Best ActiveCampaign Alternative (100% WordPress solution – FunnelKit Automations)

I was paying $99-149 per month for ActiveCampaign until I found FunnelKit Automations, the best ActiveCampaign alternative for WordPress.

I’ve since swapped over completely from ActiveCampaign to the FunnelKit ecosystem (more on this later in this article) and it’s completely changed my business (for the better).

The aim of this post is to show you why I and so many other people are leaving ActiveCampaign and using FunnelKit Automations, the best alternative on the market.

This post contains all the information I wish I had before I made the switch over to FunnelKit Automations. Please drop a comment below if you have a specific question and I’ll add it to the article.

SNEAK PEEK: Here is what the drag-and-drop Email Builder looks like in FunnelKit Automations and it is SO MUCH BETTER than the ActiveCampaign one.

How I found FunnelKit Automations

FunnelKit Automations is very new and there is no information online that I could find that gave me 100% confidence in making the switch when I was researching myself.

ActiveCampaign was also working for what I needed, so I just never bothered to investigate.

I spoke to the owner of FunnelKit about an unrelated query I had regarding their other plugin I replaced ClickFunnels with, called FunnelKit and he was EXTREMELY excited about the FunnelKit Automations plugin they’d just released.

I love FunnelKit and the FunnelKit team is incredible, so after that conversation, I realised I really had to try out this FunnelKit Automations plugin he was talking about.

FunnelKit Automations

Build your entire CRM & all your Email Automations directly inside WordPress!

Get FunnelKit Automations

I installed the FunnelKit Automations plugin, started playing with it and the next week I integrated it into ALL my WordPress websites (it’s THAT good).

Here is a screenshot of FunnelKit Automations running on my main WooCommerce website.

Now, I am writing this blog post because if you’re searching for the best ActiveCampaign alternative for WordPress, this plugin FunnelKit Automations is what you need.

I have affiliate links to FunnelKit Automations but even if they had no affiliate program, I would be writing this article – it’s that good of a plugin.

What you can expect to see in this post that’ll help you:

1. Screenshots of the FunnelKit Automations dashboard
   I’ll show you what the plugin looks like so you can get an idea of the features available.
2. I’ll show you how to set up some of the common Automations that you probably have set up already in ActiveCampaign
   You’re here because you’re already using ActiveCampaign and you’re not happy. I’ll show you what that move across to FunnelKit Automations would look like (it’s easy).
3. I was nervous about making the move and I’ll run through what reservations I had and why none of that mattered
   I was scared about running into problems with my email deliverability, migrating my contacts and more. I’ll cover that in this post.

By the end of this post, I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll be confident swapping over to FunnelKit Automations and leaving ActiveCampaign.

Now – let’s get into a few of the different ways I was able to replace ActiveCampaign by using FunnelKit Automations, some benefits of using FunnelKit Automations VS ActiveCampaign and why I am recommending FunnelKit Automations as the best WordPress alternative for Active Campaign.

The 2 types of websites I use FunnelKit Automations / ActiveCampaign on

I blog on WagePirate.com (1) and I run a WooCommerce website (2) where I sell physical products with orders, customers and more.

I wanted to clarify that so that when I am sharing my experience in this article, you can understand a bit more about the needs I have as a business owner (maybe you blog / sell online too) and so it’s a bit more relatable.

Here’s a break-down of these two businesses and how I am using FunnelKit Automations now to replace ActiveCampaign:

Here are the Automations I currently have set up inside the blog you’re on right now and the list continues to grow as I evolve my website.

How I use FunnelKit Automations and WooCommerce

Here are a few pros I’ve found for using FunnelKit Automations with WooCommerce VS ActiveCampaign.

1. Sending ALL WooCommerce Emails: I use FunnelKit Automations to send all my WooCommerce emails now, including my Order Receipt emails, on hold emails etc – any email that goes out based on a change to a WooCommerce Order Status is now sent using FunnelKit Automations.
2. Sending TRACKING NUMBER Updates: I use the Advanced Shipment Tracking plugin (from the company Zorem) with the TrackShip plugin (also from Zorem). Using these two plugins, I upload my tracking numbers back into WordPress and when a tracking number updates its status (i.e. from in-transit to out-for-delivery), that triggers an Automation inside FunnelKit Automations and sends the customer an email with the update for their tracking number. It works flawlessly
3. FunnelKit Automations has reduced my DISPUTES / Chargebacks: When an order is put into in-transit status, the customer enters an automation inside FunnelKit Automations. Every 3-5 days, I send the customer an email with screenshots of happy customers and reviews and that continues for about 15 days within the workflow. Once a customer’s tracking status changes from in-transit to out-for-delivery, I take them out of this FunnelKit Automations automation so that they don’t receive these emails anymore – all within WordPress.

