ActiveCampaign for New Users only
Tags: Activecampaign, Activecampaign Deals, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Email Marketing Tips

This Chicago-based automation tool is helping their 90,000 customers send fewer emails while, at the same time, achieving better results. Boasting many features and integrations, as well as quick and friendly support, they do sound like a powerhouse newsletter marketing tool. We’ll put ActiveCampaign under the microscope to see if they measure up to their bold claims.

One of their most important features is automations. Not only does it allow autoresponders, based on myriad conditions, but it also allows automation of your contacts and list management, as well as automations within its CRM system (known as ‘Deals’). This ‘Deals’ system is also worth noting and allows you to add notes to contacts, set up appointments or simply send direct messages to them.

In addition to that, they have the customer messages feature. Using it you can send targeted messages straight to your website visitors, therefore optimizing the overall customer experience. ActiveCampaign pride themselves on their approach to helping you build meaningful connections with your customers through their software.

And, while at first glance pages such as the Dashboard can seem a little busy and overly complicated, it’s not hard to understand how useful it is to have all your information in one place.

ActiveCampaign Summary

ActiveCampaign offer almost everything you need within a newsletter marketing tool, plus their advanced automations are hard to beat. The entry-level plan starts at $15 per month (for up to 500 subscribers, paid monthly), or, if you want to access pro features such as the in-built CRM and lead scoring, the Plus plan starts at $70 per month.

Let’s dive in and take a closer look at ActiveCampaign:

ActiveCampaign Pricing

2,500SUBSCRIBERS-$55/MO 5,000SUBSCRIBERS -$99/MO 10,000SUBSCRIBERS-$155/MO 50,000SUBSCRIBERS-$345/MO 500SUBSCRIBERS-$15/MO 1,000SUBSCRIBERS-$29/MO 2,500SUBSCRIBERS-$55/MO 5,000SUBSCRIBERS-$99/MO 10,000SUBSCRIBERS-$155/MO 50,000SUBSCRIBERS-$345/MO

Pros and Cons

PROS & CONS

Features can be overwhelming:

This might only be considered a con if you’re after a quick and simple email solution. There are simpler newsletter services out there, so you may want to look elsewhere if this is all you need.

Extremely powerful automation:

One of the best marketing automations out there. Not only extremely powerful but also easy to use.

Thorough reporting:

Offers reporting on all areas such as click-maps, geo-tracking and page visits. Purchase tracking is available on higher plans for Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce.

Great deliverability:

In our deliverability tests, ActiveCampaign proved to be one of the best tools in getting emails delivered.

Free migrations:

If you are coming from a different email marketing software, ActiveCampaign offers to do the account migration for free.

Features can be overwhelming:

This might only be considered a con if you’re after a quick and simple email solution. There are simpler newsletter services out there, so you may want to look elsewhere if this is all you need.

Extremely powerful automation:

One of the best marketing automations out there. Not only extremely powerful but also easy to use.

Thorough reporting:

Offers reporting on all areas such as click-maps, geo-tracking and page visits. Purchase tracking is available on higher plans for Shopify, BigCommerce and WooCommerce.

Great deliverability:

In our deliverability tests, ActiveCampaign proved to be one of the best tools in getting emails delivered.

Free migrations:

If you are coming from a different email marketing software, ActiveCampaign offers to do the account migration for free.

Is ActiveCampaign the right newsletter service for you?

Recommended if:

You’re serious about marketing automation:

ActiveCampaign is hands-down the most powerful automation tool we’ve tested, allowing you to set up virtually any automation you can think of — triggered campaigns, sales follow-ups, automated segmentation, dynamic email content and so on.

You need an integrated sales and marketing platform for your business:

ActiveCampaign’s inbuilt CRM seamlessly links up to all your email marketing data, allowing sales teams to act quickly. Features like lead scoring and social data can also help to streamline your sales follow-up processes.

You need a tool that performs multi-channel marketing:

Apart from sending emails, ActiveCampaign also allows you to set up landing pages, send SMS and personalized ‘Conversations’ to website visitors, and even manage how Facebook ads are displayed to contacts. It’s a great solution if you’d like to be able to centralize a good chunk of your marketing and give your customers a better all-round experience.

Not recommended if:

You need a low-maintenance, beginner-friendly tool:

ActiveCampaign is an advanced tool, and getting familiarized with it takes a lot more work than other tools. Not to mention the regular maintenance you’ll need to set up, monitor and optimize campaigns.

