ConvertKit vs Activecampaign: A Detailed Compariosn

Published by Yash Chawlani on January 25, 2022

There’s an old saying that goes like “No matter how good your product is, if no one knows about it, they won’t buy it.”

Ask Marketers of the digital age and they will tell you that email marketing is the best way to reach the right audience and introduce your brand and offerings to them.

Now that technology does most of the heavy lifting of a marketing function, it becomes important to choose the right tools that enable you to do exactly what is needed to sell more, sell quickly, grow steadily, and maintain that growth in the long run.

Email marketing tools are available by the dozens and it might get overwhelming to choose the right one. Here we shall consider Activecampgin and ConvertKit and find out which one is the best fit for your requirements.

ConvertKit – New and fresh!

Founded in 2013, Convertkit is a fairly new product. You could say that ConvertKit looks similar to all the other Email marketing tools out there but if you pay attention you’ll learn that they’re more of a Creator Marketing Platform for various types of artists (as they claim).

In essence, ConvertKit is an email marketing tool that has a different approach that isn’t generalized like other options available in the market. Their approach and offerings are aimed at ensuring artists and individual creators can reach the right audience, create, grow and maintain a community and facilitate its monetization through sales.

This difference in approach is visible in the offered feature set as you would find options that are more suited for individuals and professionals rather than traditional businesses.

This, however, does not limit its capability as an email marketing tool as every necessary feature to run a successful email marketing Campaign is available through their offerings.

Activecampaign – A good Multi-tool for Marketing

Founded in 2003, a decade earlier than Convertkit, it has made a name for itself in the email marketing world. It is a ‘Customer Experience Automation tool’ which means it provides a diverse set of marketing automation solutions that includes email marketing.

It is a powerful tool, a blanket business automation solution with several accolades. Its approach as a solutions provider is generalized and it caters to any and all marketing requirements for businesses of all sizes to individuals and institutions.

Image Courtesy – Activecampaign

Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Automation, Sales Engagement, Customer Service, and Support are the solutions it offers. Activecampaign has you covered in every spot that affects the customer experience.

Even if you’re looking for just an email marketing tool, all the additional solutions that Activecampaign offers make it a good one-stop solution for all business automation needs, especially if you don’t have a system in place for other business functions.

Reasons you should consider ConvertKit

Let us now consider all the things ConvertKit enables in terms of its functionality and feature set.

Features

• A/B Testing
• Analytics and Reporting
• ROI Tracking
• Auto-Responders
• Campaign Management
• CAN-SPAM Compliance
• Drip Campaigns
• Event-Triggered Actions
• Landing Pages and Web Forms
• Mobile Optimized Emails
• Email Templates

Image Courtesy – G2

Pros

• Considering its approach, it is not surprising that ConvertKit is pretty easy to use with a simple interface that lets you set up and start mailing quickly.
• Unlike other mailing tools that count the same email address in different mailing lists as different contacts, ConvertKit counts an email address once even if its a part of multiple lists.
• There are templates you could choose from and designing new ones is simple and easy, powered by drag and drop functionality, AB Testing, and mobile optimization.

Cons

• ConvertKit is still new to the game and hence suffers from minor bugs and other hiccups every now and then which take time to be resolved.
• The difference in approach has introduced a lot of operational quirks that are difficult to deal with for both traditional marketers, artists and creators.
• Although they mention that their tool is easy to use, ConvertKit has gone through several UX changes and some learning  might be necessary.

Reasons you should consider Activecampaign

Features

• AB Testing
• Autoresponders
• CAN-SPAM Compliance
• Drip Campaigns
• Lead Scoring and Segmentation
• Advanced Reporting
• Sales Reporting
• Task Assignment
• Segmentation
• Integrated Engagement
• Pipeline Automation
• Multi-Channel customer service and support

Image Courtesy – g2.com

Pros

• A good advantage of having been around for quite some time is that all their functionalities have been streamlined, easy and intuitive to understand and use. This enables quick deployment of automation and email marketing campaigns.
• Scope of its offerings covers a large varying set of users, so it doesn’t matter if you’re an individual or a business and the size of your operations, their services and functionalities can be scaled as per your requirements.
• Considering the different solutions on offer, Activecampaign is a better all-in-one business solution that includes a robust email marketing tool.

