Can you imagine how much time it would take to craft personalized emails to each and every visitor to your website? With an email marketing platform like ActiveCampaign, you don’t have to. This powerful software helps you send personalized email campaigns on autopilot. In this ActiveCampaign review, I’ll break down the features of this automation tool, including its pros, cons, pricing and more.

Read on to learn how ActiveCampaign can help you grow your email list, message subscribers, and convert leads into loyal fans and customers.

• ActiveCampaign review
• Features
• Plans and pricing
• Customer support
• Pros
• Cons
• How to sign up for ActiveCampaign
• ActiveCampaign vs. other email marketing platforms
• Final thoughts

ActiveCampaign review: What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform founded in 2003 with headquarters in Chicago. With this multi-featured software for bloggers and businesses, you can deliver emails to your list in a matter of seconds.

ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, customer relationship manager (CRM), live chat, and SMS messaging. When you log in to your ActiveCampaign account, you’ll also find additional features such as funnels and landing pages.

Funnels track your customer’s journey from initial contact to making a purchase. They help you convert leads into customers with a proven, step by step method.

Landing pages are super effective at capturing these leads. They are separate pages on your site that are optimized to capture emails. You can promote your landing pages organically or drive traffic with paid ads.

With ActiveCampaign, you can set up effective funnels, landing pages, email and text campaigns and more to nurture your audience and achieve your business goals.

ActiveCampaign features

ActiveCampaign is rich with features, making it an excellent platform for bloggers and businesses with some experience with email marketing. While beginners can certainly use it too, they might require a bit of a learning curve to make the most out of all its tools.

Read on in this ActiveCampaign review to learn more about its top features:

Email campaigns

First and foremost, ActiveCampaign is an email marketing tool designed to help you build your list and send emails en masse to your subscribers.

With ActiveCampaign, you can send one-time emails, also called broadcasts. Use broadcasts to keep your readers up to date on new blog posts, announcements, or company news.

You can also set up autoresponders based on a certain trigger. For example, you could send out a series of welcome emails after someone signs up for your list.

Plus, you can send out triggered emails to capture visitors’ attention when they’re most interested. Maybe you automate an email to send after they visited a certain page or made a purchase. You can even schedule holiday emails or happy birthday messages.

ActiveCampaign allows for a ton of different email campaigns. Plus, it lets you segment your subscriber list to set up a personalized customer experience.

You can organize your email list into categories like location, actions on your site, clicks, and the opt-in form or landing page used to subscribe.

You’ll get a ton of insight into your customers’ interests and can customize your marketing campaigns accordingly.

Marketing automation

ActiveCampaign allows you to set up marketing automations that are as simple or complex as you need them to be. It has an easy-to-use visual automation builder.

You may choose to create an original workflow or select from dozens of pre-built automation templates. For instance, you could choose a series of emails to welcome visitors to your site. Or follow up with a user who abandoned their shopping cart.

Or if a visitor watched a video on your blog and left halfway through, you could set an autoresponder to remind them about the video a few hours later.

All of these features keep a visitor engaged with your brand.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

When you read ActiveCampaign reviews, you’ll find an outstanding feature for small businesses: customer relationship management, or CRM.

ActiveCampaign helps you save information on each and every subscriber. You can identify and record their interests, location, social media engagement, contact information, and activity on your site.

If you have a sales or account management team, this CRM will be a huge help. Even if you primarily communicate through automated emails, this CRM feature will help you create personalized experiences for each of your leads.

Live chat and SMS

ActiveCampaign has a live chat feature that allows you to interact directly with your customers.

Even if you can’t answer them instantly, this live chat feature can be a great way to collect data on your customers and learn more about their questions and pain points.

After all, a successful blog or online business solves a problem for people. This live chat feature can be a goldmine of customer feedback about what their problems are.

What’s more, ActiveCampaign’s SMS feature lets you text your subscribers if they provide their phone number. You can send push notifications, flash sales, coupons, blog updates, or other time-sensitive announcements straight to their phone.

We all know how often we look at our phones throughout the day. SMS messaging is a great way to make sure your messages and promotions get seen.

Integrations and add-ons

ActiveCampaign integrates seamlessly with a bunch of other platforms, web applications, and e-commerce websites. These include Shopify, BigCommerce, Prestashop, WooCommerce, Zendesk, Unbounce and Calendly.

Besides, the platform uses RESTful API (application programming interface) that allows you to connect your blog to third-party software. ActiveCampaign also coordinates with Zapier, a tool that connects web applications with your blog.

Additional integrations compatible with ActiveCampaign include PayPal, Stripe, Square, Zoho, QuickBooks, Xero, WordPress, Facebook, Basecamp, and SalesForce CRM.

Other features

Along with its email segmentation, marketing automation, and integrations, ActiveCampaign offers a number of other tools and features to make your email campaigns a success.

These include multi-user editing, mobile optimization, geo-tracking, and more. Check out this screenshot for a full summary:

ActiveCampaign plans and pricing

If you’re interested in trying ActiveCampaign to see if it’s right for you and your business, you can start with a commitment-free 14-day free trial.

Once your free trial is up, you can choose one of ActiveCampaign’s four plans:

• Lite
• Plus
• Professional
• Enterprise

Plans start at just $9/month but increase depending on how many subscribers you have and how many features you’d like to access. You’ll receive a 25% discount if you pay for your plan annually instead of monthly.

