Vishal Singhal If you are reading this, you are probably evaluating marketing automation tools and stuck between two very different options. ActiveCampaign is the industry veteran with a reputation for powerful automation workflows. CampaignHQ is the newer, AWS-native challenger that is turning heads with its cost structure and built-in WhatsApp marketing.
So which one actually wins in 2026?
The honest answer: it depends on what you need. ActiveCampaign is a mature, feature-rich platform with one of the best automation builders in the business. CampaignHQ is built for teams that want to leverage their existing AWS infrastructure, keep costs dramatically lower, and run email plus WhatsApp campaigns from a single dashboard.
In this CampaignHQ vs ActiveCampaign comparison, we will break down features, pricing, automation capabilities, and use cases so you can make the right call for your business. No fluff. No filler. Just the stuff that matters.
Quick Comparison: CampaignHQ vs ActiveCampaign at a Glance
Before we get into the details, here is a high-level look at how these two platforms stack up:
ActiveCampaign
- Founded in 2003, headquartered in Chicago
- Best known for advanced automation workflows and built-in CRM
- Pricing starts at $15/month (Starter) for 1,000 contacts
- Scales up quickly as your list grows
- SMS available as a paid add-on
- No native WhatsApp support
- Uses its own email sending infrastructure
CampaignHQ
- AWS-native marketing automation platform
- Built-in WhatsApp campaigns, chatbots, and team inbox
- Connects directly to your AWS SES account for email sending
- Pricing starts at $34/month (Core) for up to 10,000 contacts
- Unlimited email sends through your own AWS SES
- WhatsApp Cloud API integration included
- Drip automations, segmentation, analytics, and retargeting built in
Right away, you can see these platforms serve different philosophies. ActiveCampaign wants to be your all-in-one marketing and sales hub. CampaignHQ wants to turn your existing AWS account into a growth engine without forcing you to pay for another messaging layer.
Feature Comparison: Where Each Platform Shines
Email Marketing
Both platforms cover the fundamentals of email marketing well. You get drag-and-drop editors, templates, scheduling, and basic personalization on either side.
ActiveCampaign offers:
- A polished email builder with conditional content blocks
- Predictive sending (sends emails when contacts are most likely to open)
- Split testing on up to five email variations (Pro plan and above)
- Site and event tracking for behavioral targeting
- Dynamic content that changes based on contact data
CampaignHQ offers:
- Email campaign manager with templates
- Unlimited email sends via your own AWS SES (you pay AWS rates, which are roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails)
- Domain warmup tools and deliverability analytics
- Retargeting campaigns for re-engaging non-openers
- Email verification credits included in every plan
The big differentiator here is cost. ActiveCampaign charges you for email sends as part of your plan, and those costs scale with your contact list. CampaignHQ lets you send through AWS SES, which means your per-email cost is a fraction of what traditional platforms charge. For high-volume senders, this difference can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month.
Marketing Automation
This is where ActiveCampaign has built its reputation, and it deserves credit here.
ActiveCampaign’s automation builder is genuinely one of the best in the industry. You can:
- Build complex, branching automation workflows with a visual drag-and-drop builder
- Use triggers based on email opens, link clicks, site visits, form submissions, CRM deal stages, and more
- Add if/else conditions, wait steps, goals, and split actions
- Score leads automatically and route them to sales
- Trigger automations from hundreds of third-party integrations
If you need deeply complex, multi-step automation sequences that react to dozens of behavioral signals, ActiveCampaign is hard to beat. The platform has had over two decades to refine this, and it shows.
CampaignHQ’s automation takes a different approach:
- Drip automations (also called User Journeys) with visual flow building
- Automation executions included in your plan (20,000 on Core, up to unlimited on Enterprise)
- Triggers based on contact activity, segment membership, and campaign engagement
- Works across both email and WhatsApp channels in a single flow
- Campaign scheduling and retargeting built into the workflow
CampaignHQ’s automation is solid and covers what most small to mid-size businesses need. It is not as deep or as granular as ActiveCampaign’s, but here is the thing: most businesses never use more than 20% of ActiveCampaign’s automation capabilities. If your needs are straightforward drip sequences, welcome series, abandoned cart flows, and re-engagement campaigns, CampaignHQ handles that well.
