Every month, over a hundred customers switch from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign. Why? Customers say they’ve hit a wall and outgrown Mailchimp. They come to ActiveCampaign because they need more advanced features, less manual segmentation, and more reliable deliverability.
| ActiveCampaign | Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Starting from $15/month | Starting from $20/month |
| Who's it best for? | Best for small to medium businesses, agencies, and marketers that want an integrated platform of email, WhatsApp, and SMS marketing with AI agents that help to autonomously imagine, activate, and validate their campaigns. | Best for beginners, creative professionals, startups, and small businesses that need basic automation, straightforward campaign creation, and don’t prioritize advanced features to help them scale their business. |
| Integrations | 950+ | 250+ |
| Deliverability rate | 93.4% | 92.6% |
| Email templates | 250+ | 100+ |
| Monthly email sends | 10,000 | 5,000 |
| AI capabilities | Forward-thinking with their rising number of AI agents and an autonomous marketing framework driven by Active Intelligence that can answer questions about your marketing, uncover insights, and generate high-performing campaigns and automations instantly. | Practical AI tools for content generation and send optimization, but lacks the autonomous agent capabilities and predictive intelligence that more advanced platforms offer—better for execution than strategic insights. |
| Customization | High level of customization | Basic customization options throughout |
| Marketing automation | Advanced automation and A/B testing for email, website, and SMS | Adequate email automation, but the creation process is more manual |
Customers tell us they’ve “outgrown” Mailchimp and have chosen ActiveCampaign because they’re seeking:
Your peers are making the switch. Hear why in their words:
| Real customers are sharing their thoughts: |
|---|
"ActiveCampaign is the best email tool on the market." |
"The automation tool is a game changer for my brand." |
“ActiveCampaign’s inbox receive rates were way better.” |
Adopting a new or switching to another email platform can be an undertaking but it’s inevitable if you’re hitting certain limits with your current tool. When you sign up for ActiveCampaign, we’ll migrate your email lists, transfer your templates, rebuild your automations, and set up your forms and landing pages. All for free.
You’ll get one-on-one sessions with a dedicated team member, along with resources like help articles and our community to get you set up fast.
EmailTooltester compared both platforms on things like ease of use, forms, CRM, automation, reporting, and more in this video.
Traditional marketing automation promised to make your life easier, but ended up creating a new headache. You’re stuck building complex “if this, then that” workflows, constantly A/B testing, and manually coordinating campaigns across different channels. ActiveCampaign’s goal-driven autonomous marketing unifies all of your marketing activities in one place, turning sophisticated marketing coordination into something as simple as having a conversation.
From marketing automation to autonomous marketing
At its core, autonomous marketing is the process of your marketing technology orchestrating seamless cross-channel journeys with minimal human intervention. It’s beyond just taking orders and carrying out tasks. To truly reach a level of autonomy, your tools should be doing more than automating single-channel, repetitive tasks, connecting a few channels, or using some if/then logic.
A lot of marketers are stuck in the idea that AI can only help with the task-level components of your day. But a truly advanced platform will weave AI through all three pillars of autonomous marketing, so you can not only use AI to help you get started, but to also measure your success and make sure you’re taking the right approach
The three pillars of autonomous marketing are:
While most marketing platforms are still asking you to build workflows step-by-step, ActiveCampaign is flipping the script entirely. Instead of making you the workflow architect, we’ve created Active Intelligence, a conversational workspace where you simply tell the platform what you want to achieve, and AI handles the heavy lifting.
The AI handling it? They’re called AI Agents and ActiveCampaign has over a dozen that help you imagine, activate, and validate your campaigns.
What sets ActiveCampaign apart is our multi-agent approach. While competitors bolt AI features onto existing platforms, ActiveCampaign has Active Intelligence that puts autonomous marketing front and center. Active Intelligence drives the AI agents to do the work you need to do faster so you can have more time to focus on what matters.
Let’s dive deeper into some of the AI agents both platforms offer.
When it comes to brand consistency in your marketing efforts, ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer solutions that require different levels of complexity and involvement. Here’s what sets them apart.
ActiveCampaign’s AI Brand Kit is laser-focused on email marketing efficiency, automatically pulling your existing brand elements from your website to create email templates in seconds.
Let AI do the tedious work for you, so you have more time to do the rewarding work.
Looking at both platform’s features, ActiveCampaign’s AI Brand Kit is straightforward and efficient: Simply type in your website URL, click import, and it does the rest. ActiveCampaign analyzes your fonts, colors, and images, and builds you ready-to-go email templates in no time. It’s built for businesses that already have an established brand identity and want to quickly translate that into their email marketing.
