Every month, over a hundred customers switch from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign. Why? Customers say they’ve hit a wall and outgrown Mailchimp. They come to ActiveCampaign because they need more advanced features, less manual segmentation, and more reliable deliverability.
If you're reading this, you're probably weighing your options. Maybe Mailchimp got you started, but now your marketing needs have outpaced what it can deliver. Or perhaps you're evaluating platforms from scratch and want to make a decision you won't regret in 18 months.
This Mailchimp vs. ActiveCampaign deep dive is built for marketers and teams evaluating which marketing platform fits their current needs and future growth plans. It covers how the platforms compare across feature depth, pricing, and customer satisfaction. More importantly, it shows how those differences play out in real-world marketing operations.
ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp both excel at email marketing, but they cater to different team needs and campaign complexity. The real difference shows up once your marketing becomes more sophisticated.
Mailchimp is best for: Simplicity, speed, and beginner-friendly workflows. If you need basic campaigns and quick setup, it's a very solid starting point.
ActiveCampaign is best for: Growing businesses that want autonomous marketing. If you need integrated marketing and AI that builds advanced campaigns for you, ActiveCampaign is designed for what comes next.
Here's a high-level look at how the two platforms compare across key categories:
Comparison data accurate as of February 2026.
Feature checklists can be deceiving. Two platforms might both list "automation" and "segmentation," but the depth and execution could differ dramatically. This makes it difficult to understand how they really stack up against one another.
We’ve taken a look at how these features actually weigh up in practice. Take a look at how automation, email design, segmentation, landing pages, CRM, integrations, and deliverability differ — so you can see where parity ends and differentiation begins.
The automation features on ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp’s platforms differ significantly in terms of depth:
ActiveCampaign supports advanced automation with deeper orchestration.
Mailchimp enables straightforward flows that are very easy to set up.
ActiveCampaign was designed as an autonomous marketing platform from day one. It helps businesses build sophisticated, fully automated customer journeys.
In the visual workflow builder, you can use deep conditional logic and triggers tied to real behavior—like site activity, purchases, and custom events—then optimize paths with goals and automation-level testing.
It’s not just email, either; automations can coordinate email, SMS, WhatsApp, site messaging, and CRM actions—like lead scoring and deal stage updates—in one connected sequence. Follow-up happens automatically based on what each contact does (or doesn’t do). All run simultaneously with no limits.
Not only is ActiveCampaign’s automation builder powered by AI, but a library of over 1,000 pre-built automation recipes is also available, categorized by industry so you can find relevant starting points fast. This makes complex workflows easier to design and launch.
Mailchimp focuses on foundational automation. Its newer Marketing Automation Flows are designed for quick setup of common lifecycle automations. It supports drag-and-drop rules, branching paths, delays, and pre-built flow templates.
While easy to adopt, the functionality is still evolving and primarily oriented toward simpler use cases. It’s a solid option for foundational nurture sequences like welcomes, re-engagement, and other standard “set it and forget it” journeys. Availability varies by plan.
Mailchimp has made some progress in supporting automation, but a late start in the game means it lags behind. When you need automation to do more, ActiveCampaign replaces what would take multiple manual Mailchimp campaigns and check-ins with one adaptive workflow.
The email tools for each platform are built with different priorities in mind:
ActiveCampaign emphasizes brand control and personalization at scale.
Mailchimp prioritizes speed and simplicity for creating polished campaigns.
ActiveCampaign is built for teams that want advanced control over personalized email marketing. You can start from 250+ professionally designed templates or a single AI-prompt, use a drag-and-drop editor to edit quickly, and still move into full HTML editing when you need a more custom layout or tighter brand precision.
Mailchimp is optimized for quick creation with minimal design effort. Its new email builder uses a template-first, drag-and-drop approach so small teams can assemble attractive campaigns fast, and it offers options to upload custom HTML on certain paid plans.
The platform used to offer more in terms of supported design with its Creative Assistant feature. But in the process of consolidating all AI functions under the "Intuit Assist" umbrella, most of those design features seem to have been demoted or quietly retired. AI-powered writing assistance is available under Intuit Assist to help generate on-brand emails faster, but this is currently a beta release.