The real advantage CampaignHQ has in automation is the ability to blend email and WhatsApp into a single journey. You can send an email, wait for a response, then follow up on WhatsApp automatically. ActiveCampaign simply cannot do that natively.
WhatsApp Marketing
This is where the comparison gets interesting, because this is not even a close contest.
CampaignHQ was built with WhatsApp as a first-class channel:
- WhatsApp Cloud API integration included on every plan
- WhatsApp campaign manager for broadcast messages
- WhatsApp chatbot builder (Chatflow Builder) for automated conversations
- Team inbox for WhatsApp so multiple agents can respond
- WhatsApp template management
- Multi-WABA (WhatsApp Business Account) support on higher plans
- WhatsApp and email campaigns managed from the same dashboard
ActiveCampaign does not offer native WhatsApp support. If you want to add WhatsApp to your ActiveCampaign workflows, you need to rely on third-party integrations like Twilio or other middleware. That means extra cost, extra complexity, and another vendor to manage.
For businesses operating in markets where WhatsApp is a primary communication channel (India, Brazil, Southeast Asia, parts of Europe and Africa), this alone could be the deciding factor. WhatsApp open rates regularly exceed 90%, and having it built into your marketing automation platform rather than bolted on through integrations is a massive advantage.
CRM and Sales Tools
ActiveCampaign has a built-in CRM that is available on the Plus plan ($49/month) and above:
- Deal pipelines with drag-and-drop stages
- Lead scoring based on email engagement and site behavior
- Sales automation (auto-assign deals, send follow-ups, update deal stages)
- Task management for sales teams
- Win probability scoring on higher plans
ActiveCampaign’s CRM is not as deep as a dedicated tool like HubSpot or Salesforce, but it is quite good for small to mid-size sales teams that want their marketing and sales data in one place.
CampaignHQ lists CRM as a feature, with contact management, segmentation, and custom attributes. It is more of a marketing CRM than a sales CRM. You can track contacts, segment them, and personalize campaigns based on their data, but it does not have the deal pipeline and sales automation features that ActiveCampaign offers.
If your primary need is sales pipeline management tightly integrated with marketing automation, ActiveCampaign has the edge here.
Analytics and Reporting
ActiveCampaign offers:
- Campaign performance reports (opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes)
- Automation reports showing how contacts move through workflows
- Contact and deal attribution reporting
- Custom reports (available as an add-on on higher plans)
- Revenue attribution if you connect e-commerce data
CampaignHQ offers:
- Deep analytics on campaign performance
- Domain warmup tracking and deliverability metrics
- WhatsApp campaign analytics (delivery, read receipts, replies)
- Retargeting insights
Both platforms give you what you need to measure campaign effectiveness. ActiveCampaign goes deeper on attribution and custom reporting, while CampaignHQ provides more visibility into deliverability and infrastructure health, which makes sense given its AWS-native approach.
Pricing: The Real Difference Between CampaignHQ and ActiveCampaign
Pricing is where the CampaignHQ vs ActiveCampaign comparison gets really stark. Let us look at what each platform costs as your list grows.
ActiveCampaign Pricing (2026)
- Starter: $15/month for 1,000 contacts (limited automation, no CRM)
- Plus: $49/month for 1,000 contacts (automation + basic CRM)
- Pro: $79/month for 1,000 contacts (advanced automation, predictive sending, split testing)
- Enterprise: $145/month for 1,000 contacts (custom reporting, dedicated support)
Here is where it gets expensive. Those prices are for just 1,000 contacts. As your list grows:
- 5,000 contacts on Pro: approximately $187/month
- 10,000 contacts on Pro: approximately $287/month
- 25,000 contacts on Plus: approximately $229/month
- 50,000 contacts on Pro: well over $400/month
Add-ons like SMS, CRM enhancements, transactional email (via Postmark), and dedicated IPs push the bill even higher. Many users on Reddit and review sites have noted that ActiveCampaign’s pricing has increased significantly in recent years, with some calling it “pricing itself out” of reach for smaller businesses.
