ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp rank among the top email marketing platforms available today. They both cater to businesses of varying sizes and offer an extensive array of features. But which one is the ideal choice for your needs?
In this article, we will conduct a comprehensive comparison between ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp, examining aspects such as features, pricing, integration, user-friendliness, deliverability, email analytics, and customer support.
Upon concluding this article, you’ll have a clear understanding of which platform is the perfect fit for your business requirements.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Comparison Summary
Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp are great options for basic email marketing features. However, every additional part may make a significant difference for those who want to make the most of their email campaigns.
Activecampaign is a more comprehensive platform with automation, CRM integration, automated campaigns, and detailed segmentation features.
It’s also more expensive than Mailchimp. If you’re looking for a simple marketing solution, Mailchimp is a great choice.
However, if you want to make the most of your campaigns and maximize your results, Activecampaign is the better option.
About Activecampaign
ActiveCampaign is a cloud software platform for small and medium-sized enterprises based in Chicago, Illinois.
The firm provides solutions that combine transactional email, email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM systems to create customer experience automation.
ActiveCampaign is suitable for people who know how to use email marketing software and have experience setting up autoresponders and creating segments.
It is a good tool for B2B and B2C marketers since it enables you to manage the business and individual consumer accounts.
About Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an American marketing automation platform and popular email marketing service that enables you to manage mailing lists and deploy email marketing campaigns.
Mailchimp is an easy-to-use solution that provides many tips for digital marketing. The tips are personalized and tailored to your goals and experience, making them a good option for novice email marketers.
With a robust feature set, including complex segmentation and customization capabilities, Mailchimp is also ideal for marketers who want to build more advanced campaigns.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Factors
There are several factors to consider when determining which platform is right for you, including:
1. Features
One of the most important factors to consider is each platform’s features. Activecampaign and Mailchimp offer a wide range of features, but the two platforms have some critical differences.
What ActiveCampaign offers
ActiveCampaign provides a limited set of email templates. This means you have to put more effort into designing your messages and thinking about how to start an email.
However, because these templates are designed with specific purposes – such as product suggestions, discount codes, and welcome emails – it’s simpler to adapt your emails to them.
The downside is that creating your email from scratch can be more time-consuming.
The features that Activecampaign offers are:
1. Email Testing
After crafting your email, you can test its appearance across various browsers and devices. This useful feature ensures that your email looks appealing to all recipients.
The email testing capabilities are impressive, as they allow you to preview your message on both mobile and desktop devices and multiple email clients.
Additionally, a spam check evaluates your email address, email client, and domain to determine if your message might be classified as spam.
2. Advanced Segmentation
ActiveCampaign’s segments rely on criteria you define, such as demographics, location, or behavior. This enables you to tailor your messages to particular audience groups and even create segments based on interactions with your website or app.
Furthermore, you can establish dynamic segments that automatically update when new subscribers meet your specified criteria. This tool is invaluable for targeting your audience with pinpoint accuracy.
3. CRM Integration
Integrating CRM is a significant advantage for sales teams, as it facilitates tracking interactions with leads and customers. It also permits sending automated messages based on specific actions taken within the CRM system, like making a purchase or scheduling a meeting.
Moreover, you can develop automation workflows that initiate particular actions in your CRM system in response to email interactions. For instance, you could add a lead to a sales pipeline when they open an email or click a link.
4. Auto Responder
The autoresponder functionality in ActiveCampaign allows you to dispatch messages automatically, triggered by specific actions performed by your subscribers.
For instance, you can send a welcome email upon a new subscription to your list or a purchase confirmation when a transaction occurs.
Additionally, you can craft personalized messages for distinct audience segments, which serves as an invaluable instrument for customizing your communication.
5. Custom Domain
The custom domain feature enables you to utilize your domain name for your ActiveCampaign account. This proves to be a beneficial tool for enhancing brand awareness and fostering trust with your audience.
Furthermore, it simplifies tracking interactions with your emails, as all links within your messages will include your domain name.
6. Comprehensive Email
Analytics ActiveCampaign offers in-depth email analytics, allowing you to assess the performance of your messages. You can view metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribe rate.
