Are you looking for the best ActiveCampaign alternatives?
ActiveCampaign is a popular email marketing and automation service. It’s a complex solution with a lot to offer, and you may need a force to manage the platform itself.
Small businesses often look for simpler, effective, and pocket-friendly email solutions. And, there are many email services that offer more features, affordable pricing, and easy configuration.
That said, we’ll compare some of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives for small businesses.
This list will tell you everything you need to know about popular email marketing services that compete with ActiveCampaign, and it’ll also help you decide whether you want to switch from ActiveCampaign to another service.
Why Should You Look for ActiveCampaign Alternatives?
ActiveCampaign is more than an email marketing service as it offers marketing automation, CRM software, sales automation, and other services. It’s a powerful and feature-rich platform but there are reasons why you would want to look at alternatives.
For starters, you’ll have to pay for an entire year for any ActiveCampaign plan and there isn’t a money-back guarantee. The initial investment alone will break the bank for beginners and startups.
Next, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer a free plan. It comes with a 14-day free trial for all their plans, but you’ll have access to limited features. The platform is also complex which can be difficult for beginners.
With so many other options in the market, it’s worth exploring ActiveCampaign alternatives. Here’s what we recommend you should look for in an email marketing service:
- Email templates: Built-in email templates will help create and send emails quickly.
- Optin Forms: Signup forms help build your email list that you can use to connect with your users and also grow your sales.
- Bulk emails: A right email marketing service will let you send emails in bulk to reach out to more users in just a few clicks.
- Email automation: Schedule and trigger welcome emails, transactional email, and other helpful emails to users automatically, so your customers will feel your presence even when you’re not around.
- Better pricing model: Pricing is the main concern when you’re choosing an email service. It should be flexible with a free-trial, free plan, money-back guarantee, and a plan for everyone.
Now, you may think that it’s hard to find an email service with all these features at once. But we’ll make sure to share some of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives and competitors with you to launch your email marketing campaigns.
Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives for Small Businesses
Below, you’ll find the top ActiveCampaign competitors and alternatives to choose an email marketing service. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to decide which email solution is best for your business.
1. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is the most popular email marketing service. It comes with helpful tools and super flexible drag and drop email editor that lets you design beautiful and professional emails in just a few clicks.
Constant Contact comes with powerful email automation features. You can create drip series, welcome emails, and transactional emails. All you have to do is configure them once and Constant Contact will automatically send the email to subscribers when the conditions are met. All of this happens in the backend while you can focus on the growth of your business.
There are also options to personalize emails to connect with subscribers and build long-term relationships with them.
Some of the emails that Constant Contact sends to your users include:
- Welcome emails to new subscribers
- Transactional email series
- Resend emails to non-openers
- Cart abandonment emails
It has a powerful contact list management and segmentation system. You can import contacts from third-party services like Excel, Outlook, etc., and Constant Contact will automatically sort them for your use. It also lets you add contacts in-person, from your website, from social media channels, and more.
The best part about Constant Contact is its real-time email tracking tools. This provides you with complete data on the total number of email opens, clicks, and shares. You can also use this data to segment users based on the content they click in your emails.
Constant Contact Pricing and Plans
Constant Contact has the simplest pricing model. It comes with two email plans.
- Email: This plan is designed for startups and small businesses. It costs $20 per month and lets you send unlimited emails. The Email plan also works great for your eCommerce stores and online businesses.
- Email Plus: This is an enterprise plan and it costs $45 per month. It includes everything from the Email plan with additional email automation features, behavioral email marketing, dynamic content, and more.
We also have a complete Constant Contact pricing guide with more details on each plan. You must check it out for more details on what you get and if the pricing is worth it.
Constant Contact vs ActiveCampaign
Constant Contact has a focused strategy to grow your email lists, connect with more users, and engage your visitors from the first day without putting in a lot of time and effort. Once you set up your email campaigns, it works behind the scenes and covers your workflow.
Unlike ActiveCampaign, you’ll get a 30-day free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee with Constant Contact. This means you can test the service with exclusive features for up to 60 days without paying anything, and if you don’t like the service, you can get a refund.
2. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a powerful email marketing solution with communication and personalization tools. It lets you connect with your users through email marketing, SMS marketing, live chat, and more.
It provides a professional email editor to design beautiful emails. You can also choose an email template from their library to quickly set up an email and send it to your users. The personalization features allow you to add dynamic content to your emails with just a few clicks.
