ActiveCampaign Vs ConvertKit: Which Is The Best?

Are you stuck with choosing between ActiveCampaign Vs Convertkit? It’s normal especially if you want to be sure to make the best choice between the two. You can use both to build email lists and landing pages that will drive conversion.

Picking the best for your business can be challenging especially if you’re new to email marketing or someone that wants to switch to either of them.

That’s what this piece aims to solve. Making a choice from ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign demands that you carefully compare and contrast what they have to offer against your requirements.

I will help you make that decision by comparing their key features, deliverability, integration, ease of use, landing page, ecommerce, A/B testing, customer service, pricing, pros, and cons.

Let’s get started

ActiveCampaign Vs ConvertKit: Overview

Over 120,000 businesses trust ActiveCampaign as a robust email marketing tool to grow their customer base.

It’s an email marketing solution that has features you need to launch email campaigns, send messages, integrate with CRM tools, and even build awesome landing pages that can convert leads to sales.

In its bid to serve you better, ActiveCampaign has three physical offices in Dublin, Sydney, and Chicago.

It’s an email marketing software to consider if you’re a B2B company, run an ecommerce business, or a digital entrepreneur.

ConvertKit is another popular email marketing platform trusted by 250,000 creators and managed by a small dedicated team of 59 members in  49 cities across the globe.

ConvertKit is designed for creators to help them build their email list and attract target clients who’re interested in their creativity and services.

If you plan to start a blog, or already a Blogger, YouTuber, Podcaster, Designer, etc, ConvertKit is the email marketing tool for you.

It has features that allow you to connect with your target audience, build relationships with them, and sell your services and digital products to them.

Key Features

The features of these email marketing platforms are one of the key factors you need to compare as you make a decision on which of them to go for.

ActiveCampaign: Key Features

ActiveCampaign has robust features beyond you launching email campaigns, creating landing pages, autoresponder, with already built templates.

It has other features like Site tracking, Migration, Advanced reporting, CRM app. These additional features make it a choice for large businesses and organizations that want to take their email marketing to the next level.

Site Tracking

This’s an important feature that will help you make smart marketing decisions. It doesn’t only let you check page views but gives you an insight into how your audiences are interacting with your membership site, sales page, apps, etc.

Migration

You can migrate from your former email marketing tool to ActiveCampaign. Your subscriber’s list, CRM data, landing pages, and email templates will be imported directly into ActiveCampaign for free.

You don’t have to bother about losing the contacts and automation you’ve set in your former email marketing platform.

ActiveCampaign has a dedicated team that will help recreate your opt-in form, automation workflow, and email templates.

Gmail Chrome Extension

You can connect your ActiveCampaign account with Gmail and CRM. With that, you can manage your contacts without leaving your email account.

This allows you to track the interaction of your contacts with your emails.

Email Segmentation

Categorizing your contacts base on their age, sex, gender, location, and behavior is a better way to know exactly the email that will suit them.

It saves you the time and energy of blasting your subscribers with emails that sometimes they found irrelevant.

Mobile App Automation

Most of your subscribers open the emails you send to them on their smartphones. That’s why ActiveCampaign allows you to manage your account, CRM, and sales from your smartphone.

With the ActiveCampaign mobile app, you can track the activities of your customers, manage your CRM data while on the go.

Advanced Reporting

This feature will be more useful to large companies or organizations that use ActiveCampaign beyond sending emails.

Advanced reporting capture all the report of automated marketing software integrated into your ActiveCampaign account.

These tools track the activities of customers, leads generated, quality leads, upsell opportunities, and the number of sales closed.

ConvertKit: Key Features

ConvertKit’s features focus on helping you as a creator to connect with the right audience who you need to make a living with your skill, craft, and products.

It offers you beautiful templates which you need to design email sign up forms to turn your social media followers, website visitor, and  YouTube viewers, into subscribers who you can build relationships with.

As a creator, you can share your new project with your audiences through landing pages which you can create with pre-built templates. Also, you can set up your automated sales funnels easily.

You need these sales funnel to take your subscribers on a buyer’s journey from the awareness stage till they convert to sales. Other  key features of ConvertKit are:

Creator pro

This is a plan for creators who are successful in their various niches. For example, if you are a successful video course creator, you need more advanced tools to know how your students interact with your courses.

Also how you can expand your coast by capturing more students who will be interested in accessing your course on various online course platforms.

This feature gives you insight into the detailed activities of each of your subscribers. The aim is to know what they want and create the best user experience for them.

You can even use your subscribers to acquire more subscribers.

How the heck is this possible? Creator pro has Sparkloop account that allows you to reward your subscribers for referring their friends to your email list.

ConvertKit Creator Pro integrates seamlessly with Facebook’s custom audience which saves the stress of running manual ads.

