When to Look for an ActiveCampaign Alternative
Marketing automation and CRM tools automate many of the processes you waste time doing manually. This automation allows you to get on with the essential tasks of running a company without worrying about constructing individual emails for every visitor to your site.
If youâre wondering when this type of automation might come in handy, hereâs when we think you should search for an ActiveCampaign alternative.
- When youâre building a new blog and want an easy way to attract and retain new visitors.
- When you need a landing page or pop-up builder to target visitors to your site.
- If youâre a SaaS company looking to unify your content and product.
How We Selected Our Top ActiveCampaign Alternatives
We looked high and low to find the best ActiveCampaign alternatives for bloggers by searching for features that make your life easier.
We looked for a solid email sender reputation, an excellent email builder, and high deliverability scores. Another important aspect of a good ActiveCampaign alternative has to be excellent marketing automation features.
These features save you time by removing the need to manually send emails or SMS to your target audience. We also prioritized the inclusion of a drag and drop sequence designer for ease of use.
The ActiveCampaign alternatives weâve assembled all have a similar scope of integrations. While many email marketing solutions focus heavily on ecommerce, weâve opted not to. Instead, we looked for CRM integrations and non-ecommerce CMS integrations.
The ActiveCampaign alternatives listed also offer similar scope to ActiveCampaign in terms of lead capture tools. ActiveCampaign offers a landing page and a pop-up builder, but these features are only available on the Plus & Professional plans respectively.
Some of the alternatives weâve listed may not offer the best quality landing page and pop-up building tools, but weâve included them to give a range of options.
What we havenât looked for are similar sales CRM features. Some ActiveCampaign alternatives offer a kanban view and opportunity tracking, but even platforms that donât have this will typically offer the ability to integrate with a sales CRM like Pipedrive or Hubspot.
ActiveCampaign alternatives: our selection
1. Sendinblue â If You Already Have Over 2000 Contacts
Sendinblue started as an email marketing platform and began adding automation features in 2017. Since then, Sendinblue has expanded its offerings to include a landing page builder, live chat, and more.
As an ActiveCampaign alternative Sendinblue boasts similar automation features and functional depth to ActiveCampaign. It also promises great value for money when it comes to simple features like a weekly newsletter.
The Free Forever plan allows you to send emails to 300 contacts on a newsletter list per day, with prices for other plans starting at $25 a month to send up to 20,000 emails per month. For a comparable weekly newsletter with 5000 contacts on ActiveCampaign, youâd be spending $79 a month. Sendinblue, therefore, offers serious savings.
The entry price for marketing automation will set you back more than its newsletter pricing. Pricing starts at $65 per month, offering 20,000 emails per month with unlimited contacts.
For this price, youâd have roughly 4000 contacts for your weekly newsletter and a few automation sequences.
While the automation features are slightly pricier, you have access to everything, including landing pagesâa feature that would set you back $149 per month on ActiveCampaign.
The biggest downside to Sendinblue is its lead capture tools. Sendinblue has switched its focus to ecommerce, meaning features such as email capture forms, landing pages, and its WordPress plugin arenât comparable to the standard of ActiveCampaign.
2. Moosend â A Solid Alternative but Very Email Centric
One of the biggest bugbears of any blogger is working with a platform thatâs difficult to use. The good news is, Moosend is very simple and easy to set up, boasting a great form builder with tons of options.
Like Sendinblue, Moosend includes transactional emails and marketing emails. The pricing is straightforward. You initially get 30 days to try the tool, then you pay based on the number of contacts you have.
4000 contacts (or anywhere between 3000-5000 contacts) would cost you $48 per month. If weâre being fair, that $48 pricing starts at 3000 contacts though but it goes on up to 5000 contacts
The benefit of Moosendâs simple pricing system is that there are no hidden costs-you get access to every feature on the Pro plan. The only other plan Moosend offers is the Enterprise plan, which offers more advanced features such as SSO and dedicated IPs.
3. Convertkit â the ActiveCampaign Alternative for Creators
Convertkit is the best ActiveCampaign alternative for creators, as it aims to distribute content to your target audience. Convertkit boasts unique features like referral links, which are easy to set up and efficient.
Thereâs also the link update option, a beneficial feature since you wouldnât believe how often emails are sent with a broken link â it happens a lot more than you think!
Users of Convertkit benefit from its excellent sign-up forms and landing pages. Convertkitâs email designer is one of the best out there, with tons of cool templates making it easy to use, no matter your level of creativity.
Converkitâs automation features and pricing, however, fail to hit the spot. There is the option to build automation scenarios on Convertkit, but the sequence builder doesnât match the quality offered by platforms like Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, or Sendinblue.
Pricing-wise, youâre looking at a monthly cost of $79 for 4000 contacts, making it pricier than some other ActiveCampaign alternatives (but cheaper than ActiveCampaign itself).
