ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign Differences

Struggling to build a legit audience? You need a digital marketing tool that can help build an email list, create and send messages, and automate many necessary parts of your campaigns. ConverKit and ActiveCampaign are two options here. In this article, we’ll go hands-on with ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign differences to help you pick one depending on your business type and other requirements.

What are they?: ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign:

As a matter of fact, email marketing is a simple yet effective way to build and nurture your targeted audience. Again, there are various tools available for email marketing while these two are the popular ones in the industry. Before you start with any of them, let’s explore both of them in terms of features, pricing, and other aspects.

What is ConvertKit?

Convertkit started in 2015 and is quite different from other email marketing providers. In addition, they embraced contemporary startup culture with their 24 employees working remotely from 17 different countries. Convertkit is the best solution for professional bloggers, aiming at providing services to busy creatives. Also, they offer lots of automation solutions for email campaigns with simplicity at its best.

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign has been around for more than a decade now, it started in 2003. As of now, they recorded a 250% increase in their user base and a 160% increase in their number of employees, which represents the success of the company itself. Moreover, its email marketing strategy is more comprehensive than any other email marketing tool out there, with a focus on the eCommerce aspect of your business. Also, they offer a whole package of marketing tools for effective campaign running and performance measurement.

ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign: Which one to use and when?

It’s crucial to make sure the service you are signing up for is suitable for your requirements. Given this, let’s check out which service to use and when-

When to use ConvertKit?

• When you are a professional blogger and want to build and grow your email list for your campaigns.
• If you need help to organize your email list with taxonomies like tags and categories.
• Moreover, when you need to create custom sequences and triggers for automating your emails.

When to use ActiveCampaign?

• When you need an email automation tool that is geared towards the eCommerce aspect of your business and helps you build and manage your email list.
• If you need a comprehensive yet easy to use tool to help you customize your messages with a drag-and-drop email designer.
• Also, when you need a tool to collect and organize data on leads in your email list for in-depth insights.

ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign: What are some useful features?

Here is a comprehensive comparison of some important features offered by ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign –

1. Email Templates

With ActiveCampaign, you can create beautiful and interactive emails for your marketing campaigns and funnels using its drag and drop feature. Moreover, they offer a wide range of email template selection to choose from, so there is no need of starting from scratch.

Furthermore, you can also carry out A/B testing on your campaigns to see which headline suits you better. However, with ConvertKit, no email templates are offered. So, you need to integrate email templates from a third party. Similarly, no A/B testing feature is provided with ConvertKit. Obviously, ActiveCampaign gets the edge here because not only it offers beautiful email templates but also offers the capability of A/B testing.

2. Analytics and Reporting

If you’re looking for analytical data and other stats extracted from the performance or any kind of analytical reporting, then, ConvertKit is not for you. As far as reporting and analytics are concerned, ConvertKit offers limited features like click-rate, open rate, subscribers and unsubscribers.

Whereas with ActiveCampaign, you get some comprehensive analytics and reporting tools. Moreover, it offers split testing with A/B testing, the option to track the engagement of your site visitors, get actionable data, option to save records about your customers for more personalized email marketing. Furthermore, you can use those records alongside your CRM and sales information to extract in-depth insights into your target audience. Correspondingly ActiveCampaign is the ultimate winner here in terms of reporting, analytics, and A/B testing as well.

3. Automation

ConvertKit is a typical email automation tool that offers a ‘sequence’ feature. It offers exceptional email marketing by allowing you to set up an ‘if this, them that’ approach. Basically, it can trigger a sequence of email to the users depending upon the actions undertaken by them. Similar to ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign also offers an ‘if this, then that’ approach. Additionally, you can also send your contacts into different segments and campaigns when they complete a task.

Equally important Activecampaign gets an edge here with its ability to offer the sales and CRM offerings with Google extensions and machine learning tools. Not to mention it is helpful in determining which of your campaigns performed better.

4. Deliverability

Deliverability is a crucial factor in email marketing. There is a possibility that a proportion of your subscribers are not getting emails from you for one reason or another. However, you can improve the deliverability with your chosen email marketing provider.

Experienced experts claim that mails from Convertkits are always delivered in the inbox. While ActiveCampaign can sometimes need more configuration for better deliverability. Considering that deliverability rate can be complicated because they often rely on a range of different factors. Therefore ConvertKit definitely gets the upper edge here.

