ActiveCampaign Review 2025 – the king of marketing automation?
ActiveCampaign is a popular marketing automation and CRM platform. It’s renowned for its strong automation builder. You can easily build almost any marketing automation workflow you can think of. Small businesses can get started for $15/month and larger businesses will find advanced features in higher plans.
In this ActiveCampaign review, I’ll use my experience testing 50+ marketing tools to see just how good this email marketing automation software holds up. I’ll look at all the features, pricing, pros, cons and alternatives.
ActiveCampaign Review Summary:
- ActiveCampaign is a great software for starters and advanced marketers.
- Marketing automation is where it shines. Do every automation you ever dreamed of.
- We found the tool easy to set up and use – once you get the hang of it.
- Too much power if you only want to send simple newsletters
- They are competitively priced, starting at $15, or $79 with CRM and lead scoring included.
ActiveCampaign Review: The Core Features
ActiveCampaign is email marketing automation software with sales CRM. But it does a lot more. When you first log in to ActiveCampaign and see all these functions in the dashboard, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Here are the most notable ActiveCampaign features:
- Send email newsletters. ActiveCampaign has 240+ professional-looking templates and a drag-and-drop email builder.
- Create automated campaigns. The real strength of ActiveCampaign is the marketing automation builder. It’s easy to put together automated campaigns. You can get a head start building automations with 900+ templates and then make them your own.
- Close sales with ActiveCampaign CRM. Automate sales follow-up and remove much of the manual work in closing deals and sales.
- Get more leads with the ActiveCampaign landing page builder to convert traffic into signups and customers.
- ActiveCampaign AI assists in automation building, content generation, segmentation, reporting, and scheduling campaigns.
ActiveCampaign is one of the rare tools that brings a lot of functionality together without overwhelming you. There is a lot more to it than you can find on the ActiveCampaign features page. But it starts with the core, which is email marketing and marketing automation software.
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ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons
Pros
- Great email deliverability right out the gate
- Wide range of features for advanced users
- Machine learning to improve your marketing results over time
- The email builder, though not the slickest, is powerful and gives you a lot of versatility
- The CRM has sales automation to make your sales process more efficient
- Fast and powerful automation builder with 900+ email templates
Cons
- The sales CRM is an add-on and isn’t included in plans.
- It takes some time to wrap your head around the more advanced features if you’re new to email marketing automation.
Is ActiveCampaign for you?
ActiveCampaign is for businesses of any size that want an email marketing service with advanced marketing automation and CRM. It has everything you need to build, send, manage and track campaigns. It also has one of the best automation builders to create custom workflows.
There are 900+ automated workflow templates to help you get started. There are hints and tips on every page. You can build forms and landing pages to grow your list. And it has an SME-friendly starting price of $19/month.
ActiveCampaign Review at a glance
| Ease of Use |  | ActiveCampaign is easy to use. It supports advanced features with great interface design and lots of on-screen tips. |
| Value for Money |  | ActiveCampaign’s prices start at $15/month. Large businesses will also find the features they need in Pro and Enterprise plans. The automation builder and marketing CRM make it great value overall. |
| Email Editor and Template |  | The email builder is intuitive and has advanced campaign options. Like AB testing, personalization, and conditional content. There are 240+ good-quality email templates. |
| Marketing Automation |  | The workflow builder is user-friendly and 900+ pre-built templates make it easy to get started. You can automate anything from email sending to updating deals in your sales pipeline. |
| Segmentation and Contact Management |  | You can build custom contact fields and tags to store any data you like about your contacts. |
| Lead Generation |  | The form and landing page builders are simple and get the job done. I’d like to see more form and page templates. |
| Reporting and Analytics | | ActiveCampaign has detailed performance analytics. You can track website visits and create custom reports. So you can look at your campaign performance from lots of different angles. |
| Functionalities | | There aren’t many email marketing services with more features than ActiveCampaign in the SMB market. |
| Customer Service | | Live chat, email, and call-back 20 hours a day Mon-Thu and 13.5 hours on Fridays. Great contextual, on-page support. The knowledge base is filled with guides and videos, all kept up-to-date. |
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Getting Started with ActiveCampaign
Signing up and getting started is quick and easy. ActiveCampaign asks about your industry and the tools you use already. You just fill in your details and activate your account via email. For this review, I signed up as an ecommerce store using Shopify.
I got this personalised onboarding checklist to connect my store, import store data, and set up my first cart abandonment automation. I’m a fan of these as they help you get value out of the tool right away. You can get started with a free ActiveCampaign trial without a credit card.
