Marketing Automation Platforms Compared, Free and Paid

Nothing has to be synced between two systems, which is why HubSpot Marketing Hub's the default pick, unlike setups where you'd wire tools together with something like Activepieces: its automation runs on the same CRM your sales team already works in.

Marketing Hub is HubSpot's marketing product, pitched as a way to "generate leads and automate marketing that drives growth."

A form fill, an email click and a deal stage all live as fields on one contact record, so a workflow can trigger on any of them directly.

You are a team of one to a handful of marketers who sell through staged deals and want automation keyed to lifecycle or deal stage without a connector in the middle.

1. HubSpot: best for growing teams wanting one CRM

Pricing (checked 1 Nov 2026)

HubSpot's pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 a month for up to 2 users, no credit card, which means this free plan won't scale with your company.

The table shows what the paid entry points include; the takeaway's that Professional and Enterprise both carry a mandatory one-time onboarding charge ($3,000 and $7,000).

Plan	Starting price	Included marketing contacts	Seats	One-time onboarding fee
Free	$0/month	None stated	2 users	None listed
Starter	$410/month	1,000	Not stated	None listed
Professional	$1,390/month	2,000	Not stated	$3,000

Prices and plan limits checked against hubspot.com and gohighlevel.com and keap.com and ontraport.com and mailchimp.com on November 1, 2026.

Those starting prices are the floor. GoodPostal puts Starter at $410 to $2,010 a month depending on contact count, so a large list costs nearly five times the entry price.

Professional runs $1,390 to $3,190, and Enterprise $3,600 to $4,000, which means the jump to Enterprise's small only if you were already near the top of Professional.

The real advantage is one record per contact. Lead scoring, enrollment triggers and sales handoffs read the same fields, so there's no field mapping to break when someone renames a property.

Marketing automation platform pricing and limits

Once a list doubles, it can push the bill past a plan boundary, because cost steps by tier and by contact count.

Budget the $3,000 onboarding fee and the contact ceiling before signing, so these constraints don't become obstacles later in your implementation.

Teams who find those steps too steep sometimes look at open-source options such as Activepieces, but that comparison comes later.

2. HighLevel: best for agencies running many clients

If you run many client accounts under one login, HighLevel suits you, because it's built for exactly that, which a single-company tool like a per-seat CRM isn't.

HighLevel's an all-in-one platform that bundles a CRM, funnels, email and SMS, scheduling and automation. Its distinguishing feature's the sub-account: each client gets a walled-off workspace, and the agency can put its own branding on top.

You are an agency or consultant who builds and operates the same stack for several clients. If you sell one company's pipeline to one company, the sub-account structure's overhead you pay for and never use.

The three tiers differ mainly in how many client workspaces you can open. The table below shows that the real decision is between the first tier and everything above it.

Tier	Monthly	Annual price	Sub-accounts	What is added at that tier
Starter	$97/mo	$970	3	Entry point, capped at three client workspaces
Unlimited	$297/mo	$2,970	Unlimited	Removes the sub-account cap
Founder	$497/mo	$4,970	Unlimited	Same workspace allowance as Unlimited, so the extra cost buys features rather than capacity

Paying annually costs ten months instead of twelve, so commit only once you're sure the tool fits. SMS and email usage's billed separately from these fees, so price a real client's sending volume before quoting a margin.

You can replace several separate subscriptions with one, and you can resell the platform under your own name. That turns the tool from a cost into a product line.

A growing agency lands on the middle tier almost immediately, because three workspaces run out quickly. The breadth also means each module's shallower than a dedicated tool, so test the exact trigger and field mapping your client needs before you promise it.

3. How to use Keap for service follow-up

When the main job's turning an enquiry into a booked sale, Keap fits a small service business. The trigger to test's a form fill that creates a contact, tags it, and starts a follow-up sequence.

