MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign

MailerLite was founded in 2005 as a web design agency but then switched to email marketing. The company is remote-first, with employees in 40 countries.

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

No coding or design skills are required to create emails and web pages. The platform also offers an extensive knowledge base with tutorials, which makes it beginner-friendly.

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.

E-commerce, freelancers, small businesses

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

A generous forever free plan with a limit of 1 user, 1,000 contacts, and 12,000 monthly emails. The free plan includes:

• Email editor and automation builder
• Website builder and 10 templates for landing pages
• Sign-up forms and pop-ups
• 24/7 email and chat support for the first 30 days

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

Growing business:

• $9-205/month billed yearly, depending on the number of subscribers, with a limit of 50k contacts at the highest price
• Unlimited emails and 24/7 support
• Includes extra features like dynamic emails, selling digital products, blogs, and an unsubscribe page builder
• 3 users available

Advanced:

• $19-1,600/month billed yearly, with a limit of 500k contacts at the highest price
• An email limit if you have more than 50k subscribers, up to 6 million, depending on the number
• Includes features like custom HTML editor, AI writing assistant, Facebook integration, promotion pop-ups, and more
• Unlimited users

Entreprise:

• Depends on the scope of work
• Only available for businesses with 100k and more subscribers
• Includes the services of a dedicated success manager, onboarding, account audit, and dedicated IP and deliverability consultation

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.

Customer support is available 24/7 via email and live chat — however, it’s only available for 30 days on the free plan. Users can also hire experts in email marketing, copywriting, no code development, and more.

MailerLite also offers an extensive Customer Self-Service Center. It includes:

• A large categorized knowledge base, that includes articles about troubleshooting most common issues
• Video tutorials
• A Circle community where users can communicate with each other
• A free ML Academy with 5 free online courses about MailerLite and email marketing

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

• Email marketing automation
• Sign-up forms
• Landing pages
• Website builder
• Blog builder
• Email verifier
• Transactional emails
• Click maps
• The ability to sell digital products like e-books and online courses
• Setting up a paid subscription for emails

• 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

70+ templates for newsletters:

• Blog digests
• Events
• Holiday emails
• Featured product
• Notifications
• Surveys and quizzes
• Deals and offers
• Emails for creative professionals

40+ templates for landing pages:

• For bloggers
• For creative professionals
• Events
• Surveys and quizzes
• Coming soon
• Celebrations
• Books
• Non-profits

18 website templates for different industries and purposes:

• Business
• E-commerce
• Education
• Events
• Food and drinks
• Portfolio
• Wellness

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

Templates for:

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

139 integrations with services for CRM, loyalty programs, e-commerce, project management, surveys, and more.

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

MailerLite has a web app, an iOS app, and an iPad app only for subscribing leads on offline events.

• 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

English

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

• 15 automation recipes for welcome emails, abandoned cart, membership renewal, online courses, and more.
• Paid versions include an AI writing assistant powered by OpenAI that allows users to write marketing copies faster.
• Automated A/B testing for up to 3 workflow variations.

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.

• A very simple and minimalist product that is good for beginners
• Many unique features like paid newsletters and selling digital goods
• Great customer support
• A lot of integrations available
• Easy migrations from other services
• Extensive video tutorial library for new users

• 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

• May come off as too simple for experienced marketers
• You need to get approval to start working with the service
• 2FA requires a third-party app instead of a phone number
• Stripe integration can be troublesome
• Confusing categories in the interface
• Outdated documentation at times

• 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.)