It all happens in a few clicks:
The user experience feels effortless. You’re not starting from scratch or manually inputting hex codes. You’re leveraging work you’ve already done on your website to power your email marketing.
The AI Brand Kit demonstrates how the Imagine pillar works in practice—taking your existing brand identity and instantly translating it into campaign-ready assets that seamlessly integrate with Activate features like Dynamic Content and Validate capabilities through performance tracking across all branded campaigns.
See the AI Brand Kit in action.
Mailchimp’s Creative Assistant serves as their AI-powered design solution, focused on creating multi-channel marketing assets from your brand elements. Creative Assistant imports marketers’ brand assets and houses them in a brand kit, allowing them to populate their marketing with auto-generated designs using their brand colors, fonts, logos, and images.
Creative Assistant collects colors, fonts, images, and logos from your Mailchimp website or landing page and uses those elements to fill in your brand kit and then creates multi-channel designs. For businesses without a Mailchimp website, you can enter your website URL and upload brand assets manually.
Core functionality:
When comparing brand kit capabilities, ActiveCampaign delivers a significantly more streamlined solution for email marketing efficiency and consistency.
ActiveCampaign wins decisively on speed and simplicity. ActiveCampaign's URL-to-templates workflow creates ready-to-send email templates in seconds, while Mailchimp's Creative Assistant requires multiple setup steps, manual asset organization, and template customization before you have usable email content.
ActiveCampaign excels in multi-brand flexibility. ActiveCampaign supports up to five brand kits per account, making it ideal for agencies or businesses managing multiple brands.
Don’t be limited to just one brand kit. ActiveCampaign allows up to five.
Mailchimp's Creative Assistant is limited to one brand kit per account, requiring separate accounts or manual workarounds for multi-brand scenarios.
ActiveCampaign offers superior email focus. While Mailchimp's Creative Assistant creates assets for multiple channels, ActiveCampaign's AI Brand Kit is laser-focused on generating actual email templates rather than just design elements. This means you get campaign-ready content rather than assets that still need assembly.
The takeaway: ActiveCampaign’s AI Brand Kit solves the specific challenge of rapid email template creation, while Mailchimp’s Creative Assistant is a broader design tool that requires more manual effort to achieve similar results.
While ActiveCampaign offers AI-powered translations that automatically convert email content while preserving tone and personality, Mailchimp takes a manual approach. Here’s how they differ.
ActiveCampaign’s AI Translations is built specifically for email marketing, allows you to send personalized email campaigns in each subscriber’s language with one send.
This drives engagement, builds trust, and increases conversions across global audiences.
Core functionality:
This showcases how AI Translations spans multiple pillars: Imagine (creating multilingual content strategies), Activate (automatically deploying campaigns in preferred languages), and Validate (providing language-specific performance insights to optimize future campaigns.
The user experience is effortless. You’re not managing multiple campaigns or worrying about complex setup. You create one email, enable translations, review the results, and send it to your entire global audience with confidence.
ActiveCampaign supports 75 languages. Mailchimp supports 51.
Mailchimp provides translation tools focused on manual content management rather than AI-powered automation. Their approach centers on giving marketers control over the translation process through conditional content display and integration with Google's translation service.
The platform supports translation workflows through merge tags and conditional logic, allowing businesses to create multilingual campaigns by manually preparing content in different languages. Users can also translate email content from the email page. Sent emails display the archive bar by default, which includes a Translate tab powered by Google Translate.
For signup forms and basic interface elements, Mailchimp offers more comprehensive support with translated versions available in 51 languages for form field placeholders, alerts, signup buttons, and other standard text elements.
Core functionality:
ActiveCampaign delivers a superior translation solution directly via email campaigns, while Mailchimp offers manual workarounds that require significant additional effort.
ActiveCampaign wins decisively on automation and efficiency. ActiveCampaign's AI Translations automatically converts entire email campaigns while preserving tone and personality, enabling one-click multilingual deployment. Mailchimp requires manual content creation for each language or relies on recipients clicking Google Translate links.
ActiveCampaign excels in user experience. The single-send approach means marketers create one campaign that automatically reaches global audiences in their preferred languages. Mailchimp's conditional merge tag approach requires technical implementation and ongoing maintenance of multiple content versions.
ActiveCampaign provides superior content quality. AI-powered translation preserves brand voice and tone, while Mailchimp's Google Translate integration delivers machine-quality translations that may not reflect brand personality or cultural nuances.
