ActiveCampaign vs Pipedrive

by Gralio Feb 01, 2025

ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive cater to different needs. ActiveCampaign is a better choice for businesses focused on email marketing and marketing automation, while Pipedrive is ideal for sales teams prioritizing pipeline management and deal tracking.

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This comparison was created by analysing 9217 reviews and 50 websites, saving 2 days, 3 hours, 37 minutes of reading.

Logo of ActiveCampaign
Logo of Pipedrive

About

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It helps you create personalized customer journeys across various channels like email, SMS, and ads. You can automate repetitive tasks, track customer behavior, and improve your marketing campaigns with its CRM and sales automation features. ActiveCampaign integrates with over 900 popular business tools and offers a wide range of pre-built templates and automation recipes to streamline your marketing efforts.
Pipedrive is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool designed to make sales teams more efficient. It helps businesses of all sizes track leads, manage deals, and analyze sales data. Pipedrive stands out for its ease of use and intuitive interface, making it simple for teams to get started quickly. It offers features like pipeline management, sales automation, and reporting to streamline the sales process and improve performance. The software aims to help close more deals and make more informed decisions with real-time insights and AI-powered recommendations.

Summary

Main difference
ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform with built-in CRM functionality, ideal for businesses prioritizing email marketing, marketing automation, and lead nurturing. Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM designed for managing sales pipelines, tracking deals, and improving sales team efficiency.

Relative strengths of ActiveCampaign (compared to Pipedrive)

  • Stronger marketing automation capabilities: ActiveCampaign offers advanced automation features, including email sequences, workflows, and personalized customer journeys.

  • Wider range of integrations: ActiveCampaign integrates with over 900 apps, providing more flexibility for connecting with various business tools.

  • Built-in email marketing: ActiveCampaign offers a robust email marketing platform, allowing users to create, send, and track email campaigns directly within the platform.

Relative weaknesses of ActiveCampaign (compared to Pipedrive)

  • Less intuitive sales pipeline management: While ActiveCampaign has CRM features, its sales pipeline management is not as intuitive and visually appealing as Pipedrive.

  • Steeper learning curve: ActiveCampaign's extensive features and functionalities can make it slightly more complex to learn and master compared to Pipedrive.

  • Can be more expensive: Depending on the chosen plan and features, ActiveCampaign can be more costly than Pipedrive, especially for smaller teams focused primarily on sales CRM.

Who is using ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive?

No data
Hustle Fund
We invest in hilariously-early teams.
Vlad Oleksiienko
Growth @ Reply.io
Piotr Smolen
CEO at symmetrical.ai

Who should use ActiveCampaign VS. Pipedrive

ActiveCampaign is a user-friendly marketing automation platform ideal for businesses seeking streamlined campaign management and sales automation. Users praise its ease of use and comprehensive features, particularly for tracking campaign effectiveness and building automations. However, some users have noted occasional glitches and slow loading times. Perfect for automating email, SMS, and CRM tasks, ultimately boosting your marketing ROI.

Pipedrive is a user-friendly CRM platform designed to boost sales team efficiency. It's praised for its intuitive interface and ease of use, allowing for quick setup and streamlined sales processes. Users appreciate its straightforward approach to managing customer interactions and organizing opportunities. However, some users mention limitations with the mobile app and integrations.

  • Best for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to scale their marketing efforts.

  • Ideal for various sectors, including E-commerce, Healthcare, Finance, and more.

  • Best for small to medium-sized businesses seeking improved sales efficiency.

  • Suitable for a wide range of industries, including Healthcare, Finance, and E-commerce.

ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive features

Supported
Partially supported
Not supported
Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

  • Lead Management
    Supported

    ActiveCampaign offers lead tracking, sales process automation, and CRM features for managing deals.

    Supported

    Pipedrive supports lead and deal management and automates sales processes.

  • Pipeline Management
    Supported

    ActiveCampaign supports pipeline management, including deal tracking and visualizing sales processes. Bottleneck identification is supported via pipeline metrics analysis.

    Supported

    Pipedrive supports visualizing sales process, tracking deals, and identifying bottlenecks.

  • Sales Automation
    Supported

    ActiveCampaign automates sales tasks, tracks progress, and improves efficiency.

    Supported

    Pipedrive automates repetitive sales tasks, tracks progress, and improves sales efficiency.

  • Drip Campaigns
    Supported

    ActiveCampaign supports the automation and sending of pre-defined sequences of emails to nurture leads or onboard users with personalized content.

