Plan limits · read 24 September 2026
Email automation software, ranked by what each plan lets you build
Nine platforms, every published workflow limit, and the price of the first plan that removes it — all read at the vendors' own pricing pages on 24 September 2026. The cheapest plan is almost never the cheapest way to run an automation, and this is the table that shows why.
The run, stage by stage
Moosend$7
Pro: no published cap · 500 contacts, billed annually
ActiveCampaign$15 → $49
Starter: 5 actions per automation — Plus lifts it · 1,000 contacts, billed annually
GetResponse$19 → $59
Starter: 1 custom automation workflow — Marketer lifts it · 1,000 contacts, billed monthly
Mailmodo$27 → $79
Lite: 1 active journey — Pro lifts it · 500 contacts, billed annually
Encharge$79
Growth: unlimited flows · 2,000 subscribers, billed yearly
Ontraport$83
Plus: automation included, 1 user · starting price, billed annually
Solid bar: what the cheapest paid plan costs. Hatched bar: what moving to the plan without the automation limit adds. Every figure is the one printed in the table on this page, read at each vendor’s own pricing page on 24 September 2026. Contact sizes differ by vendor and are named on each row, so the bars compare the cost of an uncapped workflow, not the cost of an identical list.
The most useful number in email automation pricing is not the monthly fee. It is the cap: the number of actions, workflows or journeys the plan you are looking at will let you build before it asks for more money. On 24 September 2026, ActiveCampaign's Starter plan allowed five actions per automation, GetResponse's Starter plan allowed one custom automation workflow, and Mailmodo's Lite plan allowed one active journey. A welcome sequence with a wait and a single condition can use all of that up.
So the honest comparison is not between entry prices. It is between the first plan on each platform that lets you build the thing you came to build. Sometimes that is the entry plan — Moosend and Encharge both publish no workflow cap on their cheapest paid tier. More often it is one or two rungs up, and the step is steep.
The table: every cap, and what removing it costs
Each row below was read on the vendor's own pricing page on 24 September 2026, in US dollars. Billing term and list size are named on every row because they are not comparable without them: a price for 500 contacts billed annually and a price for 2,000 subscribers billed yearly are not the same product, and adding them to a single league table would be arithmetic theatre.
| Platform | Cheapest paid plan | What that plan limits | First plan with no limit | List size priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moosend | Pro, $7/mo billed annually ($9 monthly) | No published cap on multi-step workflows | Pro — the same plan | 500 contacts |
| ActiveCampaign | Starter, $15/mo billed annually | 5 actions per automation | Plus, $49/mo billed annually | 1,000 contacts |
| GetResponse | Starter, $19/mo billed monthly ($15.58 annually) | 1 custom automation workflow | Marketer, $59/mo billed monthly ($48.38 annually) | 1,000 contacts |
| Mailmodo | Lite, $27/mo billed annually | 1 active journey | Pro, $79/mo billed annually — 10 active journeys | 500 contacts |
| Encharge | Growth, $79/mo billed yearly | Unlimited flows, unlimited team members | Growth — the same plan | 2,000 subscribers |
| Ontraport | Plus, $83/mo billed annually ($99 monthly) | Automation included; 1 user, and 1 is the maximum | Pro, $124/mo billed annually, for a second seat | Starting price; contacts chosen separately |
| Keap | $299/mo, billed at $2,988/year | Nothing on workflows; implementation is required | The same plan | Contacts not published on the pricing page |
| HubSpot Marketing Hub | Free, $0 | 1 automated action | Professional — unlimited actions, $3,000 one-time onboarding | Prices left to a dedicated pricing page |
| Brevo | Starter | Marketing automation is not in Starter at all | Business | No prices rendered to our read |
Three of those rows carry no comparable price, and that is not an oversight. Keap publishes a monthly figure but not the contact allowance it covers, and requires implementation services without saying what they cost. Brevo's pricing page rendered no figures to our read at all — what it does publish clearly is that marketing automation sits in the Business plan, not in Starter.
ActiveCampaign: five actions, then forty-nine dollars
ActiveCampaign is the platform most people mean when they say "proper automation", and its Starter plan is the clearest example of the cap problem in the category. Starter is $15 a month at 1,000 contacts billed annually, and it allows five actions per automation. Plus, at $49 a month at the same list size, says "unlimited automation actions" — as do Pro and Enterprise above it.