The takeaway: For businesses serious about global email marketing, ActiveCampaign's native AI translation capabilities eliminate the operational complexity and quality concerns inherent in Mailchimp's manual approach.
There are some major differences in what ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer in terms of AI campaign building. One platform prioritizes the generation of complete email campaigns from a single prompt where the other offers tools to help create campaign elements, but requires marketers to assemble these components manually into their campaigns.
ActiveCampaign’s AI Campaign Builder was designed to transform a single idea into a complete, ready-to-send campaign. It eliminates the traditional step-by-step campaign creation process by generating every element needed for your campaign in one conversational prompt.
Give it a single prompt and it generates complete email campaigns, including subject lines, layouts, images, content, and CTAs in seconds.
No more starting at blank templates or spending hours crafting the perfect workflow. ActiveCampaign’s AI agents help you get a running start.
ActiveCampaign embeds AI into their campaign creation process for marketers who want to focus on strategy and results rather than technical implementation. The AI understands context, brand, voice, and campaign objectives to deliver campaigns that feel purposefully designed rather than randomly assembled from separate components.
This perfectly exemplifies the Imagine pillar of autonomous marketing. AI is helping you to conceptualize and create campaign strategies from a single prompt, instantly transforming your idea into executable campaign assets.
Mailchimp approaches AI campaign creation through component-based tools rather than comprehensive campaign generation. Their Email Content Generator provides GPT AI technology to allow customers to create email marketing campaigns based on industry, marketing intent, and brand voice.
Mailchimp’s approach requires users to coordinate multiple AI features across different stages of campaign development, from content generation to design selection to audience targeting.
Differences in core functionality:
It’s clear that ActiveCampaign delivers a fundamentally superior campaign creation experience.
ActiveCampaign offers true end-to-end automation. Users consistently highlight ActiveCampaign’s AI as deliberating “ready-to-launch campaigns,” while Mailchimp users often mention needing to “piece together” campaigns manually.
For example, an ActiveCampaign customer left a G2 reviewer saying "The automation flows are incredible, intuitive and just work in the background to keep bringing people into my membership."
Meanwhile, a Mailchimp customer left them feedback saying “You want to automate your emails. Mailchimp has a decent visual workflow builder and supports complex automations. But you get virtually no help from templates at all. You get far more support in showing you how to make complex workflows on other platforms. On Mailchimp, you either have to know how or work it out yourself.”
The takeaway: ActiveCampaign treats campaign creation as a complete AI-powered workflow, handling everything from generating email content and designing layouts to segmenting audiences and scheduling sends.
Mailchimp treats it as AI-assisted content generation requiring manual campaign assembly.
True autonomous marketing doesn't think in channels—it thinks in customer experiences that happen to use multiple channels. Most platforms handle email, SMS, and social as separate channels requiring manual coordination. ActiveCampaign’s unified intelligence orchestrates everything automatically.
ActiveCampaign recognizes SMS as a distinct marketing channel requiring specialized optimization, particularly given the character constraints and immediate nature of text messaging.
The AI SMS Builder allows you to build a tailored audience for your text and personalize the message with the help of AI, integrating with ActiveCampaign’s broader customer data and automation platform.
This means SMS is not an afterthought, but a primary marketing channel deserving dedicated AI support.
The AI SMS Builder works seamlessly with email campaigns, crafting perfect SMS copy for your customers by means of a few simple prompts.
Let AI take the first stab at your SMS campaign.
It’s built into the Active Intelligence ecosystem, meaning your SMS campaigns benefit from the same customer insights, behavioral data, and predictive capabilities that power ActiveCampaign email marketing.
Core functionality
Pair AI SMS Builder with Dynamic Content and transform generic campaigns into tailored experiences by automatically customizing content for every recipient using their individual profile information, buying patterns, and engagement behaviors.
By automatically coordinating AI-generated SMS content with email campaigns while simultaneously personalizing all messaging based on individual customer data, the platform creates one seamless experience that flows intelligently across channels rather than treating each touchpoint as a separate, disconnected interaction.
This cross-channel orchestration demonstrates how Imagine (AI SMS Builder creating content), Activate (Dynamic Content executing personalization and AI Actions Library embedding real-time intelligence), and Validate (behavioral data informing future campaigns and sentiment analysis) work seamlessly together. Unlike competitors who may excel in individual areas, ActiveCampaign's AI features are designed to span all three pillars within a single workflow.
