The winner – Omnisend
Life-changing superhero
In this comparison, Omnisend wins six out of eleven rounds. Three rounds end in a tie, and there are two aspects where ActiveCampaign outperforms Omnisend. Carry on reading and learn how these two platforms compare with each other.
What Omnisend features are better than ActiveCampaign?
- More intuitive platform and better user experience
- More templates for signup forms, popups and automations
- Very intuitive email builder
- More affordable
- The platform is user-friendly, but it has many advanced features that requires specific understanding
- Marketing automation is very powerful but you need more time to get it launched
- Although comprehensive platform, but more expensive and more complicated
Are you searching for the perfect tool to elevate your email marketing to the next level? You are absolutely right in considering ActiveCampaign and Omnisend. These platforms are among the best tools available for your campaigns.
But which of these tools is ideal for you?
This ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend guide compares the features, functionalities, and pricing of these email marketing software to help you choose the best tool for your business.
ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend: Quick overview
ActiveCampaign is a multi-purpose tool that helps you build effective marketing campaigns from start to finish.
The tool’s advanced features are powerful but have a quite steep learning curve, making it difficult for marketers without prior experience.
Omnisend is a more beginner-friendly platform that combines email, SMS, and push notifications, provides good automation and customer segmentation functionality.
However, Omnisend doesn’t have sales pipelines and transactional email functionality.
Before we proceed further with this ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend review guide, let’s first compare their key functionalities head to head.
ActiveCampaign vs Omnisend comparison: Feature by feature
We’ll now go over the features of these email marketing tools in greater detail to help you decide which one between ActiveCampaign or Omnisend is perfect for your marketing campaigns.
Ease of getting started
As a busy marketer, you want an email marketing tool that’s easy to use so you don’t waste a lot of time learning how to use it effectively.
So, which tool is easier to use, ActiveCampaign or Omnisend?
ActiveCampaign has a seamless signup process when you install the app from the Shopify store. Once you do it, your 14-day free trial begins and you can set up your priorities in the initial window.
However, things get a little complicated when you sign up via their homepage since you’ll have to answer some questions about your business and provide your credit card information.
With Omnisend, the signup process is smooth and easy. You’re also not required to give your credit card details on signup. Just like with Active Campaign, you have to connect your ecommerce store to employ the tool at full capacity.
Tie. Both tools have simplified the signup processes.
Building an email campaign
Next on our comparison is to assess the email-building functionalities of these tools.
Considering how pressed for time modern marketers are, the best tool for you is the one that makes it easy for you to build and customize your campaigns.
So, which of these tools has the edge in this crucial category?
Let’s find out below.
The email builder is intuitive and offers various product listing and formatting options. One particularly useful function is the checkbox that allows images to be fitted to the same height, ensuring alignment and immediately fixing the email design. The Product picker is highly beneficial for ecommerce clients as it enables the direct extraction of product images and descriptions from the store. Another time-saving feature is the brand asset feature, where you can upload your logo and brand colors, and Omnisend automatically adjusts all email templates and forms accordingly. In the ‘Quick add’ section, you can conveniently find all your most frequently used content blocks.Intuitive email builder with different formatting options.
Although we’ve come across more intuitive email builders, some functional solutions are implemented very well. For instance, the structure of the email template allows you to easily drag-and-drop one-, two-, three-, or four-element lines and add content blocks of your choice. The Saved Modules section is a time-saver for marketers. Additionally, it’s great that there is a product catalog function to directly add products from the store to emails. However, Mailchimp and Omnisend offer better usability of this feature.
250+ modern-looking email templates that you can customize with your brand assets.
ActiveCampaign offers 250+ email templates.
Personalization in the subject lines, pre-headers, and email content. Dynamic Product recommendations.Yes – available for all users.
Personalization in the subject lines, and email content.
ActiveCampaign has a clean and clear wizard that simplifies campaign building. You can easily choose your lists and create segments directly in the wizard and set your brand style using the global settings in the email builder.
The platform comes with multiple email templates you can easily customize with the drag-and-drop email builder by adding content blocks to improve the structure of your emails.
It also has a product catalog function that allows you to add products from your ecommerce store directly to your email, but Omnisend offers better usability for this feature.
When it comes to personalization, ActiveCampaign has decent options. The email builder allows you to add customer data to subject lines and email content.
Omnisend also has a clean and clear email builder just like ActiveCampaign, but goes one step further to provide an inbox preview that lets you see how your emails are shaping up.
The email builder is intuitive and provides multiple different product listing and formatting options. Omnisend’s standout features, however, are:
- The Product picker that allows ecommerce clients to pull product images and descriptions directly from the store;
- Product recommender that allows personalize content;
- Unique discount codes that are generated directly on the Shopify platform.
