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)
SharpSpring (discontinued)
Score8 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
SharpSpring was a full-funnel marketing and sales automation platform that united marketing and sales teams to launch and track targeted campaigns and personalize every interaction to engage and convert more customers and drive revenue. It was acquired by Constant Contact and sold for a time as simply Constant Contact Lead Gen & CRM, or SharpSpring by Constant Contact. This product, and the former SharpSpring have since been discontinued, and are no longer sold apart from
Software Test Engineer in Information Technology at Ailleron (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose ActiveCampaign
With ActiveCampaign, you can centralize a significant part of your marketing operations and give your customers a better overall experience than alternative technologies.The customer support staff is very efficient and their knowledge base is particularly informative and easy …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CAD & Marketing Manager in Marketing at Northwestern Ohio Security Systems (Security & Investigations, 51-200 employees)
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign far exceeds SharpSpring in almost every way. It has a much cleaner interface and is much easier to use. SharpSpring was very glitchy for us, especially the email creator/editor. SharpSpring also costs more than double that of ActiveCampaign. And SharpSpring's …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is much more affordable and has just the right amount of features for my business size and stage. It is well supported and widely used so getting help is not a struggle.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Chief Executive Officer in Marketing at The Refinery (Retail, 11-50 employees)
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign really focuses on making the fundamental marketing automation functionality easy to use. It doesn't have as many enterprise features or customization, but that is clearly intentional. For small to mid-sized businesses, those enterprise features get in the way …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
SEO Specialist / Marketing Automation Consultant in Marketing at Klantenfabriek.nl (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose ActiveCampaign
We use multiple "marketing automation" products, and each one has its pluses and minuses. For us, ActiveCampaign is perfect for smaller companies who want to start with marketing automation. Or want to have a good base. The other tools have a lot more options and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the most robust marketing automation platforms available today and allows us to integrate with virtually all other marketing tools in our tech stack. When vetting a marketing automation software to support our clients, we did not like that other larger …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Analyist, Technology Solutions in Marketing at Inverta, LLP (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is the budget option, no doubt. There isn't a single other tool even near it in price that offers anywhere near the level of tools that ActiveCampaign offers.
However, just because it's really inexpensive, don't let that lead you to think its a "cheap" tool. They …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Co-Founder in Marketing at Conversion Queens (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
We use different CRMs for different clients, mostly due to budget and other requirements. SharpSpring from Constant Contact is in the middle, price-wise, but is slightly more user-friendly than ActiveCampaign when it comes to certain things, such as drip campaigns and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
HubSpot and Act-On have about the same capabilities. HubSpot has a much more expensive price model and Act-On is less expensive than HubSpot but even though more expensive. The user interface is not as clear as in SharpSpring and SharpSpring has a better integration with CRM. Ac…
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Director of Onboarding & Special Projects in Marketing at Optimal Digital Marketing (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
We use SharpSpring, ActiveCampaign, Omnisend, and Klaviyo for different clients. If you're looking for a solution that works well with ecommerce, I would go with Omnisend or Klaviyo. If you are looking for something for other types of businesses SharpSpring and ActiveCampaign …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Managing Director in Marketing at Schnap Digital Marketing (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring has much better sales management and reporting functionality over ActiveCampaign which makes it a much better choice for my business and my clients. From a pricing perspective, when you start to add more contacts and send more emails the costs becomes equivalent so …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Founder & CEO in Marketing at 3Bug Media (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
ActiveCampaign is a solid email marketing platform that includes many automation features. Sharpspring is more of a fully featured marketing automation as opposed to an email marketing platform with automation features. We chose to move to Sharpspring as it included …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
Constant Contact is a good tool if you want most of Hubspot's features at a much lower price. It gives you a more predictable number as well as most of the features. It also has the benefits of having other items that regular email marketing systems don't have. While there are …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Web Developer in Marketing at cFocus (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring is the best All in One CRM. It's not just a CRM for email management and that's what's important to us! The support is better in SharpSpring and it's getting more and more effective!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Founder and Chairman in Corporate at TopRight (Marketing & Advertising, 51-200 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring was the most cost effective of the solutions we evaluated. They were also the only one who offered a white label solution that we could offer to our clients
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
The price/quality relationship is really good! It has a lot of features that are charged separately or are more expensive in other platforms and the prices are easier to predict than other ones, where multiple variables can change the price and make it really hard to predict …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in Marketing at Phobos & Actor (Marketing & Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
The Hubspot sales strategy is based on hardsales. And a way of low starting price (free crm) but a large price if you realy want to use it. Most people are not able to aline all teams in a company before starting with marketing and sales automation. So the software is only what …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
There are 2 tiers of marketing automation software. Highly customizable, feature rich enterprise applications, and out of the box simpler solutions for smaller businesses. SharpSpring is unique in that is offers enterprise feature sets at the small business price point.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring's customer service blows the competition out of the water. They are an integral part of your success with SharpSpring. I've never had such great customer success teams that are always going out of their way to make sure the solution they provide is the right one.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Founder and Creative Director in Marketing at Spark (Marketing & Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring has by far the best features for the money. Having used several platforms costing significantly more money, I will go with SharpSpring every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
We use Salesforce and I would still go with SharpSpring over Pardot for cross-platform …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Chief Marketing Officer in Marketing at Above The Fold (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
