ActiveCampaign vs HighLevel

ActiveCampaign and HighLevel are two platforms designed to enhance customer engagement and streamline business processes. ActiveCampaign focuses on email marketing, customer experience automation, and CRM features, making it suitable for businesses prioritizing personalized communication. HighLevel, in contrast, targets agencies with tools for lead management, automation, and client-facing features. In this comparison, we’ll review their key features, ease of use, and pricing to help you determine which platform better fits your business needs. If you’re looking for a more balanced option with intuitive contact management, folk CRM might also be worth exploring.

What is ActiveCampaign?

Active Campaign is a marketing automation platform designed to help businesses of all sizes manage customer interactions and drive growth through personalized and automated communication.

Key features of ActiveCampaign

• Email marketing: Create personalized email campaigns with drag-and-drop templates, advanced segmentation, and automated sequences to engage your audience effectively.
• Marketing automation: Automate workflows for email, SMS, and site messages, based on user behavior and custom triggers, enhancing customer engagement and retention.
• Sales automation: Integrates a CRM with automation tools to streamline the sales process, track leads, manage deals, and automate follow-ups.
• CRM feature: Sales focused CRM to track and manage processes using automation.
  

What is HighLevel?

HighLevel is a comprehensive platform designed to streamline digital marketing efforts for agencies and businesses. It offers features such as lead capture, automated booking, customer nurturing, and membership site creation. The platform provides tools to help agencies build their digital marketing engine, automate workflows, and drive business growth. It also includes a white-label option for agencies.

Key features of HighLevel

• Lead capture tools: HighLevel provides customizable forms, surveys, and landing pages to help businesses effectively capture and manage leads.
• Automated workflows: Automate tasks like follow-ups, appointment scheduling, and reminders, saving time and ensuring consistent communication.
• Customer nurturing tools: Engage with leads through email campaigns, text messages, and automated drip sequences to convert them into loyal customers.
• Membership site creation: Build and manage membership sites directly within the platform, offering valuable resources or courses to clients.
• White-label platform: Agencies can fully brand HighLevel as their own, delivering a seamless experience to their clients.

ActiveCampaign vs. HighLevel: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of these two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales Pipeline Management

ActiveCampaign's sales pipeline management feature is integrated with its CRM, enabling businesses to streamline their sales processes. It allows users to visually manage deals through customizable pipelines, automate tasks like follow-ups, and track every stage of the sales journey. HighLevel CRM’s sales pipeline management feature enables businesses to create pipelines tailored to their sales processes. It provides tools to track leads, monitor deal progress, and view opportunities through a dashboard. This feature is designed to help organize sales workflows and provide visibility into the sales cycle.

2. Ease of use

ActiveCampaign is known for its intuitive interface, making it easy for users to navigate and implement campaigns without extensive technical knowledge. HighLevel, while feature-rich, may require a steeper learning curve due to its comprehensive suite of tools, which can be overwhelming for beginners.

3. Contact enrichment

ActiveCampaign does not appear to have a contact enrichment feature, limiting its ability to automatically gather additional data on contacts. Users may need to manually input or use third-party tools for enhanced contact profiles. HighLevel CRM does not appear to offer dedicated contact enrichment features.

4. Outreach

ActiveCampaign’s outreach includes email, SMS, and some social media tools, focusing on segmentation and personalization, though SMS is basic. HighLevel offers email, text messaging, and automated sequences, providing versatile communication options, but setup can be complex.

5. Automation

ActiveCampaign excels with a visual drag-and-drop builder for setting up workflows, automating tasks like emails and follow-ups. HighLevel offers robust automation for lead follow-ups and scheduling, but complex workflows may require more configuration time.

6. Integration

ActiveCampaign supports over 900 integrations, including Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, and Google Analytics, enhancing its connectivity with popular tools and platforms. HighLevel also offers integrations designed to streamline operations by enabling users to connect HighLevel with their existing systems and tools. However, the range of integrations may require additional setup and configuration to align with specific business needs.

7. Artificial Intelligence

ActiveCampaign integrates AI features like predictive sending and content optimization. HighLevel lacks prominent AI features, focusing on manual configuration rather than AI-driven functionalities.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both ActiveCampaign and HIghLevel.

ActiveCampaign prices

ActiveCampaign's price plans are based on the number of contacts you have. The following is based on a plan for 1,000 contacts.

• Starter: Starting from $15/month.
• Plus: Starting from $49/month.
• Pro: Starting from $79/month.
• Enterprise: Starting from $145/month.

HighLevel prices

High Level has two price tiers for you to choose from.

• Starter: $97/seat/month.
• Unlimited: $297/seat/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to ActiveCampaign and HIghLevel

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment and more. folk can also scale with you as your business grows, thanks to its ability to support solopreneurs, small to mid-size teams and large enterprises.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

ActiveCampaign vs. HighLevel: What's the verdict?

In comparing ActiveCampaign and HighLevel, it's apparent how both platforms offer robust CRM solutions with unique strengths. ActiveCampaign excels in email marketing and automation, while HighLevel provides comprehensive marketing tools for agencies. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach, folk stands out as a flexible alternative. It combines ease of use with customization, making it suitable for diverse business functions. With competitive pricing and a user-friendly interface, folk offers a compelling choice for businesses aiming to enhance their CRM experience. Try folk today, free.