ActiveCampaign vs Freshsales

ActiveCampaign and Freshsales are two platforms designed to enhance customer relationship management and streamline sales workflows, each with its own focus. ActiveCampaign combines CRM with advanced marketing automation, making it ideal for businesses seeking multi-channel communication and lead nurturing tools. Freshsales, by contrast, integrates AI-driven insights, sales automation, and communication tools, catering to teams prioritizing a data-focused approach to sales management. In this blog post, we’ll compare their key features to help you determine which platform best suits your needs – or if folk might provide a more balanced alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.

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 Freshsales?

Freshsales is a CRM platform by Freshworks designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes with AI-powered tools and automation. It provides features like lead scoring, deal tracking, email and call management, and workflow automation to enhance efficiency and drive conversions. Freshsales also integrates communication and sales in one place, offering tools for personalized outreach and detailed insights to improve sales strategies.

Key features of Freshsales

• AI-powered insights: Freshsales leverages AI to provide recommendations, predict deal outcomes, and offer actionable insights to improve sales strategies.
• Lead scoring: Automatically prioritizes leads based on their engagement and likelihood to convert, helping sales teams focus on high-value opportunities.
• Deal tracking: Provides a visual sales pipeline to track deals through various stages and monitor progress in real time.
• Email and call management: Integrates email and phone communication, allowing users to manage interactions directly from the platform.
• Workflow automation: Automates repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails or updating deal statuses, reducing manual work and improving efficiency.

ActiveCampaign vs. Freshsales: Feature Comparison

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

1. Sales pipeline management

ActiveCampaign's sales pipeline management is integrated with its CRM, allowing businesses to streamline sales processes efficiently. Users can visually manage deals through customizable pipelines, automate tasks such as follow-ups, and track every stage of the sales journey. This integration enhances workflow efficiency and provides a comprehensive view of sales activities.
Freshsales offers a visual sales pipeline that tracks deals through various stages in real time. Its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality simplifies moving deals between stages, offering a clear overview of progress. Freshsales also integrates tools like lead scoring and AI insights, which help prioritize deals and predict outcomes. While Freshsales excels in sales workflows, its pipeline may be less flexible for teams needing broader project or task tracking capabilities. Both platforms provide robust sales pipeline features, but the choice between them may depend on whether your team prioritizes integration with broader CRM functions or streamlined sales-specific workflows.

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2. Ease of use

ActiveCampaign offers a user-friendly interface with a visual workflow builder, making it easy for users to navigate and set up automations. Freshsales, on the other hand, provides an intuitive dashboard with customizable views, allowing users to manage leads and deals efficiently. Both platforms prioritize ease of use, catering to varying user preferences.

3. Contact enrichment

ActiveCampaign does not appear to have a contact enrichment feature. Freshsales, however, offers robust contact enrichment capabilities, automatically gathering and updating contact information from various sources. This feature helps users maintain accurate and comprehensive contact profiles, enhancing lead management and communication efficiency.

4. Outreach

ActiveCampaign’s outreach capabilities include email, SMS, and social media tools, enabling multi-channel communication and audience segmentation. However, its SMS functionality is basic. Freshsales offers email, phone, and chat tools, with features like call tracking and real-time chat. While effective for sales communication, it may lack the depth of dedicated marketing platforms.

5. Automation

ActiveCampaign's automation features include a visual drag-and-drop builder for creating workflows that automate tasks based on triggers like contact behavior. Freshsales offers automation for tasks like lead assignment and deal updates, streamlining sales processes. While both platforms enhance efficiency, Freshsales may require more setup time for advanced automations.

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.

7. Artificial Intelligence

ActiveCampaign integrates AI features for email marketing, offering predictive sending and content optimization. Freshsales includes Freddy AI, providing predictive analytics, lead scoring, and insights to prioritize opportunities. While both enhance decision-making, Freshsales' AI tools may require familiarity with AI-driven workflows for maximum effectiveness.

Price and plans comparison

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

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.

Freshsales prices

Freshsales offeres a monthly or annual subscription plan, alongside a Freshsales Suite for those who need access to more features.

• Growth: Starts from $9/user/month.
• Pro: Starts from $39/user/month.
• Enterprise: Starts from $49/user/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to ActiveCampaign and Freshsales

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. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment, and more. You can use folk as a solopreneur, small to mid-size team, and large enterprise. As it scale with you, allowing it to support you as your business grows.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• 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.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• 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.

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. Freshsales: What's the verdict?

When comparing ActiveCampaign and Freshsales, it's clear that both platforms offer robust CRM solutions with unique strengths. ActiveCampaign excels in marketing automation, making it ideal for businesses focused on personalized communication. Freshsales, on the other hand, offers a more comprehensive sales automation suite, catering to organizations seeking an all-in-one sales tool. However, 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