[Keap] is a business automation and CRM platform for small businesses that bundles in one login:

• Contact records
• Email and text marketing
• A sales pipeline
• Invoicing and payments
• Automations

If you're a consultant, tradesperson, coach or agency that quotes, follows up, invoices and chases, and your sales process's "enquiry, call, quote, deposit", the pipeline and payments sit where you already work.

The pricing page shows one line rather than named tiers: starting at $299 a month. That's a high entry point for a solo operator, so you need follow-up volume that earns it back.

The price then rises with your contact count, which's where the budget gets decided.

• Pipeline stages can drive the automations, so moving a deal triggers the next message without a second tool.
• Invoicing and payments live beside the contact record, so you see who's paid before you chase.
• One vendor covers email, text and CRM, so there's no field mapping between tools to break.

Past 50,000 contacts you chat to sales, so there's no published number to budget against at that size, and until then the price climbs with contacts. The trial's also narrow:

• Sending's capped at 25 emails, and you must set up DKIM (a sender-authentication record on your domain) first, so a real test needs DNS access before you start.
• Payment processing's off, so you can't test the invoice-to-deposit step that justifies the platform.
• Texts are off, so any follow-up sequence that mixes email and SMS can't be run end to end.
• Only most paid features are included, so confirm that the exact trigger you need's among them.

Test your core sequence on the trial, then verify the payment and text steps with sales before you commit.

4. Ontraport: best for membership and course businesses

If your revenue's a recurring payment attached to access, such as a membership, a course or a subscription, Ontraport is built for you. Its CRM and its payment steps live in one system.

Ontraport's a marketing automation platform with a built-in CRM, order forms, and membership and course hosting.

Its distinguishing feature's that a purchase, a failed charge or a cancellation can act as a trigger in the same sequence builder that sends your emails. You don't need a separate checkout tool wired in with a connector.

Use Ontraport if you sell access:

• A paid community
• A cohort course
• A monthly plan

It's a poor fit if your sale's a long B2B cycle with account hierarchies and multiple stakeholders, where a sales-first CRM matches how you work.

Ontraport sells three tiers: Plus, Pro and Enterprise. Annual billing's available.

Price the add-ons you need before you compare tiers, because they decide your real total. Shared Inbox, Webchat, single sign-on (SSO) and private infrastructure are paid add-ons, not part of the base plans.

I haven't listed figures here because I couldn't confirm them. Read the contact allowance for each tier on the vendor's price page, since contact count's what pushes you up a tier as your list grows.

When a payment fails, you can restrict course access and start a recovery sequence without a middle layer, because purchase events and access rules sit in one record. Because the CRM's built around orders and subscriptions, the fields you need for renewals are already there.

Its strength's also its narrowness. Teams without a payment or access component are paying for machinery they won't use.

Single sign-on and private infrastructure cost extra, so a security-conscious buyer will land well above the entry tier. Verify text messaging with sales before you commit, as the previous section advised.

5. How to integrate Zoho Marketing Plus with CRM

If your sales already run in Zoho CRM, Zoho Marketing Plus suits you, because it bundles the marketing apps around that CRM. Confirm text messaging with sales here too, just as before.

What Zoho Marketing Plus includes

Marketing Plus's a bundle, not one product. Zoho CRM sits in the middle, and separate apps for email, social, surveys and events each connect to it.

The diagram shows that layout, with the bundle outline drawn around the app tiles. Take from it that you're buying several tools sharing one contact record, not a single application with many screens.

![Zoho CRM at the centre with spokes to email, social, surveys and events apps, enclosed by a Marketing Plus outline]

That distinction matters when you read the fine print. Each app has its own setup, its own reports and its own permissions, so a field mapping that works in the email app isn't automatically available in the events app.

If your reps already live in Zoho CRM and you want campaigns, event registrations and survey responses written back to the same contact without a middleman, this is the fit. If your CRM's something else, the bundle loses most of its reason to exist.

I have no confirmed figures to quote, so none appear here. Check Zoho's price page directly, and ask two things: whether the bundle price's tied to contact count, and whether CRM seats are included or billed separately.

