In this detailed ActiveCampaign review for 2025, we’ll take a closer look at what makes the platform stand out, what it does exceptionally well, and where it might fall short.
Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketer using multiple tools, or a sales team looking to improve lead follow-ups, this review will help you understand if ActiveCampaign is the right fit for your goals.
We will highlight the top 7 benefits of using ActiveCampaign and outline some key challenges you should consider before implementation.
ActiveCampaign Review Summary
Our research on Reddit indicates that users generally appreciate ActiveCampaign for its marketing automation and CRM capabilities. However, some find its email editor and reporting tools awkward and not easy to use.
Quick Review of ActiveCampaign:
- Best For: Small businesses scaling up their digital marketing, growing eCommerce brands, agencies managing multiple clients, consultants and service-based companies and B2B companies looking to shorten sales cycles
- Pricing Starts At: $15/month (as of June 2025)
- Free Trial: 14-day trial available
- Ease of Use: Moderate learning curve with lots of support material
- Standout Feature: Marketing automation, CRM and customer journeys
Top Features of ActiveCampaign
Here are the main features of ActiveCampaign to consider before making your decision:
1. Email Marketing – Send Emails That Convert
Email marketing is still one of the most profitable digital channels—with an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. ActiveCampaign takes this to the next level by combining a modern drag-and-drop email builder, personalized content blocks, and smart automation workflows.
- You can build beautiful emails in minutes without touching a line of code.
- Use behavioral triggers (like website visits or link clicks) to send emails at the perfect moment.
- A/B testing and reporting tools help you optimize subject lines, content, and timing.
Why it matters: Instead of blasting one email to everyone, you’re sending the right message to the right person at the right time, which leads to more opens, more clicks, and more sales.
2. WhatsApp Messaging – Automate Growth with WhatsApp
With over 2 billion active users, WhatsApp has become an essential communication tool for global businesses. ActiveCampaign allows you to integrate WhatsApp messaging into your automation workflows using verified partners like Hilos or 360dialog.
- Automate transactional updates, like order confirmations or appointment reminders.
- Engage leads instantly with welcome messages, cart recovery nudges, or feedback requests.
- Sync conversations with your contact records and automation flows.
Why it matters: People read and reply to WhatsApp messages faster than emails or SMS. For B2C brands, it’s a direct line to customers. For B2B, it can improve lead follow-up time and customer support efficiency.
For example, Hilos-powered WhatsApp flows triggered straight from your automations allow you to re-engage up to 40% of abandoned carts automatically.
3. Segmentation – Sort and Automate Contacts
ActiveCampaign’s segmentation features let you organize your audience based on behavior, demographics, lead score, purchase history, and more.
- Use tags, custom fields, and dynamic lists to keep your database clean and actionable.
- Build automations that respond to how users interact with your site or emails.
- Group contacts by interests, lifecycle stage, or campaign history.
- AI suggested segments identify high performance groups automatically.
- The floating segment builder lets you define and apply segments anytime during campaign creation.
Why it matters: Segmented campaigns get up to 50% more clicks and generate more revenue by being relevant to the user.
For example, you can organize contacts based on site visits, past purchases, or lead score to deliver spot-on messaging.
4. CRM – Track All Opportunities
ActiveCampaign’s built-in CRM, enhanced with add-ons, centralizes and streamlines your sales operations:
- Deal pipelines, lead scoring, predictive win probability, and automated task assignments are included with the enhanced CRM add‑
- Activities from emails, forms, and site visits populate contact records for seamless handovers.
Why it matters: When sales and marketing share the same data, your team can close deals faster, follow up smarter, and stop leads from falling through the cracks.
For example, you can automate follow-up tasks whenever a lead reaches a new pipeline stage, saving time and boosting close rates.
5. SMS Marketing – Reach Your Contact Through Mobile Devices
Text messages have a 98% open rate, and with ActiveCampaign, you can easily add SMS to your automation workflows.
The built-in SMS feature lets you engage contacts via mobile instantly, which is ideal for reminders and flash campaigns.
- Features include opt-in forms, automated broadcasts, MMS support in the U.S., and reporting dashboards.
- You can send appointment reminders, discount codes, flash sale alerts or onboarding tips.
