MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign

Often, trends fade away pretty quickly. They’re here one day, only to be gone the next, leaving you wondering why you spent so much money and time on such silly activities, hairstyles, or clothes.

The same is true for many digital marketing trends — ever-evolving changes in software and tech alter how we spend our money and run our businesses. But while many of these trends come and go, one has been a mainstay of many successful digital marketing campaigns: email marketing.

Email marketing helps you stay connected, share product information, and build trusting relationships with your customers — past, present, and future. It generates and converts leads, drives traffic to your website, and, ultimately, makes you more money.

Fortunately, there are many email marketing solutions on the market to choose from, including MailerLite and ActiveCampaign. And while these two platforms are fairly similar, they do have some differences to consider.

Here’s a look at MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign.

Overview of MailerLite

Though MailerLite initially started out as a web design agency, it officially hit the market in 2010 to help businesses grow by using simple yet powerful email marketing. And with more than 1 million global customers — including businesses, startups, and freelancers — MailerLite seems to be on the right track.

To “keep it lite” — or provide less complicated solutions to challenging marketing tasks — MailerLite provides customers with

• A clean design
• Advanced yet easy-to-use functionality
• 24-7 live chat support
• Community groups for extra support and advice

With MailerLite, in addition to building effective and creative email newsletters and landing pages, you can also track and improve results to grow your subscriber base from one simple, consolidated platform.

Overview of ActiveCampaign

Trusted by more than 150,000 businesses, ActiveCampaign wants to help you grow your audience, client relationships, and organization. It enables you to reach and engage your core customers via channels like Facebook, website messaging, and SMS texting.

With ActiveCampaign, you “don’t just email.” You can also

• Segment your contacts
• Create simple, streamlined workflows
• Manage your pipelines with built-in customer relationship management (CRM) capability
• Access one-on-one training and support

And though ActiveCampaign’s overall platform and dashboard is visually more complicated compared to MailerLite’s, the software is just as practical and usable in helping you scale up as your business grows.

MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign: Key features

Automation

MailerLite offers powerful, premium automation to help you create relevant, personalized content for free. We’re talking autoresponders and RSS push email features for up to 1,000 subscribers on your mailing list (most other email marketing platforms, including ActiveCampaign, charge a fee for this).

Interface

What’s more, MailerLite also includes features like a landing page builder, email campaign analysis, list management tools, A/B split testing, and inline and popup signup forms. It’s easy to use and offers great customer support.

However, while MailerLite’s editor feature (drag and drop, rich text, and HTML) is fairly intuitive, it doesn’t allow you to edit directly in the email template. Instead, you have to make all modifications (like changing copy or color) using the sidebar, making it far less advanced than other solutions on the market. Reviewers say its interface is clunky and its reporting could use some improvement.

Customization

ActiveCampaign is more than just an email marketing solution. It offers a robust, all-in-one CRM, omnichannel platform as well, complete with a complex visual automation builder that includes your choice of over 125 email templates. ActiveCampaign loads quickly, is highly customizable, and comes equipped with a litany of third-party integrations. Plus, thanks to its advanced segmentation system, you can combine lists, tags, and custom fields to create hyper-targeted emails to really wow your prospects.

But, ActiveCampaign does have a steeper learning curve than MailerLite and is significantly more expensive. It also doesn’t offer a free plan.

MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign: Pricing

In addition to offering a 14-day free trial for their premium features, MailerLite has a free plan that includes 12,000 emails per month for up to 1,000 subscribers. After that, the cost goes up based on the number of subscribers. While that may not work for larger companies with longer customer lists, it’s a great starting point for small businesses, startups, and those looking to give MailerLite a try.

ActiveCampaign is much more robust and complex than MailerLite, and it offers a limited free trial. The pricing for 1,000 contacts, paid on a monthly basis, breaks down like this:

• $39 per month for Lite, its basic plan
• $70 per month for Plus
• $187 per month for Professional
• $323 per month for Professional

Overall, MailerLite and ActiveCampaign share many similar features — like personalized email marketing, advanced reporting capabilities, and site tracking — but differ greatly in learning curve and price.

But before deciding between MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign, consider how to make the most of either one using the popular email integration solution Jotform.

Overview of Jotform

Online form builder Jotform’s email marketing integrations (which include both MailerLite and ActiveCampaign) make it easy to collect and share the data necessary to create a compelling marketing campaign.

From names and email addresses to interests and payment information, Jotform helps you send vital information to your email marketing software seamlessly and automatically. Plus, it’s a user-friendly, fully customizable, and completely code-free solution, making it a stellar data-collection tool.

It’s been more than 50 years since someone sent the first email, and the number of email users has grown exponentially over the decades, resulting in impressive worldwide statistics like these:

• There are 4.14 billion email users around the world
• 319.6 billion emails are sent and received every day
• The global email marketing market was valued at $8.49 billion in 2021

So, if you really want to capitalize on these figures, it’s smart to implement an email marketing solution as part of your marketing strategy. And as you consider whether MailerLite vs ActiveCampaign is best for your specific business, just know that both — with Jotform — are more than capable of taking your marketing to the next level.

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash