ActiveCampaign vs. Google Workspace vs. MailerLite

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

Google Workspace does offer several different plans that can match well with the stage of your business. As your business grows, the higher plans can provide the better tooling or expanded features/products to scale with your needs. It would probably become very complicated to swap over to, if you are deeply embedded with another competitor. But, it could be a nice platform to consolidate several disconnected systems under one roof.

Incentivized

I didn't have much luck when testing other similar tools and since we tested with free plan, we couldn't commit to something else if we couldn't get basic stuff fixed. That's when we switched to MailerLite, and their support was great and super helpful all the way (during our free plan, especially). Plus, they're super budget-friendly for startups, so I highly recommend.

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

• Google Calendar...amazing. I don't need to ask team members when they're busy anymore and play this game of bouncing times back and forth. All I need to do is enter their email address and it shows my calendar and theirs side by side and then select the day and time I find that works best for the both of us.
• I actually prefer Google Meet over Zoom. Zoom bogs down my computer and I find their UI overcomplicated for what it actually does. Google Meet is simple and does practically everything Zoom does without needing to pay any extra money.
• Sheets integrates with our CRM (Copper) so it's perfect for us. Being able to export information out of our CRM into sheets and then create pivot tables from that data makes our lives a million times better.

Incentivized

• Offers a user-friendly interface, making it simple to create beautiful forms, group subscribers, and automate emails.
• Includes email automation workflows in their free plan - the only provider I know of that doesn't charge you after one month or hit you with "transaction fees".
• Excellent video tutorial library so you can learn email marketing as a beginner without feeling overwhelmed.

• 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

• Pricing is a little bit higher than other services
• The cost of each email inbox costs the same whether you want just email or all of the features. For example, we wanted a support email address that we could setup our support desk with. The cost of that added account is the same as the account I use with all of the features.
• They removed their free tier for small organizations like mine and restricted the free tier from adding new domain names. This was likely due to abuse, but everyone lost the privilege of the free service.

• EVERYONE should be allowed to at least use the AI bot chat feature. This doesn't take a person and is such basic customer service that it should be offered at all levels.
• It would be nice if MailerLite worked better with AddEvent icons
• When emailing support it took days to get a response (after an agent escalated the issue). Some concerns are more urgent and email support shouldn't mean bad support.

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

There is no better solution for cloud storage and real time collaboration. The amount of features included in G Suite is unmatched and out of other things we’ve tried over the years, nothing comes close to being as great of a tool.

Incentivized

Mailerlite is awesome and it does everything I need and then some. They're always innovating and adding new features, and their team is flippin' amazing. Can't see myself ever switching. They may not have everything, but looking at how well their team works, they'll get there for sure and I'm willing to wait.

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.

Google Workspace is incredibly intuitive and user friendly. It's easy to adopt through simple features, for example the prompts to enable Gemini on each call for note taking is reliable, and helps to stop you forgetting to use the feature. The main reason for a strong rating is the consistency and reliability, whilst there's definitely areas for improvement, for example additional calendar features (sharing), or deeper functionality in sheets. The level that it provides means that anyone adopting it will be able to take full use of features within a day or two. Gmail, calendar and the documentation suite contain all the basic features for a small / medium business to run at a high level day to day, with minimal downtime or learning curves.

Incentivized

I find it very easy to use, intuitive with a clean interface and drag and drop functionality where that adds value. It's quite configurable for our brand and the template and duplication options are very useful as we reuse a lot of content.

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

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

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

My experiences of getting support have been positive. Calling in is not overly difficult, but it does require getting a PIN. The knowledge of those responding to the calls has been impressive. I have managed to work with them to fix two Google bugs that I had identified. These bugs required a some technical expertise and the support staff were able to understand the issue and forward the concerns to the appropriate persons. The first bug was fixed with 24 hours. The second bug took a little longer, but it was also more complicated to reproduce.

Incentivized

Whenever I contact Support, either via email or through online chat, I always get a speedy response that gives me the answer I need. The AI Agent on the online chat is excellent and has helped me so much on numerous occasions.

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

nothing to say

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

There are lots of competitors to various tools in Workspace, like Meet versus Zoom. However, Microsoft is the other big competitor I can think of for Google Workspace as a whole. To me, at least, the strength of Workspace is how easy it is to share and collaborate with others. For items that I only need for myself and can keep on my own computer, I typically rely on Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. For items that I need to share, I turn to Workspace a lot. Being able to collaborate in real-time and not having to send documents back and forth is so amazing, and such a time saver. And I love that Workspace is also a built-in tool with Dropbox now.

Incentivized

MailerLite has similar features to the tools mentioned above. The main advantage is that it is very complete in its free version. This is ideal for those who are starting out and want to try a complete email marketing platform.

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

• 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

• Zero to no time managing tools allows us to focus on work saving us time and money
• Google Workspace allowed us to seamlessly transition to a fully remote workforce when the Coronavirus pandemic started - no lost time or productivity.
• Easily able to extend our workspace and add features, e.g. Voice, saving us time implementing other services.

Incentivized

• Gives us the ability to track the popularity of content in our email as well as who has read the content.
• The customizable layout gives us the opportunity to be creative and have our culture shine through our company communication.
• The ability to see who has un-subscribed helps our HR department to see who isn't receiving important company information so we can ask them to re-subscribe.
• Helps our company to be more transparent and communicate more effectively.

Incentivized