ActiveCampaign vs. Creatio

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.

Incentivized

Creatio is well suited in following scenarios: Complex Business process modelling and automation, Low code No code development which is best for efficient timelines, customized reporting and dashboarding, seamless integration with other technologies. Scenarios where Creatio is less appropriate: Solutions which require high cutomizations on the frontend side as this can be done by javascript modifications but it increases the load on the page and slows it down.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Creatio's client success team is super. The team is collaborative, solution-oriented, and client-driven. We have weekly meetings with the team. They show up prepared with solutions/ideas to business requests and they are clearly engaged.
• Creatio's infrastructure team has been critical to our ability to execute our cloud strategy. They have worked with us to set up our testing and production environments within Azure, assisted in testing, and are responsive and flexible to our unique requirements.
• Creatio has been very flexible to requests for customization. We have taken their low-code out-of-the-box solution and "Ringlerized" it. The benefit for us is an application that meets our niche business needs.

• 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.

Incentivized

• When we started using Creatio in 2022 the new user interface had just been released and did not include all the features we needed; however, we used a more classic user interface and were still satisfied with the results.
• The ability to capture a digital signature directly within the application was missing in the base system; however, Creatio connected us with a partner that provided a solution for this specific situation.

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

We have always used a CRM and Creatio has proven to be much more effective in meeting our needs than our previous provider. Its customizability will allow us to adapt this product as our business may change in the future.

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.

Because it is so easy to use and navigate through - even the most technophobic people in our company are using it on a regular basis. It is easy to change around and switch through different sections and keep neat and tidy.

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

Other than the daily maintenance window where the server may be inaccessible for a few minutes, there have been no issues with accessing our Creatio site. The daily maintenance window is outside normal business hours so it does not affect our Users - just myself when I am looking to implement changes.

Incentivized

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

Some Users have reported slow responses from the server at times which seems to be localized. Users are based across four different time zones and the issue is intermittent.

Incentivized

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

The people at the Creatio offices world wide are very friendly, patience and always happy to help. I have a huge respect for them, especially the people that were based in the Ukraine. Still in these strange times they always keep the focus on the customer, where we would have totaly understanded it if it was any different. So huge compliments to the whole team, keep up the energy and the good work

Most of the roadblocks to learning were not discovered until the users were actually in the system using it on a day to day basis. Our Customer Success Manager has offered to setup additional training sessions as needed to close the gaps in our learning. Some areas which required some additional training are setting up filters, dashboards, and generating reports.

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

The project manager for our implementation was great to work with and took the time to understand our business. We felt very comfortable going into the project with a reasonable scope of work to provide us with a functional version of Creatio to meet our needs. Unfortunately, we came across multiple challenges with this partner in their deliverables and timelines. Thankfully Creatio was able to provide support resources to ensure we were able to launch. We have since changed partners for our third-party support.

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

The user-friendliness of Creatio was a big selling point along with the low-code initiatives, both of which were important to our business. With Salesforce, unlimited wasn't really unlimited. You couldn't deploy an on-site instance and the overall cost of the system far outweighed the ROI. These are all things Creatio offers, out-of-the-box.

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

I can see the promise of how it can be customized to other aspects of our business.

Incentivized

• 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

• We went from manually processing Work Orders into Invoices once a day - representing significant impact to turn around speeds - to submitting automatically in real time, eliminating a great deal of human transcription errors and freeing up a great deal of operations time
• Custom Implementation automation in Creatio has eliminated 4-6 hours of configuration work per sale in comparison to our old manual methods