ActiveCampaign Review 2025: Is It Still the Best?

For a long time, ActiveCampaign was the name everyone thought of for top-tier marketing automation. It was the go-to choice for so many of us.

Having worked with ActiveCampaign on numerous projects for different clients, I’ve seen firsthand why it’s such a popular platform for marketing and CRM. The best part? You can build almost any marketing automation you can dream up, from a single email to a complex, multi-step campaign.

In this review, I’m putting ActiveCampaign through its paces. With years of experience testing over 50 marketing tools, I’ll give you my honest take on whether this email marketing software lives up to the hype. We’ll dive deep into its key features, pricing, and all the pros and cons you need to know.

ActiveCampaign: Our Quick Summary

• Powerful for all skill levels.
• Automation is its key strength.
• Easy to start, but takes time to master.
• Cost-effective, starting at $15/month.
• A top contender worth the investment.

👉 With all the features you can expect, we recommend you have a look at ActiveCampaign. It is certainly worth its salt.

ActiveCampaign: Digging into the Core Features

ActiveCampaign is a powerful platform that goes well beyond just email marketing and a sales CRM. When you first log in, you’ll be impressed by the range of functions available right from your dashboard.

Here’s a look at what makes this tool stand out:

• Effortless Email Campaigns: Send beautiful, professional newsletters with over 240 customizable templates and a simple drag-and-drop email builder.
• The Power of Automation: ActiveCampaign’s true strength is its marketing automation builder. It’s incredibly easy to create sophisticated campaigns from scratch or use one of the 900+ pre-built automation “recipes” to get a quick start.
• Streamlined Sales with CRM: Automate sales follow-ups and eliminate manual tasks to close deals faster and more efficiently.
• Boost Your Lead Generation: Utilize the built-in landing page builder to convert website visitors into valuable sign-ups and customers.
• AI-Powered Assistance: The platform’s AI features help you with everything from content generation and audience segmentation to smart scheduling and reporting.

ActiveCampaign is one of those rare tools that manages to combine a wide array of powerful features without making the user feel overwhelmed. While there’s so much more to it, these core functions are what truly set it apart.

ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons

Pros

• Your emails are more likely to land in the inbox, not the spam folder, right from the start.
• They’ll handle the move from your old platform, saving you a huge headache.
• The platform uses machine learning to help you improve your results over time.
• The drag-and-drop tool gives you the creative freedom to design exactly what you want.
• The CRM features are built in to streamline and enhance your sales process.
• Jumpstart your campaigns with a library of over 900 ready-to-use automation templates.

Cons

• We’d love to see the sales CRM included as part of the standard package, but it’s an add-on.
• If you’re completely new to marketing automation, the advanced features can take some time to master.
• While it offers great value for the features, it’s not the most budget-friendly option on the market.

So, Is ActiveCampaign Right for You?

Here’s a simple way to figure that out.

You’ll Love ActiveCampaign If…

• You want to start small but plan to grow. The platform easily connects with your website for simple tracking, so you can effortlessly build out your first automated email sequences.
• You need serious marketing automation. This is ActiveCampaign’s superpower. Its automation builder is one of the best out there, and with over 900 templates, you can create custom workflows for any scenario.
• You’re looking for an all-in-one solution. ActiveCampaign combines powerful email marketing with a built-in CRM, making it simple to manage your sales pipeline and automate deal-closing tasks.

You Should Consider Other Options If…

• You only need to send basic newsletters. ActiveCampaign is a very robust tool. If your needs are simple, you’ll be paying for a ton of features you’ll likely never use. You might be better off with a more focused newsletter tool.
• You’re on a tight budget. There’s no free plan, and with prices starting at $15 a month, it’s not the cheapest on the market. If cost is your main concern, there are other, more affordable options available.

ActiveCampaign Review Rating Details

Ease of Use	ActiveCampaign is surprisingly easy to use for such an advanced platform. The interface is clean, and the many on-screen tips make navigating its powerful features a breeze.
Value for Money	Starting at just $15/month, ActiveCampaign offers plans that suit businesses of all sizes. The robust automation builder and CRM make it an excellent investment for the features you receive.
Email Editor and Templates	The email builder is highly intuitive and offers advanced features like A/B testing, personalization, and conditional content. You also get access to over 240 professional, high-quality email templates.
Marketing Automation	The automation workflow builder is simple to use, and with over 900 pre-built templates, it’s easy to get started. You can automate everything from basic emails to complex sales pipeline updates.
Segmentation and Contact Management	The platform allows you to create custom contact fields and tags, giving you complete flexibility in how you store and manage data. The new segment manager makes it simple to use your data across all campaigns.
Lead Generation	The built-in form and landing page builders are straightforward and effective. While they get the job done, we’d love to see more templates available in the future.
Reporting and Analytics	ActiveCampaign provides detailed analytics that lets you track website visits and build custom reports. This gives you a comprehensive view of your campaign performance from every angle.
Functionalities	For small to medium-sized businesses, it’s tough to find a platform with more features than ActiveCampaign. It truly is a full-featured marketing powerhouse.
Customer Service	Support is readily available via live chat, email, and call-backs for over 20 hours a day. The contextual, on-page help is fantastic, and their knowledge base is full of up-to-date guides and videos.