5. Customer Support

You always need some technical help at one point. But not able to get the needed help can leave you hanging and disappointed with the provider. Therefore, let’s have a look at the kind of help you can seek from both tools. With ConvertKit, you can either check out their help centres for articles and guides or you can ‘open a ticket’. They don’t offer live chat support or phone calls.

Basically, there is no immediate support available with ConvertKit. On the other hand, ActiveCampaign offers live chat support, emails, and weekly webinars on basic features of the tool. Uniquely you can also book a one-on-one training session with a rep under the “Education” section of your dashboard. Moreover, you can get responses on live support typically within 5 minutes. Again, ActiveCampaign is the winner here as they offer comprehensive articles, tutorials, email-based support, live chat support, and one-on-one training sessions. Whereas Convertkit seems to offer a do-it-yourself approach.

6. Integrations

WordPress blog is invaluable in building an email list and running successful campaigns. While neither ActiveCampaign nor ConvertKit is WordPress specific, however, they both offer dedicated integration plugins. Activecampaign offers a plugin that allows you to place your subscription post form on any post or widgets you want.

However, the integration plugin offered by ConvertKit allows you to embed a sign-up form or specific pages or posts or include it at the bottom of every page on your WordPress website. Moreover, ActiveCampaign offers exceptional integration with exclusive CMSs like Zapier, ClickFunnels, WooCommerce, and Salesforce as well. Also, the performance of both platforms can vary but ConvertKit obviously gets the edge. Their integration plugin is more flexible, however, it is still wise to test both options thoroughly on a staging site before implementing it.

ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign: Comparison table

A side by side comparison of different factors of ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign-

What is ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign Pricing?

Pricing is sometimes is all that matters while deciding which one to pick. We all want to stick to the budget. Here is an overall overview of pricing for both ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign, so you can have an idea which one will work better with your budget. Furthermore, Convertkit and ActiveCampaign are the best tools for successful internet marketing.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit offers both yearly and monthly billings, with pricing based on the number of subscribers you have. So, you will have to pay $29 a month for up to 1,000 subscribers and $24 a month for the same if you go for the yearly billing. Not to mention they offer flat pricing with a transparent feature list.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers four plans which are customizable, depending upon the number of subscribers you want to manage. However, the plans differ on the number of subscribers and the features you want. With the lowest tier plan, you get basic email marketing plans, enough for a small business. But, if you want to advance your services, you will need to upgrade to a costlier plan.

Get ActiveCampaign Discounted

What are some pros and cons of ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign?

Some of the pros and cons of ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are as given below:

Pros of ConvertKit:

• Beautiful landing pages on the go
• Tailored to bloggers & creators
• Native landing page builder
• Visual automation builder
• Great technical support
• Remarkable targeting and segmentation
• Ease of use for beginners

Cons of ConvertKit

• A bit expensive in the email marketing industry
• Limited reporting and tracking
• Limited email templates

Pros of ActiveCampaign

• Offers the best automation features
• Segmentation and targeting features
• Great support & community
• Value of money
• Split testing automation
• Drag-and-drop email editor
• Great visual automation builder
• Automation and templates marketplace

Cons of ActiveCampaign

• The interface can be a bit slow
• Not many pre-designed email templates

How Does ActiveCampaign Compare with tools?

ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp

ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign – In Conclusion

ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign may share many features in common and they both are basically email marketing tool. They both can create personalized campaigns, both are simple to use and user friendly. However, they have several differences, despite their common features.

Overall ActiveCampaign offers some comprehensive tools like SMS follow-ups, conditional content, split testing, more comprehensive analytics and reporting tools in a more budget-friendly opinion. If you are not looking for a basic tool and want to get your hands on a more comprehensive tool, then we don’t see any reason not to pick ActiveCampaign. It definitely offers more robust features within affordable pricing.

At TemplateToaster website maker blog, we always try to inform you about various best email marketing software and digital marketing tools services for the betterment of your services. We hope this article helped you decide on the more suitable email marketing provider for you. Let us know in the comment which solution you chose and how it worked out for you.

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 rates, Email address harvesting, Email Marketing Tricks to Increase Open Rate/ Click Rate

online marketing campaigns

Inbound marketing and out bounding marketing works