CampaignHQ Pricing (2026)
- Core: $34/month (billed annually) for 1 user, 10,000 contacts, 20,000 email credits, 20,000 automation executions, WhatsApp integration
- Growth: $104/month (billed annually) for 5 users, 50,000 contacts, 100,000 email credits, 100,000 automation executions, WhatsApp integration, campaign scheduler
- Scale: $209/month (billed annually) for 10 users, 100,000 contacts, 200,000 email credits, 200,000 automation executions, priority support
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for 20+ users, 200,000+ contacts, unlimited everything, dedicated CSM
And here is the kicker: if you connect your own AWS SES account, your email sends through AWS are unlimited and cost roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails. The CampaignHQ email credits are for sending through their infrastructure, but most AWS-native teams will use their own SES, making email costs almost negligible.
The Cost Math
Let us do a quick comparison for a business with 10,000 contacts sending 100,000 emails per month:
ActiveCampaign (Pro plan, 10K contacts): Approximately $287/month, no WhatsApp included
CampaignHQ (Core plan, 10K contacts + AWS SES): $34/month + roughly $10 in AWS SES costs = approximately $44/month, WhatsApp included
That is a savings of over $240 per month, or nearly $2,900 per year. For a business with 50,000 contacts, the gap widens even further.
This is not a gimmick or a “you get what you pay for” situation. CampaignHQ achieves this pricing because it does not operate its own email sending infrastructure for AWS-connected users. You are leveraging AWS SES, which is one of the most reliable and cost-effective email delivery services in the world. CampaignHQ provides the campaign management, automation, analytics, and WhatsApp layer on top.
Integrations and Ecosystem
ActiveCampaign has a massive integration ecosystem:
- 900+ native integrations including Shopify, WooCommerce, WordPress, Salesforce, Zapier, and more
- Robust API for custom integrations
- Deep e-commerce integrations with revenue tracking
- CRM integrations and data syncing
CampaignHQ has a growing but smaller integration footprint:
- AWS SES and WhatsApp Cloud API as core integrations
- API access on all plans
- Webhook support for connecting with other tools
- Growing list of native integrations
ActiveCampaign wins on integration breadth. If you rely on a specific stack of tools and need native, plug-and-play integrations, check ActiveCampaign’s marketplace first. CampaignHQ’s API is capable, but you may need to build some connections yourself or use middleware like Zapier.
Who Should Choose ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is the right choice if:
- You need extremely complex, branching automation workflows with dozens of triggers and conditions
- Your business relies heavily on a combined marketing + sales CRM
- You want the largest possible library of native integrations
- You do not use AWS or have no interest in managing your own sending infrastructure
- Your team is comfortable with a higher monthly cost for a more mature, feature-complete platform
- You are primarily focused on email and do not need WhatsApp marketing
- You want predictive sending, advanced split testing, and deep attribution reporting
ActiveCampaign is a genuinely excellent platform. It has earned its reputation over two decades, and for businesses that need its depth of automation, it delivers real value.
Who Should Choose CampaignHQ?
CampaignHQ is the right choice if:
- You already use AWS (or plan to) and want to leverage SES for email sending
- WhatsApp is a key marketing channel for your audience
- You want email and WhatsApp campaigns managed in one platform
- Keeping costs low is a priority, especially as your contact list scales
- You need solid automation (drip sequences, user journeys) but do not need enterprise-grade complexity
- You prefer a lean, focused tool over an all-in-one suite you will only partially use
- You are a startup, SMB, or growing team that wants to move fast without vendor lock-in
- You want to use your AWS credits toward marketing instead of paying a separate platform
CampaignHQ is especially compelling for businesses in markets where WhatsApp dominates customer communication. The combination of AWS-native email delivery and first-class WhatsApp support at a fraction of the cost of traditional platforms makes it a strong ActiveCampaign alternative for cost-conscious, growth-focused teams.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CampaignHQ a good ActiveCampaign alternative?