How I use FunnelKit Automations for my Blogging site

Here are a few pros I’ve found for using FunnelKit Automations for my blog VS ActiveCampaign.

1. My main CRM with all Contact Details in the 1 place: All my Contacts’ details and Email Lists are saved inside the FunnelKit Automations plugin and it has access to the same database that all my other WordPress plugins use (thus integrations work seamlessly and FunnelKit Automations has a lot of integrations with popular plugins like LearnDash / Wishlist Member / WooCommerce etc)
2. The Email Builder is SO much better: I send all my Marketing Campaigns & transactional emails through FunnelKit Automations. I select the list/segment of people I want to email, build the email using the great drag-and-drop email builder (more on this later) and click SEND. The email builder is drag-and-drop and loads fast. PLUS, the media library in WordPress is a lot better than ActiveCampaigns (you can’t disagree on this one, how is AC’s media manager so dated?).
3. I can trigger Automations based on events from my favourite WordPress plugins: Everything to do with my Email Automations is inside FunnelKit Automations. An example of this is my lead magnets. Someone puts in their email address to sign up for one of my online courses or to get my list of top 10 WordPress plugins. Once the user completes the opt-in form, I send them an email using FunnelKit Automations with their download link. When someone enrols in a LearnDash course I can add the user to an Automation, etc etc. All stuff you CAN do with ActiveCampaign but it requires integrations and it’s clunky.

I am doing some much more complex things behind-the-scenes but this should give you a good idea of how you could use FunnelKit Automations too.

So now that you know a bit more of the types of businesses I am running, let’s get into some specific benefits I have found that FunnelKit Automations offers my businesses over ActiveCampaign.

Pricing: FunnelKit Automations is a FIXED Price for unlimited Contacts

Understandably, it’s going to come down to pricing – and FunnelKit Automations is a cheaper alternative to ActiveCampaign (but it does WAY MORE).

I always write my content to share my first-hand experiences as much as I can, so let me explain why ActiveCampaign was bleeding my wallet dry with no real benefit (and might be yours too).

FunnelKit Automations is PERFECT for new businesses

Let’s say you’re a new business that is just starting out.

For me, this is exactly what my website you’re on – WagePirate.com – was, until about 3 months ago.

WagePirate.com up until now has been a hobby that I’ve posted articles on in between running my main WooCommerce store.

Over time, from posting on YouTube and writing some blog posts, my mailing list got to over 2500 contacts and that cost $125 USD per month.

$125 USD per month * 12 months = $1,500 USD per year.

For me, it just didn’t suit the type of business I was running at the time.

As I said, this was a part-time gig for me.

I would post on YouTube and write blog posts when I could and I just wanted to build up a Mailing List JUST IN-CASE I ever needed to email people in the future or wanted to take this blog more seriously.

At $125 per month to store Contacts, it was an expensive option.

So I ended up cutting 1500 contacts just to get to 1000 contacts so I could pay $70 a month.

I did that and the next day was thinking wtf did I just do?

I had been so small-thinking!

I didn’t even consider other options as I’d been using ActiveCampaign for so long and had just thought of the best way to reduce my ActiveCampaign costs.

Fast-forward to today and I now have everything running inside FunnelKit Automations happily and it would only cost me $129 per year.

I say that “would cost me” because I actually bought the lifetime deal that has FunnelKit Automations and FunnelKit all-in-one.

So if you’re just looking for a platform to store your email lists and maybe send some emails here and there, then FunnelKit Automations is going to be a great option for you over ActiveCampaign.

FunnelKit Automations is PERFECT for larger businesses

I don’t want to just focus on new businesses trying to store email addresses as they grow for as lost cost as possible…

FunnelKit Automations is also perfect for larger businesses with A LOT of contacts that send a lot of emails.

Here is a post that was recently published in the FunnelKit Automations Facebook group.

Now, I personally can’t provide any feedback regarding using FunnelKit Automations for sending to email lists with 50,000+ contacts, but I am seeing people in the Facebook group posting more and more about how they’re doing it without any problems, and the FunnelKit team have only keep optimistic about larger lists using FunnelKit Automations, so I have a feeling it is something I will look at doing myself in the future at some stage.