The tool also supports a wide range of campaigns, supplying marketers with professionally-designed templates to design:
- Regular email campaigns
- Email A/B test campaigns
- Various kinds of automated campaigns (anniversary, welcome, abandoned cart, etc)
Omnisend wins this round with its intuitive wizard and special email-building features.
Marketing automation
Which tool between ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend lets users create automated workflows with ease?
Here’s what we found out.
Very easy and intuitive. Plenty of options related to triggers, filters and conditions, automations can include SMS and push notifications. A/b testing is also possible.Yes, multiple ready-to-use workflows for both email and SMS
Automation section looks very powerful. You can integrate various marketing channels, conditions, data from CRM and Salesforce, etc. A very wide functionality
Omnisend takes automation very seriously and provides plenty of options for you to create automated workflows that are triggered by different conditions.
It provides a total of 25 pre-built automation workflows that are ready to go because the structure and copy are already pre-designed. Some workflows only contain email while others include SMS and push notifications for the ultimate omnichannel marketing experience.
You can customize the workflows if needed and conduct A/B tests to determine the best variation for your campaigns.
ActiveCampaign is also a worthy competitor for the marketing automation title with its automation workflows allowing you to integrate other channels and incorporate conditions and data from your CRM.
Its workflow logics can be found in the “recipes” segment but they only provide the structure without the email copy. This means you have to make time to create your email copy from scratch should you choose ActiveCampaign as your email marketing tool.
There are many workflows for you to choose from on this platform. Just like Omnisend, you can also include SMS and web push to improve the reach of your email campaigns.
The only thing that’s missing is simplicity. With this tool, nothing works out of the box. Although ActiveCampaign provides tips and guidelines to set up your automated workflows, there’s still a steep learning curve for you to use this tool to its full capacity.
Omnisend wins this round because it provides workflows that you can launch in a minute.
Signup forms and landing pages
List building is important for any marketer who wants to succeed with email marketing. For this, you need signup forms and landing pages to collect customer details.
So, which tool between ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend excels in this crucial aspect?
ActiveCampaign gives you the option to choose from inline, floating box, popup, and floating bar forms to collect user email addresses. There are no design- or copy-ready templates to help you design your forms quickly.
On Active campaign, you get a basic layout and you can edit it according to your brand style. After creating and publishing the forms, ActiveCampaign provides detailed analytics to track the performance of your forms. You will be able to see the total number of signups.
Omnisend fares much better with its signup forms. It provides users with more than 80 pre-designed form templates that can be launched out of the box. The forms have a modern design and allow you to add your brand colors to customize your forms.
It also provides analytics for your signup forms, allowing you to see the number of views, actual signups, signup rate, and many other performance metrics.
What’s more, Omnisend also provides customizable landing page templates you can use to build landing pages for your email campaigns.
The landing page editor is smooth and intuitive, allowing you to drag and drop content elements onto the design for a seamless design process.
ActiveCampaign also has landing page templates but only for Plus plans users and above. The tool allows you to track your page views, page conversions, and the conversion rate when you publish a landing page.
Omnisend wins this round because of its ready-to-use signup form templates and the fact that it provides landing pages to all its users.
Segmentation
Audience segmentation is a desirable email marketing feature that allows you to deliver customized and highly-relevant content to your subscribers. This section examines the segmentation capabilities of these email marketing software.
Omnisend is big on segmentation, providing users with 23 pre-built audience segments they can use straight out of the box. This saves you a lot of time and allows you to segment your audience quickly so you can start engaging them with relevant content.
In total, there are six segmentation options you can combine within a segment with any number of filters. They are:
- Channels
- Shopping behavior
- Email campaign activity
- SMS campaign activity
- Contact properties
- Web browsing activity
ActiveCampaign also has robust segmentation options. However, it doesn’t provide pre-built segments like Omnisend to simplify your design process.
The tool allows you to segment your users based on different factors such as:
- Contact details
- Customer email actions
- Shopping behavior
- Site and event data
Both tools provide very powerful segmentation. But Omnisend wins this round because of its pre-built segments.
Analytics
Campaign optimization is only possible when you can access detailed analytics about your past and current campaigns. As such, you want a tool that delivers comprehensive reports to help you track your campaign performance.
ActiveCampaign has broad reporting, providing users with site tracking, campaign, and automation engagement reports. You also get link and event tracking.
However, marketing revenue and store performance reports are only available on the Plus and higher pricing plans only. Advanced reports like attribution or customer reports are available on the Professional plan and up.
Omnisend’s reporting capabilities allow you to see your click map report, opens, clicks, sales, and order numbers from each campaign. You can also access your segment performance reports and customer breakdown reports to understand your subscribers and deliver more useful content to them.
What’s missing?
In Omnisend’s campaign report, you can’t see the geo-location report. In addition, report data is only available for the last 18 months.
ActiveCampaign is the winner here.
Customer support
Both tools provide 24/7 chat and email support for all customers, including free trial users.
