ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit: Our Shocking 2021 Comparison

You are confused, aren’t you?

ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit: which one do you choose?

Should you go for the famous heavyweight that has been leading in marketing automation since 2003 or the new kid in town who does not take no for an answer?

Your confusion is understandable. ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit have incredible capabilities as far as automation is concerned, and everyone is raving about them. They both help you manage your email list easily using tags and segmentation, and they help to import email lists from other apps.

But on one hand, you have a tool that will take your marketing efforts to the next level and, on the other, an easy and straightforward platform that will do everything you need without the headache.

Lucky for you, we have tested both of them and came up with an objective ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit comparison.

But first, let’s do the introductions.

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one ESP that gives you all the email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools you need to create a fantastic customer experience. The company has been implementing and perfecting their next level automation features since 2003, so you know they are not joking.

To get started with ActiveCampaign, you should take their free course, which will walk you through the platform step by step. This course is essential because while ActiveCampaign has an intuitive interface, not everyone can understand the processes easily.

Once you sign up to the platform and tick all the right boxes, you will learn how to;

• Import your contact list
• Create your first form to collect data
• Contact/ list management
• Create automation
• Create and send your first campaign
• Ensure high email deliverability
• Create a pipeline and track deals as they move through the sales funnel and finally
• Integrations

What is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit came into the industry in 2015 as a result of Nathan Barry’s frustration with other email marketing tools. As a blogger, Nathan needed something that focuses on email campaigns. ConvertKit is not a jack of all trades like all the others. It has purposely positioned itself as a platform that serves bloggers and other content creators well.

So, what does this mean?

It means that everything in the platform is straightforward if you know how to read.  You can easily create emails, segment your subscribers according to their likes, and utilize automation features to do the work for you.

To get started;

• Sign up for an account at https://convertkit.com/?lmref=xLozqQ
• Click on ‘Account’ at the top right
• Enter your details; name, password, email address from your domain, your real address, and so on.
• Import your contacts list if you have one. ConvertKit will help you to do this seamlessly.
• If you don’t have an email list, Click ‘Forms’ at the top menu bar and then ‘Create Forms’ to create a form to capture the contact emails of your audience.
• Choose a form style from the three options provided
• Edit the form and save.
• Go to Settings and start setting up your configuration and automation.

ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit: A Full Comparison

Now that you know how to get started on both platforms, let’s see where they differ in this ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit comparison.

Pricing

To be frank, we all have a budget to stick to whether you are a new marketer or looking for something better than, let’s say, MailChimp. The cost of an email marketing tool should directly correlate with its features, be affordable, and easy to understand.

ConvertKit

Like the interface, ConvertKit has the most straightforward pricing system. ConvertKit only charges you according to the number of subscribers you have instead of having different tiers with extra features.

Their plan starts at $29 for 0-1000 subscribers, but recently they launched a free plan that covers people with less than 500 subscribers. All the features are included in every plan.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign pricing is similar to all the other tools. They have different tiers, and the features increase the more you pay. ActiveCampaign also doesn’t have a free plan, but you can try it free for 14 days.

As you can see, Lite tier has fewer features than Professional. The cost also increases with the number of subscribers you have. For most people, this pricing system is complicated and confusing. However, if you are not looking for advanced features, ActiveCampaign is cheaper than ConvertKit per subscriber.

List Management

The ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit list management battle is as rough as it gets. Both tools use very few lists to group subscribers and then tags. Their ability to segment subscribers using tags is unbeatable.

However, ActiveCampaign gets the upper hand because of advanced segmentation. You can add as many segments as you like to personalize the emails you are sending even more. For example, you can add segments such as State of origin, the date they signed up, the pages they have visited, and so on.

Reporting and Analytics

If you are going to be putting all that effort into writing amazing emails, creating sequences, and paying for a tool, you need to know how your efforts are paying off-hence the analytics and reporting tools.

