ActiveCampaign vs Sendinblue (2021): Pricing, Email Marketing Features & Integrations

The ROI for every dollar spent on email marketing is $42 (according to the Litmus 2019 report. This is why choosing your email marketing software cannot be taken lightly. If you’ve been on the hunt for your email marketing software, ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue are among the names that typically come up when someone’s asking for email marketing tool recommendations.

We hone in on the pricing, email marketing features, flexibility, and integrations of ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue to help you decide which is better for your business.

ActiveCampaign vs Sendinblue Comparison Chart

Model	ActiveCampaign	Sendinblue
Price	Check Price at ActiveCampaign.com	Check Price at Sendinblue.com
Best for	Fast-growing businesses who require more advanced automations and optimization	Smaller, newer businesses who are looking for a cost-effective email marketing tool
Contact Tagging & Segmentation	Yes	Yes
Lead Scoring	Yes	Yes
Marketing Automation	Yes	Yes
SMS and Chat	Yes	Yes
Email Templates	Around 40	Around 60
Automation Recipes	270+	No
A/B Testing	Yes	Yes, on higher-tier plans
Spam Check	Yes	No
CRM	Yes	Yes
Website Builder	Yes	No
CMS	Yes	No
Landing Page Builder	Yes	Yes, on higher-tier plans
Native Integrations	300+	57
Free Trial	14 days	Up to 300 emails/day

Pricing

ActiveCampaign has higher monthly fees than Sendinblue

The pricing model of ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue is different. ActiveCampaign bases its fees on the number of your subscribers, while Sendinblue’s monthly fees depend on the number of emails you send every month. If cost is a major consideration, calculate how many subscribers you have and how many email broadcasts you typically send a month.

Let’s say you have 1,000 subscribers and you send two email broadcasts every week, that means you send 8,000 emails every month (for a full email broadcast without segmentation). If you’re on ActiveCampaign’s Lite Plan, this means your monthly cost is at $29/month or $25/month if you pay for the whole year in advance. With Sendinblue, you’ll pay $25/month or $22.50/month if you opt to be billed annually. Sendinblue also lets you use their platform for free with unlimited contacts for up to 300 emails/day, a great option if you’re still building your email list. On the other hand, Sendinblue’s Premium Plan (starts at $65/mo) offers more advanced features such as Facebook ads integration and marketing automation.

Meanwhile, ActiveCampaign has three more tiers above its Lite Plan:

• Plus: starts at $49/mo
• Professional: starts at $129/mo
• Enterprise: starts at $229/mo

Email Marketing & CRM Features

ActiveCampaign has more robust email marketing and CRM features than Sendinblue

ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue have similar email marketing and CRM tools that will help you optimize your emails to better engage your audience and manage your contacts:

• Segmentation
• Subscriber tagging
• Lead scoring
• Split testing (for higher-tier plans)
• Automation and sequences
• Analytics
• Flow builder
• Abandoned cart recovery
• Email designer and responsive templates
• Opt-in forms
• SMS
• Landing Pages (higher-tier plans for ActiveCampaign and available as an add-on on Sendinblue)
• Pipeline management

One of the unique features of ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue that many other email marketing tools don’t offer is lead scoring. They assign a score to your subscriber depending on how engaged they are. You can then optimize your emails for subscribers with certain scores (e.g. you can send an exclusive offer to subscribers with a score of 85+) for better targeting.

Here are some of the features that ActiveCampaign has that’s missing on Sendinblue:

• Automation recipes
• Dynamic and split automations
• Spam check through SpamAssassin: a handy tool that lets you know if your email may end up in the spam folder (e.g. if your email has a phrase like “make money easily” ActiveCampaign will alert you so you can remove the phrase)
• Win probability
• Content Management System (you can host your blog on ActiveCampaign)
• Website builder

Sendinblue also has some features that ActiveCampaign doesn’t:

• Email heat maps
• Facebook Ads and retargeting

Design and Flexibility

Both email marketing tools have a drag and drop editor and a big library of ready-made email templates and landing pages

ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue are both user-friendly and have plenty of email templates and landing pages you can choose from and customize to match your branding. Sendinblue has around 60 email templates while ActiveCampaign only has around 40.

ActiveCampaign’s more advanced automation features require a higher learning curve. The good thing is ActiveCampaign provides over 270 automation recipes you can use to easily automate your email marketing. There are recipes for e-commerce, healthcare, blogging, online education, non-profits, and more.

Integrations

ActiveCampaign has more native integrations than Sendinblue

Knowing which native integrations are available to your email marketing software can help you save time and headaches as you won’t need to use webhooks to connect the different solutions you use in your business. ActiveCampaign has the edge in the integration department as it boasts over 300 native integrations, while Sendinblue only has around 60.

With that said, both platforms integrate seamlessly with major third-party tools like WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Zoho, PayPal, Zapier, and more.

Verdict

ActiveCampaign is better for fast-growing businesses who need more advanced features while those who want a cost-effective option should go with Sendinblue

ActiveCampaign

Best for fast growing businesses

Sendinblue

Best for newer businesses on a budget

ActiveCampaign and Sendinblue are popular email marketing tools for a reason: they are reliable, they work well, and offer a suite of email marketing and CRM features. If you need more advanced optimization, customization, and automation, ActiveCampaign better fits your needs. With that said, expect to pay a much higher price tag as well.

Meanwhile, Sendinblue and its free forever plan makes it a good starting point for newer businesses or solopreneurs looking to start building their email list. When you’re ready for more CRM and optimizations, Sendinblue’s Lite and Premium Plans are still at the more affordable end.

FAQs