ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign

Trying to choose between ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.

ConvertKit vs ActiveCampaign comparison
  • 4.7 GetApp
  • 4.7 Capterra
  • 2 TrustPilot

Average 3.8 / 5

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ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a tool for marketing automation and monetization for independent creators.

Pricing

  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Tools for content monetization

Key features

  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Analytics
  • A/B testing
  • Tools for content monetization

Support

Community support for all users, email and chat support for paid users

  • 3.6 TrustPilot
  • 4.6 Capterra
  • 4.6 G2

Average 4.3 / 5

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ActiveCampaign

An automation platform that combines email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, and machine learning for cross-channel management, segmentation, and personalization. It can also be used to automate sales and support processes.

Pricing

Starts from $9 a month for 500 contacts (billed yearly)

Key features

  • Automation features for marketing
  • Integrated CRM tools
  • Integrations with various popular services
  • Landing page constructor
  • Intuitive email builder

Support

Availability: 9 am - 11 pm CDT (GMT-5) Communication in the chat or via email

General info about company

ConvertKit

ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is based in Idaho, the US. It was created by Nathan Barry, a blogger and creator who needed a better way to promote his books and courses.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom. Hubs in Chicago, Sidney, and Dublin.

Difficulty

ConvertKit

Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.

ActiveCampaign

No coding or design skills are required as there are plenty of automation recipes available. The system itself is comparatively complex, though, and needs some getting accustomed to.

Best for

ConvertKit

Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.

ActiveCampaign

Businesses that plan to scale their email marketing up to include CRM, e-commerce integrations, and diverse automation schemes.

Free plan

ConvertKit

The forever free plan includes the contact list of up to 1,000 subscribers and the following features:

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited forms
  • Unlimited “broadcasts”, or one-off email campaigns, sent right away or scheduled
  • Audience tagging and segmentation
  • Selling digital products & subscriptions
  • Community support
  • Free recommendations

ActiveCampaign

No free plan. Has a free 14 days trial with up to 100 email sends to 100 contacts. The features available within the trial match the Professional tier of features.

The trial is limited to 1 user and doesn’t include:

  • Predictive Sending
  • Predictive Content
  • Sending auto-responder campaigns
  • Custom fields in forms
  • Using “Email Results” in subscription forms
  • SMS credits or sending
  • Adding a domain to a landing page

Pricing

ConvertKit

Dynamic pricing depends on the size of your contact list and the features of interest.

Creator: $9–1,916/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the free features plus:

  • Live chat & email support
  • Paid recommendations
  • Free migration from another tool
  • Automated email sequences
  • Visual automation builders
  • Third-party integrations
  • One additional team member

Creator Pro: $25–2,166/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the Creator features plus:

  • Newsletter referral system
  • Subscriber scoring
  • Advanced reporting

ActiveCampaign

Marketing + CRM

For 500 contacts, billed yearly/monthly:

  • Lite $9 / $15
  • Plus $49 / $70
  • Professional $149 / $187
  • Enterprise — individual pricing

Other pricing features:

  • 2-year price lock
  • Billing pause for 12 months with the account and campaigns intact.
  • Only charges for the contacts the client actively markets to, no matter how many lists they’re on.
  • A 20% discount for nonprofits.
  • Free 14 days trial.

Support

ConvertKit

Community support:

  • The internal forum where you can ask questions and receive answers from ConvertKit support specialists and other platform users
  • Available even on the free plan

Email and live chat support:

  • Available for Creator users
  • Priority support via email and live chat available for Creator Pro users

ConvertKit also provides a knowledge base and a YouTube channel with tutorials. The platform also runs online workshops for newbies in marketing.

ActiveCampaign

Working hours: 9 am – 11 pm CDT (GMT-5)
Either live chat or email requests

Aside from online support, ActiveCampaign offers:

  • Free online training
  • Community and forum
  • FAQ website section
  • Study Hall — in-person learning classes

Features

ConvertKit

  • Email builder
  • Email marketing automation
  • Landing pages
  • Sign-up forms
  • Tools for selling digital products and paid subscriptions
  • List segmentation
  • Lead scoring
  • A/B testing
  • Reporting and analytics
  • Internal referral systems for creators to earn off putting links in your newsletter or paying to get promoted by other creators

ActiveCampaign

  • Marketing automation
  • Landing page builder
  • Built-in CRM for small-medium-sized businesses
  • Many service integrations
  • Drag-and-drop email designer
  • Free migration from other services
  • SMS marketing
  • Site messages
  • Live chat and automated chatbot workflows

Templates

ConvertKit

25 email templates made for content creators by content creators, includes templates for:

  • Newsletters
  • Content promotion
  • Product sales pitch
  • Waitlist

The templates are sourced from other users and you can create and share your own.

ConvertKit also offers 50+ landing page templates not specified by purpose.

