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In this article, I’ll dive into two of the best email marketing automation platforms – Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign, to help you decide which you should use!
Before I begin, it’s important to note that Sendinblue has recently rebranded as Brevo.
I’m guessing you already know how important email marketing is for your small business, which is why you’re here.
But choosing the right tool for your business can be a daunting task!
Luckily, Sendinblue and ActiveCampaign are two frontrunners when it comes to all-in-one marketing automation tools.
So, which do you pick? That’s what I’m here to find out!
Read more: Top 5 Email Marketing Software For Small Business.
Quick Summary
- Sendinblue is the better choice for teams after a straightforward and affordable email marketing automation solution.
- ActiveCampaign is the top scalable sales and email marketing automation platform but is more expensive than Sendinblue.
- Both tools offer email marketing and automation tools and sales CRM functionality. However, ActiveCampaign features are more advanced.
- ActiveCampaign is my favorite sales CRM and email marketing hybrid platform for small businesses. To learn more, check out my full ActiveCampaign video guide.
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign 2024
Streamlining your marketing efforts and establishing deeper connections with your audience isn’t as complex as you may think!
With a marketing automation platform such as Sendinblue and ActiveCampaign by your side, you can easily automate your marketing processes.
So, join me as I uncover the depths of ActiveCampaign vs Sendinblue, unraveling what sets them apart and which platform aligns best with your goals!
Are you ready to completely transform your marketing strategies
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign – let’s go!
Read more: What Is ActiveCampaign? Email Marketing Platform Or CRM?
What Are They? Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign
It’s important to mention that Sendinblue has recently rebranded as Brevo.
Sendinblue and Brevo are the same product, but since the name Sendinblue is still commonly used, I’ll be referring to it as this throughout this article.
Sendinblue is a sought-after marketing automation platform that caters to businesses across all scales and technical expertise.
Boasting a comprehensive suite of features, Sendinblue seamlessly integrates email marketing, SMS marketing, chat tools, marketing automation, and CRM functionalities.
Renowned for its user-friendly interface, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness, Sendinblue attracts small to mid-sized businesses looking for an all-in-one marketing experience.
In contrast, ActiveCampaign is a versatile and popular online solution with email marketing, automation, and CRM functionality.
Known for its automation workflows, dynamic CRM integration, and omnichannel marketing capabilities, ActiveCampaign is perfect for teams looking for a one-stop marketing solution.
With tailored customer experiences and extensive segmentation choices, you can nurture your leads effectively and streamline your business processes effortlessly.
And the best part? It’s all on one easy-to-use interface!
What Are The Differences Between Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign?
Sendinblue and ActiveCampaign offer similar features, but there are a few differences you should know about!
Sendinblue shines with its intuitive interface, cost-effectiveness, and commendable email deliverability, making it a preferred choice for small businesses.
And although Sendinblue also provides CRM sales functionality, ActiveCampaign is much more robust.
Their advanced email personalization paired with CRM and multi-channel marketing makes ActiveCampaign a more comprehensive marketing automation platform.
Essentially, Sendinblue excels in simplicity and affordability, while ActiveCampaign’s versatility and complexity are why so many love and use the platform.
Want to know more? Let’s dive in deeper!
Read more: GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign.
Ease Of Use
Sendinblue boasts an exceptionally intuitive user interface, providing a hassle-free experience for all users.
And its streamlined design and clear instructions mean that even those with limited technical expertise can swiftly understand and leverage its capabilities!
Setting up is seamless, and there’s even an option to take the short tour offered by Sendinblue if needed.
The simple drag-and-drop editor and user-friendly tools make crafting an email campaign effortless.
I also like that contacts, deals, campaigns, conversations, and meetings are nicely organized on your left-sidebar menu.
In contrast, while ActiveCampaign remains a powerful platform, its wide range of features and multi-layered complexity may overwhelm newcomers.
It’s worth mentioning that although the learning curve is certainly steeper than Sendinblue, the email builder and drag-and-drop editor is clean, user-friendly, and modern.
