ActiveCampaign is a robust platform with email marketing, automation, and CRM capabilities.
Editor’s note: We updated this information on February 19, 2024.
ActiveCampaign Review: 1-minute summary
ActiveCampaign’s strong suit is that it offers a combination of email marketing automation + CRM features (pipeline, deals, tasks, etcetera). ActiveCampaign might be the perfect fit for your organization if you need both.
ActiveCampaign Pros
ActiveCampaign Cons
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Why not use ActiveCampaign?
The bottom line is that if you only have a few leads coming in daily and work alone (i.e., no employees), using ActiveCampaign’s robust CRM system combined with its automation features might be a bit of an overkill. On the other hand, if you have many moving parts, e.g., multiple sales employees and dozens of new deals coming in daily, you might find that automating steps with ActiveCampaign gives you peace of mind.
Moreover, I feel ActiveCampaign’s strong suit is that it offers a combination of email marketing automation + CRM features (pipeline, deals, tasks, etcetera). If you feel there’s no need for this combination in your organization, you might want to consider cheaper alternatives.
Another thing to keep in mind is the number of options ActiveCampaign has. If you prefer a software tool with limited features, ActiveCampaign isn’t the tool for you. Although some people might think having limited options is terrible, it can save you time.
ActiveCampaign Tutorial
Would you like to see ActiveCampaign in action? You can watch my free ActiveCampaign tutorial on YouTube.
ActiveCampaign Review: Pricing
Comparing ActiveCampaign’s pricing with its email marketing peers, it is high-end. But since ActiveCampaign offers CRM features, it also plays in the league of software companies like Salesforce and HubSpot. Compared to their price, ActiveCampaign is cheaper.
So, if you feel you need CRM features besides email marketing tools, ActiveCampaign can help your business and be worth its price.
Different plans
- Marketing Lite
- Marketing Plus
- Marketing Professional
- Marketing Enterprise
- Sales Plus
- Sales Professional
- Sales Enterprise
- Plus (Marketing & Sales bundle)
- Professional (Marketing & Sales bundle)
- Enterprise (Marketing & Sales bundle)
Marketing Lite Review
In a nutshell, I wouldn’t recommend subscribing to the Marketing Lite plan. Why?
- Limited email automation features
- Limited form features
- No landing pages
- No ecommerce integration possible
- No CRM features
- No access to SMS sending
- Etcetera
This tier is a stripped-down version of ActiveCampaign, i.e., you can send newsletters, but that’s pretty much it. In other words, you’re better off subscribing to MailerLite, which offers way more features and is cheaper. Or ConvertKit, which is a bit more expensive than MailerLite but still less expensive than the Lite version of ActiveCampaign. Or even the GetResponse Marketing Automation tier is on most subscriber levels cheaper than the Lite tier of ActiveCampaign and offers way more features.
The bottom line: I don’t see any reason to subscribe to this tier.
Further reading:
Marketing Plus Review
I feel that the power of ActiveCampaign lies in its offering a wide range of features (e.g., newsletter functionalities, marketing automation, and CRM features). If you remove or limit the access to those extra features, I’m not sure if I find the price worthwhile since other email marketing software tools can do a similar job for less money.
For example, the most expensive plan (Ecommerce Marketing) of the email marketing tool GetResponse (GetResponse review) is cheaper than the Plus tier of ActiveCampaign. In other words, if you don’t require a combination (CRM+Email Marketing), you might want to check other tools first.
The bottom line: Marketing Plus is better than the Lite tier, but you might still run into limitations:
- Email automation limitations (e.g., split automations, predictive sending)
- No CRM features, i.e., no pipeline, deals, etcetera
- No Salesforce & Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integrations
Marketing Professional Review
The Marketing Professional tier grants you access to (almost) all of ActiveCampaing’s marketing features, but you pay a hefty price for it compared to the costs of other tools. Remember that other tools often don’t have the same level of sophistication ActiveCampaign’s features offer – especially regarding its intuitiveness and automation features.
Aside from all its marketing features, you still don’t have access to its CRM/sales features. Instead, you must subscribe to the bundle tiers or one of the individual sales plans if you don’t need email marketing features.
Marketing Enterprise Review
If you are a healthcare provider in the United States (e.g., a clinic), you must comply with HIPAA. Note that HIPAA is a federal law specific to the United States.
The Enterprise tier allows you to set up a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) between your organization and ActiveCampaign. The BAA (i.e., legal contract) is a requirement under HIPAA compliance (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) to ensure that important and private information is protected and only shared with the people who need to know.
The Enterprise plan has a few more benefits, but I feel this is the most important one.
Sales Plus, Professional & Enterprise Review
The bottom line is that the Sales plans grant you access to its CRM features. Note that these plans don’t allow you to access its email marketing features.
