If you‘re looking for a powerful all-in-one sales and marketing platform, ActiveCampaign is likely a name you‘ve come across. Over the past decade, it has grown into one of the most popular tools for businesses of all sizes looking to automate and optimize their customer experience.
But with an increasingly crowded market of competitors and continual updates to the platform itself, you may be wondering: is ActiveCampaign still the cream of the crop here in 2024? Having tested it extensively, we‘ve put together this comprehensive ActiveCampaign review to help you decide if it‘s the right fit for your business.
We‘ll take an in-depth look at its features, pricing, pros and cons, and see how it stacks up against some leading alternatives. Let‘s dive in!
What Is ActiveCampaign?
First off, what exactly is ActiveCampaign? At its core, ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform. It provides a centralized workspace for businesses to attract, engage and delight their customers through automated sales and marketing processes.
While it‘s most well-known for its email marketing capabilities, ActiveCampaign goes far beyond just building and sending campaigns. It offers tools for virtually every stage of the customer lifecycle:
- Attracting leads with landing pages, forms, and Facebook ads
- Engaging contacts through targeted email campaigns and newsletters
- Nurturing leads and customers through automated workflows
- Converting leads with the built-in CRM and sales automation tools
- Supporting and delighting customers with live chat and email
But what really sets ActiveCampaign apart is the depth and flexibility of its automation builder. You can create extremely sophisticated, trigger-based workflows that adapt to how each contact interacts with your business.
For example, you could build an abandoned cart series that automatically follows up with customers who added an item to their cart but failed to check out. Or a post-purchase nurturing series that sends personalized recommendations based on each customer‘s individual purchase history and on-site behavior. The possibilities are nearly endless.
Whether you‘re a solopreneur just starting to grow your email list, or an established enterprise looking to scale your sales and marketing, ActiveCampaign aims to be an automation powerhouse that can adapt to your needs. But is it right for you? Let‘s take a closer look.
ActiveCampaign‘s Key Features
To give you a bird‘s-eye view of everything ActiveCampaign has to offer, here‘s a quick rundown of its core feature set:
Email Marketing
At the heart of ActiveCampaign is its powerful drag-and-drop email builder. You can craft professional emails and newsletters from scratch, or choose from an extensive library of pre-designed templates.
Some standout features of the email builder include:
- Conditional content that adapts based on each contact‘s data and behavior
- Predictive content that automatically recommends products/articles to include
- An AI copywriting assistant that can auto-generate email content for you
- Extensive personalization and dynamic content options
- Built-in split testing to optimize your campaigns
- Send-time optimization for maximum engagement
You can send both one-off broadcasts and automated email series, and set up a variety of trigger events (e.g. when a contact subscribes, makes a purchase, clicks a link, visits a page, etc.)
Marketing & Sales Automation
As mentioned earlier, the real power of ActiveCampaign lies in its automation capabilities. Using the visual drag-and-drop builder, you can set up a variety of "recipes" – pre-configured workflows for common marketing and sales scenarios.
Some examples include:
- Lead nurturing series
- Welcome and onboarding sequences
- Abandoned cart and browse abandonment
- Cross-sell and upsell campaigns
- Customer win-back and re-engagement
- Review and feedback requests
You can build workflows with multiple starting points, "if/else" conditional splits, wait steps, goal tracking, and a huge variety of triggers and actions. Advanced features like lead/contact scoring, site tracking and SMS are also supported.
Landing Pages & Forms
In addition to email automation, ActiveCampaign includes a drag-and-drop landing page builder for hosting gated content, registration forms, sales pages, and more.
Like the email builder, it includes an extensive library of professional templates as well as a blank canvas for custom designs. You can add a variety of widgets like countdown timers, video, pricing tables, and dynamic forms that adapt questions based on responses.
CRM & Sales Automation
For sales teams, ActiveCampaign offers a full-featured CRM and deal pipeline manager. You can track contact activity and behavior, manage tasks and appointments, send quotes and invoices, save email templates, and automate lead prioritization and rotation among reps.
It also supports live chat and chatbot automation, allowing you to engage web visitors in real-time, qualify leads, and seamlessly hand them off to sales.