ActiveCampaign Review: Marketing Automation and CRM Platform
ActiveCampaign has many features that make marketing easier, faster, and more effective for the end-user. Let’s break them down one by one.
ActiveCampaign Email Marketing
People come for ActiveCampaign’s email marketing tool and stay for everything else. Email marketing can be individual emails and campaigns. You can choose from 6 different types namely:
- Standard
- Automated
- RSS triggered
- Split testing
- Date based
- Autoresponder
After choosing the type of email you want to create, you select the right contacts for that email by picking an email list in your account. Beyond lists, ActiveCampaign site and event tracking create another layer of targeting you can use in individual campaigns.
You may want to send emails to a specific list but only if they’ve visited certain pages or did a specific action on your site. It’s relatively straightforward with ActiveCampaign. I’ll go into more detail about it in discussing the automations feature.
Email templates in ActiveCampaign
In the campaign setup, you can choose from 240 email templates. They are labeled based on the use case and they all look professional. You can also find 30+ layout templates with building blocks but no design.
When crafting your email, there is a drag-and-drop editor for content blocks. It’s not the slickest editor but it gets the job done. You can change everything from the fonts, background colors, line height, padding, and more. I use simple-looking emails with specific formatting when sending out newsletters. You can save emails as a template and re-use it.
One of the features within the email builder that I love and use all the time are conditional content. You can add tags to your subscribers based on their profile or actions like clicks or which list they signed up for. And use theses tags and other contact data to show or hide content within your email.
We use quizzes to segment people into lists then add tags based on their answers to get granular with their preferences. Then show the right conditional blocks to match someone’s specific situation.
For example: if you’re starting a business and are pre-revenue, there are many things to consider such as the type of business (course sales, eCommerce, affiliate marketing, etc.) The tags allow us to create one email that works with all the different contacts on one list.
In the email, it gets even more interesting with personalization. Adding their name, company name, and many other contact data.
The ActiveCampaign email editor also has AI content and image generation. Just write a prompt that describes the image you want to generate, select a style, and click generate to get your image. Having an image generator inside the email editor makes it really quick to try different designs and see what fits best with the campaign. I can’t do the email builder experience justice with a few paragraphs, the best option is to take it for a spin yourself.
Every feature is meaningless if the email marketing service isn’t able to deliver your emails to the inbox. ActiveCampaign’s deliverability, from my own experience and through independent tests, scores high across the board so you don’t need to worry about that.
ActiveCampaign Marketing Automation
This is why I’ve been using this tool for years. ActiveCampaign is one of the best marketing automation tools in the industry. In ActiveCampaign, it’s simply called automations.
When you start to create a new automation, you can start from scratch or pick from 900+ ActiveCampaign automation templates designed for specific outcomes, like:
- Interest follow-up based on site tracking
- Welcome workflow for new contacts
- Abandoned cart recovery triggered by ecommerce store data
In the automation builder, you can customize in many ways to get it just right. In the image above, there’s a condition to check if the contact bought something recently. If they’ve bought something, they’ll get a follow-up email with accessory suggestions. If they haven’t bought, the automation ends.
When you’re setting up your automation, you can add emails or conditions by clicking the “+” icon. A menu opens up which divides the options based on sending an email, different conditions (split automation, end automation, goals, etc), contact actions (subscribe to a list, unsubscribe, add a tag, etc.), CRM, Salesforce, and CX apps.
ActiveCampaign has an AI to help you build automations. When I tested Automations, I saw 5 workflow goals to choose from. Choosing “Convert leads into paying customers” gave me 3 automation templates.
I tested “Convert Leads to Customers with Weekly Newsletters” and I was pleasantly surprised that it already had email copy drafts and a template that fits our brand. You can fine-tune the copy yourself or use the AI content generator to make edits. And make any changes to the design with the email editor.
Inside the automation builder, you can also prompt the AI to build sequences. It had no problem generating a drip campaign. I wrote “Send 3 emails with a 2 day wait in between” and I got just that. The workflow templates and AI together with the brand kit make it very easy to get started with automation in ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign Automation Example
Let’s go through a simple workflow to illustrate what’s possible with ActiveCampaign automations:
- Someone fills out a form and joins your mailing list. They go through the normal welcome sequence but don’t end up buying anything. You send them regular emails updating them about the industry, new features or products, and blog posts.
- They click on one of those emails, visit a blog post, and also visit a product page. Since you have ActiveCampaign site tracking set up, it triggers an email sequence related to that product.
