Item: ActiveCampaign
Rating: 4.5
Author: Jack Farrell

ActiveCampaign does not try to be the simplest email marketing tool. It tries to be the most capable one at a price a small or growing business can actually afford.

The automation builder lets you create logic that most small business email tools cannot replicate: multi-branch sequences, goal-based triggers, contact scoring, and sales pipeline stages all working together. For businesses where email and sales are closely connected, that integration changes what is possible.

We spent more time setting up our first automation in ActiveCampaign than in MailerLite or GetResponse. The results were also more capable. Here is what that trade-off looks like in practice.

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Is ActiveCampaign worth it for small businesses?

It depends on how central email is to your sales process. If email for you means a weekly newsletter and a welcome series, ActiveCampaign's depth is more than you need and the price reflects features you will not use. MailerLite or GetResponse are better value.

If email is tied to your sales process, nurturing leads, scoring contacts, tracking content engagement, and moving deals through a pipeline, ActiveCampaign is the right tool and most others fall short. The 14-day trial with full feature access is the right way to evaluate it before committing.

One note on Trustpilot: ActiveCampaign scores 3.0 from around 1,385 reviews, driven primarily by support response complaints and pricing frustration rather than product quality issues. On G2 and Capterra, where reviewers are primarily active users, it consistently scores 4.5 and above.

How much does ActiveCampaign cost?

ActiveCampaign has no free plan. All plans are billed annually by default. The Starter plan runs from $15 per month (around £12) for up to 1,000 contacts and includes email marketing, basic automation, and the integrated CRM. Plus (from $49/month) adds landing pages, contact scoring, and deeper automation. Professional (from $79/month) adds predictive sending and site messaging.

Pricing scales with your contact count. At 5,000 contacts, Starter runs $45/month; Plus runs $99/month. Monthly billing is available at a premium. The jump from Starter to Plus is significant in price terms, but the features it unlocks (landing pages, scoring, advanced automation) are central to how most businesses use ActiveCampaign effectively.

The 14-day free trial is full-featured and requires no credit card. It is the sensible first step. Some users report prices have increased significantly over the past few years, which has contributed to Trustpilot frustration. Lock in annual billing at signup to avoid mid-year increases.

Does ActiveCampaign have a free plan?

No. There is a 14-day free trial with full access to all features on the plan you select. After that, you move to a paid plan or your account is restricted. That absence is ActiveCampaign's clearest disadvantage versus MailerLite (500 free contacts), GetResponse (500 free contacts), and Klaviyo (250 free contacts).

The trial is full-featured rather than a restricted preview. You can build a real automation, import your list, and send actual campaigns to test deliverability. Most small businesses will know within two weeks whether the platform fits their needs and budget.

ActiveCampaign also offers migration support, helping you move contacts and automations from another tool during the trial period. For businesses switching from a more complex platform, that assistance can meaningfully reduce the transition time.

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day trial with full feature access and no credit card required.

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How easy is ActiveCampaign to use?

More complex than MailerLite, but less complex than it looks at first. The email editor itself is polished: block-based, drag-and-drop, with a solid template library and accurate mobile preview. Getting a campaign out the door is not difficult.

The learning curve comes from the automation builder and CRM, not the email editor. New users typically spend their first week understanding how automations, contacts, lists, and tags interact. ActiveCampaign's onboarding sequence, video walkthroughs, and the importable automation templates all help, but it takes longer to feel fluent than on simpler tools.

Once you know the platform, the editor is fast. Subject line A/B testing is available from Starter. Multiple users report that the tutorials and knowledge base documentation are sometimes out of date relative to the current interface, which can add friction during setup.

How powerful is ActiveCampaign's automation?

This is where ActiveCampaign genuinely leads the category for small business tools. The visual automation builder supports multiple branches from a single trigger, goal steps that pull contacts forward when a target is reached, wait conditions based on contact behaviour, and conditional splits based on any contact attribute or action.

You can build an automation that runs differently for someone who clicked a link in email three versus someone who did not, then branches again based on their next action. We built a seven-step sequence with two conditional branches, a goal step that advanced contacts when they booked a call, and a CRM task creation at the end. It took about an hour to configure correctly and ran without errors.

No other tool in this comparison offers this level of automation control at this price point. GetResponse's Marketer-tier automation is a capable step below. MailerLite's automation covers the basics. For businesses where email sequences need to respond to complex contact behaviour, ActiveCampaign is the right tool.

Does ActiveCampaign include landing pages?

Yes, from the Plus plan. The landing page builder uses drag-and-drop conventions similar to the email editor, with templates for lead capture, webinar registration, and product promotion. If landing pages are a core part of your lead generation, that is worth factoring into your plan comparison, as the Plus tier costs considerably more than Starter.

On Starter, you would need to use a separate landing page tool or integrate ActiveCampaign with one via Zapier. That is a common pattern and works well, but it adds another subscription. GetResponse and MailerLite both include landing pages on lower-priced tiers.

For Plus plan users, the landing pages integrate directly with contact segmentation and automations. A contact who fills in a specific page can automatically enter an automation, get tagged, be added to a segment, and have a CRM task created, all without any additional configuration.

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What are ActiveCampaign's deliverability rates like?

Among the best in the category. ActiveCampaign has a long-standing reputation for strong inbox placement, backed by rigorous list hygiene enforcement and robust email authentication infrastructure. The platform flags potential deliverability issues before you send, including missing authentication, high bounce rates, and suspect subject line patterns.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup is documented clearly with registrar-specific instructions. We completed authentication on a GoDaddy domain in about 15 minutes. The platform monitors complaint rates closely and will pause accounts that receive excessive spam reports, which protects the shared sending infrastructure for all users.

