ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp: Which should you use? [2024]

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There’s a myth that email marketing is spam. In truth, spam emails are spam, and genuine emails continue to generate sales and ROI.

But gone are the days when people used generic email marketing methods to nurture leads. Now, you need a specialized automation tool to maintain contact with clients over time.

Yet, with so many possibilities, picking the best one may be difficult. Mailchimp vs. ActiveCampaign: which one should you choose?

Answering this question heavily depends on your business type and marketing needs. Despite being the most known tool, Mailchimp may not be what’s best for you, and ActiveCampaign is a pretty viable competitor.

Mailchimp is easy to use and suitable for small businesses, whereas ActiveCampaign is robust and best suited for growing enterprises and experienced marketers. 

This post compares Mailchimp vs. ActiveCampaign, giving you an in-depth look at each tool’s features, usability, customer service, pricing plans, and more.

Let’s get into it!

ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp: quick comparison 

This ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp comparison table briefly summarizes the differences between these two equally reliable tools.

	Mailchimp	ActiveCampaign
Email marketing	It’s a simple email marketing tool that mostly targets small businesses. Most of its features are easy to understand and use, making it suitable for beginner marketers and startups.	Unlike Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign’s email marketing tool has a bit of a learning curve. It’s more robust, has more detailed features, and is suitable for experienced marketers.
Marketing automation	Has all the fundamental marketing automation features, like email automation workflows, basic A/B testing, powerful segmentation, customer journey builder, and more.	Includes advanced sales and marketing automation features, some of which Mailchimp lacks, such as advanced lead scoring, advanced automation, and win probability.
Email list building	Has an easy-to-use landing page builder with a simple drag-and-drop feature to help you come up with click-worthy CTAs for email lust building.	Provides customizable landing page templates that you can tailor to your audience’s needs and capture more leads. You can also track how these pages perform.
Segmentation	Basic audience segmentation by interests and behavior.	Advanced email segmentation for more targeted and advanced personalization.
Analytics and reporting	Advanced reporting capabilities including campaign reports, audience tracking, and benchmarking	ActiveCampaign features in-depth reporting functions including lead overview reports.
Pricing	A free plan is available and paid plans start at $13/month. Also offers a 30-day free trial on the Essentials and Standard paid plans.	With pricing, ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer a free plan. Its paid plans start from $15/month for transactional emails and $29 for email automation features.
Customer Support	Offers 24/7 chat & email support but only for the first month on their free plan. The premium plan gets phone support. It also offers other resources such as guides, tutorials, and a knowledge base.	Offers 24/7 chat & email support for all plans. Also has a knowledge base and resource center for guides and tutorials. You can also request one-on-one training if you’re struggling to master the tool.

If you’re looking for an ActiveCampaign alternative and are considering Mailchimp, or just want a comparison, these next sections get into more details. 

Here’s a list of topics to expect in this post. You can jump to the relevant section if you’re looking for something specific:

• Email campaigns
• Marketing automation
• Email list building
• Segmentation
• Analytics and reporting
• Pricing
• Customer support
• Which email marketing tool fits you best?

For more information, use our email pricing calculator below to quickly compare price rates and features with other top platforms. Input your desired number of contacts, choose up to two other email marketing providers from the list, and see how Omnisend stacks up against them.

Email campaigns

Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp can help you create successful email campaigns.

Let’s take a look at the fundamentals of each platform, specifically what they offer in terms of email marketing.

Both tools have important features like landing page builders and templates, marketing automation, segmentation, and more. The difference is that Mailchimp makes these features easier to use, tailoring them more toward the needs of small businesses. 

Besides operations and other functions, small business owners also have to do their own marketing. With Mailchimp, they can get all the fundamental benefits of an email marketing tool without needing any form of training.

ActiveCampaign has a learning curve, which makes it suitable for seasoned marketers.

Here’s a case in point:

Maichimp’s interface is easy to navigate, with a simple drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy to build stunning emails.

The downside to this is that Mailchimp’s free plan only has generic email templates.  With paid plans, however, you’ll have access to over 100 pre-designed email templates you can edit for just about any subject.

ActiveCampaign has a larger email template library with over 250 ready-to-use customizable templates. Its email editor is also easy enough to master.

However, its automation settings can be difficult to navigate. This Mailchimp alternative has more powerful email marketing automation features, including email triggers you can use to send emails to clients based on their activity on your website or with your business.

This allows you to create more personalized email campaigns to get more conversions.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is more rewarding if you’re willing to take some time and master how to use it. Luckily, its website has helpful resources and tutorials to get you started.

Mailchimp is easier to master, but its features aren’t as advanced, so a large enterprise with extensive email marketing needs may need more features. The one you choose as your email marketing tool should depend on your business’s unique requirements.

Marketing automation

Despite having powerful email automation features, Mailchimp’s capabilities do not compare to those of ActiveCampaign. 

This is not meant to take away from Mailchimp’s marketing automation capabilities, which are powerful and sufficient for most small businesses. ActiveCampaign just does more.

