Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ActiveCampaign
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with a platform for intelligent marketing automation. It provides email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools that help businesses to create incredible customer experiences.
$19
per month
Freshdesk
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer service software that helps businesses of all sizes to deliver customer support. Freshdesk converts requests coming in via email, web, phone, chat, and social into tickets, and unifies ticket resolution across channels. Additionally, Freshdesk lets the user automate workflows, provide self-service, manage SLAs, and measure metrics, to stay on top of customer support. Freshdesk also offers out-of-the-box features like an AI-powered support chatbot,…
$0
Up to 10 agents per user
Pricing
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free
$0
Up to 10 agents
Growth
$15
per month per agent
Pro
$49
per month per agent
Enterprise
$69
per month per agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Considered Both Products
ActiveCampaign
Chose ActiveCampaign
I used to be a big fan of HubSpot. However, as I work with a lot of start-ups and scale-ups, it is increasingly hard to recommend it, as the price keeps going up. And in the early stages, it cannot provide the required ROI. ActiveCampaign offers most of the functionality, for a …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign has a much more powerful and flexible automation builder, as well as the pipeline function (Deal) that is fully integrated with the rest of the product.
For example, you can set up automation with conditions that push a contact across a sales pipeline based on …
Freshdesk
Chose Freshdesk
It lets users launch multi-channel support, automate help desk operations and as well provides self-service portals used to reinforce customer support efforts.
It streamlines ticket delivery and ensures maximum collaboration among internal teams.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.9
664 Ratings
13% above category average
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor9.4581 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content9.1520 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content8.8471 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages8.0338 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing9.1380 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.3526 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting7.3631 Ratings00 Ratings
List management9.6650 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.7574 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
7.5
524 Ratings
3% below category average
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation9.2491 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.0359 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management9.2401 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks9.2355 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead segmentation and distribution1.81 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.5
374 Ratings
22% above category average
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Calendaring9.6295 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing9.5286 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.5
287 Ratings
23% above category average
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns9.6254 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration9.4250 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.3
627 Ratings
10% above category average
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.0597 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.0584 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports9.0377 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.2
491 Ratings
19% above category average
Freshdesk
-
Ratings
API9.5391 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals9.2267 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability9.4420 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com9.392 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM9.760 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM9.856 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.520 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.4
145 Ratings
6% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.7141 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.195 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.43 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings7.64 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.8142 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.7142 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.3
130 Ratings
7% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.4116 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
-
Ratings
Freshdesk
8.3
138 Ratings
8% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.1116 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.143 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.572 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.7138 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.284 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.5 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP Service Cloud
SAP Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(676 ratings)
8.7
(212 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(25 ratings)
9.8
(14 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(38 ratings)
8.9
(35 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(5 ratings)
8.5
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
1.4
(41 ratings)
8.6
(33 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(2 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
7.9
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(14 ratings)
8.4
(142 ratings)
Configurability
6.4
(4 ratings)
8.5
(3 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.8
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.5
(5 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.4
(4 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.2
(4 ratings)
7.8
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
ActiveCampaignFreshdesk
Likelihood to Recommend
ActiveCampaign
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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
Using a collection of Skill Based Ticket Assignment, Ticket Allocation, and alerts, we’ve been able to bring our average resolution time to under half our previous time. This is done by making sure the right tickets get to the right agents, and by ensuring agents are followed up on to ensure they do not forget deadlines on tickets in their queue. Furthermore, tickets which would be open for weeks due to lack of a client response are now closed automatically following a prompt email to the end-user
Read full review
Pros
ActiveCampaign
  • 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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
  • Follow up on all conversations that enter and are easy to use by the employee and save responses ready for use.
  • Find out the average rate of the number of conversations that occur in the company and conduct the analysis.
  • There is a feature it allows one to take a permit in the name of the employee who responds to the conversation and to know the problem faced by the customer and the solution.
Read full review
Cons
ActiveCampaign
  • 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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
  • Ticket templates and canned responses should be able to be used interchangeably. We frequently have the same response in both fields.