Marketing & Sales Bundles Review (Plus, Professional & Enterprise)
The only downside of the Plus plan is that you will experience a few email automation limitations (e.g., split automations, predictive sending), and there are no Salesforce & Microsoft Dynamics 365 Integrations. Other than that, you now have an email marketing tool with great sales/CRM features.
You must subscribe to the Professional tier if you’re looking for these extra features.
If you are a healthcare provider in the United States, remember that healthcare providers like clinics must follow HIPAA law. This law is only for the United States, which in a nutshell, enforces that critical health information is kept private and safe. The Enterprise Bundle tier offers the Business Associate Agreement (BAA), i.e., a legal contract.
Price comparison
The table below shows the annual prices of the most popular email marketing companies, including discounts for purchasing annually. Remember that the email tool Sendinblue isn’t included in the table below because it doesn’t calculate its price based on the number of subscribers in your account. If you only send one or two newsletters monthly, Sendinblue might be financially more attractive than any other email tool. If that’s you, take a quick glimpse at our Sendinblue review + pricing.
By scrolling to the right, you can find higher contact numbers. Click here for a full-width version if you’re on a laptop or PC.
| 500 | 1,000 | 1,500 | 2,000 | 2500 | 3,000 | 4,000 | 5,000 | 6,000 | 7,000 | 8,000 | 10,000 | 15,000 | 20,000 | 20,000 | 50,000 | 100,000 | 200,000 | 300,000 | 500,000 | 700,000 | 900,000 | 1,200,000 | 1,500,000 | 2,000,000 | 2,500,000 | 3,000,000 | 4,000,000 | 5,000,000 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite Growing Business | $10 | $15 | $25 | $25 | $25 | $39 | $39 | $39 | $59 | $59 | $59 | $73 | $109 | $139 | $139 | $289 | |||||||||||||
| MailerLite Advanced | $20 | $30 | $40 | $40 | $40 | $50 | $50 | $50 | $80 | $80 | $80 | $110 | $150 | $180 | $180 | $340 | $440 | $820 | $1,200 | $1,900 | |||||||||
| ConvertKit Creator | $29 | $29 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $79 | $79 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $119 | $149 | $179 | $179 | $379 | $679 | $1,279 | $1,879 | ||||||||||
| ConvertKit Creator Pro | $59 | $59 | $79 | $79 | $79 | $79 | $111 | $111 | $139 | $139 | $139 | $167 | $209 | $251 | $251 | $519 | $879 | $1,579 | $2,179 | ||||||||||
| Zoho Standard | $4 | $7 | $17 | $17 | $17 | $18 | $24 | $31 | $35 | $38 | $41 | $49 | $61 | $74 | $74 | $138 | $242 | ||||||||||||
| Zoho Professional | $6 | $12 | $29 | $29 | $29 | $30 | $40 | $52 | $58 | $63 | $69 | $81 | $101 | $123 | $123 | $230 | $403 | $748 | $1,035 | $1,380 | |||||||||
| Sender Standard | $19 | $19 | $19 | $19 | $19 | $33 | $33 | $33 | $57 | $57 | $57 | $57 | $87 | $107 | $107 | $227 | $367 | $697 | |||||||||||
| Sender Professional | $35 | $35 | $35 | $35 | $35 | $60 | $60 | $60 | $120 | $120 | $120 | $120 | $200 | $250 | $250 | $460 | $860 | $1,660 | |||||||||||
| Constant Contact Lite | $12 | $30 | $50 | $50 | $50 | $80 | $80 | $80 | $120 | $120 | $120 | $120 | $180 | $230 | $230 | $430 | |||||||||||||
| Constant Contact Standard | $35 | $55 | $75 | $75 | $75 | $110 | $110 | $110 | $160 | $160 | $160 | $160 | $210 | $260 | $260 | $460 | |||||||||||||
| Constant Contact Premium | $80 | $110 | $150 | $150 | $150 | $200 | $200 | $200 | $275 | $275 | $275 | $275 | $325 | $375 | $375 | $575 | |||||||||||||
| ActiveCampaign Marketing Lite | $39 | $39 | $61 | $61 | $61 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $174 | $174 | $174 | $174 | $286 | $286 | $286 | $486 | |||||||||||||
| ActiveCampaign Marketing Plus | $70 | $70 | $125 | $125 | $125 | $186 | $186 | $186 | $287 | $287 | $287 | $287 | $474 | $474 | $474 | $699 | |||||||||||||
| ActiveCampaign Marketing Professional | $187 | $187 | $187 | $187 | $187 | $262 | $262 | $262 | $424 | $424 | $424 | $424 | $686 | $686 | $686 | $1,011 | |||||||||||||
| ActiveCampaign Bundles Plus | $116 | $116 | $171 | $171 | $171 | $232 | $232 | $232 | $333 | $333 | $333 | $333 | $520 | $520 | $520 | $745 | |||||||||||||
