ActiveCampaign vs. Brevo

ActiveCampaign is brilliant for small businesses wanting a secure, reliable and user friendly email capture software that filters users emails into the appropriate category/tags and have endless options when it comes to having different lead magnets and ways users may sign up. It's been super handy for my small business to send regular emails and be able to analyse the success rates and open rates of emails and the ability to resend them with a different subject line. It's made email marketing really easy peasy.

Incentivized

Brevo is an excellent email subscriber service provider for startups, small businesses, and budget-conscious users. BUT it's real strength is that as your business scales, so too does Brevo's services. As mentioned in my review, when compared to over-hyped, and super-expensive AWeber, Brevo wins out in every singly department. Not every 1000, 10000, etc. sub list generates thousands in revenue. So why do other companies charge as if it's a large profitable corporation based on the sub number thresholds? Brevo is reasonably priced without sacrificing solid service. HIGHLY recommended.

• The graphic design is very good, especially fonts, colours and templates
• Flexibility of design and functionality
• Takes a little while to learn it, but generally user-friendly
• Looks very professional but doesn't cost much to get started
• There are masses of integrations for ActiveCampaign, and the ones I tried all worked well and didn't take long to figure out.

Incentivized

• Sendinblue allows you to send emails that do not arrive in spam
• Sendinblue, through its security measures and filters, helps keep contact databases well organized and up to date
• Sendinblue offers an easy-to-use newsletter creation tool and, in case of lack of inspiration, many templates

Incentivized

• The email designing part could be easier to use. There are certain simple shortcuts that don't work, for example, adding links is more complicated than it should be, moving blocks around is hard, etc.
• There's no good way to filter by 'active' and 'inactive' subscribers when editing en-mass.
• I'd like more reporting data on one page.

Incentivized

• not easy to move/duplicate sections. much easier to just drag and drop. still working this out.
• don't like the logo or text included with the newsletter sign up form. have now upgraded, but think this should not be included for lower pricing plans
• not getting issues completely answered by support team. currently have an issue with email sign up not working on mobile. have been told it is not working, but not given any suggestions on how to fix this.
• have had unusual issue come up with a link. On 2 separate occasions, with 2 separate newsletters that went out, and 2 different images/articles/links, the link was wrong. Even though we checked it, previewed it and sent test email before we sent out these newsletters and these links were correct. It is the section at the bottom of our current newsletter. On both these occasions, when the customer has forwarded the email they received to us, the link was was to an old link - and it was the same old link on both occasions. We have asked for this to be looked into and are waiting on reply. We are going to try to delete this section this week and re-create. It is not a good look for us.
• We have another issue with how our newsletter is previewing in Outlook. The images and the text are not lining up - not on every section, but on 2 sections out of the 5 sections. Also, the Read Full Article text in the button is not showing properly. Again, not a professional look for us which we are not happy with.

Incentivized

I am committed at the moment. Rebuilding the automations I have would be a huge time drain. Plus the cost of learning a new system and the risk to deliverability of porting a 6,000 person list to a new platform. Also, AC offers everything I need ast a reasonable (but a little high) price. So, why not a 10? Because, early 2023, AC dropped a massive 2x price hike on long-term customers. They knew few would shift, so this feels like a cynical cash grab and left a bad taste, If they do something like this again, this camel will have a broken back.

Incentivized

SendinBlue is providing an excellent value to my business by simplifying and speeding up the way that we interact with our customers

Incentivized

ActiveCampaign has been the easiest marketing automation software we have ever used. They provide tips throughout the entire process of anything you are building. Their support team through LIVE CHAT has been extremely fast and helpful. The monthly meetings provided with the enablement team has helped us through several large and urgent needs.

Even if you don't have prior knowledge of using this type of platform, you can create an email marketing campaign in just a few minutes. Another platform I use (the chimpanzee one) doesn't seem as intuitive or agile to me. It offers many templates that you can edit, and they are very easy to manage.

Incentivized

I haven't experienced application errors or unplanned outages at all. Active Campaign is ultra reliable and I would not be using them if that were the case. Also, the helpful emails they send are welcomed and informative, and present very practical tips and guidance for using the platform. They're always demonstrating new features and I'm thankful for that.

Incentivized

I have never had any planned outages in the time I have been using the software and have had no issues with accessing it.

Oh my gosh, Active Campaign's performance gets an A+++ in my book. The pages load quickly and so do the reports. I haven't noticed any slowdowns when it's integrating with other programs and it performs excellently on all levels.

Incentivized

Everything loads very quickly, it saves as you go along so you're unlikely to loose work if your computer fails. Reports are there immediately too so you're able to act quickly on customer engagement.

This might be the best part. The chat support lady offered to make a video to help me solve my problem. I worked in customer service for years and I've never done that, lol. So, if they're offering things like that, I can only imagine that they'd be able to handle most any issue you throw at them.

Incentivized

These people helped me identify errors when setting up DKIM and were more than helpful in trying to diagnose low open rates with a few campaigns identifying where improvement can be made and how to more effectively manage contact lists. The support is excellent.

Incentivized

Very satisfied with our implementation in our professional medical practice, allowing us to be on top of client service, and not miss out on crucial information and insights. Marketing is often neglected in professional practices and ActiveCampaign solved this problem with aplomb.

Incentivized

If you follow all the steps of the setup process they give you, any one can set this up in about 1 - 2 hours.

Incentivized

I moved to ActiveCampaign from Mailchimp. Admittedly, I was using the free version of Mailchimp, but I had numerous episodes of subscriber data NOT being added to Mailchimp, despite using API to integrate with my mailing list. Obviously, I couldn't pay for clicks and not capture subscriber data, so I had to find something else. ActiveCampaign has been 100% reliable in testing.

Incentivized

I selected Sendinblue because my users and customers don't speak and read English, so the french version of an email solution was the best way to answer them. Since 2017, I always recommended Sendinblue to my customers and partners, even if they use another solution, I convert them and never go back again.

Incentivized

My web designer told me about Active Campaign and although I don't recall which platform I had before, I LOVE Active Campaign and its user friendliness. The transition was seamless and I've never had a problem with functionality or server failure.

Active Campaign provides so many features, and makes it easy for non-techies to maneuver around the site with ease. They capture information and put it in an easy-to-read format.

At this point, I don't think I'd ever use any other platform!

Incentivized

They have multiple options for upgrading bigger senders or if you need more emails sent in a month.

• I haven't monetized my list yet so no clear ROI but great from a list-building perspective
• The software is not cheap so at times I feel like I may not be getting the most out of the product because I'm not using all of the features

Incentivized

• The ROI has been very positive - We have been able to bring the entire process in-house to the marketing department
• We are saving time and money by not involving outside contractors
• We save resources by not involving I.T.
• The amount of time we save by being able to create the email from concept to completion, all by one person, is astronomical.
• We save some cost by using the Sendinblue stock image options