An active contact is ManyChat's billing unit: a contact who has interacted with you through ManyChat during your current billing month, counted once however often they interact. Inrō bills on contact activations instead.
An active contact is the unit ManyChat bills on: a contact who has interacted with you through ManyChat during your current billing month. However often they interact, they count once (ManyChat's help centre on Active Contacts, read September 2026). Inrō does not bill on active contacts. It bills on contact activations, which count only when Inrō's automation acts.
In ManyChat's own words, if someone responds to an automation or messages you through ManyChat this month, they count as one active contact (ManyChat's pricing explainer, published August 2026).
ManyChat's help centre (September 2026) ties the unit to the pricing model ManyChat introduced on March 2, 2026. For contacts you import, it names the routes that make them count. An imported contact stays inactive until they send or receive a message through one of these:
Yes. The count resets at the start of each billing cycle, and ManyChat works it out monthly even on an annual plan. Contacts who do not interact in a month stay in your ManyChat contact list and add nothing that month.
ManyChat alerts you at 70%, 90% and 100% of your allowance, according to its Active Contacts article as read in September 2026. If you go over, your automations keep running and the overage is added to your next bill by default. You can set an overage limit in your billing settings.
No. ManyChat counts when the contact interacts. Inrō counts when its own automation acts. A contact activation happens once per contact per billing period, the first time an automation, a DM campaign or the AI agent acts on that contact. Keeping contacts in the Inrō CRM and inbox costs nothing. For how that maps to a price, see Inrō plans and prices. If you are moving off ManyChat, see alternatives to ManyChat.
Something unrelated to billing. In Inrō, Active is a contact status: the contact has sent you a DM and can receive your messages. Your dashboard calls these Available contacts. Other statuses, such as the one set by a DM opt-out, change who your automations can reach.
For the other terms you meet when you set up Instagram automation, browse the Inrō glossary.
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