Sendinblue comes with an A/B testing tool to ensure your emails are sent to the right people at the right time. It uses machine learning technology to understand users’ behavior and send emails accordingly.
When it comes to contact segmentation, you can divide your users based on their gender, location, clicks, and so on. This helps send targeted emails to your users and increases your clickthrough rate.
The robust and solid Sendinblue features include:
- Time-sensitive transactional emails
- Advanced email marketing workflows
- Page-level tracking
- Real-time tracking and advanced stats
- Email and phone support
We also recommend checking out our complete Sendinblue review for more information on the email marketing features and options.
Sendinblue Pricing and Plans
Sendinblue offers four different plans. The pricing is based on the total number of emails sent per month.
- Free: The free plan is the ultimate win-win for Sendinblue in most cases. It covers unlimited contacts and allows you to send up to 9,000 emails per month.
- Lite: It’s the basic Sendinblue paid plan with no daily or monthly sending limit. This means you can send unlimited emails to your contacts. Unlike the free version, Lite plan is fully scalable and costs $25 per month for up to 10,000 emails.
- Premium: The premium plan includes everything from the free and lite plan. It costs $65 per month for up to 20,000 emails. Other than the basic features, this plan comes with powerful email send-time optimization, multiple shared inboxes, advanced reporting, and more.
- Enterprise: The Sendinblue enterprise plan is a customizable package with no limits. You’ll need to connect with the Sendinblue team to get a pricing quote for this plan. The popular features of the enterprise plan includes multi-user access, dedicated account manager, phone support, dedicated IP address, and more.
If you want to read more, check out our Sendinblue pricing guide. It has complete information on each plan and full feature comparison.
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign
Sendinblue provides a user-friendly email editor to create and customize your emails. It comes with tons of resources and tutorials to learn about email marketing. You can also connect with their team of experts for any questions.
Unlike ActiveCampaign, you get a free plan with Sendinblue. The best part is that the free plan includes most features that you may not find in ActiveCampaign’s basic plans, like real-time email reporting.
3. AWeber
AWeber is a premium email marketing service built specifically for small businesses. It comes with professional tools to create and design emails to send to users and boost engagement.
It has a personalized toolbar with several elements to drag and drop in your email and customize the message. AWeber allows you to send test copies to preview emails before sending them to users, so you’ll always send the best email.
You also get thousands of free stock images to add to your emails and make them attractive for readers. This also includes buttons, logos, and more to connect with your users through email marketing campaigns.
If you publish regular blog posts, AWeber will let you create automated email content and share your articles with users as newsletters. It also offers a built-in email template library. You can select your newsletter email layout and customize it with the visual editor.
AWeber provides detailed insights and analytics to track your emails. It also comes with an app to monitor your email data on your phone.
You can use this information to do the following:
- Send targeted emails
- Create relevant blog content
- Track revenue generating emails
- Drive traffic to your website
AWeber Pricing and Plans
AWeber has a simple pricing model. It comes with only two plans:
- Free: The AWeber free plan has a subscriber limit for up to 500 users. And it lets you send up to 3,000 emails per month. This plan includes email automation, drag and drop email builder, email templates, dynamic content, and more.
- Pro: AWeber Pro plan is further divided into five options. It’s based on the total number of subscribers, so if you add more subscribers, you’ll need to pay more. The basic pricing starts at $19.99 per month for up to 500 subscribers. It allows you to pay on monthly, quarterly, and annually basis. Among other features, AWeber Pro plan offers behavioral automation, branded click-tracking, email split testing, custom segmentation, advanced reporting, and more.
We have a complete AWeber pricing guide with more details on each plan. There you’ll also learn about the discount on the AWeber Pro plan on annual payments.
AWeber vs ActiveCampaign
AWeber is dedicated to small businesses for email marketing and newsletter subscription options. It has flexible features and an easy email builder to create emails without editing any code.
The AWeber free plan is premium-quality and outranks ActiveCampaign right away. You can also request AWeber’s experts for free migration from ActiveCampaign or any other email service.
4. Drip
Drip is a popular email marketing platform for eCommerce businesses. It helps you with multi-channel marketing campaigns and increases sales on your online store with a personalized email.
