Comparison

The best EngageBay alternatives

EngageBay is the cheap HubSpot: CRM, marketing and helpdesk in one suite, priced per user instead of per contact, with a free tier that allows fifteen team members. People leave when the per-user maths turns, or when a module turns out to be thinner than the specialist tool it replaced.

Nineteen alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and we're clear it doesn't replace the CRM half.

19 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links
The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Best free CRMHubSpot

Free for two users, and the CRM most people compare EngageBay against.

Best automation depthActiveCampaign

Marketing plus sales automation, priced on contacts rather than seats.

Cheapest for a big teamBrevo

Metered on sends, so headcount doesn't change the bill.

Best value all-in-one for service businessesKeap

Far more expensive, and it invoices your customers.

Best when the team is bigger than the listEmail Bump

Unlimited seats on every plan, priced only on contacts. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with EngageBay

EngageBay's pitch is genuine value, and the friction shows up in the two places that pitch depends on.

Per-user pricing turns against you. Growth is $55.24 per user per month on biennial billing. That's excellent for two people and $552/mo for ten. A platform priced on contacts doesn't move when you hire; this one does, every time.

The headline prices are biennial. $12.74 and $55.24 are the two-year commitment rates. Monthly billing costs more, so the figure you compared against a competitor's monthly price isn't like-for-like unless you're signing for two years.

The free tier is tightly bounded. 250 contacts, 2 lists, 5 forms, 5 pop-ups, 1 landing page and 2 email sequences. Fifteen team members is genuinely generous; everything they can do is not.

Breadth costs depth. CRM, marketing, helpdesk and more from one small company. Each module is competent and none is best-in-class, which is exactly the trade you're making and worth naming before you commit two years to it.

The baseline

What EngageBay costs, from their own pricing page

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

Per user, per month, biennial

All-in-One plans

$0
250 contactsFreeFree for teams of up to 15 — 2 lists, 5 forms, 1 landing page, 2 sequences
$12.74
500 contactsBasic10 lists, 10 forms, 10 landing pages, 1GB storage
$55.24
5,000 contactsGrowthMarketing automation, 50 lists, 5GB storage
$101.99
50,000 contactsProSSO, custom reporting, 20GB storage, dedicated account manager
Worth knowing

The fine print

  • Prices are per user per month on biennial billing; monthly costs more.
  • The free plan allows up to 15 team members, which is unusually generous.
  • Marketing automation arrives on Growth, not Basic.
  • Contacts scale with the tier: 250, 500, 5,000, 50,000.
  • One suite covers CRM, marketing and helpdesk.
Side by side

All 19, on the things that decide it

ProviderStarts atFree tierWhat it coversLicenceData region
Email BumpHosted$19/mo at 10,000 contacts5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a monthThe whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggersProprietaryUnited States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
HubSpot Marketing HubHostedStarter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contactsFree Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chatCampaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRMProprietaryUnited States, with EU hosting available
ActiveCampaignHostedPriced per tier and contact count; no static price table is publishedNone — a 14-day trialThe whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiersProprietaryUnited States (Chicago-headquartered)
BrevoHostedPaid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousandsCampaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pagesProprietaryEuropean Union (France)
KeapHostedFrom $299/mo ($2,988/year), 2 users includedNoneEmail and landing pages, plus CRM, pipelines, appointments, invoicing and text marketingProprietaryUnited States
MailerLiteHostedComfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automationsCampaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websitesProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
MailchimpHostedEssentials $13/mo at 500 contacts250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seatCampaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRMProprietaryUnited States
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)HostedCreator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automationBroadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product salesProprietaryUnited States
GetResponseHostedStarter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)None — a 14-day trial with feature limitsCampaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and coursesProprietaryEuropean Union (Poland)
Constant ContactHostedLite from $9/mo; Premium from $69/moNone — a free trialCampaigns, events, social posting, surveys and basic automationProprietaryUnited States
AWeberHostedLite $15/mo at 500 subscribers; $35/mo at 2,500None — a 14-day trial with no subscriber limitCampaigns, automations, landing pages and sales trackingProprietaryUnited States
Campaign MonitorHostedLite and Essentials are priced by contact count on a slider500 contacts and 500 emails a monthCampaigns, automated journeys, segments and a website builder on PremierProprietaryUnited States, with Australian origins
MoosendHostedPro is priced by subscriber count on a calculatorNone — a 30-day trial with no credit cardCampaigns, automation, landing pages, forms, plus SMTP and transactional emailProprietaryEuropean Union (Greece)
KlaviyoHostedPriced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messagesCampaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and pushProprietaryUnited States
OmnisendHostedStandard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notificationsEcommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web pushProprietaryEuropean Union (Lithuania)
LoopsHostedPriced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your emailCampaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactionalProprietaryUnited States
Customer.ioHostedEssentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figureNone, but early-stage startups can get a full year freeEvent-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-appProprietaryUnited States, with an EU data centre option
FluentCRMSelf-hostable$90/year for one site; $174/year for fiveA free version of the pluginCampaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPressCommercial plugin, with a free editionWherever your WordPress site is hosted
MauticSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay for hosting and a sending providerSelf-hosted — the software is freeFull campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoringOpen sourceWherever you deploy it