While ActiveCampaign offers a dedicated AI SMS Builder designed specifically for text message campaign creation, Mailchimp applies their general-purpose Write with AI tool to SMS content generation rather than providing specialized SMS AI capabilities.
The platform offers SMS marketing capabilities with some AI assistance, but lacks the specialized optimization and automation features found in dedicated SMS AI builders.
Core functionality:
ActiveCampaign offers the superior SMS AI experience through dedicated tools build specifically for SMS marketing. Their AI SMS Builder automatically optimizes for character limits, engagement patterns, and SMS-specific best practices. Mailchimp’s general Write with AI tool lacks this specialized approach.
For those serious about SMS marketing, folding it into their strategy alongside email marketing, ActiveCampaign comes out on top here. Their AI features eliminates the manual effort and challenges that are inherent in Mailchimp’s adapted email AI approach.
Other AI Agents ActiveCampaign offers:
ActiveCampaign’s autonomous marketing platform transforms how marketers work when budgets, skills, and time are stretched thin. But what truly sets it apart is how features span all three pillars of autonomous marketing: Imagine (AI Campaign Builder, AI Brand Kit, AI-Suggested Goals), Activate (AI Actions Library, AI Campaign Calendar, Predictive Sending), and Validate (Business Goals, sentiment analysis, continuous optimization).
To truly lean into autonomous marketing, the features you use should help you span all three activities. While competitors may excel in one area, ActiveCampaign’s integrated approach creates the complete autonomous marketing experience that actually delivers on the ‘set it and forget it’ promise.
If you’re just starting to dip your toes into marketing automation, Mailchimp can give you the basics. It offers simple automations like welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, and personalized product recommendations that may be enough if you’ve never used automation before.
With Mailchimp’s automation builder, you can create simple automations that adapt to your customers’ behaviors. Because the builder is so straightforward to use, Mailchimp is a good option if you're just starting or aren’t trying to automate very much.
Note: As of June 2025, Mailchimp's Classic Automation Builder is only available on their paid plans. This means that if you're currently on a free plan, you won't be able to add contacts to your workflows, edit old automations, or create new ones. If you sign up for a free plan after June 2025, you won't have access to their automation builder at all.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign offers automation features that usually only big companies can afford — at a price that’s comparable to Mailchimp. You’re able to automate the entire customer journey and easily drag and drop to create workflows that trigger emails, texts, or other actions based on what your contacts do—or don't do. Whether you're welcoming new subscribers, following up on abandoned carts, or nudging leads closer to a sale, the platform lets you customize every step and delivers hyper-personalized content at the right time.
ActiveCampaign’s automation builder is more powerful, supporting complex workflows that can incorporate email, SMS, site messaging, and CRM automation. You can also integrate with hundreds of other tools.
Plus, with its actionable suggestions and predictive automations, you can craft better campaigns with less effort. When you’re using the automation builder, ActiveCampaign will suggest specific send times which eliminates guesswork by predicting an optimal time to send each automation email to each customer.
ActiveCampaign lets you go much deeper with automation:
To sum it up: Mailchimp provides a more accessible entry point with essential automation features on their paid plans, but ActiveCampaign just offers more, boasting a suite of tools that allows you to create intricate automations that engage your customers through their buying journey.
When it comes to audience management and segmentation, you’re probably looking for a platform that can organize your contacts based on specific criteria like demographics, behavior, or interests. You want to be able to target the right people with the right messages, making your campaigns more personalized and effective.
When comparing ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp, there are some differences.
ActiveCampaign makes it easier to see all the info about your contacts in one place. It offers a detailed contact view, showing all interactions, tags, custom fields, and even scoring metrics. A unified view like this helps you understand your contacts better and tailor your communication accordingly.
Although both platforms allow you to use this information to send different messages automatically, ActiveCampaign gives you more advanced options for automation and conditional messaging based on the data you’ve gathered. It’s a bit more powerful when it comes to using that contact info to create personalized marketing flows.
Mailchimp gives you basic list management and simple segmentation tools. You can create segments based on data like purchase history or engagement, helping you send the right message to the right people without much fuss. But there are limitations. For instance, you can't include contacts from different lists in the same campaign.
And even worse: Mailchimp charges you per subscriber, so if the same contact is on multiple lists, you're essentially paying for them twice.
This is definitely where ActiveCampaign offers more flexibility. You can segment your audience based on a number of things like specific actions, tags, and custom fields to send the same campaign to contacts across different lists. Using custom fields helps you store extra details about your contacts, like their location, preferences, or interests which allows you to segment your audience more precisely. A win win win across the board.
This is true 1:1 automated personalization at work, allowing for deeper and more meaningful engagement with your audience.
ActiveCampaign’s segmentation and personalization features:
ActiveCampaign has over 250 well-designed, mobile-friendly templates, and you’re not stuck with just the existing templates and blocks. You have full HTML and plain text editing options, along with flexible content blocks, and you can even import your own templates. This means you can whip up perfect, on-brand emails in no time. The best part? All these options are available on every plan.
Mailchimp offers basic editing tools and over 100 email templates, but you’ll need to be on the Standard plan or higher to access their more modern designs. Unfortunately, the templates available on the free and Essentials plans tend to look a bit dated.
Note: We couldn’t find a browsable template library for Mailchimp, just this page that doesn’t allow you to access the templates unless you sign up for a plan. The screenshot above is from a video we found on their website.
ActiveCampaign’s email templates allow you to:
When it comes to email builders, Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign each have their strengths.
Although Mailchimp’s builder is user-friendly and intuitive, its customization options are somewhat limited, especially on the free and Essentials plans. You can send up to 15,000 emails per month on the free plan. But as we mentioned, you might find the templates a bit dated compared to more modern designs available on higher-tier plans.
ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, allows for more detailed personalization, including the ability to send conditional content based on contact behavior, past purchases, and preferences. Plus, with advanced mobile formatting, you can edit emails from both desktop and mobile, giving you that added flexibility.
ActiveCampaign’s email builder is known for its intuitive interface and customization options. You have access to a wide range of blocks including:
This makes it super easy to create polished, on-brand emails.
With AI-powered content generation, you’re able to craft emails in seconds by using predictive text. Plus, experiment with variants across your campaigns to identify what resonates with your customers and understand what elements you may need to change to make their experience more personal.
Email builders at a glance:
Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign’s landing page builders offer different levels of functionality.
Mailchimp’s builder is included in every plan. It’s fairly user-friendly with a drag-and-drop interface, making it easy to design basic landing pages for things like sign-ups or promotions. However, it’s not the most advanced when it comes to customization.
You get a decent range of templates, can sell items straight from your landing page, and can personalize content to some extent, but you're limited in how much you can tweak the design or incorporate complex features. It’s great for straightforward campaigns but might not satisfy more intricate needs.
ActiveCampaign’s builder is available on the Plus plan and higher which will run you $49/month (in contrast with the $15/month Starter plan). Although more expensive, the Plus plan will give you access to a more advanced set of features, including the ability to create highly customized and dynamic landing pages, a drag-and-drop editor, and the power to build pages that include conditional content and integrate seamlessly with your CRM data.
This means you can personalize landing pages based on user behavior and contact information, which is great for targeted campaigns.
In general, ActiveCampaign’s builder provides more flexibility and sophistication by providing deeper customization options and more advanced features. You can create highly tailored landing pages that integrate with your automations and incorporate dynamic content that will change based on who’s viewing the page.
The builder offers a wider range of design options, including custom code, advanced styling, and more control over layout elements. Additionally, ActiveCampaign supports more advanced A/B testing and analytics directly tied to your email and automation campaigns, giving you a more comprehensive view of how your landing pages perform.
Key features of the ActiveCampaign landing page builder:
When it comes to reporting and analytics, both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer valuable insights. But they differ in depth and scope.
Mailchimp provides solid reporting features that cover the basics. You can track standard metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounces, and subscriber activity. The platform also offers performance reports for individual campaigns, audience engagement stats, and basic A/B testing results.
However, its reporting tends to be a bit more surface-level, focusing on general trends rather than detailed insights. Even though their reporting may be simpler, Mailchimp offers slightly more for e-commerce reports whereas ActiveCampaign only allows deep data* reporting.
* If you’re using ActiveCampaign’s integration with BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, Square, or a third-party deep data integration, you’ll be able to see how much revenue was generated from your directed and automated campaigns.
ActiveCampaign offers more advanced and detailed reporting options. You get in-depth metrics for your email campaigns, including open and click rates, heat maps, and detailed engagement analytics. The platform also includes features like deal reports, which provide insights into how your sales processes are performing, including metrics on deal stages and sales pipeline activities.
With ActiveCampaign, you can dive deeper into your data, track automation performance, and even access predictive analytics to make data-driven decisions. Overall, ActiveCampaign’s reporting and analytics are more comprehensive, giving you a better understanding of the impact of your campaigns and how they translate to revenue.