In test sends across Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail, emails reached the primary inbox without filtering. EmailToolTester rates ActiveCampaign 4/5 for deliverability, compared to 5/5 for Klaviyo. In practice for most small businesses, that difference is unlikely to be noticeable day-to-day.

What does ActiveCampaign integrate with?

Over 900 native integrations, covering more ground than any other tool in this comparison. Shopify and WooCommerce connect natively with purchase events, abandoned cart triggers, and revenue attribution. Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive have dedicated integrations for businesses already using a separate CRM. Facebook Custom Audiences and Google Ads let you sync email segments directly to ad platforms.

For everything beyond the native list, Zapier and Make cover the long tail. The API is well-documented for businesses with development resource who need custom integrations. Typeform, Stripe, and most booking tools all connect cleanly.

Some users note that certain integrations are tighter in one direction than the other. Syncing data from external tools into ActiveCampaign generally works cleanly; pushing contact updates back out to external CRMs can occasionally require additional configuration.

ActiveCampaign integrates with Shopify, Salesforce, HubSpot, and 900+ other platforms.

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Is ActiveCampaign good for ecommerce?

Yes, particularly for stores where email nurturing and post-purchase sequences matter. The Shopify and WooCommerce integrations pull in full purchase history, and the automation builder lets you create sequences based on what customers bought, how recently, and how much they spent.

Abandoned cart automation is well-implemented and supports conditional logic. You can build a multi-step recovery sequence that behaves differently for a returning customer versus a first-time visitor, based on their order history. That level of personalisation is more accessible here than in simpler tools.

For very high-growth ecommerce businesses, Klaviyo's predictive analytics and revenue attribution modelling are more sophisticated. ActiveCampaign's advantage over Klaviyo is the integrated CRM. If your ecommerce business also involves sales conversations, bespoke quotes, or high-ticket purchases, having CRM and email in the same platform is genuinely useful.

Does ActiveCampaign have a built-in CRM?

Yes, and it is a meaningful differentiator. The CRM is included from the Starter plan and integrates directly with the automation builder. When a contact takes a specific action in an email, such as clicking a link or reaching a goal step, you can automatically move a deal to a new pipeline stage, create a follow-up task, and notify a team member.

The pipeline view is a standard Kanban board with customisable stages. You can create multiple pipelines for different products or sales processes. Contact records show full email engagement history, automation membership, and deal value alongside standard contact details. Lead scoring is available on Plus and above.

This is not a Salesforce replacement. For small businesses that currently track leads in a spreadsheet or a basic CRM, ActiveCampaign's built-in pipeline offers a meaningful upgrade without adding a separate subscription. For teams that already have a mature CRM, the integration options make ActiveCampaign a strong email layer alongside it.

ActiveCampaign includes a built-in CRM pipeline from the Starter plan. No extra subscription needed.

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What support does ActiveCampaign offer?

Email and chat support on all plans. Response times in testing were typically under 15 minutes during UK business hours. Email support response times were within one business day. The knowledge base is extensive and covers most automation configurations, CRM workflows, and deliverability questions.

Onboarding support is a genuine strength: new accounts get access to a guided onboarding programme, video walkthroughs, and importable automation templates. That helps offset the learning curve. There is also an active user community and agency partner network that produces useful tutorials and third-party documentation.

Support quality has drawn criticism in some Trustpilot reviews, with complaints about slow response times and difficulty getting live help. Some users report being required to pay for additional support beyond their plan tier. Phone support is available on higher-tier plans. For Starter and Plus users, expect to rely on chat and documentation for most issues.

How does ActiveCampaign compare to the alternatives?

Against MailerLite, ActiveCampaign is more powerful and more expensive. If your email programme is relatively straightforward, MailerLite delivers better value with a free tier. If email and sales are tightly connected in your business, ActiveCampaign's automation depth and CRM justify the difference.

Against GetResponse, ActiveCampaign wins on automation sophistication and CRM capability. GetResponse wins on pricing at entry level and on webinar hosting. For businesses that run events or education, GetResponse is cheaper. For businesses running complex email-to-sale funnels or nurture sequences, ActiveCampaign has more depth.

Against Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign wins on CRM integration and automation flexibility for non-ecommerce use cases. Klaviyo wins on ecommerce-specific analytics and Shopify integration depth. For a business that sells both online and through direct sales conversations, ActiveCampaign is the better fit.

Should you use ActiveCampaign for your business?

ActiveCampaign earns a 4.5 because it is the most capable automation and CRM platform in this category for small and growing businesses. The silver rating reflects the absence of a free plan and the learning investment required compared to simpler tools.

Use ActiveCampaign if email marketing is closely tied to your sales process, if you need automation logic that branches and responds to contact behaviour in multiple ways, or if you want a built-in CRM without paying for a separate sales tool. The 14-day trial covers all of that.

Look elsewhere if you are just starting out and need a free tier first (MailerLite or GetResponse), if webinars are central to your business model (GetResponse), or if you run a high-growth Shopify store where ecommerce analytics matter more than CRM (Klaviyo).

ActiveCampaign's 14-day trial is full-featured and requires no credit card. Paid plans from $15/mo.

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Start your free ActiveCampaign trial and test the automation builder and CRM with your own contacts before committing.

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