You only need simple automations:

If you only want to set up basic email sequences (for example, a welcome campaign), we’d recommend more budget-friendly options like MailerLite or Benchmark, which are far easier to use. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for a tonne of extras (and complexity) that you simply won’t need.

You’re not sure:

Unfortunately, there’s no free plan, and with a trial period of just 14 days, they don’t give you much time to assess whether it’s right for you.

Products and services

Marketing Automation

The ActiveCampaign automation workflow builder works with drag-and-drop blocks. You can easily create advanced follow up sequences and triggered emails.

These smart follow ups has proven to be more effective, and will keep your customer engagement high because you’re sending relevant, personalized messages.

Sales Automation and CRM

With a sales automation and CRM integrated with your marketing automation, you can bring leads back and forth between your marketing and sales.

Having your sales CRM and marketing automation under the same roof means that sales can use the same automation features as the marketers.

Email Marketing

ActiveCampaign is not only email but combined with email and marketing automation software for creating, managing, and extending your email marketing & autoresponder campaigns.

ActiveCampaign designed templates are fully mobile responsive. You can use tools like content blocks to save and reuse piece of content across campaigns.

Conditional content allows you to change the content of an email based on who a contact is and what they’ve done.

With message variables you can change content once, and it will update across all your campaigns.

Measurement and cross channel activation

With ActiveCampaign you’ll collect more insight about the customer at each stage of the buying process.

With Attribution, you’ll know the source of a visitor and what marketing and advertising they’ve interacted with.

With Goals, you’ll be able to define important events and then response to conversions.

With Site Messaging, email marketing, and SMS you’ll be able to reach your contacts on their preferred channel.

Key features

Marketing automation

Email marketing

Smart auto responders

A/B Testing

Mobile CRM App

SMS Marketing

Site Messages

ActiveCampaign Landing Pages

Facebook custom audiences

Automation Goals

Automation Map

Lead Scoring

Sales CRM

Customer Surveys

Drip Campaigns

Dynamic Content

Event Triggered Email

Mailing List Management

Reporting/Analytics

Subscriber Management

Template Management

Drag and Drop Email Editor

Sales Intelligence

Segmentation

Website Visitor Tracking

ActiveCampaign has 4 paid plans. Here’s a break-up their pricing for 1000 subscriber’s list:

Lite (from $25/month — billed yearly)

Plus (from $49/month — billed yearly)

Professional (from $129/month — billed yearly)

Enterprise (from $229/month — billed yearly)

Lite Plan

1000 subscribers

Monthly Payments: $29/mo

Annual Payment: $25/mo, billed annually

Even the most basic plan from ActiveCampaign has powerful email automation, design options, and social media integration. You can even track the actions of your website visitors.

This plan is great if you have a newsletter and you are building your audience as you go, as it provides basic things to get you started — subscription form, email marketing, sending newsletters and unlimited emails.

Here are exact functionalities you will get with this plan:

3 user accounts

Send Newsletters

Email Marketing

Marketing Automation

Subscription forms — basic/ inline only

In-Depth Reporting

GEO Tracking

Unlimited Sending

Auto Import From Other Services

Site & Event Tracking

Social Media Tools & Integrations

API & WebHooks

Live Chat & Email Based Support

Managed Email Delivery

This plan is good for small teams or independent businesses that don’t require rigorous sales processes.

But it won’t work if you are conscious about ActiveCampaign’s log showing at the bottom of emails. Any email you send or any subscription form that you build with the Lite tier of ActiveCampaign will come with the company’s branding attached.

Plus Plan

1000 subscribers

Monthly Payments: $70/mo

Annual Payment: $49/mo, billed annually

This plan includes everything in Lite plus unlocks the capability to have 25 users and features like built-in CRM, Sales Automation, lead scoring.

That’s not all.

You also get SMS subscription service, integration with Facebook and Shopify. Since you get some powerful automation features, they will also provide consultation on your automation strategy.

It also removes ActiveCampaign branding from your emails and forms. If you feel like you will need help making the most of all these features, you can benefit from the 1-month 1–1 training that they provide with this plan.

It’s good for any e-commerce, sales-focused company with a mid-size team of fewer than 25 users.

