Email marketing is an evergreen strategy you can safely rely on to boost your business and generate more sales. To achieve these desired results, you need a reliable email marketing platform. Further on, we will compare two of the best choices: Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign. Discover their features and benefits.
Written By Henry Walden - Digital Marketing Expert Updated: 09/02/2021 |
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Score | 8.5/10 | 9/10 |
Summary | This is a straightforward platform that features advanced capabilities which can support a successful email marketing strategy. | ActiveCampaign is a user-friendly email marketing tool that’s packed both with basic and advanced features which allow you to put your email campaigns on autopilot. |
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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 | Beginners, small companies | Small companies, medium/advanced marketers |
Templates allow you to create attractive emails that are more likely to fit your brand’s image and engage your customers.
Sendinblue provides somewhere around 60 email templates that feature a professional design. All come in a responsive format and are ready to be customized based on your needs. The user-friendly drag-and-drop editor allows you to add texts, social buttons, headers, or logos in seconds. You can also create original templates from zero. Sendinblue provides a rich text editor, as well as an HTML builder. Dynamic content is another nice addition.
ActiveCampaign offers 100+ professional-looking templates. The flexible email builder also allows you to easily customize your templates. You can drag and drop text or images to personalize your emails or start creating them from scratch. You can also use conditional blocks to target your audience with the content that’s most likely to engage them.
Winner
Both platforms because they offer good-looking templates.
Forms allow you to collect valuable leads. You can create them on both platforms. Here are the different form options available with Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign.
With Sendinblue, the email and form-building processes are identical. You can drag and drop elements and set up a new form within minutes. You can change different elements such as colors, fonts, backgrounds, borders, text, or add different buttons. It is possible to add as many custom fields as you want or drop-down lists and embed forms anywhere on your website or connect them to your social media platforms.
ActiveCampaign helps you create attractive forms within minutes and embed them on your website or on the landing pages you can also create from the platform’s editor. You can customize your forms pretty much the same way as you would with Sendinblue. There are 4 types of forms you can choose from inline - floating bar, floating box, modal. You can also choose how to add fields (dropdown, text, etc.).
Winner
It’s a tie once again.
Automated workflows are a must-have nowadays. Through automation, you can send regular updates or reminders to your clients without having to manually deliver emails.
Sendinblue provides different automation templates that will help you speed up your work: welcome emails, happy birthday emails, discount emails, etc. The drag-and-drop email builder allows you to easily customize these templates and add the events or triggers that best suit your purpose. Sendinblue also helps you optimize your automated flows by A/B testing them.
ActiveCampaign is one of the most powerful email marketing platforms when it comes to automation. The visual automation builder allows you to create a flow in minutes. You can combine actions and triggers and create automations of any complexity level. The automation building process is based on lists and tags. You choose what conditions your customers need to fulfill to be automatically tagged and receive emails. There are also multiple ready-made templates you can use.
Winner
ActiveCampaign is more intuitive and advanced.
| You may also like the following comparison: ActiveCampaign vs AWeber |
To make sure your emails end up in your contacts’ inboxes, you should be able to spam test them. Both ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue allow you to do this.
Sendinblue offers a powerful anti-spam tool that aims to improve your deliverability rates. All the contacts that are linked to hard bounces are automatically blacklisted by the platform. This means they will stop receiving your emails and you won’t get spam complaints from these contacts. Moreover, this platform also provides you custom IPs that will protect your sender reputation.
ActiveCampaign also focuses a lot on deliverability. To this point, the platform allows you to A/B test different elements of your email to increase their performance and provides an intuitive spam testing tool. Once an email campaign is set up and ready to be scheduled or delivered, in the final overview page, you can easily check whether the email manages to get past spam filters. To enhance your emails’ deliverability, you can also preview them and send test emails.
Winner
ActiveCampaign offers more options.
Segmenting your audience helps you create better, more customized emails. Discover the different segmentation methods you can use with Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign.
Sendinblue offers advanced segmentation features. You can segment your audience based on different criteria such as past purchase behavior, demographic data, location, the way they interact with your email campaigns, or their activity on your website. It’s possible to easily find contacts based on these criteria using the platform's robust contact search feature and several attributes in your search. Once a segment is created, you can apply rules to further customize your emails and send dynamic content.
With ActiveCampaign, you can create segments by using a variety of criteria such as subscription dates, IP addresses, tags, the actions a customer takes based on previous email campaigns, total conversion value, geo-location. The deals a client has or their behavior on your website are other criteria you can use. You can access the segments from different areas of the platform including lists, contacts, campaigns, or automations.