Additionally, you can monitor specific email interactions, like link clicks or message forwarding by a subscriber. This valuable data can assist you in refining your email marketing campaigns.
7. Social Data Enrichment
The social data enrichment functionality enables you to incorporate social media data into your contact records. This valuable insight can aid you in gaining a better understanding of your audience and crafting more targeted messages.
Additionally, you can utilize this data to establish audience segments based on their social media engagement. This approach helps you to focus your messages more efficiently and establish a stronger connection with your audience.
What Mailchimp offers
Mailchimp is simple to use, especially if you have a basic understanding of email marketing. The user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate.
The features offered by Mailchimp are comprehensive and cover all the basics of email marketing automation.
1. Email Templates
Mailchimp presents a diverse array of email templates that can be employed to craft your messages. These MailChimp templates cater to various message types, from promotional to transactional.
Additionally, you can tailor the custom templates used to align with your brand identity. This proves to be an invaluable resource for generating consistent and professional-looking messages.
2. Marketing CRM
The marketing CRM functionality allows you to monitor your subscribers’ engagement with your brand and send automated messages based on specific actions executed by your contacts.
Moreover, marketing CRM can be used to segment your audience and effectively target your messages. This tool is essential for enhancing the ROI of your email marketing campaigns.
3. Audience dashboard
An audience dashboard is a valuable tool for understanding your subscribers. It provides you with insights into things like demographics, interests, and engagement levels.
You can also use the audience dashboard to create segments of your audience and effectively target your messages. This is a valuable tool for increasing the ROI of your email marketing automation campaigns.
4. Segmentation
Mailchimp’s segmentation feature allows you to divide your audience into groups based on specific criteria to send them more targeted and relevant content.
This is a powerful tool that can help you boost your open and click-through rates, as well as improve your overall marketing ROI.
You can segment your audience based on demographics, interests, engagement levels, and contact history. This is timely information that may assist you in crafting more relevant messages.
5. A/B Testing
Email testing serves as a crucial instrument for optimizing your email marketing endeavors. It enables you to compare various message versions and identify the top performers.
Such valuable insights can aid in enhancing the overall efficacy of your email marketing campaigns.
6. Automation
Mailchimp’s automation functionality permits sending automated messages based on distinct interactions with your subscribers. This automation tool is invaluable for boosting the ROI of your email marketing initiatives.
You can implement automated communications concerning contact activities, subscriber interactions, and purchasing history. Utilizing this information for better marketing automation can foster more personal connections with your audience.
7. Predicted Demographics
The predicted demographics feature provides the probability of subscriber engagement with your content based on their demographic data. This valuable insight can assist you in more effectively targeting your messages.
You can use this information to refine segmentation and targeting within your communications. This essential tool contributes to an increased return on investment for your email marketing automation.
Activecampaign vs Mailchimp: Pricing
It’s essential to understand how pricing changes based on the different plans and how many contacts you have.
ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp costs go up as you add more people to your contact list.
ActiveCampaign
The ActiveCampaign pricing plans are as follows:
- Plus Plan: Starts at $49/month paid yearly with 3 users; this plan comes with email marketing & marketing automation, inline, pop-up, and modal forms, landing pages, Facebook custom audiences & lead ads, site & event tracking, API & webhooks, WooCommerce, Shopify & BigCommerce integrations, and an email content generation feature that’s powered by AI.
- Professional Plan: Priced at $149/month paid yearly with 5 users, the Professional Plan hosts all of the features present in the ‘Plus’ plan but with split automation, salesforce integration, Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration, site messages, attribution reporting, conversions, accounts, and AI-powered predictive sending.
- Enterprise Plan: For bigger teams, the ‘Enterprise’ plan pricing is best customized with a representative from ActiveCampaign. The plan includes all of the features in the ‘Professional’ plan plus custom reporting, custom objects, single sign-on, uptime SLA, HIPAA support, custom mail server domain, and unlimited email testing.
MailChimp
It’s important to take note that the current MailChimp pricing plan displayed on the official site of the brand is a limited-time-only offer. At the moment, new subscribers are offered 75% off on all plans. When the offer ends, original pricing will resume.
