HighLevel vs ActiveCampaign 

HighLevel and ActiveCampaign get compared a lot, though they’re not really solving the same problem.

HighLevel is an all-in-one operations platform built for agencies and multi-channel businesses: CRM, funnels, SMS, booking, and even course hosting under one flat fee. 

ActiveCampaign is a specialized email and automation engine, built for businesses whose growth engine runs primarily through the inbox.

If you are evaluating these as a Kajabi user looking for a marketing layer, neither one replaces Kajabi's course and community experience. 

But the choice between HighLevel and ActiveCampaign comes down to one question: is your business's core lever email deliverability and sophisticated nurture sequences, or is it multi-channel operations, SMS, voice, booking, sales pipelines?

HighLevel charges a flat monthly fee regardless of contact count:

Every tier includes unlimited contacts and unlimited users. Starter caps you at 3 sub-accounts, which matters if you are managing more than one business or client. 

ActiveCampaign works the opposite way. It is contact-based, so your bill grows with your list, not with what the software does.

Starter begins around $15/month at 1,000 contacts but caps automations at 5 actions and offers no SMS or CRM pipelines.

Plus removes the automation cap and opens up SMS and CRM add-ons. Pro adds predictive sending.

At 10,000 contacts, Plus tier pricing climbs into the $189 to $239/month range, and CRM Pipelines plus Sales Engagement are separate add-ons running roughly $49 to $111/month combined, with SMS billed per credit on top of that.

Worth flagging: accounts created on or after November 3, 2025 get billed on their full contact count, including unsubscribed and bounced contacts. 

Accounts created before that date are grandfathered onto active-only billing. If a client is opening a new ActiveCampaign account, that is a real cost difference and worth cleaning the list before the first import.

The crossover point most comparisons land on is somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 contacts.

Below that, ActiveCampaign is often cheaper, especially for a lean list with light automation needs. Above it, HighLevel's flat fee usually wins, and the gap widens the bigger the list gets. 

Email Marketing and Deliverability

This is ActiveCampaign's strongest ground. 

Its editor is more polished, and independent deliverability tests have put it near the top of the field, though results vary by testing methodology, with some studies showing inbox placement in the upper 70s to mid 80s rather than the high 90s.

HighLevel's email runs on shared-IP infrastructure by default, and getting solid deliverability requires setting up a dedicated sending domain plus SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records yourself.

HighLevel publishes server acceptance rates in the mid-90s, but that measures whether a receiving server accepted the email, not whether it landed in the inbox, so it is not directly comparable to ActiveCampaign's inbox-placement numbers.

Automation and Workflows

ActiveCampaign's visual builder is generally considered the more sophisticated tool for deep, branching, behavior-triggered logic.

It is genuinely built for email-first businesses running complex segmentation. HighLevel's workflow builder trades some of that depth for breadth. 

The same workflow can trigger email, SMS, voicemail drops, phone calls, and messages across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

If your automations rarely branch more than a handful of times but need to hit multiple channels, HighLevel is faster to build in.

If you are running deeply branched, condition-heavy sequences, ActiveCampaign handles that more cleanly.

CRM and Sales Pipelines

HighLevel bundles a full pipeline CRM, deal stages, unified inbox, tasks, into every tier at no extra cost.

ActiveCampaign treats sales management as an add-on, and a fairly pricey one, running somewhere around $49/month for pipelines plus another $85 to $111/month for sales engagement tools.

ActiveCampaign's CRM has more mature sales-team features like lead scoring, but you are paying meaningfully more to get functionality HighLevel includes by default.

Funnels, Websites, and Landing Pages

This is not particularly close. HighLevel has a proper funnel and website builder with hundreds of templates, order bumps, upsells, and A/B testing, essentially competing directly with ClickFunnels.

ActiveCampaign's landing pages are functional on higher tiers, but there is no real checkout or funnel-building layer behind them.

SMS and Phone

HighLevel includes true two-way SMS, send and receive, keyword automations, at every tier through its native phone system, plus voice calling. 

You can buy phone numbers directly and get A2P 10DLC verified.ActiveCampaign's SMS is send-focused, gated to the Plus tier and above, billed per message, and credits do not roll over month to month.

Scheduling

HighLevel has booking and calendars built into every plan. 

ActiveCampaign has no native scheduling tool and relies on a Calendly integration.

Integrations and AI

ActiveCampaign has a deeper third-party ecosystem, with roughly 900 connected apps and a more generous API rate limit.

HighLevel's native integration list is shorter, but it makes up for it by replacing a lot of the tools you would otherwise need to connect in the first place. 

Both platforms now offer AI features and MCP servers for connecting to tools like ChatGPT or Claude, but they are aimed at different jobs.

ActiveCampaign's AI leans into campaign and send optimization, while HighLevel's AI Employee suite, a $97/month per sub-account add-on, is built around autonomous customer interaction, like answering inbound calls and qualifying leads.

If you are running a digital marketing agency and want CRM, funnels, SMS, or white-label resale under one flat fee, HighLevel is the more obvious fit.

If your business lives and dies by email nurture, deliverability, and detailed segmentation, and your list is still under 5,000 to 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign's depth and inbox performance are worth the extra spend.

For a course creator already on Kajabi, neither platform replaces what Kajabi does for the course and community experience itself.

But if you want to really push the envolppe with your email marketing and automation beyond what Kajabi can do then you can use both platforms together.

1) Can I use HighLevel and ActiveCampaign together?

Not in any meaningful way.

They overlap too much on core marketing functions, and running both usually means paying twice for the same job.

Most businesses pick one as their primary marketing engine and use the other tool's category, Kajabi for courses, Calendly for scheduling, to fill in gaps instead.

2) Which one is cheaper?

It depends on your contact count and what you need beyond email. Below roughly 5,000 to 10,000 contacts with light automation, ActiveCampaign is usually cheaper.

Above that, or once you add CRM, SMS, and pipelines, HighLevel's flat fee typically wins.

3) Does either platform replace Kajabi for course hosting?

Not really. Though HighLevel has a functional course and membership builder, it is behind Kajabi on design flexibility and has a noticeably weaker mobile student experience. ActiveCampaign does not host courses at all.

4) Which one has better email deliverability?

ActiveCampaign, generally. Independent tests put it near the top of the field, though results vary by methodology.

HighLevel's deliverability is workable but requires manual setup work, dedicated domain, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, to perform well, and its own published numbers measure server acceptance rather than inbox placement.

5) Is HighLevel worth it if I am not an agency?

Possibly, if you need CRM, SMS, and booking in one place and do not want to pay per contact as your list grows.

The white-label and sub-account features are agency-specific, but the core flat-fee pricing and multi-channel workflow benefit any business past a certain contact count.