Actionetics vs ActiveCampaign

If you’re reading this review you’re wondering which tool Actionetics or ActiveCampaign is the superior email marketing tool.

Actionetics is the seamlessly integrated email marketing software of ClickFunnels while ActiveCampaign is a standalone email marketing tool. They both offer a variety of great features so let’s dig deeper…

User Interface

For me, one of the most important aspects is whether the tool is easy to use or not. I don’t want to waste time with learning how this tool works, I simply want to work with it.

In this category, both tools are very good. ActiveCampaign has a very clean interface which is simple but very powerful and designed for users with little or no technical expertise.

Actionetics is designed for marketers and “non-techy” users, with a simple and logical user interface which makes it very easy to use. However, if you are used to the user-friendly user interface of ClickFunnels that is no surprise.

However, in this category, no tool has a real advantage and they both are highly user-friendly to use.

Price

Now let’s have a deeper look into the pricing of both tools.

ActiveCampaign starts at $29/month for up to 1000 subscribers. However, this is only the Lite package which includes unlimited emails, autoresponders and segmenting. If you want to use the built-in CRM functionality you have to get at least the Plus package for $70/month. The more subscribers you have the more you need to pay. So for example, for 10,000 subscribers you need to pay $139/month for the Lite package and $249/month for the Plus package.

Actionetics has always the same price and costs $297/month. However, it is important to mention that Actionectics comes together with ClickFunnels, a powerful funnel builder software, and Backpack, an affiliate marketing management software.

If you have a small business and a small budget ActiveCampaign could be the better solution for you as you don’t pay as much as you do with Actionetics. However, you also have to pay for additional tools for website hosting, landing page creation, etc.

If you have a bigger business with up to 10,000 leads or more I would suggest Actionetics as you roughly pay the same but you get also access to a sales funnel builder and landing page creator which work seamlessly together with Actionetics.

What is great with both tools is that there is no contract at all. That means you can cancel your subscription every month. There are also yearly plans which are cheaper than the monthly prices.

Features

Now we come to the most important aspect of every email marketing tool and that is the features. Here it is important to notice that the email automation and CRM functions of ActiveCampaign are only accessible for the Plus package and not the Lite membership. But I’ll get to that more in detail.

Autoresponders and Newsletters

Creating autoresponders and newsletters are the basic features of every email marketing tool. You get this functionality in Actionetics as well as ActiveCampaign. If you only want to send out broadcasts and create autoresponders the Lite package of ActiveCampaign is fulfilling.

After working with both tools I can say that both are very easy to use and its very easy to create your emails.

Email Automation

As I said, autoresponders are the basic feature which every email marketing tool should have but today for many marketers it is important to have different email sequences for different people. It can be helpful for example to have a different sequence of emails which visited your sales page than people who have never visited your sales page.

Comparing this feature for both tools you can say that both tools make a very good job. Actionetics, as well as ActiveCampaign, make it possible to create highly automated workflows based on the customer behavior.

However, the seamless integration of Actionetics into ClickFunnels makes it a bit easier to create such workflows. You can easily target people whether they have visited steps of your funnel or they didn’t.

You can also do that with ActiveCampaign but you have to add code snippets to your landing pages. That isn’t a huge effort but that makes Actionetics a bit more easy to use for non-tech savvy users.

That’s why I think that Actionetics has an advantage compared to Actionetics if you have a look at the email automation.

Integration

If you have an email marketing tool you want to use it together with your WordPress blog or your Landing Page tool.

Both tools offer a lot of integrations but I want to have at the in my eyes two most important integrations and that is WordPress and Landing Page integration.

WordPress Integration

Most bloggers use WordPress as the foundation of their website. And if you have a blog and you want to add email marketing to your business (what you should) you need to somehow integrate your email marketing software.

With Actionectis you have different possibilities. One way to add email marketing is to create a small optin box within ActiveCampaign and add the code to your website. You can also use integrations with WordPress themes like ThriveThemes to collect leads on your website.

As you can see it is pretty simple to integrate ActiveCampaign with WordPress.

Actionetics is a little different that way. You can’t integrate Actionetics into other landing page tools like LeadPages or ThriveThemes but with the help of the ClickFunnels WordPress plugin, you can easily integrate your landing pages from ClickFunnels into your WordPress website. However, it is not possible to create small opt-in boxes for your sidebar.

That makes ActiveCampaign the better tool for bloggers in my eyes as small optin boxes on the sidebar can be very effective in collecting leads.

Landing Page Integration

The heart of every email marketing campaign is a landing page to capture your leads. With ActiveCampaign you can’t build landing pages but it offers an integration to every any landing page creator I know including OptimizePress, Leadpages, and Thrivethemes. You can even integrate ActiveCampaign into ClickFunnels if you want to!

As I already mentioned, Actionetics works seamlessly together with ClickFunnels. What this means is that you already have access to a landing page creator which makes the use of another landing page creator tool redundant. That’s why it’s not possible to integrate Actionetics with other tools.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can say that both tools offer every feature you need to build an effective email marketing campaign. They are both easy to use and are able to create complex workflows. The seamless integration of Actionetics with ClickFunnels makes it a bit easier to use but that comes with a bigger price for a small list.

If you have a blog or a small business ActiveCampaign can be the right choice for you as you don’t have to pay a lot of money to begin with. You can also use ActiveCampaign together with ClickFunnels if you don’t want to pay the full price for ClickFunnels.