# ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp

Updated 2026-10-14. Compared from independent Reddit comments only. Methodology: https://gtmranked.com/methodology/

**Is ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp better?** Independent users prefer ActiveCampaign (46/100 from 20 rated comments) over Mailchimp (11/100 from 31 rated comments). ActiveCampaign is best for Teams that need multi-branch, behaviour-based email automation beyond what Mailchimp or MailerLite offer; Mailchimp is best for Small lists sending straightforward newsletters.

**Is ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp cheaper?** ActiveCampaign: Email plans billed annually and priced by contact count: Starter from $15/mo, Plus from $49/mo, Pro from $79/mo, Enterprise from $145/mo. WhatsApp and Email + WhatsApp plans are also listed. 14-day free trial with no credit card; no free plan. Mailchimp: Free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 sends/mo. Paid plans shown at the page's default contact tier: Essentials $13/mo, Standard $20/mo, Premium $350/mo, each listed per month for the first 12 months; prices scale with contact count and overages apply. 14-day free trial of Essentials or Standard; Premium trial via sales. Prices are from each vendor's pricing page and change often.

| | ActiveCampaign | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 46/100 | 11/100 |
| Rank in category | #3 | #5 |
| Rated comments | 20 | 31 |
| Best for | Teams that need multi-branch, behaviour-based email automation beyond what Mailchimp or MailerLite offer; B2B and non-ecommerce companies leaving HubSpot mainly for email marketing; Businesses with modest, actively mailed lists | Small lists sending straightforward newsletters; Stores that want product images, titles and links pulled into emails from their catalog |
| Starting price | $15/mo | $13/mo |

## #3 ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and marketing automation platform with segmentation, landing pages, a built-in CRM and WhatsApp messaging, priced by contact count. Website: activecampaign.com. Category: [Email Marketing & Lifecycle](https://gtmranked.com/best/email-marketing/). Score 46/100 (11 positive, 5 mixed, 4 negative of 20 independent comments).

**Verdict:** More than half of the 68 comments are promotional: plugs for competing tools, a vendor reply, and a cluster of near-identical praise in Feb and Mar 2026 repeating the same abandoned-cart and automation-builder talking points. Among the rest, users consistently rate its automation builder as more capable than Mailchimp, Brevo or MailerLite for multi-branch workflows, and see it as a cheaper HubSpot alternative for email. The main trade-off is cost at scale: billing is by stored contacts rather than sends, users describe steep price jumps as lists grow, and two say removing old contacts to cut the bill is deliberately slow.

**What users like:**
- Automation builder handles complex, multi-branch and behaviour-based workflows better than Brevo, Mailchimp or MailerLite [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1lebhzu/_/no75fb8/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1nhf18x/_/nf1xl58/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1nhf18x/_/nej00ko/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1lv1j3z/_/nm7vqpo/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1p7frf6/_/nr015bo/)
- Users moving off HubSpot find comparable email marketing power for noticeably less money, with CRM features built in [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1odksu0/_/nkuyuu6/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1lebhzu/_/myj6o4u/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1odksu0/_/nl0h2ut/)
- Rated well for deliverability, and one user notes its reporting filters out bot clicks and Apple opens [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1hrd1hw/_/m55hmi6/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1rky8nv/_/o8os48s/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1nhf18x/_/niepvhu/)

**What users complain about:**
- Billing scales with stored contacts, not sends, so costs climb steeply as a list grows; users call it expensive at scale and note recent price increases [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1v68bgp/_/p0005se/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1h1xfb5/_/lzgymyf/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1lv1j3z/_/n9juhmp/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1odksu0/_/nl0h2ut/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1odksu0/_/nkuyuu6/) [6](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1lv1j3z/_/nul689l/) [7](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1h1xfb5/_/lzfeviy/)
- Removing old contacts to cut the bill is hard: one user says they are not allowed to delete contacts, another describes an archive-then-delete process that still needs support's sign-off [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1lv1j3z/_/nul689l/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1v68bgp/_/p0005se/)

**Best for:** Teams that need multi-branch, behaviour-based email automation beyond what Mailchimp or MailerLite offer; B2B and non-ecommerce companies leaving HubSpot mainly for email marketing; Businesses with modest, actively mailed lists.
**Skip it if:** Large lists that are mailed rarely, since billing follows stored contacts; Cold outreach, which permission-based marketing platforms like this one do not allow; Budget-first senders who only need simple newsletters.
**Pricing (vendor-stated, checked 2026-10-14):** Email plans billed annually and priced by contact count: Starter from $15/mo, Plus from $49/mo, Pro from $79/mo, Enterprise from $145/mo. WhatsApp and Email + WhatsApp plans are also listed. 14-day free trial with no credit card; no free plan.