The prices for MailChimp plans are as follows:
- Free Plan: For beginners who want to grow their audience and create campaigns while testing some of Mailchimp’s tools and features. A maximum of 500 contacts. The monthly email send limit for the Free plan is 1,000 sends (daily limit of 500).
- Essentials Plan: Starting at (
$13) $3.25/month, it includes all the basics for businesses just starting. Includes 500 contacts. The monthly email send limit for Essentials plans is 10 times your maximum contact count.
- Standard Plan: Starting at (
$20) $5.00/month, it offers better insights for growing businesses that want more customers. Includes 500 contacts. The monthly email send limit for Standard plans is 12 times your maximum contact count.
- Premium Plan: Starting at (
$350) $87.50/month, it provides advanced features for pros who need more customization. Includes 10,000 contacts. The monthly email send limit for Premium plans is 15 times your maximum contact count.
For most packages, Active Campaign is more expensive than MailChimp. Despite this, ActiveCampaign provides a greater variety of tools and features, which makes it still a strong option for businesses that are willing to spend more for greater functions.
Activecampaign vs MailChimp: Integration
Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer a wide variety of integrations with popular business applications.
MailChimp
MailChimp offers almost 200 integrations with different software programs, including the most popular CRMs, eCommerce platforms, CMSs and web builders, and social networks.
Plus, they also connect to Zapier, which allows for even more integration possibilities.
Some of the most popular MailChimp integrations include:
- Salesforce
- WordPress
- Shopify
- Google Analytics
- ShopSync
- Acuity Scheduling
- PayPal
- Square
- Chargify
- Google Analytics
The integration between MailChimp and Google Analytics is very valuable, as it allows you to see how your email marketing campaigns perform in terms of website traffic and conversion rates. This information can be precious in optimizing your campaigns for better results.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign integrates with over 260 apps and also connects with Zapier. Some of the most popular integrations include CRMs, eCommerce platforms, webinar software, and accounting programs.
Some of the most popular ActiveCampaign integrations include:
- Salesforce
- WordPress
- WooCommerce
- Zapier
- Shopify
- Magento
- Typeform
- Google Analytics
- Unbounce
ActiveCampaign has a slight edge over the Mailchimp alternative regarding the number of available integrations. However, both email marketing providers offer various integrations with popular business applications.
Activecampaign vs MailChimp: Ease of use
Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp are relatively easy to use, though ActiveCampaign is slightly more user-friendly.
MailChimp
MailChimp features an exceptionally intuitive drag-and-drop editor, simplifying the process of crafting visually appealing emails without technical expertise. Additionally, their template gallery offers over 100 professionally-designed email templates that can be tailored to suit your brand.
The MailChimp interface is well-organized and straightforward to navigate, with features and tools clearly labeled and easily accessible in the main menu.
This free version of the solution is ideal for those just starting with email marketing or not wanting to invest significant time in learning and setting up new email marketing software.
Mailchimp offers ample assistance when you first begin using the platform, explaining how to perform tasks and the benefits of executing them in specific ways.
For instance, Mailchimp illustrates the advantages of segmenting your contact list for more targeted emails.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a sophisticated solution offering numerous features, which may prove challenging to learn for those unfamiliar with the platform.
The interface is not as intuitive as Mailchimp’s, and locating desired features can be cumbersome.
Nevertheless, ActiveCampaign provides several helpful tutorials explaining their email marketing platform and software usage. These tutorials are well-composed and include step-by-step instructions with accompanying screenshots.
Identifying a starting point can be tricky, as many elements depend on previously completed tasks.
For example, generating a lead score is impossible without first creating a segment. Seasoned ActiveCampaign email marketers may be aware of this, but it might not be evident to newcomers.
ActiveCampaign also lacks substantial in-app support. An introductory video showcasing the location and usage of various features would be beneficial. The platform assumes users already possess knowledge of email marketing workings.
Activecampaign vs MailChimp: Deliverability
Deliverability is the percentage of emails successfully delivered to the recipient’s inbox. It’s essential to have a high deliverability rate because it ensures that your emails will reach your target audience.
MailChimp
MailChimp boasts an outstanding reputation for deliverability, employing best practices to guarantee their customers’ emails reach the inbox.