Getting Started with ActiveCampaign: It’s Easier Than You Think

Signing up is a breeze and only takes about five minutes. ActiveCampaign asks a few simple questions about your business and the tools you already use. Just fill in your details and verify your account via email. For this review, I signed up as if I were running a Shopify store.

From there, I was given a personalized onboarding checklist. It guided me through connecting my store, importing my customer data, and even setting up my first abandoned cart automation. I’m a big fan of this guided approach; it helps you see the tool’s value right away. You can even try it out for yourself with a free ActiveCampaign trial—no credit card needed.

ActiveCampaign Review: The All-in-One Marketing Platform

ActiveCampaign is packed with features designed to make your marketing smarter, faster, and more effective. Let’s take a closer look at what it offers.

Email Marketing

Users often come to ActiveCampaign for its email marketing features and end up staying for everything else. You can choose from six different types of campaigns:

• Standard: A one-time send for a newsletter or announcement.
• Automated: Emails that are sent automatically based on triggers.
• RSS-Triggered: Automatically sends an email when you publish a new blog post.
• Split Testing: A/B test different versions of your emails to see which performs better.
• Date-Based: Send emails on a specific date, like birthdays or renewal reminders.
• Autoresponder: A series of emails sent to a new subscriber.

Once you’ve chosen an email type, you can easily select your target audience from a specific list. But ActiveCampaign goes a step further. Thanks to its site and event tracking, you can target people who have visited certain pages or taken a specific action on your website. This level of segmentation is incredibly powerful, and I’ll dive into more detail about it when we talk about automation.

ActiveCampaign’s Email Templates and Editor

ActiveCampaign offers a great starting point with over 240 professional email templates, each designed for a specific use case. If you prefer to build from scratch, you can choose from more than 30 layout templates that provide a clean canvas without pre-set designs.

The drag-and-drop editor makes crafting your email a straightforward process. While it’s not the flashiest on the market, it’s highly functional, giving you full control over fonts, colors, line spacing, and padding. You can even save your custom designs as templates to reuse later.

One of my favorite and most powerful features is conditional content. This lets you show or hide specific content blocks within a single email based on a subscriber’s tags, profile data, or actions they’ve taken. For example, if you run a quiz, you can tag users with their results and then show them an email with content that’s perfectly tailored to their unique situation. This allows you to create one email that works for everyone on your list, no matter their preferences or background.

The email editor also includes powerful personalization options to add a subscriber’s name or company details. And with the new AI content and image generator, you can create unique images right inside the platform by simply typing a prompt. This feature makes it incredibly fast to experiment with new designs and find what works best for your campaigns.

Finally, none of these features matter if your emails don’t reach the inbox. ActiveCampaign consistently scores high on independent deliverability tests, so you can rest assured that your messages are getting to your audience.

ActiveCampaign: Where Automation Shines

This is the core of ActiveCampaign and the reason I’ve used it for so long. The platform is widely considered a leader in marketing automation. Here, these powerful workflows are simply called “automations.”

When you start a new automation, you can either build it from scratch or choose from over 900 pre-built templates. These templates are designed for common goals, such as:

• Following up with a new lead based on their site activity.
• Sending a warm welcome series to new subscribers.
• Recovering abandoned carts from your e-commerce store.

The automation builder is incredibly flexible. You can add conditions, emails, and actions to customize every step. For example, you can create a rule that checks if a customer recently made a purchase. If they have, the system can send a follow-up email with product recommendations. If not, the automation ends.

To build your automation, you just click the “+” icon to add the next step. A simple menu pops up, organized by action types like sending emails, setting conditions (like splits or goals), managing contacts (adding tags or subscribing them to a list), or even integrating with your CRM. It makes creating a complex workflow feel surprisingly simple.

ActiveCampaign now has an AI assistant to help you build automations, which makes the process even faster. When I tested it out, I was able to choose from a few workflow goals. For example, selecting “Convert leads into paying customers” gave me three ready-to-go automation templates.

