Overview
What is ActiveCampaign?
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.
Simple. Effective. Efficient. Perfect for organizations looking to scale.
In my opinion, Fragile Design resulted in significant Lost Revenue - Be careful or steer clear
ActiveCampaign continues to best meet my email service needs
Robust tool, but expensive
ActiveCampaign is an All-in-One easy and effective solution for all types and sizes of companies
ActiveCampaign is the most powerful email marketing automation tool
It does what it's supposed to. Customer success is not what it used to be.
ActiveCampaign has simplified my life so I can focus more on my clients
TrustRadius Insights
Love using ActiveCampaign
User friendly and good for automating marketing campaigns
Definitely a great choice for a newbie!
ActiveCampaign very user friendly
Great Automations and List Management for a Low Cost to Start With
I am a solopreneur and I use ActiveCampaign to …
At the cost, ActiveCampaign simply cannot be beat!
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- List management (650)9.696%
- Standard reports (584)8.080%
- Dashboards (597)8.080%
- Email deliverability reporting (631)7.474%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $19 per month
Product Demos
3 simple steps to writing great emails using AI in 6 minutes
Getting Started With Automation In 5 Minutes With Free Templates
A/B Testing automations using the drag and drop builder (Case Study)
Getting More Deals With This Automated Cold Email Outreach Tool
ActiveCampaign Updates: AI Tools, and Advanced Segmentation
Making Great Forms that get Great Leads in 2023 | ActiveCampaign Strategy
Features
Email & Online Marketing
Using software to manage lists, send emails, automate email campaigns, and track results.
- 9.3WYSIWYG email editor(581) Ratings
Users can create html emails through a drag-and-drop interface, without html coding knowledge.
- 9Dynamic content(520) Ratings
Users can tailor email, website or landing page content depending on the viewer or recipient (e.g., email salutations that include the recipient’s name).
- 8.7Ability to test dynamic content(471) Ratings
Users can test dynamic content prior to launching a campaign.
- 8Landing pages(338) Ratings
Users can create web pages that are customized to a particular email or campaign. Landing pages often include web forms which can capture visitor information and integrate it back into the MA software.
- 9A/B testing(380) Ratings
Users can experiment with different variations of a campaign and measure results. Testable aspects might include subject lines, header images, or landing page copy.
- 9.3Mobile optimization(526) Ratings
Users can easily optimize emails and landing pages for mobile devices.
- 7.4Email deliverability reporting(631) Ratings
The software helps ensure inbox delivery of email campaigns, through features such as deliverability tests, opt-in management, bounce handling, suppression lists, dedicated IP addresses, and delivery monitoring.
- 9.6List management(650) Ratings
This involves creating, filtering, editing, merging and de-duping lists of contacts.
- 9.6Triggered drip sequences(574) Ratings
The software allows users to set up automatic / drip email campaigns triggered by certain events.
Lead Management
The process of tracking and managing prospective customers from lead generation to conversion.
- 9.1Lead nurturing automation(491) Ratings
Users can set up targeted drip email campaigns based on time intervals or prospect behavior, to automate the lead nurturing process and move them further down the sales funnel.
- 8.1Lead scoring and grading(359) Ratings
Users can set up the software to automatically rate leads based on calculations such as buying signals, such as form submissions, or page views, and automatically qualify leads based on demographic factors.
- 9.1Data quality management(401) Ratings
The software helps store, manage, and organize data around each lead, and avoid data problems such as duplicate contacts or non-standard formats.
- 9.1Automated sales alerts and tasks(355) Ratings
The software helps ensure that a sales person is notified of lead activity and can act on the information in a timely fashion.
- 1.8Lead segmentation and distribution(1) Ratings
Facilitates the distribution and assignment of leads to sales representatives or teams, ensuring a fair and efficient allocation of leads for follow-up and conversion.
Campaign Management
Users can schedule campaigns and/or events with reminders, announcements, etc.
- 9.6Calendaring(295) Ratings
The software helps users maintain a calendar of all marketing activities.
- 9.4Event/webinar marketing(286) Ratings
Users can streamline event marketing with features such as personalized invitations, registration, reminders and post-event follow-ups.
Social Media Marketing
Using social media networks to help amplify marketing endeavors.
- 9.6Social sharing and campaigns(254) Ratings
Users can incorporate social share buttons into campaigns to allow recipients to easily share content. Users can track shares as well.
- 9.4Social profile integration(250) Ratings
The software incorporates social profile data and social share histories to enhance segmentation and scoring of contacts.
