CRM with advanced marketing automation for customer lifecycle management
ActiveCampaign combines a full-featured CRM with the most advanced email marketing automation in its price class. Its visual automation builder, lead scoring, pipeline management, and 900+ integrations create a unified platform for teams that want to manage the entire customer journey — from first marketing touchpoint through sales close and post-sale retention.
ActiveCampaign is a strong fit if its core strengths match your workflow, budget, and support needs. Use the quick signals below before opening the full review.
ActiveCampaign occupies a specific and defensible position in the CRM market: it is not the best pure sales CRM, and it is not the best standalone email marketing platform — but it is the best platform for teams that need both deeply integrated in a single tool without paying HubSpot prices.
ActiveCampaign's visual automation builder is its signature feature and its most powerful differentiator. Automations are created as visual flowcharts: triggers start the automation (contact submits a form, deal changes stage, link is clicked), then a series of actions, conditions, and waits execute in sequence. Conditions branch the workflow based on any contact attribute or behaviour — if the contact has not opened the last 3 emails, take one path; if they have, take another.
The sophistication of these automations is substantially beyond what most competing tools at comparable price points offer. A typical ActiveCampaign automation for a SaaS trial-to-paid flow might: send a welcome email series, wait to see if the user activates a key feature (tracked via site event), notify the assigned sales rep when they do, add the contact to the sales pipeline, and send a targeted offer if day 12 of the trial passes without conversion — all without a single manual intervention.
For teams that have been building this logic manually through tagged email sends and CRM reminders, the automation depth represents a fundamental workflow upgrade.
ActiveCampaign's core architectural advantage over two-tool setups (a separate CRM plus separate email marketing) is a unified contact database. Every email sent, every link clicked, every form submitted, every deal stage change, and every CRM note is recorded on the same contact record. Marketing can segment based on sales pipeline stage; sales can see every marketing touchpoint before reaching out.
This bidirectional visibility eliminates the common failure mode of sales reps cold-calling prospects who just received three automated marketing emails, or marketing sending a trial-extension offer to a contact who converted to paid three days ago.
ActiveCampaign's lead scoring model combines marketing engagement signals (email opens, link clicks, page visits) with CRM activity signals (deal stage, last contacted date, number of touches) into a composite score. Threshold rules trigger automations when a score reaches a target: automatically create a task for the assigned rep, move the deal to the next stage, or enrol the contact in a hot-lead sequence.
For B2B teams with long lead cycles and varied engagement patterns, this scoring model prioritises rep attention toward leads with genuine purchase intent rather than requiring manual pipeline triage.
ActiveCampaign pricing scales with contact list size, not user count — which is advantageous for large sales teams and disadvantageous for large contact databases. A company with 5 reps and 50,000 contacts pays significantly more than one with 5 reps and 5,000 contacts. For high-volume email senders or companies with large subscriber bases, the cost can become substantial faster than per-user CRM pricing.
As a CRM specifically, ActiveCampaign's pipeline management is functional but less feature-rich than dedicated tools. Territory management, custom objects, advanced approval workflows, and deep reporting available in Salesforce or Zoho CRM are not present. For complex enterprise sales operations, these gaps matter. For SMB and mid-market teams whose CRM needs centre on pipeline visibility and follow-up management, they do not.
ActiveCampaign is the right platform for teams where the boundary between marketing and sales is fluid, and where automation of the handoff between them is a core operational requirement. It is the strongest single-platform solution for the marketing-plus-sales-CRM use case at non-enterprise pricing.
Score: 8.2/10 — Best marketing automation and CRM integration in the category; contact-volume pricing and sales CRM depth are considerations.
$15/mo
$180/mo billed annually
$49/mo
$588/mo billed annually
$79/mo
$948/mo billed annually
ActiveCampaign is best for B2C and B2B2C companies that need advanced behavioural email automation and a CRM in one platform without integrating separate tools, E-commerce businesses managing post-purchase flows, abandoned cart sequences, and customer retention campaigns alongside CRM, SaaS companies managing trial-to-paid conversion workflows that bridge marketing automation and sales pipeline in a unified system.
No. ActiveCampaign does not currently list a permanent free plan in ToolRankr data.
Paid plans start at $15/mo.
ActiveCampaign is reviewed using ToolRankr's scoring model for ease of use, value, features, support, and overall quality. Affiliate links may earn a commission, but sponsored labels do not change editorial scoring.
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