Key features of ActiveCampaign reporting:
Forms-wise, Mailchimp provides a straightforward form builder that's easy to use, especially if you’re already familiar with its interface. You can create sign-up forms, contact forms, and pop-ups with a drag-and-drop editor.
It’s pretty user-friendly and offers basic customization options, allowing you to adjust fields, add branding, and set up basic integrations. While it’s simple and efficient for creating basic forms, it may lack some advanced features if you need more complex form functionality.
ActiveCampaign takes forms a step further. You can create a variety of forms, including inline forms, floating bars, floating boxes, and modals (pop-ups), all through a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder. They can be embedded, linked to, and added directly to WordPress or Facebook if you have the integrations set up. Plus, you can associate forms with lists, tags, and deals to tie them to specific campaigns.
What sets ActiveCampaign apart is its ability to integrate deeply with CRM data and automations, allowing for highly personalized and dynamic forms. You can customize forms based on user behavior, segment contacts as they submit, and trigger specific actions within your automations.
Note: On ActiveCampaign’s Starter plan, you’ll only have access to the basic and inline forms.
When you’re looking for a CRM, you’re looking for a few key features. Not only does it need to be easy to navigate but integration capabilities are essential so you can smoothly connect the CRM with your existing tools like email and e-commerce platforms. Automation features are also important for saving time on repetitive tasks.
Mailchimp doesn’t have a true CRM, but does offer some basic tools that can help with managing customer relationships. They suggest that you can use their audience management features as a kind of CRM, leveraging tags, segments, and custom fields to keep track of customer interactions. Although you can organize your contacts and track their behavior to some extent, it’s more of a workaround rather than a full-fledged CRM. If you're looking for advanced CRM functionalities, Mailchimp might not be the best fit.
ActiveCampaign, however, includes a dedicated CRM add-on that’s integrated into the platform. This CRM functionality is designed to manage your sales processes and customer relationships effectively, giving you access to features like deal tracking, pipeline management, and sales automation.
The CRM allows you to organize contacts, track interactions, build pipelines, create deal records, assign deal owners, and automate your sales communications. It’s designed to work seamlessly with your email marketing efforts, providing a more cohesive and powerful way to handle both marketing and sales activities.
If you need CRM capabilities to complement your marketing, ActiveCampaign is the platform you should choose. Just keep in mind that the CRM is an add-on available on the Plus plan or higher.
Key features of ActiveCampaign’s CRM:
In ActiveCampaign’s marketplace, you’ll find over 950 apps that integrate with various tools and platforms, including CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and other marketing tools. It supports connections with popular services like Salesforce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and hundreds more.
Mailchimp also offers a solid selection of integrations, including connections with e-commerce platforms, social media, and other marketing tools. However, it has just over 250 compared to ActiveCampaign, and some advanced integrations might be available only on higher-tier plans or through third-party services.
Both offer the main integrations the majority of users would need so it'll depend on what other tools and platforms you're using. Overall, ActiveCampaign gives you better control over the tools you already know and love and accommodates a wide range of businesses.
What good is your email campaign if nobody sees it? From the past three deliverability tests EmailTooltester ran this year, ActiveCampaign scored first over all other platforms with a 93.4% deliverability rate. Mailchimp came in third and scored a 92.6% in deliverability. This only proves that ActiveCampaign is the go to email platform if you care about deliverability.
And you should, because an undelivered or lost to the spam folder email is practically useless.
When you choose ActiveCampaign, you can be certain that more of your contacts will see the emails you send and increase your chances of interaction (and hopefully conversion).
ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp offer pretty different pricing structures. Let’s break down both.
Mailchimp offers a free plan whereas ActiveCampaign does not, but it should be noted that this plan is pretty limited. Firstly, you only get up to 500 contacts with a maximum number of 1,000 email sends per month. This severely stunts the amount of communication you can send if your business already has a decently sized email list. Plus, you won't be able to create any automations.
The prices above are only for an email list of up to 500 contacts. Going over this number will bump these plan prices up pretty significantly.
If you’re just getting started with email marketing and need to send out a newsletter every other week to your couple hundred contacts, the free Mailchimp plan will hold you over until you need to expand to their next tier, Essentials.