  • The spam filter can be a little too aggressive. We have had issues with tickets being accidentally marked as spam then filtering incorrectly for weeks at a time.
  • Freshdesk doesn't quite have the right integrations with our other providers (Vonage, and Avochato, to name a few).
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
ActiveCampaign
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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
We are extremely happy with Freshdesk and can foresee using it for the next year. We might only consider using a different platform if our average daily ticket volume reaches four digits and its AI isn’t enough to handle our needs by then. While we haven’t tested this yet, we have read reviews that it’s AI capabilities are lacking
Read full review
Usability
ActiveCampaign
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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
I gave it a rating of 9 out of 10 because they delivered on everything we asked them to do. Easy to setup, easy to deploy to end users, easy to customize, easy to enter tickets and so much more. Our experience with their support is top notch! After opening a ticket for support they call use back within 10 minutes every time!
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Reliability and Availability
ActiveCampaign
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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
I have encountered a lot of errors in the Freshdesk, however, they tend to resolve it on priority or at least they will share the timeline by when this can be resolved. Most of the time the issue has been from the other partner's end. They take time to resolve their vendor issues and they don't have any timelines in case of developed app errors.
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Performance
ActiveCampaign
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.
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Freshworks Inc
The reports take a lot of time to download if the time period is large. Also, the tickets take their sweet time to open and load. It is not fast as Zendesk. Only 30 tickets are visible in a single go and there isn't any option to select all. If we need to change the pages and dashboards it takes a lot of time to open.
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Support Rating
ActiveCampaign
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.
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Freshworks Inc
The main thing about Freshdesk user service is that once a request has been made for information about a feature of the platform, the support team responds to tickets quickly, within a day of writing and submitting them, with information that is concise enough so that there is no need to ask for help on the same topic again.
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In-Person Training
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
In-person training is provided to all the agents and it is very easy to learn the basics of the Freshdesk interface. Solving tickets via dashboards, replying to the guest queries in bulk via Freshdesk. The training which is a bit hard is creating the logic according to the ticket flow and intergeration.
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Online Training
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
This tool is no doubt easy to learn but in-person training is a lot better than online training. It takes time to grasp things in the online training, however, in pandemic we have done all the training online. Apart from a bit more time we haven't faced any issues with online training.
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Implementation Rating
ActiveCampaign
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.
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Freshworks Inc
Not applicable. I have never used a support desk system before and FreshDesk had already been implemented at my company before I joined. I am not involved in financial decisions and I have no opinion on buzzwords like "time to productivity" and "time to value"
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
ActiveCampaign
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.
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
FreshDesk was the best combination of ease of use and price. While inexpensive, even the lowest tier offered more functionality than the other guys, and the learning curve is almost nonexistent so it's easy to add new agents and get them up to speed quickly instead of having them spend days getting use to the UI.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Freshworks Inc
The pricing we had taken is on yearly basis but the subscription and billing frequency that we have is on monthly basis. I would not want to make any changes to it, it is a seamless process with all the contract terms and we both agreed on it. It should be as per the customer's need.
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Scalability
ActiveCampaign
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!
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Freshworks Inc
The product they have developed is amazing. They have made different products for emails, tickets, chats & calls as well. It is flexible according to multiple departments. The finance team can use it, the Customer support team is using it, we can use it in call centres, emails etc. We can use these tickets internally as well to create child tickets and assign them to different departments for query resolution.
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Return on Investment
ActiveCampaign
  • 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
Read full review
Freshworks Inc
  • Freshdesk is certainly better than nothing, or a simple shared inbox
  • Freshdesk is frustrating to incorporate social media with
  • Freshdesk excels at ticket management
  • Freshdesk needs to do more to bring it into alignment with business, rather than 'just' service desk needs.
Read full review
ScreenShots

ActiveCampaign Screenshots

Screenshot of tagging, that when combined with conditional content helps to put the right message in front of each customer.Screenshot of marketing automationScreenshot of audience segmentation based on engagement, purchase activity, lead score, or any other dimensionScreenshot of live chat, site messaging, email, and a unified inbox that can be used to build relationships with customers.Screenshot of the CRM, which helps sales reps to get more done in less time