Home » CRM » ActiveCampaign CRM Review

 
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Rating:
4.5

The Best

  • Seamless sales and marketing automation
  • Deal and contact management

The Worst

  • No free plan
  • Reports

ActiveCampaign CRM Review Everything You Need to Know

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This article has been written and researched by our expert tooltesters through a precise methodology. Learn more about our methodology

Roberta Phillips

Roberta Phillips

Author

Inka Wibowo

Inka Wibowo

Researcher

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A powerful email marketing service and CRM, conveniently packaged together in one tool?

That’s been one of ActiveCampaign’s key selling points, ever since the marketing automation provider launched its CRM feature in 2014.

But how does ActiveCampaign compare to other all-in-one email marketing and CRM tools? And does its strong reputation in marketing automation make it better equipped to help you manage your deals?

Most CRM providers have tacked on email marketing to the main offering. And as you can imagine, they don’t always give the same amount of love to their email marketing product as they do to their CRM.

Luckily, with ActiveCampaign, this is not the case – as we’ll see in this ActiveCampaign CRM review.

ActiveCampaign CRM Summary

ActiveCampaign’s main focus is email marketing – something it does impressively well. Its CRM was designed to complement this. It recently made this available as two separate add-ons: the B2C-oriented “Pipelines” CRM, and the B2B-targeted “Sales Engagement” CRM.

ActiveCampaign wanted to offer a simple way to automate the back-and-forth between marketing and sales when managing opportunities. And, when compared to some better-known CRM giants, its pricing makes it a very attractive CRM software for small businesses.

Want to know if it could work for your business? To help you find out, we tested and explored ActiveCampaign’s CRM and its functionalities. (Please note: the CRM is only available to subscribers of the Plus plan or higher)

Read on to find out the key things we learned about ActiveCampaign and its CRM, to help you make the right decision.

ActiveCampaign CRM video review

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ActiveCampaign CRM Screenshots

activecampaign dashboard
activecampaign deals
activecampign reports
activecampaign crm deals
Activecampaign automations
Lead scoring
activecampaign dashboard
activecampaign deals
activecampign reports
activecampaign crm deals
Activecampaign automations
Lead scoring

ActiveCampaign CRM Pricing

$ 50

Pipelines CRM: Plus plan users

Includes 1 user. $20 per additional user.

$ 85

Pipelines CRM: Pro plan users

Includes 3 users. $30 per additional user.

$ 150

Sales Engagement CRM: Plus plan users

Includes 4 users. $40 per additional user.

$ 275

Sales Engagement CRM: Pro plan users

Includes 6 users. $60 per additional user.

Discounts are available for yearly contracts. Different pricing also applies to Enterprise plan users. Note: the previously-offered Marketing and Sales bundles are no longer available. Find out more about ActiveCampaign’s prices and features in our pricing guide.

Pros and Cons

  • Pros
  • Cons

Pros

  • Seamless sales and marketing automation

    Your automations can go both ways – from marketing to sales, and back from sales to marketing. E.g. say you want to set up an automation for when a contact has reached the ‘Quote sent’ stage, as part of your sales funnel. Set the automation to check whether the contact has responded after 1 day. If they haven’t, the automation will send a follow-up email, asking if they need more information.

  • Deal and contact management

    ActiveCampaign CRM is a tool that really simplifies the process of deal and contact management. In fact, the whole CRM is organized around the concept of being able to create, edit and progress deals – which is probably why they refer to it as the ‘Deals CRM’.

  • Tons of free tools

    ActiveCampaign has developed tons of free tools, including CRM, content and social media calendar templates, a subject line generator and much more. The great thing is, these are available to everyone, not just customers.

Is ActiveCampaign CRM the right CRM software for you?

  • Recommended if:
  • Not recommended if:

  • You need more than just a CRM

    ActiveCampaign’s comprehensive marketing automation suite lets you send newsletters and other automated campaigns, set up landing pages, send SMS to website visitors, and more. The mobile app (available for both iOS and Android) allows for mobile call logging, too.

  • You need advanced sales and marketing automation

    By combining ActiveCampaign’s email marketing and CRM capabilities, it’s possible to set up any automation imaginable. Think triggered campaigns, sales follow-ups, automated segmentation, dynamic email content, and much more. It’s a great Mailchimp alternative, for that reason.

  • You need detailed ecommerce insights

    ActiveCampaign offers an excellent ecommerce dashboard. Aside from the performance metrics, it also gives you recommendations to help grow your online store and outlines contact engagement across the customer journey.

Rating Details

Ease of Use Info popup

ActiveCampaign uses card-based drag and drop technology, where deals can be easily moved from stage to stage. Set up is made easy with the useful ‘Getting Started’ slider.

Pipeline Management Info popup

Stages are fully customizable, so you can create as many as you’d like to match your existing sales process. If you have multiple sales processes (e.g. for each product or service you sell), you can also create a pipeline for each of these.

Contact/Deal Management Info popup

Deals are easy to create and associate with sales pipelines and stages, with your standard fields for description, value, stage, contact details, and assigned deal owner. You can bulk edit deal owners, which is great if you need to quickly reassign deals if someone is on holiday or off sick.

Contact management is facilitated by advanced segmentation and the Accounts feature, which lets you create a record for each business you work with, and add a range of information, including the contacts associated with the business. You can also automatically add account owners and add important details to an account with the account note automation action.