The Essentials plan is free for the first month but will cost $13/month paid annually after that. With the Essentials plan, you can have up to 500 contacts (if you exceed this, you’ll be charged more based on your number of contacts) and you can send 5,000 emails a month.
| Pre-built templates | Pre-built automations |
|---|---|
| White labeling | Multi-step pop-up forms |
| Email scheduling | A/B testing |
| Customer journey builder | Full email and chat support |
| SMS marketing |
Mailchimp’s Standard plan is their most popular and starts at $20/month for 500 contacts. This plan promises data-driven automation and optimization tools for businesses that want to grow faster and is also free for the first month.
| Additional user roles like author and viewer | Monthly email sends 12x the plan’s contact limit |
|---|---|
| Dynamic content, sent time optimization, and content optimizer | A maximum of 100k contacts (for the adjusted price of $800/month) |
| Campaign Manager | Social post scheduling |
| 5 audiences | Google retargeting ads |
| Advanced segmentation | Mailchimp Marketing Calendar |
| Predicted demographics, customer lifetime value, purchase likelihood, and address finder | Additional SMS and MMS marketing features |
| Page views for website engagement metrics | Multi-step automation builder |
| Custom-coded templates | Real-time and additional reporting capabilities |
| The ability to download designs | And personalized onboarding |
Finally, Mailchimp’s Premium plan is their final plan starting at $350/month for up to 10k contacts. With this plan, you’re guaranteed dedicated onboarding, unlimited contacts, and priority support.
| Monthly email sends 15x the plan’s contact limit | 4 personalized onboarding sessions |
|---|---|
| Unlimited audiences | Phone support |
| 18 months of app engagement | And premium migration services (if you contact Sales) |
| Standard vetting to increase the rate and speed of sent messages |
It should be noted that the prices listed on the Mailchimp website are only applicable if you have <500 contacts which is pretty unsubstantial if you’re making moves to grow your email list. Once you exceed that number, you’ll be paying much more.
Compared to similar enterprise-level automation tools like HubSpot or Salesforce, ActiveCampaign is pretty budget-friendly for the amount of features you get. They don’t offer a free plan (just a free two-week trial), but their Starter plan gives you access to some pretty advanced features for only $15/month.
Firstly, the prices above are based on a max of 1,000 contacts, already doubling Mailchimp’s limit. ActiveCampaign’s entry-level pricing starts at $15/month. This plan, aptly named the Starter plan, gives you access to multi-step marketing automation right out the gate (something you can only get with Mailchimp’s Standard or Premium plan).
| 10,000 monthly email sends | An AI-powered automation builder |
|---|---|
| 5 actions and triggers per automation | 900+ automation recipes |
| Email campaigns and newsletters | The ActiveCampaign Marketing CRM |
| Basic and inline web forms | 950+ integrations including e-commerce apps |
| Over 250 email templates | Limited reporting and analytics |
| A/B testing on emails | And site tracking |
| Limited segmentation |
Moving up to the Plus plan, you unlock more automation and powerful customer insights for $49/month with 1,000 contacts.
| Unlimited triggers and actions for your automations | Prospecting and retargeting ads for Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn |
|---|---|
| Web forms | Basic reporting and analytics |
| Landing pages (and templates) | And revenue reporting |
| Generative AI functionality |
With the Plus plan and up, you can add on the pipelines enhanced CRM to manage your sales automation or the sales engagement CRM that includes additional email and AI capabilities.
ActiveCampaign’s Pro plan will cost you $79/month to unlock full omnichannel marketing automation. This is where you can truly elevate your email marketing. You’ll have monthly email sends 12x your contact limit and three users instead of one.
| Advanced segmentation, reporting, and analytics | Attribution and conversion tracking |
|---|---|
| A/B testing on automations | And predictive sending |
| Conditional content |
The Pro plan allows you to get more granular about how your email campaigns are performing and understand what content, messaging, and offers move the needle for your business. You’ll have much more control over your email cadence than you would with the features Mailchimp provides for a similar price.
Finally, ActiveCampaign’s Enterprise plan starts at $145/month for 1,000 contacts and allows you monthly email sends 15x your contact limit plus five users.
| Premium CRM integrations with Salesforce and more | Premium reporting and analytics |
|---|---|
| Custom objects | Single sign-on (SSO) |
| Premium segmentation | And a dedicated account team |
No matter which ActiveCampaign plan you choose, ActiveCampaign offers services like contact migration, customer enablement workshops, chat and ticket support, video tutorials, a knowledge base, and help guides to help you get the most out of the platform so you can focus on running your business.
Listen. We know you’re aware that you’re on the ActiveCampaign website reading a comparison between us and a competitor but there really is a reason why so many people migrate away from Mailchimp and choose us. We’ve seen plenty of customers migrate and see real results!
