One of the key similarities between Convertkit vs Activecampaign is the fact that they promise the same results. However, they achieve these results in different ways in terms of scope, design, and features.
Convertkit was built with bloggers and content marketers in mind. Active campaign was built to support markets and sales teams with tangible solutions. They do this by the automation tools of email marketing, sales emails or lead scoring.
If you like to know the key similarities and differences between Convertkit and Activecampaign, then keep reading.
Table of Contents
About Convertkit
Convertkit is a marketing software useful for bloggers and content creators. It is a marketing automation platform design that allows you to send emails to the people in your list with ease. It helps you to create segments and automation sequences.
The sequences of emails can even double as a “broadcast” emails in order to easily communicate with the people in your list.
Convertkit’s design prevents you from paying for duplicate subscribers. When you use their marketing automation blueprints, you can quickly and easily get started in marketing automation.
About Active Campaign
Active Campaign is known as one of the most user-friendly all-in-one marketing platforms on the market. It’s great for middle to small businesses.
It combines marketing automation, sales CRM automation, email marketing so it is easy to use. This helps business owners retain and engage customers.
It also helps you grow your customer base. Your email campaigns will not only be eye-catching. They will also help you stay in contact with your customers.
You will also be able to send targeting emails to your audience to potential customers based on their personal interactions with your company.
Furthermore, Active Campaign integrates with over 700 other applications and services. All of these apps and services incorporated with Active Campaign are services focused on sales, open rates, lead generation, and support.
Comparing their Pros and Cons
Convertkit
Pros:
- It is easy to learn to use. It also provides you with limited options that give you all the fundamentals
- The email courses are simple to modify and are accompanied by a drag and drop interface. This interface allows you to rearrange emails quickly. The automation tools are simple. You do not need any development experience to create a well-designed automation email campaigns.
- The visual campaign builder is powerful enough to rival Active campaign
- You can create clean and readable emails that look great on both mobile and desktop
- The opt-in forms provided easily integrate with WordPress through the Convertkit plug-in. This makes it easy for you to add forms as widgets, in page or blog post content, and module pop-ups.
Cons:
- Although you are able to create webhooks, it is not a straightforward process.
- If you want additional features such as affiliate marketing and e-commerce, you will need to rely on a 3rd party integration
Active Campaign
Pros:
- Not only is there a great automation features, but you can also tag people based on their actions
- It has a user-friendly interface that is simple to learn
- The drag and drop email campaign allows you to create engaging layouts that can improve your campaign’s response rate
- You are able to customize your emails with conditional content, which allows you to focus on the deliverability of a custom email based on your contact’s gender, previous website visits, and their location
Active Campaign can also send automated email follow-up messages to your contacts and leads.
Cons:
- Depending on what you need, the pricing structure can get expensive
- Features such as customized branding and domains only come with the Enterprise and Small business plans.
Features
Convertkit does not have many of the features that Active Campaign has. This includes features such as:
- Lead Scoring
- Web activity tracking
- SMS marketing
- Split testing
- Mobile applications
However, Convertkit does have an impressive and useful range of options. This includes options such as:
- Offering customizable sign-up forms to include on your website
- You are able to create customized rules and sequences to automate your emails
- Integrates with many e-commerce platforms and many other tools
Active Campaign has many features that Convertkit does not have. This includes features such as:
- Bi-directional CRM syncing
- Split testing
- Sales reports
- Creating invoices
- Lead segmentation
Active Campaign also has a wide range of additional options. This includes actions such as:
- It helps you build and manage an adequate email list
- It provides features to help you automate your campaigns and you are able to schedule them ahead of time
- The process for collecting and organizing data on the leads in your email list is made simple
Ease of Use
Convertkit has a free trial to help you get started and allow you to check them out without making a commitment. It is also easy to use for people who are as not as technically inclined.
While many marketing software similar to Convertkit promote the simplicity of their products, Convertkit definitely takes simply to the next level.
However, keep in mind that its function beyond marketing automation tools and sending emails is limited. It also has a very strong focus on getting subscribers, emailing them, and maintaining their membership.
Furthermore, it has a function that could be used to track things such as Google Analytics or the custom URL builder that it has.
After your sign up with Active Campaign, you will be given direct access to your main dashboard. It has a very organized design.
Utilize the Getting Started option at the top of your screen. You can check off all the key, important tasks in your list, one after the other. This includes tasks such as creating your very first campaign.Or building an opt-in form and adding email addresses to your list.
You can see how your campaigns are doing from your dashboard. And you can also see your latest stats and any tasks that you have set. Check out any recent activity from your campaigns too.
The Interesting Automated Sequence
Though email sequences can be the most commonly used sequences, automated sequences may also be necessary. The need for automated sequences can be fulfilled by both ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign.
ConvertKit has two different halves of a whole for their automated sequences. They have sequences, which consist of the automated emails. With these sequences, you can make a number of emails with a specific time delay in between delivering the message.
The other half is automations, or the trigger action sets. With the automations, you can choose what happens and at what exact time it happens with different steps.
