ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp Differences

“ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp” which is the best tool? Recently, one of my clients asked me this question. And I gave him enough factors and reasons to make his choice. And that’s when I decided to write this guide for you all as well. I hope this guide will be helpful for you to decide which tool is right for you.

Deciding upon the best platform can be a little challenging. So, you can use this guide to make your decision. Herein I have compared ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp in almost all possible areas to help you get started quickly. That too with comparing them for features, pros & cons, their usability, and a lot more.

So, let’s dive right in!

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: What are They?

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is a CRM solution that provides you the opportunity to start a strong email marketing campaign. However, unlike other marketing tools available out there, it is another simple yet powerful solution to let you connect with your audiences with ease.

You can easily create engaging emails for your customers using ActiveCampaign. It is a cloud-based email marketing solution that also helps you deal with sales automation, web analytics, and easy customer relationship management.

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is one of the popular email marketing and marketing automation solutions we have. It is best for small to medium-sized businesses. It handles everything from postcards, websites to automation. Mailchimp empowers you to grow your business.

With the use of Mailchimp, you can initiate compelling email campaigns tailored to customer’s individual needs. You can easily manage your campaigns from Mailchimp’s dashboard.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Which One to Use and When?

When to use ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign should be used when you are an experienced marketer. Also, you know how to operate an email marketing platform and its functionality. You should use ActiveCampaign when you are sure that you will be able to navigate through its features.

However, the facilities that come with ActiveCampaign can help you to take your business to the next level. You can effortlessly carry out a B2B and B2C marketing campaign.

When to use Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is a user-friendly email solution. It comes with several email marketing suggestions. Mailchimp can be used even if you are a complete beginner in the realm of digital marketing. It gives you the flexibility to send personalized emails based on user activity and your experiences.

However, it does include many professional features to offer that any expert would like to use. Therefore, Mailchimp can be used by any professional marketers who wish to start a more complicated and involved email campaign for their business.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: How do They Stack Up?

ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp both are really strong competitors when it comes to email marketing and automation marketing. The kind of features and flexibility they are offering is unmatched. And that is where this comparison guide will help you decide which tool is best for you.

Let’s consider all the factors and see how they stack up against each other.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Which is Ease to Use?

When we select an email marketing tool I am sure the very first thing that you should consider is how easy or difficult they are to use.

Mailchimp Dashboard

The interface is an essential aspect that one should never overlook. And Mailchimp’s interface stands out in simplicity. It is intuitive and has a simple to navigate layout. Moreover, the drag and drop email builder makes it even simpler to use.

One thing that I personally like about Mailchimp is that it’s really text-heavy. You will get to see a lot of information on the board just about everything you need. However, beginners may find it a little difficult to get used to the process of creating processes, for instance, opt-in forms, since you will have to uncover a couple of layers to find the exact way out.

ActiveCampaign Dashboard

ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, offers you various advanced features with its clean and comprehensive interface. However, the interface may seem quite complex at first but it is not. The options are really easy to navigate through.

The drag and drop editor lets you quickly build campaigns. Whereas, the marketing automation builder is way more advanced than Mailchimp. Even the drag and drop feature is not enough in making ActiveCampaign as beginner-friendly as Mailchimp. As it is a more technically inclined solution.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Templates

Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp allow you to create email campaigns using drag and drop builder. You can gather email addresses with the help of signup forms on your site.

Mailchimp Templates

Using Mailchimp lets you engage your users with email marketing. No matter if you are just starting out or you are a seasoned pro, Mailchimp’s intuitive email builder includes the tools you need to grow your business.

In order to create templates, you can use the drag and drop email builder. However, you can use the pre-designed templates and showcase your product in just a few clicks. Moreover, Mailchimp’s mobile app permits you to create, edit, and trace performance on your campaign wherever you are.

Furthermore, the pre-designed templates are completely responsive. So, you will not have to worry about the device your email will be viewed on, it will display perfectly.

ActiveCampaign Templates

ActiveCampaign focuses on keeping emails more sophisticated. It provides you 25+ professional templates that can be easily customized according to your business needs. Likewise, you can edit your campaigns with your team using the multi-user editing feature.

It has the facility to store the edits for future use and let you add custom fields to collect custom data. The deliverability is really high and all the emails are entirely responsive. Many other features such as Geotracking, Audience Segmentation, Site Tracking, Link Actions, Social Share, etc makes it a powerful marketing option when compared to Mailchimp.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Marketing Automation

Marketing automation gives you the freedom to focus on other things while automating marketing campaigns. The drag and drop automation builder eases the process of setting up the automated workflow. Marketing Automation is surely the biggest difference between ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp.

Mailchimp Marketing Automation

Mailchimp offers you a range of automated campaign options. It flawlessly provides you with automating the emails and easily starts your conversation with your users. You can have different types of automations such as Welcome Automation, Data-based Automations, Behaviour-based Automation, and RSS-to-email.

However, Mailchimp is not very flexible with automations and doesn’t provide you that much options.

