ActiveCampaign Vs Aweber

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There is no doubt that email marketing is one of the most effective ways to market products and services.

However, the choice of email marketing automation between softwares out there, can sometimes be a difficult decision because most email marketing automation tools have very similar functions.

Two of these autoresponders we are going to compare are ActiveCampaign vs Aweber email automation.

I personally use both ActiveCampaign and AWeber, so I want to compare the two based on my own experience.

Both are very popular among marketers and business owners of all sizes, but there are significant differences between them. In fact, from Google Trends it is pretty clear to see how the competition between these two is faring as more marketers flock to ActiveCampaign.

Therefore, in this article, I will compare ActiveCampaign vs Aweber to help you find the best autoresponder. Lets get started!

ActiveCampaign Features

Active Campaign has become one of the most popular solutions for email and SMS marketing automation and CRM.

It has more than 300,000 customers, making it one of the most popular autoresponders on the market. It is also one of the most powerful email marketing automation and CRM service solutions on the market.

  • Email marketing automation software
  • Marketing platform automation
  • Form builder (forms)
  • Landing pages
  • Dynamic content
  • A/B testing
  • Lead tagging
  • Site tracking
  • Event tracking
  • Automation maps
  • Automation goals
  • Sales & CRM
  • Attribution
  • Split actions
  • Lead Scoring
  • Gmail extension for Chrome
  • Apps
  • Facebook custom audience
  • SMS
  • Site messages
  • Conversations
  • Machine learning
  • Predictive sending
  • API & Integrations
  • Win probability

As I mentioned earlier, it makes it a perfect back-end communication center.

However, front end it also has some great features with a form builder and landing page tool.

The landing pages you can build are stunning and you can drag a huge range of widgets including social media links, countdowns and videos.

Plus the domain these are hosted on looks pretty branded. See this one here: https://meltmail.ac-page.com/activecampaigns-landing-page-builder-is-great

Plus despite the amount of graphics on the page I got a Pagespeed Insights Score of 55/100, which might not sound great but is faster than a lot of popular websites and is not bad for a free tool rather than a real page builder like Leadpages.

The email builder and templates in ActiveCampaign are also very easy to use.

So far, it is still difficult for me to switch to any other autoresponder, because ActiveCampaign is very easy to use despite its powerful functions.

Both Aweber and ActiveCampaign have hundreds of email templates to choose from.

However, a lot of Aweber’s seem as old as Aweber and they aren’t really categorized that well. Some are E-commerce and some are blog updates.

ActiveCampaign on the other hand features a universe of email functions, from opt-in confirmations to stock notifications.

So in terms of ease of use, ActiveCampaign is very easy to handle.

The email builder and templates in ActiveCampaign are also very easy to use despite its powerful functions. In fact you can even get seasonal automation “recipes” to steal.

Aweber Features

Many people regard Aweber as the “godfather” of email marketing automation service.

It was founded by Tom Kulzer in 1998 and since then, it has helped more than one million customers keep in touch with their contacts through email marketing.

Although Aweber is one of the oldest auto responders in the game, it has grown and grown, which means it also has many powerful features. In addition, it also provides you with some tools for collecting emails, such as its landing page builder.

  • Automation sequences
  • Drag & drop email builder
  • Sign up forms to capture the subscribers email address
  • Tagging
  • Autoresponders
  • 6,000+ stock photos
  • Email newsletters
  • Html templates
  • Analytics and tracking
  • Email attachments
  • Mobile app
  • Split-testing
  • Landing pages

For many marketers and business owners out there, Aweber will certainly have all the features needed.

And, if you look at these features, you might notice that Aweber has everything it needs. In addition, it also has a website page builder, although there is no custom domain feature yet.

One thing I want to say is that ActiveCampaign has more advanced emails and triggers than Aweber and a more intuitive automation builder.

I find that Aweber personally lacks some ease of use because the dashboard looks a bit old. Furthermore, ease of use depends on opinions, so you might have different opinions.

And while Aweber might have a great landing page builder – although not as advanced as ActiveCampaign’s – its form builder sucks.

Badly.

ActiveCampaign having a lead here would be an understatement. It even imports your site with just a web address without having to integrate it so you can design your popup – including bars and sliders – on your live page to get colours and formatting right.

Key Differences Aweber vs Activecampaign

In terms of features, ActiveCampaign has indeed won the crown, and you will see why it did so in a second.

However, this does not necessarily mean that ActiveCampaign is the perfect solution because it is indeed more expensive.

Therefore, if you do not plan to use these features, make sure to choose Aweber.

If you need them, you should consider ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign completely dominates email marketing, although it also provides more communication tools.

The following are some functions that are only available in AC:

  • More triggers
  • Conversations (ie, manage conversations through the communication dashboard)
  • More comprehensive email split testing
  • More comprehensive automation (with goals, potential customer ratings, etc.)
  • Better website and event tracking
  • Chrome extension for Gmail

I think it can be said that ActiveCampaign wins in email marketing. If you would like to utilise email marketing as much as possible and have the best tools, you should consider using it because it has some of the most powerful email marketing tools on the market.

On the other hand, if you only need simple automation to get started, tagging, and some newsletters, easy drag and drop email creation, you don’t need the service ActiveCampaign offers.

Aweber focuses on this because it has a landing page builder and stock images.

You can see how basic and simple Aweber’s automations and tagging system are here.