If you need advanced, highly personalized campaigns and stronger brand control, ActiveCampaign is the better fit. If you want to launch straightforward emails quickly with a beginner-friendly builder and guided assistance, Mailchimp is a solid option for keeping creation simple.
How meticulously you can tailor campaigns to each contact will depend on the segmentation and personalization capabilities of the platform you choose:
ActiveCampaign allows granular, behavior-based targeting and personalization at scale.
Mailchimp offers straightforward segmentation and personalization using broad audience data.
ActiveCampaign’s segmentation software helps you build segments that reflect what people do, not just who they are. You can combine many conditions to create precise, dynamic segments using engagement and behavioral signals.
AI-suggested segments can also surface high-impact audiences for you, so you don’t have to rebuild them every time you launch a campaign or automation. This makes it easier to send targeted messages based on interest and intent.
Detailed personalization workflows are designed to scale beyond simple “first name” inserts. Conditional content blocks adapt content to different audiences without duplicating campaigns.
Mailchimp relies largely on static segmentation, meaning that it works best when triggered by manually built lists. Pre-built segment ideas help you get started quickly. Finer-grained segmentation can be based on contact and audience data, plus limited behavioral signals.
Personalization commonly relies on audience fields and merge tags, which works well for standard audience slicing and lightweight tailoring—especially for smaller teams that don’t want heavy configuration. Dynamic content is also achievable based on broader conditions and list-based segmentation.
The overall experience is designed to keep segmentation approachable and campaign creation fast.
Personalization in ActiveCampaign is typically more behavior-driven and adaptive, helping you send fewer emails that are more relevant to each contact’s actions and engagement. In Mailchimp, personalization works best when it’s field/list-oriented, which can mean relying on more sends to achieve similar targeting depth.
Lead capture and integration capabilities differ quite a bit between the two platforms:
ActiveCampaign emphasizes turning every signup into an automated journey (and CRM action) immediately.
Mailchimp prioritizes getting landing pages and forms live quickly for straightforward list growth.
ActiveCampaign includes a built-in landing page builder with a drag-and-drop editor and hundreds of conversion-optimized templates. Because landing pages and forms sit inside the same platform as your automation and CRM, it’s easy to route every conversion into the right next step—whether that’s tagging and segmenting the contact, starting a multi-step nurture sequence, scoring the lead, or creating/updating a deal record.
Forms are equally workflow-ready: you can create embedded and pop-up styles, and configure submission actions like adding tags, subscribing to email/SMS lists, creating deals, or emailing results—so lead capture instantly feeds automations and CRM processes. This is great for immediately routing leads into personalized follow-ups.
Mailchimp offers a fast, accessible landing page builder aimed at publishing quickly, with templates and a drag-and-drop experience designed to look good on any device.
It also supports core list-growth tools like pop-up forms for collecting email addresses and phone numbers, using customizable templates and a guided setup flow.
That said, Mailchimp’s landing pages come with some notable constraints due to their “keep it simple” approach. They don’t support iframes or custom HTML, and merge-tag personalization is limited, so the connection to complex, behavior-driven workflows isn’t as tight as ActiveCampaign.
ActiveCampaign is stronger when lead capture needs to be tightly tied to automations and CRM, so every new conversion can trigger the next best step automatically. Mailchimp works well for straightforward landing pages and forms when the goal is getting a clean signup experience live fast, rather than full-funnel routing.
Both platforms offer sales-alignment tooling, but only one has a true built-in CRM:
ActiveCampaign offers a full in-platform CRM that connects marketing activity directly to sales pipelines.
Mailchimp prioritizes CRM-style audience management for organizing contacts and tracking engagement.
ActiveCampaign includes an integrated Sales CRM with deal pipelines, task management, and automation that can create deals, assign owners, and move opportunities forward based on marketing engagement.