- Typical use cases: appointment reminders, shipping alerts, and time-sensitive offer nudges.
Why it matters: As customers don’t always check email, but they always check their phones. SMS is ideal for time-sensitive messages or mobile-first audiences.
6. Landing Pages – Capture Leads Effortlessly
With ActiveCampaign’s built-in landing page builder, you can create conversion-focused pages without hiring a designer or web developer.
- Start from templates or a blank canvas.
- Easily embed forms, images, videos, and custom content.
- Automatically tag users, trigger automations, or follow up with personalized emails.
LPs connect directly to automations, email sequences, and audience segmentation.
Why it matters: You can launch lead magnets, special offers, webinar registrations, or product announcements, without waiting for your dev team.
7. Forms – Gather Valuable Information
ActiveCampaign forms offer seamless lead capture, data collection, and segmentation entry points.
- Create inline, floating bar, popup and modal type forms for your site or landing pages.
- Map fields directly to custom contact properties (like budget, job role, interests).
- Trigger automations when a form is submitted, such as lead scoring, list assignment, or email sequences.
Why it matters: When set up right, forms give you the data and structure you need to personalize every follow-up, without extra admin work.
ActiveCampaign Reviews
We have compiled the ActiveCampaign reviews from G2 for you:
As of June 2025, on G2, out of 5, 14,083 users have reviewed it 4.5.
Here is a table stating the Pros and Cons by User reviews:
Pros of ActiveCampaign as per G2 users
|
Pros |
No. of users |
|
Automation |
3,010 |
|
Ease of Use |
1834 |
|
Features |
1213 |
|
Email Marketing |
1122 |
Cons of Active Campaign as per G2 users
|
Cons |
No. of users |
|
Learning Curve |
818 |
|
Missing features |
717 |
|
Expensive |
609 |
|
Limited Features |
545 |
|
Not Intuitive |
487 |
Some of the compiled user reviews by small business owners and marketers are:
Claudia S – “”ActiveCampaign helps me grow my online business”
Jodie C – “Exceptional Experience with ActiveCampaign!”
Cali R – “A Must-Have for Any Serious Marketer”
Jeff B – “Powerful automations, user-friendly, and solid integrations”
AD – “Great Email Marketing Tool for Growing Businesses”
Now, let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of using ActiveCampaign, backed by real-world examples to analyse its performance in practice.
7 Benefits of Using ActiveCampaign
Here’s a closer look at the key advantages ActiveCampaign offers and why it stands out among other tools.
1. Advanced Email Personalization That Converts
ActiveCampaign helps you send personalized emails by changing the content based on your contacts’ information and actions. With dynamic content and conditional blocks, each email feels specially made for the recipient.
On average, segmented and personalized campaigns generate 76% more revenue than non-segmented ones.
ActiveCampaign reports that organizations in over 170 countries have experienced a 206% yearly growth in revenue from emails, including the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
For example, MSI Chicago used ActiveCampaign to create email journeys for different staff groups and visitor segments. The result was an impressive 206% increase in email-driven revenue year over year.
2. Powerful Automation That Saves Time
ActiveCampaign offers powerful automation tools that can save you time and increase your profits.
With its easy-to-use automation builder, you can set up workflows without needing technical skills. Once you create these workflows, they run automatically, cutting down on manual tasks.
Key features of ActiveCampaign automation include:
- Easy automation builder
- Split and conditional actions
- A/B testing
- Triggers, actions, and goals
- Tracking for sites and events
- Smart email sending
- Sales routing
- One-to-one emails
You can access over 900 ready-to-use automation templates, helping you implement effective workflows quickly. Since automation can provide a 76% return on investment within a year, it is both efficient and profitable.
For example, Escape Campervans used automation to send personalized arrival instructions and trip tips. This increased their revenue by 50% without requiring extra staff.
3. Sales CRM Integration That Closes Deals Faster
ActiveCampaign’s built-in CRM helps you track contacts through their sales journey. You can assign deals to team members and set reminders for follow-ups.
You can also automate lead nurturing based on where the leads are in the sales pipeline. This gives your sales team more time to focus on warm leads.