For one, it allows you to build sophisticated workflows for email circulation, lead generation, data segmentation, etc. by combining triggers and conditions. 

You can also export a list of subscribers who have clicked on certain links, which helps with remarketing.

In addition to email, ActiveCampaign offers you an SMS marketing channel that you can use in your automated campaigns and on your website messages. 

Mailchimp, on the other hand, offers basic trigger automation options like opened email triggers, abandoned cart triggers, etc. Its automation editor isn’t as flexible so you can’t set your automation triggers to go down different paths.

Mailchimp offers SMS marketing too, but you’d need a third-party tool to include SMS in your automation journey.

Both tools offer A/B testing capabilities to help marketers assess the performance of their email marketing campaigns. However, Mailchimp’s split tests are limited as you can only test your automation campaigns based on the number of contacts. 

ActiveCampaign also offers a helpful feature called Automations Map. This is a visualization tool that helps users track their automation and view how they interact with each other. This feature is available on the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

This feature helps you get the most out of automation. The map shows you how an automation workflow is connected, whether it’s through your goals, deals, tags, or more. This way, you know the impact that each automation workflow has on your business. 

In this section of the ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp comparison, ActiveCampaign takes the lead. It’s simpler and has more automation options.

Email list building

Building a sizable newsletter email list is a vital part of any effective email marketing strategy. Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer powerful tools that help marketers expand their subscriber bases.

Let’s look at each tool’s list-building tools in detail.

Mailchimp has a straightforward landing page builder that is easy to use and available with its free plan. The landing pages contain built-in forms that are flexible and can easily integrate with your website.

The tool also provides a few landing page templates to help you get started if you’re unable to design them from scratch.

On the other hand, ActiveCampaign offers landing pages as an additional paid feature with their paid plans. 

ActiveCampaign lets you create forms more easily than Mailchimp. Regardless of the landing page template you choose, ActiveCampaign offers mobile-friendly and responsive forms.

This is not, however, the case with Mailchimp’s forms as their themes aren’t as responsive and you’d have to be careful with size to make them suitable for different devices.

ActiveCampaign has an innovative lead-scoring function that further bolsters its list-building capabilities. This feature ranks your prospects by their likelihood of conversion, leaving you with a more quality mailing list.

This helps you focus your efforts on the leads with the highest potential for conversion.

Audience segmentation

When sending emails to your contact list, you want them in the relevant inbox. A solid email marketing tool should let you segment your audience by factors such as user behavior, location, demographic, etc.

Both Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign offer various email segmentation options to make your email campaigns more targeted. Let’s start with how ActiveCampaign makes this possible.

You can segment your email contacts by lists, segments, and custom fields for broader or more targeted email marketing campaigns.

Lists are the broadest way of categorizing your contacts. You can add your contacts to lists based on the type of messages you intend to send them, for instance, announcement emails, promotions, networking, etc.

Tags are more targeted and you can add or remove them to create smaller contact groups for specific email campaigns.

Custom fields is the most targeted segmentation option on ActiveCampaign. You use custom fields to store information on individual contacts on your email list. These include details like names, phone numbers, birthdays, etc. 

The information found in these fields is either filled in directly or collected when the customer fills in newsletter forms, landing page forms, etc.

The segmentation process with ActiveCampaign is straightforward, just like Mailchimp’s simple one-condition segmentation process.

Creating multiple-condition segments with Mailchimp, however, is a little complex. Its listing options are also limited.

You can only include an email contact in one list in an email campaign. When you’re segmenting your mailing list, including a contact twice in a campaign would mean paying for it twice. This is because Mailchimp charges per subscriber.

This feature puts Mailchimp at a disadvantage against ActiveCampaign. The latter allows you to run the same campaigns with different lists, even those with similar contacts. The overall usability of its segmentation tool, including the tags, is pretty easy too.

Analytics and reporting

You can’t talk about ActiveCampaign vs. Mailchimp without discussing their reporting capabilities. Reports let you monitor email marketing trends, track your performance, and create better marketing campaigns.

Here’s how these two tools stack up.

Both Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign have powerful reporting and analytics features that help improve your campaign performance. 

They both have performance measurement capabilities to track metrics like click-through rates, bounce rates, social sharing, open rates, opt-out rates, etc.

With Mailchimp, you’ll be able to monitor your performance by the emails you send, your open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, click per unique opens, revenue, and more. The statistics are represented in percentages as shown below.

The engagement reports section summarizes the metrics you want to compare against each other into a visually appealing graph.

There are a few drawbacks to Mailchimp’s email reporting, and analytics feature. One is that, for your open and click-through rates to be seen on your reports, you’ll need to turn on these settings first. 

Another is that it lacks real-time reporting and analytics features that users need to understand their audiences better.

ActiveCampaign also has data campaign reports, just like all the above. You can also access automation reports that track your audience’s interactions with your automated emails.

You can also access your contact data reports to see how your contacts interact with your newsletters. These reports help you identify the best times to send your emails, where your contacts are located, and so forth.

