ActiveCampaign vs Omnisend

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing and marketing automation platform headquartered in Chicago. Jason VandeBoom founded it in 2003 as on-premises software before it moved to SaaS. Its core job is to send the right email, SMS or WhatsApp message at the right time based on what a contact does, using a visual automation builder with branching logic.

The automation builder handles multi-step journeys with waits, conditions, goals and split tests, triggered by site visits, purchases, form fills, tags or CRM events. Campaigns use 250+ templates and, on Pro, predictive sending, conditional content and attribution. Since 2025 the Active Intelligence layer adds AI agents that build segments, automations and brand kits, a conversational workspace, and a remote MCP server; every plan includes 500 AI credits a month. Plans are priced by contacts: Starter ($19/month for 1,000 contacts billed monthly) covers email and automation, Plus adds landing pages, generative AI and SMS, Pro adds advanced segmentation and three seats, and Enterprise adds SSO, HIPAA support and custom objects. CRM pipelines, WhatsApp and transactional email are add-ons.

ActiveCampaign suits SMBs, ecommerce stores and agencies that need deep automation without HubSpot pricing. Mailchimp is easier for simple newsletters, Brevo and MailerLite are cheaper at large lists, and HubSpot is stronger as an all-in-one CRM.

Buying tip: prices rise steeply with contact count, so clean inactive contacts before upgrading. The 14-day trial needs no card, and annual billing saves roughly 17 to 21%.

Omnisend is an email and SMS marketing platform for e-commerce brands. It started in 2014 in Lithuania as Soundest, a simple email tool for online stores, and was renamed Omnisend in 2017 as it added SMS and other channels. The company is headquartered in Vilnius with offices in Kaunas and Charleston, South Carolina, and is led by co-founder and CEO Rytis Lauris. Its core job is turning store data into automated campaigns that recover carts and drive repeat purchases.

Omnisend combines a drag-and-drop email builder with product blocks, prebuilt automations for welcome, abandoned cart, browse abandonment and post-purchase flows, SMS, web push, signup forms and popups, segmentation on shopping behavior, and revenue reporting. The free plan covers 250 contacts and 500 emails a month. Standard is priced by contact count from 500 contacts, while Pro adds unlimited email, advanced AI tools such as product recommendations and send-time optimization, and SMS credits equal to the monthly bill.

Omnisend fits Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce stores that want strong e-commerce automation at a lower price than Klaviyo. Klaviyo has deeper data, predictive analytics and a bigger partner ecosystem; Mailchimp and Brevo are more general and weaker on store-specific flows. Omnisend is less suited to B2B or content newsletters.

Buying tip: Omnisend shows no annual plan, but paying three months upfront cuts the price by 30%. On Pro the bundled SMS credits make it a better deal than Standard plus SMS for stores that text customers regularly.