You get built-in email workflows for your eCommerce store. This includes welcome email series, cart abandonment emails, post-purchase campaigns, and more. Drip also lets you create custom emails for different situations.
It integrates with all popular eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, etc., to design marketing campaigns that target customers based on their behavior and actions.
Drip has a powerful segmentation to target users with relevant content. It automatically filters users by looking at their actions on your emails and website, and this way, you’ll know which user is interested in which product.
Moreover, you get some exciting features with Drip. This includes:
- Revenue and engagement reporting
- Premium integrations
- SMS marketing
- A/B split testing
- Workflow dashboards
If you want to know more about the email service, check out our complete Drip review. There you’ll find more details on the features and options.
Drip Pricing and Plans
Drip offers a scalable pricing plan, and the pricing is based on the total number of contacts.
- $19 for up to 500 contacts
- $29 for up to 2,000 contacts
- $39 for up to 2,500 contacts
- $49 for up to 3,000 contacts
- $59 for up to 3,500 contacts
- And so on…
It allows unlimited emails to all users except when you’re on the free trial. Drip has a 14-day free trial and allows up to 3,500 contacts and 500 emails.
For more details, you should check out our Drip pricing guide. It has a comparison between the free trial and paid plan. Plus, you’ll learn more about Drip’s scalability.
Drip vs ActiveCampaign
Drip is entirely focused on eCommerce platforms and provides a complete solution on email marketing for your online stores. It has advanced features available at low pricing that you may not find on ActiveCampaign’s basic plans.
The pricing model is scalable, which means you’ll only pay for the contacts on your email list. It’s a better strategy when we compare Drip with ActiveCampaign’s pricing model.
5. ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a premium email marketing platform for small businesses. It has an easy-to-use email builder to design beautiful emails and email marketing campaigns that help connect with your users.
It provides branded email templates that you can use to replace content and images and send emails quickly. ConvertKit saves you a lot of time with a smooth editing experience and a powerful email designer.
With inline styling options, you can add buttons, images, text, videos, and more to your emails in just a few clicks. The interface is user-friendly and intuitive so you can write and design emails with ease.
ConvertKit claims to have a 98% deliverability rate which means your emails will reach customers’ inboxes right away. You can send different types of emails with ConvertKit, including:
- Email broadcasts
- Automated emails
- Transactional emails
- Personalized emails
ConvertKit Pricing and Plans
ConvertKit has three pricing plans. You can choose to pay on monthly or yearly terms, and there’s a discount on the annual payments.
- Free: This plan is designed for up to 1,000 subscribers. However, it allows you to send email broadcasts, eCommerce emails, and more. The free plan has support for sign up forms and newsletter subscriptions.
- Creator: You can send unlimited emails, sell digital products, set up automated email funnels, and more. It starts at $9 per month for up to 300 subscribers. The price increases with the number of subscribers you have. So for instance, for up to 1,000 subscribers, it costs $29 per month.
- Creator Pro: This the premium plan with all features and advanced reporting. It costs $59 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers. If you add more subscribers, you’ll need to pay more.
ConvertKit’s paid plans are eligible for a 2-months free service. If you’re on a paid plan and didn’t like the email solution, you can request a refund within 30 days of your sign-up. Both plans also offer free migration from any email service to ConvertKit.
Sounds interesting? You can find out more in our ConvertKit pricing guide. It has complete details on each plan and offers an in-depth comparison of paid plans and their features.
ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign
ConvertKit is a flexible solution for small businesses and startups. It comes with a free migration service that helps you switch to ConvertKit without any hassle.
The free plan will always be free and requires no credit card. It’s a better option than a basic ActiveCampaign plan, where you need to pay a certain amount to start with an email marketing service.
6. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing platform for small businesses. It has a fantastic email builder to create highly engaging emails and grow your brand name.
You get a headstart with beautiful email templates and a creative assistant to design your emails. It’s easy to add your content, images, videos, and other multimedia to your emails.
Mailchimp also helps with email content. This includes eye-catching subject lines, dynamic content, and more. You can test your emails with the A/B split testing mechanism and send the winning email to users.
It provides a customer journey builder tool to send personalized emails to users based on their behaviors and interactions. This helps in engaging more users with your emails and driving traffic to your website.
The best thing about Mailchimp is its flexibility and useful tools. You’ll also get:
- Transactional emails
- Dedicated IP
- Sales reports
- Scalable analytics
- High delivery rates
- HTML emails
Mailchimp Pricing and Plans
Mailchimp has a complex pricing plan for transactional emails, websites and Commerce, and their marketing platform.
