ActiveCampaign vs. Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) vs. Brevo

I've been using ActiveCampaign since around 2018-2019 and I've always been satisfied with the software. It's simple to use, connects with the other tools I use and makes it easy for me to duplicate automations, email templates and workflows as I need to. On top of that, any time I've had an issue (which I think is around twice in the past 5/6 years), the customer service has always been super helpful and my issue has been resolved quickly.

Incentivized

Amazon Simple Email Service comes with the bundle of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and it also offers a limited number of emails per month for free. One who has a technical background and wants to send custom emails with custom domains in a professional way can go with Amazon Simple Email Service. If you have no technical background or tech team, it might not be useful for you.

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Brevo is very suitable for companies and individuals who want to run email marketing campaigns, create a strong corporate image, manage customer relationships, and build customer loyalty. Like any application, there are areas for improvement, such as more templates and a simpler CRM application, but I believe it has more positive features than negative ones, and for us, it has become a strategic partner. Brevo es muy adecuado para empresas y personas que desean realizar campañas de mailing marketing, crear un sólida imagen corporativa, el CRM con los clientes y fidelizarlos. Hay puntos de mejora como toda aplicación como mas plantillas, mejor sencilles en su aplicativo de CRM pero considero que tiene mas funcionalidades positivas que negativas y para nosotros se ha convertido en un aliado estrategico This review was originally written in Spanish and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.

• Collects and filters emails from various lead magnets exceptionally well (especially if a user wants to re-sign up to the same lead magnet and go through it again, they can)
• Super easy to use email creation that is aesthetically pleasing and user friendly
• Easy email sequences and user classification from a large range of opt in trigger options

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• As compare to other vendors that I have integrated response is very quick.
• You can verify both domain or email to send out the emails from.
• While setup you can easily configure it with your domain with few clicks like adding CNAME, DKIM records
• Easy to use with or without access key and secret key within aws servers. You can directly map permissions to servers to go without credentials using boto3.

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• Sendinblue allows you to send emails that do not arrive in spam
• Sendinblue, through its security measures and filters, helps keep contact databases well organized and up to date
• Sendinblue offers an easy-to-use newsletter creation tool and, in case of lack of inspiration, many templates

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• It took me a while to get to understand where to find things, and I used a free online course from a consultant who specialises in AC to help me get the foundations set up more easily. That said, there were lots of onboarding workshops, which were good. It just felt like it required a lot of different angles of learning to just get started.
• The customer support took longer than other software to get back to me via email, though once I found the chat option for my most recent query, that was fast.
• I've ended up switching to another programme where more software is more naturally integrated, and the AC equivalent is included in the price, along with many other types of software. However, design-wise, ActiveCampaign is much better.
• I also had a problem with a form used on my WordPress website, which has a BuddyBoss platform - the colours on the form would be overridden by colour choices for the website, so they were hard to read (pink text on purple background instead of the gold text it was meant to be)
• I couldn't always find the templates I was looking for or how to access them for automation-based emails. I think when I used it, there was a new type of template for newsletters that weren't available for automations, so I had to recreate it, which added time.

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• While the service limits are one of the main points that keep the delivery metrics so reliable, it can be stressful to get a new implementation out the door quickly.
• If you're looking for a point-and-click style email delivery tool, this is not the right type of product for you. Amazon Simple Email Service is for a developer-centric approach to implementation into existing applications, processes, and services.

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• Onboarding can be a bit tricky. As with most WordPress additions, different plugins will have different configurations. Don't expect to install and just click activate.
• Online support is highly technical. Email is its own beast and even good digital may not know more than the basics.
• The reporting is strangely not intuitive or even very end-user friendly even with the robust data being tracked.
• Composing in their editor can sometimes sync differently. Just like a video game, it's helpful to save often despite the autosave.

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I am committed at the moment. Rebuilding the automations I have would be a huge time drain. Plus the cost of learning a new system and the risk to deliverability of porting a 6,000 person list to a new platform. Also, AC offers everything I need ast a reasonable (but a little high) price. So, why not a 10? Because, early 2023, AC dropped a massive 2x price hike on long-term customers. They knew few would shift, so this feels like a cynical cash grab and left a bad taste, If they do something like this again, this camel will have a broken back.

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SendinBlue is providing an excellent value to my business by simplifying and speeding up the way that we interact with our customers

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ActiveCampaign has been the easiest marketing automation software we have ever used. They provide tips throughout the entire process of anything you are building. Their support team through LIVE CHAT has been extremely fast and helpful. The monthly meetings provided with the enablement team has helped us through several large and urgent needs.

1. Very less cost. 2. Fastest in market. 3. Negligible downtime. 4. Easy to integrate with other systems. 5. Easy to setup with your domain and email.

