Best ActiveCampaign Alternatives of 2024

ActiveCampaign is a popular email marketing platform due to its superb sales and marketing automation features; however, the platform might not be the best fit for your business. Maybe it’s too expensive, or you’re looking for email marketing software with more specialized features.

This guide will review the best ActiveCampaign alternatives with similar features and won’t break the bank. We’ll also cover whether these email marketing software have a free plan and if it’s a great fit for your business. Read on to learn more.

1. MailWizz

MailWizz self-hosted email marketing software

MailWizz Main Features

Robust Geographic Segmentation Tools

MailWizz allows you to find the location of your subscribers through IP location and geolocation services like MaxMind. This feature is essential for audience segmentation, which helps you deliver personalized marketing campaigns and gain more clients.

Effective Bulk Email Send

One of MailWizz’s advanced features is efficient mass email sending, which enables you to send a large volume of emails for targeted campaigns to various contact groups. In fact, you can deliver up to 1-2 million emails daily using the platform.

Competitive Licensing Plans

Compared to various email marketing platforms with tiered pricing, MailWizz offers a one-time license fee, eliminating the hassle of paying monthly subscriptions. Both Regular and Extended plans allow unlimited access to all key email marketing features, marketing automation tools, and free customer support for the first six months.

Price

MailWizz price plans

MailWizz offers the following one-time fee licensing plans:

  • Regular License – The platform’s Regular license costs $65 and is ideal for users actively doing email marketing campaign tasks. It allows unlimited access to all main email marketing features (multiple drag-and-drop editors, user access, campaign monitor, etc.), free onboarding support for six months, and the ability to build one website.
  • Extended License - The Extended license costs $275 and is suitable for startups and businesses using MailWizz’s SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) features. It includes everything from the Regular plan along with business tools so you can charge them for access to your MailWizz system.

Check here to learn more about MailWizz’s licensing plans.

Why Choose MailWizz over ActiveCampaign

While ActiveCampaign is known for its powerful marketing automation features, it has a steep learning curve, which makes it a viable option for experienced marketers and enterprises. On the other hand, MailWizz has simpler solutions for email marketing campaigns (A/B testing, drag-and-drop builders, etc.) and a user-friendly design. MailWizz is also a cost-effective ActiveCampaign alternative for startups and growing businesses due to its affordable licensing plans.

2. Brevo

Brevo CRM suite page

Brevo Main Features

Robust Free Plan

Brevo’s generous free version includes unlimited contacts and access to its main tools, including pre-designed templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and CRM. It even lets you access features for transactional emails, SMS marketing, and WhatsApp campaigns—all for free.

Solid Email Marketing Automation Tools

As a marketing automation platform, Brevo lets you create automated workflows (onboarding emails, product recommendations, automated email sequences, etc.) on all plans for continued customer engagement. They also offer tools for segmenting contacts using customer data (smart segmentation).

In-built CRM

Besides being an effective email marketing tool, Brevo offers a practical and easy-to-use CRM. You can use it to track customer deals and customize your pipeline stages to optimize your sales process. The platform also plans to integrate sales automation features soon.

Price

Brevo price plans.

Brevo has the following pricing plans (paid monthly):

  • Free – The platform offers a free version for users who want to discover Brevo’s essential email marketing tools. It includes 300 daily email sends, unlimited contacts, access to Brevo’s email templates, and the drag-and-drop editor for creating custom emails and landing pages. It also lets you access tools for sending out transactional emails, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns.
  • Starter - The Starter plan starts at $25 and is ideal for startups and growing businesses. It includes everything from the free plan, including monthly email sends (20,000) with no daily limit, email support, and access to basic reporting and analytics features.
  • Business - The Business plan costs $65 and is suitable for marketing teams and ecommerce businesses. It includes everything from Starter, plus access to essential email marketing automation tools, advanced reporting, phone support, and multi-user access.
  • BrevoPlus - This plan is recommended for large enterprises with specific needs. It has everything from Business, including enterprise-grade security, tailored onboarding, and personalized support. It also lets you access advanced integrations and have a flexible contract. You can avail of this plan by contacting Brevo’s sales team.

Why Choose Brevo over ActiveCampaign

Brevo is a great ActiveCampaign alternative due to its competitive pricing and variety of marketing features. You can easily set up automated campaigns, manage sales pipelines, and access tools for SMS marketing and landing page builders. Brevo is also effective as a transactional email service, making it one of the most popular ActiveCampaign competitors today.

You can also access marketing automation and its sales CRM even on the free plan, something that only a few email marketing platforms can provide.

Cons of Brevo

Compared to ActiveCampaign, Brevo provides less comprehensive reports and analytics data. Its CRM is missing key features such as lead scoring and reporting data. Some reviews also indicate that Brevo has inconsistent deliverability, which affects your campaign’s performance.

3. Klaviyo

Klaviyo homepage with email template builder tool

Klaviyo Main Features

Powerful Email Builder

Klaviyo has a user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder where you can create visually appealing emails with personalized content (e.g., dynamic product recommendations). The platform offers various email templates for different campaign types. You can also create multiple versions of email forms for split testing.