| ActiveCampaign Bundles Professional | $482 | $482 | $482 | $482 | $482 | $557 | $557 | $557 | $719 | $719 | $719 | $719 | $981 | $981 | $981 | $1,306 | |||||||||||||
| GetResponse Email Marketing | $19 | $19 | $29 | $29 | $29 | $54 | $54 | $54 | $79 | $79 | $79 | $79 | $174 | $174 | $174 | $299 | $539 | ||||||||||||
| GetResponse Marketing Automation | $59 | $59 | $69 | $69 | $69 | $95 | $95 | $95 | $114 | $114 | $114 | $114 | $215 | $215 | $215 | $359 | $599 | ||||||||||||
| GetResponse Ecommerce Marketing | $119 | $119 | $139 | $139 | $139 | $169 | $169 | $169 | $199 | $199 | $199 | $199 | $299 | $299 | $299 | $444 | $699 | ||||||||||||
| Mailchimp Essentials | $27 | $45 | $45 | $75 | $75 | $110 | $110 | $110 | $180 | $180 | $180 | $180 | $230 | $270 | $270 | ||||||||||||||
| Mailchimp Standard | $20 | $45 | $45 | $60 | $60 | $100 | $100 | $100 | $135 | $135 | $135 | $135 | $230 | $285 | $285 | $450 | $800 | ||||||||||||
| Mailchimp Premium | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $350 | $465 | $535 | $535 | $815 | $1,025 | $1,600 | |||||||||||
| AWeber Lite | $15 | $25 | $25 | $25 | $25 | $45 | $45 | $45 | $65 | $65 | $65 | $65 | $145 | $145 | $145 | $388 | $788 | ||||||||||||
| AWeber Plus | $30 | $40 | $40 | $40 | $40 | $60 | $60 | $60 | $80 | $80 | $80 | $80 | $160 | $160 | $160 | $403 | $803 | ||||||||||||
| AWeber Unlimited | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 | $899 |
| Klaviyo Email | $20 | $30 | $45 | $60 | $60 | $70 | $100 | $100 | $130 | $150 | $150 | $150 | $350 | $375 | $375 | $720 | $1,380 | $2,070 | |||||||||||
| Klaviyo Email & SMS | $35 | $45 | $60 | $75 | $75 | $85 | $115 | $115 | $145 | $165 | $165 | $165 | $365 | $390 | $390 | $735 | $1,395 | $2,085 | |||||||||||
| Beehiiv Launch | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Beehiiv Grow | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 | |||||||||||||||||
| Beehiiv Scale | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | $99 | ||||||||||||
| HubSpot Marketing Hub - Starter | $20 | $20 | $40 | $40 | $60 | $60 | $78 | $96 | $112 | $128 | $144 | $176 | $256 | $336 | $336 | $816 | $1,616 | ||||||||||||
| HubSpot Marketing Hub - Professional | $890 | $890 | $890 | $890 | $1,140 | $1,140 | $1,140 | $1,140 | $1,140 | $1,140 | $1,390 | $1,390 | $1,640 | $1,890 | $1,890 | $3,190 | |||||||||||||
| HubSpot Marketing Hub - Enterprise | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,600 | $3,700 | $3,700 | $3,700 | $4,000 | $4,450 | $5,250 | $5,950 | $7,350 | $8,550 | $9,750 | |||||||
| Moosend Pro | $9 | $16 | $24 | $24 | $32 | $32 | $48 | $48 | $64 | $64 | $64 | $88 | $160 | $160 | $160 | $315 | $624 | $1,216 | $1,808 | $2,896 | $4,080 | $5,840 |
Discounts
20% off for paying yearly
You receive roughly 20% off the regular monthly subscription’s price if you purchase an annual subscription.
20% off for non-profits
If you’re a non-profit organization, you can request 20% off of your monthly or annual bill. However, you don’t have to have a yearly plan to qualify for the 20% discount.
For more information on how to request the discount, check out this page on ActiveCampaign’s website.
Cancellation process
In a nutshell, you can easily cancel your paid ActiveCampaign subscription in your account settings, so, no need to worry about a cumbersome cancellation process.
Check out this page on ActiveCampaign’s website for more information on the cancellation process.
Refunds
ActiveCampaign doesn’t provide refunds, so test it properly before committing to a long-term subscription.
Extra discounts (special occasions)
Sadly, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer special discounts, e.g., Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals.
The number of contacts (subscribed vs unsubscribed)
Some email tools (e.g., Mailchimp, AWeber) count unsubscribed contacts against your total account contact number. Luckily, ActiveCampaign doesn’t do that – only active contacts count against your contact limit.
Email credits
Some email tools like Sendinblue and MailChimp offer email credits, i.e., pay-as-you-go credits. ActiveCampaign doesn’t provide email credits.
