Likelihood to Recommend 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 I think it is wel suited for a business with a lot of one on one relations in the database. For example a supermarket that sells products to a client and gives a reduction on that product. It is nice if the selection process is not to complex and does not involve to many calculations. It is also nice if it is very clear what you want to follow up. In our environment we have lots of many-to-many relations. for example one product is held by more then one client. And that client might have more of those products with other clients. These kind of situation demands for a lot of calculations with derived fields(*), and there things go far too slow. Unica is probably not such a good solution for us, because our environment is too complex, and so is to process of creating the selection, we often have to change things in the selection flows. Because of the complexity it is difficult to see what the flow is exactly doing afterwoods, it also takes to much time to modify existing campaigns. The interface is not handy to work with, if you have long lists of variables, of tables or derived fields(*) you have to scroll through trough them, you can not really search them or reorder them. You can not drag and drop fields or other objects like derived fields in the flow, what would be easy if you have to make frequent changes to the proces flow. When you copy objects something the content of the object changes because the links with other objects or lost. (*) derived field: field to calculate something
Read full review Pros 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 Ability to translate Multiple SQL queries into a very easy to use visual GUI. Provides the ability to pre-define segments, run them once in off hours, store them in their own system tables for quick youth and a significant reduction in CPU utilization on the database. It’s use of Reusable objects. Including user variables to pre-define calculations one time, macros that you can create and pass values to parameterize the SQL code And the creation of templates to easily replicate work. It’s ability to bring in external data on the fly that can very easily be mapped into any flowchart. It’s flexibility and creating UNIX script via triggers to automate sending of files to multiple vendors with different FTP sites It’s flexibility in the output layouts that it can create. Read full review Cons 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 Greater integration of real time (Interact) capabilities with outbound channels, in particular IBM eMessage Email & SMS delivery. Additional outbound channels to be integrated into eMessage, including Facebook Fanpage & Twitter DM broadcasts. At the moment these are possible only through custom additional integration. Support for additional marketing database technology, e.g. MySQL, Exasol, ParAccel, WX2. Provision of database technology with software purchase, as Web technology (IBM WebSphere Express) is supplied for free, but no database is supplied - since IBM also market DB2, which is a supported technology it seems a shame. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 There are three main factors to renew a licence: 1) Cost to migrate to another platform would be rather expensive and time consuming, plus the requirement of retraining employees to use a new tool 2) It has been proven time and time again that it is a market leader in the space (10 years +) 3) It can be built upon, with the addition of additional IBM EMM modules - despite theories it does have very strong digital capabilities.
Brent Banning Most recently Senior Client Services Manager & Client Services Team Leader
Read full review Usability 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 I think it is easy to use, if you don't have to do to complex selections.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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 Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review I didn't use the Unica support since it is with IBM, only before.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review - We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart. - The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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 The contact history and the response history are so powerful. You can track whatever you want to help the call center to push relevant offers to our customer. In addition, predictive models can be built, with patience, in IBM Campaign. If you have some complaints from the call center about any campaigns, you can easily validate it into the contact or response history.
Read full review Scalability 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!
Read full review Return on Investment 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 It helps my clients drive their business which in turn, drives more profit for them. It helps my clients determine what works, and what doesn't work, in terms of their social marketing campaigns. It helps navigate proper budgeting through determining what clients' users respond to, and what they find unique. Read full review ScreenShots ActiveCampaign Screenshots