I decided to try the “Convert Leads to Customers with Weekly Newsletters” template, and I was genuinely impressed. The AI had already drafted the email copy and selected a template that matched our brand. You can easily tweak the copy yourself or use the AI content generator to make quick edits. The email editor is also right there, so you can make any design changes you need.

Within the automation builder, you can even use a simple prompt to create entire sequences. I told the AI to “Send 3 emails with a 2-day wait in between,” and it built the perfect drip campaign instantly. The combination of pre-built templates, the AI assistant, and the brand kit makes getting started with automation in ActiveCampaign incredibly easy.

A Quick Example of ActiveCampaign Automation

Let’s walk through a simple scenario to see how powerful ActiveCampaign’s automations can be.

Imagine someone signs up for your mailing list. They get your welcome emails but don’t buy anything. You continue to send them regular newsletters about your industry and new products.

One day, they click on an email, read a blog post, and then visit a specific product page on your site. Because you have ActiveCampaign’s site tracking set up, this action triggers a new, targeted email sequence related to that product.

If they don’t fill out the contact form on that product page within an hour, the system automatically sends a new email asking if they’d like to schedule a call. From there, the automation can either end or, depending on their actions, notify the right team member to follow up. It can also add a “product interested” tag to their profile.

All of this happens automatically in the background using simple “if/then” logic. For more advanced users, ActiveCampaign Plus offers even deeper event tracking and tagging options to deliver a truly personalized experience.

ActiveCampaign’s Sales CRM

ActiveCampaign also includes a powerful Sales CRM. You can add new contacts and deals manually or have them created automatically through sales automations, such as when a visitor submits a contact form or reaches a specific lead score.

One of the standout features is lead scoring. You can manually assign scores or have them automatically applied based on actions like email opens, clicks, or form submissions. This helps you identify your most promising prospects, and the ActiveCampaign AI can even calculate the “win probability” for each lead.

When a contact’s score reaches a certain point, it can automatically trigger a notification to your sales team, so they know exactly when to follow up with a personal call. Beyond this, you can add notes, use integrations with apps like Gmail, access sales reports, and assign tasks either by hand or through automation. If you want to learn more, check out a full ActiveCampaign CRM review.

Landing Pages & Forms

ActiveCampaign has a simple, drag-and-drop editor for both landing pages and forms, which is very similar to the email builder, so you’ll feel right at home. It’s incredibly easy to build a page or form and then trigger an automation the moment someone signs up.

You can drag and drop content blocks from the sidebar to quickly build your page. I was a big fan of the “theme” feature, which lets you change the colors and style of the entire template with a single click—a huge time-saver.

ActiveCampaign offers five types of forms: inline forms, floating bars, floating boxes, modals (pop-ups), and a preference center.

From these forms, you can set up four simple actions: add a subscriber to a list, apply a tag, add them to a sales deal, or send a quick email. This makes it effortless to integrate a simple form with your automations.

Another neat feature is how ActiveCampaign shows your actual website in the background while you’re designing a pop-up. This lets you preview exactly how it will look and feel on your site as you build it.

You can send SMS from automations. Just add a “Send an SMS” action to your workflow, type a name, select the recipients, and add your text message. You can personalize the message and choose the day and time you want to send it. Use text messages to advertise flash sales, send coupons, or remind them about appointments or important events. 

2. Site Messages

Site Messages are notifications you can add to your website to deliver CTAs or updates. You can send them from automations and use contact data to personalize messages. Conditions and goals let you fine-tune who gets the message and when. And you can customize where they appear on a page and on which pages to reach specific contacts based on how they interact with your brand.

I’m just scratching the surface of how you can target users with site messages. Play around with targeting, layouts, and themes to see what works best for you. 

3. Social Media Marketing & Ads

ActiveCampaign has a deep integration with Facebook and Google Ads to add and remove people from custom audiences in automations. 

Let’s say you’re running Facebook ads for a product. After a contact buys it, the automation will remove them from the Facebook Custom Audience, and they won’t see the ad anymore. The customer won’t see irrelevant ads, and you can save on your ad spend. You can also add contacts from Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn ads to your contact list.

