ActiveCampaign vs Salesforce Sales Cloud

by Gralio Feb 04, 2025

ActiveCampaign and Salesforce Sales Cloud cater to different needs. ActiveCampaign excels in marketing automation and affordability for smaller businesses, while Salesforce Sales Cloud offers a more robust and customizable CRM for larger enterprises with advanced sales needs.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 7220 reviews and 50 websites, saving 1 day, 16 hours, 31 minutes of reading.

ActiveCampaign

Salesforce Sales Cloud

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.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform designed to help businesses of all sizes increase sales productivity. It offers a range of tools for managing contacts, tracking leads, forecasting sales, and analyzing sales data. Salesforce Sales Cloud stands out for its robust features, including AI-powered insights, automation capabilities, and integrations with other business applications. It can be customized for various industries, making it a flexible solution for managing customer interactions and driving sales growth.

Summary

Main difference

ActiveCampaign is better for you if you need a marketing automation platform with robust email marketing, automation, and CRM capabilities, ideal for small to medium-sized businesses focused on personalized customer journeys. Salesforce Sales Cloud is better for you if you require a comprehensive, customizable CRM platform with advanced sales forecasting, analytics, and AI-powered insights, best suited for larger enterprises with complex sales processes.

Relative strengths of ActiveCampaign (compared to Salesforce Sales Cloud)

Stronger marketing automation capabilities, including email marketing, SMS, and social media management.
More affordable pricing plans, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.
Easier to use and implement with a user-friendly interface and pre-built automation recipes.

Relative weaknesses of ActiveCampaign (compared to Salesforce Sales Cloud)

Less comprehensive sales forecasting and analytics compared to Salesforce Sales Cloud.
Limited AI-powered insights and advanced customization options.
Not as scalable for large enterprises with complex sales processes.

Who should use ActiveCampaign VS. Salesforce Sales Cloud

ActiveCampaign is a robust marketing automation platform perfect for businesses aiming to enhance customer engagement and streamline marketing efforts. Users praise its ease of use and comprehensive features, especially for creating targeted campaigns and automating workflows. However, some users have noted occasional glitches and slow loading times. ActiveCampaign offers seamless integrations with numerous business tools and provides excellent customer support.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a robust CRM platform ideal for sales teams in small, medium, and large businesses. Users praise its seamless integrations, automation features, and centralized data platform, enabling real-time insights and improved collaboration. However, some users mention a steep learning curve and occasional performance issues. It's best suited for industries like software, IT, and retail.

Best for small to medium-sized businesses seeking growth.
Ideal for various sectors, including e-commerce, marketing, and finance.

Best fit for small, medium, and large businesses.
Ideal for Software, IT, Telecommunications, Retail, Manufacturing, and similar industries.

ActiveCampaign and Salesforce Sales Cloud features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Workflow automation

Supported

ActiveCampaign offers workflow automation with a visual automation builder, pre-built templates, and integrations.

Supported

Sales Cloud automates routine tasks and streamlines workflows.
Contact Management

Supported

ActiveCampaign supports contact management, including organizing contacts, tracking interactions, and personalized communications.

Supported

Sales Cloud organizes customer data and interactions, facilitating communication and relationship building.
Sales Forecasting

Supported

ActiveCampaign supports sales forecasting, enabling data-driven decisions and planning.

Supported

Sales Cloud uses AI-powered forecasting, collaborative tools, and dashboards to predict sales revenue.
Workflow Automation

Supported

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

Supported

Salesforce Sales Cloud supports workflow automation to automate sales workflows and tasks.
Drip Campaigns

Supported

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

Partially supported

Drip campaigns are supported via Salesforce Marketing Cloud and third-party apps.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

-0.27

Neutral sentiment

-0.83

Strongly negative sentiment
Customer Service

+0.41

Rather positive sentiment

+0.29

Neutral sentiment
Ease of Use

+0.62

Rather positive sentiment

+0.67

Rather positive sentiment
Reliability and Performance

+0.24

Neutral sentiment

+0.44

Rather positive sentiment
Ease of Implementation

+0.18

Neutral sentiment

-0.24

Neutral sentiment
Scalability

+0.08

Neutral sentiment

+0.36

Rather positive sentiment

ActiveCampaign and Salesforce Sales Cloud Pricing

No data

User sentiment

Neutral

-0.27

See full Pricing page

No data

User sentiment

Strongly negative

-0.83

See full Pricing page

ActiveCampaign and Salesforce Sales Cloud review insights

7153 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.

