ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse (2026): Two Ways to Cap a Workflow

These two platforms are the default answers in email automation, and they ration their builders in opposite ways. ActiveCampaign's Starter plan lets you build as many automations as you like but keeps each of them five actions deep. GetResponse's Starter plan lets you build one automation as deep as you like. Which limit is worse depends entirely on the shape of what you are building.

Above the entry tier the question changes completely, because both remove the cap — ActiveCampaign at Plus, GetResponse at Marketer — and the comparison becomes an ordinary one about price, billing terms and what else is in the box.

The entry plans are not comparable products

It is tempting to line up $15 against $19 and call ActiveCampaign cheaper. That comparison is wrong twice over. ActiveCampaign's $15 is billed annually — its pricing page publishes no monthly rate at all — while GetResponse's $19 is the monthly figure, and GetResponse's own annual price at the same list size is $15.58. So on like-for-like annual billing the two entry plans are within 58 cents of each other.

And they still are not the same product. Five shallow automations serve a business with several simple triggers — a welcome note, a purchase receipt follow-up, a birthday message. One deep automation serves a business with a single elaborate onboarding sequence. Choose the limit that fits the work; the prices are effectively identical.

The tiers that actually remove the cap

On annual billing the two are almost identical at 1,000 contacts — $49 against $48.38 — and then they separate sharply. By 5,000 contacts GetResponse Marketer is $77.90 against ActiveCampaign Plus at $145, and by 10,000 it is $93.48 against $189. If your list is growing and you want unlimited workflows, GetResponse gets substantially cheaper the further up the ladder you go.

That is the single most decision-relevant fact in this comparison, and it is not visible at all from the entry prices everyone quotes.

Billing terms, which are not a detail here

GetResponse publishes both monthly and annual prices across its whole ladder, with a flat 18% annual discount. ActiveCampaign publishes only the billed-annually figure; there is no monthly toggle on its pricing page. If the ability to leave next month rather than next year has value to you — and for a business testing a new channel it usually does — that asymmetry matters more than a few dollars.

It also means any table you find comparing "ActiveCampaign monthly" to "GetResponse monthly" is comparing a number somebody obtained elsewhere against a published one. This one does not try.

One number that is not on either pricing page

Neither platform publishes what happens when you exceed your contact tier mid-month, and the answer shapes the bill for anyone whose list grows in bursts. A seasonal business that crosses 5,000 contacts in November and drops back in January is buying a different product from one that sits steadily at 4,900, and the pricing pages treat them identically. Ask about it before committing to an annual term, because an annual commitment at the wrong tier is the one mistake here you cannot undo cheaply.

Seats

ActiveCampaign includes one user on Starter and one on Plus, three on Pro and five on Enterprise. So a two-person team wanting unlimited automations is looking at Pro — $79 a month at 1,000 contacts billed annually — rather than Plus. That reshapes the comparison again, because it stacks a seat upgrade on top of a builder upgrade.

GetResponse's plan structure does not ration seats the same way, which is a quiet advantage for small teams and one that neither company's marketing emphasises.

What happens if you outgrow the plan you chose

Worth thinking about before you commit, because the two platforms behave differently on the way up. GetResponse's ladder is smooth: the same plan at a larger contact tier, at a price you can read in advance across the whole range. ActiveCampaign's is smooth on price too, but the seat allowance steps rather than scales, so growth tends to arrive as a tier jump rather than a gradual increase.

Moving between them later is possible and unpleasant, as it is between any two platforms — subscribers export cleanly, automations do not, and rebuilding a branching sequence in a different builder is a week nobody has budgeted for. That argues for choosing on the shape of what you will be running in a year rather than what you are running this month, and for treating the entry tiers as a trial rather than a destination.

What each is genuinely better at

ActiveCampaign's builder is the deeper of the two, and its CRM and ecommerce integrations arrive without moving to a separate product. If the automation itself is the reason you are choosing a platform — complex branching, conditional content, behaviour-driven logic — it is the stronger tool and the higher price at scale buys something real.

GetResponse is broader rather than deeper: landing pages, funnels, webinars and advertising integrations sit alongside the email, and the pricing is more transparent in every respect. For a small business that would otherwise buy a landing-page tool separately, the bundle is worth money, and the monthly option removes the commitment risk entirely.

How to decide in five minutes

1. Write out the automations you want running this quarter and count them, then count the steps in the longest one.
2. If it is one sequence more than five steps deep, GetResponse Starter does it and ActiveCampaign Starter does not.
3. If it is several sequences of any depth, you need Plus or Marketer, and the list size decides which — they are level at 1,000 contacts and GetResponse is much cheaper above that.
4. If two people need logins, add ActiveCampaign Pro to the comparison rather than Plus.
5. If you want to be able to stop paying next month, GetResponse is the only one of the two that publishes a monthly price.

Neither is a bad answer. The bad answer is buying either entry plan expecting the automation the higher tier provides — which is the mistake this whole comparison exists to prevent. The full table of every platform's cap puts both alongside the cheaper options, and the GetResponse alternatives roundup covers what to do if neither of these two fits.