Professional Plan

1000 subscribers

Monthly Payments: $159/mo

Annual Payment: $129/mo, billed annually

This plan has everything from the first two plans and adds advanced marketing features like Predictive Sending, Site Messaging, and Attribution that help you create even more personalized experiences for your customers.

But yes, it doesn’t come cheap at $129/mo which is quite a jump from $70/mo from Plus plan.

With the increase in cost comes the ability to use machine learning features like predictive sending and split automation — The split automation action lets you test entire automation workflows against one another. Instead of a narrow point of view of “which email got the most clicks”, look at the bird’s eye view and ask “which funnel won the most customers.”

Enterprise Plan

1000 subscribers

Monthly Payments: $279/mo

Annual Payment: $229/mo, billed annually

Two words that define this plan are — sophisticated and custom.

Made for companies with heavy budget for email marketing, this plan provides custom email domain, customer SMS. You also get phone support, SMS guidance, and unlimited one-on-one training to ensure that you’re making the best use of all the features.

It is designed for companies that can afford to have custom features, need priority support and an ever-growing team that will need unlimited user accounts.

Try me, before you buy me

They don’t have a forever free plan but that shouldn’t stop you from checking it out. You can go for their 14-day free trial and even request a demo from their sales reps. And I have to tell you that their sign up process is as quick as posting an Instagram story.

Discounts are always delicious

If you commit for a year, you can get a 30–40% discount on any plan. That’s surprisingly bountiful!

For non-profits, offer a 20% discount, on top of the yearly plan discount. You can just contact them with proof of non-profit status.

What happens if you outgrow your Subscribers’ limit?

If you are close to approaching your contact limit, you will get an email notification once every 15 days until you upgrade your account. Your account will not be automatically upgraded.

You will not be able to create or send any campaigns and your contacts won’t be added to automation. This is a bummer but at least it informs you well before you expect a new, higher bill. So do let your finances know to keep some cash handy.

Does it play fair when you want to Upgrade or Downgrade?

Yes, the system automatically calculates and makes adjustments for you & makes the bill on a pro-rated basis.

For example, let’s say you are on a Lite plan and are paying $29 per month. In the middle of your billing cycle, you choose to upgrade to a Plus plan at $49 per month. We would then charge you a prorated fee of $24.5 to cover your upgrade for the rest of the half of your billing cycle. You will then be charged $49 when your new billing cycle begins.

I got 99 problems, and a fine print is also one

If you don’t love reading, you would never notice the tiny print under the pricing from ActiveCampaign & guess what’s there…

Should you read it?

No, something that you might want to read and decide if that is deal-breaking for you.

It says — Unlimited sending offered in paid plans up to 250,000 contacts. So when they say unlimited, it doesn’t truly mean unlimited to all 6B+people and their pets

Another one.

Did you buy your account for a huge discount from a reseller? Well, you don’t get one-on-one training then.

Thankfully, the fine print ends here. *phew*

Refund Policy

There are no full or partial refunds offered by ActiveCampaign. So before you make a commitment, try it out for free for 14-days.

Rating details:-

FAQs

1) Is there a forever free plan for ActiveCampaign?

No. But you can go for a free 14-day trial, and the sign up process is really easy.

2) We plan to have the same contact on multiple lists. Will we be charged multiple times for the same contacts in ActiveCampaign?

No. Unlike other ESPs like Mailchimp, in ActiveCampaign, you get charged only once per contact even if it is on multiple lists.

3) What is an Active contact according to ActiveCampaign?

An Active contact is someone that has confirmed their subscription to your list (if you are using opt-in confirmation) and has not unsubscribed or bounced. A contact will no longer be counted as “Active” if your campaigns bounce or they unsubscribe from your lists.

4) We are a non-profit organization. What is the discount we will get in ActiveCampaign? 30–40% only, or 20% extra as well?

You get 20% extra as well. If you commit for a year, you can get a 30–40% discount on any plan. For non-profits, they offer a 20% discount, on top of the yearly plan discount. You can just contact them with proof of non-profit status.

5) Suppose my contact count goes beyond my subscriber’s limit, will it auto-upgrade to the next most cost-effective plan in ActiveCampaign?

No. If you are close to approaching your contact limit, you will get an email notification once every 15 days until you upgrade your account. Your account will not be automatically upgraded.

6) How can I get a refund in ActiveCampaign if I have taken an annual plan and decide to end the subscription after just a few months?