Email Features Info popup

You can connect existing email accounts (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) to ActiveCampaign and send one-to-one sales emails via your own inbox (note: this is only available through the Sales Engagement CRM add-on). There are also excellent email marketing features such as newsletters, autoresponder, and automation as part of their standard email marketing platform.

Automation Info popup

ActiveCampaign’s sales and marketing automation tools are some of the most advanced out there for the SMB market. There are also tons of templates available for you to use. Integrated engagement lets you combine all your channels and set up automated sales funnels – you can really manage your entire sales process.

Reporting Info popup

ActiveCampaign offers a handful of useful reports and dashboard views. However, the customization options could be much greater. A cool feature added recently is the Deal Task Overview Report, which gives you access to metrics on CRM-related tasks and outcomes. You can also measure the tasks of your sales managers or agents, and get detailed insights and recommendations based on your ecommerce data.

Lead Scoring

Lead/contact scoring is included. These can be set up via rules or automations, and let you assign scores to contacts based on their demographic, or actions they take (e.g. page views, email opens, email clicks).

Live Chat

Live chat is no longer available to new customers.

Web Tracking

Site and event tracking is possible on the lowest Marketing plan.

Security Info popup

GDPR, SOC 2, and HIPAA-compliant. Multi-factor authentication available. User permissions are available on Plus, Professional and Enterprise plans.

Languages

The website is available in 6 widely spoken languages. You can change your user profile to one of more than 15 languages (including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian etc.). Support is available in English and a few other languages.

Integrations & Apps

ActiveCampaign allows you to sync calendar tasks from Google Calendar, Outlook and Apple Calendar, so that they also show up within your CRM. It also integrates with Salesforce, Google Analytics, and tons of other tools. In fact, the number of native integrations has reached 900!

Support

Support is fast and friendly, via all mediums. The knowledge base is particularly useful and easily searchable. Video tutorials and webinars are also available, and one-on-one training is offered on the ‘Plus’ plan.

Overall Rating

4.5

With first-rate marketing automation software and an easy-to-use interface, ActiveCampaign has a lot to offer small to medium-sized businesses. Larger enterprises that need very granular reporting might need to look elsewhere, though.

Conclusion

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing tool first, and a CRM second. But does that mean it’s right for you?

My answer would be yes – but only if:

  • Your deals are mainly driven through web inquiries, your email marketing strategy, and automated campaigns (or you plan on generating most of your business through these channels)
  • Being able to automate tasks and communications is important to you
  • You have a relatively small marketing and sales team that are committed to following the required processes
  • You don’t need deep, fully customizable reports

While it might not be as advanced as some of the other specialized (and more well-known) CRMs in terms of reporting, it has a few really strong points: slick automations, seamless integration of sales and marketing tasks and unmatched email deliverability. So if that’s something that you think could really benefit your business, it’s definitely worth a try.

If you’re still not convinced, check out our ActiveCampaign review, where we talk in more detail about the email marketing features and deliverability. You can also see how ActiveCampaign’s landing pages perform in our complete guide.

Try ActiveCampaign for free for 14 days

FAQ

ActiveCampaign is used for creating both simple and complex marketing & sales automations. You can do anything from run your email marketing campaigns to automate how your leads move through your deal pipeline.

Every sales process has a defined set of stages – this is called a pipeline. With ActiveCampaign, you can create an unlimited number of pipelines.

We rate both tools pretty highly for different reasons. In fact it’s a very close call on which the better CRM service – it totally depends on yor¡ur needs. Find out how each tool did, in a variety of categories, in our ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot review.

Yes, ActiveCampaign’s mobile app is available for iOS and Android. You can manage and create deals, track and assign tasks, view campaign and email automation details, schedule and send campaigns, and more.

ActiveCampaign CRM Alternatives

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Read review
pipedrive-logo
Read review

HubSpot is the most well-known, offering a very generous free CRM plan. What’s not so attractive is the price jump when you move onto a paid plan.

Two other CRM tools to check out are Freshworks and Pipedrive CRM. The former offers an interesting mix of sales and marketing features, and the latter is more focused on sales.

This guide covers the top ActiveCampaign alternatives for all things related to email marketing. You can also check out other top-rated CRMs with automation.

The authors

Learn more about us

Roberta Phillips

Marketing Manager

Hey, I'm Roberta! Having worked as a digital marketer for a host of online businesses, I've tried, tested, fallen in love with and despaired with so many marketing tools. I'm excited to help you find the email marketing and CRM tools you need to thrive. I know the ins and outs of tools like Brevo, MailerLite, and Hubspot, so let me know if you need help picking the right one!

Inka Wibowo

Senior Content Manager

Hi, I'm Inka! I spent the earlier part of my career in agency land, helping businesses of all sizes get their email marketing campaigns up and running. Now, at EmailTooltester, I'm using my experience to help businesses like yours find the best email marketing services for your needs. Although I've used dozens of different tools, I'm most familiar with Mailchimp and Kit (I use the latter for my personal newsletter!).

Learn more about us

We keep our content up to date

20 Jun 2024 – New pricing with introduction of CRM add-ons
24 May 2023 – General update
21 Feb 2023 – Plans and pricing updates
18 Jan 2023 – Awards added
29 Nov 2022 – New ActiveCampaign video added
05 Oct 2022 – Changes to plans and pricing
26 Jan 2022 – Some smaller features added
16 Dec 2021 – General update
16 Nov 2021 – General update
15 Jul 2021 – Added FAQ
22 Jul 2021 – Added Deal Task Overview Report

Our Methodology

This review has been written and researched following our EmailTooltester methodology.

Our Methodology

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