Marketing and sales data live in the same system, so a contact’s email behavior, website activity, and lifecycle stage can automatically trigger sales actions like deal assignment, follow-up tasks, and pipeline updates.
Mailchimp doesn’t offer a full sales CRM in the same way. Instead, it positions its features as “marketing CRM tools” that you can use to organize audience data, track engagement, and improve targeting and campaigns.
For example, Mailchimp’s contact ratings provide a star-based snapshot of engagement. It’s useful for prioritizing who’s most active, but not the same as managing deals, stages, and rep workflows inside the platform. Any business that needs pipeline management will require a separate CRM tool.
If marketing outcomes need to connect directly to revenue—automating handoffs, pipeline movement, and sales follow-up—ActiveCampaign provides that link out of the box. If you primarily need lightweight contact tracking and engagement insights (and are fine pairing with another CRM for sales), Mailchimp’s marketing CRM approach can be sufficient.
There is a pretty clear winner when it comes to integration flexibility. ActiveCampaign supports far more native integrations than Mailchimp. If you’re trying to connect a wider stack and need data moving through automated workflows, more integrations = better systems.
ActiveCampaign offers 1,000+ app integrations across some of the most popular sales, eCommerce, support, and analytics tools. It’s easier to plug into a broad growth stack and keep key actions connected to automations and CRM workflows without having to rely on middleware.
Mailchimp offers 250+ integrations that cover most everyday business needs, especially for standard email marketing and eCommerce connectivity. For smaller teams, that may be enough to sync contacts, purchases, and campaign engagement with minimal setup.
Choose your tool based on the breadth of your ecosystem.
ActiveCampaign is designed to fit as the orchestration layer of a fully composable platform architecture.
Mailchimp generally covers core ecosystem connectivity for straightforward marketing programs.
Deliverability is a crucial metric for any email marketing software. If your emails don’t land in the inbox, your campaign-building efforts have been pointless.
Both ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp provide specific features that help optimize deliverability, but the quality is scored differently by independent reviewers.
ActiveCampaign puts a lot of emphasis on the fundamentals that impact inbox placement, especially list hygiene and authentication. Deliverability infrastructure includes native domain verification tools (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) and dedicated IP options for high-volume senders.
The platform automatically handles bounce management and automations for contact list cleanup can be enabled, so your list’s health is looked after without manual intervention. Together, these tools help to keep your sending reputation secure.
If you need something a little more tailored, an in-house deliverability consultation service is available at $79 for a 60-minute session. If this isn’t within your budget, significant resources are available to provide guidance on monitoring and optimizing sender reputation over time.
EmailToolTester gives ActiveCampaign a 4/5 star rating for delivery features, with strong authentication support and the responsive deliverability team particularly noted.
Mailchimp is generally regarded as a reliable sender for everyday campaigns, with dedicated IPs available for high-volume use cases and a strong focus on shared-IP deliverability for most customers.
In the same EmailToolTester rubric, Mailchimp earns 3/5 stars, with limitations cited around areas like dedicated deliverability tooling (e.g., dashboards/health scoring) and full SPF alignment.
ActiveCampaign gives you more deliverability levers when inbox placement and scaling are a priority. Mailchimp is reliably strong for everyday sending, with add-on options available when you need to level up.
95% of former Mailchimp users cite deliverability as their #1 reason for switching to ActiveCampaign.
The reporting tools in each platform serve different business functions:
ActiveCampaign focuses on tying performance back to business goals and lifecycle movement.
Mailchimp focuses on making it easy to understand and improve individual campaigns and compare them over time.
ActiveCampaign’s reporting goes beyond “how did this email do?” into “what did this do to the business?” In addition to standard campaign metrics, you get reporting across automations so you can see how whole journeys perform, plus deeper views into contacts, forms, deals, and ecommerce performance depending on your setup.
Attribution software is also available, including first-touch, last-touch, and multi-touch models to help connect marketing efforts to outcomes across channels.
Reports and analytics on the platform are increasingly guided by AI Business Goals: you can define a goal (or have one generated from a simple prompt) and track real-time progress toward it, with the platform surfacing what’s working and what to do next.