Yes, CampaignHQ is a strong ActiveCampaign alternative, especially for businesses that use AWS and need WhatsApp marketing. It covers the core features most teams need (email campaigns, drip automation, segmentation, analytics) at a significantly lower cost. Where it falls short compared to ActiveCampaign is in the depth of its automation builder and the breadth of native integrations. But for the majority of small and mid-size businesses, CampaignHQ offers more than enough capability at a price point that is hard to argue with.
Can I use CampaignHQ without an AWS account?
Yes. CampaignHQ includes its own email credits on every plan, so you can send emails without connecting an AWS account. However, the biggest cost savings come when you connect your own AWS SES, which lets you send emails at AWS rates (roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails). If you do not have an AWS account, you can still use CampaignHQ, but you will be working within the included email credit limits or purchasing additional credits.
Does ActiveCampaign support WhatsApp marketing?
Not natively. ActiveCampaign does not have built-in WhatsApp campaign management, chatbots, or a WhatsApp team inbox. You can connect WhatsApp through third-party integrations (like Twilio), but that adds complexity and cost. If WhatsApp is a primary marketing channel for your business, CampaignHQ has a clear advantage with its native WhatsApp Cloud API integration, chatbot builder, and multi-WABA support.
How does CampaignHQ keep its pricing so low?
CampaignHQ’s pricing model is fundamentally different from traditional marketing automation platforms. Instead of operating its own email sending infrastructure and charging you per email, CampaignHQ lets you connect your own AWS SES account. AWS SES is already one of the cheapest and most reliable email delivery services available. CampaignHQ then provides the campaign management, automation, analytics, and WhatsApp layer on top. You are essentially paying for the software, not the infrastructure.
Which platform has better email deliverability?
Both platforms offer strong deliverability, but the approach differs. ActiveCampaign manages shared and dedicated IP pools and handles deliverability on your behalf. CampaignHQ, when connected to AWS SES, gives you full control over your sending reputation, dedicated IPs, and domain warmup. AWS SES has excellent deliverability rates and is used by some of the largest senders in the world. CampaignHQ also includes domain warmup tools and email verification credits to help you maintain a healthy sender reputation.
Can CampaignHQ replace ActiveCampaign for my business?
It depends on your specific needs. If you rely heavily on ActiveCampaign’s advanced automation builder with complex branching logic, deep CRM integration, or its massive library of 900+ integrations, switching may require trade-offs. But if your primary needs are email campaigns, drip automation, segmentation, and especially WhatsApp marketing, CampaignHQ can absolutely replace ActiveCampaign while saving you a significant amount of money each month. Many businesses find they are paying for features in ActiveCampaign they never use.
The Bottom Line
The CampaignHQ vs ActiveCampaign debate is not about which platform is objectively “better.” It is about which platform is better for you.
ActiveCampaign is a proven, mature platform with best-in-class automation, a solid CRM, and a massive ecosystem. If you need that depth and are willing to pay for it, it remains an excellent choice.
CampaignHQ is the modern, AWS-native alternative that delivers the features most growing businesses actually use, at a fraction of the cost, with WhatsApp marketing built in from day one. It is not trying to be everything to everyone. It is built for teams that want to grow efficiently using the AWS infrastructure they already have.
If you are spending $200+ per month on ActiveCampaign and wondering whether you really need all those features, or if you are looking for a marketing automation comparison that includes WhatsApp as a core channel rather than an afterthought, CampaignHQ is worth a serious look.
Ready to see how much you could save? Try CampaignHQ free and connect your AWS account in minutes. Or check out the CampaignHQ Savings Calculator to see exactly how your costs compare.
