Are you considering ActiveCampaign to manage your email marketing in 2022?
In this article, you will learn how ActiveCampaign works, what the ActiveCampaign pricing model is, how it compares to other services in the market, and whether it is worth it for you.
What is ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform that helps businesses manage their entire customer experience workflow.
The platform includes opt-in email forms, list management, list segmentation, email automation, customer relationship management (CRM), and many other features.
ActiveCampaign’s marketing automation software caters to small to medium-sized businesses and has successfully served them thus far.
With over 145,000 customers from almost 200 countries (as of April 2021), the company is valued at over $3 billion.
Most of its new customers come from word of mouth.
The ActiveCampaign enterprise is also one of the more user-friendly services available, helping it cater to solo entrepreneurs and bloggers and larger companies looking to step up their e-commerce and SaaS marketing efforts.
The drag-and-drop editor lets customers set up email autoresponders based on timing, on-site user behavior, user intent, buying history, browsing history, geo-location, and more.
ActiveCampaign combines scaled pricing, user-friendliness, customer support, and marketing/sales capability to help small and medium-sized businesses run their marketing more effectively.
How Does ActiveCampaign Work?
ActiveCampaign is a cloud-based service.
Once logged in, the software allows users to create new automations (email campaigns), manage email lists, view recent subscribers, set up opt-in forms, and view analytics reports.
The core of ActiveCampaign’s service is its automation capability.
Customers can create workflows that run in the background without additional input.
Utilizing automation is a great way to increase customer retention.
For example, you can tell ActiveCampaign to automatically send an email about a specific product only to people who have clicked to read an article about a similar topic.
This type of targeting is more likely to have a higher conversion rate, while not over-selling to the rest of your list who might not be interested in that product.
The software can do this without needing someone to manually segment the list and send an email blast each time.
ActiveCampaign also features machine-learning algorithms to analyze prospect/customer data and offer insights to help businesses make more effective decisions.
Overall, ActiveCampaign helps businesses save time, market more effectively, and increase sales.
ActiveCampaign Pricing
ActiveCampaign’s pricing is broken up into three tiers, starting with the most affordable.
Lite Plan
ActiveCampaign Lite plan pricing:
- 500 contacts: $9 per month (yearly) or $15 per month (monthly)
- 1000 contacts: $29 per month (yearly) or $30 per month (monthly)
- 2,500 contacts: $49 per month (yearly) or $61 per month (monthly)
- 5,000 contacts: $79 per month (yearly) or $99 per month (monthly)
- 10,000 contacts: $139 per month (yearly) or $174 per month (monthly)
- 25,000 contacts: $229 per month (yearly) or $286 per month (monthly)
- 50,000 contacts: $339 per month (yearly) or $424 per month (monthly)
- 75,000 contacts: $449 per month (yearly) or $561 per month (monthly)
- 100,000 contacts: $549 per month (yearly) or $687 per month (monthly)
- >100,000 contacts: Customized pricing
This ActiveCampaign enterprise pricing plan includes marketing automation, email marketing sorftware, unlimited emails, the drag-and-drop builder, pre-made email templates, opt-in forms, segmentation, site and event tracking, and campaign/automation reporting.
The Lite plan supports one user login at a time.
Plus Plan
ActiveCampaign Plus plan pricing:
- 500 contacts: $49 per month (yearly) or $70 per month (monthly)
- 1,000 contacts: $49 per month (yearly) or $70 per month (monthly)
- 2,500 contacts: $99 per month (yearly) or $125 per month (monthly)
- 5,000 contacts: $149 per month (yearly) or $186 per month (monthly)
- 10,000 contacts: $229 per month (yearly) or $287 per month (monthly)
- 25,000 contacts: $379 per month (yearly) or $474 per month (monthly)
- 50,000 contacts: Customized pricing
The Plus plan offers everything in the Lite plan plus:
- landing pages,
- Facebook Custom Audiences,
- contact scoring,
- SMS marketing,
- conditional content,
- advanced reporting,
- CRM with sales automation,
- lead scoring,
- customer success pipelines
- advanced customer experience management features.
