8 Best Marketing Automation Platforms in 2026, Compared

Quick comparison

The best marketing automation platform

#1

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Small and mid-size teams that want CRM, email and automation in one place and can pay per seat

★★★★★★★★★★4.4/5 on G2 (16,050 reviews, checked Nov 2026)

Visit hubspot.com

Starting price$20/month per seat (Starter, billed monthly; $15/month per seat billed annually; 1,000 marketing contacts included)

Free planYes — free plan (CRM, basic email and forms; 1,000 contacts)

HubSpot Marketing Hub is the all-in-one option in this list: CRM, email, landing pages, forms, live chat and ad management in one login, with Breeze AI agents and content tools included even on Starter. The entry price is $20 a month per seat on monthly billing, or $15 a seat on annual billing, and it includes 1,000 marketing contacts, email automation, landing pages and forms.

The catch is that the bill grows on two meters at once. Every extra seat costs $20 a month, and every extra block of 1,000 marketing contacts adds about $50 a month, so a 5,000-contact list costs around $210 a month on Starter. The free plan covers the CRM, basic email and forms at $0, so a small team can start free and pay only when the list grows.

What we like

• One login covers CRM, email, landing pages, forms, live chat and ad management
• Breeze AI agents and content tools are included on the Starter plan
• The free plan is genuinely usable, with CRM, forms and basic email at $0
• The deepest integration library here, with 192 native integrations

Watch out for

• Starter is billed per seat and per 1,000 marketing contacts, so the bill grows on two meters at once
• Professional jumps to $890 a month plus a $3,000 one-time onboarding fee, with no middle tier
• Reporting and attribution are weaker than the price suggests, per multiple G2 reviewers

#2

ActiveCampaign

Best for: Email-first small teams that want deep automation and a built-in CRM without enterprise pricing

Visit activecampaign.com

Starting price$19/month (Starter, billed monthly; $15/month billed annually; 1,000 contacts)

Free planNo — 14-day free trial

ActiveCampaign is the automation specialist in this list: a visual builder with 900+ ready-made recipes, site tracking and event-based triggers, plus a built-in CRM with deals, pipelines and lead scoring on every plan. Starter costs $19 a month on monthly billing, or $15 a month billed annually, for 1,000 contacts, and it includes email marketing, automation, forms and landing pages.

The limits are the caps. Starter allows only 1 user and 5 actions per automation, so a team that needs longer journeys or a second seat must move to Plus at $49 a month. The price also rises with the list: 10,000 contacts costs $149 a month on Starter. Buy ActiveCampaign when automation depth matters more than anything else; buy HubSpot when the CRM is the centre of the stack.

What we like

• The strongest visual automation builder at this price, with 900+ ready-made recipes
• A built-in CRM with deals, pipelines and lead scoring on every plan
• Site tracking and event-based triggers work from the Starter plan
• Predictive sending and machine-learning features arrive on Plus ($49 a month)

Watch out for

• Starter caps each automation at 5 actions and covers only 1 user, so real teams outgrow it fast
• The price rises with contact count: 10,000 contacts costs $149 a month on Starter
• No free plan, and predictive sending and conditional content need Plus or Pro

#3

Brevo

Best for: Budget-conscious senders who want automation plus SMS and transactional email in one account

★★★★★★★★★★4.5/5 on G2 (2,775 reviews, checked Nov 2026)

Visit brevo.com

Starting price$18/month (Standard, billed monthly; $16.17/month billed annually; 5,000 emails a month)

Free planYes — free plan (300 emails a day)

Brevo is the budget pick, and the pricing model is the reason: you pay for monthly email volume, not for contacts, so a large list that mails rarely stays cheap. Marketing automation — unlimited multi-step workflows — starts on Standard at $18 a month on monthly billing, or $16.17 a month billed annually, for 5,000 emails a month, with A/B testing, landing pages and AI send-time optimization.

