10 Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives for Smart Brands in 2024

Email marketing is an evergreen trend leveraged by brands to boost engagement and generate leads. According to marketers, emails deliver the highest ROI among all channels. As a result, email marketing automation software systems such as ActiveCampaign have a loyal fanbase.

Image via Campaign Monitor

ActiveCampaign is undoubtedly the most popular email marketing automation platform. Marketers love its intuitive dashboard, drag-and-drop campaign builder, and sales and CRM integration.

ActiveCampaign Review

Before we delve into the best ActiveCampaign alternatives, let’s understand why ActiveCampaign is the preferred choice of millions.

Features

• Campaign automation flowchart for every client’s unique needs
• Email funnels to convert prospects into customers
• Visually stunning, personalized emails
• Email segmentation and dynamic content

These basic features can help you roll out your email marketing campaigns in no time. But to leverage ActiveCampaign’s advanced features, you’ll need to buy the Enterprise license at a steep cost.

List of 10 Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives

SMBs operating on a tight marketing budget may prefer to use one of the many ActiveCampaign alternatives, available at lower prices.

To help you make an informed decision, we’ve compiled a list of 10 of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives below. Let's take a closer look at how these ActiveCampaign competitors rate, compared to ActiveCampaign.

1. HubSpot

This ActiveCampaign alternative is a great email marketing automation software solution for enterprises of all scales and scopes. Apart from mechanizing your email workflows, you can also automate your sales, marketing, and services systems.

A free CRM underlies all of the processes in HubSpot. You can get insights into your contacts, prospects, and customers from one window. Talk about a one-stop destination.

Features

• Dozens of professional-looking email templates
• Personalized subject lines and content to ensure high open and click-through rates
• A/B testing to identify productive email campaigns
• Salesforce integration that helps analyze each email’s effectiveness
• Lifetime free subscription that includes contact insights and email conversion analytics

Cost

Compared to ActiveCampaign, HubSpot scores higher due to its affordable business model. Its free edition bundles up email marketing with ad management, live chat, and reporting dashboards. The paid packs range from $35 to $2,240 per month. Read our HubSpot review for more details.

Image via HubSpot 

2. Exponea

Next on our list of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives is a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that utilizes AI to give businesses a holistic picture of their customers and targets.

This alternative to ActiveCampaign extracts customer data from online and offline sources, centralizes it, and restructures it so that you get valuable insights about your customers. Then, it helps you develop appealing email content and helps you target it to contacts at the right time, in the right form.

Features

• Cloud-powered to host voluminous contact diaries, on-premise and on-the-fly
• Smart delivery of emails in each contact’s optimal time (derived by complex machine learning (ML) algorithms based on stored interaction records)
• Drag-and-drop editor to craft beautiful emails
• Advanced HTML editor to plugin premade codes
• Easy-to-understand dashboard to monitor email performance

Cost

If you want intelligent analytics along with email campaign execution, get Exponea CDXP. Get in touch with the sales team for prices.

Image via Exponea

3. AWeber

For small enterprises, AWeber is an affordable ActiveCampaign alternative. You can build emails directly from your blog posts, tag emails according to campaigns, and make slick emails with a high conversion rate.

This alternative to ActiveCampaign has an HTML and a drag-and-drop editor. It lets you choose from 100+ integrations with CRMs, shopping carts, and social listening tools.

Features

• Award-winning customer service for 24×7 assistance
• Smart sign-up forms to build your contact lists and auto-segment them
• Effective subject line analyzer to ensure your recipients click and open your mails
• A/B testing of subject lines, content, and send times for better results
• Campaign hubs for your teams to collaborate on each outreach plan

Cost

Registered users can try AWeber for 30 days for free. For 500 contacts and unlimited emails, you pay $19 per month, inclusive of round-the-clock guidance from email marketing advisors and basic automation features.

Image via AWeber

4. Constant Contact

Whether you‘re a retailer or a non-profit association, you’ll find this ActiveCampaign alternative as an email marketing automation solution highly effective.

Compared to ActiveCampaign, it comes with all basic tools – a subject line analyzer, contact segmentation, intelligent analytics, and smart automation. Plus, some advanced capabilities, such as integration with Shopify. Decrease your shopping cart abandonment by sending automated reminders.