    Supported

    Pipedrive supports drip campaigns through its Campaigns feature, allowing users to automate and send pre-defined sequences of emails to nurture leads or onboard users with personalized content.

  • Workflow Automation
    Supported

    ActiveCampaign supports workflow automation to automate sales workflows and tasks to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.

    Supported

    Pipedrive supports workflow automation to automate sales workflows and tasks, reducing manual effort and improving efficiency.

Qualities

  • Value and Pricing Transparency
    -0.28
    Neutral sentiment
    -0.19
    Neutral sentiment
  • Customer Service
    +0.42
    Rather positive sentiment
    +0.49
    Rather positive sentiment
  • Ease of Use
    +0.65
    Rather positive sentiment
    +0.85
    Strongly positive sentiment
  • Reliability and Performance
    +0.21
    Neutral sentiment
    +0.54
    Rather positive sentiment
  • Ease of Implementation
    +0.21
    Neutral sentiment
    +0.34
    Rather positive sentiment
  • Scalability
    +0.12
    Neutral sentiment
    +0.16
    Neutral sentiment

ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive Pricing

ActiveCampaign offers four main pricing tiers: Starter, Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. Each tier offers a different set of features and contact limits. Add-ons are available to enhance CRM capabilities and add SMS marketing.
Plans

User sentiment

Neutral
-0.28

See full Pricing page

All plans include a 14-day free trial. Prices are VAT exclusive. VAT will be billed to EU customers based on their member state rates unless a valid VAT number is provided.
Plans

User sentiment

Neutral
-0.19

See full Pricing page

ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive review insights

9150 reviews analysed from and

Users love

  • Easy to use and has all the features I need.
  • Campaigns get tracked and I know what works and what not.
  • Automations are easy to build.
  • My business is working while I am lying on my sofa.
  • Easy to use and intuitive.
  • Great for managing customer email interactions.
  • Simple and straightforward to use.
  • Excellent way to keep opportunities organized and customization is a bonus!

Users dislike

  • The UI can be a bit glitchy.
  • It can be slow to load, I tend to have several browser tabs open to avoid losing time with the pages loading.
  • Prices for Brazil are expensive, there could be regional or student discounts.
  • Support in your own language would be nice.
  • The custom tags for the leads don’t transfer to deals.
  • Limited integration with platforms other than Facebook
  • The mobile app is underwhelming with limited functionality
  • When having too many stages in Pipedrive, it seems to compromise the view and I cannot see the full title of each stage.

ActiveCampaign and Pipedrive Ratings

  • G2
    4.5/5
    (2486)
  • Capterra
    4.6/5
    (2388)
  • Glassdoor
    3.6/5
    (444)
  • G2
    4.3/5
    (1877)
  • Capterra
    4.5/5
    (2418)
  • Glassdoor
    3.6/5
    (250)

Company health

Employee growth

4% increase in the last year
No change in the last year

Web traffic

11% decrease in the last quarter
7% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

January 2021 - $360M
July 2018 - $90M

How do ActiveCampaign's marketing automation features compare to Pipedrive's sales-focused automation?

ActiveCampaign's marketing automation is geared towards broader customer journeys across multiple channels like email, SMS, and ads, focusing on personalized marketing campaigns and lead nurturing. Pipedrive's automation is primarily sales-focused, streamlining the sales process within the pipeline, automating tasks like lead qualification and deal progression, and ultimately aiming to improve close rates and sales efficiency. While both offer automation, ActiveCampaign leans towards marketing engagement and Pipedrive emphasizes sales actions within the CRM.

Which product better integrates with existing CRM systems for a unified sales and marketing approach?

ActiveCampaign better integrates with existing CRM systems for a unified sales and marketing approach. While Pipedrive is primarily a sales-focused CRM, ActiveCampaign offers robust marketing automation features alongside its CRM capabilities, and explicitly states integration with over 900 business tools. This suggests a greater emphasis on broader integration, including existing CRM systems, facilitating a more unified sales and marketing strategy.

What are the advantages of ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign offers stronger marketing automation capabilities, including pre-built templates and automation recipes for various channels like email, SMS, and ads, making it better suited for businesses focused on personalized customer journeys and multi-channel marketing. It also boasts a wider range of integrations with over 900 business tools.

What are the disadvantages of ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign users have reported that the user interface can be glitchy and slow to load, sometimes requiring multiple browser tabs to avoid delays. Pricing can be considered expensive in some regions, lacking regional or student discounts. Finally, while it integrates with many tools, some users desire support in languages other than English.

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Page co-authored by
MK
Michal Kaczor
CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

TT
Tymon Terlikiewicz
CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

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