If you’re an infrequent newsletter sender, email credits might make the most sense. Tip: compare the table below with the pricing comparison above to see what makes the most financial sense. The left column shows the number of email credits, columns 2 and 3 show the total price, and columns 4 and 5 show the cost per email credit.
| Brevo | Mailchimp | Brevo | Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000 | $32 | $200 | $0.0064 | $0.0400 |
| 10,000 | $59 | $260 | $0.0059 | $0.0260 |
| 15,000 | x | $390 | x | $0.0260 |
| 20,000 | $95 | x | $0.0048 | x |
| 50,000 | $165 | $1,300 | $0.0033 | $0.0260 |
| 75,000 | x | $1,950 | x | $0.0260 |
| 100,000 | $275 | x | $0.0028 | x |
| 200,000 | x | $2,600 | x | $0.0130 |
| 500,000 | $940 | x | $0.0019 | x |
| 1,000,000 | $1,600 | x | $0.0016 | x |
| 2,000,000 | x | $3,300 | x | $0.0017 |
| 5,000,000 | x | $6,500 | x | $0.0013 |
| 25,000,000 | x | $13,000 | x | $0.0005 |
ActiveCampaign Review: Free plan
Does ActiveCampaign offer the best free plan compared to its competitors? The short answer is no – you can find a more detailed explanation here, where we compare the best free email marketing tools.
The features available in its trial match its Professional tier of features.
| Forever free plan | ❌ (14-day free trial) |
| Maximum subscribers/contacts | 100 |
| Maximum emails | 100 |
| Email automation | ✔️ |
| Support | ✔️ (not 24/7) |
| Signup forms | ✔️ |
| Landing pages | ✔️ |
| Can add custom domain | ❌ |
| SMS credits or sending | ❌ |
ActiveCampaign Review: Newsletter Features
- This section only covers ActiveCampaign’s newsletter features and not its automation features
Maximum contacts & monthly emails
ActiveCampaign’s pricing page mentions that it offers unlimited sending in any paid plan of up to 250,000 contacts. The bundles pricing page says a sending limit of 10X your contact number post 300,000 contacts. Remember that you have to request the pricing for accounts with more than 50,000 contacts.
Newsletter
In a nutshell, ActiveCampaign offers the basic features most email tools offer, like segmentation options, pre-designed templates, drag-and-drop newsletter builder, split testing, etcetera.
ActiveCampaign differentiates itself because they go the extra mile. You can see an example of what I mean in the screenshot below. When creating a regular newsletter, ActiveCamaign includes various options to create automations based on the newsletter you’re creating instantly. In addition, it offers open/read automations, i.e., when someone opens your newsletter, you initiate an automation.
Or link tracking (see screenshot below) where you can instantly initiate an automation when someone clicks on one of the links in your newsletter.
Other email tools usually also offer open tracking or link tracking, but they don’t provide these features in the same user-friendly way as ActiveCampaign. So when creating a link tracking automated campaign with other tools, you have to do it all by yourself, e.g., go to the automation tab, create an automation, remember the website link you to trigger the automation, etcetera.
ActiveCampaign offers roughly 20 basic templates; you can start your email design from scratch or choose and edit one of 150+ pre-designed templates. All templates look up-to-date and professional. Moreover, you can edit these templates to your liking in its newsletter editor.
Example of the ActiveCampaign newsletter builder
Google Analytics UTM builder
Some email tools like AWeber or Constant Contact do not offer the feature to automatically add UTM parameters to your website links in your emails. However, this shouldn’t come as a surprise that ActiveCampaign does offer this feature by quickly switching the Google Analytics setting to on.
Segmentation
Like many email tools, ActiveCampaign allows you to segment your contacts with email lists, tags, and custom fields. Moreover, you can segment your contacts on many different things, like most other email tools.
You can also segment your contacts based on what link they have clicked, and ActiveCampaign makes it easy to list all the links in the email you sent.
Although ActiveCampaign has unlimited segmentation combinations, it isn’t as comprehensive as Mailchimp’s Advanced Segmentation feature.
For example, see the screenshot below for Mailchimp’s feature Advanced Segmentation, which allows for nested conditions, which isn’t possible with ActiveCampaign or any other email tool I’ve tested.
Mailchimp’s Advanced Segmentation feature available in its Premium plan
Email Scheduling
Every email tool allows you to schedule your emails, and so does ActiveCampaign.
Some email tools offer more fancy email scheduling features, such as sending the email in batches or sending the email at a specific time, no matter your audience’s time zone. In addition, some tools offer to send time optimization, i.e., it determines the most likely time your subscriber will open the email based on previous emails you sent.
ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer any of those extra scheduling features. Instead, it only provides the regular email scheduling feature, which is disappointing considering ActiveCampaign positions itself as the #1 automation platform. From my point of view, email scheduling for specific time zones is part of automating and optimizing my newsletters.
Do note that ActiveCampaign does have a send with predictive sending feature for automated emails (see screenshot below). But it doesn’t have a similar feature for its regular newsletters.
Screenshot of the scheduling feature for automated emails with ActiveCampaign
It also has a feature to send an automated email to your contact in the contact’s timezone. But as previously mentioned, it doesn’t offer this feature for a regular newsletter.
