Need a new way to simplify your marketing strategy?
We understand.
There’s so much to do to keep a business growing these days. You need a social media presence, an awesome product or service, a team of fantastic customer service agents to delight your clients.
Now that customer experience is the number one differentiator for any business; you can’t just send emails either – you’ve got to make people fall in love with your brand.
Anything that can help you out with all that work is sure to go down a treat.
ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft are two of the front runners in the marketplace for not just email marketing, but customer management too.
Both tools claim to help organizations develop stronger connections with their target audience through CRM functionality and automated messaging.
ActiveCampaign seduces your consumers with carefully cultivated and targeted emails, sent using state-of-the-art drip campaigns
Infusionsoft by Keap provides an “all-in-one” marketing environment where you can capture and nurture prospects, score your leads, and analyze sales potential in your CRM system.
Both services provide things like automated tagging and segmentation to help you get on your audience’s good side. The question is, how do the tools stack up against each other?
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Features
ActiveCampaign (review) is an email marketing and automation tool that was launched in 2003. Infusionsoft by Keap has been around for slightly longer, since 2001. However, the tool recently went through a rebranding process when Infusionsoft changed its name to Keap.
The overall experience of “Infusionsoft by Keap” under the new branding banner hasn’t changed much. There’s still the same visual campaign builder, and you still get things like tags and custom fields to manage your contacts.
However, you might notice a few differences in the “Keap” experience – particularly as it continues to develop.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Pricing
Remember the last time you bought new software for your company without worrying about the price?
Nope? I didn’t think so.
Whether you’re part of a huge corporation or a tiny startup, you’ve got a budget to stick to.
So, let’s start our comparison by looking at pricing.
ActiveCampaign gives you four plans to choose from:
They’re not expensive compared to some of the other options on the market, like Klaviyo – but they’re not cheap either.
You also get the option to customize your pricing based on the number of contacts you want to connect with. The more popular you are, the more you pay.
One somewhat annoying thing is that you need to upgrade to certain plans to access specific features.
The same can be said of most email marketing tools, but I generally prefer something that offers the same functionality – no matter how many contacts you have to serve.
For instance, if you want deep data integrations, custom domains, and custom branding, you need at least the “Plus” plan. Let’s face it – who wants ActiveCampaign branding scattered all over their professional emails?
On the plus side, unlimited sending is included in all of the packages – including “Lite.”
Additionally, free migration is included, which means you can easily transfer your data and lists from one platform to another.
That’s handy if you’ve been using a different service until now.
Infusionsoft by Keap, on the other hand, offers 3 pricing models:
This is one of the biggest changes you’ll see in the new “Infusionsoft by Keap” rebrand.
- Grow: $79 per month
- Pro: $149 per month
- Infusionsoft: $199 per month
Crucially, if you want the full “Infusionsoft” experience, then you don’t necessarily have to choose the highest-priced package. You can still access many of the tools you loved about Infusionsoft, such as landing pages and internal forms, on the Keap Pro plan.
Upgrading to Infusionsoft just gives you more of those sales CRM features that you need to combine marketing and sales, like company records, and affiliate management.
Obviously, the pricing of both tools here isn’t exactly going to fill your inner savvy shopper with joy.
You’re not paying $12.50 per user per month like you would with Pipedrive CRM or $15 for up to 2,500 subscribers as you would with MailerLite. However, you are getting the functionality of a CRM sales and email marketing tool in one – so maybe that’s worth some consideration.
Another point to note is that Infusionsoft by Keap also provides “New user coaching” at different prices depending on the package you chose.
If you’ve looked into Infusionsoft pricing before, you might be wondering if the new rebrand has removed the “kickstart” fee. The simple answer? It’s hard to tell. There’s no mention of the Kickstart fee (previously a $499 one-off payment) for new users on the pricing page. However, you can find more details suggesting that it’s still necessary here.
My advice? Assume that Infusionsoft by Keap might be more expensive than you’d think.
Winner
ActiveCampaign is definitely a lot cheaper than Infusionsoft by Keap – although there is a deal on the cost at the time of writing for Infusionsoft.
