ActiveCampaign Reviews

Pros
Instead of boring the hell out of you making a long list of all the things I like about AC, I would resume them in just 3 "little" things I care of: - Reputation: They REALLY care about sender reputation. And, you know... an email that doesn´t get to my suscribers is like loosing money out of my pocket. So, I´me really happy the way they´re handling things on this department - Ease of use + functionalities: Most other services only offer one of them things. But I want them all. AC covers all my needs regarding this issues (and I´m a choosy guy, you know). - It´s scalable!: This is a biggy. As your businees grows, you´ll have a new set of needs when it comes to automation. AC scales as your business thrives so you don´t have to switch companies never again.

Cons
I´m a Spanish user and would love a full Spanish translation (at the moment we hace a partial translation) for Spanish users.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Switched to ActiveCampaign from Pipedrive via ConvertKit and Keap - this is something else. I am so impressed. Very easy to use and well laid out, it is easy to create some of the most robust automated customer follow ups I have seen. AC blows the other softwares out of the water. It works, it is easy to understand and it is the most powerful peace of software I have seen in years. I am so pleased my grin goes all the way around my head.

Cons
Customer service gave 8-10 min waiting time on their chat support these days, and that is just not good enough.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
love the automation and the campaigns features. I also like that it integrates with my gmail (G Suite) account.

Cons
some of the features are hidden, the layout is really lacking for easy of use. its hard to find and add tags and lists etc. it seems to have great features but they are hidden away and hard to find.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
You have a massive amount of features available to you to handle basic email marketing, advanced marketing automation, behavioral automations, tagging and audience segmentation, and so on. That's just the basic package, too. More advanced packages introduce a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) aspect that is particularly helpful for sales teams, Lead scoring to help prioritize accounts for your sales teams to be more efficient, and dynamic content (among many other features).

Cons
There is little to see on the Cons. If I had to select something, I suppose the limit of three users on the Lite plan can be frustrating. However, it's typically safe enough for a small business, easy to share logins if needed, and the price and added features of upgrading to the Plus plan is quite affordable as well.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
ActiveCampaign has all the features that other "premium" platforms also have, but the price and the fast set up are totally a game changer. In a few steps you can provision a marketing automation platform with all the capabilities.

Cons
For high database and high sending volumes, maybe it's not the best option. Large campaigns could take time in sending.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I love how powerful it's to create a really good email marketing automation and flow with the builder. I switched from Aweber and it's just another level! Since then I am converting my list at 4%! that it's huge for my industry.

Cons
At first it's a litle difficult to learn how to use it. And it has a lot of features that can discourage beginners.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Easy of use, template options. It's a great software that with some basic learning curve easily lets you design and measure your email campaigns. The automations are very customizable!

Cons
UI/UX feels a little saturated if you don't follow the training guide. You'll easily get lost in number of options and settings. The fact when creating an email you get redirected for simple steps just to edit email header also hurts the flow. CRM - Feels like an lately added feature that is still not there to compete with others on the market,

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
When my clients do not have a CRM, I tell them to get Active Campaign. The month cast for someone just starting out is reasonable and you get WAY more in terms of features than you do with other services. The campaign builders are nice and packed with solid tools you need to set up automated campaigns.

Cons
When in the campaign builder, I'd like to be able to preview the emails without having to open up the builder each time.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Easy to set up automations and API connections. Good account set-up support.

Cons
It was sometimes difficult to get immediate customer support.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I will start with listing out the few things I do like about Active Campaign. It's not the worst I've seen by any means, but there are much better programs out there that can do much more. 1) The home page is customizable which lets you have the data you need right at your fingertips. 2) The reporting on campaigns is actually really nice and shows you exactly what you need to see. 3) Writing emails is distraction free and lets you do the basic task of writing an email. It doesn't give you a lot of unneeded and unnecessary options.

