ActiveCampaign and Clickfunnels are two of the most popular email marketing platforms. But if you have to make a choice, which one should you choose?
ActiveCampaign is a powerful and robust email marketing tool that can help you set up automated, drip-based campaigns that work like magic.
Meanwhile, Clickfunnels is an advanced email marketing platform that lets you create gorgeous sales funnels, which are essentially paths to your customers. They can take any type of content and transform it into high-converting sales pages or landing pages.
Your email marketing goals and your needs will determine which of these two platforms you should go with.
Here are the features you get when you work with ActiveCampaign:
The advantages you get working with Clickfunnels are:
In this ClickFunnels vs ActiveCampaign pricing comparison video, I compare the annual or monthly subscriptions of these two tools to help you make a decision on which one is better for your needs.
Clickfunnels Annual Rates: $97/mo - $297/yr (50% discount)
Active Campaign Subscription Fees: From Free up to $49 per month ($1599 yearly fee)
The first thing that really jumped out at me when viewing their pricing plans was how much more expensive it is to use Clickfunnels than Active Campaign.
A follow-up funnel builder is an online tool for creating sequences of actions on your website, blog or email campaigns that help you capture leads in a step-by-step fashion.
For example: if someone lands on your site and signs up to subscribe to a list, what should they do next? Is there any sort of sequence where they all follow the same action, such as signing up for the newsletter as I did above...?
It's important when building these types of funnels because it will help give people the impression that you're providing value by giving them information and then asking them to provide their details.
ActiveCampaigns' follow-up funnel builder is the best way to create sequences and set up any sort of automation in your business.
You can use ClickFunnels for a lot more than creating email campaigns (their "main" product, I guess). It's also possible to use it for setting up lead pages, which is like an online form you send people after they sign-up on your site/blog.
Companies often rely on these as a means of getting quality leads because if someone signs up using one, then at least there is proof that they've landed on their site.
ActiveCampaign is a lot more than email and lead pages, though, as you can see with the range of tools it offers: CRM, Shopping Cart integration, Email marketing software... The list goes on! Clickfunnels simply doesn't offer anywhere near enough features to be able to compete in all areas - and certainly not for that price tag.
If you're only using their main product (email), then this won't really impact your business too much because the cost isn't an issue, but if, like me or many others, are relying on so many other aspects of this toolset, then you'll soon become dependent on it as a crutch.
This is something that I've noticed with other tools too, so it's not just Clickfunnels - but then again, there are many more features in their app than I need for my small business and most of the people who use them have larger businesses (like me). How can you compete when your competitors have to deal with all these extra functions?
It makes sense from an investment standpoint...but from a user experience one, this will be hard to create any sort of separation if they're still relying on email. In addition: You can't even use Clickfunnels if you're using MailChimp, which is one of the major email management programs.
This means that many people - including myself - will have no choice but to continue using their old provider for this reason.
Clickfunnels is the tool that will help you sell more effectively and grow your business. It's a powerful sales funnel builder with tons of features, it can be hellishly difficult to set up if not done correctly, and it's not cheap.
ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, is a great email marketing tool that integrates with many popular CRMs (like Salesforce).
You can use their app to reply directly from your emails in Salesforce - which works well if you're using an email automation system like I am. It also has much more functionality than Clickfunnels because of its reliance on MailChimp as opposed to Aweber or another free platform.
If you are looking for something simple and easy-to-use, then Active Campaign will suit your needs better than anything else out there right now.
In addition, an Active campaign is easier to use and may be less expensive than Clickfunnels if you only want a CRM-based email marketing solution that integrates with Salesforce or something similar, but I don't recommend using it for anything else (unless your business doesn't require automation).
ActiveCampaign could easily become the most popular email marketing tool for small businesses because of its price point and ease of use. It's not perfect by any stretch, but I had used them successfully in the past when other tools failed me.
Clickfunnels offers better analytics than Active Campaign - they show you the exact number of clicks each piece of content received, and it's easy to see what is working vs not working when reviewing your reports. This feature alone may be worth switching over if that's important to you at all!
ClickFunnels also integrates with most email marketing platforms (like MailChimp) out of the box, so there are a lot more options for automation through Aweber or another service which will save time and money in terms of administrative costs for your business. Lastly, you can use any of the landing pages and opt-in forms that you like.
One of the features I love about ClickFunnels is that their "funnel" setup allows you to customize some aspects of your pages and opt-in forms using code.
This means that, as an example, if someone submits a lead form on your website, but they want to be added into a specific list or segment within ClickFunnels, then you can create those lists (or segments) in just minutes before sending them over to online registration for one feature/offer/product page with custom fields.
The same applies to email marketing tools like Aweber, which also allow users access through their "funnel" setup.
I've used a lot of lead capture tools, and it's so incredibly frustrating to have someone fill out your form only to be told that they must add themselves into an email list, but you can't do this inside ClickFunnels because the forms are pre-populated with fields in their templates as opposed to needing you to upload them from somewhere else (which is what happens when utilizing Aweber).
The best part about all of this? It works for any kind of website or landing page, whether it is one provided by ClickFunnels or another service like Lead pages or Infusionsoft. The lead capture forms that you create can be used in any of your marketing efforts, whether it's Facebook ads, Google AdWords campaigns or even LinkedIn Ads.
One more thing I love about ClickFunnels is how they allow you to set up email templates that are easily editable via the application itself as well as being able to use different domains for each separate campaign within their software (as opposed to having them all on the same domain).
This means that if someone subscribes through an opt-in form and then later decides to sign up via a link that you put in your blog post, they will still be placed into the email list on ClickFunnels.
This feature is an invaluable one for anyone wanting to follow through with their conversion rates as it allows them to easily create more than just one simple email blast (or whatever else type of campaign).
You can also use tags within each separate campaign so that you know who's opted-in from what form. This level of flexibility is something I've never seen before with any other SaaS application out there.
To conclude, ClickFunnels is fantastic. It's a tool that will save you so much time and help increase your conversion rates beyond even what you could ever imagine.
Their entire suite of tools are very easy to use, their customer support team responds quickly, and they're able to assist with any issues or questions that come up immediately – something I've never had the pleasure of experiencing from another system before coming across ClickFunnels.
It's also incredibly cost-effective too! You can't go wrong with them, especially when hundreds if not thousands of other marketers have already tried it out for themselves and continue to use it.
If you're looking to connect with contacts across your entire revenue operations (Leads, Prospects, Existing, and Churned Clients), Cliently would be a great way to engage at scale. Sometimes multiple tools can leave blind spots in who's engaging, how they're engaging, and when to engage. This is where Cliently could benefit you the most.
