ActiveCampaign vs Zoho CRM

Likelihood to Recommend

ActiveCampaign works well for onboarding, deadline countdowns, informational emails, and marketing. I think that ActiveCampaign could improve it's one-to-one sales email options to really be an all in one solution with it's CRM.

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Verified User

Partner in Other

Graphic Design Company, 1-10 employees

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Well suited for basic sales and pipeline management. Not appropriate if those leads or prospects need to be transferred into other organizations or companies. Good to use on more individualized sales teams, but not particularly great when it comes to collaborations. Limited tagging and chatting options for collaborative sales.If you are planning to work a pipeline to generate sales and are not in need of a great deal of communication between employees, this will be great for you.

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Andrew McClean

Sr. Community Outreach Associate

Oak Street HealthHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

ActiveCampaign

7.9

Zoho CRM

—

WYSIWYG email editor

7.7

—

Dynamic content

7.6

—

Ability to test dynamic content

7.7

—

Landing pages

6.8

—

A/B testing

7.4

—

Mobile optimization

7.8

—

Email deliverability

8.3

—

List management

8.4

—

Triggered drip sequences

9.4

—

ActiveCampaign

7.2

Zoho CRM

—

Dashboards

7.2

—

Standard reports

7.4

—

Custom reports

7.1

—

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

8.3

Customer data management / contact management

—

8.5

Workflow management

—

8.2

Territory management

—

8.1

Opportunity management

—

8.5

Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)

—

7.8

Contract management

—

8.4

Quote & order management

—

8.0

Interaction tracking

—

8.7

Channel / partner relationship management

—

8.5

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

7.4

Case management

—

7.3

Call center management

—

7.5

Help desk management

—

7.3

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

7.9

Lead management

—

8.0

Email marketing

—

7.8

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

8.0

Task management

—

8.2

Billing and invoicing management

—

7.6

Reporting

—

8.2

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

8.2

Forecasting

—

8.1

Pipeline visualization

—

8.4

Customizable reports

—

8.1

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

8.2

Custom fields

—

7.9

Custom objects

—

7.9

Scripting environment

—

8.3

API for custom integration

—

8.5

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

8.8

Single sign-on capability

—

9.1

Role-based user permissions

—

8.5

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

7.7

Social data

—

7.7

Social engagement

—

7.7

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

7.7

Marketing automation

—

7.7

Compensation management

—

7.7

ActiveCampaign

—

Zoho CRM

8.0

Mobile access

—

8.0

Pros

Marketing Automation
Click/Link Tracking
Email Integration with Gmail via a Chrome extension

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Verified User

Partner in Other

Graphic Design Company, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM has an incredible amount of features, from tagging contacts to social media integration (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc) and email capabilities.
Zoho CRM is very customizable. The entire look and feel of each page and account can be customized to fit your organization's needs.
Zoho CRM is just one of the products offered under Zoho's suite of software products. It easily integrates with other enterprise software like Zoho Project Management and Zoho email.

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Adam Montgomery

Energy Efficiency Consultant

SEMCORenewables & Environment, 11-50 employees

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Cons

One-to-one email automation (all automations have unsubscribe / impersonal req'd fields)
Sometimes the Chrome plugin does not work properly.
The email builder could use improvement on the UX end.

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Verified User

Partner in Other

Graphic Design Company, 1-10 employees

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Zoho's modules for user profiles are able to be customized, but the layout applies to all users in the CRM, so you cannot tailor your user layout to a specific account or user types. This causes the pages to become pretty busy pretty quickly.
Zoho allows you to export reports as CSV or XLS files, but inserts its own column of Zoho user IDs, so you have to open up these files to edit them and remove that column to use the file for other applications, such as importing a list of email addresses to a ESP
Zoho support takes... well, forever. That's probably where the company could use the most improvement. It once took us 5 months to get a response about something. They've definitely made improvements, but it could still use work.

