ActiveCampaign vs. tinyEmail: which is the best email automation software?

As long as email has existed, email marketing has been one of the most effective marketing channels.

Considering its impressive ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, even after over 50 years, email marketing still has the highest return on investment out of any marketing method.

With all of this potential in the email marketing space, it’s no surprise that a plethora of email marketing platforms have sprung up to capitalize on this gold mine.

If you’ve heard of any email marketing platform, it’s likely that you’ve heard of ActiveCampaign as well. As ActiveCampaign has been in business for over twenty years, they are a veteran of the industry.

A platform you may not have heard of (or heard less often) is tinyEmail, which is relatively young compared to ActiveCampaign. With their domain registered for over ten years, tinyEmail is still an established player in the email marketing industry, however.

Now, ActiveCampaign and tinyEmail may fall into the same category of email marketing platforms with a focus on automation, but that doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable; each email marketing platform has its own strengths and weaknesses.

If you’re looking to choose a reliable email marketing platform, doing so without information on both platforms may lead you to make a bad choice. Not that either platform is bad, but maybe it won’t fit your needs perfectly.

To make sure you’re properly informed, I’ll walk you through the main differences between ActiveCampaign and tinyEmail, including their target audience and email marketing features so you can find the email marketing platform that is right for you.

Without further ado, this is ActiveCampaign vs. tinyEmail.

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform with a heavy focus on automation and advanced features, to best suit email marketers who are already familiar with the primary email marketing features and are looking for something more in-depth.

In fact, some reviews say that ActiveCampaign’s feature suite is a little too in-depth – meaning that if you’re just looking to send simple newsletters, you may be paying for a whole bunch of features that you have no intention of using.

However, in spite of that, ActiveCampaign is still an incredible email marketing platform, especially if you’re looking to automate every step of the customer journey.

From the top of the funnel to the bottom and beyond, ActiveCampaign has a diverse set of features meant to nurture subscribers and maximize conversions, then grow beyond your email list’s previous limitations.

ActiveCampaign has a 14-day free trial, and three paid plans for their email marketing platform: their Plus plan, their Professional plan, and their Enterprise plan.

The Plus and Professional plans start at $49/mo and $149/mo respectively, paid annually; their Enterprise plan is a customized affair, so you’ll have to talk to sales to get the features you need for the price you want.

This is just the marketing section of ActiveCampaign’s platform, and they offer features like their Sales hub which includes a CRM and Sales Engagement. Additionally, ActiveCampaign offers a transactional email service via Postmark, which you can take for a free trial.

What is tinyEmail?

tinyEmail is another, smaller email marketing outfit with a focus on automation, so users can focus their efforts on the real marketing work instead of the behind-the-scenes tasks that could (and should) be automated.

Additionally, tinyEmail is incredible for automated email personalization due to its ability to automatically create audience segments tailored to your brand based on data about your subscribers.

As of recent tinyEmail has introduced TinyEinstein, an AI-powered suite of powerful tools that can generate subject lines and email copy to help boost your open rates.

tinyEmail offers four plans: a free version, a Standard plan, a Pro plan, and an Enterprise plan.

The Standard and Pro plans start at $15/mo and $65/mo respectively, and scale up based on how many emails you plan on sending per month. The Enterprise plan is meant to be customized for enterprise-level email marketing operations, and its pricing is determined by your need.

ActiveCampaign vs. tinyEmail at a glance

Below is a comparison table that outlines the main differences between ActiveCampaign and tinyEmail. I’ve written a more detailed comparison between the two below if you want to skip the table, but here is an at-a-glance comparison:

	ActiveCampaign	tinyEmail
Ease of Use	Geared towards advanced users; may be unfriendly to new email marketers	Simple with or without code; intuitive interface
Email Marketing Features	Professional email and landing page templates, automated & advanced email campaigns	TinyEinstein AI-generated subject lines & copy, email segmenting automation, interactive emails via AMP
Integrations	920+ integrations, including Shopify, Salesforce, Postmark, WordPress, and many more	5,000+ integrations, including Shopify, Magento, and Volusion; constantly adding more
Customer Support	Live chat & sales support; in-depth webinar archive and knowledge base	Help center with article guides for users to solve problems, plus live chat & email support
Pricing	14-day free trial available; paid plans start at $49/mo	Free version available; paid plans start at $15/mo

ActiveCampaign is for advanced email marketers

If you’re a veteran email marketer looking for advanced features and in-depth automation, then ActiveCampaign is the best email marketing platform for you.

ActiveCampaign’s dashboard isn’t the best out of the email marketing platforms I’ve seen, but it’s completely servicable for people who know what they are doing. Upon making a new account it immediately gives users access to all kinds of features, from their sales pipeline builder to the automation of internal processes.

Speaking of automation…

This is the kind of stuff you can do with ActiveCampaign. Not just simple automated workflows; you can visually create automated workflows for any and every situation.

The triggers you can use in these workflows include form submissions, whether or not a subscriber has visited a website, interacting (or not interacting) with a site message, click-throughs, and so much more. These tags are categorized into Behaviors and Actions, E-Commerce, Emails & Messages, Sales & CRM, and Web Properties.

The best part about this automation builder is that it guides you through building whatever automation you desire. Whether it be trigger/effect suggestions or the visual format, ActiveCampaign makes a complicated automation process much simpler.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is an email marketing platform built for veteran or advanced email marketers, with all of the automation features you could think of.

tinyEmail is laser-focused on simple automation

If you’re someone looking for maximum results with minimal effort, then tinyEmail has your back.

As with ActiveCampaign, the name of tinyEmail’s game is automation, and they do it incredibly well. From their automated segmentation based on customer data to their recent “TinyEinstein” AI-powered messaging, tinyEmail makes advanced personalization and email automation a breeze no matter your email marketing skill level.

Note: I didn’t have a relevant place to say this in my analysis, but if you use another email marketing platform like Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Drip, etc., and plan to migrate to tinyEmail, then you can get 50% off your current bill by talking to live support after signing up for a free trial.

With tinyEmail’s automation features you can set up triggered and drip campaigns, letting them run and create audience segments automatically based on subscriber info.

Arguably most important is the user interface. If a platform’s user interface is difficult to use or unintuitive for new users, then that is an immediate turn-off for a platform.

Luckily, tinyEmail doesn’t have any issues with its user interface.

Their user interface is simple and clean, with minimal clutter while maximizing the amount of important information displayed on your dashboards.

Additionally, as reviews go, tinyEmail has an average of 4.8/5 stars on Trustpilot, with over 90% of those reviews being 5-stars.

Overall, tinyEmail is a great email marketing platform for small businesses and solopreneurs with limited budgets due to its user-friendly interface, potent automation features, and excellent customer support.

Conclusion: ActiveCampaign vs. tinyEmail?

When comparing ActiveCampaign vs. tinyEmail, it’s very clear that they are two automation platforms with two very different audiences.

ActiveCampaign’s interface and features suit the kind of email marketers who have been in the business for years, and tinyEmail’s interface and features lend themselves to newbie email marketers or people who care about interface more than the depth of features.

Ultimately, the choice between ActiveCampaign and tinyEmail depends on your specific needs.

I won’t leave you hanging there, though; as I’ve stated several times in this comparison, the audience for each platform is pretty clear.

If you’re a veteran email marketer who is looking for complexity and depth of features in your email marketing automation platform, then ActiveCampaign is your best bet.

If you’re a newer email marketer or a small business that just needs simple email automation features, then tinyEmail will suit your needs perfectly.