Reporting & Analytics
Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.
- 8Dashboards(597) Ratings
Users can create, customize and share dashboards, which provide an overview of the most important metrics.
- 8Standard reports(584) Ratings
The software offers pre-built reports with metrics standard to the category.
- 9Custom reports(377) Ratings
Users can create custom reports.
Platform & Infrastructure
Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.
- 9.5API(391) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 9.2Role-based workflow & approvals(267) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
- 9.4Customizability(420) Ratings
Users can customize their instance with features like custom fields and custom objects.
- 9.2Integration with Salesforce.com(92) Ratings
The software can integrate with Salesforce.com bi-directionally, allowing for data syncs, activity alerts, campaign triggers, enhanced reporting, and lead assigning.
- 9.7Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM(60) Ratings
The software can integrate with Microsoft Dynamics CRM bi-directionally, allowing for data syncs, activity alerts, campaign triggers, enhanced reporting, and lead assigning.
- 9.7Integration with SugarCRM(56) Ratings
The software can integrate with SugarCRM bi-directionally, allowing for data syncs, activity alerts, campaign triggers, enhanced reporting, and lead assigning.
- 7.5Third-party software integrations(20) Ratings
Integration functionality with third-party or in-house systems.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign offers small teams a platform for intelligent marketing automation. According to the vendor, customers from over 170 countries use ActiveCampaign’s mix of pre-built automations and integrations (including Facebook, Google, WordPress, Salesforce, Shopify, and Square) to power personalized marketing, transactional emails, and one-to-one CRM interactions throughout the customer lifecycle.
ActiveCampaign Screenshots
ActiveCampaign Videos
ActiveCampaign Integrations
ActiveCampaign Competitors
ActiveCampaign Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | Apple iOS, Android |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(895)Community Insights
- Recommendations
Users commonly recommend ActiveCampaign for its CRM, email marketing, and marketing automation capabilities. They suggest that businesses in need of these features should consider using ActiveCampaign as it provides all these functionalities in one platform.
Another common recommendation is to take advantage of ActiveCampaign's onboarding and support services. Users recommend trying the platform and utilizing their resources to ensure a smooth transition and effective use of the software.
ActiveCampaign is often praised as a robust system for small businesses on a budget. Users appreciate the value they receive from the platform, making it an attractive option for those with limited resources.
Additionally, users recommend ActiveCampaign for email marketing purposes, often highlighting it as an alternative to MailChimp. It is seen as a helpful tool for creating and managing email campaigns.
Furthermore, some users suggest using ActiveCampaign as a means to build a business without relying on advertising. The platform's features and support are seen as instrumental in achieving this goal.
Lastly, users express satisfaction with ActiveCampaign's support team, describing it as amazing. They find the support available through webinars, live chat, and other channels to be helpful in maximizing their use of the platform.
Attribute Ratings
- 8.4Likelihood to Renew25 ratings
- 9.1Availability5 ratings
- 6.9Performance5 ratings
- 7.6Usability38 ratings
- 1.4Support Rating41 ratings
- 7.3Online Training1 rating
- 9.1In-Person Training2 ratings
- 8.6Implementation Rating14 ratings
- 6.5Configurability4 ratings
- 1.6Product Scalability5 ratings
- 8.9Ease of integration4 ratings
- 7.2Vendor pre-sale4 ratings
- 6.5Vendor post-sale4 ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 676)My experience: Damaged me personally with financial loss due to their error, and now my business suffering because of data loss—no apologies
- Customer service is readily available (via chatbot) for basic questions on how to use the CRM
- Their automation flow makes more sense to me than some other CRMs.
- In my opinion, their customer service is horrible. It took 38 emails over 2 weeks simply to "resolve" that my bank account was overdrawn due to an unauthorized renewal fee for a yearly subscription, when I had never purchased a yearly subscription before.
- In my opinion, customer service could actually listen to the problem and respond like their customers are real people instead of giving canned, generic responses, making light of significant issue.
- In my opinion, not threaten to remove access to contact data in the event of their own error (such as unauthorized charges, and then, in my experience, after refunding, threatening to remove access to contact data if I didn't purchase a plan).
- In my opinion, not randomly change the functions on their platform that results in data loss, such as happened to me this week.
- In my opinion, when receiving a complaint about customer data loss: apologize or acknowledge the loss.
- In my opinion, reimburse a business for financial loss suffered due to, what I believe is incompetent and dishonest behavior, such as the auto-renew event last June.