Once you synchronize your ConvertKit segments to your Facebook, you can launch ad campaigns targeting a particular list which will increase the rate of conversion.

The Creator pro feature ensures that you don’t panic after sending an email with the wrong link. All it takes is to change the link in the email even after you have clicked the send button.

How about working with your team?

It allows you to invite your team members as many as you want and has them log in or switch accounts without lagging.

This will facilitate the rate at which you complete tasks and projects.

Let’s start comparing.

1.Deliverability

When you launch an email campaign, do your subscribers receive it in their inbox where they can easily see and read it? Or does it land in their spam? How many were lost in the process? This’s what email deliverability implies.

It involves the internet service providers, email service providers, and  email marketing platforms.

Internet service providers, email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. Email marketing platforms like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, GetResponse, Aweber, etc.

Then subscribers who’re already on your email list.

ActiveCampaign: Deliverability

ActiveCampaign has a good deliverability rate. According to its analysis base on the number of emails sent compared with the number that went to the inbox, spam, and were lost, it established that it has a deliverability rate of 83%.

ActiveCampaign also works with ISP and ESP to build a strong reputation to ensure emails sent to subscribers through its platform are delivered to subscribers directly to their inboxes.

ConvertKit: Deliverability

According to its monthly deliverability rate report, ConvertKit has an average deliverability rate of 98%, this’s better compared to ActiveCampaign which boasts of 83%.

This’s will be the choice of creators who are anxious of not losing emails during the delivery process.

Verdict: ConvertKit wins

 ConvertKit has an edge over ActiveCampaign in this regard. With a 98% average deliverability rate, you’re sure that your emails get to your subscribers.

2. Integration

Any robust email marketing tool should support integration with other apps. This’s to allows you to make use of related marketing tools that will help you grow your business.

ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign support integration with other apps. Let’s check them out below.

ActiveCampaign: Integration

ActiveCampaign supports the integration with 350+ different apps on its app market place.

These apps are arranged according to categories making it easy for you to locate any that you need.  You can look for any app you need on its app search bar. Some of the apps include:

Shopify if you run an ecommerce business. Salesforce, one of the CRM tools you need for effective customer relationship management.

WordPress for bloggers and people who want to start a blog. PayPal, a popular e-payment platform that you can use to receive payment on your landing pages.

Twitter, to engage and interact with your customers on social media.

Others are Facebook, Zapier, Jotform, Clickfunnels, Woocommerce, Pipedrive, Google Analytics, Activewoo, 123FormBuilder, Bigcommerce, etc.

ActiveCampaign supports you to develop your own app with its API and have it featured on its app marketplace.

ConvertKit: Integration

ConvertKit just like ActiveCampaign integrates with a lot of apps but there is no idea of a number of apps that connect with it.

Its apps are arranged according to tags. Also, there is a search bar that you can use to look up any app you need.

Some of the apps that integrate with ActiveCampaign also connect with ConvertKit. Through its API you can develop your own Integration and have it listed.

Some of the apps are as follows: Shopify for ecommerce, Teachable to create awesome online courses, Crowdcast which is a webinar and live streaming platform.

Other apps are; Unbounce, Clickfunnels, WebinarJam, WordPress, Zapier, WP engine, Gravityform, Woocommerce, Thrivelead, etc.

Verdict: No winner

Both email marketing software connects with hundreds of third-party apps that you need to scale your business.

Also, they support you to develop your own integration through their API and have it featured on their app marketplace.

3. Ease of use

Many people who have the need for email marketing software lack coding skills. They want a tool they will explore, handle, and manage without any technical support.

Even if you’re tech-savvy you will prefer software that’s beginner-friendly and simple to understand. 

Reason is that it’ll save you time and energy. Let’s see how easy it is to use ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit.

ActiveCampaign: Ease of use

Once you sign up for the free trial of ActiveCampaign, you’ll get access to your dashboard where you can carry out any action.

At the left-hand side of your dashboard, you’ll see a menu and options like contact, campaigns, automation, deals, lists form, report.

It’s well organized in a manner that you won’t get confused on what to do. At the top right is a button to launch an email campaign. You can choose from different templates available on the bottom right of your dashboard.

ConvertKit: Ease of use

ConvertKit is also easy to use. Once you click on create a free account, an option pops up asking if you’re moving from another email marketing platform to ConvertKit or a beginner.

Once you/v choose any and sign up, you’ll be taken to your dashboard. On the right-hand side of your dashboard, you’ll see different options like create a form, embed a form on your website, create a sequence, connect forms and sequence, import subscribers, etc.

Verdict: No winner

Both are beginner-friendly and easy to use. Once you create your account and access your dashboard, the features are self-explanatory. All you’ve to is to click on any option you need and get started.

4.Landing page

The landing page is a key factor to consider when choosing an email marketing platform. It performs the basic function for which one would need an email marketing software – build an email list.