Seamless integration with other platforms and apps.
Robust automation features for streamlining tasks.
Centralized data platform for improved collaboration.
Real-time insights and reporting for data-driven decisions.

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.

High price for small and medium-sized businesses.
Steep learning curve and complex features.
Occasional performance issues and slow loading times.
Limited customization for specific needs and integrations.

ActiveCampaign and Salesforce Sales Cloud Ratings

G2

4.5/5

(2477)
Capterra

4.6/5

(2388)
TrustPilot

3.6/5

(67)
Glassdoor

3.6/5

(444)

G2

4.3/5

(2288)
Glassdoor

4.1/5

(18141)

Company health

Employee growth

4% increase in the last year

2% increase in the last year

Web traffic

11% decrease in the last quarter

7% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

January 2021 - $360M

July 2022 - $65M

How do ActiveCampaign's email marketing automation features compare to Salesforce Sales Cloud's sales process automation?

ActiveCampaign focuses on email marketing automation as part of a broader marketing automation strategy, enabling personalized customer journeys across multiple channels. Salesforce Sales Cloud, while offering workflow automation, centers on sales process automation within a CRM context. Sales Cloud streamlines sales tasks, manages contacts, and provides sales forecasting, while ActiveCampaign excels at automated email sequences, personalized messaging, and integrations tailored for marketing campaigns. Therefore, ActiveCampaign is better suited for comprehensive marketing automation including email, while Sales Cloud targets sales process optimization and management.

Which product better integrates with existing marketing tools for a streamlined workflow?

ActiveCampaign better integrates with existing marketing tools for a streamlined workflow. It boasts 900+ integrations with popular business tools, offering more extensive pre-built connections than Salesforce Sales Cloud, which primarily focuses on sales-related integrations within its own ecosystem. This broader integration capability makes ActiveCampaign more suitable for diverse marketing technology stacks.

What are the advantages of ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign offers stronger marketing automation capabilities, including pre-built templates and automation recipes across multiple channels like email, SMS, and ads, making it better suited for marketing-focused teams. It also boasts a wider range of integrations with over 900 business tools. While both offer workflow automation, ActiveCampaign's focus on marketing automation and broader integrations makes it advantageous for businesses prioritizing streamlined marketing efforts and diverse tool connectivity.

What are the disadvantages of ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign users report occasional glitches and slow loading times in the UI. Some users find the pricing to be expensive, particularly in specific regions, and desire more localized support options.

Alternatives to ActiveCampaign and Salesforce Sales Cloud

HubSpot Marketing Hub

HubSpot Marketing Hub is a comprehensive marketing platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a suite of tools including email marketing, marketing automation, social media management, analytics, and SEO optimization, all within a single platform. This helps businesses streamline their marketing efforts, improve efficiency, and track results. Its focus on inbound marketing and lead generation makes it a popular choice for businesses looking to attract and convert leads into customers. HubSpot Marketing Hub integrates seamlessly with HubSpot's CRM platform for enhanced sales and marketing alignment.

HubSpot Sales Hub

HubSpot Sales Hub is a sales software platform designed to help mid-sized and growing businesses streamline and automate their sales processes. It offers tools for managing contacts, tracking deals, sending emails, and analyzing sales performance. Its focus is on providing a user-friendly interface and a suite of integrated tools that work together seamlessly. HubSpot Sales Hub aims to improve sales efficiency, increase productivity, and drive revenue growth by providing a centralized system for managing all aspects of the sales pipeline.

Pipedrive

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.

Freshsales

Freshsales is a customer relationship management (CRM) software designed to help sales teams of all sizes. It offers a range of features, including contact management, sales pipeline management, and automation tools. Freshsales stands out with its user-friendly interface, AI-powered insights, and built-in communication channels. It promises to help businesses streamline their sales process, improve efficiency, and increase revenue. Freshsales is suitable for businesses of all sizes across various industries.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a comprehensive work management platform designed to consolidate various work processes into one centralized location. It offers a wide array of features including task management, project planning, document collaboration, communication tools, goal setting, and automation options. ClickUp aims to enhance team collaboration, improve visibility across projects, and streamline workflows for increased productivity regardless of team size or industry.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It helps you create personalized marketing campaigns across email, SMS, and other channels. Klaviyo offers tools for email and SMS marketing, automation, segmentation, and data analysis. It stands out with its customer data platform, which provides a centralized view of customer information, enabling highly targeted campaigns. Klaviyo promises to help you increase conversions and customer lifetime value.

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