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams tired of send multipliers, seat limits and paid add-ons

Contact-priced marketing automation with the transactional API included rather than sold as an add-on. Sending isn't a multiple of your list size, seats aren't rationed, and unsubscribed contacts stop counting toward the bill.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
The whole product — campaigns, live segments, multi-step flows and behavioural triggers
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • No send multiplier. Most of this list caps you at 10–15× your contact count; sending here is uncapped under fair use.
  • Unlimited team seats on every plan, including free — seats are the quiet upsell everywhere else.
  • Unlimited sending domains, also on every plan.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop being billable, so the number you pay for is your real audience.
  • The transactional API, SMTP and inbound email are included, not add-ons.
  • A CLI, an MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
What to watch for
  • No sales CRM — no pipelines, deals or lead scoring. If you're replacing ActiveCampaign's sales side, this isn't it.
  • No SMS or WhatsApp. Email and inbound email only.
  • No landing page or form builder.
  • US-only sending; no EU data region.
  • A much smaller integration catalogue than the incumbents' hundreds of connectors.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers.
02Hosted service

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Best for: Companies buying a CRM and getting marketing with it

Not really an email tool — a CRM platform with marketing attached. The free tier is real and useful; the jump to the tier with the automation people actually want is one of the steepest in software.

Starts at
Starter $7/mo per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts
Free tier
Free Marketing Hub for up to 2 users, with basic email, forms and live chat
Marketing
Campaigns, omni-channel workflows, landing pages, ads and a full CRM
Data region
United States, with EU hosting available
What it does well
  • The free CRM is genuinely free and genuinely useful.
  • Starter at $7/mo per seat is the cheapest entry on this page.
  • One system for marketing, sales, service and content.
  • The reporting and attribution an executive team will ask for.
What to watch for
  • Professional is $800/mo with a $3,000 mandatory onboarding fee. Enterprise is $3,600/mo plus $7,000 onboarding.
  • Unlimited workflows — the actual automation — start at Professional.
  • Additional core seats are $45/mo each.
  • Marketing contacts are billed separately from CRM contacts, which surprises people.
03Hosted service

ActiveCampaign

Best for: Teams that need marketing and sales automation in one system

The deepest automation builder in the mid-market, with a CRM alongside it. Four tiers, priced on contacts, with sending capped at a multiple of your list and most of the interesting parts sold as add-ons.