Screenshot of the scheduling feature for automated emails with ActiveCampaign
If you’re looking for a tool that offers extra scheduling features for regular newsletters, check out these email marketing tools:
- MailerLite (MailerLite review) – A great alternative to more expensive email tools
- GetResponse (GetResponse review) – Excellent for start-ups selling B2B software or if your business sells high-priced information products
- Sendinblue (Sendinblue review) – Financially attractive for the ones that only send one or two newsletters monthly
Audiences / Email lists
Not every email tool allows you to create more than one email list. In ActiveCampaign, you can create as many lists as you would like.
Although you can use one ActiveCampaign account for multiple clients or businesses, risks are involved. For example, you run the risk of selecting the incorrect email or physical address when sending a newsletter. As you can imagine, it would be weird for the one receiving the email – especially when those businesses are unrelated. Furthermore, I’m unsure whether there are any legal consequences related to privacy laws.
A good use case for multiple email lists is when you send newsletters to employees (internal) and customers (external). Or when the product/service you sell is to other businesses (B2B) and consumers (B2C). In that case, you may want to create two separate email lists. However, you still run the risk of unintendedly sending an email to the wrong list, but it wouldn’t be as bad as sending a newsletter for one of your clients while using another client’s address.
What would solve this problem entirely is if ActiveCampaign allowed us to connect email addresses and physical addresses to our lists, i.e., I don’t want to see the option to use an email address or physical address of one of my other lists when sending a newsletter.
Ecommerce
Once you have your ecommerce store connected, you’ll get instant access to ecommerce features like new segmentation options, a variety of new automation templates, and a new block called Product Catalog for your newsletters (see screenshot below).
Although ActiveCampaign’s Product Catalog block has many customization options, it isn’t as comprehensive as Klaviyo’s product block (see screenshot below).
Klaviyo differentiates itself from a tool like ActiveCampaign because you can create and select dynamic product feeds for the product block in your newsletter. For example, you can easily create and choose the product feed best-selling products inside Klaviyo that always showcase your best-selling products. Other feeds you may like are: products a customer recently viewed, added to the cart, or most viewed products, newest products, etcetera. Such a feature like this isn’t available inside ActiveCampaign.
The thing is, ActiveCampaign hasn’t only one target audience like Klaviyo. Instead, ActiveCampaign focuses on sales & marketing teams in general, including ecommerce companies. Klaviyo, on the other hand, only focuses on ecommerce companies making their features, in most cases, more comprehensive and user-friendly for ecommerce users.
ActiveCampaign Review: Email Marketing Automation
Here’s the deal: ActiveCampaign has the most comprehensive marketing automation features compared to its competitors.
Endless marketing automation possibilities
Triggers
There are numerous ways to trigger/start an automation. Like most email tools, it offers triggers like: a contact subscribes to a list, submits a form, clicks a link in an email, etcetera. These are the basic triggers most email marketing tools offer.
A bit more advanced are the site tracking triggers. This feature allows you to trigger an automation when someone visits your site or a specific page on your website. Note that if you have European visitors on your website, you must ask for consent before enabling the site tracking feature (GDPR privacy regulations). In that case, you can’t entirely rely on the site tracking feature because many people will not consent, resulting in no active trigger.
Because ActiveCampaign also offers features like Contact Scoring, Goal setting, and CRM features (e.g., pipelines, deals, and tasks), you can also use these as triggers for your automations. For example, when a contact enters a pipeline or moves to a different stage in a pipeline, you can use that as a trigger to notify one of your sales representatives.
Or maybe you have an automation that triggers a notification for your sales employee when the contact scoring of a contact reaches a certain threshold.
The bottom line is that ActiveCampaign has the most comprehensive list of features compared to others allowing you to access a massive library of automation triggers.
Add an action
Sending an email is an example of an action in your automation. Other basic action examples are wait periods, if/else conditions, and adding/removing a tag. Most email marketing tools offer these actions for their automation workflows.
A bit more advanced actions are Split actions (see screenshot below), Go to another action, Jump to an action when the contact matches a goal you selected, Unsubscribe a contact from one or more lists, etcetera.
Remember that an automatic action to unsubscribe a contact from your list is a big time saver for cleaning up your list. Every experienced email marketer knows that list cleaning is an essential and recurring task, and the only email tool that allows you to automate this process is ActiveCampaign.
Aside from the basic and the more advanced tasks, you can add many more actions to your automations. For example, you can send a site message, SMS message, or notification email to your employees, a transactional email with their tool Postmark, or a 1:1 email if you’re making individual sales conversations/calls. Remember that you can connect with all of ActiveCampaign’s features like pipelines, deals, etcetera. You can also automate things inside other apps through its integrations with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics or add data into a Google Spreadsheet.
The bottom line is that the possibilities with the actions you can add to your automations are endless. If you’re looking for a specific action, sign up for a 14-day free trial.