Nowadays, building email lists with the target audience is becoming difficult. This’s because people don’t want to be disturbed by promotional emails.

The way to go about this to create a robust landing page with all the features that will convince the audience to join your list.

ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit support landing page. Let’s see what they offer.

ActiveCampaign: Landing Page

Building a landing page on ActiveCampaign is simple. It has a library of landing page templates that are customizable.

Alternatively, you can use its drag and drop editor to build your own landing page from scratch in minutes with no coding.

Your landing pages can be automated to capture leads with the use of forms, chatbots. The use of freebies to bait your audience is an easy way to capture them as leads on your landing page.

ActiveCampaign supports this. Even activation of your count down timer to create a sense of urgency for your special products is a feature you could add to your landing page.

What if you decide to sell your products on your landing page? Yes, it’s possible, PayPal which integrates with ActiveCampaign can be added to your landing page as a button and you can receive payment through it.

ConvertKit: Landing Page

ConvertKit has different landing page templates for different creators that are customizable. You have access to 100,000+  stock photos from Unsplash which makes it easy to locate and select a suitable image to design your landing page.

Landing pages designed on ConvertKit respond perfectly on mobile devices and other smaller devices.

Opt-in forms that help turn your audience into subscribers can be embedded in your landing page.

A lead magnet that ensures that your audiences exchange their email addresses with your free gifts is supported for ConvertKit landing pages.

Verdict: ActiveCampaign win

ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit have great landing pages but ActiveCampaign has an edge.

While ConvertKit landing page is mainly designed for creators to connect with their audience and make money from their products, ActiveCampaign landing page is designed to meet the needs of both creators and large businesses.

It offers both chatbot and web chat to interact with potential customers, track their activities with CRM tools, and even follow up until a sale is closed.

5. Ecommerce

Email marketing tools play crucial roles in ecommerce. Especially if you sell either digital or physical products on your store or you’re a drop shipper.

You can use it to build relationships with your customers, inform them about a new product you’ve.

It can be a way to recover the abandoned carts by sending them emails on the need to complete a purchase process they initiated.

ActiveCampaign: Ecommerce

ActiveCampaign has features that help you manage the sales on your online store. It achieves this with its integration with CRM. 75% of ecommerce shopping carts are abandoned.

That’s a huge sale store owners are likely to lose. You can send an automated email to recover an abandoned cart.

As a merchant, you can use ActiveCampaign to send abandoned cart reminders to customers to bring them back to complete their purchase process.

To boost your sales in ecommerce, it’s important you launch a win-back campaign to your customers who haven’t patronized your store a long time.

This could be an email asking them to check out your new arrivals. What of customers who find it difficult to use the products they purchase from your store? You can trigger a series of automated emails taking them step by step on how to use the product.

This shows how you care about them as customers. It will also encourage them to continue to patronize you.

During special seasons like Black Friday, Holidays, Christmas, and New Year, you can automate emails to notify them of the discounts on your store and they need for them to take action while the offer lasts.

ConvertKit: Ecommerce

As a creator, you can sell your digital products and membership subscription with the commerce tool that ConvertKit offers.

Your digital product and membership subscription can earn you money when you set up a purchase and recurring subscription fee for them.

This’s a feature that ensures that you make money online from your skill as a creator. To get started with this, choose a product page template and customize it to suit the product you want to sell.

To make it look professional, you can decide to brand the URL of your product page. Then connect it to your main domain.

Add a buy a button to your product page after you have set up credit/debit card payment methods.

To increase your chances of making sales, y set up a sales funnel to follow up potential customers until they convert to sales.

Verdict: ActiveCampaign wins

ActiveCampaign does more in terms of customer management due to its integration with CRM tools.

It focuses more on customers to ensure that the rate at which carts are abandoned is reduced while identifying more opportunities to upsell customers.

In addition, ActiveCampaign supports the direct connection of PayPal payment button on your product page which ConvertKit doesn’t.

6. A/B Testing

You can send hundreds of emails to your subscribers, but if you don’t analyze them to get an insight into how they performed, you’re off track on reaching your email marketing goals. A/B testing or split testing is the way to about this.

ActiveCampaign supports A/B testing.

Your email subject lines,  content, images, call to action can all be tested. For the subject line, it could be how many subscribers opened an email subject line X Vs email Y subject line. Up to 5 email subject lines can be tested at the same time.

What about your sales funnels?

Yes, ActiveCampaign supports its testing. If you feel that your sales funnel isn’t working, you can test it to identify what needs to be fixed.

ConvertKit also supports A/B testing. But you can only test for two subject lines at a time. That’s email A subject line vs email B subject line with at least 1000 recipients.

The winning subject line is determined by the one with the highest open rate 4 hours after the testing period.

