ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign – Which Is Better?

If you’re running your own business, you know how hard it can be to stay organized and keep engaged with your potential prospects and current clients.

If you’re trying to grow an email list, or an online business, you can’t just choose one email marketing tool.

There are a lot of email marketing services out there. In fact, many people prefer ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign for their email marketing needs. While these two services are both very powerful, each excels in different areas.

Today, I am going to compare two different platforms, ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign, and share with you the differences in this email marketing software.

So, let’s dive right in!

Interesting Post: Ways To Increase Email Subscription On WordPress

What Is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit is an email marketing platform that lets you send customized email campaigns to different contact groups. It is a marketing automation tool designed to help businesses build their email lists, send emails, and track conversions.

Additionally, ConvertKit helps you create beautiful landing pages, automate your follow ups, and even integrate with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

ConvertKit allows you to create funnels and automate them. This way, you don’t have to spend hours sending emails to customers and waiting for them to respond. Instead, you simply send a welcome email and ask them to follow you on social media.

It’s perfect for anyone who wants to grow their email list or improve their email marketing campaigns.

Once you have your list, you can engage your subscribers with drip campaigns, nurture your list with automation, and send personalized automated messages with one of ConvertKit’s templates.

You don’t even have to have a website yet. They provide the ability for you to set up a customized landing page for your business to get up and running quickly.

ConvertKit Features

Landing pages

ConvertKit is designed to help you collect email addresses, nurture your audience, and convert leads into customers. With ConvertKit, you can build beautiful responsive landing pages and even lead generation forms without the need for a developer.

Plus, it has powerful automation features that allow you to automate tasks such as sending emails and setting up follow-up sequences.

That way, you can create a landing page for your business or special offer and then invite your ideal customers to subscribe to your email newsletter.

Email Sign Up Forms

A sign up form is one of the most effective ways to get people to sign up for your email list. With ConvertKit, you are provided with unlimited customizable sign up forms that enables you to connect with your audience directly.

Apart from being responsive to all digital devices, these sign up forms are also GDPR compliant. Also, you can add custom fields to these sign up forms depending on your website theme.

You can automate both the appearance and placement of sign up forms, whether you’re delivering a freebie, newsletter, exit intent pop-up, or creating specific blog categories.

Email Marketing Automation

It’s one of the most valuable things you can do, but you’re going to need help doing it. With ConvertKit they have awesome forms, trackable data, and powerful automation tools.

• You can send automated content at the right time to the right people. According to ConvertKit’s website, you can learn how your subscribers act, as well as view context at a glance by viewing cards or their visual automation tool.
• The content editing tool is nice because you don’t have to open multiple tabs, you have to click on the workflow then open the window in the same item.
• You can create rules within your program such as “if this”, “then that” rules.
• RSS Feeds – you can automatically create a broadcast so that you can deliver your blog posts to your audience.

Also Read: Best Aweber Alternatives For Ecommerce

Tagging and Segmentation

ConvertKit prides itself and has built itself around its tagging system which organizes your contacts into easy to find groups.

One of the nice things about the tagging system is you can tag people based around behavior. For example, as you are moving people through the funnel, you can tag them based on if they clicked on a certain add or inquired about a certain product.

Commerce

ConvertKit enables creative entrepreneurs to sell their digital products online. Plus, you can set up recurring subscriptions, one-time pricing, or even flexible pricing option for your digital products via ConvertKit Commerce.

Here are some digital products that you can sell with ConvertKit:

• Ebooks
• Paid newsletters
• Music
• eCourses
• Presets
• Coaching, etc.

Additionally, ConvertKit integrates with Stripe which allows you to receive payment for purchases made by your customers.

Reporting and Tracking

The tracking for your campaign is pretty simple but gets the job done. As you can see from the image above, it shows a nice visual image of the activity from your campaign.

You can choose any date range you want, and even create your own custom date range to view reports.

Check Out: Sumome vs Mailmunch vs Thrive Leads

Integrations

ConvertKit does have the fewest integrations of all the other platforms, but it still comes with over 110 integrations such as Zapier, WooCommerce, WordPress, Leadpages, and Shopify, to name a few.

On the other hand, you can integrate ConvertKit with your custom application by using the ConvertKit API. That way, you can programmatically integrate ConvertKit features like eCommerce tagging and email capture into your solution.

Customer Support And Resources

To begin, ConvertKit has amazing support. They are open 24/7, and you can reach them via email, or live chat.

Additionally, ConvertKit also provides helpful resources that can help users who encounter any issue while using their service.

Take, for instance, users can visit their Help Center, join the ConvertKit community forum, or talk to a product specialist when they login to their dashboard.

ConvertKit Pricing

When it comes to pricing, ConvertKit has three pricing plans i.e. Free, Creator, and Creator Pro.

However, they operate a flexible pricing scheme which depends entire on the number of email subscribers.

Here is their pricing for 1,000 email subscribers:

• Free – $0 per month
• Creator – $29 per month when billed every month, or $25 per month for annual subscription
• Creator Pro – $59 per month when billed every month, or $50 per month for annual subscription

Note: ConvertKit also offers free courses known as Creator Pass to both free and premium users. Also, you can request a demo before making premium commitments.

Also Read: Sendlane vs Aweber

What Is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is a fantastic, user-friendly email marketing software that is designed more for the small to medium sized business owner that’s trying to save money, but they also have an Enterprise package as well.

As a cloud-based marketing automation tool, it helps businesses automate their email campaigns, track customer interactions, manage leads, and create personalized messages.

The company was founded in 2003 and has become one of the leading email marketing solution providers. Their goal is to provide a simple solution for every type of business.

ActiveCampaign offers automatic deliverability, built-in segmentation, and allows you to provide a seamless experience for your subscribers when it comes to reading your email.