Cons
Active Campaign has a lot of room for improvement. Maybe it's just me, but I don't enjoy using it when I login. I am left with a clunky user experience and I am just not a fan. It's one of those things thats hard to bring down into words, but I will share what I don't like about it here. 1) It's list centric vs. subscriber centric. ConvertKit is a competitor that uses a subscriber centric model and I think it works much better. The entire point of building an email list is to build relationships with folks, and when you have a list centric email list this function gets more difficult as the same person could be on multiple lists. 2) I don't like the inability to easily see where subscribers are coming from. It takes some digging to find a screen that clearly displays how you are getting subscribers. I feel that this is an oversight as the very first thing I want to see is how I am getting new subscribers. I like to know whats working or not! 3) I don't like that it's not intuitive overall. It feels clunky and not like a new tool. It feels outdated and thus I don't enjoy using it.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 4/10

Pros
Active Campaign is a great software, it is very easy to use and having used Aweber and GetResponse I can tell you that the biggest difference is that everything in Active is organized in a logical way and it is easy to grasp. But what is their stronger point in my opinion is the API system, I was able to add, update and delete contacts from a PHP script in a very simple way. Their documentation is very well done and they have functional examples that you can use as a base fro your work.

Cons
The cost structure could be better, other software they can be cheeper but I'm willing to pay that extra money for the simplicity of usage.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Marketing automation tools and templates Deliverability excellent in our experience CRM was enough for our needs, helping coordinate 5 staff. Can use in Gmail, which helped our non-Tech sales people. Reporting that helps quantify engagement and ROI

Cons
CRM was not the strongest, yet enough for our needs Marketing automation services generally are separate from emails you send to larger lists in my approach. Would like an option for sending mail outside the automation to lists, but that may simply be different skill sets (haven't found a solution we like).

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
ActiveCampaign is one of the best kept secrets in the marketing world. The automation builder is both easy-to-use AND powerful. You can trigger actions and segment by almost any criteria you can imagine. In a lot of ways, the automation builder rivals the (what I consider) best-in-class solutions such as Marketo. The email builder is intuitive and the template library comes with a lot of good looking emails to start from. Zero HTML/CSS needed. The built-in SMS messaging is really cool and somewhat unique in the industry. Building an automation consisting of emails and SMS messages is drag and drop, with no integrations needed. While it's limited (as of today) the CRM is really intuitive and clean. If they continue to add functionality in this area they may have something incredible in a couple years. Importing contacts is simple and goes far beyond the typical CSV file. Google contacts, Google Sheets, other email providers. no problem. Possibly the best import tools I've seen in this industry.

Cons
The most obvious one is the lack of a landing page builder. Having landing pages in the tool would be ideal, but solutions such as LeadPages can be easily integrated. Having to pay for email compatibility testing (for different devices) is a bit annoying, feels like you're being "nickel and dimed." The reporting leaves a lot to be desired. I'm really hoping they invest in this area (much more important than having built-in landing pages in my view), as it would really elevate the solution and make it an easy choice vs the Infusionsofts of the world.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
ActiveCampaing is easy to use but its modular approach allows you to do very complex things. I really like the automation features. ActiveCampaign is also integrated with most e-commerce and online services.

Cons
It does not yet have native GDRP management. Numerous configurations are required to comply with the standards.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
My favorite part about ActiveCampaign is the automation features. Using this Automations, you can set up complex marketing email campaigns. I use this to develop a welcome series and a reactivation series for people on our list who stop engaging.

Cons
The part that I did not like is very simple. There is no "Undo" button in the email editor interface. Control + Z doesn't work either. You would think for a basic email design interface an undo option would be standard.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
ActiveCampaign specializes in providing email marketing solutions with an intuitive, visual (albeit a bit slow) interface for creating and sending email campaigns and logical drips (i.e. If Email A opened send Email B or else send Email C). The CRM is a nice add-on if you don't already have a way to manage your client relationships.

Cons
The CRM is quite clunky and doesn't have the power and flexibility of platforms that were designed with that functionality in mind.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
ActiveCampaign has a very deep feature set for the price. Yes, you can build and send emails, and that part works just fine. But the automation features are the standout, as you can build out rich engagement pathways based on user interactions.