But for this round, I believe Sendinblue easily surpasses ActiveCampaign, especially for beginners!
Winner = Sendinblue.
Read more: ActiveCampaign vs Constant Contact.
Pricing
Sendinblue (Brevo):
Sendinblue’s (Brevo) pricing plans consist of four options – Marketing, Conversations, Sales, and Transactional Emails.
Each plan type has a free option, but if you want advanced functionality, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
If you’re just after email marketing, I recommend choosing one of the Marketing plans:
- Free: $0
- Starter: From $25 per month.
- Business: From $65 per month.
- Plus: Custom price.
All plans come with unlimited contacts and various email send limits per month.
The marketing plans don’t have any CRM features, so you’ll have to buy a CRM paid plan ($15 per user per month) for CRM functionality (or use the free sales platform plan).
The same goes for teams wanting advanced chatbot conversation capabilities.
ActiveCampaign:
ActiveCampaign has a similar plan structure, with separate options for different needs.
Like Sendinblue, I suggest opting for one of the Marketing plans for email automation marketing only.
- Lite: $29 per month (1000 contacts).
- Plus: $49 per month (1000 contacts).
- Professional: $149 per month (1000 contacts).
- Enterprise: Custom price.
The marketing plan also doesn’t include any CRM features, so you’ll need to buy a sales plan to access CRM sales engagement tools.
Something I do love about ActiveCampaign is the bundle plans, which combine CRM and email marketing capabilities (prices starting from $93 per month).
Winner = Sendinblue.
Email Templates
Sendinblue offers 40+ responsive and professional templates to help you get up and running with your campaigns quickly!
All templates are free and don’t require any HTML experience. That’s right, it’s all done from the front end – all you need to do is drag and drop elements then edit the text directly!
And if you do want to dabble in a bit of code, simply use the HTML code editor to personalize your campaigns further.
Additionally, Sendinblue’s handy AI subject line assistant is available on regular and A/B tested emails to help bring your emails to life!
ActiveCampain’s template library is significantly larger, with over 150 completely customizable modern templates.
You can customize anything from your content blocks, images, fonts, and colors to align your chosen template to your brand.
And like Sendinblue, you can:
- Build your own emails.
- Add custom HTML code.
- Use the AI content generator tool to enhance your campaigns.
If you want more flexibility over how your designs look but don’t want to learn any code, ActiveCampaign’s easy-to-use editor and personalized tag capabilities are the way to go.
Winner = ActiveCampaign.
Read more: ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot.
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign Tools
Both Sendinblue and ActiveCampaign offer pretty similar services. Both focus on email marketing and sales automation. So what else do they offer? And who offers the most?
Sendinblue’s key tools include:
- Email and SMS marketing.
- A/B testing.
- Whatsapp campaigns.
- Live chat and chatbot services.
- Landing pages and forms.
- Facebook Ads.
- Deal and pipeline management (CRM).
- Automation workflows.
- Segmentation capabilities.
- Integrations.
- Meeting scheduling.
ActiveCampaign shares many of the same tools:
- Email and SMS marketing.
- Landing pages and forms.
- A/B testing.
- AI Predictive sending.
- eCommerce integrations.
- Abandoned cart.
- Automation templates.
- Lead scoring and segmentation.
- Campaign and automation reports.
- Built-in CRM.
- Predictive analysis.
Overall, ActiveCampaign’s tools are more advanced than Sendinblue’s. But as you can see, both bring a lot to the table!
It all comes down to what you want from your chosen platform.
Winner = ActiveCampaign.
Read more: ActiveCampaign vs Drip.
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign Key Features
Okay, so what else does each have to offer? Let’s take a closer look at each now to find out who comes out on top!
Segmentation
Don’t get me wrong, Sendinblue offers list segmentation features, but they’re less advanced than ActiveCampaign’s.
Instead, Sendinblue focuses on driving conversions through multi-channel campaigns (Whatsapp, Facebook, email, text) and dynamic landing pages and forms.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign is well-known for its advanced segmentation capabilities, and it’s no wonder why!
