Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign: 2025 comparison

Reading Time: 10 minutes

Comparing Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign to find the best email marketing tool for your store looks difficult at first, but each tool’s focus makes your decision easiery.

Omnisend is a best-fit ecommerce solution, offering tailored features for online retailers of all sizes. ActiveCampaign is a versatile platform for multiple industries, with advanced customization but less ecommerce focus.

Pricing and features also differ significantly: Omnisend has a free plan and more affordable paid plans, while ActiveCampaign’s higher pricing includes add-ons for ecommerce-essential features like transactional emails.

Join us below for a complete ActiveCampaign vs. Omnisend comparison to help you choose the right tool. 

Today we’ll look at:

• Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign comparison
• Email campaigns
• Marketing automation
• Email list building
• Segmentation
• Analytics and reporting
• Pricing
• Customer support

Quick overview of Omnisend and ActiveCampaign

Before exploring each feature closely, here’s a quick overview of Omnisend vs. ActiveCampaign for ecommerce email marketing:

	Omnisend	ActiveCampaign
Email campaigns	Has ecommerce-oriented email campaign templates for every stage of the buyer’s journey. Includes a built-in campaign booster for better campaign results.	Has an extensive but plain template library for generic email campaign use cases like newsletters, opt-ins, and promotional alerts.
Automation capabilities	Advanced automation features for email, SMS, and web push. Ecommerce-specific workflows that can be set up in a few clicks. The workflow builder has a user-friendly UI.	Advanced automation for email and SMS, integrating data from CRM; 1-on-1 emails Active Campaign provides an extensive list of automation recipes for multiple business cases. However, it has a steep learning curve needing technical help.
List-building features	100+ signup forms and landing page designs. All of them are copy-ready. Multi-step popups and landing pages available for all users. Interactive Wheel of fortune is added to the offering as well.	There are no design- or copy- ready signup forms, only a few layouts to choose from and a standard functionality. Landing pages availale for Plus plan users and above.
Email campaign features	Easy drag-and-drop email builder, 250+ modern-looking email templates for all ecommerce occasions, including Black Friday, winter seasons, etc. Many useful ecommerce features – Campaign Booster, Product Picker, automatic brand asset application, unique discounts codes, etc.	Email campaign builder looks clean and clear. There are banner and timer content blocks, but the product content block is missing. Which means you will have to upload all products by hands instead of uploading all information from the store directly, like in Omnisend.
Advanced segmentation options	Offers advanced segmentation options based on customers’ past purchases, email engagement, on-site behavior, interests, demographics, etc.	Offers advanced segmentation, too. Automatically adds a ‘tag’ every time your customer performs a set action.
Analytics and reporting tools	Has advanced analytics and reporting features to track multiple KPIs and optimize efforts. Advanced reporting is available for Pro plan users only.	Has more advanced reporting, such as automation, deal, contact, conversion, and web personalization reports. The marketing revenue and store performance reports are available on the Plus and higher pricing plans only. More advanced reports like attribution or customer reports are available on the Professional plan and up.
Pricing and value for money	Free plan available. Paid plans start at $16/month, with all features included.	Doesn’t offer a free plan. Paid plans start from $15/month. For email automation, plans start from $49/month.
Customer support and resources	24/7 live chat and email support, Customer Success Manager from $400/month, dedicated help center.	24/7 chat and email support and free resources.
User experience and interface	Easier to integrate with your store. Fewer steps to create automations. Dashboard Overview provides sales performance and audience growth data.	Easy navigation. Automations take more time to configure. Main dashboard has links to create and edit campaigns.

By the look of it, both tools fare well in most areas. However, ActiveCampaign’s complex automations and somewhat cluttered interface are not beginner-friendly. 

Also, ActiveCampaign’s advanced features, like Modules and Module editor, have a considerable learning curve and need some technical expertise, making it a challenging tool for non-technical users. Meanwhile, Omnisend is more beginner-friendly despite its advanced features. 

If at any point you want more information or an in-depth view of Omnisend, feel free to reach out to us.

Let’s get started with the in-depth feature comparisons. 

Campaign builder

Both ActiveCampaign and Omnisend offer email templates for campaigns, but there are some differences in customization capabilities:

ActiveCampaign:

• Provides over 250 pre-designed templates for all kinds of businesses and occasions
• Templates use a drag-and-drop editor, allowing some customization
• You can add, remove, or rearrange content blocks
• Offers AI-generated templates based on brand colors and logos
• While customizable to an extent, ActiveCampaign’s campaign builder doesn’t offer a product content block which is essential for ecommerce businesses

Here’s ActiveCampaign’s campaign builder dashboard in action:

Overall, ActiveCampaign has an extensive but basic template library for multiple email campaign use cases, such as newsletters, online courses, RSVP, welcome series, opt-in emails, promotional alerts, and more.