ActiveCampaign’s AI: Making Marketing Smarter

ActiveCampaign’s AI is integrated throughout the platform, adding a layer of intelligence to your everyday marketing tasks. For email campaigns, you’ll find these seven features especially useful:

1. Text Generation: Instantly creates or refines subject lines and email copy based on your simple prompts.
2. Image Generation: Quickly adds stunning visuals to your emails. Just describe the image you want, and the AI will create it in one of 17 different styles.
3. Segment Suggestions: Helps you find and group subscribers by analyzing your contact data and their engagement, so you can target the right people with the right message.
4. AI Automation Builder: Build entire automation workflows from a simple text prompt or add new steps to an existing one in seconds.
5. Predictive Sending: Analyzes how your contacts engage with your emails to determine the perfect time to send for maximum open rates.
6. Predictive Content: A smarter version of A/B testing that uses machine learning to figure out which version of an email is best for each recipient.
7. AI Brand Kit: Automatically pulls your logo, brand colors, fonts, and social links from your website URL to instantly generate on-brand email templates.

Within the CRM, you can use machine learning to get a better understanding of which deals are most likely to close, allowing you to focus your time and energy on the most promising leads.

Connecting Your Tools: ActiveCampaign’s Integrations

ActiveCampaign makes it easy to connect to your existing software, with over 950 integrations and more being added all the time. If you use Zapier or their open API, you can link the platform to almost any other tool you use, even custom-built ones.

ActiveCampaign also has powerful premium integrations with popular CRM and e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Salesforce, Magento, and Microsoft Dynamics. These connections go far beyond the basics, letting you pull in extra contact data, apply tags, and track things like purchase history right inside your automations.

Here are a few of the most popular integrations:

• E-commerce platforms: Link your store from platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.
• Email template editors: Use tools like Stripo to create stunning designs.
• CRM tools: Sync data with platforms like Salesforce and Pipedrive.
• Online course platforms: Connect with tools like Thinkific to automate your student communication.
• Email verification tools: Use services like Kickbox to keep your lists clean.
• SMS marketing platforms: Connect with platforms like Slicktext for your text message campaigns.
• Social media and ads: Integrate with Facebook and Google Ads to automate your ad audiences.
• CMS software: Easily link to your website on WordPress and other platforms.
• Reporting tools: Sync your data with Google Analytics to get a clearer picture of your performance.

ActiveCampaign Pricing & Discount

ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15/month. There are 4 plans and prices increase based on the number of contacts and the features you want. Let’s break down the price each plan:

ActiveCampaign offers several powerful add-ons for enhanced functionality, including Enhanced CRM, SMS, Custom Reporting, and Transactional Email.

You can add Transactional Email to any plan you choose. The Enhanced CRM and SMS add-ons are available with the Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans. Custom reporting is included with the Enterprise plan, but you can also add it to the Plus and Pro plans for an extra cost. To get a full breakdown of what each add-on includes and how much they cost, be sure to check out our ActiveCampaign pricing guide.

Customer Support

It’s common for a company’s customer support to suffer as it grows, but ActiveCampaign seems to have only improved. In the past, they primarily offered email support and a knowledge base. Today, you also get complimentary onboarding webinars, live chat, and a wealth of helpful tutorial videos on their YouTube channel.

The tutorials are short but easy to follow, and the support team is known for being both knowledgeable and empathetic. While there’s no direct phone support, my own personal experiences with them have been excellent, and I’d rate their support a solid 4 out of 5.

Final Verdict: Is ActiveCampaign Worth It?

ActiveCampaign is a powerful and versatile tool that’s perfect for businesses across any industry, whether you’re in B2B or B2C.

We wholeheartedly recommend ActiveCampaign if: You have some email marketing experience or you’re ready to take the next step into full marketing automation. You don’t need to be an expert to get started; just follow the step-by-step onboarding guides, and you’ll be set up for success.

You should probably consider other options if: You only need to send simple newsletters. ActiveCampaign is just too powerful for basic needs, and you’ll likely pay for a ton of features you’ll never use. In that case, we’d suggest looking at some of the best email newsletter software or other, cheaper alternatives.

Starting at just $15/month for 1,000 contacts, it’s an affordable investment for any small business that’s serious about improving its marketing and automation results.

My Scorecard for ActiveCampaign:

Ease of Use
Value for Money
Email Editor and Template
Marketing Automation
Segmentation and Contact Management
Lead Generation
Reporting and Analytics
Functionalities
Customer Service
Total score

Considering the powerful combination of its automation, email marketing, and CRM features, it’s clear that ActiveCampaign offers incredible value for your money. My final verdict is simple: you can’t go wrong with it.

7 Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives

Since ActiveCampaign isn’t the right fit for every business, here are some of the best alternatives that still provide the key features you need for successful email marketing and automation.