Read the fine print before you buy. The $9 Starter plan has no marketing automation at all, and the cheapest tiers cap stored contacts at 500, so a 5,000-contact list needs the 20,000-email tier. The free plan sends 300 emails a day at $0. Choose Brevo when the budget is tight and the list mails a few times a month; choose ActiveCampaign when the workflows themselves are the product.

What we like

• The cheapest real automation here: unlimited multi-step workflows from $18 a month
• Email, SMS, WhatsApp and transactional mail run from the same account
• AI content generator on Starter, AI send-time optimization on Standard
• A genuinely free plan with 300 emails a day and no card required

Watch out for

• Marketing automation only starts on Standard ($18 a month); the $9 Starter plan has none
• The cheapest tiers cap stored contacts at 500, so a bigger list pushes the price up fast
• Logo removal on Starter is a $12 a month add-on, and reporting is basic below Professional

#4

Mailchimp

Best for: Small businesses and creators who want a familiar brand, templates and 200 automation flows

Visit mailchimp.com

Starting price$20/month (Standard, billed monthly; 500 contacts; 50% off the first 12 months for new customers)

Free planYes — free plan (250 contacts, 500 sends a month)

Mailchimp is the familiar default: the largest template library in this list, 300+ integrations, and up to 200 automation flows on Standard, with branching, dynamic content, send-time optimization, generative AI and predictive segmentation. Standard costs $20 a month for 500 contacts, with 6,000 sends a month, 5 seats and 5 audiences, and new customers get 50% off the first 12 months.

The cost is the growth curve. Mailchimp bills by contact count, including unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts, so 5,000 contacts costs $100 a month on Standard and 10,000 costs $135. The free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 sends a month. Pick Mailchimp when the team already knows it and the list is small; pick Brevo or ActiveCampaign when the list is growing fast.

What we like

• Up to 200 automation flows on Standard, with branching, dynamic content and send-time optimization
• Generative AI features and predictive segmentation included on Standard
• The largest template library here, plus 300+ integrations
• A 50% discount on the first 12 months for new customers

Watch out for

• The price is set by contact count, so 5,000 contacts costs $100 a month on Standard
• Unsubscribed and non-subscribed contacts still count toward the billing tier
• Real automation with branching only unlocks on Standard; Essentials caps flows at 4 steps

#5

Klaviyo

Best for: Shopify and ecommerce stores that live on segmentation, flows and purchase data

Visit klaviyo.com

Starting price$20/month (Email plan, billed monthly; 500 active profiles)

Free planYes — free plan (250 active profiles, 500 sends a month)

Klaviyo is the ecommerce default, and it earns that spot by treating store data as the product. Browse abandonment, cart abandonment, post-purchase and win-back flows all run off live Shopify events, and the segmentation goes deeper than any rival here, on purchase history and predicted customer value. The Email plan costs $20 a month for 500 active profiles, with 5,000 sends and an AI-powered subject line generator.

The trade-off is the growth curve, which is the steepest in the cheap half of this list: 1,000 profiles costs about $30 a month, 5,000 about $100 and 10,000 about $150, because you pay for every active profile whether you emailed them or not. The free plan covers 250 profiles and 500 sends. Choose Klaviyo when the store is the business; choose Mailchimp when the list is not tied to a shop.

What we like

• Flows run off live store events: browse and cart abandonment, post-purchase and win-back
• Segmentation goes deeper than any rival here, on purchase history and predicted value
• AI-powered subject line generator and predictive analytics on the paid plan
• 350+ integrations, with the deepest Shopify connection in this list

Watch out for

• The price climbs steeply with list size: 10,000 profiles costs about $150 a month
• Email-plus-SMS plans are priced on request, not published
• You pay for every active profile, even ones you never emailed that month

#6

Keap

Best for: Small service businesses that want CRM, automation, scheduling and payments in one plan

Visit keap.com

Starting price$299/month (Pro, billed monthly; $249/month billed annually; 1,500 contacts, 2 users)

Free planNo — 14-day free trial

Keap is the all-in-one for small service businesses: one plan covers the CRM and pipeline, email and SMS automation, landing pages, appointment scheduling, quotes, invoicing and payments, with AI Plays that automate follow-ups and draft messages. Pro costs $299 a month on monthly billing, or $249 a month billed annually, for 1,500 contacts and 2 users, and there is no cheaper tier.

