ActiveCampaign vs Mailchimp
 ActiveCampaign |  Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Sentiment | ||
| 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 |
| 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 | 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 |
| Starting price | $15/mo | $13/mo |
| Pricing (vendor-stated) | 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. | 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. |
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.
Users like
- Automation builder handles complex, multi-branch and behaviour-based workflows better than Brevo, Mailchimp or MailerLite[1][2][3][4][5]
- Users moving off HubSpot find comparable email marketing power for noticeably less money, with CRM features built in[1][2][3]
- Rated well for deliverability, and one user notes its reporting filters out bot clicks and Apple opens[1][2][3]
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][2][3][4][5][6][7]
- 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][2]
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.
Users like
- Cheap at small list sizes, and some users argue the cost is small relative to the revenue email brings in[1][2][3]
- Pulls product images, titles and links from a store catalog into an email in one step, which users say smaller tools lack[1][2]
- Works well enough for newsletters and basic campaigns[1][2][3]
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][2][3][4][5]
- Deliverability depends on shared IP pools: users report test sends reaching the inbox while bulk campaigns land in Gmail spam[1][2][3][4][5][6]
- 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][2][3][4][5][6]
- The interface feels bloated and hard to use, with many steps, awkward editors and formatting fights[1][2][3][4][5]