ClickFunnels vs. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is the clear winner if you’re looking for a powerful marketing automation platform. While ActiveCampaign is designed for a wide range of marketing tasks, ClickFunnels is specifically built for creating high-converting sales funnels and lead capture pages. For building, automating, and tracking complex campaigns, ActiveCampaign is the better choice, offering a visual automation builder that is both user-friendly for beginners and powerful enough to grow with you.

Brevo vs. ActiveCampaign

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an excellent option if your main goal is to send email newsletters and transactional emails without needing the advanced automation that ActiveCampaign offers. While Brevo’s automation isn’t as robust, it excels at these core tasks and has a very easy-to-use newsletter builder.

Brevo’s best features include:

• A user-friendly email newsletter builder
• A basic CRM
• Excellent tools for transactional emails
• Integrated SMS marketing

GetResponse vs. ActiveCampaign

GetResponse has evolved from a simple autoresponder tool into a full-fledged marketing platform. It now includes features like webinars, landing pages, and online storefronts, allowing you to manage all of your digital marketing from a single platform.

GetResponse’s best features include:

• An all-in-one marketing dashboard
• A free plan to get started
• Pre-built templates for most features
• Tools for creating Facebook ads
• Clear reporting across your entire marketing funnel

Kit vs. ActiveCampaign

Kit is a tool primarily built for creators, and its automation features are not designed for e-commerce companies. While it has a niche focus, it compensates by providing extra features, training, and content to help creators get their start.

Kit’s best features include:

• Landing pages
• A free plan
• A decent form builder
• Clear and helpful reporting

Mailchimp vs. ActiveCampaign

Mailchimp is one of the most prominent names in email marketing, but it’s a distinctly different tool from ActiveCampaign. While ActiveCampaign is a sophisticated automation platform, Mailchimp is a simpler option and a popular choice for marketers who just need to send basic newsletters. Its main appeal is its ease of use and a free plan for very small contact lists.

Mailchimp’s best features include:

• A free plan for up to 500 contacts (though it quickly gets expensive as you grow)
• Landing pages
• Facebook Ads management
• Postcards to engage customers

Keap vs. ActiveCampaign

Keap is a comprehensive email marketing and CRM platform that includes features like landing pages, checkout, and affiliate marketing. While it’s a powerful tool with a lot to offer, it can be quite complicated and requires a significant time investment to master.

Keap’s best features include:

• Invoicing and payment processing
• A dedicated Sales CRM
• Appointment booking
• Marketing automation
• A business line and text messages

HubSpot vs. ActiveCampaign

When you compare HubSpot to ActiveCampaign, HubSpot goes above and beyond in terms of inbound marketing. It has additional tools to help you with organic traffic and conversions. While ActiveCampaign is a more powerful email marketing and automation tool, HubSpot is a much larger platform with more functionality across the board—and a much higher price tag.

HubSpot’s best features include:

• A free CRM
• Live chat
• A built-in website builder (CMS)
• Marketing automation
• Landing pages

FAQs

1. What is ActiveCampaign Used For?

ActiveCampaign is a powerful platform for both marketing and sales automation. For marketing, it helps you send automated emails, text messages, and website notifications to your audience. On the sales side, it automatically updates deals, tasks, and pipelines based on your customer communications.

For example, a marketing automation might be a welcome series. When a new visitor signs up on your website, ActiveCampaign can automatically send them a series of emails to introduce your company. A sales automation might be a workflow that updates a lead’s profile when they respond to a sales email. Once they reply, ActiveCampaign can update their contact record and send an instant notification to the sales rep to make a call.

2. Is ActiveCampaign Also a CRM?

Yes, ActiveCampaign’s base plans include a marketing CRM, and you can also get two powerful sales CRM add-ons.

The first add-on, called Pipelines, costs $68/month and unlocks ActiveCampaign’s full sales CRM and automation features, allowing you to automate your entire sales pipeline. The second add-on, Sales Engagement, is available for $111/month. It includes everything in the Pipelines add-on plus automated one-on-one emails, win probability scoring, and sentiment analysis. These CRM add-ons can be purchased with the Plus, Professional, or Enterprise plans.

3. Does ActiveCampaign Have a Mobile App?

Yes, ActiveCampaign offers mobile apps for both iOS and Android. They function as a mobile CRM, letting you manage your tasks, deals, contacts, and accounts right from your phone. You can also view campaign reports and even resend email campaigns while you’re on the go.

4. Is ActiveCampaign GDPR-Compliant? Where is Data Hosted?

Yes, ActiveCampaign is fully GDPR-compliant. While the company is based in the U.S., it stores data on servers within the United States. This data transfer is legally sound under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.

ActiveCampaign provides you with all the necessary tools and features to ensure your own data collection and marketing practices are compliant with GDPR.