Diverse Ecommerce Integrations

One of the platform’s ecommerce features is its pre-built integrations with popular ecommerce platforms, which include WooCommerce, Shopify, Ecodrive, and more. They also have apps for point-of-sale, data management, email capture, etc.

Marketing Automation Features

Klaviyo’s marketing automation tools support omnichannel marketing, which allows you to promote your brand through various channels and trigger personalized messages based on recent customer interactions. You can also use it to create one-off promotional campaigns, like product launches and seasonal campaigns.

Price

Klaviyo price plans page.

Klaviyo offers the following pricing plans (at 501-1,000 contacts):

  • Free – The platform’s free version is ideal for users who want to try out Klaviyo’s key email marketing tools. It lets you store up to 250 contacts and send 500 emails monthly. It also comes with 150 SMS/MMS credits and email support for the first 60 days.
  • Email - The Email plan starts at $30 monthly and is perfect for users who want to scale their email marketing efforts. It includes everything from the Free plan, plus 10,000 monthly email sends, SMS marketing features (mobile push notifications), and chat support.
  • Email and SMS - The Email and SMS plan costs $45 per month and is recommended for businesses that intend to increase their brand reach globally through email and SMS campaigns. It includes everything from the Email plan; additionally, you can customize your monthly SMS/MMS credits (the price estimate is for 1,250 credits).

Why Choose Klaviyo over ActiveCampaign

While both Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign have robust email editors, Klaviyo has unique ecommerce-specific features, like the ability to provide personalized product recommendations for each contact. The platform also supports recommendations for many ecommerce platforms other than Shopify and WooCommerce, which makes it one of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives for online store businesses. In addition, Klaviyo offers more email form template options and is flexible when doing split testing.

Cons of Klaviyo

Compared to ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo has a more complicated approach for advanced segmentation (e.g., Boolean expressions), which might not be the best for beginners. The platform has limited default conditions per segment (13 max.) compared to platforms like ActiveCampaign, which allow up to 20. Also, Klaviyo has less variety of reports, especially for analytics data in email campaigns.

4. EngageBay

EngageBay homepage

EngageBay Main Features

User-friendly Email Editor

EngageBay offers a robust drag-and-drop email editor and customizable email templates. You can add specific contact attributes to your emails (e.g., full name or email address) for personalized campaigns.

Effective Automation Features

EngageBay is an effective sales and marketing automation tool that allows you to establish automation on different deal stages, set up email sequences, etc., through its workflow builder. You can also set up triggers that track lead scores based on customer behavior.

Affordable Pricing Plans

EngageBay offers cost-effective pricing plans, including a free plan containing essential email marketing, consumer tracking (Service Bay), and CRM features. They also offer discounts for yearly and biennial-based subscriptions (8% and 15% off, respectively), making it one of the most affordable ActiveCampaign alternatives in the market.

Price

EngageBay price plans page.

EngageBay has the following pricing plans (paid annually):

  • Free – The free plan is for users who want to try EngageBay’s key email marketing features. It allows you to store 250 contacts, send 1,000 emails, and have access to email marketing, landing page builder, and automation features. It also lets you access its built-in customer relationship management (CRM) system, chat support, and a live chat widget for your site.
  • Basic - The Basic plan starts at $14.99 monthly and is ideal for startups with a limited customer base. It includes everything from the Free plan, plus more contact storage (500), email sends (3,000), and third-party integrations. It also lets you access advanced marketing and sales automation features and help desk tools (Service Bay).
  • Growth - The Growth plan costs $64.99 monthly and is suitable for scaling businesses. It offers everything from the Basic plan, including more monthly email sends (25,000), contacts (up to 5,000), a dedicated account manager, complimentary onboarding, and access to advanced email marketing features. It also contains more sales CRM and Service Bay tools, like push notifications, automation, etc.
  • Pro - The Pro plan starts at $101.99 per month and is recommended for teams who want access to the full feature set of EngageBay to grow their business. It includes everything from Growth, plus unlimited contacts, up to 50,000 monthly email sends, custom reporting and analytics tools, phone support, and access to the platform’s API.

Why Choose EngageBay over ActiveCampaign

EngageBay is an effective ActiveCampaign alternative mainly because of its diverse feature offerings at affordable price points. Besides being a solid marketing automation software, you can also access features for lead management, appointment setting, help desk, live chat, and more, making it an all-in-one marketing and sales platform.

Cons of EngageBay

The platform significantly lacks third-party integrations compared to ActiveCampaign, which has direct integrations with over 800 platforms. Regarding customer support, EngageBay’s knowledge base lacks certain features, which might be a problem for users looking to troubleshoot app issues independently.

Conclusion

ActiveCampaign is one of the best marketing automation tools today. However, there are alternatives that offer more sales and marketing tools at competitive pricing plans. If you’re looking for an affordable email marketing solution with CRM features, you can consider giving EngageBay a try. Brevo and Klaviyo are great ActiveCampaign competitors with ecommerce-specific features.

But MailWizz, in our opinion, is the best ActiveCampaign alternative when looking for a cost-effective email marketing tool with contact segmentation tools and multi-language support. It offers one-time licensing plans with unlimited access to all features and has good customer support.

Learn more about MailWizz now and see how our diverse set of features compares against ActiveCampaign, effectively boosting the marketing performance of your business.

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