Automation templates
According to ActiveCampaign’s pricing page, it offers 850+ Automation Recipes. These recipes are ready-to-go automation templates you can import into your ActiveCampaign account. When you’re new to ActiveCampaign, I advise you to take a few hours and study dozens of these recipes. Analyzing these recipes will help you better understand the possibilities ActiveCampaign has to offer and give you ideas to implement one of these recipes in your company.
The downside of so many recipes is that you probably don’t know where to start or which to import. Furthermore, the recipes only have a short description, which might not be sufficient for you, especially if you’re new to email marketing.
Screenshot of a part of ActiveCampaign’s automation recipes
Organizing your automations
There aren’t many email tools that offer you a wide range of features for organizing your automated campaigns.
Labeling your workflows
ActiveCampaign allows you to label your automations. Especially if you have many automated workflows organizing your campaigns using labels is an absolute must if you don’t want to waste time searching for a particular workflow.
Use filters and find your automation
You can then easily filter on specific labels to find the workflow you’re looking for. Furthermore, as you can see in the screenshot below, there are multiple ways to filter your automations, e.g., you can filter on status (active/inactive), labels, or sort by, where my favorite is sorting by highest activity. If you ever wonder where to start by optimizing your automations, you should start with the ones with the highest activity since that will translate into the most noticeable changes.
Automation Map
The above two screenshots are from the Automation tab (see screenshot below). Aside from the Automations tab, where you can edit your automations, add labels, etcetera, there are also two other tabs; the Automation Map and Automation Messages.
The automation map is an excellent feature that gives you an overview of all your automations. You can filter and sort on status, labels, activity, and(!) actions. The filter-by-actions feature allows you to filter your automation on specific triggers or actions. For example, let’s say you’re looking for all automations that start (trigger) when a contact enters a pipeline. In that case, add a filter and see at a glance those automations. Very cool feature!
Another cool feature of the Automation Map is that when clicking on one of your automations, you’ll see more information about it. For example (see screenshot below), you’ll see how your automation connects to others.
So, what are these connections? In a nutshell, in the screenshot below, you can see an automation that will start when a contact submits sign-up form 1, where the action step is sending an email. One of the connections in the above screenshot is the open/reading tracking automation.
The bottom line is that ActiveCampaign offers these helpful tools not to lose track of all the different automations you create, no matter their complexity.
The left side of this screenshot shows an automation that starts when the contact submits sign-up form 1. The right side shows that a new automation starts whenever a contact opens the email. ActiveCampaign calls this a connection and gives an overview of these connections in the Automation Map feature.
ActiveCampaign Review: Landing Page Features
- Landing pages are available on the Plus plan, and higher
- You can create unlimited landing pages
The bottom line is that ActiveCampaign’s landing pages are easy to use while still offering lots of customization features, i.e., it’s like creating a website using a fancy template editor.
Landing page templates
ActiveCampaign offers roughly 60 landing page templates, including a blank template where you can design your own with its drag-and-drop builder. When choosing a pre-designed template, you can delete sections/elements and re-design them to your liking.
In the screenshot below, you can see an example template. Although everyone calls these pages landing pages, i.e., a tool to create landing pages, you can also create a simple website with ActiveCampaing’s page builder. For example, you can add a navigational bar, logo, footer, etcetera. In addition, you can create a one-page website since it allows you to add links and jump to specific sections on the page. You can also create a multi-page website by creating multiple pages and internally linking to the other pages.
Using sign up forms on your landing pages
When building your landing page, you can drag and drop an existing sign up form or create a new one. Moreover, you can select one or more actions whenever someone subscribes to your form, e.g., subscribe to a list, add a tag, add a deal, and email the results (see screenshot below). Also, adding a sign up form to your landing page is easy and fast, i.e., I like it!
Drag and drop the sign up form block onto your landing page
Custom domain
- Custom domains for landing pages are available on the Plus plan, and higher
If you don’t connect your domain to ActiveCampaign, you can use their domain for hosting your landing pages.
An example of the default ActiveCampaign domain when publishing your pages:
If you add your domain, it’ll look like this: http://creatoregg.com/ or http://creatoregg.com/test
As you can see, the custom domain URL does look more professional since it uses a recognizable URL (your domain name) instead of ActiveCampaign’s domain. Remember that your audience doesn’t know what lp.page is and might not trust it, resulting in fewer opt-ins.
ActiveCampaign Review: Opt-in Form Features
- Removing the ActiveCampaign branding on the opt-in forms is not accessible on the Lite plan
ActiveCampaign Limitations
ActiveCampaign allows you to create inline forms (also called embedded forms), a floating bar form that sits at the top/bottom of a page, a floating box form that “floats” on the bottom left or right of your website, and lastly, there’s the popup form. Do note that the popup form only has the option to show instantly or on scroll delay, i.e., there’s no option to show this popup after X seconds or use it as an exit-intent popup. Moreover, ActiveCampaign doesn’t have a feature where you can link an optin popup to a hyperlink, image, or button like some other (cheaper) email tools offer.
