How to integrate Active campaign MCP with CrewAI

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Introduction

This guide walks you through connecting Active campaign to CrewAI using the Composio tool router. By the end, you'll have a working Active campaign agent that can add a note to john doe's contact record, create a new contact with email and tags, add contact jane@company.com to 'welcome series' automation, create a follow-up task for a lead due friday through natural language commands.

This guide will help you understand how to give your CrewAI agent real control over a Active campaign account through Composio's Active campaign MCP server.

Before we dive in, let's take a quick look at the key ideas and tools involved.

TL;DR

Here's what you'll learn:
  • Get a Composio API key and configure your Active campaign connection
  • Set up CrewAI with an MCP enabled agent
  • Create a Tool Router session or standalone MCP server for Active campaign
  • Build a conversational loop where your agent can execute Active campaign operations

What is CrewAI?

CrewAI is a powerful framework for building multi-agent AI systems. It provides primitives for defining agents with specific roles, creating tasks, and orchestrating workflows through crews.

Key features include:

  • Agent Roles: Define specialized agents with specific goals and backstories
  • Task Management: Create tasks with clear descriptions and expected outputs
  • Crew Orchestration: Combine agents and tasks into collaborative workflows
  • MCP Integration: Connect to external tools through Model Context Protocol

What is the Active campaign MCP server, and what's possible with it?

The ActiveCampaign MCP server is an implementation of the Model Context Protocol that connects your AI agent and assistants like Claude, Cursor, etc directly to your ActiveCampaign account. It provides structured and secure access to your marketing automation and CRM data, so your agent can perform actions like adding contacts, managing deals, creating tasks, and organizing pipelines on your behalf.

  • Automated contact management: Easily add new contacts, update details, or attach notes so your customer database stays current and actionable.
  • Sales pipeline creation and management: Let your agent create, customize, or delete deal pipelines and organize deals through every stage of your sales process.
  • Task and activity automation: Have your agent create tasks for contacts and deals, assign due dates, and ensure important follow-ups never slip through the cracks.
  • Deal and account organization: Automatically create, update, or remove accounts and associate them with the right contacts and opportunities for seamless CRM workflows.
  • Seamless automation enrollment: Add contacts directly to specific automations, personalizing your marketing or sales outreach at scale without manual effort.

Supported Tools & Triggers

Tools
Add contact noteAdd a note to a contact in activecampaign.
Add Contact to AutomationThis tool adds an existing contact to a specific automation in activecampaign.
Add Secondary Contact to DealThis tool adds a secondary contact to an existing deal in activecampaign.
Create AccountThis tool creates a new account in activecampaign.
Create contactCreates a new contact in activecampaign with the specified details.
Create contact taskCreate a task associated with a contact in activecampaign.
Create Deal PipelineCreates a new deal pipeline in activecampaign.
Create Deal Task TypeThis tool creates a new deal task type in activecampaign.
Delete AccountThis tool deletes an existing account in activecampaign.
Delete Deal PipelineThis tool deletes an existing deal pipeline in activecampaign.
Delete Deal StageThis tool deletes an existing deal stage in activecampaign.
Find contactFind a specific contact in activecampaign using either their email address, id, or phone number.
Find Contact TasksThis tool allows you to find tasks associated with a specific contact in activecampaign.
Find User by EmailThis tool allows you to find a user in activecampaign by their email address, returning detailed information including first name, last name, email, phone, organization details, and related resource links.
List all contactsList all contacts in activecampaign.
Manage contact tagManage tags for a contact in activecampaign.
Manage list subscriptionSubscribe or unsubscribe a contact from a list in activecampaign.
Remove Contact from AutomationThis tool removes a contact from a specified automation in activecampaign.
Track Event in ActiveCampaignThis tool creates a custom website or application event in activecampaign by recording events through a post api endpoint.
Update AccountThis tool updates an existing account in activecampaign.
Upsert AccountThis tool creates a new account if it doesn't exist or updates an existing account in activecampaign.

What is the Composio tool router, and how does it fit here?

What is Tool Router?

