ActiveCampaign vs ClickUp

When it comes to Customer Relationship Management (CRM), choosing the right platform can impact your business operations and growth. ActiveCampaign and ClickUp are two popular options, each offering distinct features tailored to different business needs. ActiveCampaign is renowned for its robust email marketing and automation capabilities, while ClickUp excels in task management and productivity tools. In this blog post, we will explore a detailed comparison of these two CRM solutions, looking at their core functionalities, pricing structures, and overall benefits. We'll also introduce folk as a compelling alternative to consider.

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 ClickUp?

ClickUp is a project management and productivity platform designed to help teams and individuals organize tasks, track progress, and collaborate in one workspace. Although it is primarily a project management tool, ClickUp includes some CRM elements.

Key features of ClickUp

• Task management: ClickUp allows users to create, assign, and track tasks with custom statuses, providing flexibility in managing work processes across different projects.
• Custom views: The platform offers multiple views like lists, boards, calendars, and Gantt charts, enabling users to visualize tasks and workflows in a format that suits their preferences.
• Goal tracking: Users can set, track, and manage goals within ClickUp, aligning tasks and projects with broader objectives.
• Time tracking: ClickUp includes a built-in time tracking feature to log time spent on tasks, allowing users to monitor productivity or billable hours.
• Workflow automation: Automation in ClickUp enables users to reduce manual tasks by setting up rules that trigger actions, such as status updates or notifications, based on predefined conditions.
• Custom fields: The platform allows users to add custom fields to tasks, enabling them to track specific data points or categorize tasks according to their needs.

ActiveCampaign vs. ClickUp: 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. In contrast, ClickUp does not have a dedicated pipeline management feature designed specifically for sales or CRM purposes, but users can create customizable pipelines using task lists, boards, and custom statuses. This flexibility allows users to adapt ClickUp’s project management tools for sales tracking, though it may require more manual setup compared to ActiveCampaign’s streamlined approach. For businesses prioritizing direct sales pipeline management, ActiveCampaign offers a more integrated solution, while ClickUp provides a versatile platform suitable for those who prefer to design their own systems within a broader project management context.

2. Ease of use

ActiveCampaign offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced users. ClickUp, while versatile, can be overwhelming due to its extensive feature set, requiring a steeper learning curve to fully leverage its capabilities.

3. Contact enrichment

ActiveCampaign and ClickUp both do not appear to have a contact enrichment feature.

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. ClickUp does not have a dedicated outreach feature specifically designed for communication with external contacts, such as clients or leads. However, users can manage outreach tasks using custom workflows which requires manual setup.

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. ClickUp's automation capabilities are general-purpose and not specifically tailored to CRM functions like lead nurturing or contact segmentation, which may require additional customization to meet more advanced CRM needs.

6. Integration

ActiveCampaign offers integrations with over 900 third-party applications, allowing users to connect the platform with tools like Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, and Google Analytics. ClickUp provides basic integrations with various third-party tools, such as Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, and Dropbox, to enhance workflow efficiency and collaboration within the platform.

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. ClickUp's AI integration is relatively new and comes in the form of 'Chat'. It connects tasks, docs, people, and all of your company’s knowledge with AI. Using this information to become a knowledge manager, help you manage your tasks and write.

Price and plans comparison

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

ActiveCampaign prices

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

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

ClickUp prices

ClickUp offers a free forever plan for personal use. Premium options are available as either a monthly and annual subscription plan. The following is a high level overview of the annual subscription plans available.

• Unlimited: $7/user/month.
• Business: $12/user/month.
• Enterprise: Undisclosed.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to ActiveCampaign and ClickUp

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. ClickUp: What's the verdict?

Between ActiveCampaign and ClickUp, both platforms offer robust features catering to different business needs. ActiveCampaign excels in marketing automation and sales processes, while ClickUp shines in project management and team collaboration. However, for companies seeking 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.