With Aweber, you can create basic pages of your choice to help you collect emails. Moreover, Aweber also comes with stock photos, you can use them in your emails or website pages.

You can use the page builder through its drag and drop based editor to create beautiful pages easily and quickly.

These two nice bonuses can benefit in your social media activities because you can collect emails and also use stock images. They can also be used in social media advertising or a range of other places outside of social media, such as your blog.

ActiveCampaign has CRM (super powerful)

The next key difference in functionality is the fact that ActiveCampaign offers CRM tools.

It is an excellent CRM tool that allows you to automate the entire sales process, based and including advanced tasks such as contacting your sales team when someone fulfils a step or condition.

I must admit that it is very advanced, and as a blogger, I never felt the need to use it all.

However, if you are looking for a powerful CRM, then ActiveCampaign may be your solution.

Some other cool ActiveCampaign CRM features include:

  • Win probability
  • Lead scoring
  • Predictive Sending
  • Customer attribution & Path to purchase, and more

As you can understand, ActiveCampaign has very good CRM.

Just look at its system for lead scoring where you can assign points to a contact that performs certain activities.

ActiveCampaign has a native SMS auto-responder

It is possible to integrate an SMS autoresponder with Aweber software, but ActiveCampaign has a native SMS autoresponder (if your subscription plan is right).

This means you can set up an SMS sequence sent directly from the ActiveCampaign dashboard.

SMS sending is only available in some plans, but we will discuss more in the pricing section later.

Delivery capability

Now, let’s talk about the deliverability of email. If you don’t know, email deliverability is the ability to send emails to be delivered out to your customer contacts email addresses.

According to a study made by EmailToolTester in February 2020, the sending rate of ActiveCampaign emails was 90.2%, while the sending rate of Aweber emails was 85.4%.

This is no big difference at all, and I confirm that as long as you follow deliverability based best practices and do not send spam to any email address in your contact list , then neither of these autoresponders will encounter deliverability issues.

Support

Both email marketing platforms have strong support teams services.

Both platforms have email support, phone support, and real time live chat support .

It is always great when you are in a need for help and you can contact the support and talk to them in real time and don’t have to wait for hours or even days for the response.

What I want to say is that AC has a better knowledge base and better resources. In addition, the startup process of AC is better than that of Aweber regarding those services.

Overall, although they are fast and friendly, I have no complaints about any of their support teams.

It should also be noted that compared with ActiveCampaign, Aweber phone support can be obtained more frequently. I think Aweber’s support team has more time available every day, but both support teams are great.

Pricing of AC vs Aweber

Activecampaign

AC software offers a 14-day free trial period so that you can test the platform and see how everything works. If you don’t want to continue using ActiveCampaign, they don’t ask for a credit card, and you’re not obligated to enter a paid plan.

The free trial version allows you to have up to 100 contacts/ subscribers and send up to 100 emails. You can also access all the features listed in the “Pro” plan.

Lite. The monthly cost of the lite plan is $17 per 1000 subscribers. The plan includes unlimited sending, email marketing, marketing automation, chat and email support, and up to 3 account users.

Plus. Costs US$49 per month and can accommodate 1,000 subscribers, including the Lite plan and CRM, contact and lead scoring, deep data integration, custom user permissions, custom branding, one-on-one training, SMS marketing, Conditional content, each account can have up to 25 users.

Professional. The monthly fee for the professional plan is $129/USD per thousand subscribers, which includes the Lite and Plus plans, as well as website messaging, attribution, predictive sending/delivery, split automation, winning probability, and all content for up to 50 users.

Enterprise. The cost of the enterprise plan is $229 per month, including all the content in the lower plans, as well as custom reports, custom mail server domains, custom domains, dedicated account representative, in-depth introduction, free design services, free social data, phone calls Support, uptime SLA and unlimited users.

Aweber pricing

Aweber provides a completely free plan that you can use for testing. Or, if it meets your requirements, you can also use it forever because it is completely free.

It comes with:

  • Autoresponse
  • Landing page builder
  • Email template

Not bad, right?

Now, I’m sure you might want to know where these restrictions are.

  • 500 subscribers and 3000 emails per month
  • No behavior-based automation sequence
  • No custom domain (only available for paid plan soon)

Despite this, the free plan is still proven to be among the best free automatic answering plans.

After that the pricing is:

  • 0-500 subscribers – $19
  • 501 – 2,500 subscribers – $29
  • 2,501 – 5,000 subscribers – $49
  • 5,001- 10,000 subscribers – $69
  • 10,001 – 25,000 subscribers – $149

Conclusion

In terms of email marketing, both AWeber and ActiveCampaign software are good tools, but there are some differences with other functions, which may mean that one is better for your business than the other.

The following are the main differences between ActiveCampaign and Aweber:

If you just need email marketing at an affordable price, then AWeber is your best choice.

They provide all the features included in all plans, so the only difference in price is the number of contacts you need to have in your account.

It provides a simple solution for automated email marketing, so you can easily grow your business without getting into technical difficulties.

I hope you like the comparison of ActiveCampaign and Aweber software.

Remember, this article is always just a guide, ActiveCampaign offers a free trial, and Aweber has a completely free plan, so please don’t shy away from testing it.

In comparison to Aweber, Activecampaign is my personal favorite, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same for you.

If you are just looking for the basics, then Aweber might do it. Either way, these two auto responders are easy to use, efficient and powerful, which means there is no totally wrong choice.

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