Customer support

ActiveCampaign presents a myriad of customer support options. First, the platform has a help center where you can type in your issue and search for solutions. If your problem needs a more specific solution, you can reach the customer support team through live chat.

The platform also provides phone support and a dedicated account manager for users on the Enterprise plan. ActiveCampaign also offers YouTube tutorials, podcasts, webinars, blog posts, and community forums.

Pros of ActiveCampaign

No ActiveCampaign review would be complete without a closer look at this platform’s pros and cons.

Easy to use

With its setup support for new users, multitude of templates, and drag-and-drop builders, ActiveCampaign has an excellent user experience.

Although there might be a learning curve if you’re new to email marketing, ActiveCampaign has a sleek user interface that’s designed to help you make the most of this platform.

Plus, it allows you to import sales templates that you might already be using on other platforms like SalesForce or Google.

High email deliverability

ActiveCampaign has one of the best email deliverability rates of all email marketing platforms. According to EmailToolTester, this email marketing platform has a 91% deliverability score as of March 2021.

Outstanding email automation

ActiveCampaign has powerful automation tools that allow you to run email campaigns on autopilot. For instance, you can easily set “thank you” emails to send to customers after they purchase a product. Or you can automate product review requests a few days after the product has been delivered.

ActiveCampaign provides dozens of automation templates for you to get started. Alternatively, you can create your own. You can make these as straightforward or complex as you need by specifying your own conditions.

Free migration

If you’re using a different email marketing software and want to switch to ActiveCampaign, the platform will help you migrate your account for free.

Robust integrations and add-ons

ActiveCampaign works with many other tools, such as Zendesk, Calendly, and WordPress. It also integrates with Google Analytics, Salesforce, and other CRM platforms.

Detailed analytics reports

ActiveCampaign tracks user activities on your sites. It provides a detailed report on new sales, subscribers, clicks to your links, and other analytics.

With these details, you can figure out what’s working and not working. Use this insight to continuously improve your marketing campaigns.

Cons of ActiveCampaign

Now let’s consider some of the potential downsides of using ActiveCampaign for your email marketing.

Complex features

ActiveCampaign has lots of complex features, and you may need some time to learn how they work. If you’re simply look for a tool to build your list and send emails, you might be better off with a platform like MailerLite or ConvertKit.

But if you have some experience with email marketing and need powerful features for your business, ActiveCampaign could be a good fit.

Basic plans have limited features

Although they’ll save you money, ActiveCampaign’s Lite and Plus plans have limited features. For example, you’ll have to pay extra for the conversations feature purchased as an add-on if you opt for one of these plans.

Some alternative email marketing platforms offer more features in their basic plans, as well as a greater number of email templates.

How to sign up for ActiveCampaign

If you’ve read through this ActiveCampaign reviewed and decided to try this software, head to ActiveCampaign’s website to get started.

Provide your email address and click “Try It For Free.” A dialogue box will appear on your screen requesting your contact information.

On the dialogue box, provide your name, phone number, and website information such as category, number of contacts, and account goals.

Then, simply set your password and click “Take Me To Account” and you’ll start your 14-day trial. You can choose to upgrade to the paid plans or cancel your subscription if the email marketing platform is not what you’re looking for.

  Try a Free Trial of ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign vs. other email marketing platforms

• ActiveCampaign vs. MailChimp: MailChimp appears to have even more templates for users. Plus, it has a free plan for users with less than 1,000 contacts. However, I’ve found it not to be as user-friendly as ActiveCampaign.
• ActiveCampaign vs. ConvertKit: ConvertKit has content creators and bloggers in mind. To this end, I find ConvertKit to be the best tool for bloggers thanks to its easy email sequence editor. But ActiveCampaign offers a ton of features for e-commerce businesses and companies in need of a CRM.
• ActiveCampaign vs. ClickFunnels: ClickFunnels is another comprehensive tool that’s comparable to ActiveCampaign, but its plans are a bit pricier.
• ActiveCampaign vs MailerLite: MailerLite edged out ActiveCampaign in terms of its deliverability rate (97% vs 91% as of March 2021, according to EmailToolTester). However, MailerLite doesn’t have nearly as many features as ActiveCampaign. I’d say MailerLite is better for bloggers who are looking for a minimalist tool, not businesses or advanced email marketers with more complex needs.

ActiveCampaign review final thoughts

From the features discussed in this ActiveCampaign review, you can see that ActiveCampaign is a sophisticated platform with comprehensive features for your email marketing campaigns.

You can use the segmentation feature to organize your email list into categories. Then, send personalized emails and marketing campaigns to your leads. It’s also easy to set up and comes with dozens of integrations. Plus, you’ll enjoy high deliverability, and a robust customer support system.

ActiveCampaign’s custom reports are comprehensive. They offer insight into your site visits, geo-tracking, links opened, emails read, and so much more. This data enables you to evaluate your marketing efforts and continuously improve your sales processes.

  Try a Free Trial of ActiveCampaign

About Rebecca Safier

Rebecca Safier is a blogger and digital marketer who teaches others how to use SEO and other best practices to build profitable blogging businesses.