Composio's Tool Router helps agents find the right tools for a task at runtime. You can plug in multiple toolkits (like Gmail, HubSpot, and GitHub), and the agent will identify the relevant app and action to complete multi-step workflows. This can reduce token usage and improve the reliability of tool calls. Read more here: Getting started with Tool Router

The tool router generates a secure MCP URL that your agents can access to perform actions.

How the Tool Router works

The Tool Router follows a three-phase workflow:

  1. Discovery: Searches for tools matching your task and returns relevant toolkits with their details.
  2. Authentication: Checks for active connections. If missing, creates an auth config and returns a connection URL via Auth Link.
  3. Execution: Executes the action using the authenticated connection.

Step-by-step Guide

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:
  • Python 3.9 or higher
  • A Composio account and API key
  • A Active campaign connection authorized in Composio
  • An OpenAI API key for the CrewAI LLM
  • Basic familiarity with Python

Getting API Keys for OpenAI and Composio

OpenAI API Key
  • Go to the OpenAI dashboard and create an API key. You'll need credits to use the models, or you can connect to another model provider.
  • Keep the API key safe.
Composio API Key
  • Log in to the Composio dashboard.
  • Navigate to your API settings and generate a new API key.
  • Store this key securely as you'll need it for authentication.

Install dependencies

bash
pip install composio crewai crewai-tools python-dotenv
What's happening:
  • composio connects your agent to Active campaign via MCP
  • crewai provides Agent, Task, Crew, and LLM primitives
  • crewai-tools includes MCP helpers
  • python-dotenv loads environment variables from .env

Set up environment variables

bash
COMPOSIO_API_KEY=your_composio_api_key_here
USER_ID=your_user_id_here
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here

Create a .env file in your project root.

What's happening:

  • COMPOSIO_API_KEY authenticates with Composio
  • USER_ID scopes the session to your account
  • OPENAI_API_KEY lets CrewAI use your chosen OpenAI model

Import dependencies

python
from crewai import Agent, Task, Crew, LLM
from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter  # optional import if you plan to adapt tools
from composio import Composio
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
from crewai.mcp import MCPServerHTTP

load_dotenv()
What's happening:
  • CrewAI classes define agents and tasks, and run the workflow
  • MCPServerHTTP connects the agent to an MCP endpoint
  • Composio will give you a short lived Active campaign MCP URL

Create a Composio Tool Router session for Active campaign

python
composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
session = composio.create(
    user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
    toolkits=["active_campaign"],
)
url = session.mcp.url
What's happening:
  • You create a Active campaign only session through Composio
  • Composio returns an MCP HTTP URL that exposes Active campaign tools

Configure the LLM

python
llm = LLM(
    model="gpt-5-mini",
    api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"),
)
What's happening:
  • CrewAI will call this LLM for planning and responses
  • You can swap in a different model if needed

Attach the MCP server and create the agent

python
toolkit_agent = Agent(
    role="Active campaign Assistant",
    goal="Help users interact with Active campaign through natural language commands",
    backstory=(
        "You are an expert assistant with access to Active campaign tools. "
        "You can perform various Active campaign operations on behalf of the user."
    ),
    mcps=[
        MCPServerHTTP(
            url=url,
            streamable=True,
            cache_tools_list=True,
            headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")},
        ),
    ],
    llm=llm,
    verbose=True,
    max_iter=10,
)
What's happening:
  • MCPServerHTTP connects the agent to the Active campaign MCP endpoint
  • cache_tools_list saves a tools catalog for faster subsequent runs
  • verbose helps you see what the agent is doing

Add a REPL loop with Task and Crew

python
print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end.\n")
print("Try asking the agent to perform Active campaign operations.\n")

conversation_context = ""

while True:
    user_input = input("You: ").strip()

    if user_input.lower() in ["exit", "quit", "bye"]:
        print("\nGoodbye!")
        break

    if not user_input:
        continue

    conversation_context += f"\nUser: {user_input}\n"
    print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

    task = Task(
        description=(
            f"Based on the conversation history:\n{conversation_context}\n\n"
            f"Current user request: {user_input}\n\n"
            f"Please help the user with their Active campaign related request."
        ),
        expected_output="A helpful response addressing the user's request",
        agent=toolkit_agent,
    )

    crew = Crew(
        agents=[toolkit_agent],
        tasks=[task],
        verbose=False,
    )

    result = crew.kickoff()
    response = str(result)

    conversation_context += f"Agent: {response}\n"
    print(f"Agent: {response}\n")
What's happening:
  • You build a simple chat loop and keep a running context
  • Each user turn becomes a Task handled by the same agent
  • Crew executes the task and returns a response