I've worked with HubSpot, Adobe, Marketo, Pardot and a myriad of other digital marketing tools. I've used tools that cost 1-2 million a year, spent months on integrations. I've honestly never found a tool that is so capable, so easy to implement, and does not require 6 figures …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Marketing Automation consultant in Information Technology at IHR Mexico (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
When we started to search for a total Marketing Automation platform in 2016 we were afraid of the expensive prices for a limited license to users. We tried different platforms very well known like HubSpot, but as we needed characteristics the price started to be a problem …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Director de Desarrollo in Marketing at ManuelMontiel.com (Marketing & Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring promises all but nothing complete. They build a software that you have to hire them to do all the things it should do. They have 3 levels of Certification: Silver, Gold and Platinum. I am Gold and the implementation of the software requires coding knowledge. The …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
SEO Specialist / Marketing Automation Consultant in Marketing at Klantenfabriek.nl (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
Overall, I have tested more applications. If there is one thing that sticks out with SharpSpring, it is price and the quality you get for the price. If you buy SharpSpring, you get everything you can see, no add-ons afterward or limits. (Well 100,000 leads and 25,000 emails …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
I selected SharpSpring due to the value. While most of the products I evaluated and/or have used have much of the same functionality, you often have to purchase a bigger package or more user licenses to allow the entire team to have the functionality. As well, the limits on the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Marketing Technology Manager in Marketing at INLAT (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
Before making the decision to buy ShaprSpring we made a comparative chart among many solutions, but these did not have much difference with respect to SharpSpring. It had very similar characteristics but the cost was lower for SharpSpring. First we called HubSpot to ask for …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
♠ Marketing Advisor to Small Business ♠ Speaker ♠ Author of "Amplify Your Business" in Marketing at Kenny Harper - Business Coach & Marketing Advisor (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
SharpSpring provides a more sophisticated approach than some of the other systems that we've used. It is worth mentioning that every tool changes very regular these days and I realize some of the tools I've used previously have evolved since I last used them so a comparison may …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Business Process Analyst || Executive Assistant in Corporate at DigiProMedia LLC (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
In terms of functionality, SharpSpring and Active campaign are very similar; However, our company chose to make the switch to SharpSpring because of its very affordable price point, the quality of the product, and the unmatched quality of the SharpSpring support staff.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Marketing & Executive Associate in Marketing at Phimation Strategy Group (Management Consulting, 1-10 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
For me it is all about the level of support provided and the services that help us to get where we need to be. Without the stellar support, it does not matter what they have to offer. This is the best customer focused agency I have ever dealt with in the nearly 30 years of …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Marketing Technologist in Marketing at Qualbe Marketing Group (Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees)
Chose SharpSpring (discontinued)
Better at maintaining clients and using as a Marketing Agency. A few more features with a little less customization in some areas like workflow builders. However, the API is way better in my opinion and has a native Salesforce Integration. The CRM is less than agile, but the …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
SharpSpring is great for creating and tracking campaigns that span multiple channels. With the Salesforce integration, we are able to keep our Sales team focused inside Salesforce without them needing to learn a new tool. Our Marketing team uses SharpSpring to nurture leads before handing them off to the Sales team. Though the features are available, SharpSpring would not be suitable for social media management or blogs; our third-party tools do a better job at that.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Their Emailers are very easy to construct and user-friendly. It takes your Newsletter and sales emails to the next level, especially with the action groups and trigger functionalities.
The life of the lead functionality allows you to see when leads get warmer, so you know when to send them what. Helps improve conversions.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The landing page builder is a bit hard to use. Doesn’t have much flexibility.
Sometimes confusing between types of workflows to use. Opportunity versus visual.
If you imported contacts that weren’t formatted correctly. It is hard to delete a bull amount. Need to type DELETE for each one manually. No bull options to make changes.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have been very impressed with all aspects of this software and the potential for it to radically change how we operate is huge! Support has been exceptional and we have discovered many extra uses for the software than originally thought. Not only will it give us benefits for our company's growth, but for our client's growth as well.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
This rating is coming from an administrative perspective. With so many features, workflows, dashboards, and more, there is certainly a lot going on, and even the most savvy software user can get a little overwhelmed when trying to decide how to best implement and utilize the platform to its full potential. That being said, the SharpSpring platform is well-implemented and well-organized, with most solutions being fairly intuitive, once you have a grasp of the software. It is fairly easy to learn, but difficult to master. Just like any powerful platform, however, the complexity is worth it, and once you are comfortable navigating and problem solving within SharpSpring, it becomes a great marketing and sales tool which can do virtually anything you need it to.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The support is great which really helps overcome challenges if you become stuck and the training videos are great too. Same-day replies are great and I even got some help with some CSS code on the chat. Not many organizations would do this or even respond.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Overall I would say to be patient and bring everyone who will be touching the platform to the onboarding sessions. The Virtual Classroom lets you onboard as quickly or slowly as you want. Sales, marketing, design, account management, get 'em all in on it. For the most part, they will be happy to use this platform. I recommend getting as many people as possible to see the SharpSpring demo.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We use different CRMs for different clients, mostly due to budget and other requirements. SharpSpring from Constant Contact is in the middle, price-wise, but is slightly more user-friendly than ActiveCampaign when it comes to certain things, such as drip campaigns and workflows. Though the price can be prohibitive to some clients, it is extremely robust. I definitely prefer the list-building, the ability to send smart emails and the WYSIWYG editor.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Streamlined Processes - sales and marketing are now all in the same place.
Reduced Number of Platforms/Tools - CRM/lead management, email, automation, landing pages, forms, etc are all in the same place rather than using multiple tools.
Time-saving - sales pipeline is very easy to use for sales. For marketing, we have dozens of workflows that eliminate much of our manual processes from the past.
Return on Investment - We're more focused on moving the building the business than ever before because SharpSpring has simplified so many of our business operations and we're seeing massive results!
Lead generation - Up SIGNIFICANTLY (between 3x & 4x) since setting up SharpSpring.