Omnisend:

• Offers an intuitive, easy-to-use campaign builder
• Templates are fully customizable with extensive drag-and-drop functionality
• You can easily add custom branding, edit themes, and modify all design elements
• Allows saving custom templates for reuse, preserving layout, design, and content
• Offers greater flexibility to create templates that precisely match your brand needs
• Offers unique discount codes for Shopify users, Product Picker and other ecommerce-focused functionality

Here’s the Omnisend campaign builder:

Omnisend’s easy-to-use, intuitive campaign builder offers more ecommerce-related customizations. You can drag and drop campaign elements, easily add branding, edit themes, and more.

Email campaign features 

Omnisend and ActiveCampaign have generous email marketing tools with plenty of competitive features. 

But ActiveCampaign needs more ecommerce-focused features, whereas Omnisend is focused on ecommerce, making it easy for you to send more personalized email campaigns to suit various stages of the buyer’s journey.

Promotional emails, welcome offers, order shipping alerts, personalized recommendations, and abandoned cart recoveries are popular ecommerce email campaigns you can easily create and schedule using Omnisend.

Omnisend ensures you achieve more email clicks and opens with its in-built campaign booster: 

Automation capabilities 

ActiveCampaign and Omnisend have advanced automation features for email and SMS, which most other marketing automation tools don’t offer. These are both key channels to target broader user demographics.

ActiveCampaign has a powerful marketing automation builder with many advanced features beyond email marketing. These include CRM and sales automations, social media integration, and a tool for running limited-time deals.

However, ActiveCampaign has a steeper learning curve than most of its competitors. 

ActiveCampaign’s focus on complex workflows and behavior-based segmentation pushes you to think strategically about customer journeys. If you’re seeking simple email marketing, you’ll likely feel overwhelmed.

The automation builder also introduces the concept of “modular” automation, which can be overwhelming initially — instead of creating one large workflow, you build multiple smaller, interconnected automations. 

While this approach offers flexibility, it requires a significant mindset shift. You’ll need to think about functions and modules, carefully planning how these pieces fit together to create your overall marketing strategy.

The powerful but dense user interface presents another steep learning curve: multiple layers of menus and interconnected features can leave you disoriented as you attempt to set up basic email campaigns.

Omnisend is a strong contender for setting up robust marketing automation workflows. It goes the extra mile and lets you connect more channels to emails, such as web push notifications and SMS, for more contextual communications and customized user experiences. 

With Omnisend, you get pre-built, ready-to-use workflows custom-made for ecommerce businesses that are missing in ActiveCampaign.

To simplify workflows, Omnisend lets you choose an ecommerce-specific goal, like building loyalty, recovering abandoned carts, welcoming users, etc., and offers fitting templates. 

Further, you can A/B test marketing workflows to spot and pursue the best-performing ones for better ROI.

Building and managing your email list 

Omnisend and ActiveCampaign both have features that can help you build and manage your email list. However, only Omnisend offers all these features in its lowest-tier plan. 

For instance, ActiveCampaign’s Starter Plan, at $15/month, limits web forms to standard and inline only and doesn’t enable landing pages. You must spend at least $49/month on the Pro plan for full access to these features.

Omnisend is much more generous. Even on the Free plan, you get full access to popups, web forms, and landing pages. Plus, you get interactive list-building tools, such as the Wheel of Fortune, to boost signups even further:

You can also visually enhance your form layouts and add branding colors or tones for more eye-catching designs:

Overall, Omnisend offers more ways to build lists than ActiveCampaign, making designing forms, popups, and landing pages easier.

Advanced segmentation options 

The secret behind curating more personal emails and receiving high engagement is user segmentation. It ensures the right information is delivered to the right people at the perfect time. 

Segmentation is when you group website visitors, potential/current customers, and leads into targeted groups with similar characteristics. For instance, by segmenting a group of website visitors who have clicked on a particular offer, you can send them follow-up emails to increase the possibility of a conversion.

Omnisend and ActiveCampaign offer advanced segmentation options based on customers’ past purchase activities, email engagement, website behavior, interests, demographics, and many more.

ActiveCampaign’s segmentation strategy lets you automatically add a “tag” every time a consumer performs an action, such as clicking on a link, visiting a web page, etc.

However, Omnisend has the upper hand with segmentation, which includes other key channels like SMS and web push notifications for broader targeting. 

Analytics and reporting tools

Ecommerce businesses must monitor how well their campaigns perform to bring consistency in sales and reduce churn. 

Both Omnisend and ActiveCampaign offer detailed campaign reports and analytics that help you measure performance and improve your future marketing efforts.