Read that as a $34 monthly gate on the builder rather than a $15 entry price, because for anyone wiring conditions and waits it is one. The rest of the Starter ladder, billed annually: $39 at 2,500 contacts, $79 at 5,000 and $149 at 10,000. Plus runs $95, $145 and $189 at those same sizes — so the cash gap barely moves, $34 at 1,000 contacts and $40 at 10,000, while the Plus bill it sits on grows nearly fourfold. The cap costs proportionally less the bigger you get.
Two details worth knowing before you budget. First, ActiveCampaign's pricing page publishes the billed-annually figure only; there is no monthly toggle on it, so a monthly rate is not something this site can quote. Second, seats are tight low down: Starter and Plus each include one user, Pro includes three and Enterprise five. The page states there are no setup fees.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
GetResponse: one workflow on Starter, unlimited on Marketer
GetResponse draws its line even more sharply than ActiveCampaign does. Starter includes exactly one custom automation workflow. Marketer and Creator both say unlimited automation workflows. If you plan to run a welcome sequence and an abandoned-browse sequence at the same time, Starter cannot do it, at any list size.
GetResponse does publish both billing terms, which makes it one of the easier platforms to budget. At 1,000 contacts, Starter was $19 a month billed monthly and $15.58 billed annually; Marketer was $59 monthly and $48.38 annually. At 5,000 contacts those become $54 and $44.28 for Starter, $95 and $77.90 for Marketer. The annual discount is a published 18%, applied across the ladder rather than as an introductory rate that later snaps back.
One thing to watch on that page: it carries the machinery for a seasonal promotion, and the underlying data on the day we read it had the promotion switched off and the discount set to zero. The prices above are the standard ones. If you arrive to find a countdown and a larger discount, that is a promotional price, not the plan price, and it is worth checking what renews at.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
Moosend: the cheapest builder with no published cap
Moosend is the answer for a specific and fairly common situation: you want real multi-step automation, your list is small, and you do not want to spend $49 a month to get past a workflow limit. Its Pro plan was $7 a month at 500 contacts billed annually, and $9 billed monthly — a published 20% annual discount, with a biannual option at 15%. Pro carries the automation workflow builder, pre-built recipes and multi-step workflows with no cap printed against them.
The limit that does exist on Moosend is on the trial, not the plan: the 30-day free trial allows one published automation workflow and two team members. Pro raises team members to five. Above Pro, the Moosend+ and Enterprise tiers are built to order and no prices are published for them.
The honest caveat is that we could only read Moosend's ladder at its default 500-contact step — the selector that prices larger lists did not respond to our reading, so this site quotes the 500-contact price and no other. If your list is larger, treat $7 as the shape of the pricing rather than your bill.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
Encharge: unlimited flows, priced for software companies
Encharge starts where the others end. Its entry Growth plan advertises unlimited flows and unlimited team members at $79 a month billed yearly for up to 2,000 subscribers, with monthly email sends allowed at ten times the subscriber limit. Premium is $129 a month billed yearly for the same list size, with sends at twelve times the limit and integrations aimed at HubSpot, Salesforce, Segment, Shopify and WooCommerce. Enterprise is custom and framed for lists over 50,000 subscribers.
That is a high entry price and an unusually generous builder, which tells you who it is for: software businesses running behaviour-triggered onboarding, where one flow's logic matters more than the price per contact. The page notes that email sending overages apply. It also advertises a 20% saving for paying yearly, but we read only the yearly figures, so this site does not publish an Encharge monthly price.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
Mailmodo: one active journey on Lite
Mailmodo's distinguishing feature is interactive AMP email — forms and widgets that work inside the message — and its automation is metered in "active journeys". At 500 contacts, Lite was $27 a month billed annually with one active journey, 2,000 email sending credits and one team member. Pro was $79 a month billed annually with ten active journeys and 3,000 credits. Max is custom, with unlimited journeys and unlimited credits.
