What is ActiveCampaign: An Honest Review In 2024

ActiveCampaign is a game-changer and flexible email marketing service that helps companies of all sizes achieve better outcomes by providing them with a collection of marketing tools and excellent automation services. However, given the software’s inherent complexity, not every organization will find it to be a good fit.

Email marketing still has a big role in the success of businesses and can be more influential if paired with the right tools. This article is about reviewing ActiveCampaign itself and going through ActiveCampaign alternatives to see which one is the right tool for email marketing and can perform best. So let us start.

What Is Active Campaign?

When ActiveCampaign was established in 2003, its sole goal was to give small and medium-sized companies a strong and adaptable solution for their CRM, outbound sales strategies, and marketing requirements.

Nowadays, ActiveCampaign has developed into a platform with several features and integrations, making it a considerable choice for companies of all kinds. Its extensive user base—more than 145,000 individuals—should be enough to give you an idea of the kind of service and quality you can anticipate! This amount of users is what each one of Active Campaign competitors desires and works for.

To put it briefly, ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based platform that helps organizations expand and thrive by fusing email marketing, automation, and customer relationship management (CRM). It seeks to enhance client relationships, boost sales and revenue, simplify and expedite marketing and sales procedures, and enable data-driven decision-making.

ActiveCampaign Features

ActiveCampaign email marketing is a feature that is well-known to everyone. However, there are other features that Active Campaign provides businesses so they can rise and flourish. Here are all the features you can expect from ActiveCampaign:

1. Email Marketing Features

ActiveCampaign email marketing is the first feature that brings many customers to the platform and builds up trust. Active Campaign email marketing has its own features that include:

• Email segmentation: A key element of cross-channel marketing tactics is segmentation. Marketers can guarantee that each contact in their database sees content they genuinely want to view by utilizing ActiveCampaign’s email segmentation features, which will increase engagement and maximize retention. The foundation of these features is ‘tags’ which can be applied to contacts automatically depending on what they do. This feature coexists with the audience segmentation in the best possible way. 
• Subscription Forms: Forms on websites are another essential component of marketing since they allow businesses to collect data from users and utilize it to create strategies, automate cross-channel interactions, and expand their clientele. 
• Deliverability: Deliverability of emails can be one of your marketing strategy’s hidden gems. For instance, the email deliverability features of ActiveCampaign will assess how well you can send emails to inboxes and pinpoint the location of your messages within those inboxes.

2. Automation

The foundation of an effective email marketing strategy is automation. Automation is the practice of creating workflows so that, naturally, your contacts will get specific emails automatically when they take particular activities. Businesses can use an AI email generator alongside ActiveCampaign to speed up the process even more. 

You may design a procedure, for instance, to notify your customers who have completed a purchase a long time ago of new products so they would be persuaded to buy that product. This is a huge help that the ActiveCampaign marketing automation feature will grant you in the best way. 

3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

ActiveCampaign CRM tools are for managing your customer relationships and the interactions you have with them. This is due to the fact that they simplify the process of organizing, storing, and managing all of your prospect and customer data in one location. 

It is quite simple to add contacts, and it may be done automatically or manually using a CSV file. For instance, you can add contacts to your list who have filled out a contact form or have a high lead score.

Lead scoring is a method developed by ActiveCampaign CRM that establishes a lead’s quality, or lead score, based on behavior-based criteria and data that may be configured either automatically or manually. You may easily segment your leads and concentrate on the most potential chances with the help of this tool. 

4. Customer Segmentation

Similar to other ActiveCampaign competitors, ActiveCampaign enables companies to divide their clients into groups according to particular attributes, such as behavior, demographics, or past purchases. This facilitates more individualized client communication and helps organizations design focused advertising.

Additionally, there’s a helpful tool called ‘list clean-up’ which does exactly what its name suggests: it purges users from your contact list who have unsubscribed, failed to confirm their subscriptions, or had returned emails to their accounts.

5. Landing Page Builder

ActiveCampaign offers a landing page builder, although access to it is restricted to Plus plan subscribers and higher plans. For your convenience, the builder offers over 40 designs that are all aesthetically pleasing and responsive to mobile devices— more than any alternative to Active Campaign would provide you with. 

ActiveCampaign Pricing

4 main plans depending on the type and size of the business can be purchased. 

There is also an ActiveCampaign free trial that lasts for 14 days and can be a great starting point. All you need to get started is your email address and company name. After creating a password, you choose the desired service—it provides email marketing as well as CRM, marketing automation, and sales automation. Next, select how many subscribers or contacts you have and if you require assistance creating your account.