Starts at
Priced per tier and contact count; no static price table is published
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial
Marketing
The whole product, plus a sales CRM on the higher tiers
Data region
United States (Chicago-headquartered)
What it does well
  • Automation depth that most of this list doesn't match.
  • Marketing and sales in one system, with custom objects on Enterprise.
  • Over 1,000 integrations.
  • Free migration and onboarding, and no setup fees.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at a multiple of your contacts: 10× on Starter and Plus, 12× on Pro, 15× on Enterprise.
  • Seats are rationed — 1 user on Starter and Plus, 3 on Pro, 5 on Enterprise.
  • Starter limits automations to 5 actions each.
  • CRM, transactional email and SMS are paid add-ons on top of the plan.
  • No free plan, and the price scales with contacts whether or not you email them.
04Hosted service

Brevo

Best for: Large lists you email infrequently, and teams that want EU-based billing

Formerly Sendinblue. The structural difference from almost everything else here is that Brevo meters emails sent rather than contacts stored — so a big dormant list costs nothing to keep.

Starts at
Paid plans start at 5,000 emails a month; the price scales with send volume
Free tier
300 emails a day, forever, with contact storage into the tens of thousands
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, plus SMS, WhatsApp, a CRM and landing pages
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Priced on emails sent, not contacts stored — the cheapest way to hold a large, rarely-mailed list.
  • French company with EU data handling, which settles a lot of procurement reviews.
  • SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and landing pages included in the platform rather than bolted on.
  • The free plan is genuinely usable for a small list.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 300-a-day ceiling is a hard daily wall, not a monthly allowance.
  • Breadth over depth — the automation builder is less capable than ActiveCampaign's.
  • Deliverability on shared infrastructure gets mixed reports; warm up carefully.
  • The interface carries the scars of a product that has absorbed a lot of modules.
05Hosted service

Keap

Best for: Service businesses who want CRM, invoicing and automation in one

Formerly Infusionsoft. Not really an email tool — a small-business operating system with CRM, pipelines, appointments, invoicing and payments alongside the marketing. Priced accordingly.

Starts at
From $299/mo ($2,988/year), 2 users included
Free tier
None
Marketing
Email and landing pages, plus CRM, pipelines, appointments, invoicing and text marketing
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Invoicing, payments and appointment scheduling in the same system as the marketing.
  • A dedicated Customer Success Manager and US-based phone support included.
  • Text marketing bundled — 500 messages and 100 voice minutes on the entry tier.
  • Genuinely one system for a service business that would otherwise run four.
What to watch for
  • From $299/mo, which is an order of magnitude above most of this list.
  • Only 2 users included; additional users are $39/mo each.
  • Implementation services are sold on top, and are effectively expected.
  • Enormously over-specified if what you need is a newsletter.
06Hosted service

MailerLite

Best for: Small teams who want a clean builder and a cheap entry price

The most consistently recommended ActiveCampaign alternative for people who found ActiveCampaign too much. Well-designed, inexpensive, and the Power plan drops the send multiplier entirely.

Starts at
Comfort from $12/mo; Power from $25/mo
Free tier
250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, 2 seats, 3 automations
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages, forms and websites
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Power removes the send cap entirely — unlimited monthly emails and unlimited seats.
  • $12/mo entry is among the cheapest real plans in this category.
  • The editor and templates are genuinely pleasant to use.
  • 24/7 support even on the cheaper paid tier.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 subscribers and 3 active automations — small.
  • Comfort caps you at 50 active automations and a 10× send multiple.
  • Automation logic is shallower than ActiveCampaign's; complex branching gets awkward.
  • No sales CRM.
07Hosted service

Mailchimp

Best for: Teams who need the name procurement already recognises

The default answer for a decade, now part of Intuit. Enormous integration catalogue, and a pricing model built around send multipliers and seat counts that gets expensive at the top.

Starts at
Essentials $13/mo at 500 contacts
Free tier
250 contacts and 500 sends a month, capped at 250 a day, 1 seat
Marketing
Campaigns, journeys, landing pages, forms, ads and a light CRM
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The largest integration catalogue in the category.
  • Template and content tooling that non-marketers can use without training.
  • Predictive segmentation and reporting on Standard and above.
  • Every agency and freelancer already knows it.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 sends — a demo, not a plan.
  • Send multipliers apply: 10× on Essentials, 12× on Standard, 15× on Premium.
  • Seats are rationed at 1 / 3 / 5 until Premium, which is $350/mo at 500 contacts.
  • You pay for unsubscribed contacts unless you archive them yourself.
08Hosted service

Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

Best for: Creators, newsletters and anyone selling their own digital products

Built for individual creators rather than marketing departments, and it shows in the best way: unlimited sending, a free tier that goes to 10,000 subscribers, and commerce built in.