Cons
The email editor can sometimes be buggy. If I copy a sent campaign to create a new one and then make changes, sometimes the changes don't save. I've made it a habit to make the change, save and exit. Then I'll go back in to the editor before sending out a test. Otherwise, I'll send the test and some of my changes revert to the old version for some reason. Also, there's not an easy "undo" in the editor. The application stores revisions and you can revert to prior revisions, but that seems more complicated than a simple undo button.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The automation system is really powerful. We can do almost everything within it to achieve our primary goals.

Cons
The UI is a bit old, but you get used to it. The filters for the fields in searching functionality can be improved so we can search for terms in a particular column.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Muuuy bien las opciones de segmentación al enviar campañas y el montaje de embudos. Tiene muchas opciones y no es especialmente complicado. Se basa en etiquetas y listas, lo cual está genial porque da muchas alternativas.

Cons
Sin duda, el editor de emails. Cuando vas a escribir uno no funciona muy allá y parece bastante arcaico. Es muy raro que una herramienta tan completa tenga ese editor tan flojo.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
The feature set AC comes with is excellent considering its low price point. You have everything you look for in an e-mail automation software and with the recent design overhaul it is a pleasure to use. Very easy to customise the e-mail layouts and building automations is very fast after you got to know how it works.

Cons
The many features you have within the software kind of make it a steep learning curve. Other than that there is nothing I could complain about.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The marketing automation side of the software is excellent as is the customer support. We are very happy that we upgraded to a package that includes an account manager - she is very responsive and helpful. The outline/map view of automations works great on all screen sizes - I can work with it as easily on my laptop as I can on my desktop and this was a big difference compared to our previous marketing automation software. Campaign / newsletter set up is easy and reporting on campaign performance is detailed and insightful. The iPhone app is really user friendly for quick updates to the CRM - tasks and notes - on the go.

Cons
I find the CRM / Deal reporting a little simplistic. I would really like to be able to get more detailed information such as detail of deals by user and ability to filter deals based on the lead source. The List Clean Up feature doesn't allow you to preview your list before it deletes contacts. eg. if I want to clean up bounced or unsubscribed contacts I only have one choice and that is to delete them all, I can't preview that list and cherry pick. Neither can I seperate the bounced list by bounce type. These would be really good features to have.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It's very cheap for the services they offer. There is a great amount of customization and especially through the automation that is very extensive. Also, there are pre-made automations for you to use if you don't understand how to make your own, but either way the guides they have everything you need to know on how to make your own. Also, customer service is amazing. They truly went out of their way to make our transition to the product better and even did all the exporting of our email contacts from Emma to them easy to do.

Cons
Minor issues that can be annoying. The builder is wonky. Not like a lot of the other email marketing services we have worked with. Sometimes campaigns we start on go away. Also, very importantly is that emails sent don't come out looking well for those that use outlook! Very bad thing that needs to be fixed.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Automation. You are able to create complicated sales funnels that run on autopilot to maximise conversions and sales. For example, I integrate my ClickFunnels landing pages with ActiveCampaign. Leads receive automated follow up emails, and then further personalised emails based on whether they open or click on a link in an email.

Cons
It was very complicated at first. It would be good if they had YouTube tutorials to get you started, like with ClickFunnels.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
ActiveCampaign offers a lot at a reasonable price point. The tagging system is a great innovation in contact-sorting. The built-in CRM and Salesforce integration make it easy to communicate with contacts and keep track of those relationships. The email studio is refreshingly usable. Active campaign’s support and customer service are truly second-to-none.

Cons
The Salesforce sync, while convenient, is bulky and requires finesse to use. The automation options are a little limited compared to some competitors.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
ActiveCampaign is a great step up from something like Mailchimp if you're going to test some automation features. IT's actually cheaper than Mailchimp and has automation features you'd expect in something like Hubspot.

Cons
I'd love to see some better automation templates to help people who are new to automation get started. That's something the more expensive tools do a good job with.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10