Here is my experience: In my opinion, this is the worst customer service I have ever experienced. As a CRM that is supposed to hold data for people's customers, I felt they threatened me with the data loss of my clients in June, and now they have lost the data of my clients. In June it took 38 emails over two weeks to get the issue "sorted out". They caused me to go overdrawn in my bank account by making an unauthorized renewal charge on my card on file. I never purchased a yearly membership to begin with, and suddenly in June I was charged over $600 for a renewal of a yearly subscription. I had never had a yearly subscription before! Like I said, it took over 38 emails to get to a conclusion. I was initially told they do not provide refunds. I finally got a refund, was given a free year, then they took that free year away and, in my experience, threatened me with data loss if I didn't pay within about a week's timeframe! Then, in my experience, they gave me an extra week before they threatened to remove access to my clients data, as though they were being nice by giving me an extra week. I was literally about to launch a business I had been working on for two years, and they did this to me! And I'd been using them for about a year or more building up to my launch! I was never reimbursed for the overdraft fees, and ended up purchasing a yearly subscription simply because I was about to launch my business and it was set up to operate using ActiveCampaign so I couldn't afford to learn a whole new CRM and rewire my business right before a launch. I cannot begin to express how, in my opinion, bad the customer service representative was that handled this whole thing. I truly felt like a number not a person to them, and all they cared about was taking my money, not the fact that they were toying with my livelihood. Now this week there is a new issue. Since I have had ActiveCampaign, I have had a feature where I can attach files to my contacts. And I do. Signed, legal documents. Well this week all the files I've ever attached to any customers disappeared. And now suddenly there is no feature to even attach files. My experience: The first customer service representative I spoke with literally did not understand what I was asking and kept asking me about was I having trouble importing contacts, completely unrelated to my issue. I asked to speak with a manager or someone else and the customer service representative said they couldn't pass my ticket along to anyone else or let anyone else see it. In my opinion, lies. I left the chat conversation. I waited a day and went back. The next customer service representative said they would look into it and email me back. They emailed me back with no apology or even acknowledgment that customer data had been lost! They simply said the feature to add files to a contact is with their sales plan only, so I need to purchase the sales plan. I haven't had the sales plan for the 2 years I've had ActiveCampaign and I have always had the files feature. In my opinion, basic common sense says this does not answer the problem. Why did the feature suddenly disappear? The customer service representative did not even apologize for my data loss, say they would try to help find the lost files—nothing. I am now convinced, after this and reading other reviews here of similar, in my opinion, horrible neglect of their customers, that in my free time I need to begin learning another CRM and rebuilding my business to function on another platform. I do not understand how the owners can have a clean conscious knowing they support businesses function—help people maintain their livelihood—but, in my experience, treat those people with no dignity or respect. I am appalled. And hurt. In my experience, my business has been hurt by ActiveCampaign. Twice now. And in no small way.
In my opinion, Fragile Design resulted in significant Lost Revenue - Be careful or steer clear
- Searchable table of contacts
- Email campaign templates
- Decent email workflows
- In my opinion, Terrible UX for accessing contacts, no navigation buttons, users have to click the back button and then click on the next contact.
- In my experience, VERY SLOW - the system is very slow to load data which frustrates the UX and makes it frustrating to access contact data quickly
- In my opinion, Fragile design - it is very easy to break automations, but ActiveCampaign insists on this design (more to say later)
A good Marketing Automation tool, a bad CRM
- Very simple drag-and-drop template builder/editor
- Robust automation planner
- CRM functionality is sub-par compared to other CRMs
- Reporting is very basic and lacking advanced functionality [for my needs]
- Advanced automations, triggers, and connections between workflows are not working well at all
- [In my experience], the Chatbot is extremely basic and lacking
However, if you're a power-user, looking to create complex automations and workflows, and/or looking to manage your actual Sales pipeline - unfortunately, ActiveCampaign is NOT the platform for you.
Consider either going for a different all-in-one or splitting your needs and using ActiveCampaign only for the marketing automation part and not the CRM part.
Be weary of AC
- Marketing automation (ok)
- Price
- That's literally all I can think of
- Product: built backward in a lot of ways and is incredibly unsmooth to work with
- Server goes down a lot
- Buggy as all get out
Automation Over Aesthetic
- Automation Mapping
- Automation Options
- Limited Drag'n'Drop Design Options
- Testing Groups Not Available
- No Ability to View or Edit HTML in Drag'n'Drop editor
- No Ability to Create Content Groups in Builder
The Good and the Bad--Mixed Bag
- Reports
- Scheduling
- User interface
- Customer service
- Wait time for customer service
- Custom plans
- Custom billing options
I'm a micro-business, with a tiny team, and two of us use this tool to send client-wide info to our subscription membership group, even though we have a FB group and a Slack channel, having the email go to all is very helpful in keeping members up to date on our shenanigans!