Features

• Dynamic content that updates according to a user’s recent online activity
• Event marketing to get customer data using surveys and polls
• Behavioral analysis of contacts to build accurate personas and relevant email content
• 30-day free registration with ecommerce-specific basic and advanced features

Cost

The email and email plus packs cost $20 and $45 per month, respectively.

Image via Constant Contact

5. Salesforce Email Studio

This ActiveCampaign alternative is a sophisticated email marketing platform for launching and automating email marketing campaigns. You can opt for simple workflows to send your pre-built emails, or choose smart sending of personalized content to contacts.

By importing data from your CRM and user behavior analytics, Salesforce builds a detailed contact persona. Then, this alternative to ActiveCampaign helps you craft emails that will help convert skeptical prospects into confident customers of your brand.

Features

• Responsive design tools to help you create emails from any device
• Flexibility to use HTML, drag-and-drop editor, or tailored scripting languages
• Customizable templates conceived by the best-in-industry designers
• Scalable campaigns at affordable rates

Cost

Subscribe to Salesforce Marketing Cloud to get email marketing, phone messaging, automation tools, campaign manager, journey builder, and smart analytics. Contact the sales team for a free quote.

Image via Salesforce

6. Mailchimp

Another of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives is Mailchimp. The email builder has a content studio where you can upload your email content, templates, and media files.

Compared to ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp's super-friendly editor lets you pick and drop components into your email with ease. Like most marketing automation software, Mailchimp has real-time analytics to report your campaign performance.

Features

• Integrated marketing automation tools for end-to-end automation solutions
• Contact segmentation and persona building
• Predictive product recommendations by adding your store’s plugin
• Responsive mobile app and templates that work well across all hand-held devices
• Easy-share options for getting engagement and visibility on Facebook and Instagram

Cost

The Free edition allows up to seven marketing channels, selected templates, automation, and basic analytics. The Essentials, Standard, and Premium plans cost $9.99, $14.99, and $299 a month, respectively.

Image via Mailchimp

7. Marketo

This ActiveCampaign alternative is miles ahead of its competitors owing to its robust strategic partnerships and innovation. It’s a tool made by marketers and aligned with modern email marketing automation trends.

Compared to ActiveCampaign, the super-friendly interface of this alternative to ActiveCampaign lets you launch email campaigns in minutes. Roll out entire email marketing campaigns on the move without technical support or programmer intervention.

Features

• Detailed contact profiling using intelligent forms
• Manual and automated testing of email workflows
• Deep integration with top CRMs to arm your sales and customer service departments
• Triggered emails for every progressive interaction of a prospect with your website or landing page
• A proactive customer feedback cell that strives to fine-tune the platform for better performance

Cost

Marketo’s email marketing bundle includes a landing page creator, template gallery, marketing campaign calendar, and SEO for emails. Contact the sales team for pricing information.

Image via Marketo

8. iContact PRO

Up next on our list of alternatives to ActiveCampaign, iContact Pro can beat competitors for its free registration feature and simplistic email editor. You also get to build beautiful landing pages with appropriately-placed CTAs and easy navigation architecture.

Features

• Coding-free email creation
• A/B testing on sample contacts and scientific evaluation of test results
• Complete automation of routine emails, such as welcome emails
• Creation and hosting of CTA-loaded landing pages for better conversion
• A rich repository of stock images and templates for your emails
• Photo editing tools to transform media content in emails

Cost

You can buy the base and pro plans of iContact PRO software for $27.20 and $54.40 per month. The pro plan gives additional tools for creating landing pages and re-engagement email automation.

Image via iContact

9. Mailjet

Our next ActiveCampaign alternative is Mailjet, intuitive email marketing software. It's great for email marketers and API developers. Its editor, Passport, makes mail creation a breeze. Create action-oriented newsletters and appealing emails that your contacts just can't ignore.

You get a real-time preview of how your emails will look in a recipient’s inbox. Easy contact management lets you handle thousands of contacts with a few clicks. Derive your customer insights for each contact segment and leverage them for creating more effective outreach plans.

Features

• Optional widget to capture customer details while they’re cruising around your website
• Management of access and roles of team members collaborating on a campaign
• Micro-analytics for each email, such as the effectiveness of the subject line.
• Support for multiple file formats of your imported contact lists

Cost

The free edition lets you send 6,000 emails a month, limited to 200 emails per day. If you need a higher volume and access to superior features, buy the basic or premium editions for $8.69 and $18.86 per month.

