ActiveCampaign-vs-SharpSpring

ActiveCampaign and SharpSpring are centralized sales and marketing platforms that offer email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM capabilities. Both products are preferred by small businesses on TrustRadius, though SharpSpring has a solution specifically designed for marketing agencies.

Features 

As marketing automation platforms with built-in CRMs, both products share core email marketing and automation capabilities. These include email & online marketing, dynamic content creation, lead management and scoring, marketing attribution, campaign management, and reporting & analytics. However, each has a few unique features as well. 

For example, SharpSpring offers a landing page and blog builder while ActiveCampaign does not. SharpSpring also includes a content calendar, social publishing features, and social listening tools while ActiveCampaign only integrates with social media management and listening tools. 

ActiveCampaign also offers and SMS and email campaign testing features while SharpSpring does not include these capabilities.

Limitations

The main limitation of ActiveCampaign is that not all features are included for all plans. For example, its built-in CRM, attribution, subscription by SMS, and contact & lead scoring capabilities are not available on ActiveCampaign’s Lite plan—the lowest-priced tier. In contrast, all of SharpSpring’s plans include the full set of features. 

When compared with ActiveCampaign, SharpSpring’s biggest limitation is its pricing. ActiveCampaign has prices that start as low as $9 per user per month for 500 contacts. While SharpSpring’s prices start at $550 per month for 1,500 contacts, though it has unlimited users. 

Pricing 

Both products have monthly, subscription-based pricing that varies depending on your organization’s contact list size. However, SharpSpring has unlimited users and includes the full list of features for all plans. In contrast, ActiveCampaign charges per user and does not offer all features on its lower-tier plans. 

ActiveCampaign pricing ranges from $9 to $459 per month, depending on the contact list size and number of users. SharSpring’s prices range from $550 to $1,250 per month, also based on the contact list size. 

Which Is Right For You?

ActiveCampaign is a great choice for startups or micro-businesses that have a small number of contacts and a tight budget. It’s also ideal for small marketing teams at SMBs, as it charges per user as well as by contact list size. 

SharpSpring is ideal for marketing agencies looking for a marketing automation solution tailored to their needs. If your marketing team needs access to a wide range of marketing automation and CRM features, even on a lower-tier plan, SharpSpring is a good choice.