Additionally, they uphold a stringent anti-spam policy and scrutinize customer email campaigns for compliance. If MailChimp deems your campaign as spam, it will be suspended immediately.
MailChimp does not provide a dedicated IP address, potentially resulting in lower deliverability rates compared to other providers. However, their exceptional spam monitoring compensates for this drawback.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign also excels in email deliverability, with no significant issues reported in this area. They offer impressive deliverability options and tools, providing a substantial advantage.
It’s worth mentioning that ActiveCampaign is white-listed with Gmail, reducing the likelihood of emails being marked as spam by Gmail.
In summary, ActiveCampaign surpasses Mailchimp in terms of deliverability. For ensuring your emails reach the inbox, ActiveCampaign is the superior choice.
Activecampaign vs MailChimp: Email Analytics
It’s essential to track your email analytics to see what’s working and what’s not. Email analytics can tell you how many people opened your email, clicked on the links, and unsubscribed from your list.
MailChimp
MailChimp provides fundamental email analytics, displaying the number of opens, link clicks, unsubscribe rates, and bounces.
The reporting is straightforward and easy to comprehend. You can identify the most and least clicked links. MailChimp also enables A/B testing for email subject lines and content to determine what resonates best with your audience.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign’s email analytics are more comprehensive than MailChimp’s.
Besides displaying email opens and link clicks, it also reveals the number of unopened emails (still received), individual link click counts, and the city and country of your subscribers.
Additionally, ActiveCampaign allows you to segment subscribers based on their behavior. For instance, if you want to send a follow-up email to those who didn’t open your initial email, you can easily do so.
The reporting offers greater detail, enabling you to see the most popular links, the most engaged subscribers, and those at risk of unsubscribing.
Activecampaign vs MailChimp: Support
The most important thing to consider when choosing an email service provider is the level of support you need. If you’re just starting, you might not need much backing. But if you’re running a business, you’ll want to ensure you have access to someone who can help you if things go wrong.
MailChimp
MailChimp’s support options encompass a knowledge base, email support, and live chat. The knowledge base is extensive, featuring how-to guides and FAQs.
Email support operates 24/7, with responses typically arriving within a few hours. Live chat is accessible during business hours only.
Free plan users have access to email support, while paid plan subscribers can use live chat assistance from Monday to Friday. If you opt for the Premium (most expensive) plan, phone support is available from Monday to Friday.
When seeking help from Mailchimp, they’ll first direct you to their Knowledge Base. If you can’t find what you need there, you can contact customer support.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign provides email support and live chat support, along with a comprehensive knowledge base containing guides, how-tos, and FAQs.
Email or phone support is available 24/7, with responses generally received within a few hours. Live chat operates during business hours.
Contacting a human at ActiveCampaign is significantly easier than at Mailchimp. There’s no need to search through a knowledge base to find a way to reach customer support.
In Summary
Having worked with both platforms extensively, I can assure you that they both offer unique and powerful tools for marketing your business. The choice between the two really comes down to your specific needs and budget.
Active Campaign excels in advanced automation capabilities, comprehensive reporting, and robust CRM. It’s ideal for larger businesses and professional marketers who seek powerful features and don’t mind higher costs. However, it may be overwhelming for beginners due to its extensive features.
MailChimp is user-friendly and versatile, offering a free plan for up to 2000 subscribers. Its strength lies in customizable landing pages and thorough reporting with social media and Google Analytics integration. It’s well-suited for freelancers and small businesses, but the free plan has limitations, and inactive contacts can incur costs.
If you’re a larger business or a professional marketer looking for advanced automation and excellent CRM, and you don’t mind investing a bit more for powerful features, Active Campaign would be your pick.
On the flip side, if you’re a freelancer, a small business, or just starting out and need a versatile and user-friendly platform with a generous free plan, MailChimp could be the way to go. Just remember to keep an eye on your subscriber count, especially inactive ones, as the costs can add up.
Brian Shelton is an entrepreneur, marketer, and life-long learner committed to helping businesses achieve impactful results. He founded Grow Predictably to provide tailored marketing strategies to generate predictable, profitable growth. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Brian has helped businesses, large and small. reach their goals and drive positive change in the world.