Mailchimp’s reporting is typically more campaign-centric and easy to scan. It focuses on understanding engagement (opens, clicks, and related audience signals) so you can iterate on creative and sending strategy. It’s strong for quickly answering “how did this campaign perform?” and making straightforward improvements, but it’s generally less oriented around goal-based, cross-journey analytics inside the platform.
If you need to connect engagement to journey performance and business outcomes—and especially if you want guidance on how to interrogate results—ActiveCampaign tends to offer more depth. If you mainly want clear campaign reporting to optimize newsletters and basic sequences, Mailchimp’s analytics will feel simpler and more immediately approachable.
AI is the world’s hottest buzzword, and most marketing platforms are happy to slap the label on anything remotely automated. It’s important to assess whether that really removes work from your plate, helps lighten the load by polishing content, or is actually just dashboard clutter.
ActiveCampaign takes AI very seriously. It is increasingly possible to generate and orchestrate campaigns end-to-end, not just assist with components. Active Intelligence is positioned as a layer that runs through the entire platform. It acts like an incredibly proficient personal assistant, helping teams create campaigns, build automations, and analyze insights in one place.
You can see it show up in practice with features like the AI Campaign Builder, which will generate an entire campaign (not just copy) from a plain-language prompt, and the AI Actions Library that plugs smart agents directly into workflows that adapt without manual setup or code.
Global marketing execution is helped along by a suite of intelligent tools that safeguard your brand at scale. Import your brand identity into the AI Brand Kit and it will analyze your fonts, colors, and images to build you ready-to-go email templates in minutes. AI Translations can turn one campaign into a multilingual send by translating subject lines, body text, and CTAs into 75+ languages based on each contact’s preference. Meanwhile, Predictive Sending applies historical behavior to deliver at the optimal engagement time for each individual contact. This has been shown to improve CTR by 17%.
When you get to the point of analysis, you can ask questions like how a recent campaign performed, what underperformed (and why), and what to change next, and get summaries, recommendations, and even visualizations without digging through reports.
Mailchimp applies AI more to specific surfaces and suggestions. It is newly organized under the Intuit Assist offering, a beta release that generates on-brand emails within pre-made templates, creates automations, and surfaces predictive insights. The depth of the AI campaign creation offering has reduced somewhat with the quiet retirement of a number of tools such as the Creative Assistant and Content Optimizer.
Send time optimization is available on a broader basis and is helpful for improving opens without a lot of analysis, though this is based on “data science” rather than AI, and analysis is at list-level rather than per contact. For translation needs, Mailchimp-hosted forms and their response emails can be auto-translated into 50+ languages, matching the language to the subscriber’s browser settings.
Given the newer Intuit Assist integration, it can be assumed that there are other AI offerings in the works for Mailchimp. In the meantime, however, if you’re looking to hand off more of the manual effort, ActiveCampaign is a far stronger contender.
Mailchimp has earned its reputation as one of the easiest marketing platforms to pick up—especially if your primary goal is to get a campaign out the door quickly. But “easy” shouldn’t be measured by how fast you can send your first email. It should be measured by time-to-value: how quickly you can launch campaigns and keep running effective marketing without repetitive manual work as your needs grow.
There's a common perception that more powerful tools must be harder to use. It's true that ActiveCampaign is an advanced tool, and getting familiar with the more intricate features may take more effort than very simple platforms.
ActiveCampaign argues that capable doesn’t have to mean complicated. The platform provides guided onboarding, templates, and resources designed to help teams get value quickly.
In practice, the biggest usability difference appears after your marketing gets more advanced. In Mailchimp, achieving deeper personalization can mean more manual setup: creating and maintaining separate audiences/lists, rebuilding segments per campaign, and duplicating work when you want different versions of the same message to go to different groups. Mailchimp segmentation is approachable, but it’s also more constrained, which can push teams toward workarounds as targeting gets more nuanced.