Steps to setting up these sequences and automations include first creating a single email sequence, and then you must add tags to complete the sequence. It can be a fairly complicated process, as well as time consuming, especially compared to ActiveCampaign’s Automated Sequence setup.
Something that you will find helpful, as well as convenient, is ActiveCampaign’s flexible automations. Their automation builder has a lot more to offer as far as functionality goes.
It is very easy to use with simple drag and drop functions that allow you to complete more advanced automations with a small fraction of the work. You can even add conditional formatting for advanced purposes.
Tagging Ability
Like automated sequences, you can get the tagging ability with both ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit as well. If you are kind of new to this, then tags will be briefly explained.
Tags basically give you the ability to split up any list you may make and to make new actions in your automation sequences. You are able to keep track of the number of tags you create, or if you are good with spreadsheets you can organize them/keep track that way.
For ConvertKit, you create a tag through the automations category. It is important to understand that every tag has two sides which include the action, which marks something that is going to be done, and the trigger when that thing is going to be done.
All of your tags in the beginning will be associated with a trigger and you can continue to add actions until your automation sequence is full/complete.
With ActiveCampaign, you can add tags to a subscriber whenever it is necessary in your automations. Tags can also be used to trigger actions, as stated earlier as ‘something that is going to be done’.
Also, like ConvertKit, you will need to organize your tags with a spreadsheet or keep track of them in some other shape or form that is easy for you to work with so that you do not lose them when you need them.
Integrations
ConvertKit offers you some of the biggest and most trusted integrated apps as well as Zapier. Zapier can give you more access to other systems that you might already use, which can be helpful.
Be sure to look through the documentation for each integration because you want to be certain that the integration has everything that you need to keep your business above ground, especially if ecommerce is an important part of your business.
Unlike ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign offers well over one hundred and fifty different integrated apps for you. If you are thinking, or in the process, of building your online integrated business, you can have a wide variety of integrated apps to choose from to make sure you get the best features for your business.
Never shy away from reading up on all of the details, which may be a little time consuming since you are offering so many integrated apps, but in the end, it will be worth having a big, booming online business.
Some of the integrated apps for both services come with double opt-in plugins that way you aren’t restricted to official plugins only.
Which One Provides Better Service?
ConvertKit presents you with more in general in terms of automating drip emails as well as adjusting them to respond to certain triggers. They also have fairly flexible prices, especially given the features that are offered with their basic plan.
ActiveCampaign allows you to customize your plan in its full entirety that way you do not have to pay for anything excess/unnecessary. They have an advanced dashboard with a multitude of options for email customization and result tracking.
Service wise, overall, ActiveCampaign is a winner. Their service, though only slightly, is cheaper, they are more flexible, and their user experience seems to be better. Their service trumps ConverKit’s service.
Pricing Plans
One good thing about both of these service providers is the fact that they offer a free trial. This lets you to get a feel for their features without having to pay. Just in case you’re not a fan of the functions or the setup.
ConvertKit comes with four basic plans arranged by the number of supported subscribers. Their first plan is 0-1000 subscribers, which is $24/month (which is paid yearly). For the second plan, you can get 1000-3000 subscribers for $41/month (also paid yearly). Their third is 3000-5000 subscribers at $64/month (yearly), and lastly, their final plan is a custom number of subscribers.
The price for the fourth plan is calculated online based on the number of subscribers you choose that happens to be over 5000. Besides the difference in price and the subscriber limit, each plan is exactly the same.
They all have the same key features besides the highest option which is moving your current email from another service for free.
Like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign also has four plans, but they are more flexible and customizable. The plans are Lite, Plus, Professional, and Enterprise (from cheapest to most expensive).
The Lite Plan is $17/month and it includes unlimited sending, email marketing campaigns. As well as the ability to send newsletters. The Plus plan is $49/month and it comes with everything from lite in addition to CRM with sales.
The Professional plan is $129/month and it comes with everything from Plus in addition to site messaging. Lastly, the Enterprise plan is $229/month and it comes with everything from professional.
Before selecting your plan, you can tell them how many contacts you have through the website from a range of 500-100,000 and up.
Customer Support
ConvertKit only has three ways to talk with a customer service representative. You can speak with a representative through email. Or you can fill out tickets, and they will reach out to you. Alternatively, you can get training online to help you. This way, you will not need to come back to ask the same questions in case you forgot.
ActiveCampaign also only has three ways to contact a representative. However, their support options are more useful. You can speak with a representative directly on the phone. Or you can get live video support, and like Convert Kit you can get training.
Final Verdict
Both ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign are great services with very useful features. They help you with the best online business of your dreams. The clear winner in this competition is ActiveCampaign.
They offer more features for cheaper, more integrated apps, email marketing tools, and they are especially easy to use and set up. Their customer support is also more convenient than ConvertKit.
If you want what is the absolute best for your online business, you will want to go with ActiveCampaign. However, if you find that it just does not scratch your itch then you can go with Infusionsoft’s campaign builder. If you want another alternative, try Constant Contact.