Cons

• Considering how many solutions and automation are available, the Dashboard customization is limited and cannot display different sets of information all in a central location.
• Activecampaign restricts the number of users using the service based on the plan you opt for. If you want access to more users, you will have to upgrade your plan.
• There are no limitations as such when it comes to designing emails, landing pages, forms, etc but users have reported that the customization process is not easy.
• While their solutions are easy to understand and run, their use of Heavy Technical lingo for some UI elements can hinder the understanding of beginners.

Pitting them up against each other

Having a good idea about each email marketing tool helps but it is not helpful enough to make a good purchase decision. One must know how these two tools compare against one another in different functional areas.

This provides a better insight into understanding which tool is better at which function and what advantage you may gain in which functionality by opting for either one. So let us begin:

Email Marketing

In terms of basic functionalities that are a must for email marketing tools, both Activecampaign and ConvertKit have all the needed feature sets.

AB Testing, Drip Campaign, Campaign Management, Email tracking, Automation, Triggered emails, etc. are all available with both the options.

This is where the similarities end. Considering this factor alone, it becomes difficult to compare the two options as both have different approaches, and their functionalities and features serve those approaches well.

Activecampaign, however, is a more robust offering as an email marketing tool as it has many advanced features and scaling capabilities that ConvertKit lacks.

Moreover, in terms of Email Deliverability, the number of automation triggers, and automation actions, Activecampaign is leagues ahead of ConvertKit.

ConvertKit, though a solid option, is not suitable for mid-market and Enterprise clients that want to do more which cannot be blamed upon it as it was specifically designed to address the requirements of creators and artists.

List Management and Segmentation

These features allow one to offer personalization using the data collected from audiences.

ConvertKit does not have a List function in the traditional sense but rather it uses tags to create sets of mailing addresses. In essence when it comes to creating lists and segmentation, what ConvertKit offers is pretty basic but simple and easy to use.

You can use the tags to segment sets of mailing addresses but that doesn’t enable you to offer personalization. Activecampaign on the other end has a capable list management function in place with a lot of advanced options.

The same is the case when it comes to segmentations where you can not only use tags but also have different fields to segment data according to the parameter you desire. This enables a powerful segmentation that enables you to offer a higher degree of personalization than the competition.

Ease of Use and UX

ConverKit’s approach of making email marketing Simple for Artists and Creators itself should translate into seamless ease of use and good user experience but that seldom is the case in the real world.

While it surely is pretty easy to use, this very factor is what makes ConvertKit’s user experience feel lackluster. Everything is overly simplified and while that does help a lot to hit the ground running, it also means one misses out on a lot of useful features.

This can be seen when it comes to designing emails, an area where Activecampaign dominates with its drag and drop functionality and a big library of templates to choose from.

Though a little complex compared to ConvertKit, Activecampaign compensates by providing a richer user experience and easy and beautifully designed emails.

Pricing

The two solutions providers are difficult to compare in this regard as ConvertKit is a standalone email marketing tool while Activecampaign provides many Marketing Automation solutions along with its email marketing tool.

Image Courtesy – Activecampaign

Opting for Activecampaign will cost you significantly more but you have to consider that the price includes the other marketing automation services that Activecampaigns provides along with its email marketing tool.

Image Courtesy – ConvertKit

The Pricing offered by ConvertKit is similar to other mainstream email marketing tools but here you’re paying for a completely different approach that will still take time to iron out all the wrinkles in terms of functionality.

Image Courtesy – Email Tool Tester

To Conclude with

While both the tools do offer similar functionality in email marketing, they drastically differ in their approach.

Activecampaign has a traditional generalized approach while ConvertKit is targeting a specific set of users.

Both the solution providers have their upsides and downsides but more importantly, they’re meant to be used by different types of users. We suggest you consider which Email Marketing tool fits best with your business requirements and whether you belong to their targeted user base.