Instantly vs ActiveCampaign

Choosing the right platform can significantly impact your business operations. Instantly and ActiveCampaign stand out as two popular options, each offering distinct features tailored to different business needs. Instantly excels in automation and email outreach, ideal for businesses focused on lead generation, while ActiveCampaign is renowned for its comprehensive marketing automation and customer experience solutions. This article will explore the key features, pricing, and benefits of both platforms, providing you with valuable insights to determine which CRM best aligns with your organizational goals. Additionally, we'll introduce folk as a compelling alternative.

What is Instantly?

Instantly is a newer player in the market that focuses on automation and email outreach, helping teams send high-volume personalized emails and track responses. Instantly CRM is geared more toward businesses looking to maximize lead generation and email outreach campaigns, often used by outbound sales teams and marketers.

Key features of Instantly

• Email outreach automation: One of Instantly’s standout features is the ability to automate and send thousands of personalized cold emails at scale.
• Advanced email warm-up: Instantly ensures that your emails land in inboxes rather than spam by providing email warming and reputation management tools.
• AI-based insights: Use AI-powered analytics to gain insights into the success of your outreach and optimize future campaigns.
• Multi-account management: Run multiple email accounts and campaigns seamlessly from one dashboard.
• Performance tracking: Track open rates, click rates, and other key metrics to measure campaign performance in real time.
• Integrations: Instantly CRM integrates with tools like Zapier, Google Sheets, and other productivity apps to help streamline workflows.

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. It's got some elements of a CRM, but that is not it's main focus.

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.

Instantly vs. ActiveCampaign: 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

Instantly lacks a clear kanban view of all your deals. You can view your leads' status with email campaigns, but there isn't a distinct pipeline management view. In contrast, 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.

2. Ease of use

Instantly CRM is designed with simplicity in mind, offering an intuitive interface that allows users to quickly navigate and manage campaigns. ActiveCampaign, while also user-friendly, offers more complex features that may require a steeper learning curve for those unfamiliar with advanced marketing tools.

3. Contact enrichment

Instantly CRM offers contact enrichment features by leveraging a large database of verified contact information. The platform can automatically enhance contact records by adding details such as company names, job titles, and more. ActiveCampaign does not appear to have a contact enrichment feature.

4. Outreach

Instantly provides a robust cold outreach solution, allowing users to connect unlimited email addresses, rotate them for improved deliverability, and send multiple emails in campaigns, ideal for large-scale outreach. ActiveCampaign’s outreach capabilities include email, SMS, and some social media tools, but its SMS functionality is basic.

5. Automation

Instantly CRM focuses on automating email outreach with personalized bulk emails and automatic follow-ups based on recipient behavior. ActiveCampaign offers extensive automation with workflows that automate tasks like sending emails and updating records, using a visual builder and a range of triggers for dynamic engagement.

6. Integration

Instantly CRM integrates with various third-party applications primarily through Zapier, connecting with tools for email marketing, lead management, and productivity, such as Google Workspace, Slack, and Salesforce, available from their Hypergrowth plan. 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

Instantly CRM integrates AI to enhance email outreach by automating personalization, scheduling, and follow-up sequencing based on engagement patterns. ActiveCampaign uses AI for predictive sending and content optimization, analyzing behavior for optimal email timing and messaging.

Price and plans comparison

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

Instantly prices

Instantly offers a few types of plans depending on whether or not you're after its CRM product, leads generator, or outreach campaign product. Their CRM price plan comes as either a monthly or annual subscription. Their yearly subscription plan is as follows.

• Growth CRM: Starts from $37.90 per user, per month.
• Hyper CRM: Starts from $77.60 per user, per month.

ActiveCampaign prices

Active Campaign's price plans depends on the number of contacts you have in your database. The following is based off an indication of 1,000 contacts.

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

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Instantly and ActiveCampaign

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. There is a reason why folk is 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.

Instantly vs. ActiveCampaign: What's the verdict?

In comparing Instantly and ActiveCampaign, each CRM offers unique strengths; Instantly excels in automation and email outreach, while ActiveCampaign provides robust marketing automation and CRM capabilities. However, for companies seeking a more personalized and flexible CRM solution, folk emerges as a flexible alternative. With its user-friendly interface and customizable features, folk allows businesses to tailor their CRM experience to meet specific needs, making it a versatile choice for various business functions. Try folk today, free