ActiveCampaign Reviews

Pros

It is an excellent platform, the CRM is very intuitive and the follow-up it gives to customers through automations is excellent, it is capable of sending automated emails or mass emails, since it has some add-ins that are very much in line with the job. . I am dedicated to digital marketing and this system has been very useful for me to be able to organize myself without the need for more paper or old Excel techniques. I highly recommend it for different types of businesses because it is also very adaptive to whatever you want to do.
Highlights are CRM and sales automation, marketing reporting and analytics, contact management, and A / B testing

Cons

It is difficult to use at the beginning, I would say that it has a learning curve of medium difficulty

Alternatives Considered

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

I chose ActiveCampaign because it is the most complete of all email marketing software on the market at an affordable price.

Pros

Moved to Active Campaign from Infusionsoft (2 years ago now, before they changed their name) and we were very satisfied at that particular time that Active Campaign was the superior product.

Good marketing and automation tools - which have also had a lot of investment and attention in the two years we've been using Active Campaign - as well as a solid CRM and lead/opportunity management dashboard.

We have the Enterprise Grade subscription which gives us access to a dedicated account manager. This was really useful in the first year and we had an excellent account manager at that time.

Cons

Active Campaign have really focused in recent years on the live / real time behaviour tools and giving users the ability to build extremely complex automations. For us though, we would prefer a bit more focus on improving the CRM and things that make contact and lead management easier - such as the ability to add follow up tasks from the (otherwise excellent) Gmail widget.

Pros

I like that I can partner with AC as an agency and manage all of my clients through my account.

Cons

Some features can be buggy or glitchy. However support is usually able to sort it out.

Alternatives Considered

Sendinblue, SendGrid, Mailchimp and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

Price was a factor but also features. I have different clients that require different functionality and I need one system to be able to provide it all. AC fulfilled those requirements for my agency.

Pros

Activecampaign sets the bar for building automations, with great sorting and filtering features including customer records, tags, lists, conditional rules/routing, e-commerce data such as purchases, crm pipelines and even a custom event layer. We have created very complex integrations for dozens of businesses ranging from E-Commerce stores, to Gyms to local businesses.

It's really simple to learn and use, and powerful enough to tackle even the most complex business processes. This includes in-store purchases on a POS to sending out emails or automation's based on purchases or LTV. It also supports multiple E-Commerce platforms natively, but be aware those features are nearly 4x the price to unlock after the trial.

Cons

After months of issues that resulted in one of our clients losing an excess of $40,000 in revenue, we can no longer recommend activecampaign. Poor support was to blame for this issue, with it being impossible to get someone on a call even though we pay 6 figures a year for service.

Activecampaign is growing really really fast. Because of this, They have pretty terrible support and there are also long-standing bugs that they seem to have no intention to fix. For instance, the system is supposed to generate previews for each automation's email steps and in various other places, but instance shows a broken image. We have inquired about this to the support to be told they are aware it's been broken for over a year and have no ETA or intention on repairing it. We have this problem on all our client's accounts(dozens), and it's a serious issue with UI/UX but they don't seem to care.

There are also some major logic issues, such as if you filter an automation to show anyone with 0 purchases, it doesn't work. We also inquired about this but got another non-response...

So basically, where it works, it works well but there are a few major issues and they don't seem intent on repairing them, even though they are steady releasing more features to add to their pricing tiers. Overall, it's hard to find another system that provides the ease of use, features, and value of activecampaign but the support and existing bugs are a nasty/necessary compromise.

Pros

ActiveCampaign is an amazing tool for automating your marketing campaigns. It makes it easy to create, manage and track multiple campaigns with its simple and intuitive interface. You can set up automated emails, create segmented lists, and even use its powerful analytics to track the performance of campaigns. The customer support team is always there to help, and the pricing is very reasonable.

Cons

The only downside to using ActiveCampaign is that it can be a bit overwhelming for beginners. It has a lot of features, and it can take some time to learn how to use them all. Additionally, the reports are not as detailed as some other services, so it may be hard to get a full picture of how your campaigns are performing.

Pros

ActiveCampaign offers ease of use and integration. It is great for automating email marketing and lead magnets, freeing up time and reducing stress.

Cons

With so many features, it can be overwhelming to navigate the system and find the best approach.

Pros

I like the semplicity in creating lista, campaigns, and automations

Cons

I had hard time when i had to send one more mail ti the user Who already finished the automation

Pros

Ease of designing an email and storing graphic assets

Cons

Site navigation- confusing. I get bounced around.