ActiveCampaign goes beyond these essential reporting features with its Deal Overview Reports. Here, you’ll be able to track the performance of your sales team, including deals won and lost over time. 

The Deals Funnel Report also shows you how many deals are in your sales or marketing pipeline.

Mailchimp provides ecommerce reporting for more platforms compared to ActiveCampaign. However, if you’re looking for a specialized email marketing tool, then neither is optimal.

ActiveCampaign takes the lead on this one too, with more to offer in terms of reports and analytics.

Pricing

You’d think ActiveCapmaign would be much more expensive than Mailchimp as it offers more features. However, depending on the plan and considering the value you get for your money, this isn’t exactly true, as you’ll learn later in this section.

Mailchimp has an upper hand here as it offers a free plan along with a free 30-day trial of two of its paid plans. This free plan includes 500 contacts, lets you send 1000 emails monthly, and has pre-built email templates.

ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer a free plan but instead, offers a 14-day free trial to help customers make a decision.

Most of Mailchimp’s essential features come with the Essentials package — except for comparative reporting, multivariate testing, unlimited support, and a few other additional functions, which are included in its premium plan. 

This package costs $13 a month. This makes Mailchimp’s Premium package seem overpriced, since for these few additional features, the pricing starts at $350 monthly.

Note: The prices listed above for Mailchimp are just starting prices for when your email list has 500 subscribers for the basic plan, and 10,000 subscribers for the Premium plan. As the number of your subscribers increases, the Mailchimp pricing increases.

Paid plans start from $15 on ActiveCampaign for transactional emails. If you want email marketing automation features, the pricing plans start from $29. 

ActiveCampaign’s prices include unlimited sending for up to 250,000 contacts for paid plans.

You get the most essential email marketing features on ActiveCampaign with their second-tier plan, Plus. This ActiveCampaign plan includes an SMS add-on, landing pages, ecommerce integrations, lead scoring, and automation maps.

There’s a price jump in the next plan, the Professional plan, mainly because it includes CRM and sales automation features. 

Some features that ActiveCampaign’s plans come with, which Mailchimp lacks, include multiple automated journey maps, Microsoft Dynamics integrations, and the ability to send messages to your customers through your website.

Here, the ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp verdict is that, for the most fundamental features, Mailchimp pricing is budget friendly and preferable over ActiveCampaign. 

However, for enterprises looking for more advanced sales and marketing features and functions, ActiveCampaign gives you more bang for your buck.

For more information, use our email pricing calculator below to quickly compare price rates and features with other top platforms. Input your desired number of contacts, choose up to two other email marketing providers from the list, and see how Omnisend stacks up against them.

Customer support

ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp: which one offers better customer support? 

First, both tools have fairly responsive customer support and offer similar contact options for customers depending on their needs. Besides direct contact options like email, chat, and phone support, each tool has resource centers for further reading and practice.

ActiveCampaign offers 24/7 chat & email support. You can also request a demo to see how the tool works before getting started. Also, since it has a steeper learning curve, the tool gives you the option for one-on-one training. 

For self-help options, the it offers resources for both customers and developers. These include a resource center that contains guides and tutorials explaining every feature.

There’s also a community where you can:

• Join a forum and converse with fellow users.
• Find product help documents and resource material.
• Join ActiveCampaign University and enhance your knowledge of the platform.
• Become a partner with ActiveCampaign, and have an additional source of revenue.

Mailchimp also offers 24/7 chat & email support with all plans. However, customers on the free plan get email support for only 30 days. The premium package comes with a phone and a priority customer support option.

There are other numerous self-help resources to guide customers. Mailchimp 101 contains guides on how to use the tool overall. You’ll get email design guides, landing page optimization guides, and more. 

The help center has popular Mailchimp tutorials, webinars, guides, and more. You can easily search for what you want by topic. The tool also offers marketing inspiration articles to help you build your business.

Getting escalated support from the ActiveCampaign team is easier, even if you’re new to the site. By clicking on the help prompt at the bottom right corner of the website, you can get the help you need.

Both websites have an AI chatbot that’s easy to access and can be sufficient for basic customer support queries.

Which email marketing tool fits you best?

Ultimately, the tool you choose depends on your business’ marketing needs. 

While Mailchimp is more popular because of its ease of use, ActiveCampaign better suits larger businesses in need of advanced marketing and sales automation features. 

Mailchimp has a way of fitting most email marketing essentials into a straightforward, affordable package. This makes it suitable for small businesses.

ActiveCampaign costs more on the lower tiers as it has more features, but you get a lot more value for your money. For large enterprises, this is ideal.

However, if you have an ecommerce business and are looking for a specialized email and SMS marketing automation tool, it’s worth trying Omnisend. 

Check our detailed Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign or Omnisend vs. Mailchimp comparisons.

It has an easy-to-use email editor and pre-built custom email automation workflows and other channels. It also has amazing 24/7 award-winning customer support.