If you’ve got a particularly restricted budget, try MailerLite (review), which is free for up to 1000 subscribers.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Automation
With worries about pricing out of the way, let’s take a look at what you came here for – automation.
Both Infusionsoft by Keap and ActiveCampaign claim that they’ll give you a fully immersive solution for automation and sales.
ActiveCampaign, however, provides one of my favorite automation pipelines on the market. I’ve really got a soft spot for the smooth and clean appearance of the drag and drop drip workflow, which gives you everything you need to create campaigns based on if-this-then-that logic.
You can even set your contacts up so that they automatically join new segments when they complete tasks like clicking on a link or making a purchase.
Frankly, it’s hard to find anything to complain about with ActiveCampaign’s automation.
For beginners in the email marketing world, it’s easy to make your experience as elaborate or as simple as you like. There’s even the option to establish pipelines according to specific goals.
Combine all the handy functionality of ActiveCampaign’s drip campaign builder with the intelligent site tracking features of the built in-CRM, and the option to tag and manage contacts, and you’ve got an excellent tale for nurturing leads.
I did have a few moments when using this tool where I felt like things were moving a bit slowly. Adding an email to your workflow, for instance, pulls you out of the builder and pushes you into the email template tool.
However, you don’t go back to the pipeline you were building when you’re done – which means clicking through the entire system again. Things like that aren’t deal breakers for me – but they are signs of where ActiveCampaign could make things more streamlined.
So, what can you find on Infusionsoft by Keap?
Well, the experience is pretty much the same as it’s always been.
The main difference is that your dashboard has a menu on the left-hand side of the page, rather than at the top
I’d assume that Keap decided to keep the drag-and-drop builder the same based on the “if it ‘ain’t broke don’t fix it” mantra. After all, most people regard Infusionsoft to be pretty much the best campaign builder out there.
In my opinion, it’s not quite as pretty as the builder from ActiveCampaign, but mapping out your entire sales funnel is very simple, and you’ve got plenty of automation rules to choose from – so that’s pretty great too.
Like ActiveCampaign, the builder is “visual.”
You drag and drop triggers into a list, and it’s very easy to follow where someone needs to go in your workflow to get to the finishing point of your campaign.
There’s also the option to build various sequences that lead to the same goal. After all, there’s no guarantee that everyone you connect with is going to take the same route to purchase.
Overall, the campaign builder takes over some of the exhausting manual processes you’d need to manage when developing drip strategies with other tools.
Whether you’re sending welcome emails or following up on an abandoned cart, it’s easy to stay connected with your target audience. Plus, you get make sure that you’re constantly moving people towards the right outcomes in your buying cycles.
In terms of automation, Infusionsoft is very difficult to beat.
However, it’s also way more complicated than ActiveCampaign when it comes to learning curves.
If you’re not used to automating emails, then you might need to spend a few hours getting used to Infusionsoft before you can create something special. On the other hand, ActiveCampaign is easier to jump into as a beginner.
Winner
If you want something simple and straightforward, ActiveCampaign is a no brainer.
However, for truly immersive automation, there’s really nothing quite like Infusionsoft. It’s definitely one of the most effective automation tools on the market.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Segmentation and CRM
Now here’s what makes ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft real special.
Unlike other email marketing tools, they don’t just work to help you connect with your audience. These solutions also give you everything you need to build deeper relationships with customers through CRM functionality, tagging, and categorizing.
ActiveCampaign uses lists and tags to help you get the most of your list.
You can import your existing contacts from another app using ActiveCampaign’s migrate option, or you can simply enter a CSV file.
Once your contacts are on your list, just implement tags and lists to ensure that every person in your community ends up in the segment that they belong to.
The thing that makes ActiveCampaign impressive is that you can combine the segmentation features with tracking and sales features thanks to the built-in CRM functionality.
ActiveCampaign comes with its own lead-scoring system, so you can track which of your leads are most likely to become a customer.
Plus, you can track exactly where each customer is in the sales cycle, from “to contact,” all the way to “follow up.”