Moreover, when using the modal form (see screenshot below), you can only add the fields email, name, and phone. You can’t add more or other custom fields. To add more or other custom fields to your form, you must use the inline form (also called the embedded form).
Opt-in form templates
ActiveCampaign doesn’t have pre-designed forms like, for example, the email tool GetResponse. In the screenshot below, you can see two sample opt-in form templates of GetResponse. ActiveCampaign’s forms are less fancy. Click here if you want to read my full GetResponse review.
The screenshot below shows an example of ActiveCampaign’s inline form. Although I wouldn’t recommend using so many custom fields, it shows that you can add as many as you’d like if you’re picky about who subscribes and/or requests information. Note that you can change the form style, e.g., edit the background, fonts, width, etcetera. There’s also an option to change the form by using CSS.
GDPR
First, the bottom line is that ActiveCampaign offers plenty of features to help you comply with GDPR, i.e., you’re in good hands.
Let’s dive in …
The EU GDPR and the UK GDPR are regulations for data privacy. Simply put, you must have received consent before legally sending a subscriber an email.
The screenshot below shows an opt-in form created with ActiveCampaign. If a person downloads your free ebook, it doesn’t necessarily mean they also want to receive your newsletter. So, in other words, to obtain consent for sending them your newsletter, you could add a checkbox to your sign up form, similar to the screenshot below. You can create this checkbox by adding a new custom field in your ActiveCampaign account.
If you have a sign up form that encourages people to sign up for your newsletter, like the screenshot below, you don’t have to add a checkbox since the form already explains it. Instead, you have to enable the double-opt-in setting to prove that the contact confirmed they requested it and want to receive your newsletter.
Double-optin setup
ActiveCampaign enables the confirmation optin (double-optin) by default within your account settings. For example, you enter your email address in the optin form above (subscribe to our weekly newsletter). Doing so triggers an action inside my ActiveCampaign account that will send you the confirmation email below. I can only send you a newsletter once you click the bottom of the email Confirm My Subscription.
In a nutshell, it’s a feature that automatically sends an email when someone enters their email address in one of your optin forms.
As you can see in the screenshot below, for every sign up form you create, you can easily tweak the content of the confirmation email (see the confirmation email in the screenshot above) and change the confirmation action URL. Remember, already subscribed contacts will automatically be redirected to the URL you enter in the Confirmation Action field, i.e., a handy feature for the ones that create and distribute free ebooks often to their audience. Why? Well, already subscribed contacts don’t have to go through the same process of subscribing when they want to download something from your website. Instead, whenever they fill in their email address, the system automatically recognizes them and redirects them to the Confirmation Action URL.
What would be a handy extra feature is if you could upload a file to the Confirmation Action field. Another email tool, ConvertKit (ConvertKit review), allows users to upload a file and link it to the Confirmation Action field, i.e., the Confirm My Subscription button (see screenshot below). ConvertKit automatically redirects the new subscriber to the ebook/report. To accomplish the same thing with ActiveCampaign, you must enter a Google Drive download link in the Confirmation Action URL, making the process a bit more time-consuming.
ActiveCampaign Review: CRM features
The bottom line is that if you only have a few leads coming in per day, using ActiveCampaign’s robust CRM system combined with its automation features is a bit of an overkill (see a sample of what it can do below). On the other hand, if you have many moving parts, e.g., multiple sales employees and dozens of new deals coming in daily, you might find that automating steps with ActiveCampaign gives you peace of mind.
Managing Deals
In the screenshot below, you can see an example pipeline I created with ActiveCampaign. The columns are the different stages of the pipeline, and the rows are the deals. You can rename the columns (i.e., stages), add more columns or delete columns.
For example, the screenshot below shows a simplified pipeline with fewer stages.
Once you have created your pipeline, you can add deals (see screenshot below). You can add multiple contacts to the same deal but only one organization. With larger projects, you may talk to numerous people in the same organization.
The screenshot below shows an overview of an individual deal’s page. Here you can see two contacts connected to this deal and one account, Charlie Dée BV.
You can manually create and add deals to your pipelines but also use ActiveCampaign’s automation features to do this. For example, if there’s a form submission on your website, you could automatically create a deal and add that deal to the first stage of the pipeline. The screenshot below shows a sample automation that makes a new deal when there’s a submission on sign up form 1. You can also automatically create a task and/or notify the deal owner.
In the above example, I chose the form submission to trigger the automation, but as you can see in the screenshot below, there are many (many!) triggers to choose from.
You can also add an endless list of actions to the automation workflow (see screenshot below).
Managing Tasks
If you like organizing your tasks in to-do lists, then you’ll love this feature, where you can see your highest priority tasks at a glance.
Reporting
Deal overview
The screenshot below shows how many deals were created, won, and lost for all sales employees or select individuals. You can also set a custom timeframe to make monthly reports to see what sales employees performed the best. For example, if you prefer to see the deal value instead of the number of deals, you change it on the left-hand side.