Both tools don’t offer phone support, meaning you’ll have to rely on chat and email to get the support you need.
Moreover, both platforms provide a wide range of resources, including academies, blogs, webinars, etc.
It’s a tie because Omnisend and ActiveCampaign provide 24/7 chat and email support and none provide phone support.
Integrations
Both ActiveCampaign and Omnisend integrate with popular business applications to help you run your campaigns easily.
Omnisend integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, and OpenCart. The platform is a hit with ecommerce marketers who have rated it 4.9/5 and 4.8/5 on WooCommerce and Shopify respectively.
Besides that, it also comes with 130+ other integrations, including:
- Middleware apps such as Zapier
- Advertising platforms like Facebook Lead Ads
- Shipping and logistics apps
- Loyalty and reward apps
ActiveCampaign also provides hundreds of native integrations, including popular platforms like PayPal, Shopify, BigCommerce, Google Analytics, WordPress, etc.
It has a rating of 4.4/5 and 4.1/5 on Shopify and WooCommerce respectively, proving its usefulness to ecommerce marketers.
You won’t have any difficulties in finding the specific integrations you need, as they also seamlessly connect with Zapier.
ActiveCampaign has more integrations.
Compatibility with other marketing channels
Lastly, let’s see how these tools, ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend fare when it comes to their compatibility with other marketing channels.
Omnisend is a rockstar. On this platform, you can combine email, international SMS, and push notifications into one communication flow.
Additionally, you can also retarget cart abandoners with Facebook and Google Ads.
ActiveCampaign also holds its own when it comes to channel compatibility. SMS marketing is possible with an add-on and extra pay. You can also retarget users with Facebook custom audiences and send site messages through web push notifications.
Omnisend wins this round because it’s easy to start using other channels. Active Campaign provides a great compatibility with other channels, but they require extra add-ons, and extra cost.
Price Comparison
Before we choose the winner of our Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign review, let’s first go over their pricing.
You’re probably interested in the free plans of these tools but you can only get that with Omnisend. ActiveCampaign doesn’t have a free plan but gives users a limited access 14-day free trial.
This is what you can get for free on Omnisend.
Free plan comparison
- Reach out up to 250 contacts/month
- Send up to 500 emails/month
- Send up to 500 web push notifications
- Send up to 60 free SMS
- All features on Omnisend without any limitations, including Product Picker, Wheel of fortune, unlimited segmentation, pre-built marketing automation, Campaign Booster, click maps, landing pages, etc.
- Non-existent. Paid plans only
Omnisend’s free plan provides more features than any other email marketing software out there. Small businesses with limited budgets can find this plan very useful.
Let’s now review the paid plans of Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign.
As you can see, Omnisend is cheaper than ActiveCampaign for the same number of subscribers yet packs more useful features. In fact, with Omnisend on all plans you get all features except from Advanced reporting which is available on Pro only.
Meanwhile ActiveCampaign offers limited features, and the Starter and Plus plans don’t offer ecommerce features and reporting. If you want landing pages, ecommerce automation, you have to pay for Pro plan.
Summary: Which one wins?
Omnisend or ActiveCampaign, which one’s right for your business? That will ultimately depend on your needs.
4.8
4.1
– All pro features (automation workflows and unlimited segmentation, gamification, landing pages, etc.)
– Reach up to 250 contacts (unlimited contact list size)
– 500 emails/mo
– Up to 60 SMS
– Up to 500 web push
– Paid plans only
– Easy to use
– Robust automation
– Advanced analytics
– Beautiful signups forms
– Modern-looking newsletters
– Robust marketing automation features
– Good email templates
– Extended tracking and reporting capabilities
– Broad functionality, including CRM
– Transactional emails
– Doesn’t provide geographical reports
– Doesn’t provide CRM features
– Doesn’t have transactional emails
– More expensive than other similar tools
– Might be overwhelming for non-tech-savvy people, or marketing beginners
– Ecommerce reports available on the higher tier plans only
– Signup forms don’t have templates
– Ecommerce stores of all sizes
– Both beginners and advanced users
– Well-established ecommerce businesses
– B2B companies
– Solopreneurs
– Bloggers
– Governmental and non-governmental organizations
– Ecommerce beginners
– Non-profit organizations
– Solopreneurs
While ActiveCampaign offers decent features for experienced marketers and well-established businesses, Omnisend is well-suited for all ecommerce sites. This platform is user-friendly and incorporates numerous time-saving features. However, it may not provide advanced sales and customer management features utilized by larger companies.
In terms of pricing, Omnisend emerges as the winner in the ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend comparison, demonstrating that you don’t have to spend a significant amount of money to create profitable email campaigns.
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Our team strives to be accurate and unbiased in reviewing email tools. However, we recognize that mistakes can happen, and it’s essential for us to stay up to date. If you come across any errors or things that need to be reviewed again, please let us know.