The price is the whole story. Keap also charges a mandatory one-time implementation fee from $500, so the first year costs at least $3,488 even before the list grows, and 5,000 contacts pushes the monthly price to $449. Pro also caps active deals at 250. Buy Keap when one tool must run the whole service business; buy ActiveCampaign when email automation alone will do.

What we like

• One plan covers CRM, pipeline, email and SMS automation, landing pages and appointments
• AI Plays automate follow-ups and draft messages from your own data
• Quotes, invoicing and payments are built in, so no separate billing tool is needed
• A visual automation builder with lifecycle tracking for every contact

Watch out for

• A mandatory one-time implementation fee from $500 applies to every new account
• At $299 a month it is the most expensive small-business option here by a wide margin
• Pro caps active deals at 250, so a busy pipeline needs the Max plan at the same price

#7

Pardot (Salesforce)

Best for: B2B teams already running Salesforce who need lead nurturing and scoring inside the CRM

Visit salesforce.com

Starting price$1,250/month per org (Growth+, billed annually; 10,000 contacts included)

Free planNo — demo only

Pardot, now sold as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, is the default pick when Salesforce is already the CRM. Engagement syncs to leads and contacts every few minutes, so sales sees exactly what marketing did, and Growth+ includes lead nurturing and scoring, B2B Marketing Analytics and Agentforce campaign creation. The entry edition costs $1,250 a month per organisation, billed annually, with 10,000 contacts included.

The price is only half the commitment. Account Engagement needs Salesforce Sales Cloud Enterprise or Unlimited underneath it, which is a second large bill, and Growth+ caps forms, landing pages and automation rules at 50 each. Buy it when the team already lives in Salesforce; buy HubSpot or Marketo when the CRM choice is still open.

What we like

• Native to Salesforce: engagement syncs to leads and contacts every few minutes
• Lead scoring and grading, plus B2B Marketing Analytics, from the entry edition
• Agentforce campaign creation is included in the Growth+ edition
• Connected Campaigns push engagement data straight onto the Salesforce record

Watch out for

• Growth+ starts at $1,250 a month, billed annually, with no monthly option
• It needs Salesforce Sales Cloud Enterprise or Unlimited, which is a second large bill
• Growth+ caps forms, landing pages and automation rules at 50 each

#8

Marketo Engage

Best for: Enterprise B2B teams with large databases and dedicated marketing operations staff

Visit business.adobe.com

Starting priceCustom quote (no published pricing; Growth, Select, Prime and a top-tier package)

Free planNo — demo only

Marketo Engage is the enterprise standard in this list: the most mature B2B automation engine here, with Smart Campaigns and Smart Lists, account-based marketing, predictive audiences and revenue modeling on the higher packages, and native sync with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. Adobe sells four packages — Growth, Select, Prime and a top tier — and every deal is a custom annual quote shaped by database size, so there is no published starting price.

The cost goes beyond the quote. Marketo needs dedicated marketing operations staff to run well, and implementation commonly adds tens of thousands of dollars in the first year. Small teams will underuse it badly. Buy Marketo when the database is large, the sales cycle is long and a specialist runs the platform; buy Pardot when the team already runs Salesforce.