Alternatives Considered

Constant Contact

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

It got high ratings from others in our industry

Pros

The support is of a high level, it offers quick answers to our doubts, it allows us to create automatic marketing campaigns, which allow us to increase the workflow and the good results in our clients, it offers solutions and great scalability with our sales and clients, account with a very intuitive interface that generates ease of use for beginners.

Cons

Some of the peers may think it is an expensive product, but it is one of the best in the market to offer great integration of automated marketing campaigns, I don't think it is expensive, the price is according to the benefits.

Pros

In my organization, we have used ActiveCampaign to manage and automate our email communication. We have found it to be an incredible software that improves our customer experience with effective marketing tactics. The email template builder is versatile and has helped us create different on-brand templates. The analytics provided by the software is also profound, helping us track visibility and engagement. ActiveCampaign provides all basic functionality, including creating landing pages, collecting emails, automatically sending emails, and tagging clients, making it easy for beginners to use. The cost is reasonable, making it a great option for small to medium-sized businesses. The support team is also responsive, providing answers to basic questions within 24 hours. Overall, I highly recommend ActiveCampaign to anyone looking to automate their email campaigns and improve their customer experience.

Cons

It is frustrating to be limited to only one email address for each contact. Many individuals nowadays have multiple email addresses, and although I understand the potential for abuse with multiple addresses, this limitation does not solve the problem at hand.

Pros

AC is very easy to use and to set up. It’s more intuitive than most similar products we’ve tried. When it works right, it’s great.

Cons

Software like this is complex, and things inevitably break or have bugs. We have used most of the major platforms out there, and they all have periods of bugs and issues. Once you run into it, the only question is this: will support be there to help? Not AC support, not if it’s lunchtime.

Alternatives Considered

Ontraport and Keap

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

Ease of use and more CRM features in ActiveCampaign.

Switched From

Kartra

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

Ease of use

Pros

ActiveCampaign is crazy powerful and has so many features that make it a fabulous selection for email marketing software. I've used a few different email marketing programs and definitely think ActiveCampaign is the best - the tagging features are way superior to a lot of the entry level offerings and the automations are fantastic. On top of this, the service is brilliant and I feel confident in the team's ability to help me with any issues I'm experiencing.

Cons

Because it is so powerful, it can be a little confusing to new users who aren't tech-savvy. There is plenty of education though, so I do believe it is worth pursuing.

Alternatives Considered

ConvertKit, Drip and Mad Mimi

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

Mailchimp's automation and tagging options weren't sophisticated enough for my needs.

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

The pricing was far better for what was available and I had real life recommendations from other users.

Pros

I love that their user interface is very functional and easy to understand and use. I've been using ActiveCampaign from a little over a year now and there are still so many features I discover that helps me and my clients every time.

Cons

I guess an area they can improve on is their loading time. Sometimes it takes a while for things to load when I use ActiveCampaign heavily.

Alternatives Considered

Kartra

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

This is for a client. We did because the previous software provider was charging a bit higher but features are less. We feel it wasn't at par with the value my client was paying.

Switched From

ConvertKit

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

Aside from AC's powerful features, it was the discount we got on top of the 50% off for 3 months that sealed the deal!

Pros

Our account rep was quite helpful initially and our experience getting set up went fairly smoothly. After the inital set up our account rep pretty much disappeared but when we pressed her to become involved she did set up a call and was helpful.

Cons

The company has some fairly significant problems related to intracompany communications between departments. The old adage the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing fits Active Campaign perfectly based on our exeprience. About 6 months in we set up a call with our account rep whose analysis was that our account was doing very well from any analytics perspective with very high relative open rates and fairly low/acceptable spam reports, but the bery next day we received an email from a different person and department indicating that our spam complaints were too high and they suspended our service. It was an exptremely poor experience and given the spam numbers displayed on the Active Campaign admin panel made no sense at all. Qe also had a similar negative experience during the onboarding process with our account rep being totally out of the loop. The initial onboarding problems almost caused me to go in a different direction and looking back on it I wish I had folowed my gut instincts at that time, had I made the correct decision and chosen a different provider it would have saved us a lot of time that ended up being wasted.

Alternatives Considered

Email on Acid

Switched From

Constant Contact

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

I have since migrated to Sendgrid and have had a much better experience.

Pros

A step up from most Email Marketing tools that brings a powerful Marketing CRM and automation system. Highly competitive against the enterprise grade platforms of Hubspot and Marketo. Brings much of the day to day functionality you will typically need and avoids a lot of the excess and bloat of the larger enterprise platforms.

Easy to setup and build automations and campaigns.

