ActiveCampaign vs. Mailshake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ActiveCampaign
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
ActiveCampaign integrates email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM software into one platform designed for small businesses.
$9
per month
Mailshake
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Mailshake is a suite of tools for teams sending sales emails, including pre-written emails, follow-up scheduling and send controls, merge fields and customization / personalization, in-built monitoring, and both an API and Zapier integrations, notably with Gmail and Google Suite.
$50
per month
Pricing
ActiveCampaignMailshake
Editions & Modules
Lite
$9.00
Per Month [3 Users]
Plus
$49
Per Month [25 Users]
Professional
$129
Per Month [50 Users]
Enterprise
$229
Per Month [Unlimited Users]
Email Outreach
$50.00
per month
Sales Engagement
$99.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCampaignMailshake
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ActiveCampaignMailshake
Considered Both Products
ActiveCampaign
Chose ActiveCampaign
Definitely, ActiveCampaign has the ability to give us more control within our large email lists and engaged prospects.
Mailshake
Chose Mailshake
For more advanced email campaigns, I use ActiveCampaign and the email sending provider because it gives more control and options related to the drip rules. Besides that, for simple campaigns that need to be followed up in a great, quick, and simple way, Mailshake is perfect …
Chose Mailshake
These tools are undoubtedly reputable products that are used by millions of users. However, for the goal of lead generation by cold emailing, Mailshake shines by its genius approach of highest possible personalization of the messages. We see incredible results with every …
Chose Mailshake
While Mailchimp is an established email marketing platform, it is more suitable for jobs like sending out email newsletters or welcome messages.
Mailshake is a niche product that shines in cold email and drip campaigns that are highly personalized for each recipient. However, it …
Chose Mailshake
We looked at several email marketing solutions to find a solution for our email outreach campaign but decided to go with Mailshake because of it's deep focus on email outreach, ease of use and pricing. Mailshake also integrates well with other software via Zapier so we did not …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ActiveCampaignMailshake
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.9
660 Ratings
15% above category average
Mailshake
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.5578 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content8.8517 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content8.6469 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages8.3336 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing8.9378 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.1524 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting9.5671 Ratings00 Ratings
List management9.1647 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.3572 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.9
522 Ratings
14% above category average
Mailshake
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing9.0489 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.7357 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management8.9400 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks9.0354 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.0
372 Ratings
18% above category average
Mailshake
-
Ratings
Calendaring8.9293 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing9.1286 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.2
286 Ratings
20% above category average
Mailshake
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns9.3254 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration9.0249 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.6
624 Ratings
14% above category average
Mailshake
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.4594 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.5581 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports8.8377 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.0
488 Ratings
18% above category average
Mailshake
-
Ratings
API9.3389 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals8.9266 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability9.4418 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com8.992 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM9.560 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM9.556 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.717 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ActiveCampaignMailshake
Small Businesses
SALESmanago
SALESmanago
Score 9.6 out of 10
Mailtrack
Mailtrack
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SALESmanago
SALESmanago
Score 9.6 out of 10
Mailtrack
Mailtrack
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.4 out of 10
Conversica
Conversica
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ActiveCampaignMailshake
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(667 ratings)
8.5
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(24 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.5
(37 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.2
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.5
(41 ratings)
7.8
(6 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
3.6
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.1
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ActiveCampaignMailshake
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
Mailshake
Mailshake is best-suited sales, cold, and leads email outreach, the amount of personalized email you can send is excellent plus the follow-up. The sequence and lead catcher feature will save so much time.
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
Mailshake
  • It has an email editor which is easy to use.
  • Email sequences are comprehensive in their functionality--all the options you would expect from a cold emailing solution
  • Campaign and List management are also good
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
Mailshake
  • Mailshake works only with Gmail/G Suite accounts.
  • The only option for customizing emails is in the CSV file. It would be great if there were a feature in the tool for this.
  • Missing starts about the total number of opens of an email (it is only tracked once).
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
Mailshake
No answers on this topic
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
Mailshake
I found it pretty good - we were able to put email templates and campaigns together almost immediately. The reason I gave it an 8 is because if you want to edit those templates, the saving and making sure they were part of the campaigns was a little tricky and not intuitive.
Read full review
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
Mailshake
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Mailshake
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Mailshake
Quick support. They offer very extensive and detailed tutorials on how to use the tool, as well as how to succeed in sending emails the right way. It probably reduces the number of support tickets and general support needs. The videos make it very easy to use their solutions. Great way to educate new clients.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Mailshake
No answers on this topic
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
Mailshake
These tools are undoubtedly reputable products that are used by millions of users. However, for the goal of lead generation by cold emailing, Mailshake shines by its genius approach of highest possible personalization of the messages. We see incredible results with every campaign; literally, multiples more of reply rates than we were able to achieve with the traditional email tools like Mailchimp.
Read full review
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!
Read full review
Mailshake
No answers on this topic
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
Mailshake
  • Mailshake has made link building outreach less messy and saves time.
  • Fill in the template and prospects and we are good to go!
Read full review
ScreenShots

ActiveCampaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Combine tagging with conditional content to put the right message in front of each customer.Screenshot of Powerful, easy-to-use marketing automationScreenshot of Finely segment your audience based on engagement, purchase activity, lead score, or any other dimension you can think of.Screenshot of Use live chat, site messaging, email, and a unified inbox to build relationships with customers.Screenshot of A simple, intuitive CRM helps your sales reps to get more done in less time