- If they don’t submit a contact form on the product page within one hour, an email is sent out that asks them if they’d like to schedule a call. Depending on their actions, the automation ends and starts a different one and tags the person as interested or it continues by notifying a relevant team member to reach out to the person.
All of the automation happens behind the scenes and can be set up using simple conditional logic. If you’re a more advanced user, you can use ActiveCampaign Plus with event tracking, and tagging to improve the customer experience.
ActiveCampaign CRM
There’s an ActiveCampaign Sales CRM as well. You can make new contacts and deals by hand or based on sales automation, like submitting a contact form or having a high lead score.
Lead scoring is one of the best features of the ActiveCampaign CRM. You can apply scores (manually or automatically), and find your best prospects. From there, ActiveCampaign AI can calculate win probability.
You can set up scoring rules based on email opens, clicks, and form submissions. When someone gets to a certain score, it’ll trigger a notification email to one of your sales reps so they can call or follow up with the contact personally.
Of course, you can add notes to individual contacts, use third-party apps like Gmail, access sales reports, and assign tasks manually or automatically. Learn everything you need to know about the sales features in our full ActiveCampaign CRM review.
Landing Pages and Forms in ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign has a drag-and-drop landing page editor with 60+ templates and a simple form editor. The landing page and form editors are very similar to the email editor, so you’ll get the hang of it quickly. And it’s easy to trigger automations based on form submissions on landing pages.
The landing page templates are quality designs. I created this page based on a template in about 10 minutes.
It’s very easy to drag and drop blocks from the right sidebar. And I really liked how you can change the whole theme of template. It saves so much time that you don’t have to change the colour of each element individually.
ActiveCampaign has 5 types of forms. You can choose from inline forms, floating bars, floating box, modals and preference center.
And there are 4 actions you can trigger from a form: Add subscribers to a list, tag them, add them to a deal, or send them an email. I like how easy it is to trigger automations from a simple page. You can add these forms anywhere on your website.
I also like that ActiveCampaign displays your website in the background when you’re designing a popup. You can preview how it will look on your website as you’re designing it.
Site Messages, SMS and Chat
ActiveCampaign gives you the power to create an omnichannel messaging experience that improves support and conversions. Omnichannel marketing is the umbrella term they use for SMS, social and ad audiences. Let’s look at them in more detail.
1. Text messages and SMS
Text messages have a 98% open rate and are proven to be effective. With ActiveCampaign, contacts can subscribe to SMS by texting a keyword to your company number or adding their phone number when they submit a form.
You can send SMS from automations. Just add a “Send an SMS” action to your workflow, type a name, select the recipients, and add your text message. You can personalize the message and choose the day and time you want to send them. Use text messages to advertise flash sales, send coupons, or remind them about appointments or important events.
2. Site Messages
Site Messages are notifications you can add to your website to deliver CTAs or updates. You can send them from automations and use contact data to personalize messages. Conditions and goals let you fine-tune who gets the message and when. And you can customize where they appear on a page and on which pages to reach specific contacts based on how they interact with your brand.
I’m just scratching the surface of how you can target users with site messages. Play around with targeting, layouts, and themes to see what works best for you.
3. Social Media Marketing & Ads
ActiveCampaign has a deep integration with Facebook and Google Ads to add and remove people from custom audiences in automations.
Let’s say you’re running Facebook ads for a product. After a contact buys it, the automation will remove them from the Facebook Custom Audience and they won’t see the ad anymore. The customer won’t see irrelevant ads and you can save on your ad spend. You can also add contacts from Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads to your contact list.
ActiveCampaign AI – the smart stuff
The ActiveCampaign AI pops up across different parts of the tool. For email marketing campaigns, there are 7 features you’ll find useful:
- Text Generation creates and refines subject lines and email copy based on your prompts.
- Image Generation to add impressive images that match your email template and copy. Get visuals by writing prompts and selecting from 17 styles.
- Segment Suggestions help you group subscribers based on contact data and engagement to help you find the right contacts and what they want.
- AI Automation Builder creates automations based on your prompts. You can use it to create a full automation or just add steps to an existing workflow.
- Predictive Sending analyzes how your contacts interact with your emails and determines the optimal time to send.
- Predictive Content works similarly to multivariate testing but much smarter. You write multiple versions of an email and send it. ActiveCampaign’s machine learning and natural language processing help determine who the best recipient is.
- AI Brand Kit gets your logo, 3 brand colours, fonts, and social links based on a URL and generates email templates.