My Klaviyo account has a decent sized mailing list…

and Klaviyo isn’t cheap.

I’m seriously considering making the switch from Klaviyo to FunnelKit Automations and if you’re in the same boat with a larger blogging email list or large online store, I would jump in the Facebook group and check the feasibility.

With regards to my blog WagePirate.com, I am all-in with FunnelKit Automations.

Even if I didn’t get the lifetime deal for FunnelKit Automations + FunnelKit, the $129 per year just for FunnelKit Automations is so much cheaper than ActiveCampaign.

I think it’s going to work insanely well as my blog email list grows and I think it’s the perfect solution for any WordPress blog.

FunnelKit Automations is cheaper than competitors AND does A LOT more than most of them.

FunnelKit Automations VS ActiveCampaign for Ecommerce websites

I wanted to just touch on this one briefly here because I’m not sure how many people are using ActiveCampaign with the Ecommerce functionality, but here are my thoughts.

Whether you’re selling online courses, physical products or digital products like eBooks – no matter what it is, these are “products” and you want to run reports on them, see which customers spend the most and so on.

Thus, it’s all “ecommerce” functionality.

The industry standard for Ecommerce stores (from the circles I am in) is Klaviyo.

For 25,000 Contacts in Klaviyo, you’re looking at paying $400 a month.

With ActiveCampaign, you’re looking at paying ~$380 USD per month.

With FunnelKit Automations, you’re paying the flat fee of $129 for the entire year + whatever your SMTP provider charges you (SendGrid / Amazon SES etc) which is usually peanuts.

If I were starting an Ecommerce store today with WooCommerce, I would be running it all in FunnelKit Automations.

And with FunnelKit Automations Version 2 promising a lot, I think a lot more people will be looking to move to FunnelKit Automations over the next few months.

For smaller businesses with 2,500 contacts, you’re paying at least $138 AUD per month ($97 USD/month) to have restricted Ecommerce functionality.

If you’re in this position, I would HIGHLY recommend considering FunnelKit Automations.

Paying $97 USD per month to have basic ecommerce reports for 2,5000 contacts blows my mind and is a waste of money.

You’re way better off buying the Funnel Builder + FunnelKit Automations bundle pack for $249 or whatever it is currently at the time you’re reading this…

and then setting everything up inside FunnelKit Automations and having a fixed price for unlimited contacts.

Plus, by purchasing the Funnel Builder + FunnelKit Automations bundle, you’re getting the FunnelKit plugin which lets you build your Sales Funnels inside of WordPress.

You can learn more about FunnelKit below and I’m going to cover it later in this article you’re currently ready why I think EVERY single WordPress website selling something online should be using it.

FunnelKit

Build ENTIRE Sales Funnels inside WordPress, with One-click Upsells and much more!

Get FunnelKit

You know…what the heck – let’s cover FunnelKit next and why ActiveCampaign comes nowhere near the level of power you get from the FunnelKit Automations + FunnelKit integration.

FunnelKit Automations integrates seamlessly with FunnelKit

FunnelKit and FunnelKit Automations are coded by the same company so their integration together is incredible and allows you to do SO MUCH MORE than you possibly could in ActiveCampaign.

But Grant.. what does FunnelKit do exactly?

What is FunnelKit?

FunnelKit is an alternative to ClickFunnels and other Sales Funnel building software, and it works with WooCommerce right inside of WordPress.

In my YouTube video below, I show you how to set up a Sales Funnel using FunnelKit and how to then integrate it with the FunnelKit Automations plugin.

An easy way to think of it is like this:

1. Frontend (FunnelKit)
   You build your Sales Pages, Opt-in pages and Checkout pages using the FunnelKit plugin for WordPress. FunnelKit is what your customers are seeing on your website and it’s how you sell your products and get your Contact’s details. It’s a landing page builder, one-click upsells builder and more.
2. Backend (FunnelKit Automations)
   All the people that buy your WooCommerce products or opt-in to your Opt-in forms are saved as a Contact inside FunnelKit Automations. When they buy products, sign up for your LearnDash courses or do other things on your website, FunnelKit Automations saves all this data automatically to their Contact details.

Below is another post I have that shows you how FunnelKit can be used to customize your WooCommerce Checkout pages using Elementor / Beaver Builder / Oxygen etc (any page builder).

In the below image, I am looking at a Contact’s details inside FunnelKit Automations and I am specifically inside the tab named “Funnels”.

