
Looking to take your small business to the next level? There are many marketing strategies out there which can help you increase your customer base, plus boost sales.
One ever-popular marketing tool is that of the email automation service. Having a ready-made list of potential customers is a handy way to easily interact with them. But doing this manually would be horrifically time-consuming. Hence the advent of email marketing automation services.
There have recently been a deluge of different email marketing software options coming to the market. While this gives business owners a lot of power in terms of choice, it can also make things seem needlessly confusing. Luckily, Create Your Start is here to help. We’re reviewing a large selection of email marketing platforms to help you decide. Our reviews look at the key features of every platform, along with pros and cons and information from verified customer reviews.
Our Activecampaign vs Mailchimp guide is here help you make the decision between two of the biggest email marketing agency options.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Target Audience
Both of these service providers target smaller businesses, be that a blog or an e-commerce store. They both have a user-friendly interface, making it simpler for you to build professional looking emails through drag and drop.
The main difference between the two is their testing of data. Mailchimp offers a lot of interactive graphs to help you see what’s working, while Activecampaign is more focused on completion of sales, monitoring completion and click-through rates.
Mailchimp is a little more affordable, making it a great first step in terms of email marketing campaigns. But for those who want additional features from their marketing service to build CRM and increase growth, Activecampaign may be the ideal next step.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Automation
Both of these services offer fairly visual means through which to build specific campaigns. They offers a visual style of email builder to help you better track how subscribers are moving through your drip campaigns. The automation features of either option will allow you to successfully target customers, create robust workflows, plus build high quality templates.
Mailchimp may have the slight edge in this category, though, thank to its implementation of social media. By automating ads on different social media platforms, Mailchimp can help gather more information for you, and help you better tailor your campaigns in the future.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Email Style
Both of these companies seem to subscribe to a more is more approach in terms of the email campaigns you create. They help you create fancy-looking, pretty, visual emails. You get a lot of options in terms of customization, including things like width and height, colours and fonts. Mailchimp templates, in particular, are famous for being super aesthetically appealing and visually exciting.
There are pros and cons to this. While the stuff you send out with these marketing tools will look fairly impressive, there’s a chance it may look too much like an advert. However, if you want to build simpler, sleeker emails, that can also of course be done with either of these options – so really, the choice is up to you.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Landing Pages
Neither of these options offer inbuilt landing page builders. Both integrate well with other landing page builders, though this could be a little bit annoying for beginners.
Activecampaign does not have any landing page templates. Mailchimp has quite a restricted selection of two – though they can be customized to quite a large extent.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Opt-In Forms
Both of these services are excellent in terms of building sign-up forms. They can be built and embedded on your site using the handy WordPress plug in. With either company, you can tailor your use to offer single opt-in and double opt-in options.
However, we think Activecampaign has the edge. It offers a more professional feeling form builder, while Mailchimp can feel a little bit amateurish. Mailchimp’s biggest strength is in the Mailchimp campaign email building, while for Activecampaign, it feels like it’s a more all around CRM and marketing tool.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Analytics
Using tools like Google Analytics can be an excellent way to grow your business by finding potential customers. But if you’re using an email marketing service, then you’;ll also want that to give you interesting and useful information about current and potential customers.
Activecampaign allows for constant monitoring of your success. You can set specific goals and move towards their completion. It also tracks conversion rates, so you can see how far through the automation sequence different people are getting. This can help you learn more about how to achieve better click-through rates.
Mailchimp has an interactive dashboard which gives you all the overview information you could want. Often, this information is displayed in handy visual graph form to make things appear more clearly to you.
Both options are pretty top notch in terms of data and analytics. Mailchimp may be slightly favorable for beginners, as the way it displays information can be more user-friendly. Activecampaign may be a little more tailored, which is better for those working to achieve specific goals.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Customer Support
Customer support is an essential facet of any marketing service, particularly for beginners. Both of these services are fairly good for customer service options. There are excellent articles and online help forums for everyone, plus dedicated support teams for their paying customers.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Price Range
Pricing is obviously something that a small business owner should take into consideration. Of the two options, Mailchimp is generally more affordable – but many would say that you get what you pay for.
Activecampaign has two main pricing plans. There’s a Lite option, which starts at around $17 per month, which offers unlimited emails, up to one thousand contacts, and many additional extras. The Full option starts at around $49 per month, but can cost more depending on the size of your email list. This offers all the features the company has to offers, including the CRM they’re famous for.
