ActiveCampaign vs Clay

Choosing the right CRM platform can make a huge difference to the way you manage customer relations and sales. ActiveCampaign and Clay are two solutions often shortlisted. Each offering distinct features tailored to different business needs. In this blog post, we'll provide a comprehensive comparison of their key features, pricing, and overall benefits. We also introduce a firm favourite – folk, which is a popular alternative.

What is ActiveCampaign?

Active Campaign is a marketing automation platform designed to help businesses of all sizes manage customer interactions and drive growth through personalized and automated communication.

Key features of ActiveCampaign

• Email marketing: Create personalized email campaigns with drag-and-drop templates, advanced segmentation, and automated sequences to engage your audience effectively.
• Marketing automation: Automate workflows for email, SMS, and site messages, based on user behavior and custom triggers, enhancing customer engagement and retention.
• Sales automation: Integrates a CRM with automation tools to streamline the sales process, track leads, manage deals, and automate follow-ups.
• CRM feature: Sales focused CRM to track and manage processes using automation.
  

What is Clay?

Clay is a customer relationship management tool designed to help users organize and manage contact information and interactions, with a focus on automation and contact enrichment.

Key features of Clay

• Contact management: The platform allows users to organize and manage contacts by consolidating information in one place. Users can add custom fields, notes, and tags to categorize and track interactions with each contact, making it easier to manage customer relationships.
• Automation: Clay CRM includes automation tools that handle repetitive tasks like contact updates and reminders, helping users streamline their communication and workflow processes.
• Search and filtering: The platform provides advanced search and filtering functionality, allowing users to segment their contact database based on various criteria such as engagement history, tags, or custom fields.
• Real-time updates: The platform provides real-time updates for contact records and tasks, ensuring that users have the latest information on their contacts and projects at all times.

ActiveCampaign vs. Clay: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

ActiveCampaign's sales pipeline management feature is integrated with its CRM, enabling businesses to streamline their sales processes. It allows users to visually manage deals through customizable pipelines, automate tasks like follow-ups, and track every stage of the sales journey.
Clay CRM does not offer a dedicated pipeline management feature as part of its core functionality. While users can organize contacts and tasks, the platform lacks specific tools for tracking deals or leads through stages in a sales pipeline.

2. Easy of use

ActiveCampaign is known for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise. Its intuitive design and clear navigation simplify the process of setting up campaigns and automations. Clay, while functional, may require a steeper learning curve for users not familiar with CRM systems.

3. Contact enrichment

ActiveCampaign does not appear to have a contact enrichment feature. Clay offers a contact enrichment feature that automatically gathers additional information about contacts from various sources, such as social media profiles, public databases, and professional networks. This feature helps users build more comprehensive profiles by pulling in data like job titles, company information, and social links.

4. Outreach

ActiveCampaign’s outreach capabilities are functional, offering email, SMS, and some social media tools for multi-channel communication. It allows businesses to segment their audiences and send personalized messages, while automations help manage follow-ups across different channels. However, the SMS functionality is quite basic. Clay CRM does not have a dedicated outreach feature specifically designed for managing customer communication, such as email marketing or mass outreach. However, users can track interactions with contacts and set up tasks or reminders for individual follow-ups.

5. Automation

ActiveCampaign's automation features allow users to create workflows that automate tasks like sending emails, updating contact records, and triggering follow-up actions based on predefined conditions. These workflows can be set up using a visual drag-and-drop builder, and they support a range of triggers, such as contact behavior, form submissions, or sales pipeline changes. Clay CRM includes automation features that allow users to streamline repetitive tasks, such as updating contact information, sending follow-up reminders, or managing workflow tasks. These automations can be set up to trigger actions based on certain conditions, such as time delays.

6. Integration

ActiveCampaign offers a wide range of integrations with over 900 third-party applications, allowing users to connect the platform with tools like Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, and Google Analytics. Clay supports integrations with various third-party tools, allowing users to connect external applications for enhanced functionality.

7. Artificial Intelligence

ActiveCampaign integrates AI features to enhance various aspects of its platform, such as email marketing and automation. The AI-powered tools include predictive sending, which analyzes contact behavior to suggest the best time to send emails, and predictive content, which helps in optimizing subject lines and messaging. Clay CRM does not currently offer dedicated AI integration.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both ActiveCampaign and Clay.

ActiveCampaign prices

ActiveCampaign's price plans are based on the number of contacts you have. The following plan is based on 1,000 contacts.

• Starter: Starting from $15/month.
• Plus: Starting from $49/month.
• Pro: Starting from $79/month.
• Enterprise: Starting from $145/month.

Clay  prices

Clay has a free plan for personal use, for up to 1,000 contacts. After that premium plans are as follows on an annual subscription.

• Pro: $10 per user, per month.
• Team: $40 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to ActiveCampaign and Clay

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system.

Key features

• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

ActiveCampaign vs. Clay: What's the Verdict?

Between ActiveCampaign and Clay, it's clear that both platforms offer robust CRM solutions with unique strengths. ActiveCampaign excels in marketing automation and sales-focused CRM features, making it ideal for businesses seeking comprehensive automation tools. On the other hand, Clay provides a more flexible approach, catering to those who prefer a highly customizable CRM experience. For companies that need a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free