Run the application

python
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
What's happening:
  • Standard Python entry point so you can run python crewai_active_campaign_agent.py

Complete Code

Here's the complete code to get you started with Active campaign and CrewAI:

python
# file: crewai_active_campaign_agent.py
from crewai import Agent, Task, Crew, LLM
from crewai_tools import MCPServerAdapter  # optional
from composio import Composio
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os
from crewai.mcp import MCPServerHTTP

load_dotenv()

def main():
    # Initialize Composio and create a Active campaign session
    composio = Composio(api_key=os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY"))
    session = composio.create(
        user_id=os.getenv("USER_ID"),
        toolkits=["active_campaign"],
    )
    url = session.mcp.url

    # Configure LLM
    llm = LLM(
        model="gpt-5-mini",
        api_key=os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY"),
    )

    # Create Active campaign assistant agent
    toolkit_agent = Agent(
        role="Active campaign Assistant",
        goal="Help users interact with Active campaign through natural language commands",
        backstory=(
            "You are an expert assistant with access to Active campaign tools. "
            "You can perform various Active campaign operations on behalf of the user."
        ),
        mcps=[
            MCPServerHTTP(
                url=url,
                streamable=True,
                cache_tools_list=True,
                headers={"x-api-key": os.getenv("COMPOSIO_API_KEY")},
            ),
        ],
        llm=llm,
        verbose=True,
        max_iter=10,
    )

    print("Chat started! Type 'exit' or 'quit' to end the conversation.\n")
    print("Try asking the agent to perform Active campaign operations.\n")

    conversation_context = ""

    while True:
        user_input = input("You: ").strip()

        if user_input.lower() in ["exit", "quit", "bye"]:
            print("\nGoodbye!")
            break

        if not user_input:
            continue

        conversation_context += f"\nUser: {user_input}\n"
        print("\nAgent is thinking...\n")

        task = Task(
            description=(
                f"Based on the conversation history:\n{conversation_context}\n\n"
                f"Current user request: {user_input}\n\n"
                f"Please help the user with their Active campaign related request."
            ),
            expected_output="A helpful response addressing the user's request",
            agent=toolkit_agent,
        )

        crew = Crew(
            agents=[toolkit_agent],
            tasks=[task],
            verbose=False,
        )

        result = crew.kickoff()
        response = str(result)

        conversation_context += f"Agent: {response}\n"
        print(f"Agent: {response}\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Conclusion

You now have a CrewAI agent connected to Active campaign through Composio's Tool Router. The agent can perform Active campaign operations through natural language commands. Next steps:
  • Add role-specific instructions to customize agent behavior
  • Plug in more toolkits for multi-app workflows
  • Chain tasks for complex multi-step operations

How to build Active campaign MCP Agent with another framework

FAQ

What are the differences in Tool Router MCP and Active campaign MCP?

With a standalone Active campaign MCP server, the agents and LLMs can only access a fixed set of Active campaign tools tied to that server. However, with the Composio Tool Router, agents can dynamically load tools from Active campaign and many other apps based on the task at hand, all through a single MCP endpoint.

Can I use Tool Router MCP with CrewAI?

Yes, you can. CrewAI fully supports MCP integration. You get structured tool calling, message history handling, and model orchestration while Tool Router takes care of discovering and serving the right Active campaign tools.

Can I manage the permissions and scopes for Active campaign while using Tool Router?

Yes, absolutely. You can configure which Active campaign scopes and actions are allowed when connecting your account to Composio. You can also bring your own OAuth credentials or API configuration so you keep full control over what the agent can do.

How safe is my data with Composio Tool Router?

All sensitive data such as tokens, keys, and configuration is fully encrypted at rest and in transit. Composio is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant and follows strict security practices so your Active campaign data and credentials are handled as safely as possible.

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