ActiveCampaign is presented as an AI-first marketing platform for marketers, agencies, and entrepreneurs. It uses Active Intelligence for goal-aware automation and personalized experiences across email, SMS, and WhatsApp. ActiveCampaign integrates with 950+ apps and generates insights to optimize every workflow.
$180
per year (single user)
ClickSend
Score 4.9 out of 10
N/A
ClickSend aims to help businesses communicate with their customers and staff in the moments that matter on the channels, they use every day. ClickSend is designed to power billions of messages worldwide and offers a full suite of communications products from SMS and rich messaging to letters and fax all done via online dashboard or API.
I've been using ActiveCampaign since around 2018-2019 and I've always been satisfied with the software. It's simple to use, connects with the other tools I use and makes it easy for me to duplicate automations, email templates and workflows as I need to. On top of that, any time I've had an issue (which I think is around twice in the past 5/6 years), the customer service has always been super helpful and my issue has been resolved quickly.
ClickSend supports live chats, where instant messaging is done for both formal or informal discussions. Besides, proper management of tasks, from the simplified ones to the complex ones, and every player is well assigned. The option of bar code in this application ensures there is the automation of many tasks and reduces paperwork.
Collects and filters emails from various lead magnets exceptionally well (especially if a user wants to re-sign up to the same lead magnet and go through it again, they can)
Super easy to use email creation that is aesthetically pleasing and user friendly
Easy email sequences and user classification from a large range of opt in trigger options
You can add list of users just by uploading numbers CSV or by uploading detailed CSV.
You can generate quick campaigns just like in email, save templates with URLs, send immediately, or schedule for a certain date and hour. They have analytics, shared, and private numbers. I like that it is super straightforward.
You can make automated campaings that will be sent every time a new user joins a list. This you can do with 3rd-party integrations such as your own app or Zapier since ClickSend already has this integration.
Super cheap and it's what I like most. You pay for SMS in bulk with really competitive prices. Most SMS companies want to charge by the number of users, and when you have 32,000 active users or +130,000 users it just becomes expensive so ClickSend is the SMS solution.
In general, using ClickSend is quick and the learning curve for new users is flat since it's almost the same as an email marketing tool just for SMS and compressed.
It took me a while to get to understand where to find things, and I used a free online course from a consultant who specialises in AC to help me get the foundations set up more easily. That said, there were lots of onboarding workshops, which were good. It just felt like it required a lot of different angles of learning to just get started.
The customer support took longer than other software to get back to me via email, though once I found the chat option for my most recent query, that was fast.
I've ended up switching to another programme where more software is more naturally integrated, and the AC equivalent is included in the price, along with many other types of software. However, design-wise, ActiveCampaign is much better.
I also had a problem with a form used on my WordPress website, which has a BuddyBoss platform - the colours on the form would be overridden by colour choices for the website, so they were hard to read (pink text on purple background instead of the gold text it was meant to be)
I couldn't always find the templates I was looking for or how to access them for automation-based emails. I think when I used it, there was a new type of template for newsletters that weren't available for automations, so I had to recreate it, which added time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In general, support is good. Actually they usually write to you about things like when you upload your first contacts, send your first campaign, or when you forget to put the opt-out option. Of course, they are automated emails but it happens that if you reply to one of them a real support agent will attend to your case. If you have any doubt you can write directly to support by email. I'm not sure if they are using Zendesk or any other kind of program but they usually answer in less than 2 hours. Still, the option of an actual real-time chat is missing.
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.
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.
ClickSend is okay but limited in functionality as compared to HighLevel. HighLevel has more functionality and it is at a reasonable price point everyone. Apart from that support are the same for most platform and it is really great to have something that is easy to start using. Most important decision that someone have to make is what they want in these software.
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!
The ROI is time. More time focused, less time distracted with a mobile device.
Early days, however the customer survey and marketing campaigns will hopefully yield results.
Customer adherence to appointments and/or rescheduling for missed appointments has drastically increased with the use of reminder and follow-up SMS options that normally wouldn't be used as often on a mobile device.
