If you're considering ActiveCampaign vs. Drip as your next email marketing tool, you have to choose between two of the best options on the market. You can discover here their features, pros, and cons so that you can make the best decision for your company.
Written by Ria du Plessis - Digital Marketing Expert Updated 9/2/2021 |
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Score | 8.3/10 | 8/10 |
Summary | ActiveCampaign is a reliable platform that offers the ideal automation and email design features that small companies need. | Drip is a powerful platform that features robust automated workflows, an intuitive email editor, and good segmentation. |
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Pros |
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Cons |
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Key Features |
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Pricing |
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Support |
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Ease of Use |
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Best fit for | Small companies | B2C companies |
The email design options you get from your future platform will influence your campaigns’ look and the time you need to invest in creating them.
ActiveCampaign features a great user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and around 100 modern, attractive email templates. You can also create emails from scratch, and no matter where you are in the email creation process, you can quickly turn back to previous steps to check your content. All the platform's templates are responsive and can be customized by changing the position of the text blocks, for example.
Drip also offers an intuitive visual email editor, and it has a gallery of email templates. However, their selection is less impressive than that on ActiveCampaign, as you only get around ten templates. On the other hand, you can build emails from scratch with ease, choose your favorite colors, style, or background. You can use personalized content blocks and make your email's content dynamic.
Winner
ActiveCampaign, because of its templates.
A/B testing your emails is essential if you want to discover the best variation to bring you higher open rates.
ActiveCampaign is the perfect choice in terms of spam and A/B testing if you’re a beginner. The platform offers multiple testing features, and they are all easy to use. For example, for spam-testing, you simply have to click a button to see if your email is likely to pass spam filters. You can A/B test simple elements such as subject lines or even entire workflows.
Drip is a bit more limited in terms of email testing capabilities. It offers preview email features, which, by the way, is also available with ActiveCampaign. You can also split test workflows with Drip. And you can split test subject lines and ‘from’ information, but you can’t test your emails’ content.
Winner
ActiveCampaign offers more advanced features.
Segmenting your audience allows you to craft well-targeted campaigns and boost your open rates. Here is a quick ActiveCampaign vs. Drip segmentation comparison.
ActiveCampaign offers excellent segmentation features, starting with the fact that it allows you to import your contact with just one click. To segment your contacts, you have the option to create lists or tag them. Lists are groups of contacts you will send your emails to. Tags are essential attributes you assign to your contacts (for example, people who don't answer your emails). You can also create groups based on customer actions, such as a purchase or a download they've made.
Drip also allows you to divide your audience into multiple categories. With this tool, you can create segments and tag your contacts. You can use multiple criteria to include contacts in the same list (e.g., a link they've opened, unopened emails in a given period, etc.). You can track your customer behavior and tag them according to their actions. You can apply tags based on events such as recent purchases, website visits, or the source the contacts come from.
Winner
It’s a tie.
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Registration forms help you collect leads and start segmenting them. Discover ActiveCampaign vs. Drip form-building capabilities.
With this platform, you can build various types of forms such as pop-ups, inline, floating box, or floating bar forms. You can also customize them as you please and add different elements - dropdown lists, checkboxes, buttons, or hide fields. After the submission takes place, the contact can automatically be tagged or added to a list.
Drip features good form-building features. There are different types of forms you can create here, including widgets and embedded forms. If you don’t have a website where you can embed your forms, Drip allows you to create pages where you can post the forms. You can easily build these forms from the visual editor and customize them by changing different elements, adding buttons, dropdown lists, etc.
Winner
Both tools are fine from this perspective, but ActiveCampaign is slightly more flexible.
Automated workflows are email sequences you can create once and then put on autopilot. Here is what ActiveCampaign vs. Drip has to offer.
Despite its powerful and highly detailed automation process, ActiveCampaign offers one of the most intuitive automation builders. The visual approach allows you to easily move contacts down the pipeline, as they accomplish a particular action (opened email, clicked link, etc.). You also get templates for different automation purposes and the possibility to automate sales processes.
Drip also features a user-friendly automation builder that allows you to create any type of email automation. You can choose to customize the rules and actions that will trigger your workflows. You can create workflows of any complexity level by choosing as many actions as you want to split them. You can move contacts into different campaigns, or split contacts and send them on different paths.
Winner
Both tools offer outstanding automations.
Find out more about the multiple pricing plans ActiveCampaign and Drip offer.
There are four pricing options you can access. The price fluctuates for each plan based on your number of contacts. The starting price is $9 per month for the Lite Plan. The Lite plan enables you to create emails and use marketing automation. The Plus plan costs at least $49 per month. The Professional plan ($129/month) and Enterprise ($220/month) are the highest tiers.
