ActiveCampaign vs Ontraport

• Email automation - Automated email marketing to potential customers, follow up with existing customers, and automated messaging to outside parties.
• Flow building - This software allows companies to build simple or complicated sequences in a visual builder so that you can see exactly where people are in the sequence of messages.
• CRM - Customer relationship data. Maintaining data points across a user journey (tagging a UTM source, current activity. If you have someone - and want to know where they are in the journey, there's a way to find that data and label a profile with that).
• Integrations - ActiveCampaign integrates with almost everything. Seamlessly. You can trigger behaviors in other apps through Zapier, or import data from other software you use. It's a very easy experience to integrate with others.
• Customer support - Every team member I've encountered has been exceptionally helpful. They are probably the bar for customer support in the tech industry, to be honest.
• Email systems for the long-haul (and for sequences and emails that are expected to bring in a lot of $$$). Email marketing should be 30-50% of revenue for most businesses. It's THE platform that we recommend for coaches and other businesses to help them earn 6 & 7 figures from email. You can track A LOT of data through this software as a platform, which makes it a great candidate for businesses who want to grow and visualize where their customers are in the overall purchase process, as well as maintaining them as multiple purchases customers.

Read full review

• User segmentation for specific messaging is key for us because it helps drive our new client conversions and existing client repurchasing.
• ONTRAPORT plays nice with our scheduling software and WordPress so we can implement new material without hassle.
• Campaigns and automation is simple to set up and monitor which helps us use more of their tools instead of paying for complex features we'll never use.

Read full review

• ActiveCampaign is so powerful and so versatile that it can sometimes be a challenge to use. There are certainly plenty of online resources available to help you get up to speed, but there are times when the process can seem a little overwhelming. I got a lot of help by attending a "Study Hall" in-person classroom session that was sponsored by the company. Chris Davis was the instructor; he did an amazing job of clarifying priorities and procedures for getting the most out of ActiveCampaign. After going to that session my productivity with ActiveCampaign increased enormously, but in retrospect, I felt like I should have been able to get that kind of expert guidance with the software much earlier, instead of using ActiveCampaign at far less than its maximum capability for several years before feeling like I was really getting my feet on the ground.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to create or accommodate multiple email addresses for a single contact in the system. When people get into the system with multiple email addresses, they show up as multiple contacts. This can create problems with proper list segmentation; it should be easy enough to resolve this problem, but it's a nagging headache whenever it pops up.

Read full review

• Integrations. Basically, all integrations are done using Zapier. This is a huge time suck. In other programs like ActiveCampaign, you have WordPress plugins to import your data from Gravity Forms. It takes 2 minutes to set up. With Zapier, even a simple integration takes a minimum of 30 minutes to setup and test to the point where you trust it.
• Documentation: there is a lot of documentation, but a lot of it is confusing with not enough examples to make something clear.
• Templates: other programs like Drip focus on more templates for campaigns. While there are a few here, there's really not a ton and they don't seem carefully curated.
• Learning curve: it took a really long time to get it set up for our business. I appreciated the onboarding sessions, which definitely helped a lot, but it could have been simpler.
• Version 5: last year ONTRAPORT launched their newest version of their software. I can see that it's a foundation that they will be able to build a lot on, but it's not fleshed out yet. Like a fresh foundation and a good building, but not a lot of paint or polish yet.
• Sales funnels: managing people through a sales funnel just happens through a custom field that you set up. There's no predetermined "section" for something that a lot of sales teams would want. It makes it easy to not know what's going to happen with your automation when you send someone to a new part of the sales funnel (ie. you move someone to the next part of the sales funnel, it triggers an automation, maybe you weren't aware of that). It would be great if it gave you a quick summary of some of the automation you're about to send when you take actions.
• Intimidation: enough said. It just feels intimidating to set this stuff up. This may be true for all the other automation programs too though.

Read full review

• The fortune is in the follow through, and ActiveCampaign makes the follow through easier. Drip campaigns and triggers strengthen granular follow up opportunities.
• The granular messaging options coupled with attractive pricing have made this our go to service for businesses who need more automation features, but are just getting started in the space.

Read full review

• We can save costs on excessive mailings as we are more targeted in our efforts and wasting less communication.
• We have been able to more effectively target relevant donors that have given more recently.
• ONTRAPORT has consolidated the tracking software that we have used for contact information.

Read full review