Verdict: ActiveCampaign wins

A/B testing on ActiveCampaign is more advanced than ConvertKit. For example, you can test up to 5 email subject lines, images, content, and call to action buttons at the same time.

Even your sales funnel can be tested to see how they perform. This’s not true with ConvertKit that allows only for 2 subject line testing at the same time with no option to test for sales funnels.

7. Customer Support

At one point or the other, you’ll need the assistance of the customer service of any of these email marketing software.

It doesn’t matter if you’re tech-savvy or not. There are some issues you may encounter while using any of these platforms which only their technical support can fix.

So it’s important we look into the kind of customer support ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit offer.

ActiveCampaign: Customer support

ActiveCampaign has physical offices in Sydney, Chicago, and Dublin where you can call in. It offers support through live chat, toll-free numbers for calls relating to sales, and support center where you search and read up articles that will help you fix a problem.

You can submit a request through its contact form. Its social media handles are also channels through which you can get updates.

ConvertKit: Customer support

ConvertKit has over 100 articles from which you can get help to fix an issue. You can also open a ticket to contact their customer support team.

Its live chat and email support are available between 8am to 8pm eastern time. There are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter channels through which you can get information on the latest development.

Verdict: Both have good customer support. But ActiveCampaign has additional options which include toll-free numbers through which you can contact the sales team.

Also since it supports 6 different languages it means that you can get support from other languages apart from English.

8.Pricing Plan

Here’s where you’ve to compare the pricing plans of ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit. This’s to be informed on the amount you need to pay monthly or yearly to subscribe to their plans.

ActiveCampaign: pricing plan

ActiveCampaign has 4 different pricing plans:

• Lite: $15/month( 0-500 subscribers)
• Plus: $70/month(0-500 subscribers)
• Professional: $159/month (0-500 subscribers)
• Enterprise: $279/month(0-500 subscribers)

The features of these pricing plans differ. The higher the plan, the more features you’ve access to.

Also the higher your subscribers the higher you pay monthly for any of the plans. You get a discount when you subscribe to any of these pricing plans 12 months upfront.

ConvertKit: Pricing Plan

• ConvertKit has 3 pricing plans:
• Free: maximum of  1,000 subscribers
• Creator: $29/month( 0-1000 subscribers)
• Creator pro: $59/month ( 0 – 1000 subscribers)

Note: As your subscribers increase, so the monthly subscription price for each of the plans increase.

Also, each of the pricing plans offers different features, and ConvertKit offers you a 2-month free plan when you subscribe for 12 months upfront for any of the plans.

Verdict: ConvertKit Wins

 ConvertKit has a less expensive pricing plan compared to ActiveCampaign. Although the reason could be seen in their features.

But for someone who is on a low budget, ConvertKit is the choice to make. It has a free plan which ActiveCampaign doesn’t have.

That’s it with the comparison between these robust email marketing tools.

Going further, to be sure that you make the best decision, I have collated other relevant information you may like to consider which is their pros and cons.

ActiveCampaign: Pros

• Beginner  friendly and easy to use.
• Offers customer support through email, live chat, and toll-free calls.
• You can split-test up to 5 emails at the same time.
•  Supports A/B testing for your sales funnel.
• Boasts of a deliverability rate of 83%
• You can sell your products on your  landing pages and receive payment through PayPal
• Integrates with 350+ third-party apps including CRM tools.
• You can build your own integration with its API and have it listed on its app marketplace.
• Beautiful and customizable templates that suit any kind of email and landing page.
• Suitable for large businesses and companies.

ActiveCampaign: Cons

• Has no free plan.
• The pricing plan is relatively expensive.

ConvertKit: Pro

• Suitable for bloggers, artists, YouTubers, podcasters, social media influencers, and other creators.
• Offers a free plan.
• Has awesome landing page and email templates for any purpose.
• Integrates with hundreds of third-party app.
• Its interface is beginner-friendly and easy to use.
• You can sell your digital products on your landing page and receive payment through credit cards.
• Supports you to develop an integration with its API and have it featured on its app list.
• Pricing plans are relatively cheap compared to ActiveCampaign.
• Deliverability rate of 98%.

ConvertKit: Cons

• No  integration with CRM tools
• Only 2 email subject lines can be split tested at a time.
• Its A/B testing doesn’t support sales funnel.

Summary

It’s now over you. I trust I’ve made the decision making the process easy for you.  You’ve known their features and I’ve made a comparison base on the important factors in email marketing – deliverability, integration, ecommerce, A/B testing, pricing, customer support.

Yours is to place these comparisons side by side against your requirements so as to make the best choice.

ConvertKit features suit bloggers, Youtubers, artists, social media influencers, and other creators.

For large organizations and businesses that deal with a large number of customers, ActiveCampaign is the answer, its integration with CRM tools that makes it robust. It’s up to you now to make a choice.