Per the article's argument, the contact-based pricing decides what you pay once the list grows, so that answer outweighs any feature comparison.

• Native CRM connection, so campaign activity lands on the contact record without a connector.
• Breadth across email, social, surveys and events under one bundle.
• One vendor to contact when a sync breaks, instead of a hunt between two support teams.

Don't mistake a bundle's app count for depth. Test the specific trigger you need, such as a survey response updating a CRM field or an event check-in moving a lead stage, before you sign.

Outside the Zoho ecosystem, the integrations are thinner, and anyone whose CRM isn't Zoho should look at the platforms in the earlier sections instead.

6. Mailchimp: best for email-first small businesses

If your CRM isn't Zoho and email's most of what you send, Mailchimp is the platform to price first: it's familiar, quick to launch, and free to start.

Mailchimp's an email marketing platform with plans for managing contacts, sending campaigns and building automations. Its pricing page lists a Free plan at $0 a month with one seat and one audience, so you can test it on a real list before paying.

Best for

This suits small businesses where the newsletter or promotion's the marketing, not a lead-scoring pipeline. Mailchimp's own benchmarks show non-profits opening 40.04% of emails and education 35.64%.

Business and finance sits at 31.35% and ecommerce at 29.81%. A store should therefore expect under a third of sends to be opened, and should judge its own results against its industry, not a single generic target.

EmailToolTester puts Essentials, Standard and Premium at $13, $20 and $350 a month for 500 contacts. At 2,500 contacts they're $45, $60 and $350. Premium doesn't move, while the other two climb with the list.

At 50,000 contacts, Standard costs what Premium costs at 500. Past that size, the plan name matters less than the contact count.

You can validate the tool before committing, thanks to the free plan. Setup's fast for a team with one list and a few campaigns. The benchmark data gives you a yardstick for your industry without buying a third-party report.

The catch is contact-based pricing: a list you never clean's a list you pay for.

If you sell through a CRM pipeline, check the exact field mappings and triggers you need before you commit, because email-first tools are strongest when email's the whole job. Teams that need deep sales-stage automation should look at the CRM-native platforms in the earlier sections.

7. Activepieces: best for open-source workflow glue

It's a workflow automation tool, not a marketing suite, which is why Activepieces takes seventh place. It fits teams that already have a CRM and need something to wire it to everything else.

Activepieces lets you chain a trigger to a series of actions in a visual builder, across 746 integrations, with no contact database or email sending engine of its own. It doesn't score leads or manage lifecycle stages.

If the connector your CRM needs isn't in the catalogue, you don't wait on a vendor's roadmap: you can have AI build that integration and keep it private to your own Activepieces instance, with no release to request.

About 60% of the 746 integrations, which you can count in the open-source monorepo, were contributed by the community, so the catalogue grows without anyone's release schedule.

Connecting your marketing platform to apps it doesn't integrate with natively, building AI-driven steps into a process, and self-hosting when data has to stay on your own infrastructure.

On the builder canvas, the "CV Scanning" flow shows the pattern.

A web form trigger collects a submission, a Google Sheets step logs the row, a step extracts text from the attached PDF, an AI step summarizes it, and a final step writes the summary back to the same row.

The form trigger's panel exposes published and draft form URLs and a "Wait for Response" warning, so you can see what the trigger does before you build on it.

Swap the sheet for your CRM and the same shape handles inbound lead forms or document intake.

I have no confirmed figures to quote here, so check the vendor's price page before committing.

The core's open source and can be self-hosted, which changes the cost question from per-seat licences to hosting and maintenance time. Read the licence terms on any enterprise-only features before you plan around them.

• Self-hosting keeps workflow data on your own servers.
• AI steps sit in the same canvas as ordinary app steps.
• Flows are readable top to bottom, which makes handoffs easier.

It won't replace your marketing platform. Without a contact database, you'll be building audience logic yourself in other tools. Test each trigger and field mapping against your real data, because a long list of connectors says little about how deep any single one goes.