Here I can see what upsells and DownSells this user bought, as well as the products – all inside WordPress without any extra plugins needed.

You get MORE data than you get from ActiveCampaign because FunnelKit / FunnelKit Automations are coded by the same team and so the integration is very tight.

Below is an example of the data available under the Purchases tab (I’ve blurred out tags/product names etc but you get the point).

FunnelKit Automations + FunnelKit truly is an all-in-one marketing engine and I can pretty much guarantee it’s going to save you money and benefit your business.

PS: On this topic, another reason you might want to get the FunnelKit + FunnelKit Automations bundle and not just FunnelKit Automations is that it allows you to customize your WooCommerce checkout pages (as shown in the below-related post).

RELATED POST: WooCommerce Checkout Page Like Shopify (Only takes 1 minute) + BONUS Video

WATCH ON YOUTUBE: I have a lot of FunnelKit + FunnelKit Automations content on YouTube and you can click here to watch some videos and learn more.

Everything happens inside WordPress

FunnelKit Automations is A LOT easier to set up than Active Campaign because you’re not sending data anywhere – everything happens inside of WordPress!

I can’t stress this enough – no need for webhooks, no Zapier, third-party plugins etc – it all just works!

Last year I felt like everything with my Blogging website was ALL OVER THE PLACE.

This was my setup:

1. Active Campaign as my CRM
2. LearnDash for my Online Courses
3. ClickFunnels for my Opt-in pages and Sales Pages
4. ActiveMember360 for connecting ActiveCampaign to WordPress to restrict content in WordPress (and restrict access to LearnDash courses) based on a Contact’s tags in ActiveCampaign
5. ThriveCart for taking payments and handling upsells / downsells

As someone who is trying to make money blogging now, I know the most important thing is to keep writing and putting out content and I try to stick to this as much as I can.

So, I’d set these systems up, write for a couple of months, then need to go back and adjust something and I would forget how everything was set up and would have to spend time learning what the heck these systems were all doing so I could then continue to make the tweak I had initially set out to do.

It was a P-I-T-A – and I’d always wanted to fix it.

Fast-forward to now in 2022, this is my current website set up for my Blog:

1. LearnDash is used for my online courses
2. FunnelKit is used for all my optin pages and sales pages, plus I use WooCommerce for everything related to taking payments (for my checkout forms, plus post-purchase upselling and down selling).
3. Bricks Builder – I swapped from using ThriveCart & ClickFunnels over to FunnelKit, I am now also able to build my sales pages and landing pages using Bricks Builder (the page builder I use now instead of Beaver Builder – try it, it’s incredible)
4. Wishlist Member – I recently swapped over to this to replace ActiveMember360 as it integrates with FunnelKit Automations out-of-the-box. Now I can restrict a user’s access to content in my WordPress website based on the tags the contact has inside the FunnelKit Automations plugin

As you can see, I have gone all-in on WordPress plug-ins this year and I am trying to do as much as I can all within my WordPress website.

Why?

Take, for example, this blog you’re on.

WagePirate.com has some online courses that have been created using the LearnDash plugin.

I can go into FunnelKit Automations and click to create a new FunnelKit Automations automation.

Then I could trigger this automation based on the following events in LearnDash:

Here is a quick Automation I set up just now.

As you can see, when a Student completes my online course titled “Start Your Online Store” I then send them an email to congratulate them and I upsell them a related course “Advanced Web Design”.

Again, all of this, inside of WordPress… with no need for third-party plugins / no Zapier / no extra anything.

FunnelKit Automations has a better email designer than ActiveCampaign

C’mon – that email editor in ActiveCampaign is a PAIN to use. Can we agree on that?

I hated writing emails using the email editor in ActiveCampaign.

I cringed every time I would click to add an image – maybe you know that feeling?

You want to be able to write emails quickly and part of that process is just having your UI load quick and being able to find your content easily.

So many times I would click to upload an image, upload it, and then it would go into this massive list of images and I’d have to remember what I named the image to find it.

I mean, sure – you can organise your images into folders, but it’s far from ideal.

I mean, go to your ActiveCampaign email editor and check the UI and then look at this image below where I am uploading an image from my Media Library into an email I’m writing inside FunnelKit Automations.

Sure, the red box I have highlighted above is a third-party plugin called Folders by premio, but that’s the thing.

There are so many great WordPress plugins like that that make your life easier and with a SaaS like ActiveCampaign, you have to put up with whatever they release.