Drip’s main advantage in terms of price is that you can use all its features, regardless of the plan you purchase. Their most basic plan costs $19 per month, and you can use it for up to 500 contacts. To add SMS marketing to the plan, you would need to pay 15$ more. For 2,500 contacts, the price is $49 per month.
Winner
Although ActiveCampaign’s plans have a lower starting point, Drip offers more features even with the lowest plan, so we consider it the winner.
Both platforms are pretty easy to use. Let’s see who wins.
ActiveCampaign also features an intuitive interface. However, compared to Drip, it doesn't have the same modern and fun look and is rather business-oriented. You find all the main features on the left-hand side of your dashboard. Creating emails and automations is easy, and you can also customize the dashboard for effortless navigation. To make it more accessible for beginners, you can configure the dashboard to show the specific features and sections that interest you.
Drip features a modern and attractive UI. You only get a few essential features displayed in the top menus, which makes navigation very easy. The visual and dynamic editor helps you create campaigns with hardly any effort. To start creating a new campaign, you first have to choose the section of your email you want to modify. Then, you can simply start placing the desired content in the place where you want to.
Winner
Drip’s interface is more intuitive.
Both platforms offer good integrations with a plethora of different tools.
ActiveCampin allows you to integrate more than 250 third party-apps from different areas, such as social media platforms, content management tools, online commerce platforms, or CRMs. Some of the most useful platforms you will probably want to connect to your ActiveCampaign account include WordPress, Facebook, Zapier, Shopify, Google Analytics, Lead Pages, SurveyMonkey, WooCommerce, Pipedrive, Unbounce.
Dip also offers plenty of convenient integrations, but you only get about half the number you can have with ActiveCampaign. Some of the services that integrate seamlessly with this platform include PayPal, Facebook, Shopify, or LeadPages.
Winner
ActiveCampaign, since it offers more choices.
Here is a quick summary of the reports you can access with ActiveCampaign vs. Drip.
ActiveCampaign offers advanced reporting. You get all the basic campaign reports (opens, unsubscribes, clicks, forwards, bounces), as well as geolocation reports, read reports, social media shares, heat maps, and multiple workflow reports.
Drip offers all the important campaign metrics such as open rates, bounces, subscriber growth analytics, or unsubscribes. You can also generate event-based reports triggered by specific actions, such as website visits, tags applied, downloaded eBooks, etc.
Winner
ActiveCampaign is more complex.
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The customer support options you can benefit from with ActiveCampaign vs. Drip are quite similar. Let’s find out more.
ActiveCampaign has a topnotch Help bubble you can click on at any time when connected to your account. You'll find it in the right-hand bottom corner. This platform offers support via email or live chat. Phone support is also available, but only for the highest plan. The support options are only available during business hours.
You can also attend regular training sessions or even benefit from one-to-one training if you’re using the Plus plan or a superior plan. A comprehensive help center with myriad training resources is also available.
Drip offers 24/7 live support from agents you can contact by using the chat functionality or by email. Most customer reviews show that their service is prompt and helpful. However, occasionally, you might find that no agent is available to support you. Drip also offers a great knowledge base.
Winner
Drip wins this time for its 24/7 support.
Find out who is the intended audience for each platform.
ActiveCampaign is a good choice for small and medium businesses. It can suit the needs of beginners and advanced players alike. This tool is ideal for those who are looking for advanced automation or beautiful email templates.
Drip is a good choice if you are a beginner and you need an intuitive platform that allows you to create email campaigns with ease. Drip is also great if you're looking for in-depth segmentation. The audience the platform was built for is B2B companies.
Here are some of the pros and cons of these two platforms.
ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one platform. You get everything you need to build engaging emails, including great templates. ActiveCampaign also offers excellent reporting tools and multiple integrations. However, you don't get access to all the features with the lower plans.
Drip is an intuitive platform that helps you easily create campaigns or set up automated workflows using a visual builder. This platform also offers outstanding segmentation features and good reporting. However, it doesn't provide many templates.
Here are two valuable alternatives you might also want to consider.
This is an affordable and reliable email marketing platform that can offer you powerful automation features, great reporting capabilities, event management, and engagement tracking tools.
Sendinblue performs very well in terms of customizations. You can create different target emails with this platform, including transactional emails. SMS marketing, CRM, and send-time optimization features are other strong points.
ActiveCampaign is our final winner since it won most rounds, including email design options, forms, integrations and reporting.
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