The prices are based on the total number of contacts and there’s a pricing calculator to find out what it’s going to cost you. Mailchimp offers four plans for its marketing platform:
- Free: The free plan is suitable for up to 2,000 contacts and comes with helpful features that you need to start with email marketing.
- Essentials: This plan costs $10.16 per month for up to 500 contacts and allows you to send up to 5,000 emails per month.
- Standard: The standard plan starts at $15.18 for up to 500 contacts and allows up to 6,000 emails per month.
- Premium: It’s the top plan starting with $303.61 for up to 10,000 email contacts and 150,000 emails per month.
All paid plans are fully scalable, and you can calculate the price to determine the cost of your email marketing with Mailchimp.
To understand this further, we recommend you to check out our complete Mailchimp pricing guide. It includes details on each plan with a feature comparison.
Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign
Mailchimp is one of the oldest email marketing services in the industry. They offer powerful tools on every step of email marketing, making them a robust choice for beginners and small businesses.
When it comes to pricing, Mailchimp has a scalable and custom pricing model that outlets the ActiveCampaign’s complex pricing structure. You’ll pay for the total number of contacts in your email list and nothing additional to it.
7. GetResponse
GetResponse is a high-quality email marketing service for startups and small businesses. It comes with professional email templates, easy design tools, and more to start with email marketing.
It allows you to send newsletters and one-time email broadcasts to share updates, news, and special offers. You can create autoresponders and email sequences to follow up on your emails.
GetResponse also offers transactional emails with the paid addon. You can use an SMTP service to send automated receipts, trigger emails, and send reminders to users.
When it comes to email automation, you can automatically set up workflows to send emails and engage with users. This works the same for eCommerce businesses to sell products with automated emails.
GetResponse automation and email marketing includes:
- Automated blog post sharing
- Time-based email delivery
- Custom email layouts and sections
- Email scheduling
- Free stock photos
GetResponse Pricing and Plans
GetResponse has five pricing options. This includes a forever-free plan for startups and personal blogs to email marketing campaigns without worrying about the budget.
- Free: The free plan allows up to 500 contacts and it’s free forever with no credit card requirement. You can use this plan to send emails to users and move to a premium plan as your business grows.
- Basic: This plan is for small businesses and works for up to 1,000 contacts. It includes email marketing, autoresponders, sign up forms, and more. It costs $15 per month.
- Plus: The plus plan costs $49 per month for up to 1,000 contacts. It includes list segmentation, multi-user access, and much more.
- Professional: It’s a top tier plan starts at $99 per month for up to 1000 contacts. It provides unlimited automations, eCommerce support, sales funnels, and paid marketing tools.
- Max: This is a custom plan and starts with up to 5,000 contacts as a minimum requirement. You need to connect with the GetResponse team to get a quote.
All plans are flexible, and you can add more contacts to your list. If you plan to use GetReponse on longer terms, they offer a yearly and two-yearly discount for up to 30% on the total cost.
To learn more, you can check our complete GetResponse review!
GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign
GetResponse is a win-win for small businesses to start with email marketing. It’s flexible and offers several tools to grow your business and eCommerce store.
Though the pricing model is not much different than ActiveCampaign, GetResponse has a free plan that gives it a lead. It also offers up to a 30% discount on the total cost of email marketing on bundled payments.
Conclusion: What’s the Best ActiveCampaign Alternative?
If you’re looking for an ActiveCampaign alternative that’s simple yet powerful with better pricing, then we recommend Constant Contact. It offers a 30-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
If you want to start with a free plan, then we recommend Sendinblue and AWeber. Both services are top-notch and compete with ActiveCampaign on customer support, resources, and more.
For eCommerce stores, you should check out Drip. It’s the best solution to set up your email marketing campaigns for an online store. Drip has a pay-as-you-go model and comes with advanced features.
That’s all for now. We hope this article has helped you find the best ActiveCampaign alternatives and competitors.
Now that you have an email marketing service, we want you to check out these guides too:
- 8 Best Email Capture Tools & Form Builders for WordPress
- How to Create a Free Business Email in Less than 5 Minutes
- 10 Best Email Hosting Providers Compared
These articles will further provide you with email marketing resources to grow your business.
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