Is ActiveCampaign really worth it?
ActiveCampaign is an automation platform that helps businesses with customer support and management. It offers marketing automation features, email marketing, and customer relationship management tools to help businesses improve the customer experience. While ActiveCampaign has extensive features, it can be overwhelming for entrepreneurs and even the first ones on their way to marketing automation.
The complexity of software is one of the most frequently complained about by users. While Active Campaign offers several features, the user interface can be overwhelming and users find it difficult to navigate within the tool for creating emails and sending them to their audience.
I'm leaving @activecampaign for this reason. Doubling price and give nothing in exchange is not exactly great pricing decision. I already deleted thousands of contacts and copied automations to competitor.
A new user may find the experience frustrating and difficult to learn and may need a dedicated person to run such complicated tools. For businesses that are new to email marketing automation or have no dedicated marketing teams, this challenge might result in a lack of brand awareness and conversion rates.
Customer support is another weakness of ActiveCampaign. In addition to providing email and chat support, no phone support is available. For businesses that require quick answers to their questions, this may not be a pleasant experience, which can be frustrating if you're paying a premium price for the platform.
Another issue with ActiveCampaign's pricing is that it can be difficult to justify the cost if you only use the platform for basic email marketing. Many businesses may only require a few features offered by Active Campaign, meaning they're paying for those not used in email marketing. ActiveCampaign is an automation platform that helps businesses with customer support and management. To help businesses improve the customer experience, it offers marketing automation features, email marketing, and customer relationship management tools. While ActiveCampaign has extensive features, it can be overwhelming for entrepreneurs and even the first ones on their way to marketing automation.
Updates on ActiveCampaign pricing
Four plans are available in the ActiveCampaign, each with increasingly advanced features. When you first start using this platform, it may appear relatively cheap but as your number of contacts grows, its price increases for each plan. Choosing a plan with only the features you need in your email marketing is very important for your constrained budget, so you don't have to pay extra for the functionality you don't use.
ActiveCampaign updated its pricing structure at the beginning of 2023, which really hit long-term users. There were waves of chaos and confusion in the market among users. The price hikes were on all-in-one legacy plans (equivalent to the new Bundle product) that buy directly from ActiveCampaign.
@ActiveCampaign Greed will kill you. The raise in pricing is unacceptable and doesn't reflect your value. Yes we are captive but as soon as we'll have opportunity your clients will leave.
Here's the updated pricing of ActiveCampaign as of May 2024.
| Number of contacts | Lite | Plus | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1k | $29/mo | $49/mo | NA | NA |
| 2.5k | $49/mo | $99/mo | $149/mo | $259/mo |
| 5k | $79/mo | $149/mo | $209/mo | $379/mo |
| 10k | $139/mo | $229/mo | $339/mo | $539/mo |
| 25k | $229/mo | $379/mo | $549/mo | $799/mo |
| 50k | $389/mo | $559/mo | $809/mo | $1059/mo |
| >50k | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
For 1000 contacts, 1 user, live chat, and email support, the Marketing Lite plan starts at $39 a month. It offers email marketing automation, drag-and-drop editor, and basic forms. More than 150 email templates are available to create email campaigns. The lite plan also includes campaign and goal reports to help users optimize their campaigns. However, this plan lacks a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and channels like SMS marketing and site messaging.
Marketing Plus, starting at $70 a month, includes 1K contacts and 3 users. The Lite plan has everything a user needs, including advanced forms, unlimited landing pages, database sync, SMS marketing, and conditional content. It'll give users the ability to integrate e-commerce platforms on a variety of platforms. To make the user visualize their workflows, a map of automation is included in the ActiveCampaign Plus plan because marketing automation can get complicated very quickly. The Plus plan lacks more advanced features like machine learning technology and site messaging.
Professional Plans start at $159 for 1000 contacts; its high-level features, one-on-one consultations, assistance to 50 users, and support of up to 50 users would be a perfect fit for medium-sized businesses. While the professional plan has almost everything a midsized firm needs to implement marketing automation, there is little room for customization. The ActiveCampaign Professional plan is not sufficiently balanced with the corresponding Plus and Lite packages. In view of the fact that the package allows them to add as many as 50 users, only businesses with large departments and growing marketing agencies would find this useful.
The Enterprise Plan will cost two to three times as much as the professional plan, but it includes a dedicated account agent, phone support, and unlimited users. This plan would be a serious overkill for most small and medium-sized businesses. The lowest amount you can spend here is $229 per month.
Verdict
ActiveCampaign offers a wide range of built-in marketing tools and automation features with relatively high price tags. It will be a good investment if you have a midsize or large business dependent on lead creation and sales automation. With the Professional Plan, you can nurture leads, drive sales, and cultivate loyal customers.
However, ActiveCampaign may not be able to provide the necessary value if you are a freelance or small business owner. Running an ActiveCampaign is expensive, and you may not need all the features.
ActiveCampaign is a powerful marketing automation system with numerous benefits, but its high cost can be an important drawback for some businesses. If you are a small business or sole proprietor with a limited budget, you might want to consider other options with more affordable pricing plans.
Hence, it's important to carefully consider whether you actually need all of ActiveCampaign's features before committing to a high-priced plan.