ActiveCampaign has more advanced, easy-to-download reports, such as automation, deal, contact, conversion, and web personalization, to name a few.

Omnisend’s advanced reporting summarizes your campaigns’ performance for better decision-making. It offers valuable insights into KPIs like segment-wise performance; i.e., open rates, click-through rates, email, and SMS audience growth trends, etc. — all in a single view. 

Pricing and value for money  

ActiveCampaign offers various pricing plans. There is no free plan, but there is a 14-day limited access free trial. 

The lowest-priced plan starts from $15/month and includes multi-step marketing automation features, but it does not include sales automation or omnichannel marketing via SMS and social channels. 

For your $15/month, you get a 10x contact limit for email sends, meaning if you have 500 contacts, you can send 5,000 emails.

The Starter plan also lacks predictive sending and conditional content (the ability to show unique content for your segments).

If you need email marketing automation features and ecommerce-related integrations, pricing starts from $49 for the Plus plan, with SMS at additional cost. 

Omnisend’s pricing is based on your email list size. You can select the number of subscribers you own and get a custom-priced plan. 

Omnisend has a Free Forever plan that lets you send up to 500 emails/month and 500 web push notifications/month with access to all features. These include:

• 250+ email templates
• Pre-built workflows and segments
• Unlimited segmentation
• Popups, signup forms, and landing pages
• 130+ integrations with other apps
• A/B testing 
• List cleaning tool
• Sales and performance reports, including clickmaps 

Omnisend’s paid plans start at $16/month for 500 contacts and 6,000 emails/month. Brands needing advanced reporting and unlimited emails with SMS automation can opt for the Pro plan, which starts at $59/month. 

You can also get a dedicated Customer Success Manager when you spend $400/month, to help you make the most of the platform and your campaigns. 

Use our email pricing calculator below to quickly compare price rates and features with ActiveCampaign. Simply input your desired number of contacts, select ActiveCampaign from the list, and see how Omnisend stacks up against it.

Quick email provider pricing comparison

Quickly and easily compare the top email marketing providers so you can find the best platform for your ecommerce store needs.

Customer support and resources

Both tools offer 24/7 live chat and email support for all its paid and free trial/plan users. 

Considering ActiveCampaign’s steep learning curve, around-the-clock help is a must. You can also access the tool’s various self-help docs and resources that help you get started.

Omnisend is noted for its award-winning customer support team. It also has a dedicated Help Center with useful resources for multiple searchable topics, from ecommerce integrations to email builders and automations. 

User experience and interface

ActiveCampaign’s navigation bar shows that it’s an extensive platform with multiple features and functionality, for any industry. This navigation bar and collapsible secondary bar allows quick access to features.

The platform is organized into key sections like Contacts, Campaigns, Automations, and Deals, each with tools and reports. You can manage contacts, create email campaigns, set up automations, and track sales pipelines in a few clicks.

The page builder provides a user-friendly canvas for creating landing pages, with drag-and-drop functionality and customizable themes. 

The Contacts section contains reports on Contact Trend, Field Breakdown, Nearby Contacts, and Tag Trends. The Campaigns area offers analytics, including Campaigns Performance, Email Client Trends, and Predictive Content insights.

Although it’s a bit crowded, Active Campaign’s navigation is pretty logical and intuitive. 

Omnisend guides you through connecting your store and importing your contacts with clear steps. You can quickly set up branded emails using pre-populated templates and your store’s assets. 

Enabling basic features like signup forms and automated workflows is straightforward. While there’s depth to explore in areas like multichannel marketing and advanced reporting, you can start with the essentials and gradually learn more complex features. 

The interface is intuitive, and many automated processes allow you to launch effective email campaigns without extensive technical knowledge.

Final verdict 

Omnisend or ActiveCampaign: which tool meets your needs? Ultimately, you must choose a more ecommerce-focused tool that offers smooth integrations with your ecommerce platform.

Here’s a quick wrap-up of the features we’ve discussed so far:

• Omnisend has more ecommerce-oriented support for setting up and running email campaigns with its templates and features
• Omnisend’s marketing automation workflows are easier to set up for beginners and do not need extra technical intervention like ActiveCampaign
• Along with email, Omnisend supports SMS and web push notifications for a complete marketing solution for ecommerce brands
• Omnisend and ActiveCampaign have advanced segmentation features
• Both tools offer analytics, and ActiveCampaign has more advanced custom reports for its Enterprise plan users
• Omnisend has a free forever plan and more affordable plans
• Omnisend has an award-winning 24/7 customer support team and a dedicated help center for all customers

If you’re a growing ecommerce brand looking for a tailored email and SMS automation solution at an affordable price, we suggest you try Omnisend.