With ActiveCampaign, you can create highly targeted email campaigns based on specific criteria like behavior, demographics, and interests
But it doesn’t stop there! ActiveCampaign goes beyond basic segmentation, allowing for more precise targeting and personalization.
Contacts can be segmented into groups based on criteria such as:
- Location.
- Personal interest.
- Website visits.
- Deal stage, and more.
And the special segmentation builder allows you to choose from a whopping 20 conditions per segment!
Winner = ActiveCampaign.
Read more: ActiveCampaign vs tinyEmail.
Email Automation
Sendinblue provides automation workflows with automation triggers and actions.
While it offers basic automation features, it doesn’t have the same complexity and customization options as ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign also excels in automation workflows, empowering you to create intricate automated sequences with conditional branching and personalized actions.
The great thing is that you can create specific email automations from scratch or simply pick from one of ActiveCampaign’s 850 templates (known as Automation recipes).
Then, create multiple triggers, conditions, and actions for various email automations like welcome series, lead nurturing sequences, abandoned cart recovery, and more.
This advanced functionality allows for sophisticated drip campaigns that adapt to each customer.
ActiveCampaign’s automation offers limitless possibilities!
Winner = ActiveCampaign.
Read more: ClickFunnels vs ActiveCampaign.
CRM
If you’re looking to manage your leads, deals, and customers, you’re in luck! Both tools offer robust and intuitive CRM solutions.
And the best part is that these are found on the same platform as your email marketing!
Sendinblue offers a lightweight CRM experience that’s easy for businesses of all levels to understand.
Its intuitive interface offers solid contact management capabilities, including:
- Sales pipeline.
- Automation.
- Shared inbox.
- Meeting scheduler.
- Integrated calling features.
Sendinblue is more limited in sales automation, whereas ActiveCampaign’s CRM system is more advanced, with features to help you manage your contacts, tasks, and deals.
Their Conversations feature lets you keep your email, social media, and SMS conversations in one inbox and offers sales automation tools such as:
- Sales pipelines.
- Deal record creation.
- Deal owner assignment.
- Lead scoring.
- CRM automation.
Although more basic than a fully-fledged CRM software like HubSpot or Zoho CRM, ActiveCampaign’s CRM is a great choice for teams looking for an all-in-one sales and marketing solution.
Winner = ActiveCampaign.
Read more: 7 Best CRM Software For Small Business.
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign Customer Support
All Sendinblue (Brevo) plans offer email support and access to their free knowledge base, community forum, and blog.
Business paid plans additionally get phone and chat support.
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign offers email and live chat support on all plans and a handy knowledge base, YouTube channel, and Facebook group.
And for ‘Plus’ plan members, one-on-one training sessions from a dedicated account strategist is just a click away.
Winner = ActiveCampaign.
Read more: ActiveCampaign vs Klaviyo.
Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign Who Are They Best For?
After all that, you’re probably wondering – which is best for me?
For businesses seeking a streamlined, budget-friendly email marketing solution with ease of use at the forefront, Sendinblue is the perfect fit.
Ideal for small to medium-sized businesses and startups, Sendinblue offers a user-friendly interface (and is great value for money).
Basically, it caters to those primarily after a fundamental marketing and sales automation solution.
And the best part is that you can access their email marketing and CRM entirely for free!
On the other hand, ActiveCampaign is the best premium choice for businesses looking to take their marketing efforts to the next level.
With robust marketing automation, advanced CRM capabilities, and sophisticated segmentation tools, ActiveCampaign is the go-to solution for mid-sized to large enterprises.
So, whether you’re a startup after simplicity or an established brand aiming for advanced marketing features, the decision between Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign is up to you!
Stew’s Final Thoughts
And that is it for this Sendinblue vs ActiveCampaign comparison article.
I hope you’ve gained value and can now confidently choose the best marketing automation tool for you.
As you can see, both are impressive tools! I advise carefully considering your budget and what you’re after regarding features.
So, which will you be going for? Sendinblue (Brevo) vs ActiveCampaign?
