HubSpot vs. ActiveCampaign

In the realm of customer relationship management, two names often come up in conversations: HubSpot and ActiveCampaign. While both platforms are also celebrated for their email marketing and automation tools, their CRM capabilities are equally impressive. Whether you're a small business or a growing enterprise, understanding the key differences is key to choosing the right CRM solution for your needs.

HubSpot Overview

HubSpot stands out as a comprehensive, all-in-one platform to connect marketing, sales, content management, and customer service. At its core most people know HubSpot for its CRM solution. It is designed to cater to businesses of all sizes and industries, offering scalability and a wide range of features.

Highlights

• Full Marketing Integration: It offers a seamless connection with the rest of HubSpot's suite and hundreds of third party software, ensuring consistent data flow and management.
• Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Provides detailed insights into customer interactions and sales pipelines, facilitating data-driven decision-making and precise forecasting.
• Feature-Rich: HubSpot’s business and enterprise CRM suite is known for its wide range of features that leave almost nothing to be desired.

ActiveCampaign Overview

ActiveCampaign, while renowned for its email marketing and automation capabilities, it also offers a robust CRM system. The CRM is built to complement their powerful automation and email marketing tools, creating a cohesive experience.

Highlights

• Seamless Email Marketing Integration: ActiveCampaign's CRM integrates flawlessly with its marketing suite, providing a unified approach to customer management and engagement.
• Sales Automation: Similar to email automation it can help automate numerous sales processes, enhancing efficiency and reducing manual effort.
• Contact and Lead Scoring: Offers sophisticated scoring systems to prioritize leads and opportunities based on their engagement and potential value.

Buying Guide

When it comes to choosing between HubSpot and ActiveCampaign for your CRM, we can summarize it as follows.

Choose HubSpot if...

• you're primarily looking for a CRM solution
• you require comprehensive analytics and reporting
• you're planning to use other HubSpot services
• you don't mind spending more money while selling high-ticket products from $5,000+ with a high enough margin to leverage advanced features to your advantage

Choose ActiveCampaign if...

• you have complex email and sales automation needs
• you're looking for a more affordable solution

While HubSpot offers a free version of its CRM, the costs can add up quickly as your business grows along with the requirements for advanced features. HubSpot's basic plan seems cheap, but the jump after that is huge. Unfortunately, many of HubSpot's outstanding features are only available in the higher tier plans.

ActiveCampaign does not offer a free version, but is much more cost-effective. Even if upgrades are required for more features, the jumps are significantly more reasonable.

Final Remarks

HubSpot and ActiveCampaign both deliver compelling CRM solutions, each with its own strengths.

HubSpot offers the better CRM overall if you have the money to pay for the higher plans and ideally have an interest in HubSpot's other services. The software is therefore particularly interesting for companies selling B2B services and products in the high-price segment, where the costs are in proportion to the sales margin (which it should be for most companies looking for a CRM).

On the other hand, ActiveCampaign is a strong contender for businesses that prioritize email marketing and automation with a reasonably priced CRM option which can be purchased together as a bundle. ActiveCampaign is therefore perfect for companies focusing on email and sales automation while keeping the monthly bill lower.

Still not sure which software is right for you?

Try them both.

With HubSpot you can sign up for the free version or request a demo and with ActiveCampaign you can try out the full range of features for 14 whole days.