Very cost effective Marketing Automation CRM that integrates well with all other Enterprise tools

Cons

Field management and auto-fill functionality is lack.

Email/Templates builder while works well is very rigid and locks in to the system, requiring custom builds to be made inside the platform. Little to no documentation or functionality for importation of external builds.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

Mailchimp doesn't have a true Marketing Automation system or CRM. Marketo has a terrible Ux Hubspot has too many underbuilt features ActiveCampaign has just the right Ux and features mix for 95% of hyper growth software businesses

Switched From

Unbounce and Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

Mailchimp doesn't have a true Marketing Automation system or CRM. Marketo has a terrible Ux Hubspot has too many underbuilt features ActiveCampaign has just the right Ux and features mix for 95% of hyper growth software businesses

Pros

We came to Active Campaign from Pardot and what we like MOST is the price difference. AC is much cheaper and has all the core functionality (and more) that you need to set up a pretty robust marketing automation and customer support system.

Cons

I gotta say the one detractor from giving them an all-around 5 star review has been the unresponsive nature of our contacts there. I have had a few billing questions and was trying to move to an annual contract and my dedicated account rep just flat out hasn't responded in weeks. I had to go back to the guy who originally sold us the software to get the invoice and forms I needed. I also tried to follow up with both of them to make sure we were good on the annual plan and haven't heard anything from either of them. So I have to say the customer support (from a billing/account management perspective) has been sub-optimal.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

Pardot costs a lot of money for small companies and their support is non-existent.

Switched From

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has all the features and integrations we needed at a fraction of the cost.

Pros

ActiveCampaign has all the features that other "premium" platforms also have, but the price and the fast set up are totally a game changer.
In a few steps you can provision a marketing automation platform with all the capabilities.

Cons

For high database and high sending volumes, maybe it's not the best option. Large campaigns could take time in sending.

Alternatives Considered

Sendinblue

Switched From

Watson Campaign Automation

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

More plans and options available. More flexibility and options in automations. Great community and integrations with most popular platforms.

Pros

I like how straightforward and intuitive the software is. -- I can actually see a visual flow map of the customer journey, I can create automated series and then schedule them easily, I can create a standard template for my weekly video campaign and then customize it without revisiting old or pre-designed templates; I wasn't able to do any of those things intuitively with MailChimp. I have fewer than 400 subscribers right now, and I'm really glad to be making the switch now instead of later down the road. ActiveCampaign is where I want to build the foundation for my email marketing from here on out.

Also, I had to buy a whole separate online course to learn how to use MailChimp and ActiveCampaign includes a startup course, "Getting Started," in their platform. Much appreciated!

This is turning into a MailChimp critique, but the other thing I didn't like was how I couldn't just type directly into the body of the email like how a NORMAL email works; I had to write in a separate box to the side and it made it hard to see what the actual email would end up looking like sometimes.

Cons

Honestly I don't have any feedback about what to improve yet; I've been using ActiveCampaign for just a couple weeks.

Alternatives Considered

Flodesk, Constant Contact and Drip

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

See response to first question... (everything I enjoy so far about ActiveCampaign has to do with how much more intuitive and easy it is compared to MailChimp).

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

Some big online entrepreneurs that I highly respect [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] with Thrive Themes, [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] with Consulting Accelerator) use ActiveCampaign, and I figure they're using the best of the best for online course/consulting business marketing.

Pros

I like the fact that someone like me, who has only ever written campaigns for others to create but now has to do everything myself, can get up to speed pretty quickly and now I feel very comfortable with the platform. Although there are some odd, small nuances in the drag and drop, that functionality is really good and let's me create my campaigns quickly and easily.

Cons

For the most part, this is a great tool, but there are a few things I would like to see addressed. The first one was just addressed recently and you can now "undo." Not having an undo and instead looking at a bunch of dropdown times was not efficient, so kudos to AC for fixing that! I would also like to be able to search my images by keyword...that would save me a ton of time. Also, and this one would really be helpful...I find that creating a suppression file is an awkward process. I would like to be able to choose and list to send to and a list to suppress against that send list. Creating the segment for the suppression is not intuitive and I get confused with that.

Pros

This is high-end marketing automation at mid-market pricing. If you want to automate marketing to a high-degree and with great sophistication, AC allows you to do nearly anything - yet at a price point similar to email marketing tools with little or no automation. That's why I chose Active Campaign and why I stick with it.

