Kit vs. ActiveCampaign Comparison: Which platform is better?

Struggling with email open rates and clicks as a creator? Learn how one of this software can help in this Kit vs. ActiveCampaign comparison.

Do you struggle with low email open rates, especially as a creator? Start using email marketing automation software.

Kit and ActiveCampaign excel at it. 

Kit caters to sole creators, while ActiveCampaign suits growing e-commerce businesses. However, how does each perform as marketing automation software?

Let’s explore them in this Kit vs. ActiveCampaign comparison.

Kit vs. ActiveCampaign: At a Glance

Criteria	Kit	ActiveCampaign	Winner
SMB Guide’s Rating	7.6/10	8.2/10	ActiveCampaign
Marketing Automation Capabilities	Advanced automation	Advanced automation	ActiveCampaign
Email Builder	Text-based, visual editor	Flexible, powerful	ActiveCampaign
Personalization & Customization	Highly personalized	Highly customizable	ActiveCampaign
Campaign Performance Tracking	Detailed metrics	Detailed metrics	ActiveCampaign
Email Deliverability	✅	✅	ActiveCampaign
List Management	More advanced segmentation and tagging	Dynamic segmentation	ActiveCampaign
A/B Testing	✅	✅	ActiveCampaign
Advanced Reporting & Insights	Advanced Insights	In-depth insights	ActiveCampaign
Compliance & Security	✅	✅	ActiveCampaign
User Experience and User Interface	Minimalistic interface	Professional interface	Kit
Integrations and Compatibility	130+ integrations	950+ integrations	ActiveCampaign
Customer Support	Live chat and email	24/7 live support	ActiveCampaign
Pricing	Free – $2,599/mo	$15/mo – $1,169/mo	Kit
Scalability	Ideal for scaling businesses	Users with larger audiences pay more	Kit

Kit: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

Kit is an email marketing platform built for creators. It provides them with automation and monetization tools to drive business growth. 

Marketing automation is now a common phenomenon, and Kit excels at it. The platform allows users to trigger email sequences, organize subscribers, and create ideal sales funnels.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

Kit pricing is straightforward. It offers three plans and a forever-free package. The plans are scalable, and the paid packages have a two-week free trial period.

Billing is monthly or annual, with yearly payments getting 2 months off.

Here are the plans:

• Newsletter: Free (max 10K subscribers)
• Creator: $29 monthly or $290 yearly (1K subscribers)
• Pro: $59 monthly or $590 yearly (1K subscribers)

ActiveCampaign: Key Features, Pros, Cons, & Pricing

ActiveCampaign is marketing software built for businesses with complex needs. It excels by providing automation tools, a powerful CRM, email marketing, and more.

Businesses with e-commerce sites or creators selling high tickets will find the software ideal.

Pros & Cons

Pricing

ActiveCampaign’s pricing structure is simple. It offers four scalable plans but no free plan. The plans have a two-week trial period, and users can request a demo.

Something to note is that the billing is monthly only.

Here are the plans:

• Enterprise: $145 monthly (1K subs)
• Starter: $8 monthly, 50% off (1K subs)
• Pro: $49 monthly (1K subs)
• Plus: $79 monthly (1K subs)

Marketing Automation Capabilities

Businesses will find that Kit uses basic branching logic within the email sequences. On the other hand, ActiveCampaign, through its visual builder, allows advanced branching logic with multiple actions.

It allows more granular personalization of emails than Kit.

Regarding trigger range, Active Campaign has an edge, offering triggers like custom events, visits, and more. The best part is that it has native integrations, unlike Kit, which relies on Zapier to connect external triggers.

ActiveCampaign also stands out in cross-channel automation. It allows users to add social posts, SMS, and site messaging within the workflows.

On dynamic content personalization, Kit uses basic subscriber tags within emails. ActiveCampaign allows advanced personalization of landing pages, email, and site content based on subscriber behavior and attributes

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Email Builder

Kit provides users with text-based templates that focus on simplicity. However, it lacks a broad range of pre-designed templates. Unlike Kit, the ActiveCampaign template library is extensive and includes industry-specific options.