There are no full or partial refunds offered by ActiveCampaign. So before you make a commitment, try it out for free for 14-days.

7) Do I have to pay to migrate from another tool to ActiveCampaign?

It is free, but it depends on the plan you choose. After you send in your request, they’ll send you an email with more information about their free migration options and instructions on what to do next.

8) Does ActiveCampaign have landing pages?

Using integrations with tools such as Lander with ActiveCampaign will allow you to send new submissions gained through form submissions directly to ActiveCampaign.

9) What is ActiveCampaign used for?

ActiveCampaign is a category-defining Customer Experience Automation Platform that helps businesses meaningfully connect and engage with their customers. It creates optimized customer experiences by automating many behind-the-scenes marketing, sales, and support processes.

Try ActiveCampaign now for free for 15 days.

COMMENTS

1.Ease of Use

ActiveCampaign have a very user-friendly design, with menus being easily navigable. The dashboard, which could feel crowded if not designed correctly, has a useful ‘Getting Started’ slider to help new users. And it has demo data to give you an idea of how best to use sections. It may be a little complicated for the absolute beginner though.

2.Newsletter Creation

The editor is fast, and has a couple of handy features. One is saving custom ‘blocks’ to reuse, and the other is allowing you to see changes other people have made, Google Docs-style. Although finding your last action to undo can be painstaking due to multiple auto-saves every minute! Another issue we had was in creating columns, this was needlessly finicky. Also, there is no quick way to preview your newsletter.

3.Choice and Flexibility of Template Designs

ActiveCampaign have around 40 modern, responsive templates to choose from. You can handily preview them in another window. Other tools offer more template options, and also slightly more features/content blocks within the editor.

4.Email Automation

Their marketing automation really is the one to beat for newsletter tools. It’s extremely powerful, and very user-friendly, allowing you to automate follow-up campaigns, edit multiple conditions and much more. This is all done via an easy-to-use flowchart-style system. There are also pre-made ‘recipes’ for you to use, or get ideas from. Otherwise, you can start your own automation from scratch. Learn more in these video tutorials.

5.List Management

Compared to some other tools, managing contacts and lists is made much easier, and automated, due to being able to use their automation functions to organize people into lists. Learn more here.

6.Registration Forms/ Opt-in & Opt-out- Process

Easy to use, lets you create your own fields. Next to the standard forms, which are fully responsive, it also allows you to create floating forms and modals. Simple but effective.

7.Deliverability

In our deliverability tests ActiveCampaign tends to score very highly, landing emails in the main inbox of the most popular providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and AOL. In recent rounds, they have seen quite a dip, so we’re keeping an eye on them.

Conclusion:-

It’s really tough to fault ActiveCampaign, not only do they offer almost everything you need within a newsletter marketing tool, but they do it very well. The reporting offers you insight into almost all facets, such as page visits, geo-tracking, openers, ecommerce and more. One area that is slightly lacking is the newsletter editor, not offering an experience as slick as other tools out there, with a few niggling features that could be done better (like the revision history).

The support is as advertised: friendly, helpful and fast. Email and chat support are great, with a personal feel to the communications. Their knowledge base is easily searchable and actually returns relevant results a high percentage of the time. With their ‘Plus’ plan you even get access to one-on-one training and helpful webinars, which is a nice addition.

ActiveCampaign really are one of the best choices you could make if you’re looking for an all-in-one newsletter marketing tool. Their automation is the real deal, and makes other tool’s versions of this pale in comparison. You’ll need to be prepared to put in a bit of time, and perhaps spend a little more money, but your business will reap the rewards. If, on the other hand, you’re just looking for a simple way to blast out newsletters, a solution like GetResponse or MailerLite might be a bit easier to get your head around.

ActiveCampaign Alternatives

MailerLite is one of the most affordable solutions, in fact, their free plan is very generous. Their approach to email marketing design is admirable, offering well modern-looking templates. It’s also one of the easiest tools we’ve ever used.

GetResponse is a powerful alternative to ActiveCampaign with loads of pro options (e.g. a webinar tool) and good automations. Unlike ActiveCampaign, they offer their platform in more than 20 languages, and their design and testing tools are excellent.

Sendinblue is one of the cheapest all-in-one email marketing tools on the market. It’s available in 6 languages and comes with advanced automation options and a built-in CRM.

Still not sure which is the right newsletter tool for you? Try our Smart Finder.