ActiveCampaign aims to help you do more with fewer builds. One automation can adapt dynamically based on contact behavior, engagement, and attributes—so instead of recreating campaigns for every slice of your audience, you build once and let the workflow branch automatically. And because ActiveCampaign pairs that automation power with libraries of templates, automation recipes, and AI-assisted strategy, you often spend less time repeating setup work as your program scales.
Mailchimp is a leader in “quick to start.” But if you define ease as time saved over months of real marketing, ActiveCampaign offers the strongest combination of power and usability—there’s simply no easier option that delivers the same level of automation, personalization, and scalability.
ActiveCampaign users save more than 10 hours every month on manual processes.
Users who switch from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign frequently see impressive ROI results.
ActiveCampaign prices itself as more than an email marketing tool, so it tends to come in at a more premium level than Mailchimp. However, you’ll be getting deeper automation, CRM, and sales alignment earlier in the experience, rather than upgrading later when you hit limits.
Both platforms let you test-drive without a credit card:
ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial.
Mailchimp offers a free plan—but it’s intentionally slim. You’re capped at 250 contacts and 500 sends per month, and core features like automations and A/B testing aren’t included.
Once you move into paid plans, Mailchimp’s sticker price is lower at most subscriber counts, but the feature set is narrower, especially if you’re trying to run more advanced automation and personalization:
Despite being the more premium platform overall, ActiveCampaign has a very competitive entry plan:
Where ActiveCampaign really diverges is flexibility at the high end: it can expand into a broader marketing and sales system with component-style add-ons such as sales engagement and transactional email. Teams can start with core marketing automation and layer in advanced capabilities when they’re ready to justify the ROI.
I couldn’t imagine our product without ActiveCampaign. If ActiveCampaign didn’t exist, we would have to create it ourselves, which we wouldn’t be able to afford.
Mailchimp tends to win on price for straightforward email marketing—especially if you want a low-cost entry point out of the gate.
ActiveCampaign delivers substantially more depth, with a clearer path for teams that expect to scale into sales alignment and AI-driven workflows over time.
Support is one of the biggest risk reducers in platform choice—especially if you’re migrating. The difference between ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp isn’t just what kind of support exists, but how much hands-on help you can expect during onboarding and how support access changes by plan.
ActiveCampaign’s support offering includes:
Free onboarding is a standout here: for qualifying plans, setup and data migration are expedited and early campaigns can be built for you.
Mailchimp’s support offering is tier-based, and includes:
Mailchimp’s support model is structured and tiered. It has strong self-serve resources, while higher-touch support is reserved for Premium accounts.
ActiveCampaign’s support pairs chat and email support with thorough onboarding and assistance, and a broader set of enablement resources. Support is designed to accelerate success and adoption, not just resolve tickets.
ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp both have consistent and broadly positive sentiment on popular independent review sites.
Mailchimp is most often praised for being the easiest way to get professional-looking email campaigns out the door quickly. Reviewers consistently call out its intuitive UI, drag-and-drop creation, templates, and simple reporting—especially for newsletters, promos, and basic nurture.
It’s known for:
ActiveCampaign is most often praised for depth: automation, segmentation, and the ability to run more personalized lifecycle marketing without stitching together lots of tools. Reviewers regularly highlight its automation builder, CRM tie-ins, and the sense that it can scale with more complex journeys once you’re past the first setup.
It’s known for:
The common thread is that:
Mailchimp is great for launching quickly. Some advanced features require moving up tiers or feel more constrained once you want deeper automation.
ActiveCampaign is more powerful and customizable. There can be a slight learning curve, but it’s worth it if you’re building sophisticated journeys.
We know you’re aware that you’re on the ActiveCampaign website reading a comparison between us and a competitor. We understand that we are biased. So, why not hear it from customers instead?
The following quotes are all from recent independent reviews that compare ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp.
Overall, we couldn’t be happier. ActiveCampaign doesn’t just offer tools; it feels like a partner that actually helps us grow. If you’re considering switching from Mailchimp or any other platform, do it — the results will speak for themselves and of course a great customer support to help you out.