Mailchimp has a free plan, which limits your list to two thousand and only offers twelve thousand emails per month. Generally, it’s not enough to maintain an email marketing campaign, but it is a great way to try out the service before you commit.
Mailchimp’s paid plans start at a super affordable price, around $10 per month. This grows as your company does, offering you more features.
While neither of these options offer a free trial, there is a free plan with Mailchimp, which may be a great way to dip your toe into the world of automated marketing.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Customer Reviews
Getting to grips with the various features available on these different affiliate marketing plans can be a great way to decide which is the best fit for you. But there’s nothing that’s more helpful than finding out what real, verified customers think of a service.
Activecampaign Reviews: What Real People Are Saying
Activecampaign has a very positive online reputation. It currently has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on review site g2crowd.
People love the CRM Activecampaign offers, plus how well it combines every aspect needed for a well-rounded and successful automated marketing service.
My browser opens to ActiveCampaign because I manage most of my marketing through the system. Email, website visitors, prospect pipelines and advertising campaigns are all conveniently located in one platform. I like that I can manage tasks, pipelines and AUTOMATIONS are the best part of this.
g2crowd.com
Even so, there are some areas where the service seems to be lacking. Some users point out there there are aspects of the service which they wish were included, saying these gaps can make the company harder to work with.
Active Campaign is not ideal for B2B use — for example, when I select an Organization (Company) for a contact that has previously been entered, I have to retype all of the company address information even though it exists for other colleagues from the same company. I would think it’s better suited for consumer marketing outreach. I also wish the template creator was more robust — it’s easier to create a template in the campaign editor than in the “Create Template” editor.
g2crowd.com
Mailchimp Reviews: What Real People Are Saying
Mailchimp is a little less popular online, though still has a very good score of 4.3 out of 5 stars on review site g2crowd.
People primarily draw attention to how user friendly the service is, particularly for beginners. Mailchimp templates are particularly popular with customers.
It has a simple learning curve that allows any user to manage Mailchimp easily. I really like the function of drag and drop when editing what makes it a very practical software. The analytics offered is very good. It offers excellent templates adaptable to different screen formats. The control panel and the respective menus are well arranged.
g2crowd.com
MailChimp makes it easy to begin email marketing. It is easy to use and free with a generous starting number of contacts. It makes it easy to start building your list and build an understanding of what you want to do before committing to a paid service.
g2crowd.com
In spite of this, there are some drawbacks to the service which users also point out. Some draw attention to the price disparity, and wish there was a middle option in between the beginner and expert packages. They also wish it offered better integrations.
If you have a contact management system it can be hard to connect the two accounts to keep things synchronized. Although a lot of popular CRMs already have integrations with MailChimp because it is a popular email platform.
g2crowd.com
The prices seem absurd to me because one is very cheap and the other is more expensive the price is raised too much and there is no average price that is between half of these two plans as well as between these two plans the enabled functions are not much difference
g2crowd.com
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Other Alternatives
While both Activecampaign and Mailchimp are very popular in terms of these sorts of services, they are by far not the only two options available to you. At Create Your Start, we’re dedicated to bringing you the widest selection of reviews possible in order to help you make the best choice.
We have a dedicated review for Activecampaign, if you want more information on this specific option. We also have the same dedicated review for another competitor, Drip Email.
We’ve also compared Mailchimp with a further marketing automation option, Convertkit. Read our review and comparison of those two options here.
If you’re interesting in building an email subscriber list but want to learn more about the subject in general, we also have informational guides to help. Check out our guide to building an email list, and our guide to making money from said list, to help you learn more.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Our Verdict
We’re happy to recommend either of these services – we think they both are good quality companies who won’t leave you disappointed.
However, we do think that each one suits a different purpose a little better. If you’re a total newbie to the internet business game, we think Mailchimp would be a far better choice for you. It’s more initially user friendly, with less of a steep learning curve. It offers more in terms of templates, which can be super handy to those who have never built emails before. In terms of analytics, the way they display certain information can be easier to understand and digest, which can help with future campaign building. Mailchimp also offers that all-important free starter plan, plus is more generally affordable across the board. If this sounds like a good fit, sign up with Mailchimp here.
However, if you’re more of an expert in terms of automated marketing, we think Activecampaign will likely be more up your street. It’s more goal oriented, which can mean it offers quicker and more impressive results in terms of CRM and sales. If you’re convinced by this service, sign up with Activecampaign here.
Have you ever used either of these services? How were your experiences? Do you have a different favourite marketing automation service? Let us know in the comments below!
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