Starts at
Creator $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers ($390/year)
Free tier
Up to 10,000 subscribers with one basic visual automation
Marketing
Broadcasts, sequences, visual automations, landing pages, forms and digital product sales
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • The most generous free tier here by subscriber count — 10,000, not 250.
  • Unlimited email broadcasts on every paid plan; no send multiplier.
  • Sells digital products and subscriptions natively.
  • Pro includes unlimited users, which most competitors reserve for their top tier.
What to watch for
  • The free tier allows one basic automation — the sequences are the paid product.
  • Creator is $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers, well above MailerLite or Mailchimp at that size.
  • Commerce takes a transaction fee on product sales.
  • Built around a creator's mental model; a B2B lifecycle team may find it thin.
09Hosted service

GetResponse

Best for: Course creators and anyone who needs webinars in the same tool

An all-in-one that includes things nobody else bundles — webinars, course hosting, a website builder — with unlimited sending on every plan.

Starts at
Starter $19/mo at 1,000 contacts ($15.58/mo billed annually)
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with feature limits
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, funnels, landing pages, webinars and courses
Data region
European Union (Poland)
What it does well
  • Unlimited monthly email sends on every plan, including the $19 entry tier.
  • Webinars, courses and a website builder in the same subscription.
  • Polish company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
  • Abandoned-cart recovery and sales funnels on Marketer.
What to watch for
  • Starter allows exactly 1 automation workflow — the automation is really on Marketer at $59/mo.
  • No free plan.
  • Users are capped at 3 on Starter and 5 on Marketer and Creator.
  • Breadth means some modules feel less finished than the email core.
10Hosted service

Constant Contact

Best for: Small local businesses who want a phone number to call

One of the oldest email marketing companies still operating, and still the answer for a restaurant, a gym or a non-profit that wants an event tool, a template and someone on the phone rather than a chat widget.

Starts at
Lite from $9/mo; Premium from $69/mo
Free tier
None — a free trial
Marketing
Campaigns, events, social posting, surveys and basic automation
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Event management and registration built in, which almost nobody else has.
  • Phone support with actual humans, which small businesses value more than features.
  • Templates and an editor aimed squarely at non-marketers.
  • Decades of deliverability experience.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at a multiple of your contact list, rising with the tier.
  • Lite is a single user; automation and segmentation arrive on Standard.
  • No free plan.
  • Feels dated next to the newer platforms, and priced as if it doesn't.
11Hosted service

AWeber

Best for: Small businesses who want unlimited users at a low tier

One of the oldest email tools still standing, and it has aged better than most. The Plus plan gives unlimited users at $30/mo — a seat policy the newer platforms reserve for their top tiers — and there's a done-for-you setup service if you'd rather someone else built it.

Starts at
Lite $15/mo at 500 subscribers; $35/mo at 2,500
Free tier
None — a 14-day trial with no subscriber limit
Marketing
Campaigns, automations, landing pages and sales tracking
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Plus gives unlimited users at $30/mo — most competitors charge far more for that.
  • Unlimited landing pages and automations on Plus.
  • A Done For You tier that includes a 1:1 setup call and weekly newsletter drafts.
  • Decades of deliverability experience behind it.
What to watch for
  • Sending is capped at 10× subscribers on Lite and 12× on Plus.
  • Lite allows only 3 automations and 3 landing pages.
  • No free plan — a 14-day trial.
  • Sales tracking carries a 0.6% transaction fee.
12Hosted service

Campaign Monitor

Best for: Design-led teams and agencies sending on behalf of clients

The prettiest templates in the category, and a long history with agencies managing multiple client accounts. Now part of Marigold, with a free tier and unlimited sends from the Essentials plan up.