Reporting & Analytics
ActiveCampaign provides extensive reporting on every aspect of your marketing and sales efforts. You can track key email metrics like opens, clicks, unsubscribes and bounces, monitor goal conversion and campaign ROI, and even see which automation paths are driving the most revenue.
For deeper insights, you can leverage lead/contact scoring, attribution reporting, and even predictive analytics like win probability and send time optimization.
Integrations & API
ActiveCampaign offers over 870 pre-built integrations with popular apps and web services, including:
- Ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce
- CMS tools like WordPress and Squarespace
- Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
- Analytics tools like Google Analytics
- Customer service platforms like Zendesk
- Accounting software like Quickbooks
It also offers a full-featured API, webhooks, and developer tools for custom integration.
ActiveCampaign Pricing
One area where ActiveCampaign can get a bit confusing is its pricing. The platform is divided into several "layers" – Lite, Plus, Professional and Enterprise – each with increasingly advanced features.
Pricing for each plan is based on your number of contacts and starts at:
- Lite: $29/month for 500 contacts
- Plus: $49/month for 500 contacts
- Professional: $149/month for 500 contacts
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
The main differences between the plans are:
- Lite includes core email marketing features and basic automations
- Plus adds CRM and sales automation, landing pages, and lead scoring
- Professional includes site messaging, attribution, predictive sending and split automations
- Enterprise has all features and adds custom reporting, uptime SLA, dedicated support, etc.
There‘s also the option to add the CRM and sales engagement tools separately as an individual product starting at $19/user/month.
While not the cheapest email marketing tool out there, ActiveCampaign‘s pricing is competitive when you consider the breadth and depth of its feature set. The ability to start small and upgrade as you grow is also attractive. However, it‘s disappointing that some key features like the CRM and landing pages are locked behind the higher-tier plans.
Compared to more affordable options like Sendinblue and GetResponse that include these on all plans, ActiveCampaign may be cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses.
ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons
So, is ActiveCampaign right for you? Let‘s review some of the biggest reasons to choose it – or not:
Pros of ActiveCampaign
- Extremely powerful and flexible visual automation builder
- Includes CRM and sales engagement tools in addition to marketing
- Robust email and landing page builders with tons of templates
- Advanced reporting, predictive analytics and AI-powered optimization
- Extensive integrations with over 870 apps and services
- Free migration from other platforms and excellent support
Cons of ActiveCampaign
- Steeper learning curve than other email marketing tools
- Can be overwhelming for beginners who don‘t need advanced features
- More expensive than competitors, with some key features paywalled
- Automation builder can get complex/messy for very large workflows
- Deliverability rates slightly lower than top competitors
- Limited built-in ecommerce features compared to tools like Drip
ActiveCampaign Alternatives
While ActiveCampaign is an excellent all-in-one platform, it may not be the best fit for everyone. Here are a few alternatives worth considering:
- GetResponse – Lower-cost, easier to use platform with a full suite of inbound marketing tools
- Hubspot – Popular CRM platform that offers email marketing and automation as an add-on
- Keap – All-in-one sales and marketing automation platform aimed at small businesses
- Omnisend – Ecommerce-focused platform with built-in SMS, push notifications and more
- Sendinblue – Budget-friendly, beginner-friendly alternative that doesn‘t skimp on features
Final Verdict
All things considered, ActiveCampaign is still an incredibly powerful and flexible platform for businesses that want to automate their customer experience from start to finish. If you can handle the learning curve, it offers some of the most advanced email marketing, automation and CRM functionality on the market.
However, it may be overkill for small businesses or beginners who are just looking for a simple way to send emails and build their list. The lack of a free plan, relatively steep starting price, and gated features are also drawbacks compared to cheaper alternatives.
Overall though, ActiveCampaign is a top choice for mid-to-large sized businesses that want an integrated platform for marketing and sales automation. The depth of features and ability to scale make it an investment that can grow with your business for years to come.
Hopefully this ActiveCampaign review has given you a clearer picture of whether it‘s the right solution for your needs. The only way to know for sure is to try it yourself with a 14-day free trial – click below to get started!
