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)
iContact
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
iContact is an email marketing solution that was acquired by Vocus in 2012. The product is integrated with Facebook and Twitter and is aimed at SMBs with unlimited sending as a key feature.
$14
per month
ShippingEasy
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
ShippingEasy, an Auctane (formerly Stamps.com) company, offers their cloud-based ecommerce shipping platform, providing full support for USPS, UPS, FedEx and integrating with online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Volusion, and others. ShippingEasy allows automated order tracking with fulfillment data, and inventory levels to populate in real time.
We have used all of the above platforms previously over the past decade, migrating from Constant Contact to iContact, then to Emma and finally GreenRope before migrating to ActiveCampaign, where we have stayed for the past 4 years. All of the previous email platforms had some …
For the price, ActiveCampaign is streets ahead. I probably use about 60% of the platform's functionality with a further 20% that I could benefit from using and intend to explore in the next 12 months. This compares to only about 25% usage with some other platforms or having to …
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 …
In my opinion, Mailchimp is the top contender to iContact and really gives them a run for their money. Mailchimp offers users more features, and costs less. Of course, they both have their advantages and disadvantages. Overall, it is a tough decision to make between the two, …
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.
I would only recommend it if someone was a small business. I think they are the best suited for companies who will send out a coupon or offer here and there. The most recent updates made it more complicated to use for more complicated processes. It is easy to train someone on the program, and so quick to learn. But I would also only stick to the simpler things. I also think the colorful templates are great, and show great creativity. But again, it is hard to justify recommending the program when it isn't WYSIWYG.
ShippingEasy is perfect for a small business that needs the inventory system but doesn't want to pay through the nose. The customer service is excellent - they help you in set up, making changes, and make sure you understand how to use it. They save me time in managing our inventory and save me time when there is a problem - I call and get an answer right away. Plus if there is a system wide problem, which there rarely is, they make announcements and keep us up to date during and after
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
Contact management. iContact is really great for entering all your contact. You are able to put them onto different lists, and let them choose which lists they would like to be a part of as well. There are many data fields provided to fill in information.
Emailing. We use the email feature at least once a month. They are always improving and adding new features, which is very helpful in presenting content in a new and exciting way to our readers. There are many options with remade templates and themes, or you can add your own.
Insights. It is really helpful being able to have the data to see what is working and what isn't. It is nice to be able to go back and see how things went in the past compared to now. Opens, clicks, shares, etc.
ShippingEasy makes it very easy to set up shipping rules for various scenarios so that shipping is fairly automated. It really is a click and ship type set up.
ShippingEasy integrates into our BigCommerce platform very well. We very rarely have any issues with ShippingEasy syncing orders and shipping status to BigCommerce and vise versa.
ShippingEasy's marketing service is very easy to use. It makes email campaign design extremely easy and aesthetically pleasing and it also makes automated emails very easy to set up as well.
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.
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.
iContact has been a quick and easy way to send any announcements and news directly to email and social media subscribers. Its tracking and reporting capabilities turn a simple email into a marketing campaign that can be used as a tool to efficiently gauge reader response and customer satisfaction, and ultimately to reach potential customers. The consistency and excellent customer service is what makes this program a pleasant experience.
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.
I rate iContact as an easy to use program due to its user friendly dashboard and user interface. Most companies of small to medium size do not have a dedicated marketer, therefore it is someone multitasking who may or may not have this kind of experience. iContact makes it relatively simple and can actually expand one's knowledge in the area of business promotion.
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.
iContact is regularly up and running. Only once has it been unavailable for maintenance, which is to be expected and even desired for optimal performance when needed.
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.
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.
They have always been responsive to any issues or concerns that have arisen with our account. Our customer account manager participates in our monthly county-wide communicators meetings via telephone to ensure that we are getting the most from the service. He also analyzes our lists to help us weed out inactive contacts.
ShippingEasy customer support is excellent. We rarely have to wait on hold, the reps are knowledgeable, well trained, well spoken, and understand technical issues. They listen carefully to make sure they understand the issue and check if they do not know something. I feel confident that I am getting correct information and rarely have to make more than one phone call to get an issue corrected.
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.
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.
I didn't have a say in the decision because I wasn't with the company at the time. I listed HubSpot here because I know we used it in conjunction with iContact for email automation, but HubSpot Email was only recently built-out to the point where it is today. Now, iContact and HubSpot are no longer integrated.
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!
iContact stays the same with the number of users added or taken away. It certainly remains reliable despite increased usage, and so, can be considered scaleable in that aspect.
ShippingEasy has really had a positive impact overall on our business. It is very simple to use and the flexibility of the shipping rules has more or less automated shipping. So for a small organization like ourselves, it allows us to reduce overhead by not having to have multiple employees to ship.
It also has helped reduce overhead significantly by switching our email marketing from Constant Contact. It is about a 10th of the price and has more functionality. So that was definitely a no-brainer
All in all, ShippingEasy helps us reduce overhead the most in labor. It is extremely easy to use so a lot less of our time is devoted to shipping concerns such as manually entering shipments like before and making sure shipment information is transferred over to BigCommerce, or doing return labels. Everything integrates so well it is essentially automated.
