Campaigner Review (2026)Automation Starts on the $35 Plan
By Daan Haket · Researched and written with an AI assistant · who does what
Contact-based pricing also means dormant subscribers bill like active ones; prune first. Throughout this review we weigh it against Mailchimp.
mid-market senders with larger lists that want mature email plus SMS workflows and are comfortable at the Essential tier and up.
you're small (the useful features start at $179/mo) or you dislike card-required auto-converting trials on principle.
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Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 15 Oct 2026
Campaigner prices by contact count and bills per account, not per user: a slider sets the tier and there is no separate monthly/annual toggle. Two self-serve plans: Essentials from $14 a month at 1,000 contacts ($38 at 5,000, $158 at 25,000, $409 at 100,000) and Advanced from $35 a month at 1,000 contacts ($70 at 5,000, $258 at 25,000, $649 at 100,000), plus a quote-only Custom tier.
Essentials excludes automation workflows and conversion tracking but includes the REST API, webhooks and SFTP; landing pages, sub-accounts and white-label are Custom only. SMS/MMS is not bundled into any plan: pay-as-you-go from $0.009 per message, sold through sales. Reputation Defender is an add-on at 20% of plan cost. The 30-day trial is full-feature but takes a card and auto-charges when it ends.
Full pricing notes (2 more paragraphs)
History: until July 2026 the page carried a Starter/Essential/Advanced ladder at about $59, $179 and $649 a month; the current ladder starts far lower and moves with the contact count. Read again on 9 October 2026 on campaigner.com/pricing-plans (the old /pricing page now redirects there), with the contact slider and no billing toggle: Essentials $14 at 1,000, $24 at 2,500, $38 at 5,000, $72 at 10,000, $109 at 15,000, $138 at 20,000, $158 at 25,000, $188 at 30,000, $238 at 40,000, $287 at 50,000, $339 at 60,000, $349 at 70,000, $369 at 80,000, $389 at 90,000, $409 at 100,000; Advanced $35 at 1,000, $47 at 2,500, $70 at 5,000, $124 at 10,000, $192 at 15,000, $235 at 20,000, $258 at 25,000, $288 at 30,000, $347 at 40,000, $398 at 50,000, $449 at 60,000, $499 at 70,000, $549 at 80,000, $599 at 90,000, $649 at 100,000 contacts, each '/ mo'.
Re-read 15 October 2026 on campaigner.com/pricing-plans in the served page at its default of 1,000 contacts: Essentials $14 and Advanced $35 a month, unchanged, with a USD/CAD currency switch; the FAQ still says the 30-day trial is full-feature and that you cancel through customer support.
Plans change — always verify the live price on their site.
Category context: Growth & Revenue. Across the 85 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is about $30 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Campaigner’s entry price of $14 a month sits below that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
Correction after re-checking: (2026) Contact-based and billed per account rather than per user; a contact slider sets the tier and there is no separate monthly/annual toggle. Two self-serve plans: Essentials from $14/mo at 1,000 contacts ($38 at 5,000, $158 at 25,000, $409 at 100,000) and Advanced from $35/mo at 1,000 contacts ($70 at 5,000, $258 at 25,000, $649 at 100,000), plus a quote-only Custom tier. Essentials excludes automation workflows and conversion tracking, but does include the REST API, webhooks and SFTP. Landing pages, sub-accounts and white-label are Custom-tier only. SMS/MMS is not bundled into any plan — it is pay-as-you-go from $0.009 per message and gated behind sales. Reputation Defender costs an extra 20% of whatever your plan costs. The 30-day trial is full-feature but requires a card and auto-charges when it ends. (re-verified 31 Jul 2026)
What the price did
We read Campaigner’s own pricing page on a schedule and keep every reading, so this is our record of the page — not a forecast, and not someone else’s summary. A change appears here only after we confirmed the new price on the page itself.
Unchanged. Every price on Campaigner’s pricing page was identical across our 10 reads from 8 Aug 2026 to 27 Oct 2026 (80 days).
The honest knock
Automation workflows and conversion tracking only arrive on Advanced (from $35 a month at 1,000 contacts) — Essentials is a sending tool with an API, not a marketing-automation platform — and the trial auto-converts to paid if you do not actively cancel, which tells you something about the retention strategy.
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What Campaigner does
Email and SMS marketing for mid-market senders with larger lists. Contact-based pricing bills dormant subscribers too.
What buyers report about Campaigner
Hands-on: not tested by usReported by buyers: Capterra, TrustRadius and Business, read August 2026
Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We have not run Campaigner ourselves, so this is other buyers' experience rather than ours. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • Segmentation and automation are deeper than the price suggests, and reviewers running complex campaigns rate the workflow builder.
- • $14/month at 1,000 contacts on Essentials is competitive on paper.
- • Cancellation requires a phone call plus 30 days' notice. Reviewers describe still paying for a month after the service stopped working for them.
