The answer is it’s both but the real question is can this gem take your business into customers’ inboxes?

Active campaign the fastest growing all in one sale and marketing platform which provides small business with built-in automation combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI).  Insights say +70% of Active Campaign clients use its +850 integrations including product and service offerings as well as Third Party products. Active Campaign has helped +100,000 small businesses all around the world.

I had been looking for an automation platform or some tool for my business and for the first time when I read Active Campaign describing itself as a “Customer Experience automation platform” instead of email marketing or something similar, I was ready to give it a try. Let’s discover the platform analytically and critically into,

• Features
• Ease of Use
• Analytics
• Support
• Pricing

Before we go into more details I will pinpoint the key features here, Active Campaign offers

• 14 days Free Trial
• +125 professional email templates
• +850 integrations
• A/B testing
• Newsletters
• Marketing Automation
• Customer Support with over a dozen languages

Features

Do Active Campaign features satisfy the needs of email marketers and businesses?

Active Campaign provides unlimited emails with any plan you choose and supports a minimum of 3 team members. Essentials like newsletters and email receipts are managed unexceptionally.

+125 email templates

Small businesses become happy when they see this number of ready-to-use templates for their next marketing campaign. Active Campaign provides +125 beautiful design templates with +70 responsive premade, email templates, each one serving a specific purpose. 

You can build templates from scratch as well. There drag and drop builder can be used to modify any template you want to meet the needs of your messaging and emails. Most of the templates and designs are for email automation such as Reengage with an Old Customer or Product Back in Stock. Others were ideal for newsletters, like Weekly Newsletter.

Simple Split Testing 

You can set up a split test as easily as creating a simple mail. It allows you to create up to five versions of each A/B test which is very good. You can test any combination of subject lines, sender details, and email content. It gives you a big room for experimentation and comes up with which works best. 

Auto Spam Test

Subject Lines are critical to writing, meaning if your subject line has been detected as SPAM your mail will land in the Spam/Junk folder. The good thing is Active Campaign has an automated spam-check that tests subject lines during the setup process.

Its smart AI scores your subject line as well, making it clear if emails will land in the inbox or not OR how you can increase your good chances by creating a better subject line. 

Deliverability

No business can connect with its customers if its emails are landing in the SPAM folder. The deliverability rate must be high for any business or marketer. 

In my deliverability tests Active Campaign tends to score very highly, landing emails in the main inbox of the most popular providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and AOL.

+850 Marketing Integrations

To work efficiently you need more than just an email platform. The good thing is Active Campaign comes with +850 marketing integrations which allow you to link to the other tools which one business needs.

The famous integration which comes with it is Zapier which allows you to link to countless other applications. Active Campaign API can also be used to streamline app integrations. Some of the most helpful options I came across are

* Active Campaign Social Media Integrations: Facebook and Twitter

* Active Campaign e-commerce integrations: Big Commerce, Shopify, Square, and Woo Commerce

* Active Campaign lead generation integrations: Deadline Funnels, Lead Pages, and Many Chat

* Active Campaign CRM integrations: Salesforce and Zoho

Form Builder 

Active Campaign comes with an easy famous builder, which really helps to attract more subscribers to your lost. You can customize any form within minutes according to your business/marketing need.

Check out Active Campaign Features

Ease of Use

Is Active Campaign User-Friendly?

Personally, I would say Active Campaign is very easy to use as compared to all other platforms I have tried. After you logged in to your account you will see it.

The main dashboard shows your automation and recent campaigns. On the left side, there is a menu from where you can access your campaigns, lists, forms, and automation with a single click.

Normally some advanced features and tools require some do and so but the Active Campaign interface is so user-friendly that anyone can figure out the features and automation within a little time.

Time saver and Mistakes eliminator 

With Active Campaign, you can save time and eliminates your mistakes with content blocks. You can reuse your content blocks and styles throughout your email campaigns by saving them for your future campaigns or templates. Your time will be saved as you will not be required to re-enter your information and the best part is it will introduce consistency in your campaigns.