With CRM, you can use machine learning to get a better understanding of the types of deals that will close so you can focus more time and energy there.
ActiveCampaign Integrations
ActiveCampaign has over 950 integrations and new ones are added daily. With Zapier or the open API, you can integrate any (homebrew) software.
Premium integrations are available for CRM and ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. These go beyond the surface and pull in extra contact data, apply tags, add automation actions, get purchase history, and more.
A few of the most popular integrations include:
- Ecommerce platforms, like Shopify, Sellfy, BigCommerce and WooCommerce
- Email template editors, like Stripo
- CRM tools, like Salesforce and Pipedrive
- Online course platforms, like Thinkific
- Email verification tools, like Kickbox
- SMS marketing platforms, like Slicktext
- Social media and ad platforms, like Facebook and Google Ads
- CMS software, like WordPress
- Reporting tools, like Google Analytics
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ActiveCampaign Pricing & Discount
ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15/month. There are 4 plans and prices increase based on the number of contacts and the features you want. Let’s break down the price each plan:
| Plan | Price for 1K contacts | Email Sends | Features |
| Starter | $15/mo | 10x contact limit | – Email Marketing – Marketing Automation – Site Tracking – Forms – AB Testing – Marketing CRM – Basic Reports |
| Plus | $49/mo | 10x contact limit | – Landing Page Builder – Unlimited Automation Actions – Generative AI – Sales Automation – Site Messages – Advanced Segmentation – Revenue Reporting |
| Pro | $79/mo | 12x contact limit | – Automation AB testing – Conditional Content – Predictive Sending – Predictive Content – Premium Ecommerce Integrations – Attribution Tracking – Conversion Tracking – Priority Support – 3 users |
| Enterprise | $145/mo | 15x contact limit | – Premium CRM Integrations – Custom Reporting – Unlimited Inbox Testing – Single Sign-on – Custom Objects – HIPAA Support – Dedicated Account Team – 5 users |
ActiveCampaign has Enhanced CRM, SMS, Custom Reporting, and Transactional Email add-ons.
You can get Transactional Email on any plan. The Enhanced CRM and SMS add-ons are available on Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans. Custom reporting is included in the Enterprise plan and you can get it for Plus and Pro plans. Check out our ActiveCampaign pricing guide for details about what each add-on includes. Here’s how much the add-ons cost:
| Add-on | Price |
| SMS | $16.83 for 1000 credits |
| Pipelines enhanced CRM | $68/month |
| Sales engagement enhanced CRM | $111/month |
| Custom reporting | $159/month for 50 reports and 25 dashboards |
| Transactional emails | $15 for 10,000 emails |
Does ActiveCampaign give a discount?
Yes, ActiveCampaign offers a 20% discount on a yearly plan. With this, ActiveCampaign costs are very competitive compared to other marketing automation platform. They also offer 20% off on all plans for non-profits.
Customer Support
Many companies get into trouble with customer support as they grow. It seems ActiveCampaign has only gotten better. Previously, it only had email support if you wanted to contact a human and a knowledge base to solve problems on your own.
Today, you also get free onboarding/training webinars, live chat, and lots of tutorial videos on YouTube. The tutorials are short but clear, and the reps are knowledgeable and empathetic. There isn’t any phone support. From the personal encounters I’ve had with them, I give ActiveCampaign 4 out of 5 on support.
ActiveCampaign Review: Conclusion
ActiveCampaign is a powerful email and marketing automation tool for businesses across industries, B2C, and B2B.
We recommend ActiveCampaign for:
Companies with a bit of experience with email marketing or those ready to take their email marketing to the next level and start with marketing automation tool. You don’t need to be an expert. Beginners should follow the onboarding guides and videos and you are set.
We don’t recommend ActiveCampaign for:
Marketers who only want to send simple newsletters. It’s too powerful and you probably won’t use all the features. In that case, I’d check out our review of the best email newsletter software, cheaper email tools and MailChimp alternatives.
At just $15/month for 1000 contacts, it’s affordable for any small business. And you’ll have the features to improve your email marketing and automation results.
My Scorecard for ActiveCampaign:
| Ease of Use | |
| Value for Money | |
| Email Editor and Template | |
| Marketing Automation | |
| Segmentation and Contact Management | |
| Lead Generation | |
| Reporting and Analytics | |
| Functionalities | |
| Customer Service | |
| Total score | |
Looking at value for money with all the ActiveCampaign automation, email marketing and CRM, my verdict is that you can’t go wrong with ActiveCampaign.