If you’re already running a WordPress plugin you know and love the ability to tweak your ecosystem to your liking and using FunnelKit Automations as your CRM and Email Marketing software allows you to do just that.

I’ll touch more on how this email designer works later on, but for now, my point is more so…

You can customize FunnelKit Automations to be exactly what you want as it runs in WordPress.

You drag your columns in to build your grid and then you drag in your elements (like text and images).

FunnelKit Automations loads very quickly while you’re editing

One of the BIGGEST factors we consider when we’re choosing to go with a WordPress plugin vs a SaaS is whether or not it’s going to slow our workflow down.

No matter how extensive a WordPress Plugin’s features; if it slows down your workflow, you will hate using it.

This is literally the 1 reason I swapped from WooCommerce to a SaaS for my Ecommerce store (don’t worry, I’m back on WooCommerce now – I’ve learned my lesson 😛 ).

FunnelKit Automations is powerful for WooCommerce stores and normal WooCommerce sites like business websites and blogging sites. This example with WooCommerce is just to get my point across that WordPress can be slow.

You know how you’re using a SaaS’ like Facebook and you can just scroll and things load very fast?

And you click on a link and that loads fast. Then you type a comment and it posts instantly?

You know that “instant” feeling you’re used to when you’re using software that isn’t WordPress?

Well, one of the code libraries that is making all that possible is ReactJS and that is what is used to power the Gutenberg edit that comes built-in to WordPress now.

Since Gutenberg was released with ReactJS it just seems like so many advancements are happening with WordPress Plug-ins as they too start to adopt these libraries.

FunnelKit Automations uses ReactJS (like Facebook) and so everything loads super quick – much quicker than a normal WordPress plugin you might be used to using.

I can click to create an Automation and it loads faster than ActiveCampaign.

So if the slow backend of WordPress is something that you’re worried about – I wouldn’t be.

So far, I am building Automations and managing my Contact Lists as fast as (if not faster) than ActiveCampaign and their UI.

But please note: Hosting and caching will play a massive role in all of this, so please consider that with regards to my comments about speed. I use Digital Ocean for hosting WagePirate.com and AWS for hosting my Ecommerce store. The other alternative I recommend if you’re just starting out is to use NameHero.

This WooCommerce website has 141,000 orders and about 85,000 WordPress users and it loads in about 0.5 seconds when I click into FunnelKit Automations > Automations, which is where you go to create your Automations (which we will cover later in this post).

So now that I’ve hopefully eased your concern about FunnelKit Automations being slower to create things with than you’re used to with ActiveCampaign, let’s get into the next part of this article which is answering the question you’re wanting the answer to…

Why is FunnelKit Automations the best alternative to ActiveCampaign?

The first thing we’ll look at is the CRM capabilities…

FunnelKit Automations

You can better organise your media in FunnelKit Automations

I’m actually going to take the time to list out why I love this so much haha (bare with me):

1. All my images are in one place (no need to re-upload!)
   I used to have to find images in WordPress that I’d uploaded to my blogs, save them to my computer, and then upload them to ActiveCampaign. Using FunnelKit Automations, I now have access to all the images I’ve used in the content of my website over its lifetime without having to re-upload them for emails inside ActiveCampaign.
2. I can build emails faster in FunnelKit Automations than in ActiveCampaign
   No re-uploading is great, but to go next-level on you – the Media Library is so much faster than ActiveCampaign’s slow UI. I really love working with FunnelKit Automations’s email designer when adding media to my emails.
3. BONUS! All my images are in the folders I use on my WordPress website so I can find images faster
   I use the Folders plugin here to organise all my images, so that plugin shows when I am adding an image using the

Conclusion: ActiveCampaign for WordPress

As you can see, I’m 100% all-in and swapped from ActiveCampaign to FunnelKit Automations and I can’t see myself ever going back to AC.

The FunnelKit Automations plugin is only getting more and more powerful with every update and I can already do everything I need to with it, so I’m excited for what’s to come and I don’t think you’d regret making the switch.

Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions and I’ll see if I have experience and can offer my opinion.

But the FunnelKit Automations + FunnelKit bundle, is a no-brainer for me.

DON’T FORGET: FunnelKit and FunnelKit Automations also come as a lifetime deal. FunnelKit Lifetime Deal: (Access With This Link)

FunnelKit Automations

Build your entire CRM & all your Email Automations directly inside WordPress!

Get FunnelKit Automations