Starter

This plan is dedicated to small businesses and those who are at the start of their journey. The starter plan can be used for up to 10000 contacts and will start at $15/m for 1000 contacts and $149/m at its max. Additionally, this plan does not include a landing page builder, generative AI, revenue reporting, and some other services.

Plus

If you need more advanced services than the starter plan and basic segmentation, this plan is the best choice for you. In this plan, you don’t have restrictions on your contracts and also can use the landing page builder and automation. You also can use A/B testing on your emails but not the automation. The starting cost for this plan is $49/m which can go up to $609/m for 50000 contacts.

Pro

This is the most popular plan among the 4 and has access to most of the important services that are needed for any business. This plan provides all the services mentioned in previous plans plus A/B testing for automation, conditional content, predictive sending, and up to 3 users at the same time. 

The starting point for this plan is $79/m up to $969/m for up to 50000 contacts.

Enterprise 

As the name suggests, this plan is especially good for bigger companies and businesses that need ActiveCampaign email marketing service and other services as well. The difference between this plan and the Pro is that with this plan, you get a dedicated account team and Single Sign-On (SSO) as well as the ability to log in with 5 users at the same time. 

This plan starts at $145/m up to $1169 for 50000 contacts. 

ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons

Here are some of the ActiveCampaign comparison results in the form of pros and cons so you can decide more easily:

Pros

• Easy to set up automation: ActiveCampaign automation is easy to understand thanks to the drag-and-drop design. They are one of many companies in this field that use this method for design automation.
• Versatile goal tracking: Every business must have a plan and goal for its future so it can try and reach it. ActiveCampaign goal tracking allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your efforts.
• Lots of Integrations: Because of its position in the email marketing world, Active Campaign owns many integrations that will help businesses work with it. 
• Message variables: You may build an HTML or plain text snippet library that you can use again and again for all of your active campaigns. For instance, you can modify ActiveCampaign automation so that it always uses a different discount code.
• High deliverability: with a 97% deliverability rate, ActiveCampaign is in a good spot, according to recent research by Email Tool Tester.
• Advances services: It is inconvenient to have to switch email marketing platforms just because your company expands. You can subscribe to a ‘Pro’-level, package with ActiveCampaign, which comes with extra capabilities including SMS marketing, on-site chat, lead scoring, and a CRM.

Cons

• Clunky email editing: ActiveCampaign comparison with other brands such as MailChimp shows some level of clunkyness in their email editing part. 
• Steep learning curve: A lot of email marketing software offer quick fixes for common tasks like finding dormant contacts, changing certain subscription preferences, or sending lead magnets. However, the learning curve on ActiveCampaign is steeper because you have to construct each of these from scratch.
• Too many features: With ActiveCampaign, you can do anything, therefore there are a lot of features to choose from. The learning curve is steep as a result. If you don’t have the time to become well-trained with ActiveCampaign, you could be better off using a simpler platform.
• Poor customer service: According to the reviews and our own experience, ActiveCampain has a customer service situation that is not well suited for any marketing platform and can be exhausting in many situations.

User Reviews

Now that we talked about the pros and cons of ActiveCampaign, it is time to see what other users think about this marketing software and if our experiences are the same or not.

The first thing that is obvious in this particular review is the condition of ActiveCampaigns’ customer services.

As you can see, there are multiple reviews and occasions where customers are unhappy about this marketing software’s customer services and how they won’t even respond to their requests except for advertising more packages and selling new services. This can be hurtful for ActiveCampaign in the long run and customers should not overlook this fact.

Another fact that is obvious and should be mentioned here is the complexity and deep curve of learning ActiveCampgin. This and the steep price of this platform make customers annoyed and lead them to consider other options in the market.

Here is another review from Khalil who also has had difficulties with customer service and the high cost of services:

It is obvious that everybody can have different experiences with a specific platform. However, these reviews are the best way to see what is happening and determine if the platform is suitable for someone’s business. 

ActiveCampaign Alternatives

There are many email marketing platforms in the market that may be suitable for different businesses and meet their specific needs. Therefore, in this part, we try to introduce some of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives. Let us start with Activecampaign vs Clickfunnels and their comparison:

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one marketing platform that can be named as one of the ActiveCampaign alternatives.

