ActiveCampaign

Comments: Setting Activecampaign for a client with a limited budget and limited technical skills, we were able to set up and automate many of the lead funnels for this B2B SAAS company. The tools are comparable to what you'll pay 10X for, and one of the features I love about Activecampaign are their Marketing Automation Workflows - allowing you to setup, segment, and activate the inactive. By using this tool, we achieved 25% open rates in the HR industry where 10% is often average; by integrating the online tools with our inbound marketing Team - both phone and online support - we were able to increase sales Demos 10X over the previous 6 months because Activecampaign helped us motivate the inactive, as well as those who take action. One of the tools I recommend most to clients is Activecampaign because it's performance marketing at a reasonable price.

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).

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.

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.

Comments: ActiveCampaign is a great value for the variety of tools that it provides.

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.

Comments: I needed something more robust than Mailchimp, but I didn't want to invest in an enterprise-level automation tool. ActiveCampaign fits that spot nicely for me. I have what I'd consider enterprise-level features with respect to automation and behavior tracking, but at a much lower price point.

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.