The CRM allows you to score leads, track deals, and automate sales processes directly from marketing campaigns. It supports unlimited pipeline actions, automated follow-ups, and predicts the win probability with AI in premium versions.
For example, Pit Boss Grills ran an email campaign using forms, tags, and automation. They generated $76,717 in revenue, showing how well the system connects marketing with sales intent.
4. Smart Segmentation for Laser-Focused Campaigns
ActiveCampaign helps you split your audience based on behavior, location, or engagement. You can send emails based on site visits or past purchases using tags, custom fields and behavior-based segmentation. Conditional content shows the most relevant information to each recipient in your emails.
For example, you can email customers who visited your pricing page but didn’t buy or users who clicked on a specific product but didn’t check out.
A real case scenario is Bonjoro improved engagement and conversions by looking at lead scores and behavior. Their personalized follow-ups led to much better results because their messaging became relevant to individual users.
5. Multi-Channel Reach with One Dashboard
ActiveCampaign lets you combine email with SMS, Facebook Custom Audiences, and even in-app messaging, all from the same platform. This ensures your message reaches customers wherever they are in their journey.
Additionally, SMS and automated WhatsApp messaging can be added with official add-ons, enabling broadcast, MMS, and reply-based triggers.
Customers like Escape Campervans and others have layered SMS reminders onto email campaigns to boost effectiveness.
For example, a retailer integrated SMS reminders with email campaigns for seasonal promotions. Using this coordinated approach, they attracted more traffic and increased average order value by over 35%, all managed from one platform.
6. Real-Time Insights That Guide Smarter Decisions
With ActiveCampaign’s reporting tools, you can discover which automations are converting, how your campaigns are performing, and where drop-offs happen. These insights help you tweak your strategy and improve results over time.
ActiveCampaign delivers detailed analytics, drilling down into campaign performance, pipeline health, and automation efficiency.
The platform lets you track opens, clicks, revenue, pipeline flow, and even predictive sending insights.
Email automations deliver 320% more revenue than manual campaigns. For example, nonprofit organizations can identify which automations (newsletters vs. appeals) generate the most donations. One such organization optimized its workflow mid-campaign to increase donation conversions by 28% in just three months.
7. Flexible, Scalable Tools That Grow with You
Whether you’re a solo founder or a small team, you can start with simple campaigns and grow into more complex automations and pipelines as your business expands. Its pricing plans make scaling cost-effective.
With plans supporting multi-step automations, unlimited actions, conditional logic, AI agents and AI-powered tools, it adjusts to business growth.
Recognized as a $3 billion valuation unicorn, it powers 180,000+ businesses globally.
For instance, a consultant started with basic email sequences. As their client base grew, they layered in SMS, lead scoring, pipelines, and custom integrations, all within the same platform, eliminating the need to switch down the road.
Limitations of ActiveCampaign
Of course, no platform is perfect. Here are some of the cons of ActiveCampaign:
1. Initial Learning Curve
There’s a lot to explore, especially in the automation builder. It may feel overwhelming at first, but the learning pays off.
2. Limited Free Trial
While there is a 14-day trial, there’s no free forever plan like Mailchimp. For very small businesses just getting started, this could be a hurdle.
3. Limited Social Posting
If your strategy relies heavily on managing and scheduling social media content, you’ll need an additional tool like Buffer or Hootsuite.
4. CRM Isn’t Enterprise-Grade
Great for small to mid-sized sales teams, but lacks deeper features like quoting tools, custom dashboards, or AI-based forecasting found in larger CRM platforms.
Is ActiveCampaign the Right Tool for Your Business?
It depends on what you are looking for and what’s your business goal.
You should use ActiveCampaign if:
- You want to automate email and SMS follow-ups
- You value contact segmentation and personalization
- You run B2B or eCommerce campaigns
- Your team wants sales and marketing at one place
- You’re looking to scale without adding headcount
You should not use it if:
- You need a free tool to test ideas
- You rely on in-depth social media management
- You require advanced enterprise CRM capabilities
If you need a platform that goes beyond basic email marketing and you’re ready to automate your customer journey, streamline sales follow-ups, and deliver more relevant communication at scale, then yes, ActiveCampaign is likely a great fit.