One active journey is a real constraint, and the jump to ten costs $52 a month at that list size. We read Pro at $99 a month on monthly billing, consistent with the page's advertised 20% annual saving. The Lite row on the monthly view showed "Free" rather than a price, which we could not reconcile with the $27 annual figure — so this site publishes no Mailmodo monthly price for Lite.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
Ontraport: the automation is fine, the seat count is the catch
Ontraport bundles CRM, automation, email and SMS, pages and payments, and its automation is not tiered away — Plus, the entry plan, includes marketing automation. The catch is seats. Plus includes one user and one is the maximum: there is no buying a second login on that plan. Pro includes two users with a maximum of five, and Enterprise three with no maximum.
Prices, read as starting figures with the contact count chosen separately: Plus was $99 a month billed monthly and $83 billed annually, Pro $149 and $124, Enterprise $299 and $249. The annual saving is described on the page as two months free, which is what the arithmetic shows. Extra users are charged per user per month, and the page lists several different rates against the different plans; we could not tie each rate to its plan with confidence, so none is quoted here.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
Keap: a suite that bills like a suite
Keap, now owned by Thryv, is the one platform on this page whose price starts with a three-figure number. Its pricing page showed a single plan starting at $299 a month, billed at $2,988 a year, including two user licences, with additional users at $39 a month each. It does not publish the contact allowance that price covers.
It also states that implementation services are required, and does not publish what they cost. For a small business that is the most important sentence on the page: the real first-year figure is $2,988 plus an implementation fee nobody outside a sales call can quote. Keap is a genuine option for a business that wants sales pipeline, quotes and automation in one place and has budget for onboarding. It is not an option you can price yourself from the website, and this site will not pretend otherwise.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
HubSpot: one automated action free, unlimited at Professional
HubSpot's Marketing Hub is worth knowing about here for its action caps rather than its ladder. Its free tier allows one automated action. Starter allows up to ten automated actions. Professional and Enterprise both say unlimited actions, with omni-channel marketing automation on top.
The number that matters alongside that is not monthly at all: Professional carries a required one-time onboarding fee of $3,000, and Enterprise $7,000. An automation buyer moving up HubSpot's ladder to get past the ten-action ceiling meets that fee at the same moment, and it is the single largest figure on this page. The rest of HubSpot's pricing is a subject of its own and is deliberately not re-litigated here.
Partner link, carrying the sponsored and nofollow attributes. Subscribe after following one and this site is paid a share of what you pay — which is why the plan limits above are spelled out in full rather than summarised, and why the platforms paying nothing appear in the same table on the same terms. Prices move: check the figure on the vendor’s own page before you buy.
Brevo, Mailchimp and the tools that pay us nothing
Brevo is a reasonable automation platform and this site earns nothing from it. Its affiliate programme rejects sites without existing traffic, so there is no Brevo link here to sell — it is named, covered and linked plainly to brevo.com, and that is the whole arrangement. The important fact about it for this page: on Brevo's own pricing page, marketing automation — described as an unlimited number of automated, multi-step workflows — is listed under the Business plan, as something added to Starter rather than included in it. So Brevo's automation cap is not a number, it is a tier.
Brevo's pricing page did not render its figures to our read, so no Brevo prices appear here: the rule that keeps invented open rates off this site keeps estimated prices off it too. Mailchimp, Klaviyo and Salesforce also pay this site nothing, and if one of them is right for you, nothing here has a reason to steer you away.
How to choose, by what you are actually building
Work out the shape of the automation first, then read the caps. Three common shapes:
- One sequence, no branches. A welcome series that goes out the same way to everyone. Almost any entry plan does this, including the capped ones — GetResponse's single Starter workflow is exactly this shape. Buy on price and sending limits, not on the builder.
- Several sequences running at once, with waits and conditions. This is where the caps bite and where the comparison above earns its keep. On a small list, Moosend's Pro plan is the cheapest uncapped builder we found. On a list in the thousands, ActiveCampaign Plus or GetResponse Marketer are the mainstream answers.
- Behaviour-triggered flows tied to product events, with a team touching them. Encharge is built for this, with unlimited flows and unlimited team members on its entry plan, and it charges accordingly. Ontraport and Keap belong here too when a sales pipeline has to sit beside the automation — see CRM with marketing automation for that comparison.
The sanity check: write out the sequence you want, count its actions, and look up the cap. If the count exceeds the cap, the plan you were about to buy is not the plan you need — and that difference, not the headline price, is what this purchase costs.