If you want email, segmentation, and sales-stage automation in one product, pick a CRM-native platform from the earlier sections. Teams without anyone to maintain a self-hosted install should also look elsewhere.

How to choose a marketing automation platform

Pick the platform whose CRM matches how you sell, then let contact-based price break the tie. The table shows each buyer's pick, the reason that decides it, and the price trap to check before you sign.

Buyer	Pick	Deciding reason	Pricing watch-out
In-house team	HubSpot	Sales and marketing share one contact record	Cost climbs as marketing contacts grow
Agency	HighLevel	One account structure for many client businesses	Check how sub-accounts and messaging usage are billed
Solo service business	Keap	Appointments, invoices and follow-up in one place	Contact tiers rise with your list
Course seller	Ontraport	Membership and purchase tracking sit beside the CRM	Contact tiers rise with your list
Zoho shop	Zoho	Your CRM data's already there	Suite versus single-app pricing
Email-only starter	Mailchimp	Simple sends without CRM overhead	Price follows audience size, so prune dead contacts
Automation-minded team (open source)	Activepieces	746 integrations and unlimited flows on every plan, including free	Free plan is $0 with 1,000 credits a month; Plus is $20 a month for 10,000 credits, then $0.007 a credit over the allowance

Read across a row, not down a column. The pick follows the reason, and the watch-out only matters once two picks are close.

If you run a single brand with a sales team, HubSpot fits, because a lead's emails, deal stage and rep notes live on one record, so a workflow can trigger off a deal moving stage.

Before you buy, model your contact count a year out, because that's what separates its tiers.

Under one login, HighLevel bundles CRM and pipelines, funnels, email and SMS, workflows, booking calendars and payments. That suits an agency serving many clients and reselling the stack. Read the plan page for what each client account costs you.

If you sell courses or memberships, look at Ontraport. It tracks purchases and membership access next to the contact, so a refund or failed payment can change what someone sees. Compare its contact tiers against your buyer list, not your total audience.

When you only need email on a tight budget and send newsletters and simple sequences, Mailchimp's enough. If you find yourself wanting deal stages, you've outgrown it, and Keap or Zoho's the cheaper move than bolting on workarounds.

FAQ on marketing automation platforms

Outgrowing a simple tool raises a handful of practical questions, and the short answers are below.

What's a marketing automation platform?

It's software that sends messages and updates records automatically based on what a contact does or what's stored about them. Email marketing sends a message to a list.

Automation reacts: a form submission starts a sequence, a pricing-page visit changes a score, a purchase removes the contact from the nurture track. If your sending never branches on behavior, you need email marketing, and paying for automation's wasted.

Is there a free marketing automation platform?

Yes, several vendors offer free plans, but they suit testing more than running a funnel. Expect caps on contacts and sends, vendor branding on emails, and automations limited to a single linear path.

Branching on a field value, the first thing most real sequences need, is usually what sits behind the paywall. Check that before you build anything on a free tier, because migrating later means rebuilding every sequence.

Whether or not you email anyone, cost follows list size, since most vendors price by the number of contacts stored. Dormant and duplicate records still count, which means an unpruned list quietly raises your bill each tier.

Clean the list before comparing quotes, and read how each vendor defines a billable contact.

Yes, there's an open-source option. Mautic's an open-source marketing automation platform you can host yourself, so there's no per-contact fee.

The cost moves elsewhere: you run the server, manage email deliverability, and handle upgrades. That trade works if someone on your team already does that work.

Can I connect my platform to other apps without code?

Yes, through a workflow layer such as Zapier or Make, which pass data between apps using triggers and actions. Ignore the catalogue count.

What matters is whether the specific trigger you need exists, such as "deal stage changed", and whether it exposes the fields you need to map. A listed app with only a "new contact" trigger won't do the job.

Related reading

• Automation Templates: 6 Platforms Compared (2026)
• Best Notion Alternatives for 2026 (Free & Paid)
• Best Zendesk Alternatives for 2026 (Free + Paid)

References

• GoodPostal
• Mailchimp
• EmailToolTester