It might not be the most immersive CRM in the world – as it doesn’t have the same kind of in-depth functionality, you’d get from something like Salesforce. However, you get more capabilities than you would from the majority of email marketing tools.
Plus, the simplicity of the built-in CRM functionality makes ActiveCampaign really easy to get used to – even if you’ve never worked with a tool like this before.
There are even machine learning tools available for people who are willing to pay for them.
You can use AI to determine which leads are worth pursuing, which need a little more time, and more. It’s easier to ensure that people don’t accidentally slip through the cracks.
Infusionsoft also has everything you need for contact management and CRM functionality.
I’d argue that Infusionsoft is more advanced, because currently, ActiveCampaign doesn’t give you a way to organize your tags. That means that it’s a little bit harder to keep everything carefully managed when you’re trying to work through several different campaigns or strategies, for instance.
Infusionsoft, on the other hand, has a feature that allows you to instantly categorize all the tags in your system, which is perfect if you’re dealing with conditional funnels and a lot of customers at once.
If you’ve used Infusionsoft before, the Infusionsoft by Keap CRM tool should be familiar enough. Adding a contact is as simple as adding the + button at the top of your page after you click on “Contacts.”
One thing that makes Infusionsoft extra impressive is the fact that you can add as much detail to every contact as you like, including that person’s social media information, and their lead score.
Storing client information like shared files, documents, contracts, images, and proposals is simple. Plus, you can keep a complete history of all your payments, quotes, and emails from a single customer. That makes it easy to assign follow-up tasks to members of your sales team.
There’s still features like “tagging” to help you segment your customers for email purposes, but Infusionsoft by Keap also goes much further too.
The customisable dashboard allows you to track every user connection, so you can organize your leads, check accepted quotes, and more.
Keap makes client management really immersive.
Plus, you have the option to connect via more than just email if you like, because Keap provides text messaging opportunities too.
You can also connect your Outlook or Gmail inbox, and Keap will automatically update your contact record every time you send or receive a message from a new subscriber.
When it comes to collecting leads, Infusionsoft by Keap goes above and beyond too, with Smart Forms that collect specific information for your email strategy.
While ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft both claim to be all-in-one tools, it’s Infusionsoft that really shows you what it means to have your CRM and email combined into one.
Winner
ActiveCampaign is great, but when it comes to combining CRM and email automation tools, Infusionsoft by Keap is leading the way. It comes close to competing with tools like Hubspot (check out our Infusionsoft vs Hubspot comparison) and Salesforce for CRM and marketing support.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Email Marketing and Ecommerce
Got your contact list all organized just how you like it?
Great.
Let’s start working on making those seductive email campaigns then.
ActiveCampaign gives you a handy-dandy drag-and-drop tool that you can use to build campaign follow-ups, individual messages, and newsletters. You can create content for split-testing purposes, RSS-triggered emails, or date-based campaigns.
For instance, maybe you want to send an email on a customer’s birthday.
The email templates you get with ActiveCampaign are also really nice.
I really like the responsive nature of these mobile-friendly, and rather modern looking templates. However, you don’t get many to choose from.
There’s nothing close to the hundreds of templates available from competitors like MailChimp.
Still, on the plus side, you can always add plenty of customization to your content to make it even more impressive.
If you like fiddling around with email designs (like I do), then you can potentially create dozens of emails that look totally different, just by using the same template.
What’s more, you can always build your entire email from scratch if you’re feeling particularly creative. ActiveCampaign will even let you add your own branding and colors – as long as you’re not on it’s lowest pricing tier.
As an email builder, ActiveCampaign has plenty to offer. It’s easy to use and has just enough templates to make things fun.
On the other hand, here’s what you get with Infusionsoft:
Click on the “Broadcasts” option (now on the left-hand side of the page after the Keap rebrand), and you’ll see several templates to choose from. Again, there’s not a huge amount to choose from here, but it’s not a terrible selection either.
Most of the templates, like with ActiveCampaign, look pretty modern and clean.
You shouldn’t have too much trouble catching the eye of your intended audience.