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It's okay, it's easy to use, has good features, and good automation options, but it lacks better delivery support. Many messages end up in spam, even though I have a dedicated IP address that I pay for separately, and I think it needs more design options to make emails stand out, especially in terms of typography. That's why I'm not giving it a 10. It also lacks integration with other tools. EStá bien, es fácil de usar, tiene buenas funcionalidades, tiene buenas opciones de automatización, le falta mayor apoyo en cuanto a entrega, muchos de los mensajes se vana spam, aun cuando tengo una IP dedicada que pago por aparte y creo que faltan opciones de diseño para que los correos puedan ser diferentes, sobre todo en tipografía. Por eso no le doy 10. Falta integración con otras herramientas.

I haven't experienced application errors or unplanned outages at all. Active Campaign is ultra reliable and I would not be using them if that were the case. Also, the helpful emails they send are welcomed and informative, and present very practical tips and guidance for using the platform. They're always demonstrating new features and I'm thankful for that.

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I have never had any planned outages in the time I have been using the software and have had no issues with accessing it.

Oh my gosh, Active Campaign's performance gets an A+++ in my book. The pages load quickly and so do the reports. I haven't noticed any slowdowns when it's integrating with other programs and it performs excellently on all levels.

Incentivized

Everything loads very quickly, it saves as you go along so you're unlikely to loose work if your computer fails. Reports are there immediately too so you're able to act quickly on customer engagement.

This might be the best part. The chat support lady offered to make a video to help me solve my problem. I worked in customer service for years and I've never done that, lol. So, if they're offering things like that, I can only imagine that they'd be able to handle most any issue you throw at them.

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We did not have the need of contacting Amazon for support. The documentation they provide is of great quality. Examples are easy to follow. One thing to have into consideration is we didn't have the premium support for AWS, so I can't provide details on how good or bad this service is, but in general, the basic support I had was great.

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These people helped me identify errors when setting up DKIM and were more than helpful in trying to diagnose low open rates with a few campaigns identifying where improvement can be made and how to more effectively manage contact lists. The support is excellent.

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Very satisfied with our implementation in our professional medical practice, allowing us to be on top of client service, and not miss out on crucial information and insights. Marketing is often neglected in professional practices and ActiveCampaign solved this problem with aplomb.

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If you follow all the steps of the setup process they give you, any one can set this up in about 1 - 2 hours.

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I moved to ActiveCampaign from Mailchimp. Admittedly, I was using the free version of Mailchimp, but I had numerous episodes of subscriber data NOT being added to Mailchimp, despite using API to integrate with my mailing list. Obviously, I couldn't pay for clicks and not capture subscriber data, so I had to find something else. ActiveCampaign has been 100% reliable in testing.

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Mailchimp has a fixed monthly price, and with the number of emails that we sent, it's pretty expensive. Since our mailings are quite infrequent, using Mailchimp didn't make financial sense for us, even though Mailchimp is a more polished, packaged solution for email marketing. We evaluated other email delivery solutions as well and didn't find anything that matches Amazon SES on reliability and pricing.

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Sendinblue not stacking up so great unfortunately. We are considering going back to Constant Contact because of ongoing issues we are having with Sendinblue. We have however just upgraded to Premium with Sendinblue, mainly so we can get Telephone Support. But now it seems Sendinblue do not call you, you have to call them. With Constant Contact they would phone us and talk us through any issues we were having.

We selected Sendinblue initially because of price.

Also, our average Open rate over the last few months we were with Constant Contact was about 20%. Our Open rate - to exactly the same database, has dropped to under 10% with Sendinblue. We can't understand this. Doesn't make sense.

The Click Rate has stayed about the same - averaging about 2-3% on both platforms.

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My web designer told me about Active Campaign and although I don't recall which platform I had before, I LOVE Active Campaign and its user friendliness. The transition was seamless and I've never had a problem with functionality or server failure.

Active Campaign provides so many features, and makes it easy for non-techies to maneuver around the site with ease. They capture information and put it in an easy-to-read format.

At this point, I don't think I'd ever use any other platform!

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They have multiple options for upgrading bigger senders or if you need more emails sent in a month.

• I haven't monetized my list yet so no clear ROI but great from a list-building perspective
• The software is not cheap so at times I feel like I may not be getting the most out of the product because I'm not using all of the features

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• SES is still more cost effective than other email services like Mailgun.
• Unless we have a high-traffic month, staying within the free tier is very nice for our bottom line.
• Not having to spend time worrying about SES reliability saves us frustration and money.

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• Saved us over 80% of what we used to pay aWeber for the exact same services
• Maintained similar effectiveness in email blast/newsletter open rates (slightly less than aWeber but within margins)
• Saves us an incredible amount of time in content creation using Brevo content editor