ActiveCampaign Marketing Automation

ActiveCampaign comes with many useful marketing tools. You can use them to engage your audience and grow your business. Features such as Site Tracking, Event Tracking, Automation Goals, Automation Map, Attributes, and Split Action gives you new opportunities to spread your business.

And the seamless integration with in-built CRM can help you raise the sales processes. However, you can easily make it automated.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Sales and CRM

ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp both come with CRM but they are both similar and confusing for some. However, it is really important to understand the difference between these two features i.e. Mailchimp Marketing CRM and ActiveCampaign Sales and CRM. Once you know the differences well, you will be able to use them properly.

Mailchimp sales and CRM

Mailchimp Marketing CRM has a unique feature that gives a dedicated audience dashboard that displays the pre-built segments such as common tags, a recent source of growth, and location. And when you are starting from scratch you can bring your existing list to Mailchimp.

ActiveCampaign sales and CRM

ActiveCampaign has simply nailed the sales and CRM features. Basically, it stores the contact information and provides you the chance to use effective quotes to attract your users. The ActiveCampaign’s sales CRM with automation refrain tasks to be gathered on your list.

It has the capability to manage all your contacts on the central platform. In fact, it will automatically update the contact details and manage the complete history of the recorded contact.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Which has Easy Integration?

Both Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign support several integration options. And they both are playing quite safe in the field of integrations.

Mailchimp Integration

Mailchimp supports more than 200 integrations that fall under different categories such as

• Analytics
• Design
• eCommerce
• Marketing
• Social Media
• Point of Sale
• Payments
• Productivity
• Developer Tools

However, Mailchimp also has an API along with several functional integrations.

ActiveCampaign Integration

ActiveCampaign has successful integrations with over 250+ different apps. The supported integration list is quite long.

• Shopify
• WordPress
• Zapier
• Twitter
• PayPal
• Facebook
• WPForms
• Unbounce
• Google Analytics

The ActiveCampaign API is used to enable integrations between your account and third party services or a custom interface that you might have created.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: Which has Best Pricing Options?

Pricing is certainly an important factor that can affect your choice if you are limited on budget. And that is where Mailchimp is a clear winner because it offers a free plan along with three premium plans and one Pay as you go plan.

However, both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp have different plans with a different set of features included. Let’s learn about the plans they both are offering.

Mailchimp Pricing

Mailchimp has five plans to choose from. Each plan is created keeping various business needs in mind. Therefore, it gets even simpler to take your business to the desired level with some affordable marketing plans.

Free Plan – $0 for sending emails to 2,000 contacts.

Essentials – $9.99/month for sending emails to 50,000 contacts.

Standard – $14.99/month for sending emails to 100,000 contacts.

Premium – $299/month for sending emails to 200,000+ contacts.

Note: The price for every plan is subject to additional charges that may increase due to the use of an excess of monthly plan limits.

And the pay-as-you-go plan offers you the flexibility to pay as you grow. That means initially, you will pay as per the plan you have chosen. And when you want to extend your plan (either you want to increase the number of contacts or number of emails sent every month) you can do that.

However, the Pay as you go plan may seem a bit pricey at times. Because it varies with the number both the number of contacts and number of emails. Whichever you increase will raise the price. And sometimes you may have to pay a bigger amount just for a single contact. Certainly, that can be a problem. You can also learn the best email marketing software, Email marketing tricks to increase open rates, Email address harvesting, and best Webinar Software.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

The ActiveCampaign marketing tool includes four premium plans. It doesn’t have any free plan to offer. However, it offers a free trial for 14-days. And the other paid plans are as follows.

Lite – $15/month for up 3 users

Plus – $70/month for up to 25 users

Professional – $159/month for up to 50 users

Enterprise – $279/month for unlimited users

Note: These pricing plans include only 500 contacts each. However, if you want to increase the total number of contacts you will have to pay a little more for that. Somewhat similar to a pay-as-you-go plan.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp – Which Solution Should You Use?

Which tool is best for you still depends on your needs. I have just provided you with a detailed comparison between ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp. However, it is really important here to understand that there’s no such thing as a “universal” solution to help you. Therefore, you have to make your own choice keeping all the factors into consideration.

However, things like it take time to get used to the nitty-gritty of ActiveCampaign. Whereas, Mailchimp, on the other hand, is quite a simpler solution to get started with.

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp Comparison Table (2021)

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp – Which is Better?

I must say both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp are highly functional and managed the best email marketing software and best digital marketing tools available out there. But which tool can serve you and fulfill your business needs, you can decide that based on your business needs. So, do tell me which tool did you choose and how it helped you grow your business, and to create your own website don’t forget to try TemplateToaster website builder.

But if neither of the tools seems right for you, read about Aweber vs Mailchimp, Convertkit vs ActiveCampaign, Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign, HubSpot vs Mailchimp, Constant Contact vs Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot, Sendiblue vs Mailchimp, Sendinblue vs SendGrid to be sure about your choice.

Related reading
10 Proven Formulas for Killer Email Subject Lines to Increase Open Rate
The Evolution of Pop-ups to Capture Email Leads
Web Design As An Effective Digital Marketing Strategy
Email Marketing Tricks to Increase Open Rate/ Click Rate
How Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing Works?