For email editors, Kit offers a classic builder with drag-and-drop limitations. ActiveCampaign’s builder is more powerful and allows intricate customizations.

Both software templates are also responsive to mobile devices, which is a plus. On HTML editing, Kit lacks the capability. However, ActiveCampaign supports direct HTML editing for custom templates.

ActiveCampaign stands out in terms of email preview and spam testing. Unlike Kit, it offers comprehensive capabilities.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Personalization & Customization

Kit provides basic merge tags for subscriber info, such as custom fields, email, and name.

ActiveCampaign stands out here, offering support for merge tags, site activity, and custom data fields. It allows for granular personalization through conditional logic.

On segmentation and targeting, ActiveCampaign edges Kit. It allows segmentation based on custom events, site activity, and more.

It enables precise targeting through behavioral triggers.

Regarding personalization tokens, both software offer the functionality. However, ActiveCampaign excels at behavior-based personalization.

It allows users to tailor email messages based on interactions.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Campaign Performance Tracking

Kit offers basic email marketing reports like CTR, bounces, unsubscribes, and open rates. However, it lacks granular metrics like on ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign’s tracking metrics are comprehensive; it reports on ROI, CTR, heat maps, and more.

While Kit allows setting campaign goals, it lacks in-depth revenue and lead gen tracking. However, ActiveCampaign allows for the setting and tracking specific goals, including revenue.

On A/B testing, both software offer support. However, ActiveCampaign offers granular insights for optimizing. Regarding integration with third-party analytics tools, both connect with Google Analytics.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Email Deliverability

Unlike ActiveCampaign, Kit lacks a built-in spam filtering capability. However, the platform offers resources to help users prioritize clean email lists. In fact, the Top plan (Pro) provides a feature enabling users to track spam complaints and bounce rates.

ActiveCampaign provides a spam checker tool for analyzing emails for spam triggers before bulk sending. The software also offers tools that help maintain the sender’s reputation and track bounce rates and spam complaints. 

The best part is that ActiveCampaign includes dedicated IPs for top plans for better control. On emergency control, both software allow account owners to modify or revoke access.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

List Management

Kit supports segmentation based on forms, tags, and subscriber data (location or name). The segmentation focuses on static subscriber attributes but with basic behavior targeting flexibility.

ActiveCampaign provides users with a more capable engine for segmenting based on broader criteria. These include purchase history, custom events, site activity, and demographics.

Both platforms also offer tools to maintain and clean email lists. ConvertKit provides a blacklist feature for blocking specific emails but only available in the Pro plan. 

ActiveCampaign offers advanced capability with automated unsubscribe and bounce management tools. Regarding subscriber management, both software includes opt-in/out options.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

A/B Testing

Kit allows users to A/B test email subject lines but limits testing of other elements, such as CTAs, content, and more. 

On the other hand, ActiveCampaign provides a robust A/B testing tool that allows users to test various email elements. These include content blocks, CTAs, subject lines, and images.

Regarding setting the A/B tests, both software offers a straightforward process.

On reporting, ActiveCampaign shines. Unlike Kit, it provides in-depth test reports. Users can view conversion results, CTR, sales per variation, and more.

It makes it easy for users to get granular insights on campaign optimization.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Advanced Reporting & Insights

Kit reporting on segmented campaigns is basic. It only displays CTR, unsubscribes, and open rates. It lacks in-depth reporting on subscriber behavior in the segments.

ActiveCampaign stands out in segmented reporting, allowing users to analyze more metrics for each segment. These include deal forecasting, attribution, heat maps, and more.

On conversion attribution, Kit doesn’t attribute to specific campaigns. However, ActiveCampaign attributes a conversion to specific touchpoints or email campaigns.

On predictive analytics, Kit lacks the functionality. However, ActiveCampaign incorporates predictive algos to forecast future email campaigns based on historical data.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Compliance & Security

GDPR compliance features provided by Kit are basic. It offers unsubscribe options and subscriber consent management only.