This marketing platform has the ability to establish fully automated, optimized sales and marketing funnels that may provide the most money with the least amount of work. However, the main problem with ClickFunnels is the high cost of their services. Here are some features and pricing of this marketing platform:

Features

• Landing page editor: The landing page editor offered by ClickFunnels is really powerful. It is quite intuitive, neat, and well-designed. This makes modifying pages easier by giving you a clear understanding of what needs to be done and how your page will appear and work once it is live on the internet.
• Pop-up creator: Pop-ups can play a big role in a website’s success and it is no shock that ClickFunnels gives you all the tools you need to construct your own.  With the tool, you may create a pop-up from the start or choose one of the many templates, which you can then edit with a single click.
• A/B testing: You can receive comprehensive data and A/B test your sales funnels inside the ClickFunnels dashboard.

With the help of this function, you may test several pages based on various elements to see which one works best.

• Email list-building tools: You can easily make your own email list by using ClickFunnels. You are able to generate an opt-in email funnel to gather your leads’ email addresses using their email list builder feature.

Pricing

As an alternative to ActiveCampaign, ClickFunnel offers two different plans for customers besides the 14-day free trial that can help newcomers get familiar with its features. Here is a breakdown of these two plans:

• Startup: as we said before, the main issue with ClcikFunnels is their pricing. The startup plan is the cheapest one and starts at $97/m. However, the important point is that you get all of their features without any exceptions. The only limitations are brand workspaces and team members which are at 3 for each.
• Pro: This plan starts at $297/m and the only advantage of it is that your team members and brand workspaces are limited to 10. 

MailChimp

Founded in 2001, MailChimp is an email marketing platform designed for a broad range of companies. As one of the most popular ActiveCampaign competitors, MailChimp provides you with the resources you need to plan, carry out, and monitor email marketing campaigns for your clients and subscribers. 

With the many features the tool offers, you can manage your mailing list, create visually appealing campaigns, set up email automation, and monitor campaign performance all from one location. Here is a list of features that you can expect from MailChimp:

Features

• Managing email lists: by using MailChimp, it’s a simple task to manage your list of contacts and select from a wide range of segmentation options. You can divide up your subscriber base, for example, according to their demographics, interests, and behavior.
• Create Campaigns: Without knowing how to code or design, you can build visually attractive email campaigns and newsletters using Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop email editor. Make sure your emails are consistent and engaging to your customers by tailoring their layout, design, and content to reflect the identity of your business.
• Analytics reports: Strong analytics tools are available from Mailchimp to monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns and email marketing. With the help of these insights, you can maximize the return on investment from your business initiatives by making data-driven decisions.
• Email Automation: Automation can have a huge impact on businesses. You may build up emails based on milestones or client actions with Mailchimp’s automation tools. Welcome emails, transactional emails, product recommendations, shopping card abandoned alerts, and follow-up emails after a purchase can all be automated.
• A/B Testing: You can test various variables in your email campaigns with Mailchimp’s A/B testing functionality. You can determine which email version most appeals to your audience and tailor your campaigns to increase open rates and conversions by experimenting with and comparing various iterations of the message.
• Email Templated: MailChimp has a large collection of editable email templates designed specifically for eCommerce companies. Select from a variety of expertly created templates and alter them to fit your brand. This aids in making your emails pleasing and coherent with the style of your e-commerce website.

Pricing

MailChimp offers 3 separate plans besides their 30-day free trial which is great if you want to examine these features in the most basic way.

• Essential: Their essential plan starts at $13/month and contains the main features except for generative AI, Dynamic content, behavioral targeting, and advanced segmentation. Keep in mind that an essential plan is available for 3 users at the same time. 
• Standard: this plan is the best and most popular among all of MailChimp’s plans. It starts at $20/m and is usable by 5 users at the same time. It contains all the features except for some very advanced customer support such as phone & priority Support. 
• Premium: This plan is only suitable if you have a very big company and are in need of advanced and specific customer services. It starts at $350/m and can be used by unlimited users at the same time.

MailChimp is an alternative to ActiveCampaign that can cover many common needs and specific ones. The decision should be based on the company’s needs and how to solve them in the shortest amount of time. 

FAQs

Here are some of the topics and questions that are relevant to our subject and can help you choose more easily:

1. Who Is ActiveCampaign Best For?

The platform ActiveCampaign currently includes several capabilities for CRM, marketing, sales, and transactional messaging. This platform is a valid option for those who prioritize marketing automation.

2. Is ActiveCampaign Easy to Use?

Yes. It’s more user-friendly than some of the other email marketing tools, which makes it simpler to create automated programs with more sophisticated features and triggers. With ActiveCampaign, creating an email campaign is a pretty simple process.

Conclusion

In this honest ActiveCampaign review, we tried our best to gather the most recent and beneficial information about this marketing platform and its alternatives. Therefore, you can easily see the ups and downs of each brand and choose based on your business needs and the problems you’re facing right now. So, have a good decision-making time.