What’s more, the email editing tool also means that you can do some editing with that drag-and-drop interface that I love so much.
You’ll create your templates out of “blocks” of content, that include things like images, spacers, and even call-to-action buttons. The whole process is super simple, and you get to preview what your content is going to look like on mobile at the click of a button.
Winner
While Infusionsoft by Keap is great, I prefer the ActiveCampaign experience for building and using email templates. However, I think it might just be a personal thing, as you get similar functionality from both tools.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: A/B Testing and Analytics
Now, awesome automation tools and segmentation features are great.
But, you’re gonna need to do some testing to make sure that you’re getting the best ROI on your email marketing efforts.
That’s where reporting and analytics come in.
ActiveCampaign is handy when it comes to analytics and A/B testing.
You can implement reply tracking, link tracking, open/read receipts, unsubscribe tracking, and even Google analytics to give you extra insights from your SEO campaigns.
There’s also spam monitoring built into ActiveCampaign which should help you to avoid bouncing out of consumer inboxes, by letting you know when your emails may not be accepted.
If you open the “Reports” section on your toolbar, you’ll be able to take a more in-depth look at some of the things that are going on in your campaigns. For instance, you can see whether people are consistently opening the same number of emails, or whether you’ve had a drop in open rate after a specific campaign.
The implemented CRM system means you can also track your deals and conversion rates too.
There’s a “Marketing Revenue” section available, which links to your eCommerce store and showcases all the revenue to enter your business from marketing and email automation campaigns – up to 7 days after your messages send.
Plus, when it comes to A/B testing those messages, ActiveCampaign has plenty to offer too, including the option to split test things like subject lines and form information, or split test your entire drip campaign at once.
ActiveCampaign provides some of my favorite A/B testing functionality in the market today. It’s convenient and simple to use, all you need to do to test your entire campaign is add the “Split” trigger to your workflow.
Another cool thing?
The whole experience provided by ActiveCampaign is GDPR complaint.
If you’re dealing with customers over in the EU, then you don’t have to worry about risking issues with compliance. Now that’s a weight off anyone’s mind.
So, how does Infusionsoft measure up?
Well, Infusionsoft by Keap allows companies to visualize their data, conversions, and more from an in-depth analytics dashboard. The idea is that the more information you have, the more informed your decisions will be. Makes sense to me.
All you need to do is click on your “Reporting” tab, and you’ll see a bunch of analytics options like this:
That email engagement tracker report is particularly useful, as it’ll give you the option to figure out whether your messages are really resonating with your target audience, or whether you need to do some tweaking in your segments.
There are also things like Unsubscribe trackers, and campaign enrollment trackers to choose from. Plus, because everything connects with your CRM, you can also access reports about what’s going on with your website too.
Checking the performance of individual emails is slightly different, as you’ll need to go onto your Campaign page to look into the statistics for each message.
Overall, however, once you get used to the Infusionsoft by Keap experience, you’ll end up with a very immersive and compelling solution for analytics.
Infusionsoft even allows users to set up automatic triggers and tasks to remind them of what they need to do next to improve sale based on what they learn in their reports.
Infusionsoft also offers some basic A/B testing – although, in my opinion, it’s not as great as what you’d get from ActiveCampaign. Saying that the layout of the tests is nice. It’s not overwhelming like some of the reporting features you get on other apps. You just get a single block of information. That’s simple enough for even my muddled brain to handle.
Winner
For reporting, Infusionsoft comes out on top with the option to track dozens of different things, ranging from sales, to subscribe rates and more.
However, ActiveCampaign wins this segment when it comes to A/B testing. If you’re looking for a way to quickly test the performance of entire campaigns or single emails, ActiveCampaign really can’t be beaten.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Usability
So far, we’ve looked at plenty of the functionality and feature options provided by Infusionsoft and ActiveCampaign. So, how do they compare in terms of usability?
After all, even the best tools aren’t going to be much good if you can’t figure out how to use them.
ActiveCampaign has always been one of the simplest tools to use, in my opinion when it comes to marketing and automation.