What we like

• The most mature enterprise automation engine here, with Smart Campaigns and Smart Lists
• Account-based marketing, predictive audiences and revenue modeling on higher packages
• Native CRM sync with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics
• Four packages (Growth, Select, Prime and a top tier) that scale with database size

Watch out for

• No published price: every deal is a custom annual quote shaped by database size
• Needs dedicated marketing operations staff; small teams will underuse it badly
• Implementation commonly adds tens of thousands of dollars in the first year

The best marketing automation platform does one job that email tools alone cannot: it watches what each contact does and starts the right journey without anyone pressing send. We ranked the eight tools below by fit for the most common buyer — a small or mid-size team choosing its first automation platform — and every price was checked on November 4, 2026.

How to choose the best marketing automation platform

• Find what the price is tied to. HubSpot bills per seat and per 1,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp bill per contact, Brevo bills per email sent, Klaviyo bills per active profile, and Pardot bills per organisation. The cheapest headline can become the most expensive bill as your list grows.
• Check that automation is actually included. Brevo's $9 Starter plan has no marketing automation at all — it starts on Standard at $18 a month — and Mailchimp's real branching flows need Standard too. Read the plan, not the homepage.
• Count the seats and the contacts together. A five-person team on HubSpot Starter pays five seats before any contact add-ons, while ActiveCampaign Starter covers only one user. Multiply both numbers before you compare.
• Test the builder on a real journey. Every paid tool here offers a free plan or a trial, and one genuine week — your welcome sequence, your lead magnet, your follow-up — tells you more than any review can.
• Check the CRM question. HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Keap and Pardot bundle a CRM, so scores and deal stages update automatically. If you already run a separate CRM, check that the sync is two-way before you commit.

Marketing automation is one system in your stack, not the whole stack. If the business also needs to be found online, our guide to marketing analytics platforms covers the measurement side of the same work. And before you publish new pages for the services you sell, run your titles through the free SERP snippet preview tool — it shows exactly how the title and description will look in Google.

Whatever you shortlist, try it with real data before you pay. The trials and free plans in this list are long enough to run one genuine journey through — your welcome sequence, your lead magnet, your follow-up — and that journey tells you more than any review can. Check two things in the trial: that the automation fires when a real contact takes a real action, and that your team can build a second journey without calling support. If either fails, the price does not matter.

Best marketing automation platform pricing: what you will actually pay

Take one user and one year at each entry price. On list prices, the first year costs $0 on a free plan, $180 on ActiveCampaign Starter or HubSpot Starter billed annually, $194 on Brevo Standard billed annually, $216 on Brevo Standard billed monthly, $228 on ActiveCampaign Starter billed monthly, $240 on HubSpot Starter, Mailchimp Standard or Klaviyo Email billed monthly, $2,988 on Keap Pro billed annually, $3,588 on Keap Pro billed monthly, and $15,000 on Pardot Growth+ billed annually. Marketo Engage is a custom quote, so there is no number to put in the list.

Two of those numbers need adjusting before they are real. First, the list-size trap: at 5,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign Starter costs $79 a month, Brevo Standard about $69, Klaviyo about $100, Mailchimp Standard $100 and HubSpot Starter about $210 — so the $18 to $20 entry prices in the chart describe a small list, not your list. Second, the one-time fees: Keap charges a mandatory implementation fee from $500, and HubSpot charges $3,000 for Professional onboarding, so Keap's first year costs at least $3,488 and HubSpot's Professional first year costs $13,680 before any contact add-ons.

Three costs sit outside every number above. First, the second seat: HubSpot bills per seat, ActiveCampaign Starter covers one user, and Brevo Standard covers three, so a team of five pays very different totals on tools with the same headline price. Second, the channels: SMS and WhatsApp are separate meters on Brevo, Klaviyo and Mailchimp, so a multi-channel plan costs more than the email price. Third, the migration: moving lists, tags, scores and journeys from an old tool takes a week of someone's time, and that week dwarfs the subscription. If you are choosing tools for a small business, our guide to marketing automation for small business shows how the cheap end of the market compares.