Nurture Leads with Segmentation

When it comes to nurturing leads, sending relevant messages to the right subscribers is critical. Active Campaign streamlines lead generation and nurturing with easy segmentation. You can create multiple tags and add them to groups of subscribers in bulk. Active Campaign’s automation also allows you to streamline tagging, so you don’t have to do it manually.

Send Better with Compatibility Checks

Active Campaign offers a compatibility preview that includes all major email providers meaning that your campaigns will not look bad in your subscriber’s inboxes. Active Campaign Basic plan includes five compatibility checks. You can add more but you need to pay an additional fee for it.

Automation Migration

You can improve productivity with your custom templates and automatic migration. Active Campaign offers free automation and template migration even on the basic plan. This service is a great way to work more efficiently while avoiding costly mistakes as it can be tricky to import templates from other email platforms. 

Analytics and Reporting

Get Data that you need

The active Campaign analytics dashboard provides all the basic data that anyone needs. It really helped visualize the data with few clicks for campaigns you select.

Does Active Campaign offer in-depth analytics?  

Guess what the answer is yes, the active campaign offers in-depth analytics. For example, you can see the number of clicks for each URL in your campaign which is really helpful to measures your audience interest levels. You can also see which email clients had the most clicks, which is really helpful in setting up future campaigns.

Can reports be shared?

Normally marketers need to share the campaign analytics with other team members or clients. Active Campaign allows you to export each report with one click. You cannot share the report overview rather you are required to share each section of the report separately.

Support Team

Live and email support

Live chat support is really handy when it comes to saving your time. Active Campaign Platform as its user-friendly, in the same manner, it’s very easy to access to the support team. There is a help button at the bottom right of every page which means you don’t need to search for it specifically. 

Active Campaign also has self-service support option i.e. FAQs that answer all basic queries and questions.

The cheapest-price plan only comes with live chat and email support but no phone call support. Also, live chat hours are limited to timing. Its only available Sundays from 04 PM to 11 PM CST, Monday through Thursday from 08 AM to 2 PM and 6 Pm to 11 PM CST, and Friday from 08 AM to 02 PM CST. But the question is then how actually support work in real?

When you enter live chat support you might get to see some people ahead of you, so you might have to wait for some time till your turn is next. But the good part is they really answer all your questions in no time. After your chat ends you will receive an email transcript of the conversation. It even gives you the option in case you had follow-up questions.

In the case of emails, if you request email support, you get a prompt message with your case number and it told to expect a reply within 24-hours but it can take more time as well.

Email support is slow compared to live chat so you shall first try self-service support then if it’s urgent and you don’t get your answer then live chat otherwise email support.

Pricing

Active Campaign offers many options for small and mid-size businesses. The only thing lacking by Active Campaign is a free plan i.e. with limited and basic options but the good part is they do offer a 14-day free trial. 

Active Campaign offers various payment options i.e. Visa, Master Card, American Express, and PayPal.

Here I have listed their plans in comparison 

	Lite	Plus	Professional	Enterprise
# of emails per month	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
# of subscribers	500	500	500	500
Multi-user accounts	Yes(3)	Yes(25)	Yes(50)	Yes(unlimited)
Automation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Segmentation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Analytics	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price(billed yearly)	$9/month	$49/month	$129/month	$229/month

Refund and Cancellation Policy:

Active Campaign does not offer refunds so the best thing you can try is to pay monthly until you want to fully move to Active Campaign.

 Check #1 Tool with best customer experience now

Final Words:

Active Campaign is a user-friendly email marketing platform offering advanced automation choices and more than 850 app integrations. The deliverability is robust, the features are admirable, and the support is good – and there’s even a free trial offered. Even though I’d wish for more comprehensive reports, I would absolutely recommend Active Campaign to fellow marketers and small or mid-size businesses.

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