But if you’re just getting started with a small list and a tight budget, or if your business relies heavily on content marketing and blogging, a platform like HubSpot might offer better results.
ActiveCampaign Alternatives
Here are two other marketing automation platforms to consider if you feel ActiveCampaign is not suited for your business goal.
HubSpot
HubSpot offers a full suite of marketing, sales, and service tools. It’s intuitive and easy to use, with a built-in CMS and content tools. It is good for B2B businesses that want an all-in-one platform, especially those with a focus on inbound marketing.
Why choose HubSpot?
- Strong CRM and pipeline management
- Free tools available for smaller teams
- Deeper content and SEO capabilities
- Better for blog/content-driven growth
Downside? It can get expensive fast as you grow.
Eloqua
Eloqua is an enterprise-grade marketing automation platform by Oracle. It’s built for large teams with high-volume campaigns, multi-region marketing, and complex workflows.
Why choose Eloqua?
- Advanced lead scoring and nurturing
- Enterprise-level segmentation
- Excellent for Fortune 500-style operations
Downside? Complexity and cost.
How to Get Started
If you are seeking a comprehensive marketing automation tool, ActiveCampaign is a strong option to consider. At Automation Strategists Group, we offer support throughout the onboarding process.
Since our establishment in 2015, we have specialised in assisting businesses in the tech, healthcare, and B2B service sectors, enhancing their marketing investment returns through effective marketing automation strategies.
Our team of experts is skilled in implementing and optimizing various marketing tools, including ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, and Eloqua. Recognizing that each business has unique needs, we collaborate closely with our clients to develop customised strategies aligned with their specific objectives.
To determine if ActiveCampaign is the right solution for your business, schedule a free consultation call with one of our specialists.
Final Verdict
In conclusion, ActiveCampaign offers several key benefits, including advanced email personalization, powerful automation, sales CRM integration, smart segmentation, real-time insights, and flexibility and scalability. However, there are some limitations, such as limited features, a steep learning curve, and a lack of intuitiveness.
Despite these drawbacks, ActiveCampaign remains one of the best all-in-one tools for startups and small businesses. By automating repetitive tasks and personalizing customer journeys, businesses can improve efficiency, boost engagement, and achieve their marketing goals more effectively.
If you’re looking for a smarter way to connect with your audience, automate follow-ups, and grow your business without the hassle of juggling multiple tools, ActiveCampaign is worth trying.
Our recommendation for 2025 is that if you are a startup or a small business ready to simplify your marketing journeys through a more personalized and automated approach, this tool deserves your consideration.
Related FAQs
Which ActiveCampaign plan is good for a growing business?
For most small to midsize businesses, Plus or Pro is a good option as you get marketing automation and AI agents combined with CRM, lead scoring, and reporting. Our ActiveCampaign specialist team helps clients choose the best plan and scale based on their current needs and future goals.
Is ActiveCampaign easy to learn and implement?
Despite its rich feature set, ActiveCampaign’s visual workflow builder is both intuitive and powerful, rated as one of the most user-friendly tools for marketing automation. That said, complex automations may require guidance. Most users benefit from structured onboarding from Consulting services, ensuring faster setup and quicker ROI.
Can ActiveCampaign connect to our existing tools?
ActiveCampaign integrates with 900+ applications, including Shopify, Salesforce, WordPress, Slack, Calendly, and Zendesk. Add-ons extend functionality with SMS, transactional email service, and enhanced CRM. In consulting engagements, we prioritize critical integrations to ensure seamless data flow and messaging consistency.
How effective are the deliverability and reporting?
ActiveCampaign consistently ranks high in email deliverability, even recognized by EmailToolTester for top outcomes. Reporting includes opens, clicks, pipeline conversions, and ecommerce attribution, with customizable dashboards for Pro and Enterprise plans. We guide clients to refine automations and list hygiene, directly improving deliverability and engagement metrics.
Can ActiveCampaign support long-term growth?
With tiered plans (Starter, Plus, Pro, Enterprise), ActiveCampaign scales with your business. Long-term clients benefit from financial and operational predictability, and you don’t require unexpected platform migrations as you grow.