Deal owner overview
If you have multiple salespeople in your organization, having an overview of all deal owners and how many open deals they have is essential data when determining whether you should increase or decrease a sales rep’s workload.
Tasks overview
The task overview dashboard allows you to see how many you and your colleagues created, how many you completed, how many are overdue, and how many are still open. You can also filter on sales rep and timeframe.
ActiveCampaign Review: Support
- Live chat and email support are available on all plans
Live Chat Available During Limited Hours Only
The biggest downside is that live chat is only available between specific hours of the day – primarily if you work at night, on weekends, or aren’t in the same time zone. See the live chat availability below. For example, I’m from the Netherlands, meaning I can contact its live chat only from 4 pm to 6 am (my timezone), which isn’t the best since I mainly work in the morning to around 4 pm.
ActiveCampaign’s live chat availability:
- Monday – Thursday from 9 am – 11 pm, Central Standard Time (CST)
- Friday from 9 am – 4:30 pm, Central Standard Time (CST)
Many other email marketing tools offer 24/7 live chat support making ActiveCampaign’s chat schedule a bit disappointing – especially considering the high price you pay for its subscriptions.
Moreover, I can name multiple instances where I created a support ticket and didn’t receive an answer after numerous days.
Support dashboard
The dashboard shown in the image provides a useful summary of the questions you’ve asked. However, finding the support dashboard in your ActiveCampaign account is not straightforward. There is no direct link or clear reference to it once you’re logged in. To access this dashboard, use the following link: https://help.activecampaign.com/hc/en-us/requests.
The tickets displayed on the dashboard are those that weren’t resolved during a chat session or were converted into tickets because no one was available in chat to assist me at the time. Additionally, I find it inconvenient that interactions with the chat support that get resolved during the chat session (unlike the tickets shown in the screenshot) are not recorded on this dashboard. It’s often helpful to revisit past support tickets to review the advice or solutions given for previous issues. Unfortunately, records of these chat sessions seem to be unavailable, which I think is a drawback.
ActiveCampaign Review: Reporting
Keep track of subscriber growth
ActiveCampaign offers a great report to keep track of your subscriber growth. There’s also a tab to see the growth of new contacts and unsubscribed contacts.
Sign up form & landing page reports
The sign up form reporting page offers me the option to change the date range and shows how many total optin form submissions there were (see screenshot below).
Sadly, the forms don’t show the conversion rate since it doesn’t measure the number of views.
The pages track views and show the conversion rate (see screenshot below). Knowing the conversion rate and the number of page views helps determine where to start optimizing.
Transactional emails
In May 2022, ActiveCampaign acquired the software tool Postmarkapp, a transactional emailing service. Transactional emails include order confirmation emails, delivery updates, password recovery, etcetera.
Postmarkapp is a stand-alone product, but if you also have an active ActiveCampaign subscription, you can easily integrate the two and create handy automations like the one in the screenshot below.
ActiveCampaign’s History
Jason VandeBoom founded ActiveCampaign in 2003 and is still the CEO.
Customers
- In 2020, ActiveCampaign had 100,000 customers
- In 2022, 150,000 customers
- In 2024, 185,000+ customers
Employees
- 15 employees in 2015
- 100+ employees in 2017
- Crosses 500 employees in 2019
- 850+ employees in 2022
- 1,000+ employees in 2024
Revenue
- In 2017, ActiveCampaign crossed $25 million in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
- In 2020, they crossed $100 million in ARR, i.e., $8.3 million per month
- In 2023, ActiveCampaign hit $195.3 million in revenue 1
Investments
- In 2016, $20 million Series A funding through Silversmith Capital Partners
- In 2020, $100 million Series B funding through Susquehanna Growth Equity and Silversmith Capital Partners
Frequently asked questions
ActiveCampaign alternatives
Although ActiveCampaign is already a robust marketing tool, it still might not be what your company desires/needs. If budget isn’t an issue, I suggest looking at HubSpot, Salesforce, or Marketo. Read our HubSpot review here. For example, you can also use Salesforce for its sales features and integrate it with ActiveCampaign for its email marketing automation features.
On the other hand, if budget is an issue, I suggest looking at Sendinblue if you need CRM features or transactional email services besides email marketing. Read our Sendinblue review here.
If you’re looking for an email marketing and SMS tool for ecommerce, check out Klaviyo.
No need for CRM features and looking for a budget-friendly tool? One of the cheapest email tools is MailerLite. Note that cheap doesn’t mean bad. On the contrary, MailerLite offers a great deal of email marketing features. Read our MailerLite review here.
What is the best email marketing software? I’ve thoroughly tested the 10 most popular email marketing tools. Read out my FULL roundup review here or watch the video below.
- https://getlatka.com/companies/activecampaign, retrieved January 4, 2024 ↩︎