In addition, up to 25 users can have unique logins.
Professional Plan
ActiveCampaign Professional plan pricing:
- 500 contacts: $149 per month (yearly) or $187 per month (monthly)
- 1,000 contacts: $149 per month (yearly) or $187 per month (monthly)
- 2,500 contacts: $149 per month (yearly) or $187 per month (monthly)
- 5,000 contacts: $209 per month (yearly) or $262 per month (monthly)
- 10,000 contacts: $339 per month (yearly) or $424 per month (monthly)
- 25,000 contacts: $549 per month (yearly) or $686 per month (monthly)
- 50,000 contacts: Customized pricing
This is ActiveCampaign’s most popular plan, offering some powerful machine learning features.
These include predictive sending, predictive content, marketing attribution, split automations, site messages, sales engagement automation, win probability, and personalized product experiences.
This plan also offers CXA strategy consultations and access to quarterly business reviews from the ActiveCampaign team.
Up to 50 users can create accounts.
Enterprise Plan
ActiveCampaign’s Enterprise plan only offers custom pricing.
With this plan, you receive everything in the other plans plus a host of customization options.
This plan is tailored to larger businesses that want domain support, onboarding, training, custom reporting, design services, email marketing software, and more.
ActiveCampaign Pricing Comparisons
Here is how ActiveCampaign’s pricing compares to some of its competitors.
ActiveCampaign Pricing vs. Mailchimp Pricing
MailChimp is a cheaper ActiveCampaign alternative, with a free option if you have 2,500 subscribers or less.
MailChimp’s premium tiers are cheaper than ActiveCampaign, and MailChimp stays cheaper even as your subscriber base scales up.
However, MailChimp’s email marketing software comes with fewer features overall.
ActiveCampaign Pricing vs. HubSpot Pricing
HubSpot separates its pricing into three tiers.
They are more expensive than ActiveCampaign.
HubSpot’s Starter package starts at $50 per month, their Professional package starts at $500 per month, and their Enterprise package starts at $1,200.
While HubSpot can cater to smaller and medium-sized businesses, it is best for companies with large budgets.
ActiveCampaign Pricing vs. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is cheaper than ActiveCampaign.
It starts at $9.99 per month for their Core plan and $45 per month for their Plus plan.
As the service scales, it stays cheaper than ActiveCampaign.
However, Constant Contact has a monthly send limit of 24 email times your total contacts.
Beyond this, you will pay a fee of $0.002 per email.
Limitations like this aren’t an issue for companies sending fewer emails.
However, some companies could quickly go over this limit.
ActiveCampaign Pricing vs. Emma
Emma starts at $99 per month for up to 10,000 contacts.
They also only offer annual contracts, which might not suit smaller businesses or content creators.
Their other two tiers are priced at $159 per month and $299 per month, respectively, for up to 10,000 contacts.
If you have more than 10,000 contacts, you must contact them for a custom quote.
If you have around 10,000 contacts, Emma is cheaper than ActiveCampaign.
Is ActiveCampaign Worth It?
Compared to other services, ActiveCampaign is on the more expensive end overall.
However, businesses with small contact lists can start cheaply and scale up as their business/contact list grows.
When it comes to the actual service offered, ActiveCampaign offers more advanced features than most of its competitors.
If you want to use targeted automation to increase sales, ActiveCampaign can be an ROI-positive option.
If you also wish to access machine-learning data to improve your decision-making, ActiveCampaign is one of the only SMB-facing services that offer this data.
However, if you won’t get as much value from segmenting your audience and targeted automation, then a less expensive email marketing service might suit your business better.
Wrapping Up
Overall, ActiveCampaign is a powerful tool focused on helping its customers save time, optimize marketing efforts, and increase sales.
Customer results indicate that if ActiveCampaign is right for you and fits into your budget, it has the potential to make a positive impact on your bottom line when utilized correctly.