- • The 30-day trial takes a card and auto-converts. Reviewers report being charged for over a year on a trial they never used.
- • SMS works only for US and Canadian numbers as of early 2026, and this is not stated prominently at signup. For a European team that is a dealbreaker discovered after paying.
- • No free version, and below 500 contacts reviewers say it is simply the wrong tool.
When the paid plan is worth it
There is no free tier — only a 30-day trial that takes a card. The real decision is Essentials versus Advanced, and pricing scales by contact count, not per user: $14 versus $35 a month at 1,000 contacts, $158 versus $258 at 25,000, $409 versus $649 at 100,000. The limit that bites first is automation. Essentials has no workflows at all — no time-based, rules-based or conditional triggers, no delay nodes — no conversion tracking, and no way to remove the Campaigner footer branding.
Stay on Essentials if you broadcast a scheduled newsletter to one list: you still get the drag-and-drop editor, A/B and multivariate testing, dynamic segments, the REST API, webhooks and SFTP. Advanced pays for itself the moment you want one triggered sequence, or want to attribute revenue to a send. Upgrading does not fix the ceiling above it. Landing pages, sub-accounts, SSO and white-label stay quote-only on the Custom tier. The media library is capped at 50MB on every plan, Reputation Defender adds 20% of plan cost at any tier, and SMS stays pay-as-you-go behind a sales conversation.
Our monthly capture read this vendor's pricing page every month from July 2026 to October 2026, and the amounts were the same all 4 times, including $14 and $35 from the pricing above. We keep watching — the registry records what moves.
How to actually use Campaigner
Start the 30-day trial — full-feature, but it takes a card and charges automatically when the trial ends unless you cancel first. Fix the sending identity before anything else. Campaigner's knowledge base carries separate articles for validating a business From domain instead of a Gmail or Yahoo address, and for SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Its deliverability page describes authentication as something its team walks through with you. So treat DNS as a task with lead time, not a checkbox. Then run the import wizard, build in the drag-and-drop editor, and schedule.
Distilled from vendor pricing and SMS pricing pages, anti-spam policy and terms & conditions, the deliverability and tutorials pages, and the knowledge-base article index Buying questions read 15 October 2026: campaigner.com/pricing-plans (default 1,000-contact view and the FAQ on trial, set-up fees and cancellation) and campaigner.com/legal/terms-conditions (published 18 July 2024: contact-plan billing on the highest count, usage fees above the allowance, non-refundable fees, section 14 termination).
Common Campaigner setup mistakes
Where Campaigner setups actually go wrong, and what it costs you when they do. Same sources as the setup notes above — not from a walkthrough we ran ourselves.
The trap is the first big send.
- The anti-spam policy states that campaigns are screened automatically and held until a postmaster reviews and clears them.
- The flags it lists include campaign size, the billing plan chosen, and how little time passed between account creation and scheduling — the exact profile of a new account.
- Campaigner's own remedy is to let support help with the first large list upload and to test-send to a few addresses first.
- Purchased or rented lists are refused outright.
Campaigner vs Campaign Monitor, side by side
Each column shows the vendor’s own published entry price, read on the date shown. Entry prices can cover different services or units, so check what each one buys. We do not average them into a score.
Both names above are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you sign up, at no extra cost to you. Neither changes what this table says.
The natural comparison is Campaign Monitor or ActiveCampaign — Campaign Monitor shares the polish, ActiveCampaign beats it on automation depth — compare at your real list size and feature floor. Weigh it against Mailchimp on the job you actually need done.
Frequently asked questions
Does my Campaigner bill drop if I delete contacts?
Not by itself. Campaigner's Terms & Conditions (published 18 July 2024, read 15 October 2026) base a contact plan's fee on 'the highest number of subscribers or contacts in your account at any time' and say the fee will not come down as the count falls unless you contact Customer Support. Each unique email address counts as one contact. The same terms say that going over your plan's allowance triggers automatic usage fees for each contact or email above it. So clean a list before you import it, and ask support to re-tier the account after a large clean-up.
How do I cancel Campaigner, and is anything refunded?
Through support rather than a button. The pricing-page FAQ (read 15 October 2026) says you can cancel at any time by calling customer support or by email or chat; the US Terms & Conditions (section 14, published 18 July 2024) let online and month-to-month subscribers downgrade or cancel with 30 days' notice by phone or by email to support@campaigner.com. Activation and recurring subscription fees are paid in advance and are completely non-refundable under the same terms. How the 30 days' notice squares with 'cancel at any time' is not spelled out, so ask support for the effective date in writing when you cancel.
Is this a hands-on review of Campaigner?
This is a researched assessment, not a hands-on test — where we've used a tool ourselves, we say so explicitly. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on Capterra, TrustRadius and Business.com, read August 2026.
- Re-read 2026-09-05 on campaigner.com/pricing.
Others in this category
Reviewed growth & revenue tools that share ground with Campaigner — comparable in what they do, not drop-in swaps:
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