ActiveCampaign offers a more comprehensive GDPR compliance toolkit. These include DPA, consent management, and data access request capability.

Regarding encryption, both use standard AES-256 and TLS 1.2.

With permission-based marketing, both software confirm adherence to set principles. It means they send emails to an opted-in subscriber.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

User Interface and User Experience

Kit offers a simple and clean interface built for solo creators. It makes it easy to create, send, and manage emails. The menu and features are well-organized, simplifying navigation.

ActiveCampaign offers a more cluttered interface full of features and buttons. While comprehensive, it can be overwhelming when navigating, especially for beginners.

With email creation, Kit uses a basic editor with few templates and customization limitations. ActiveCampaign provides a drag-and-drop editor with a library of templates. The templates are highly customizable, even with HTML.

On preview and testing, both software offer the functionality and it applies to mobile and desktop users.

✅ Winner: Kit

Integrations and Compatibility

Kit lacks a built-in CRM feature, but users can link 100+ platforms through Zapier. The Zapier integrations require tech knowledge.

ActiveCampaign stands out here because it integrates 900+ systems. It also integrates with many built-in CRMs to help users streamline workflows.

With API availability, each offers one for custom integrations and development. On e-commerce integration, ActiveCampaign offers more connections with popular platforms than Kit.

Both platforms also allow social media integration, with ActiveCampaign offering tracking and posting functionalities.

Regarding mobile apps, Kit aligns it with the focus on solo creators. ActiveCampaign offers a mobile app with advanced features like reporting, automation editing, and more.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Customer Support

Kit support channels include live chat and email. The response time on live chat is timely and takes 3- 5 minutes. The feedback from support agents is also helpful, even on technical issues.

ActiveCampaign support is available through phone, live chat, and email. Response times on live chat are quick, taking 2-5 minutes. The support agents help provide feedback, even on technical problems.

With self-help resources, both software offer guides, documentation, and articles on the inner workings.

✅ Winner: ActiveCampaign

Pricing

Kit offers three scalable plans, including a free package that supports up to 1K subscribers.

ActiveCampaign also offers scalable plans but without a free package. The entry plan caps subscribers at 500 for $8 (50% off).

It makes Kit offer a better value proposition, especially in its free plan. It supports 1000 subscribers and sends unlimited emails.

ActiveCampaign’s advanced features make it better value for businesses with more extensive lists and complex marketing.

✅ Winner: Kit

Scalability

Kit pricing scales depending on subscriber count. It can accommodate growing businesses with higher subscriber caps at an affordable rate.

ActiveCampaign pricing also scales based on subscriber count. However, adding more features due to growing subscribers requires paying add-on fees.

It can become costly, especially for smaller businesses.

✅ Winner: Kit

Standout Features of Kit

Kit excels at offering email marketing software that is ideal for creators. Here are two features that make it stand out.

Advanced lead capture

Creators aiming to grow their email list will find the software provides tools for automating the process. Users can use it to capture leads and manage them well.

Tag-based contact segmentation

Users can send targeted emails to specific groups, which benefits personalized campaigns.

Standout Features of ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign offers more advanced features that suit small and growing businesses. Here are two features that make it unique.

CRM function

The software offers a built-in CRM that helps with contact segmentation and lead scoring. It simplifies managing email marketing and sales.

SMS marketing

ActiveCampaign supports adding SMS marketing to campaigns. It is handy in reaching a wider audience besides email contacts.

Kit vs. ActiveCampaign: SMB Guide’s Verdict

Our comparison of Kit and ActiveCampaign shows that each software suits different users. ConvertKit suits solo creators, while ActiveCampaign is for growing e-commerce businesses.

However, after evaluating them, ActiveCampaign wins. Here is why;

ActiveCampaign offers more than email marketing functionality. It includes lead scoring segmentation and more.

Choose Kit If:

You are a solo creator and need a simple email marketing platform.

Choose ActiveCampaign If:

You need an all-rounded marketing automation software for e-commerce sites.