Palmetto Fortis was struggling with poorly integrated systems and siloed information between Salesforce and Mailchimp. This lead to a major lack of strategic communication. Plus, their old tools lacked automation capabilities and their sales process was manual and overwhelming. All of this combined stunted their growth and scalability.
ActiveCampaign was prepared to fix each problem When they switched, the native integration with Salesforce allowed for highly personalized communication with contacts based on role, interest, and lead score. And with advanced automation built in, marketing and sales managers at Palmetto Fortis could now scale client support exponentially.
Their open rates more than doubled, going from 22% with Mailchimp to 52% with ActiveCampaign. And sales boomed as well, seeing a 20% year-over-year growth.
Choose Mailchimp if you’re a beginner, like simplicity, and are still getting started. Once you have the basics covered, you may need to reconsider if the platform has all the functionality you need.
Choose ActiveCampaign if you value marketing automation that can do what you want it to and need a platform that can easily connect to the tools you already use. ActiveCampaign can be the tool you graduate to when you outgrow Mailchimp.
Are customer stories too biased for you? We get it. Let’s look at a few reviews from real users.
Source: G2
Source: G2
| Pros: “The best feature is campaign automation. The ease with which I can schedule emails, ads and social media posts is truly amazing. This has allowed me to save a significant amount of time and resources that I used to invest in doing these tasks manually.” | Cons: “Mailchimp offers many impressive features, its worst feature is the limitation of the free version. As my business grows, I find that some of the more advanced features, such as more sophisticated marketing automation and broader emailing capabilities, require an upgrade to paid plans.” |
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Source: G2
Source: G2
| Pros: Nothing can match ActiveCampaign. Whether it's adding tags on the go, setting up the parameters of automations, or segmenting contacts in the middle of drafting a campaign, this tool is THE one. | Cons: I mean it when I say this tool just rocks. I do wish the form builder had a few more features. |
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Lingering questions? We've got you.
Mailchimp is best used for small businesses with limited resources and individuals looking for an easy-to-use platform for email marketing. It offers a user-friendly interface with essential features such as email campaigns, basic automation, segmentation, and analytics. Mailchimp is ideal for those who want to create, send, and track email newsletters and marketing campaigns without needing advanced technical skills or complex automation capabilities.
ActiveCampaign’s migration service makes it easy to move from your old email marketing or marketing automation provider.
You never need to worry about losing contacts or automations. When you switch to ActiveCampaign, you can get up and running fast. Your lists, contacts, custom fields, and tags will all be imported and ActiveCampaign will recreate your opt-in forms, landing pages, automation workflows, and email templates.
Read the guide on how to migrate your contacts from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign is best used for businesses that need advanced marketing automation and CRM capabilities. It excels in creating complex, personalized workflows that integrate email marketing, SMS, and other channels, making it a good fit for companies looking to simplify their sales processes, boost customer engagement, and manage detailed customer interactions all in one tool.
ActiveCampaign is known for its advanced automation capabilities and built-in CRM, catering to businesses that want to interact with their customers throughout the entire buyer journey. In contrast, Mailchimp offers email marketing with basic automation, making it ideal for beginners just getting started.
Both platforms offer email marketing features, but ActiveCampaign excels in complex workflows and multi-channel messaging, while Mailchimp is known for its ease of use and well-known reputation.
💡 How does ActiveCampaign’s pricing structure help businesses avoid unexpected costs as they grow?
ActiveCampaign’s pricing is transparent and scales with your contact list, allowing you to budget confidently as you grow. Unlike some platforms, you’re not double-charged for contacts on multiple lists, and you get access to advanced features at every tier without surprise fees. This structure ensures you can expand your marketing without worrying about unpredictable costs.
💡 Are there hidden fees or extra charges for advanced features in ActiveCampaign?
ActiveCampaign offers a flat-rate, tiered pricing model with no hidden charges for advanced features. User fees are clearly indicated for each tier, and you have the flexibility to add on additional users at you need them. Each plan clearly outlines what’s included, and you can access enterprise-grade automation, segmentation, and reporting without unexpected add-ons. This makes it easy to plan your investment and unlock powerful capabilities as your business grows.
💡 Is ActiveCampaign difficult to learn if I’m switching from another platform?
ActiveCampaign is designed to be intuitive, even for users transitioning from other platforms. The interface is user-friendly, and AI agents, prebuilt templates, and automation recipes make it easy to get started—often in just a few clicks. Most users find they can launch campaigns quickly, and the platform grows with you as your needs become more advanced.
Try it free for 14 days.