Before we started using ActiveCampaign, we were using MailChimp, and we felt really limited. There was no way to segment our lists effectively, and we couldn’t set up different automations for various segments, which was a big challenge. Once we switched to ActiveCampaign, the experience improved significantly. We had an excellent onboarding person who walked us through the setup, which made the transition smoother. Overall, it’s been a great tool for us, and we’ve been really happy with it.
I’ve used MailChimp, Infusionsoft, Keap, and tried out a host of others. I’ve settled on Active Campaign because it has the right fit for me. If you can code, you can tweak with lots of control. If you can’t you still get good quality.
[Mailchimp’s] email builder is quite basic, so don’t expect to create highly advanced email designs. The triggers and automations are suitable for basic needs, but they don’t compare to the advanced capabilities of Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign, particularly in the e‑commerce field.
If you’re trying to decide between Mailchimp and ActiveCampaign, the cleanest way to do it is to match the tool to your current marketing reality and to what you’ll need a year from now.
Mailchimp is a strong starting point: quick setup, approachable tools, and a good fit when your program is mostly newsletters and straightforward campaigns.
ActiveCampaign is built for what comes next: it’s the better fit when growth means more journeys, more personalization, more efficiency—and you don’t want to switch platforms later.
Initially, we were using Mailchimp, with about 14,000 to 15,000 contacts, but we weren’t engaging with them as strategically as we could. We chose ActiveCampaign for its ease of use and because it met our specific needs. The ActiveCampaign team provided exceptional support during our transition, going the extra mile to ensure a smooth onboarding experience. ActiveCampaign’s automation features have significantly eased my workload—comparable to adding one or two full-time employees to the team.
Want more proof? Watch the video below to find out how Parrish Law Firm went from 10% to 40% open rates after switching from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign.
Former Mailchimp users who have switched to ActiveCampaign frequently cite significant operational and ROI wins, especially around deliverability and scaling without extra manual effort.
More than a hundred customers switch from Mailchimp to ActiveCampaign every month.
If you’re deciding to migrate to ActiveCampaign, the transition couldn’t be easier. Meagan Ingersoll, Marketing Director at educational solutions provider Palmetto Fortis, shared how simple they found the experience:
Still not sure you can trust our review? Take a look at some other comparisons:
If you’re ready for a platform that can handle a mature strategy, request an ActiveCampaign demo or take a look at our migration guide to see how easily you can switch platforms.
ActiveCampaign is best used for businesses that need advanced marketing automation and CRM capabilities. It excels in creating complex, personalized workflows that integrate email marketing, SMS, and other channels, making it a good fit for companies looking to simplify their sales processes, boost customer engagement, and manage detailed customer interactions all in one tool.
ActiveCampaign is known for its advanced automation capabilities and built-in CRM, catering to businesses that want to interact with their customers throughout the entire buyer journey. In contrast, Mailchimp offers email marketing with basic automation, making it ideal for beginners just getting started.
Both platforms offer email marketing features, but ActiveCampaign excels in complex workflows and multi-channel messaging, while Mailchimp is known for its ease of use and well-known reputation.
ActiveCampaign’s pricing is transparent and scales with your contact list, allowing you to budget confidently as you grow. Unlike some platforms, you’re not double-charged for contacts on multiple lists, and you get access to advanced features at every tier without surprise fees. This structure ensures you can expand your marketing without worrying about unpredictable costs.
ActiveCampaign offers a flat-rate, tiered pricing model with no hidden charges for advanced features. User fees are clearly indicated for each tier, and you have the flexibility to add on additional users as you need them. Each plan clearly outlines what’s included, and you can access enterprise-grade automation, segmentation, and reporting without unexpected add-ons. This makes it easy to plan your investment and unlock powerful capabilities as your business grows.
ActiveCampaign is designed to be intuitive, even for users transitioning from other platforms. The interface is user-friendly, and AI agents, prebuilt templates, and automation recipes make it easy to get started—often in just a few clicks. Most users find they can launch campaigns quickly, and the platform grows with you as your needs become more advanced.
Try it free for 14 days.