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Elaine Foster

Customer Success Manager

StudySoupE-Learning, 11-50 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

ActiveCampaign 10.0

Based on 1 answer

I've tried over half a dozen email autoresponders and ActiveCampaign is by far my favorite. The ability to send emails is the backbone of my business. The "cheap" email marketing tools designed for the mass market are not powerful or intuitive to set up and also don't have the best deliverability. And the "expensive" ones are usually super confusing to use.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM 7.6

Based on 19 answers

The rating is based on:

Satisfaction with the product
Ability to extend the product to meet new and unanticipated needs
Ability to manage the cost of the service as needed

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Peter Marquez

Founder

8020NetworksInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

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Usability

ActiveCampaign 9.0

Based on 1 answer

It's super easy and fast to set up automations and email lists. In under five minutes, you can be mailing your list. I'm not a fan of complexity, and I'm also not a fan of being hamstrung by weak tools, so I really like using ActiveCampaign. It's the perfect blend of simplicity and power.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM 7.8

Based on 3 answers

Zoho CRM is extremely intuitive and allows users complete visibility of sales data through reports/analytics. The platform has wide native integration with other cloud-based business solutions. But, it's fairly simple to write scripts with their publicly available API.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Corporate

Management Consulting Company, 1-10 employees

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Reliability and Availability

ActiveCampaign 10.0

Based on 1 answer

I've never had ActiveCampaign down for maintenance. I'm sure they update things, but they always seem to manage to stay live. Also, I've had very few errors, if any. None come to mind. This might be to due to the fact I focus on building things as simply as possible, but I also believe it's due to the quality of the software.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM 9.0

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

Performance

ActiveCampaign 10.0

Based on 1 answer

ActiveCampaign works seamlessly with the other tools I use. It integrates directly with most. And if no direct integration is available, there is almost always one you can make using Zapier. I've yet to run into a technical error that prevented me from doing something I wanted to be able to do.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM 9.0

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

Support

ActiveCampaign 9.0

Based on 1 answer

I have only had to reach out to ActiveCampaign support a couple of times, and every time they have helped me out quickly and efficiently. They get back to you pretty quickly and usually have the solution figured out within just a couple of message exchanges. Please keep in mind I use the simple features of ActiveCampaign, so if there's a complication solution you're looking for help with, your experience with support might be a little different.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM 4.0

Based on 4 answers

Horrible experience. They should send regular apologies and refunds to all existing customers.

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Ajay Gupta

Attorney / Founder

Gupta Legal CenterLegal Services, 1-10 employees

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Online Training

No score

No answers yet

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Zoho CRM 8.2

Based on 2 answers

Training was basic, and didn't really cover more advanced aspects of using the product.

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Verified User

Consultant in Marketing

Internet Company, 1-10 employees

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Implementation

ActiveCampaign 10.0

Based on 1 answer

If your email marketing strategy is clunky and confusing then it doesn't matter what tool you use or need to set up. It will take time to set it up. However, if you favor simple and effective email marketing strategies then you'll find that setting up ActiveCampaign is a breeze. And the results you'll get with it will far outweigh the time it takes to set it up.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Zoho CRM 8.0

Based on 4 answers

The CRM is only as good as the data you put into it. Spend the time up-front to clean up your old data sources prior to importing them into Zoho

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Ron Sherwood

Senior Account Manager

Novus Media Today Group, LLCOnline Media, 11-50 employees

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Alternatives Considered

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.

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Verified User

Director in Marketing

Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employees

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ZoHo was selected for budgetary purposes and while I think it's a perfectly usable and valuable tool, I found Sage and SalesForce easier to use and easier to get new employees acclimated to quicker.

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Verified User

Employee in Sales

1001-5000 employees

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Scalability

ActiveCampaign 10.0

Based on 1 answer

I've tried several of the email services available today. ActiveCampaign makes it easy and fast to get set up. And they have some of the best email deliverability available today as well. That's really important when it comes to email marketing, because winding up in spam or promotion folders makes your email marketing efforts and uphill battle.

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Ben Marcoux Roofing Lead Generation Expert

Manager @ BMX Marketing LLC

BMX Marketing, LLCMarketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

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No score

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Return on Investment

ActiveCampaign is not inexpensive, so that's something to think about. If you need help and perspective for sales management, it's worth it.
Positively, it threw me into the ring of the newest methods of sales.
It has helped us organize our plan and the folks that are already engaged in our programming.

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Sarah Bandy

Executive Director

Youth Empowerment through Arts and HumanitiesNon-Profit Organization Management, 1-10 employees

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The integration capabilities have driven business by playing a role in the automated gathering of web site visitor data, responding to visits, and managing follow-up communication weeks after first contact. The product has paid for itself several time over.
Key Client Facing Benefits:
-- Automated relationship management
-- Better client communication and follow-up
-- Simple development of landing pages and conversion process
Key Sales Facing Benefits:
-- Tracking account process
-- Better forecasting
-- Better time management

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Peter Marquez

Founder

8020NetworksInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

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