Frequently Asked Questions about ActiveCampaign
What is ActiveCampaign used for?
A simple example of marketing automation is a welcome email workflow. When a website visitor submits a form on your website, ActiveCampaign sends them a series of welcome emails thanking them and introducing your company and content. A simple example of sales force automation is a workflow that updates the contact profile of a lead who replies yes to a sales email asking for a call. When the lead replies to the sales email ActiveCampaign updates the contact profile and sends a notification to the sales rep to call the lead.
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Is ActiveCampaign also a CRM?
The Pipelines enhanced CRM add-on includes ActiveCampaign’s sales CRM and automation. It costs $68/month and unlocks sales automation triggers and actions to automate your pipeline. The Sales engagement enhanced CRM add-on costs $111/month. It includes everything in the Pipelines add-on, plus automated 1:1 emails, win probability, and sentiment analysis. You can get these CRM add-ons with a Plus, Professional, or Enterprise plan.
Does ActiveCampaign have landing pages?
Does ActiveCampaign have a mobile app?
Is ActiveCampaign legit?
Is ActiveCampaign GDPR-compliant? Where does it host your data?
7 Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives
Seeing as ActiveCampaign isn’t for everyone, here are the best ActiveCampaign alternatives that have many of the key features you’d need to do email marketing successfully.
Clickfunnels vs ActiveCampaign
As a marketing automation platform, ActiveCampaign is the better choice. It beats Clickfunnels 7-2 in our full ActiveCampaign vs Clickfunnels review. ClickFunnels is good if you’re looking to build high-converting lead capture pages.
For building, automating and tracking campaigns, choose ActiveCampaign. It has one of the best visual automation builders I’ve worked with. They’re easy enough to use to get started with. And there’s plenty of room to grow to advanced levels of automation.
Brevo vs ActiveCampaign
Brevo is a great choice if you’re most interested in sending email newsletters and don’t need the advanced automation of ActiveCampaign. Brevo automation isn’t as elaborate as ActiveCampaign’s. Read our full Brevo review to learn more about its automation, pros, and cons. When I think of Brevo, I think of newsletters and transactional emails which it excels at.
The best Brevo features are:
- Very easy to use email newsletter builder
- Basic CRM
- Great tool for transactional emails
- SMS marketing
Find out how much it costs in our full Brevo pricing guide.
GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign
GetResponse started as a simple autoresponder and newsletter tool but has grown to be a complete marketing platform. It has sales funnels with webinars, landing pages, Facebook Ads integrations, Stipe integration, and an online storefront.
The best features of GetResponse are:
- Control all your digital marketing from one place
- Free plan
- Prebuilt templates for most features
- Tools to create Facebook ads
- Clear reporting across the entire funnel
Read our full GetResponse review and pricing guide to compare the 2 tools.
ConvertKit Vs ActiveCampaign
ConvertKit is primarily focused on creators and its automation features wouldn’t be ideal for eCommerce companies. It makes up for it by adding additional features, training, and content to help creators start out.
The best features of ConvertKit are:
- Landing pages
- Free plan
- Decent form builder
- Clear and useful reporting
Mailchimp Vs ActiveCampaign
Mailchimp is the multibillion-dollar gorilla in the email marketing space. We aren’t the biggest fans of MailChimp as it’s way less sophisticated compared to ActiveCampaign, and for simple email there are a lot of great Mailchimp alternatives. The main pull is that it’s simpler and free for tiny lists.
The best Mailchimp features are:
- Free plan for less than 500 contacts (but quickly gets very expensive)
- Landing pages
- Facebook Ads management
- Postcards to engage customers
Keap vs ActiveCampaign
Keap is a an email marketing and CRM platform. It has landing pages, checkout, and even affiliate marketing. Check out this list for the best email tools that allow affiliate marketing. Though it has the chops, it’s quite complicated and will take a considerable amount of time to master.
The best features of Keap are:
- Invoices and payments
- Sales CRM
- Appointment booking
- Marketing automation
- Business line and text messages
HubSpot vs ActiveCampaign
Now let’s compare ActiveCampaign to HubSpot. HubSpot goes beyond ActiveCampaign when it comes to inbound marketing. It has tools that help you optimize your organic traffic and conversions.
ActiveCampaign is a better email marketing and automation tool but Hubspot is just bigger, more functionality and considerably more expensive.
The best Hubspot features are:
- Free CRM
- Live chat
- Build websites (CMS)
- Marketing automation
- Landing pages
Check out our full HubSpot review and pricing guide to compare them.