4. HubSpot â The Inbound Marketing Powerhouse
If youâre looking for raw marketing automation, Hubspot basically invented it. Hubspot is arguably even more advanced than ActiveCampaign, but it might still be a good fit for your needs.
Beyond just marketing automation features, Hubspot offers a complete CMS which allows you to run all your content and marketing operations on the same platform.
Features like calls to action, gated content, SEO, and social ads are, therefore, all integral parts of the same tool.
The real clincher for choosing Hubspot is its dynamic content feature, which allows you to customize your websiteâs user experience with ease, based on your subscriberâs email experience or offline experience if you use Hubspotâs sales CRM.
However, this advanced functionality will cost you. The CMS plan starts at around $25 per month, but realistically, most users will want the features which come with the Pro plan, which starts at $400 per month.
As for the Marketing Hub, the Starter plan starts at $50 per month, but 5000 contacts would cost $275 per month. One plan up from the Starter planâthe Pro planâstarts at $890 per month for up to 2000 contacts, making Hubspot the priciest option among our ActiveCampaign alternatives.
5. GetResponse: An Interesting Funnel First Approach
GetResponse is one of the best alternatives to ActiveCampaign. GetResponse differs from ActiveCampaign in that it has a built-in webinar feature. For a similar feature in ActiveCampaign, youâd need to use a third-party integration.
GetResponse benefits ecommerce users since, unlike ActiveCampaign, it allows you to sell products and take payments through its landing pages.
Where GetResponse falls down is its subscriber contact options and automation and reporting features. GetResponse only allows you to contact your subscriber via email, while ActiveCampaign also allows SMS and site messages.
The automation, reporting, and A/B testing features are also more advanced on ActiveCampaign, so if your key focus is automation, GetResponse may not be as suitable an ActiveCampaign alternative for you.
GetResponse offers a free plan which includes unlimited newsletters for up to 500 contacts. 4000, or up to 5000 contacts would set you back $54 per month on the Basic plan, $95 per month on the Plus plan, and $169 per month on the Professional plan.
The Basic plan offers unlimited landing pages and email scheduling, whereas the Plus and Professional plans offer features such as marketing automation and unlimited funnels, respectively.
6. Substack: For Personal Blogging
Substack is, without a doubt, one of the best free ActiveCampaign alternatives. If youâre just getting started with personal blogging and you donât yet have a CMS set up, Substack is the ideal platform for you.
Substack costs nothing, and it comes with a newsletter feature and basic website, on which each newsletter is a post. Since itâs free and easy to use, Substack is a great way to build your audience at the beginning of your blogging and content career.
For most, pricing will only come into play when youâre more established, as itâs based on you monetizing your audience. Substack takes 10% of the revenue you generate through the platform.
7. SendX: For the Ones ActiveCampaign Wonât Accept
SendX is the most inclusive alternative to ActiveCampaign. The founder of SendX wanted to build software for the industries that are usually banned from using email marketing platforms.
These industries include blockchain, gambling, cannabis, supplements, affiliate marketing, and more.
These industries are often bannedâ”unfairly” as SendX claimsâfrom email marketing service providers since their emails can cause deliverability issues and end up in peopleâs spam inboxes, causing issues for the ESPs.
These issues likely stem from the fact that such industries generate a high volume of spam. ISPs like Gmail are more likely to flag such emails as spam, even the legit ones. This means more work for ESPs to maintain deliverability for other clients on their servers.
If your blog is based in one of these industries, itâs well worth checking out SendX. It also has HTML & CSS customization options.
Thereâs no free plan on SendX, but its prices are reasonable, with 4000 contacts setting you back only $39.99 per month, or $29.99 if you pay annually. It also offers a 14-day free trial.
8. Drip: For Ecommerce Brands
Drip is one of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives for ecommerce and cross-channel marketing, boasting excellent forms and popups and ecommerce integrations.
Drip is great for conversational marketing such as email, SMS, pop-ups, and social media. Its easy-to-use stunning email designer and top-notch revenue reporting make it ideal for any ecommerce brand.
Email prices start at $19 per month for 100 contacts, with $69 per month for 4000 contacts, or $72 to include SMS.
ActiveCampaign Alternatives You Shouldnât Consider
Mailchimp is often touted as an alternative to ActiveCampaign, but it simply isnât up to par on its feature offerings. The automation on Mailchimp leaves a lot to be desired, and itâs priced extremely highly for its abilities.
The support is also lacking, so itâs not ideal for first-time website creators with lots of questions. Mailchimpâs focus is more towards e-commerce and designers, so it fails to properly replace ActiveCampaignâs main offerings.
Despite Constant Contact and Aweberâs high rewards affiliate programs, their email marketing and marketing automation features arenât valid replacements for ActiveCampaign.
Salesforce Engage, SharpSpring, Pardot, Exponea, and Marketo are aimed at enterprise organizations with highly complex marketing automation needs.
If youâve outgrown ActiveCampaign, they can be worth looking into, but theyâre not like-for-like ActiveCampaign replacements.
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