Don’t be alarmed when you log into the UI and you see a bunch of information staring back at you.
The whole thing might look a little cluttered at first, but you can always customize it by removing tabs and widgets that you’re not interested in seeing on your homepage.
Even better?
If you click the “Getting Started” option on the top of the page, then you’ll get a complete guide through everything you need to know to start using the software.
The whole experience feels really comfortable and intuitive, like riding a bike.
Infusionsoft by Keap also has a pretty nice UI.
Honestly, I prefer the change in style compared to what we had when it was just “Infusionsoft.”
The main navigation bar will be on the left-hand side now, rather than at the top of your page, and it’s less overwhelming when you click on the navigation because you don’t see dozens of options to choose from.
Check it what it looked like before, for instance:
Additionally, like with ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft by Keap allows you to customize your UI experience to suit your specific needs.
You can see how many users you have engaged and what’s going on with your email campaigns.
Additionally, there’s also the option to check out what kind of tasks you need to deal with each day:
Infusionsoft by Keap doesn’t just make keeping track of your emails easier – it also helps you to stay on top of your schedule with as little stress as possible too.
That’s something you don’t generally get from an email automation tool.
There are even mobile apps available for iOS and Android, although you might find that they’re a bit clunky right now while Infusionsoft is rolling out their new Keap branding. Be patient – you’ll get the functionality you need eventually.
Winner
I’d struggle to pick a favorite here if it wasn’t for the fact that you can track your tasks on Infusionsoft, as well as checking up on your emails. It’s that feature that makes the Keap solution more of an “all in one” offering in my opinion.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Customer Support
Finally, before you go rushing off to buy your new email automation and CRM solution, it’s worth making sure you’re going to get the kind of customer support you need.
ActiveCampaign offers plenty of guidance in the form of live chat support, email, and even the option to join weekly training sessions if you don’t mind reliving your school days.
If you’re feeling super lost, then you can book a one-on-one training session with a representative tool.
Overall, however, I’d say that the education section of ActiveCampaign is robust enough to give you most of the guidance you’re going to need. On top of that – the software is far from challenging to use, so you’ll probably be able to work most of it out as you go.
Another thing worth noting is that ActiveCampaign’s live chat functionality is slightly slow.
Still, you can expect an answer within 10 or 15 minutes, which is better than continually refreshing your email inbox for an hour or two.
At least you’ll get to see where you are in the queue.
Infusionsoft by Keap is also willing to provide plenty of support options.
On the website, you’ll find a help center, knowledgebase articles, blogs, webinars, videos, and various other forms of guidance. You can also access one-on-one support by contacting one of the call-centers in the UK, USA, Canada, or Australia.
If you have a higher-paid account (i.e., more than the basic package), then you’ll also be able to access instant chat directly from your Infusionsoft dashboard.
If you’re not that lucky, there’s plenty of support out there from the Infusionsoft by Keap community, although it’s best to give yourself a day or two if you want the most extensive selection of answers possible.
Winner
I’d give ActiveCampain the trophy here, as it provides just about every kind of customer support you can ask for, including a knowledge base and live chat.
If you want a tool that gives you award-winning customer support, however, check out AWeber (review) – they’re one of the few companies to provide you the same service no matter what package you buy.
ActiveCampaign vs Infusionsoft: Which One Should You Choose?
Both ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft are competitive solutions for companies that want more than just email marketing. If you’re looking for a tool that can give you drip campaigns, combined with robust A/B testing, analytics, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, then these two solutions are right on the money.
However, each option appeals to a slightly different kind of customer.
If you’re a newer business owner with more confined needs when it comes to email marketing, then ActiveCampaign is probably best for you. There are plenty of marketing automation tools to explore, and the email template builder is great.
However, if you’re a more experienced business leader and you need things like in-depth analytics and a state-of-the-art CRM tool, then Infusionsoft by Keap is the way to go.
You can really accomplish virtually anything with your sales and marketing using this service.
If you still need help figuring out the right email marketing tool, check out our guide to some of the most compelling software for 2023.
