ActiveCampaign vs. Optimizely Web Experimentation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ActiveCampaign
Score 7.9 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
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation empowers teams to conduct experiments (without having to rely on developer resources) in order to test various user interactions, make website changes backed by data, and personalize customer experiences.N/A
Pricing
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
Considered Both Products
ActiveCampaign
Chose ActiveCampaign
Although these service providers are good and maybe better for starters, if you want to take your email marketing game a step further, you will need a tool like ActiveCampaign. I still like and occasionally use MailChimp, but for more sophisticated work I use ActiveCampaign. …
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely is a great tool for A/B testing landing pages, I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a built-in A/B test workflow. I haven't come across a worthy competitor that does what Optimizely does. Their software is also much more robust than landing page platforms that …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.9
664 Ratings
13% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor9.4581 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content9.1520 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content8.8471 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages8.0338 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing9.1380 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization9.3526 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting7.2631 Ratings00 Ratings
List management9.6650 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.7574 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
7.5
524 Ratings
3% below category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation9.2491 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.0359 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management9.2401 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks9.2355 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead segmentation and distribution1.81 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.6
374 Ratings
23% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Calendaring9.6295 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing9.5286 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.5
287 Ratings
23% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns9.6254 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration9.5250 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
8.4
627 Ratings
11% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.0597 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports8.0584 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports9.1377 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
9.2
491 Ratings
19% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
API9.6391 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals9.2267 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability9.4420 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com9.392 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM9.860 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM9.856 Ratings00 Ratings
Third-party software integrations7.520 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.0
101 Ratings
7% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.3101 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings8.582 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.884 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings8.279 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings7.454 Ratings
Mobile app testing00 Ratings7.643 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings8.592 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.081 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings7.574 Ratings
Page surveys00 Ratings6.917 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings8.090 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings6.962 Ratings
Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.161 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings6.542 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.438 Ratings
Client-side tests00 Ratings9.256 Ratings
Server-side tests00 Ratings9.124 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.542 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.6
95 Ratings
3% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.993 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.373 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.489 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.962 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
ActiveCampaign
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
91 Ratings
3% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.113 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings8.733 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings8.117 Ratings
Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.332 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.744 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.479 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings8.182 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
CSV export00 Ratings7.654 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.5 out of 10
Convert Experiences
Convert Experiences
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(676 ratings)
8.8
(186 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(25 ratings)
8.5
(45 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(38 ratings)
9.0
(57 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(5 ratings)
7.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
1.4
(41 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(14 ratings)
8.0
(11 ratings)
Configurability
6.4
(4 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.5
(5 ratings)
8.0
(98 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
6.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.2
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ActiveCampaignOptimizely Web Experimentation
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
Optimizely
Optimizely Web Experimentation is appropriate if you have a big budget and your company is mature enough in experimentation to take all the advantage of a such an expensive price model. If you are just starting into AB testing, or not enough budget, I do not recommend Optimizely Web Experimentation, as it becomes quite frustrating to manage usage limits and technical set up to avoid extra charges.
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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
Optimizely
  • Considers every kind of experiment from simple code change, code additions, code removal, javascript functions, CSS changes, and split landing redirects.
  • Very friendly UC interface for easy navigation of implementation of pages, click events, experiment set up, and metric set up.
  • The ability to let me know when something has reach stat sig without having to do complicated math on my own
  • ability to carry UTM parameters through landing page redirects with a click of a button.
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
Optimizely
  • Filtering capabilities in the reporting tab. To be able to filter based on a custom metric
  • Tracking scroll depth within the reporting tab
  • A more interactive graph within the reporting tab. Ability to manipulate there vs having to update the whole page
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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.
Read full review
Optimizely
Because it's an incredible and essential tool for my line of work as a conversion optimization specialist. Really couldn't do my job nearly as effectively without it. It's paid for itself many times over and I feel like I'm only beginning to unlock the tools potential.
Read full review
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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Optimizely
Usability is mostly great. I like the WYSIWYG functionality and adding in real code is simple as well. It's easy to target specific pages or audiences. I've knocked a couple of points off because of how difficult it is to set up URL redirect experiments, confusion around creating pages, and lack of data that can be further analyzed.
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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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Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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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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Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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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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Optimizely
They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
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Online Training
ActiveCampaign
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
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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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Optimizely
In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
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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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Optimizely
Overall, the tools we compared against were great, but we went with Optimizely because it has all the features we needed and has the market leadership that gave us trust we would be successful in our experimentation efforts.
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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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Optimizely
While granted, I am not the one making the changes to deploy the software; it seems basically as simple as placing the optimized snippet on your site. If you place it in the header, it should reach across your entire site easily. I do think the test setup can be a bit temperamental at times, and having too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to errors. So, I would caution how many people have the access needed to make actual changes.
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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
Read full review
Optimizely
  • Customer retention: We've reduced subscription service client churn by 20%+ using optimized unsubscribe flows.
  • Risk mitigation: Testing into full site redesigns has saved clients millions of dollars.
  • Feature prioritization: Identifying what painted door changes add value has allowed developers to focus on changes that add hundreds of thousands or even millions to the bottom line.
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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

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of the visual editor, used to make changes to the appearance and layout of a website.Screenshot of the results dashboard that displays experiment results.Screenshot of the integrations page, where integrations can be enabled.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting: Custom Real-Time Segments provide customers with the ability to create rapidly-updating segments which can be used as audiences for testing or personalization. These segments can be based on profile data, omni-channel behaviors, and AI-based observations.Screenshot of AI Content Suggestions: AI-powered suggestions in the Visual Editor accelerate ideation.Screenshot of Extensions for Edge: reusable elements minimize developer dependency when launching multiple tests with the same element.