ActiveCampaign

125+ templates
No-code dynamic content available
Email template recommendations and guides

Templates for:

  • Abandoned Cart
  • Conference Event
  • Customer Service
  • Holiday
  • Newsletter
  • Reviews Feedback

Integrations

ConvertKit

120 integrations with third-party apps for:

  • Memberships and courses
  • Analytics
  • Lead capture
  • E-commerce
  • Giveaways
  • Quizzes
  • Workflows
  • Webinar
  • Affiliate management
  • CRM
  • Scheduling
  • Email verification

ConvertKit also supports Zapier for even more integrations and provides users with the API docs for custom integrations.

ActiveCampaign

Facebook, Google Analytics, WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, Unbounce, ClickFunnels, Salesforce, Zapier, and more

Devices

ConvertKit

  • Web app only

ActiveCampaign

  • Website
  • Email extensions for Chrome and Outlook
  • Mobile app for Android and iOS (possible to review email reports, track customer activity, and manage CRM data).
  • No installable solution

Languages

ConvertKit

English English

ActiveCampaign

Czech Czech Dutch Dutch English English French French German German Hungarian Hungarian Indonesian Indonesian Italian Italian Polish Polish Portuguese Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese Russian Russian Slovenian Slovenian Spanish Spanish Danish Danish Finnish Finnish Simplified Chinese Simplified Chinese Turkish Turkish Vietnamese Vietnamese

Automation

ConvertKit

10+ visual automation templates for starting a paid newsletter, releasing a new podcast, crowdfunding for a music album, and other tasks that professional content creators might face.

ActiveCampaign

800+ automation recipes for email and other marketing channels.

Offers the whole customer experience automation:

  • Links different integrated services (like Shopify or Facebook) into cohesive scenarios.
  • Collects broad data on each customer, so it’s possible to customize segments based on almost any parameter.
  • Helps to choose the best content, send time, and delivery channel for each individual customer.
  • Has AI advice on improving the marketing strategy.

Pros

ConvertKit

  • Good platform for content creators
  • Great deliverability
  • Supports paid newsletters and has a “tip jar” functionality for free donations from subscribers
  • A flexible tagging and segmentation system for targeted campaigns

ActiveCampaign

  • Hundreds of automation options even for sophisticated purposes
  • CRM features
  • Mobile app
  • A dedicated email deliverability specialist checks the client’s email for compliance before sending
  • Automation of 1:1 communications to customers on the website or social media

Cons

ConvertKit

  • Very basic reporting
  • Expensive compared to other email marketing tools
  • Not great for midsize and large businesses
  • No drag-and-drop builder which makes it harder to design emails from scratch

ActiveCampaign

  • High price and no free plan
  • Customer support is often unavailable or slow
  • Complicated automations system
  • Steep learning curve
  • Reports aren’t great (not enough information, no real-time results, visually unappealing, etc.)

Reviews from experts

ConvertKit

If you’re a blogger, vlogger, frogger, YouTuber, digital course creator, or anyone who makes their own digital content for sale under a single business entity, ConvertKit is 100% the tool for you, and it’s not even close.
It has everything you need to grow your business, including direct integrations with tools specifically designed to make your life easier like course, webinar, blog, and lead magnet plugins.
If you’ve got a stable business and over 1,000 subscribers, you’ll reap all of the benefits of the world’s most streamlined email autoresponder tool at a price that won’t break the bank and is silly easy to use.

Karl Kangur

Karl Kangur

Director of Marketing at Smash Digital, SEO/Marketing speaker

We bought this software after reading the Capterra reviews here, however we find it very limited in customization so it's mainly take it or leave type of features. We could not block freemailers from subscribing, or use custom CSS for the same purpose. In general, it is not a tool to use if you care about following a brand identity of your own.
The set-up process is tedious with Wordpress websites. We were not happy so we canceled, so instead of letting the current paid period last the software deactivated the account immediately and blocked us out of the software. We could not export our subscribers nor our content.

Karan Singh

Karan Singh

CEO of Code Creative India

ActiveCampaign

“ActiveCampaign is a solid choice for your email marketing needs. There are few flaws (though they matter), and if you want a service you can integrate into almost any tool chain, ActiveCampaign’s feature-packed plans have few equals.

While its decent feature set could potentially be let down by the rather high prices on more expensive plans, ActiveCampaign still provides good value for your money”.

Ezequiel Bruni

Ezequiel Bruni

Email Marketing Expert

“So do we recommend ActiveCampaign?
As this ActiveCampaign review highlights, it’s really tough to fault ActiveCampaign, not only do they offer almost everything you need within an email marketing platform, but they do it very well.

The reporting offers you insight into almost all facets, such as page visits, geo-tracking, openers, ecommerce and more. One area that is slightly lacking is the email builder, not offering an experience as slick as other services out there, with a few niggling features that could be done better (like the revision history)”.

Roberta Phillips

Roberta Phillips

Digital Marketer

*This information is current as of 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.