Zoho Campaigns vs ActiveCampaign
Trying to choose between Zoho Campaigns vs ActiveCampaign as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 4.3 GetApp
- 4.2 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 4.3 / 5
Zoho Campaigns
A complex marketing solution with email campaigns. Features include automations, integrations, and SMS marketing.
Pricing
Starts at $3 a month for 500 contacts (billed yearly)
Key features
- Email automation
- E-commerce workflows
- Mobile app for email sending, reporting, and contacts import
- Integrations with various services
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Signup forms
Support
Weekdays support during working hours via email, live chat, and phone by default. Limited support during weekends. On the free plan, the support is only available for the first 14 days.
- 3.6 TrustPilot
- 4.6 Capterra
- 4.6 G2
Average 4.3 / 5
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
Zoho Campaigns
Zoho Campaigns is the product of Zoho Corporation — an Indian-American company. The company was founded in 1996 by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas. Global headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and corporate headquarters outside of Austin in Del Valle, Texas.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign was founded in 2003 by Jason VandeBoom. Hubs in Chicago, Sidney, and Dublin.
Difficulty
Zoho Campaigns
Possible to create emails and automations without coding or design skills. At the same time, many people find the interface to be not very user-friendly.
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
Zoho Campaigns
E-commerce businesses that require simple, essential workflows like post-purchase emails or digital marketing agencies working with different clients.
ActiveCampaign
Businesses that plan to scale their email marketing up to include CRM, e-commerce integrations, and diverse automation schemes.
Free plan
Zoho Campaigns
Has a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers and 6,000 emails a month. The support is only available for the first 14 days. The features are limited. Segmentation, scheduling, and automation are excluded.
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
Zoho Campaigns
For up to 500 contacts, billed yearly/monthly:
- Standard $3 / $4
- Professional $4.50 / $6
Other pricing features:
- 14 days free trial with all the features
- A Pay As You Go plan
- Discounts for non-profit organizations
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
Zoho Campaigns
Weekdays support during working hours via email, live chat, and phone by default. Limited support during weekends. The response time is 8 hours depending on the pricing plan.
On the free plan, the support is only available for the first 14 days.
Offers paid additional support packages.
The Premium plan (an additional 20% of the Zoho subscription) includes 24/5 support and a three-hour response time.
The Enterprise plan (an additional 25% of the annual Zoho subscription with additional requirements) includes 24/7 support, one-hour response time, a dedicated technical account manager, a quarterly report, and early access to new features.
Knowledge Base, community forums, text and video guides, virtual classrooms, and self-service support portal.
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
Zoho Campaigns
- Email automation in a drag-and-drop builder
- Integrations with various services
- SMS campaigns
- E-commerce workflows with content sync between the store and email campaigns and AI product recommendations
- Signup forms
- Drag-and-drop email builder and templates
- A mobile app for Android and iOS to send emails, see reporting, and import contacts
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
Zoho Campaigns
240+ email templates including responsive email templates
The free plan doesn’t have advanced responsive templates
Templates for:
- Welcome messages
- Deals and offers
- Newsletter
- Webinars
- E-commerce
- Emergencies and crises
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
Video/screenshots
Zoho Campaigns
ActiveCampaign
Integrations
Zoho Campaigns
60 integrations including Zapier, Shopify, Salesforce, Twilio, Flickr, WordPress, Zendesk, and more.
ActiveCampaign
Facebook, Google Analytics, WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, Unbounce, ClickFunnels, Salesforce, Zapier, and more
Devices
Zoho Campaigns
- Website
- A mobile app for Android and iOS to send emails, see reporting, and import contacts, etc.
- No installable solution.
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
Zoho Campaigns
Dutch
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
English
Portuguese
Spanish
Chinese
Danish
Polish
Russian
Turkish
Vietnamese
Hindi
Thai
Indonesian
Swedish
Ukrainian
Bulgarian
Croatian
Czech
ActiveCampaign
Czech
Dutch
English
French
German
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Polish
Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Slovenian
Spanish
Danish
Finnish
Simplified Chinese
Turkish
Vietnamese
Automation
Zoho Campaigns
Many pre-built automation workflows:
- Different welcome series
- Reengagement
- Nurture series
- Customer retention
- E-commerce
- Conditional
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
Zoho Campaigns
- E-commerce-focused features
- Integrations with other services including Zoho CRM
- A lot of templates and pre-built automations
- Various support options
- A mobile app
- Relatively cheap prices
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
Zoho Campaigns
- Slow loading times
- Low deliverability
- Design options and the email builder are limited
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
Zoho Campaigns
There are occasional glitches in the execution of campaigns but overall it's a fantastic marketing tool that is more user-friendly than it's competitors.
Pros: Zoho Campaigns has readymade templates that can be reused to save time.It is an affordable product in it's category making it a first choice for most businesses. Zoho Campaigns integrates well with other products such as Zoho Analytics, to generate some valuable end user data visualization that can help organizations take better & informed decisions.
Cons: Zoho's problems remain the same irrespective of the product, their customer support is sluggish and query resolution takes much time. Zoho Campaigns uses automation for scheduling campaigns but the user needs to take care of validation errors in advance else the scheduled job will fail.
Best Campaign Tool for Zoho One Users
This tool is connected in the backend to all Zoho Apps which really helps the Marketing team to track a lead in its entirety. We can have the whole life history of the lead and do lead scoring which can help the Sales team to prioritize.
Still, the deliverability is an issue and there are lot more fine-tuning needed in the features. The intelligence metrics that can come as part of a campaigning tool are not fully achieved in Zoho Campaigns
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”.
“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)”.
*This information is current as of 02/14/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