I could use it more and better for marketing, to be sure! I am just learning how to do that well.
- Easy to create a one-time campaign.
- Easy to search past campaigns, templates, etc.
- Customer service how-to's solve the problem of "how do I do that?" quickly.
- I have trouble navigating automations and setting them up properly.
- It's SO robust, I am not even sure what I don't know about what it can do!
ActiveCampaign - Proceed with Caution
- It features easily deployable email campaigns.
- Its lead scoring component is easy to set up and configure.
- Its form tool is straightforward and provides for easy embedding on websites and landing pages.
- It's reporting functionality is terrible. I can't emphasize this enough. There is not a path for ad hoc reports; only canned system reports and some ability to use advanced search and filters to "try" and work around this.
- The form tool does not have the best styling capabilities.
- Their list building / segmentation features are difficult to confidently maneuver when trying to establish unique paths for individual contacts based on certain triggers / behavioral actions.
Great product, but deliverability can be an issue
- Very easy to create templates.
- Vast automation tools.
- New app integrates well with Salesforce Lightning.
- Immediately after renewing our service (twice) our sending servers were switched which created deliverability issues. After considerable back and forth with their deliverability team, we were finally switched to a third server which was better for deliverability.
- Automation sometimes is delayed.
- Salesforce app only works in Lightning.
Great for Smaller Businesses
- Easy automation duplication to save time.
- Tagging system to segment contact.
- Contact profiles to learn more about each customer's history with us.
- Automation tools are very visual and easy to edit or grow.
- Automation glitches where not all emails send.
- Reporting malfunctions were the wrong information is displayed.
A complete and essential Marketing Tool
I mainly used it to send our Marketing Campaigns to the database I build
I also used it to embed a form into our website and some Marketing automation
The problem we solved is how to reach our many potentials customers in a massive way.
- Email Marketing Campaign
- Marketing Automation
- Forms
- Better Landing Pages Designs
- Better Forms Customize
- Better Bounce Mails Detection
- Better Stadistics (Clics sometimes failure)
It is also a very good tool to automize certains actions.
I think their´s landing and forms templates are not very goods, and the quality of the pages you can create is not very outstanding.
Fully featured and scalable but steep learning curve
- Support
- Email automation
- Lists
- It's complicated
Need to ramp up your marketing automations?
- Customer Support
- Automation
- Email Builder
- Sending to more than one segment / list / segment & list combo
- More triggers the merrier
- I think there's always improvement in the email builder itself
- Sometimes the platform is very slow and glitchy
An Awkward Middle Child Between ESP and MA
- Most Email Service Providers don't allow for logic branching in their drip sequencing - they allow for time delays or opt out/ins based on opens and maybe clicks, but no true branching or trees. This is a key differentiation for AC.
- The drag and drop workflows and organization is fantastic, easy to use and fast. You can setup a sequence in a matter of minutes where it would take hours with other providers.
- Integrating with others is a key part of the modern tech stack. Active Campaign works with Zapier, making it able to talk to landing page software, ad campaigns, other marketing automation, email databases and more. Plus it offers native integrations with Stripe, SurveyMonkey, PipeDrive, Paypal and more.
- If you're just getting started and have less than 1k contacts, the pricing is very reasonable. You can get out between $17 and $100 a month and get a host of features competitors can't touch.
- The reporting UI is difficult to use. I setup a fantastic sequence, but understanding how it was performing was like pulling teeth. How many users branched, how many unsubscribed? I had to dig into individual emails to get this information.
- As your contact list climbs, the pricing does, too. Once you get up around 2-5k contacts, you really should start looking at options like HubSpot, where the pricing is comparable but the feature list is much larger.
- At it's heart, AC is an email platform. So no landing pages, the website tracking is kinda half-baked and the CRM feels like it's just tacked on without it being integrated in an intentional and strategic way.
On the other hand, if you know you'll be wanting options like landing pages and robust tracking within 12 months, or expect to be working with a large list soon, you might find yourself disappointed, and should start looking at Infusionsoft or HubSpot instead, as you won't be as likely to outgrow it so soon.
ActiveCampaign offers a lot but could be better
- Manage email addresses
- Automated process
- Email blasts
- Making the automated process more straight forward
- Simplifying tools
- No need to complicate things that are simple
A Closer Look at ActiveCampaign from a Frequent User
- Easy to create and format emails with a "drag and drop" interface. Anyone can easily create an email with little instruction.