Starts at
Lite and Essentials are priced by contact count on a slider
Free tier
500 contacts and 500 emails a month
Marketing
Campaigns, automated journeys, segments and a website builder on Premier
Data region
United States, with Australian origins
What it does well
  • Unlimited email sends from Essentials up — no multiplier.
  • Template and design quality that agencies keep coming back for.
  • Send-time optimisation and engagement segments on Premier.
  • 10% off annual plans and 15% off for non-profits.
What to watch for
  • Lite caps sending at 5× subscribers a month.
  • The free plan is 500 contacts and 500 emails — an evaluation allowance.
  • Dollar amounts aren't published as a static table; the page prices by contact band.
  • Automation is shallower than ActiveCampaign's.
13Hosted service

Moosend

Best for: Unlimited sending on a budget, with a long trial to prove it

A Sitecore-owned platform that leads on unlimited sending and a 30-day no-card trial. There's also a credits model — buy 350,000 sends for $350 — which suits anyone whose volume is lumpy.

Starts at
Pro is priced by subscriber count on a calculator
Free tier
None — a 30-day trial with no credit card
Marketing
Campaigns, automation, landing pages, forms, plus SMTP and transactional email
Data region
European Union (Greece)
What it does well
  • Unlimited email campaigns and sends on every paid plan.
  • A 30-day trial with no card, which is unusually long.
  • A credits option — $350 for 350,000 sends — for irregular volume.
  • SMTP and transactional email included rather than a separate product.
What to watch for
  • No permanent free plan.
  • Pro pricing is a calculator rather than a published table.
  • Smaller integration catalogue than the big names.
  • Brand recognition is low, which matters if you need internal buy-in.
14Hosted service

Klaviyo

Best for: Ecommerce, where revenue attribution per email is the point

The ecommerce standard. Deep Shopify and store-data integration, segmentation built on purchase behaviour, and reporting that ties sends to revenue better than anything else here.

Starts at
Priced by active profiles on a slider; no static price table is published
Free tier
250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month, plus $5 of mobile messages
Marketing
Campaigns, flows, ecommerce segmentation, SMS and push
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Best-in-class ecommerce data model — orders, products and browsing drive segments directly.
  • Revenue attribution per flow and per campaign, out of the box.
  • SMS and push in the same platform as email.
  • Predictive analytics on customer lifetime value.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 profiles and 500 sends a month.
  • Priced on active profiles, and the definition of active is broader than 'subscribed'.
  • It gets expensive fast as the list grows; that's the standard complaint.
  • Overkill, and overpriced, if you aren't an ecommerce store.
15Hosted service

Omnisend

Best for: Small ecommerce stores that want Klaviyo's shape at a lower price

Ecommerce-focused automation with email, SMS and web push in one plan, priced well below Klaviyo at the sizes most stores actually operate at.

Starts at
Standard $11.20/mo for 500 contacts; Pro $41.30/mo for 2,500
Free tier
250 contacts, 500 emails a month and 500 web push notifications
Marketing
Ecommerce campaigns and automations, SMS and web push
Data region
European Union (Lithuania)
What it does well
  • Pro gives unlimited monthly emails at $41.30/mo.
  • Web push is unlimited from the Standard plan.
  • SMS from $0.007 with no separate platform fee.
  • Free migration and 24/7 support even on the entry plan.
What to watch for
  • Free is 250 contacts and 500 emails.
  • Standard's 6,000-email allowance is small if you send weekly.
  • Built for stores; a B2B SaaS will find the data model a poor fit.
  • Reporting is thinner than Klaviyo's.
16Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced, opinionated, and quick to set up, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Less configurable than ActiveCampaign by design.