Cons

For all of its technical sophistication, there are a few weak points around basics. Its email creation interface feels dated and the handling of image assets is clunky and horrid. Creating restore points and undo is flaky and unreliable. And what makes all this so bad is that users have logged these points for several years as top requests and AC has not addressed them. Instead they add fancy functionality. The basics of everyday use matter and the experience spoils the software for me.

Alternatives Considered

ConvertKit and Keap

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

I switched from MailChimp because I needed the automation functionality. Now, MailChimp are building that capability. I hope AC can continue to stay ahead on that and catch up with MC's usability and UX.

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

I chose AC over ConvertKit for better functionality and marginally better price (2017) and over InfusuionSoft (now Keap) because that was WAY too expensive for my business.

Pros

love the automation and the campaigns features. I also like that it integrates with my gmail (G Suite) account.

Cons

some of the features are hidden, the layout is really lacking for easy of use. its hard to find and add tags and lists etc. it seems to have great features but they are hidden away and hard to find.

Alternatives Considered

Pipedrive

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

insightly was great at inegrating into gmail but SUPER hard to use, I really narrowed down the CRMs to ones that had the automation features, I didnt want to have multiple crms and tools all connected together

Switched From

Insightly

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

pipedrive is amazing!!! but it doesnt have an automation (sort of does now) or bulk email out function like mailchimp. I hate mailchimp so I wanted a CRM that did it internally

Pros

I was with MailChimp. I moved to ActiveCampaign for the features that I am most fond of and use the most. Those are list segmentation, CRM, their existing recipe to help build automation, the automation functionality, in-depth segmentation, and tracking every move a contact makes.
The transition was seamless; ActiveCampaign moved my whole list for me. I was a bit overwhelmed at first because of the high level of functionality. But, their customer service and support are the best I've encountered in any company that I deal with to run my business. I love them!

Cons

I don't love the functionality of the design elements in the Campaigns. Mainly, there is no way to set the overall design perimeters. So, every time you add a block, you select your font and have to reset the design. The time making adjustments adds up.

Pros

I love the flow of the automations and segmentation.
It's opened a whole new world of opportunities for my organisation.

Cons

I'm not sure whether I have yet to find it, but from the exploration that I've done on the mobile app, I couldn't find tracking for automations, nor for forms. That would come in handy.

As for the software in general, it would have been helpful to be able to see an overview of all campaigns and automations in one place, rather than having automations on one tab and campaigns on another.

Also, it would be helpful if I could go into a sent campaign and resend it to myself (not a specific contact), and access the original message and list of people who received the campaign more easily. Currently feels like I need to go through 2-3 steps each time in order to do so.

Alternatives Considered

Mailchimp

Reasons for Choosing ActiveCampaign

100% due to a recommendation and assistance of a committed and extremely professional user - [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] (aka "automations queen" :) [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to ActiveCampaign

Same answer as previous question - [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] of Day by Day Business Management - [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]. She has referred several new customers your way and deserves a BIG shoutout! :))

Pros

Activecampaign is more than just an email marketing app... done right it can free you from manually keeping track of leads and contacts interacting with your business.

We use it to nurture all new leads coming in through our website. I recently implemented lead scoring of my contacts, which will hopefully allow me to filter those leads ready for sales.

Another great feature is the site tracking. I've set an alert to notify me when a contact is on our site. I've yet to take advantage of this, but my plan is to automate an email to the relevant sales consultant, telling them their lead is on a high-intent page, so we can reach out at just the right time.

There is more under the hood, I know. For larger setups one could use it as a full CRM, bringing your sales team on board with incredible amount of data about your contacts.

Cons

It can be overwhelming. They have pre-built recipes for most functions, which is a great start. But still, you'll have to play with the automations and see which work for you.

Otherwise, it's like driving a Ferrari and not going faster than 120 kmh.

Pros

I enjoy the way ActiveCampaign displays information because it assists you in optimizing your services. The platform eliminates the requirement for users of varying skill levels to use multiple programs by centralizing all records in a single location that can be accessed from anywhere at any time. ActiveCampaign's advanced marketing tools enable you to create and save lists of potential customers for any product or service you offer, then email them offers. You can also customize ActiveCampaign to track the success of your marketing campaigns, which enables you to develop more distinctive campaigns and sustainable marketing strategies. ActiveCampaign's charts, suggestions, and reports will ensure that you always make the best choices. I appreciate how you can improve content viewing and automatically track engagement across many social media platforms, allowing you to have a better understanding of how your consumers and new customers react to it.

Cons

I had no technical issues when using ActiveCampaign, and the user interface is fantastic and simplifies the process of accessing various tools and reports, but the work team need easy exercises to effectively use the platform and get the intended results.