to see a deal next to the email history, that is a case where the suite beats an email-focused tool. Encharge's answer is its HubSpot sync, available from Premium, which keeps a separate CRM current.
Moving from ActiveCampaign to Encharge
- Export contacts with tags, custom fields and list membership. Translate tags that mean "lifecycle stage" into Encharge segments driven by events instead.
- List your automations and mark which ones depend on CRM deals; those either stay in a CRM or move to a HubSpot or Salesforce sync.
- Connect Stripe in Encharge first so historical trial and subscription state is present before any flow is switched on.
- Import unsubscribed contacts as unsubscribed, update the sending-domain records, and run one lifecycle flow in both tools for a full trial cycle.
The call
- Encharge Growth for a SaaS team of any size that wants Stripe or Chargebee triggers, unlimited flows and open seats, and can pay $60 more at 10,000.
- ActiveCampaign Plus or Pro for a team with a sales process that wants CRM and landing pages in the same bill, and is happy with 1 to 3 users.
- Encharge Premium if HubSpot or Salesforce stays your system of record and you need the two-way link.
Related reading: all comparisons, Customer.io vs Encharge, Customer.io vs ActiveCampaign, Loops vs Encharge, ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot and reducing churn with tools.
Encharge vs ActiveCampaign: common questions
Which is cheaper at 10,000 contacts, Encharge or ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign on its like-for-like plan. Encharge Growth is $249 a month at 10,000 subscribers, against $189 for ActiveCampaign Plus, a $60 difference or $720 a year. Step up to the second tier and the gap closes to $24: Encharge Premium is $399, ActiveCampaign Pro $375. One caution is that ActiveCampaign's rates are listed as billed annually, while the Encharge readouts here are monthly-billed.
How many users can I add to each?
Encharge lists unlimited team members on both Growth and Premium. ActiveCampaign limits users by plan: 1 on Starter, 1 on Plus, 3 on Pro and 5 on Enterprise. For a SaaS team where support, product and marketing all need to edit flows, that limit is one of the practical differences between them.
Does ActiveCampaign understand Stripe subscriptions?
Its help center describes a Stripe integration that syncs customer, order and subscription data and can trigger automations when a Stripe event occurs, with limits: it maps only to existing ActiveCampaign fields and does not add contacts directly to a list. Encharge's Stripe page lists twelve triggers, including trial started, trial ends, subscription past due and subscription cancelled.
Is there a free plan on either?
No. ActiveCampaign's pricing page lists paid plans from $15 a month at 1,000 contacts, billed annually, and Encharge lists Growth and Premium plus a custom Enterprise plan, with a 14-day free trial button. Encharge Growth is $99 monthly or $79 billed yearly at 2,000 subscribers.