Starts at
Priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Campaigns and loops (their term for automations), plus transactional
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending included rather than billed as a second product.
  • Genuinely fast to set up — hours, not a fortnight.
  • The free plan runs a small product.
  • Clean, modern interface with no legacy modules.
What to watch for
  • Free adds Loops branding and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing sits behind a slider, so budgeting means signing up.
  • Automation is deliberately simpler than ActiveCampaign's.
  • No CRM, SMS or landing pages.
17Hosted service

Customer.io

Best for: Product teams sending lifecycle email off real product events

The technical end of this list. You pipe in events and objects, and build messaging on top of your actual data model rather than a list. Powerful, and priced for companies that already know they need it.

Starts at
Essentials includes 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails a month; the price isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier
None, but early-stage startups can get a full year free
Marketing
Event-driven campaigns and journeys across email, push, SMS and in-app
Data region
United States, with an EU data centre option
What it does well
  • 1 million emails a month included on the entry plan — sending is not the constraint.
  • Data model built on events and objects, not lists and tags.
  • Extra profiles are $0.009 each, so growth is predictable.
  • The startup programme gives qualifying companies a year at no cost.
What to watch for
  • You need engineers. This is not a tool a marketer sets up alone.
  • Pricing above Essentials is a sales conversation.
  • No landing pages, forms or CRM — it assumes those live elsewhere.
  • Overbuilt for a straightforward newsletter.
18Commercial plugin, with a free edition

FluentCRM

Best for: WordPress sites that want the CRM inside WordPress

A WordPress plugin rather than a SaaS. Contacts, sequences and automations live in your own WordPress database, and you bring your own sending provider — so the licence is a flat annual fee no matter how big the list gets.

Starts at
$90/year for one site; $174/year for five
Free tier
A free version of the plugin
Marketing
Campaigns, sequences, automations, segmentation and forms, inside WordPress
Data region
Wherever your WordPress site is hosted
What it does well
  • Flat annual licence — unlimited contacts, no per-contact pricing at all.
  • Data stays in your own WordPress database.
  • Deep integration with WooCommerce, LearnDash, membership plugins and the rest of the ecosystem.
  • The genuine answer to 'ActiveCampaign alternative for WordPress'.
What to watch for
  • It doesn't send email. You still pay Amazon SES, Mailgun or similar underneath.
  • Sending at volume from WordPress cron is fragile; large lists need care.
  • Deliverability is entirely your problem.
  • If your site goes down, so does your marketing automation.
19Open source

Mautic

Best for: Owning your marketing automation stack outright

The largest open-source marketing automation project — campaigns, segmentation, landing pages, lead scoring — running on your own PHP and MySQL. Free as software, expensive in attention.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay for hosting and a sending provider
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Full campaign builder, segmentation, landing pages, forms and lead scoring
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • No per-contact pricing, ever. The list can be any size.
  • Feature coverage close to the commercial platforms, including lead scoring.
  • Your data stays on your infrastructure, which answers most privacy requirements.
  • Over 10,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
What to watch for
  • PHP, MySQL and correctly configured cron — this is a system you administer.
  • Upgrades are known to be involved.
  • You bring your own sending provider and own the deliverability.
  • The interface feels its age next to the commercial tools.
FAQ

EngageBay alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best EngageBay alternative?

If you want the CRM, HubSpot's free tier or ActiveCampaign. If you want the marketing without the suite, MailerLite, Brevo or us. If you're a service business that invoices, Keap does more and costs far more.

If the per-user pricing is what's pushing you out, anything priced on contacts — including this site — stops the bill growing with headcount.

Is EngageBay really cheaper than HubSpot?

At small team sizes, dramatically — $12.74 per user per month against HubSpot Professional's $800/mo plus a $3,000 onboarding fee.

At larger team sizes the per-user model narrows the gap, and HubSpot's free CRM for two users is free where EngageBay's is capped at 250 contacts.

Is there a free EngageBay alternative?

HubSpot's free CRM for up to two users is the closest for the CRM side. For the email side, Kit gives 10,000 free subscribers, EmailOctopus 2,500, Email Bump 5,000 contacts with unlimited flows, Brevo 300 emails a day forever.

If the team keeps growing

Seats that don't change the bill

Priced only on contacts, with unlimited team seats and unlimited sending domains on every plan including free. 5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free.