ActiveCampaign vs. Adobe Marketo Engage

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ActiveCampaign
Score 8.0 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
Adobe Marketo Engage
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Marketo Engage (acquired by Adobe in 2018) is a marketing automation platform whose basic features include email marketing, drip nurturing, landing pages, and lead scoring, but other editions offer additional advanced features. Typical customers are B2B firms with complex sales cycles.N/A
Pricing
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
Considered Both Products
ActiveCampaign
Chose ActiveCampaign
The functionality is comparable but the price for ActiveCampaign is a lot better than most competitors, for the number of active contacts. It's pretty much as easy to use as HubSpot and while not a powerful as Marketo, it's got enough features to make it really useful for …
Chose ActiveCampaign
With ActiveCampaign, you can centralize a significant part of your marketing operations and give your customers a better overall experience than alternative technologies.The customer support staff is very efficient and their knowledge base is particularly informative and easy …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign has the best combination of features and functionality for the price that we've found in the industry.
Chose ActiveCampaign
Active Campaign is 100x way better than Mailchimp. If you're using Mailchimp, you should switch asap. Mailchimp is fine if you're running a small business or family business, but an Active campaign is far more robust for startups and small-medium-sized businesses. Active …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign has advanced automation features, but lacks advanced design, layout and testing features. ActiveCampaign has a great interface for creating new automations and forms to get them up and running quickly, but the design of the automated emails that goes out has many …
Chose ActiveCampaign
I preferred ActiveCampaign as it gave me the best bang for my buck. At the time, Mailchimp didn't do automation (now they do) but I prefer the interface of AC over them. Keap is a great tool but I find it too pricey for what I currently need. The fact that AC can integrate with …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is one of the most robust marketing automation platforms available today and allows us to integrate with virtually all other marketing tools in our tech stack. When vetting a marketing automation software to support our clients, we did not like that other larger …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign really focuses on making the fundamental marketing automation functionality easy to use. It doesn't have as many enterprise features or customization, but that is clearly intentional. For small to mid-sized businesses, those enterprise features get in the way …
Chose ActiveCampaign
We use multiple "marketing automation" products, and each one has its pluses and minuses.
For us, ActiveCampaign is perfect for smaller companies who want to start with marketing automation. Or want to have a good base. The other tools have a lot more options and …
Chose ActiveCampaign
We have selected ActiveCampaign because it has all the basic features in marketing automation we wanted. It is a cheap and effective Marketing Automation software when you are a small business. We simply wanted a tool powerful enough to help us increase the number of new leads …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is an awkward middle child between full fledged marketing automation (HubSpot, Marketo, Infusionsoft) and Email Service Providers (MailChimp, ConstantContact, CampaignMonitor). It's a step up from the ESPs with richer list management and branching logic without …
Chose ActiveCampaign
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 …
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is more modern than most other solutions. The ease-of-use is on another playing field entirely. The automation builder is a marketers dream. Downfalls are the lack of landing page builder and general necessity of integrating through Zapier, not native.
Chose ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is closest in proximity to Infusionsoft but falls short of in most every area except price. It is not in the same ballpark as Pardot, Marketo and HubSpot. To be fair, however, one also has to pay a great deal more for those solutions.
Adobe Marketo Engage
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
HubSpot and Marketo are designed for larger marketing teams, but Marketo has more marketing options whereas HubSpot can sometimes feel more like a content marketing tool. You can build mini-websites that you can use for A/B testing. You can also build and optimize content for …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
ActiveCampaign has very limited customized reporting options as compared to Marketo. We were not able to achieve quality Email and ABM campaigns using Active Campaign which we achieved from Marketo. When using ActiveCampaign there was less visibility of marketing automation …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
HubSpot, SharpSpring and ActiveCampaign are much better and a lot cheaper than Marketo all have [a] better user interface, UX, WYSIWYG editors. Their lead flow management [is] more intuitive. You will be able to pick them up and run with them in no time. Reporting and assigning …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo provides email marketing services but does so much more.
While Hubspot, SFMC, and ActiveCampaign have more automation, they do not come close to the customization that Marketo allows you to create.
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo would have to be the most powerful email marketing tool that I've used before for its extensive features and capabilities. It's fairly designed for both B2B and B2C use which other ESPs are not capable of. Compared with other platforms where you can only create regular …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
If your organization uses Salesforce or even if you have Sales Groups or Divisions that don't use a CRM at all, Marketo is an extremely valuable software tool to communicate in a more effective, timely, and personalized way with prospects, clients/customers.