Full review: https://gtmranked.com/tools/activecampaign/

## #5 Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an email marketing platform for building and sending campaigns and automated emails to a contact list, with plans priced by the number of contacts. Website: mailchimp.com. Category: [Email Marketing & Lifecycle](https://gtmranked.com/best/email-marketing/). Score 11/100 (5 positive, 4 mixed, 22 negative of 31 independent comments).

**Verdict:** Independent users mostly see Mailchimp as fine for small lists and plain newsletters, and a poor fit once the list or the strategy grows: the most common complaints are steep price increases as contacts accumulate, campaigns landing in Gmail spam on shared sending IPs, and segmentation and automations that struggle with Shopify purchase behavior. A handful defend the price relative to email ROI and like its one-click product import from a store catalog. About 43 of the 100 comments were promotional, much of it repeated pushes for alternatives such as Omnisend, ActiveCampaign, Sender and Campaign Monitor in Mailchimp-alternative threads.

**What users like:**
- Cheap at small list sizes, and some users argue the cost is small relative to the revenue email brings in [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1htxd1f/_/m5kkuc3/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1htxd1f/_/m5jjlx5/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1ga6uvm/_/ltco827/)
- Pulls product images, titles and links from a store catalog into an email in one step, which users say smaller tools lack [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1r2dlti/_/o4wrdkg/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1r2dlti/_/o9h7q11/)
- Works well enough for newsletters and basic campaigns [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1p7frf6/_/nr015bo/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1osptdf/_/no1kw2q/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1r96q7r/_/o6b7scq/)

**What users complain about:**
- Cost rises steeply as the list grows; one 14-year customer saw their bill double to $308/mo for 7K contacts, and others pay for stored contacts they rarely mail [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1s1pwel/_/oc56dyu/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1htxd1f/_/m5kkuc3/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1nhf18x/_/nup01n5/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1qttg5w/_/o37brfd/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1rq28cb/_/on8cah1/)
- Deliverability depends on shared IP pools: users report test sends reaching the inbox while bulk campaigns land in Gmail spam [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1t4usix/_/okcfmfl/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1t4usix/_/ok81eq4/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1t4usix/_/ok83kjg/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1t4usix/_/okb93ve/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1r96q7r/_/o6b7scq/) [6](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1t4usix/_/okf0f0g/)
- Segmentation and automation hit limits for ecommerce: combining purchase-behavior conditions kept breaking for one Shopify seller, and others found it clunky beyond a newsletter [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1vgvvof/_/p24xqzo/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1u92gvs/_/osfbp1b/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1rra19p/_/o9ztob0/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/ecommerce/comments/1rra19p/_/oa06xh3/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1rq28cb/_/on8cah1/) [6](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1p7frf6/_/nr015bo/)
- The interface feels bloated and hard to use, with many steps, awkward editors and formatting fights [1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1s0le65/_/obu7ewy/) [2](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1nhf18x/_/nrjw1ub/) [3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1p7frf6/_/nqyr1ls/) [4](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1qb35c8/_/nzbvr7t/) [5](https://www.reddit.com/r/Emailmarketing/comments/1p7frf6/_/nqyimh0/)

**Best for:** Small lists sending straightforward newsletters; Stores that want product images, titles and links pulled into emails from their catalog.
**Skip it if:** Large lists that only mail segments, since price follows total contacts; Shopify stores that rely on purchase-behavior segments and flows; Senders without the volume for a dedicated IP who need consistent Gmail inbox placement.
**Pricing (vendor-stated, checked 2026-10-14):** Free plan for up to 250 contacts and 500 sends/mo. Paid plans shown at the page's default contact tier: Essentials $13/mo, Standard $20/mo, Premium $350/mo, each listed per month for the first 12 months; prices scale with contact count and overages apply. 14-day free trial of Essentials or Standard; Premium trial via sales.

Full review: https://gtmranked.com/tools/mailchimp/