Winner
Overall, Sendinblue seems to offer more options and a more user-friendly approach.
Discover the pricing plans you can access with these two tools.
This platform has a free plan that allows you to send up to 300 emails per day. There are two main plans you can pay for - the Lite plan ($25/month - 10,000 emails) and the Premium plan ($65/month - 20,000 emails), as well as a custom plan.
ActiveCampaign provides 4 pricing plans. The Lite plan costs only $9 per month (paid yearly) and is available with up to 500 contacts. The Plus plan costs $49/month, the Professional plan costs $129/month. The highest tier is the Enterprise plan - $229/month.
Winner
Sendinblue, as it also offers a free plan.
Let’s see which one of these platforms is easier to use.
When it comes to usability, this platform truly excels. It features one of the most intuitive dashboards you can easily get used to even if you’re a beginner. Another advantage is the fact that you can customize the dashboard and you get a drag-and-drop editor to build emails and forms.
Active Campaign has a modern and appealing dashboard. Thanks to its drag-and-drop builder, it is easy to create email campaigns or automated workflows. The help button is also super useful if you need support, as well as the numerous resources in the knowledge base.
Winner
Sendinblue is easier to use compared to ActiveCampaign which has more advanced features that imply a learning curve.
Integrations are necessary if you want to streamline your marketing process by connecting different tools.
Sendinblue offers around 60 integrations with popular third-party services such as Facebook, WordPress, Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, SalesForce, Google Analytics. The integration with Zapier allows you to connect other apps that are not on Sendinblue’s integrations list.
ActiveCampaign provides somewhere around 500 integrations with many content management tools, social platforms, online shops, CRMs and lead generation tools. Some examples include WordPress, Facebook, Shopify, Zapier, Paypal Stripe, etc.
Winner
ActiveCampaign offers more integrations.
Tracking your campaigns’ performance allows you to constantly improve your work. Discover the reports you can access with Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign.
Sendinblue provides a basic set of reports that allows you to monitor your email campaigns. Some of the most useful reports include open rates, click rates, and unsubscribes. You can also gain insights after testing your campaigns’ subject lines, content or send times.
This platform takes reporting to the next level and offers more than basic metrics such as open rates, bounces, unsubscribes, or click rates. ActiveCampaign also features a useful Reply Tracking tool and additional insights thanks to its Google Analytics integration. Statistics on individual campaigns, attribution, and automation reports are also available.
Winner
ActiveCampaign is more advanced.
| You may also like the following comparison: Getresponse vs Sendinblue |
Both ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue offer different support options.
Sendinblue features a comprehensive help center with different tutorials and articles, as well as live chat, email, and phone support. They offer help in multiple languages and their support options are also available for the lower plans.
This platform also offers email, live chat, or phone support. Only the highest plan allows you to access phone support. An extensive knowledge base is also available.
Winner
Sendinblue, as it offers multilingual support.
Both platforms are more suitable for particular needs. Discover the best option for you.
Sendinblue is a great option if you need a free tool and you’re only sending a few hundred emails per day. It is also great for beginners thanks to its ease of use and for small companies since it is affordable. International teams can benefit from the platform’s multilingual support.
This all-in-one email marketing platform features advanced automation and reporting tools, which make it a great choice for more experienced marketers who want to make data-driven decisions.
Here are the main pros and cons of these two tools.
Sendinblue offers a super intuitive dashboard that’s easy to use even for absolute beginners. The email and form building process is fast and intuitive and the segmentation features and email templates are excellent. However, compared to ActiveCampaign, this platform offers fewer integrations, automation, and reporting features.
ActiveCampaign offers a library of great-looking email templates. The visual automation builder allows you to easily create well-targeted flows and track their results. The spam and A/B testing features increase your deliverability and open rates. Overall, the platform offers outstanding features, but it lags behind some competitors in terms of customer support and has no free plan.
Here are two alternatives for Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign.
ConstantContact: is a great choice for beginners thanks to its intuitive dashboard. This platform features great templates and email customization options, as well as reliable reporting and engagement tracking tools.
Mailjet: is a flexible cloud email marketing platform. It offers in-depth reporting features, great deliverability rates, powerful integrations, and an easy initial configuration process.
ActiveCampaign is our final winner thanks to its advanced automation and reporting features, user-friendly email and automation builders, and numerous integrations.
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