HubSpot is a great …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
I did not select Marketo; it's an optional suggestion we make to the customer based on their needs. If I have to say overall: Marketo is behind most of the other tools out there: Price, looks, and outdated functions. For most clients, we suggest other tools.
BUT if you want a …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo is the most powerful of the platforms I demo'd. Many platforms promise a lot but don't deliver. For example, most platforms have odd restrictions on how you can define segmentation conditions. In many cases, I'd have to do a lot of setup or work outside the service to …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Overall, I think Marketo is overpriced, complex, and not user-friendly. Their customer service was atrocious, so thank goodness we had the robust Marketo community. Their turn over rates for the person managing our account was gone every, so we were constantly having to retrain …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo was introduced to me as the end-all, be-all of the programs we'd explored as I was consulting. When dealing with the program itself, I could see why. It really is expansive and capable of nearly anything. I recommended Marketo because they were operating a team, one of …
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
- Marketo has more attractive pricing for smaller database size (it appears the break-even point between the offerings is usually around 500,000 active leads/contacts).

- Marketo's UI is a bit easier to user for people unfamiliar with marketing automation.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.9
664 Ratings
13% above category average
Adobe Marketo Engage
8.1
979 Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG email editor9.3581 Ratings7.5888 Ratings
Dynamic content9.0520 Ratings7.6865 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content8.7471 Ratings7.8843 Ratings
Landing pages8.0338 Ratings8.1905 Ratings
A/B testing9.0380 Ratings7.9891 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.3526 Ratings7.8863 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting7.4631 Ratings8.1947 Ratings
List management9.6650 Ratings8.8944 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.6574 Ratings9.0854 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
7.4
524 Ratings
4% below category average
Adobe Marketo Engage
8.7
947 Ratings
12% above category average
Lead nurturing automation9.1491 Ratings8.8922 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.1359 Ratings8.8897 Ratings
Data quality management9.1401 Ratings8.7895 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks9.1355 Ratings8.7850 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
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.9
876 Ratings
4% above category average
Calendaring9.6295 Ratings7.5708 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing9.4286 Ratings8.3836 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.5
287 Ratings
24% above category average
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.4
545 Ratings
1% below category average
Social sharing and campaigns9.6254 Ratings7.5536 Ratings
Social profile integration9.4250 Ratings7.3375 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.3
627 Ratings
10% above category average
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.5
949 Ratings
0% above category average
Dashboards8.0597 Ratings7.3891 Ratings
Standard reports8.0584 Ratings7.8929 Ratings
Custom reports9.0377 Ratings7.4884 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.2
491 Ratings
19% above category average
Adobe Marketo Engage
8.5
939 Ratings
11% above category average
API9.5391 Ratings8.5807 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals9.2267 Ratings8.5685 Ratings
Customizability9.4420 Ratings7.9831 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com9.292 Ratings9.1808 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM9.760 Ratings8.6271 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM9.756 Ratings8.2173 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.520 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(676 ratings)
8.5
(1129 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(25 ratings)
9.0
(146 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(38 ratings)
8.0
(98 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.0
(25 ratings)
Performance
6.9
(5 ratings)
9.0
(30 ratings)
Support Rating
1.4
(41 ratings)
8.8
(89 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(2 ratings)
10.0
(12 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
6.7
(29 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(14 ratings)
10.0
(37 ratings)
Configurability
6.5
(4 ratings)
6.0
(6 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(4 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.9
(4 ratings)
1.8
(9 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.6
(5 ratings)
7.0
(10 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.5
(4 ratings)
8.2
(7 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.2
(4 ratings)
8.2
(6 ratings)
User Testimonials
ActiveCampaignAdobe Marketo Engage
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
Adobe
Adobe Marketo Engage is great for lead gen because of the out of box solutions. We import leads from Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Tradeshows, and web forms. It allows me to track leads from the moment they enter the system to the point where they become customers. I use it to score leads, segment them, and nurture them with targeted content. It's especially useful as a B2B organization.
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
Adobe
  • Like I have said Marketo has been very helpful by helping us to connect us with our customers and keeps them coming back, hence saving time, effort and resources.
  • Let AI build predictive audience and segments easily.
  • Personalize experience with active listening and triggered content.
  • 24/7 responsive support and service team.
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
Adobe
  • Marketo's email editor is basic in comparison to other cheaper alternatives out there.
  • Marketo doesn't work as well in B2C scenarios as it does in B2B. One of the painpoints of this is it's difficult to showcase a selection of product recommendations based on purchase behaviour without a very time consuming workaround. It's manageable if you're only selling a handful of products, but it's inefficient when dealing with a large catalogue.
  • Marketo's form and landing page builder are also behind the times. Perhaps not as bad as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform, but for an enterprise company the product should be much better.
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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.
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Adobe
We're likely to renew for several reasons:
  • Now that it's been implemented, I can't imagine not having marketing automation and the easy interface that Marketo provides to run our campaigns
  • Marketo's community and customer service is fantastic; I know that when I need help, I'll get it
  • Marketo continues to improve the product, so I know that I can expect it to be even more useful in the future
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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.
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Adobe
In some aspects, the tool can feel quite clunky in parts. But with the rich feature set it has, it's understandable. There is a lot of room for improvement for the user interface. The system itself doesn't have a slick or modern feel, so the usability could feel nicer to use with these areas considered.
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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.
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Adobe
Marketo provides different way and abilities to connect. If you are having product support or unexplained errors you can get someone on Marketo support 24 hours a day. One of Marketo's greatest assets in my opinion however would be the community. Often times our company is just looking for case success stories from someone else. In the community you can search for problems you are currently facing and see others having the same issue and solutions for those issues. If not, you can pose a question to the whole community and champions of the product and others can chime in to provide suggestions to fix your needs. The community is truly a 24/7 place to get your answers quickly.
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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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Adobe
There are times when it is slightly slow for us, where we sit on a screen waiting for it to load. This could be our internet since we have had the same issue occasionally with other systems, but it is enough to make you crazy.
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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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Adobe
On multiple occasions we've had Marketo support (technical and license based) issues. Technical issues were minor and resolved within a day. License based issues (even things encouraged by Marketo for partners, like provisioning another license) took WEEKS. They actually took so long to respond that the client we were working with withdrew from the contract because they were no longer convinced Marketo was capable of supporting their business. As an agency trying to sell the software, you can only explain away so much before they just made us look silly.
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In-Person Training
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Our account rep stopped out in Lincoln, NE to ensure we were properly set up and running. This was very much appreciated. I was very, very new at this point, so I can't comment very much on the extent of what was taught because I was still brand new to the company and the system
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Online Training
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Adobe
I had never used Marketo prior to taking this job so online training was my starting point. I was able to follow along, it was interesting and quickly and efficiently taught me what I needed to know without a lot of fluff. It was far from boring and really helped me get my hands dirty with Marketo.
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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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Adobe
1. Have a content marketing plan to run in parallel with the marketing automation installation--you'll need a lot of content to make full use of Marketo's capabilities. 2. Work with sales (and ISRs) to define and document a workflow--build your Marketo installation around how you do business--not figure out how to apply your business to the tools 3. Spend time of data cleaning--both an initial project as well as a strategy for ongoing data management. We found some change manaement issues (no more appending ZZZ to the first name to identify contacts who have left the company, for example, or prohibiting the entry of "info@company.com" email addresses). 4. Find some champions in the sales and ISR teams. You'll have both fans and detractors--work with the fans to build some success stories
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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.
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Adobe
Prior to Marketo, we used SharpSpring. I will say that SharpSpring is more intuitive to use than Marketo, but it has much less functionality. If you have the time to really learn Marketo, it has much more to offer as well as many more options to customize the solution to your exact needs.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Adobe
The total cost is a little bit higher than we expected.
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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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Adobe
We look at scaleability in a few different ways. First, the speed while using Marketo has remained relatively the same as our database has grown. Though I would say Marketo is slow at times, it has not gotten slower over the last few years. If anything, it has improved, and they are working to improve it. Second, the amount of programs we have developed in Marketo has exponentially grown as well. Marketo has allowed us to drastically increase our output without having to drastically increase our headcount.
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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
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Adobe
  • Generated a 35% higher return on investment (ROI) in demand generation in the company.
  • The focus on the accounts that presented a greater sales potential, allowed us to prioritize and reduce costs by 20 Million USD.
  • Being personal and optimized. reduced efforts towards a more personalized customer experience, in working hours by almost 100 h.
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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

Adobe Marketo Engage Screenshots

Screenshot of Marketo Lead Scoring - Marketo dynamically scores leads in real-time and can trigger a timely sales call based on website or other activity. Lead scores are integrated with a connected CRM.Screenshot of Marketo Moments - A mobile app designed to deliver timely, actionable insights.Screenshot of Simple or advanced workflows, built using drag-and-dropScreenshot of Lead nurturing can be performed without having to be a programmerScreenshot of Visualizations - display the revenue influence of each program and channelScreenshot of Marketo Sales Insight, which filters out the noise