ActiveCampaign

Reporting is a priority in ActiveCampaign. Apart from integrating with Google Analytics, ActiveCampaign also has its own comprehensive reporting features. You can follow your subscribers to know what pages they like, click-through rate, open rate, deliverability, and forms completed.

With these figures, you will know what is working and adjust your approach accordingly.

ConvertKit

ConvertKits reporting dashboard is easy to read and interpret. You can see stats such as email opens, click rates, and unsubscribes.

Unfortunately, its reporting tools are minimal compared to ActiveCampaign and even MailChimp. ConvertKit also doesn’t integrate with Google Analytics, meaning you will miss out on any social media reporting, bounce rates, and conversion tracking.

Forms and Landing pages

As we continue this ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit comparison, it’s important to note that a great emailing tool is useless if you don’t have subscribers. Forms and landing pages are lead capture tools that you place strategically to build an audience.

ActiveCampaign

Creating forms in ActiveCampaign is not hard at all. You need to choose from the four templates; inline, floating bar, floating box, and modal. Once you pick a template, you can add as many fields as possible and style it. Unfortunately, if you are in the Lite plan, you only have access to an inline form.

ActiveCampaign does not have in-built landing pages. If you want a landing page, you have to integrate with other tools. ActiveCampaign has more than a few limitations when it comes to creating forms and landing pages.

ConvertKit

On the other hand, ConvertKit makes forms creation and landing pages incredibly easy. You just pick a template and edit it to your liking. You can also create embedded pop up forms that you can put in different places on the website and edit them as you like.

What’s more, you can host your landing pages on the platform if you don’t have a website. That means YouTubers, Instagram creative, and all content creators can send their dedicated fans to their landing page.

ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit: Automation

In email marketing, Automation is sending emails to the right people at the right moment based on their actions- without doing all that work every time. Besides segmentation, you can also use analytics to know subscribers’ behavior and preference and personalize their emails.

ActiveCampaign

Automation in ActiveCampaign starts with a trigger that you have set up. A trigger could be something as simple as signing up to your email list via a form.

It is then followed by a corresponding action like a welcome message and then a sequence of several emails per day or week.

ActiveCampaign can also unsubscribe people who haven’t opened your emails in a while, pass them to a member of your sales team for specialized treatment or add them to a deal list (bonuses or free goodies).

ActiveCampaign has a beautiful visual workflow editor that allows you to drag and drop any automation series you want. For newcomers in email marketing, you can use the pre-made automation instead of creating your own.

You can schedule emails, move people between lists, and instigate multiple actions at the same time. The automation powers you have in ActiveCampaign are only limited by your imagination.

What makes ActiveCampaign better is that you can combine their automation features with CRM. As a marketer, you can add point scoring to engaged subscribers and give them access to better offers like deals, and calls from your sales team.

Interestingly, with all these automation capabilities, ActiveCampaign does not schedule resend to unopened to increase your open rate.

ConvertKit

Creating automation in ConvertKit is very easy, thanks to the simple workflow builder. You can create tags and move people between lists. However, their automation capabilities are not as advanced as ActiveCampaigns, which is okay for bloggers.

That said, ConvertKit has two automation features that make Activecampaign look stupid;

1. RSS to Email- this feature allows your subscribers to receive an alert every time you post a new article in your blog.
2. Send to unopened- instead of jumping 50 hoops to resend emails to people who didn’t open them the first time, ConvertKit has a single button to help you do that in less than a second.

ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit: Let’s Compare The Features

The Verdict in this ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit Review:

This ActiveCampaign vs ConvertKit comparison is head to head. They are both fantastic tools depending on what your requirements are.

However, ActiveCampaign has a higher learning curve than ConvertKit and a clunky, overcrowded interface that may confuse a beginner. So if you’re just starting out, you may want to go for ConvertKit’s free plan to get started.

SIGN UP FOR ACTIVECAMPAIGN HERE
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