It combines email marketing, marketing automation, and a sales CRM all in one nice, easy to use platform. ActiveCampaign has built in triggers for email automation, but you can also build advanced workflows to send emails based on schedules you define.

It’s perfect for businesses that have a need for automation and a budget for a powerful software solution. You can use ActiveCampaign for social media marketing, subscription management, text marketing, and more.

Below, we will look at some of the features of ActiveCampaign and how they compare to ConvertKit.

ActiveCampaign Features

ActiveCampaign has a very robust list of features that you can use to develop beautiful, successful, high-converting campaigns.

Worth Reading: Aweber vs GetResponse

Email Marketing

With ActiveCampaign’s email marketing system you can build email newsletters, create campaigns, and send compelling emails to the right audience at the right time.

• Pre made Templates – 250+ pre made email templates which makes it easy if you are not a good designer.
• Email Segmentation – use tags to sort and organize your contacts
• Subscription Forms – sign up forms that let you capture leads
• Dynamic Content – put different messages in front of different people by combining tagging and conditional content to ultimately send people what they want.
• Split Testing – A/B split testing is available for email subject lines, email content, form information, calls to action, and images.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is one of the most important features when trying to save time. ActiveCampaign has an impressive list of automation tools for you to use.

Also Read: ActiveCampaign vs Aweber

• Site Tracking – tracks your visitors and how they interact with your site so you can market to them the products that they are interested in.
• Event Tracking – lets you see what people are doing in your app, membership site, website, or online portal.
• Automation Goals – lets you see who is moving through your funnel as well as if they are dropping off or not.
• Automation Map – lets you see how automation is connecting to each other therefore helping you to identify new opportunities in your marketing plan.
• Attribution – helps you to determine which marketing is working best such as social media, SEO, PPC, Facebook Ads, etc.
• Split Action – makes it easier to control your actions.

Sales & CRM

The biggest difference you will see between ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign is in the ability for Active Campaign to combine its CRM and automation tools to drive sales.

The sales and CRM tools come with lead scoring, a Gmail extension, and a mobile app so you can run everything from your fingertips.

Their machine learning tool helps you figure out which marketing campaign is working the best as well, so you can make better business decisions.

Messaging

ActiveCampaign allows you to connect with your audience using email marketing, SMS marketing, site messaging, and messages to your targeted Facebook audiences.

ActiveCampaign gives you the power to create personalized and relevant messages at every stage of the buyer journey.

Take, for instance, if someone signs up for an email newsletter on your site, you can add them to a flow that welcomes them and provides them with valuable information.

If someone buys from you but doesn’t complete their account setup, you can create a reminder that encourages them to finish setting up their account and learn about all the benefits of being a customer.

Then if they leave items in their cart on your website, send them a message reminding them about what you have in there and encourage them to check it out.

Mobile App

ActiveCampaign has a CRM mobile application that allows users to manage contacts, assign tasks, create campaigns, track email automation activities, etc. when you’re on the go.

This helps to know that you can always check in on your sales pipeline. You can also track how many people have opened their emails or clicked through to your landing pages, so you can stay in touch with your clients irrespective of your location.

Customer Support And Resources

ActiveCampaign offer world-class customer support that is available 24/7 and can help answer any questions you might have about your account or platform.

They have a robust Help Center where customers can get answers to common questions. Conversely, they also provide live chat support via phone or email.

Whether it is billing questions, feature requests, or anything in between, they have a team of live experts ready to chat with you whenever they are needed.

To contact their team, simply click on “Get Help” in the bottom left-hand corner of any ActiveCampaign page and type your question into their chat box.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign has four different pricing plans depending on how many email subscribers you have.

Here is their pricing for 1,000 email subscribers:

• Lite – $30 per month for monthly subscription, or $29 per month for annual subscription
• Plus – $70 per month for monthly subscription, or $49 per month for annual subscription
• Professional – $187 per month for monthly subscription, or $149 per month for annual subscription
• Enterprise – Custom plan

Check Out: Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives

ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit: Pros And Cons

ConvertKit Pros

• It has a user-friendly dashboard
• Multiple sign up forms
• Fast email deliverability
• Comprehensive email automation functionality
• Email tagging and segmentation
• Diverse email templates
• Reliable conversion tracking
• Helpful customer resources

ConvertKit Cons

• No mobile app
• Unlike other email marketing services, it has fewer integrations

ActiveCampaign Pros

• Ideal for B2B, B2C, and eCommerce users
• It has advanced automation triggers
• Visual email automation builder
• It has email segmentation functionality
• It supports contact sharing
• Real-time email tracking
• It has a mobile app for convenient CRM tracking
• Robust third-party integrations
• Responsive customer service team

ActiveCampaign Cons

• It has a steep learning curve
• Expensive pricing

ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign: Similarities & Differences

Similarities

• With either ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign, you get support for email automation.
• Both email marketing platforms support contact tagging and segmentation.
• Both platforms have WordPress plugins.
• They both support third-party integrations. Also, they provide API for custom integrations.
• Both ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit provides email templates to kickstart your email marketing campaigns.
• They both provide helpful resources and community forums.

Differences

• In terms of customer service, ActiveCampaign edges out ConvertKit.
• ConvertKit is ideal for content creators while ActiveCampaign is ideal for business users.
• ActiveCampaign has a mobile app, unlike ConvertKit.
• ActiveCampaign has more third-party integrations than ConvertKit.

Final Thoughts – ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign

Both of these platforms are good; it just depends on what your goals are.

ActiveCampaign is more flexible and has more advanced features than ConvertKit because when you are trying to sell a product as opposed to just blogging, you need more tools.

ConvertKit is good for bloggers who simply want to send out simple messages to their subscriber base on a scheduled timeline. Whichever you choose, you should be happy with both.