ActiveCampaign vs MailerLite: Which is a better fit?

Mike: My name is Mike. I'm a small business owner. I'm giving ActiveCampaign a three out of five stars today. Before using ActiveCampaign, I had been doing things pretty manually in terms of sending out email blasts and sort of just general marketing stuff. I had tried a couple of different other companies as well actually after using ActiveCampaign. I tried a couple different ones. I used another one called GetResponse. While I liked using ActiveCampaign better than GetResponse, I did run into some issues trying to incorporate ActiveCampaign into our workflow, but I was able to do the basic job of email marketing and trying to keep track of a flow in terms of emailing prospective clients as well as current clients. Originally, I chose ActiveCampaign because it came recommended from a few different people and for good reason. The program can do a whole lot of different things. It certainly works well if you're looking for a really in-depth platform that you can create content to blast out to your contacts and prospective clients. For me, it was a little bit too in depth almost where it was more than what we needed, so I ended up not using it in the long run. But definitely that was kind of the main reason that I started using it and unfortunately just never really got the hang of it. So I wouldn't say that ActiveCampaign is the easiest program to get started with, to be honest. It does require some back knowledge. I'm not a marketing expert. My partner who is more adept with it also had just some issues sort of getting the whole thing going. It's pretty easy to get a basic template going and to get a funnel going and all that stuff. It is fairly simple, but we did run into some issues and unfortunately the help in terms of the customer service wasn't the best, so we never were really fully able to right the ship. So after using it for almost a year plus, we worked out of using ActiveCampaign. So unfortunately, I wouldn't say the easiest program to get going. If you're an expert, I'm sure that it's a lot easier, but I guess I wouldn't say for beginner users, not the easiest. So if you're thinking about using ActiveCampaign, I would definitely just recommend doing some research on the platform itself just to sort of get acquainted with it and to understand all the in-depth features that it can do, which are definitely plentiful. If you're an expert or advanced user in email marketing and content creation, email templates, you're probably going to have a pretty good time with it. The funnel system is very in depth and very good. If you're a beginner or just sort of looking to get started, I would probably shy away from using something like this unfortunately. It is worth your time to check out. It's definitely a good platform overall. It didn't work for me personally, but that doesn't mean that it won't work for others. So yeah, I mean, if you're watching this, you're probably doing a good amount of due diligence. It's worth spending a little bit of time checking it out. It may fit like a glove for certain businesses and certain types of marketing techniques, but for me, it didn't end up working out unfortunately.

Erin P.: Hi, my name is Erin. And I have a couple of companies, actually, but they're both small companies. And one is just, I'm a solo entrepreneur in the one, and the other is with a business partner. This is for MailerLite, and I would give it about a 3. I decided to move forward with MailerLite because previously, for another side of my business, we've been using Shopify, and that has a larger price tag to it. So we decided to use MailerLite because we thought that it had a great price. And it was a new business venture and we wanted to kind of try it out. We thought it would be really easy. And that was why we ended up trying MailerLite. We decided on MailerLite because the price, they had a great sale that was going on. They also had a lot of all-inclusive items that some other programs didn't have. So they had the web builder, they had the ability to be handling mailing lists, they had the ability to be doing landing pages. So it seemed like a really good package and a good deal. And for the price, it seemed like a great way to be starting this new venture that we had. In the beginning, it kind of started off to a bit of a rocky start, unfortunately. We had a bit of trouble just even getting some basic questions answered. Until you level up to one of their higher packages, they actually don't offer any kind of real customer service, which we didn't realize in the beginning. And when we hit a couple of roadblocks, we had to go through a really lengthy process to even just try to get some customer service back. So that wasn't a great way to start. So, once we got started up and running, the main focus initially was to actually get a website up. And the website was where we actually were running into all the problems. The other side was for the mailing list, and that actually went really well. So we had no problems creating mailing lists, being able to send everything out, to be sending auto-mailings. That all was great with MailerLite and actually stays. We still use them for that. And I do believe that maybe that they actually started as that was what their company started doing. So I think that the other portion, which is why we also had joined, was because of the website. I think that that maybe was an add-on later, and I don't think that that is their core functionality, and that is where we were having the issues. Unfortunately, on creating the website, it became very glitchy. It was really difficult to actually get in and build things. It wouldn't stay. So that side is something I just, unfortunately, would not recommend. I would steer clear and I would find a different way to go. But the mailing part of it, the actual email functionality, they've been fabulous. So I would recommend it on that side. So, that's it.