Image via Mailjet

10. MailOptin

Next on our list of alternatives to ActiveCampaign, MailOptin mainly serves WordPress-hosted websites. It strategically partners with top CRMs, WordPress partners, and marketing software providers.

With this email marketing software, you can send event-triggered emails to capitalize on each milestone in a customer’s journey with your brand.

Features

• A customizable scheduler to launch daily, weekly, event-based campaigns automatically
• Auto-sends emails to announce new content additions to your WordPress website
• Support to all leading email platforms, including Mailchimp and Mailjet
• A dedicated Email Marketing Service (EMS) account for all your personal or client campaigns

Cost

The standard, pro, and agency plans cost $79, $179, and $279 a year, respectively.

Image via MailOptin

FAQs

Q1. What is ActiveCampaign?

A. It’s a customer experience automation platform that helps businesses acquire, nurture, and engage customers. It helps them automate most of the behind-the-scenes processes like support, sales, and marketing so that they can offer optimized customer experiences.

Q2. How much does ActiveCampaign cost?

A. ActiveCampaign’s pricing depends on the number of contacts you have.

For 500 contacts, you can choose one of the following:

• Lite Plan @ $9 per month paid yearly.
• Plus plan @ $49 per month paid yearly.
• Professional plan @ $129 per month paid yearly.
• Enterprise plan @ $229 per month paid annually.

Q3. What are the best alternatives to ActiveCampaign?

A. Here is a list of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives you can use:

• AWeber
• Constant Contact
• MailChimp
• Salesforce
• Marketo Engage
• Mailjet
• MailOptin

Q4. Is ActiveCampaign better than MailChimp?

A. Depends on your business and which features you consider important in an email marketing tool.

MailChimp is one of the free ActiveCampaign competitors to a limit. It is easy to learn, and comes with numerous templates. It easily automates the creation of compelling emails tailored towards customer needs and offers ample learning resources. However, the price becomes steep if your business has a lot of subscribers, and its reporting is not very intuitive.

ActiveCampaign helps you learn from user data so you can send personalized and effective messages. It also has a customer relationship management feature that consolidates your communication and customer data. However, despite having fairly comprehensive reports, they can be difficult to navigate sometimes.

Q5. How long is ActiveCampaign free trial?

A. It is 14 days.

Q6. Is ActiveCampaign a good CRM?

A. Yes.

Their CRM simplifies deal management by making it easy to create, edit and progress deals. ActiveCampaign also allows you to set automated campaigns, send personalized conversations and SMS, set up landing pages, etc.

However, their reports dashboard does not have the granularity you would get with other CRMs like Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce. They don’t also have a free plan for their CRM.

Q7.  What is the best email marketing software?

A. Here is a list of great email marketing software:

• Constant Contact
• MailChimp
• Sendinblue
• Campaigner
• Salesforce
• Campaign Monitor

Q8. What is ActiveCampaign used for?

A. ActiveCampaign helps businesses acquire, engage, nurture, and retain customers using their all-in-one email marketing, CRM, and sales automation capabilities. It also helps businesses track customer behavior across channels, create marketing workflows, and automate sequences.

Q9. Does ActiveCampaign have landing pages?

A. Yes.

To set them up, open your account, go to “Site,” and click on “Pages.”

Choose “Start building,” and then select the button with “Add a new page.” There, you get a list of templates you can choose from, and hovering your mouse over the one you like, gives you the option to “Use This Template.”

You can also choose the “Blank” option to create your own template.

Once the template opens, rename it, save, and customize depending on your business needs.

Q10. How do I set up ActiveCampaign?

A. Start by creating an account or registering for the free trial.

Then, choose services you want, including email marketing, marketing automation, or CRM and sales automation.

Indicate what your business seeks to solve, your industry, number of contacts, and your phone number.

Then, click on “get started” to be taken to your dashboard. There, you can update settings, set up tracking, create a list, import contacts, and start running campaigns.

Which of these ActiveCampaign Alternatives is Best?

If you have a startup and a shoestring marketing budget but big aspirations, pick any one of these ActiveCampaign competitors. They will make your email marketing efforts more productive.

Do you know of any other ActiveCampaign alternatives you think deserve a spot on this list? Let us know your feedback and insights in the comments section.