Know the difference: marketing automation vs email marketing

The confusion in this category is between two different jobs that share the word email. Email marketing sends campaigns to a list: a newsletter goes out on Tuesday, everyone on the list gets it, and the job is done. Marketing automation triggers multi-step journeys from behaviour: a download starts a nurture sequence, a cart abandonment starts a recovery flow, a pricing-page visit raises the lead score, and a hot prospect is handed to sales automatically.

There is a second, quieter confusion: automation is not the same as scheduling. A scheduled newsletter is still one message to everyone. A real automation branches: the contact who opened gets the next email, the contact who clicked gets a different one, and the contact who did nothing gets a reminder three days later. Mailchimp Essentials caps flows at four steps and Brevo Starter has no automation at all, so both look like automation tools until you try to build a branching journey.

The practical rule is simple. If the job is sending the same message to a list on a schedule, buy email marketing. If the job is reacting to what each contact does — and doing it differently for each one — buy marketing automation. If the job is both, buy the automation platform and use it for the newsletter too. Buying an email tool and expecting behaviour-based journeys is the most common expensive mistake in this category.

Quick comparison: tool type by need

Mistakes to avoid

• Budgeting on the monthly headline. The $18 to $20 entry prices describe a small list: at 5,000 contacts the same tools cost $69 to $210 a month. Price the tool at your real list size, not the smallest tier.
• Buying a plan without automation in it. Brevo Starter at $9 a month has no marketing automation, and Mailchimp Essentials caps flows at four steps. Check the plan feature list before you pay.
• Forgetting the second meter. HubSpot bills per seat and per contact block, ActiveCampaign Starter covers one user, and Keap adds a $500 implementation fee. The headline price is rarely the whole bill.
• Buying enterprise tools for a small team. Pardot starts at $1,250 a month and Marketo is quote-only, and both need specialists to run. A small team pays enterprise prices for power it never uses.
• Skipping the trial on a real journey. A demo video hides the builder's limits. Run one genuine journey through the trial — welcome sequence, lead magnet, follow-up — and check that it fires on real behaviour.

How we chose

We checked each vendor's own pricing page on November 4, 2026 and recorded the starting price exactly as shown, including the annual-billing figure where the page lists one, and we ranked the tools by fit for the most common buyer — a small or mid-size team choosing its first automation platform — not by brand size. Brevo's page and its machine-readable pricing file were read directly today, as were the Mailchimp and Klaviyo pricing pages, which confirmed their free-plan limits and automation features. Four prices rest on direct reads of the vendors' own pricing pages by independent reviewers in October 2026, because the live pages' price widgets did not render figures in our text check today: HubSpot Starter ($20 a seat a month), ActiveCampaign Starter ($19 a month), Keap Pro ($299 a month) and Pardot Growth+ ($1,250 a month per org). Marketo Engage publishes no price, so we list it as a custom quote. Ratings come from G2 review pages read on November 4, 2026; where a G2 page could not be opened because G2 rate-limited our requests, we show no rating rather than an estimate. No vendor paid for a place in this list, and none of the links here are affiliate links.

What to do next

Start with the free plan or trial of your top pick and run one real journey through it. Check that the automation fires when a real contact takes a real action, and that your team can build a second journey without calling support, before you commit to a year. If the tools are sorted but new customers are not finding you, our monthly SEO service handles the visibility side — or compare providers in our guide to SEO companies for small business. Once your tools are in place, find out what's holding your rankings back.

Sources we checked (10)

• HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing — hubspot.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• ActiveCampaign pricing — activecampaign.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Brevo pricing — brevo.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Mailchimp marketing pricing — mailchimp.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Klaviyo pricing — klaviyo.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Keap pricing — keap.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement pricing — salesforce.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Adobe Marketo Engage product page — business.adobe.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• HubSpot Marketing Hub reviews on G2 — g2.com (checked November 4, 2026)
• Brevo reviews on G2 — g2.com (checked November 4, 2026)