- You can also use custom HTML to create an email or email template so that you can be assured the email you are sending looks EXACTLY like you want it to or matches your website exactly.
- There is no media database/library. All images uploaded for use just kind of "live" with the user that uploaded them in the emails and there is no easy way to organize them and there is no way to share them amongst different users. So needless to say, images are just kind of a mess.
- Campaigns can be organized by various methods - type, status, label and list. But there is no way to organize by campaign name, date created or date scheduled/sent which would be helpful for the person creating all the emails to keep track of what's done and needs to be done. (You can sort by 'last modified' but if you jump around a bit between emails, that doesn't help.)
The Best Autoresponder And Email System We've Ever Used
- Email Capture
- Segmentation
- Autoresponder sequences
- Automations - sometimes they don't work as expected
- Help files - it's sometimes hard to find an exact answer (but chat is awesome)
Serious program built for growth
- They allow you to schedule free one-on-one training sessions, even on their low priced plans.
- ActiveCampaign has the best webinars I've seen. They are really high value, engaging and their staff seems to be true advocates for the product.
- The interface for formatting emails is intuitive.
- There's a ton of information on different ActiveCampaign functionality. The starter guide is still a little too complex for me.
- As a newby, some of the terminology sometimes goes over my head a little bit.
- The pricing, especially for a new business, is very steep if you like those special features.
- Competitive price point.
- Great design flexibility.
- Integrates with lots of other software I use.
- Super robust features make for a steep learning curve.
- Hard to know where to start with so many different features.
Great for small business owners and solopreneurs looking for automation but cost can quickly escalate if you want certain features.
- The automation feature is easy to set up and allows me to deliver digital products and important information to new and potential clients.
- The ability to create tags and custom fields on the lowest pricing tier helps me personalize the content I send out which results in better open rates and more sales.
- While the "lite" price tier is powerful and works great for my small business there is a huge increase in cost to access certain features. For example, the ability to create dynamic content is possible on the "lite" tier if you do it manually with tags and custom fields. However, if you want to use the actual dynamic content feature then the cost of jumping from the "lite" tier to the "plus" tier is 5x the cost.
Effective Overall!
- Automations are simple to set up.
- Forms are easy to integrate into our WordPress site.
- Tagging customers is helpful.
- Forms could use more customization abilities without the need for Custom CSS.
- Often need to have multiple windows open to easily navigate the platform.
- Features haven't worked for me (ex. "Wait" feature in automations) and customer service said it is an "ongoing problem" with no fix.
However, we have had frequent small problems that seem to add up, which causes us the need to find workarounds or change how we were planning to do something.
- Email Marketing
- Drip Campaigns
- Segmentation
- Sending limits penalises companies that send frequent emails by forcing them to upgrade to a higher subscribers tier.
- Account manager non-responsive and difficult to get hold of.
- No transactional email functionality.
Best email marketing tool so far
We build up waiting lists and automations with it. It's been a huge step forward for us and our clients in organizing all of our leads, contacts, and customers and to make sure that everyone gets the content they need.
ActiveCampaign is intuitive, has a lot of great features, and is easy to handle and to learn. Their webinars and events are great and if they do events in your area you should go.
- Marketing automation
- Custom tagging
- List building
- Updates sometimes make things worse and not better
- Forms are hard to find
- No overview of all emails
- Better delivery, so emails don't end up in spam
When you have a feature in your plan and they exclude it from the plan, you don't get a message and realize sometime later that it is not working anymore. This happened to some of my clients and to me, too. Recently there were a few changes that cut down the power of that tool. I guess it is normal that as business, you pay more attention to the higher paid plans.
- The automation capabilities are robust and capable.
- The CRM is plenty robust for a company our size.
- The integration between the CRM and the automation capability is quite good and very useful for us.
- The interface is not always intuitive and it can be confusing troubleshooting automations that don't always work as they should.
- Support is spotty. Our account rep is not as responsive as we would like.
- Information/insight/education on how to use AC better exists but it is hard to find.
Though there were some basic expected functionalities missing, such as using custom fonts according to company design guides. Also, the email builder, while quite easy to use in general, can be a bit buggy. It was also missing some basic features that I would have liked, such as stacking content blocks (on top of each other, rather than next to each other; Z-dimension) and putting background images on content blocks.
Few grievances aside though, I'm generally happy with the product!
- Ease of use.
- Lacking some basic expected features.