Softwr

Email Marketing · head to head

ActiveCampaign vs Sailthru

ActiveCampaign logo

ActiveCampaign

Email Marketing

CRM, marketing automation, and sales platform

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sailthru logo

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only ActiveCampaign has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: ActiveCampaign starter tier capped at 5 automation actions per automation; unlimited actions require Plus tier or higher; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • They diverge on capability: ActiveCampaign covers Contact management, Sailthru covers Interest profiles.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which ActiveCampaign and Sailthru actually diverge.

Attributes where ActiveCampaign and Sailthru differ
AttributeActiveCampaignSailthru
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelsubscriptionquote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsCloud-based SaaSWeb, REST API
Founded2003Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Email Marketing).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in ActiveCampaign

  • Contact management
  • Sales pipeline
  • Marketing automation
  • Email marketing
  • Customer service
  • Reporting
  • Automation
  • Zapier

Only in Sailthru

  • Interest profiles
  • Personalisation engine
  • Prediction Manager
  • Site personalisation
  • Zephyr templating
  • Lifecycle optimiser

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

ActiveCampaign

  • Businesses automating cross-channel campaigns (email, SMS, WhatsApp)not Sailthru
  • Marketing teams needing AI-driven lead scoring and automationnot Sailthru

Sailthru

  • A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot ActiveCampaign
  • A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot ActiveCampaign
  • High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot ActiveCampaign
  • Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot ActiveCampaign

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

ActiveCampaign

  • Starter tier capped at 5 automation actions per automation; unlimited actions require Plus tier or higher
  • Active Intelligence (AI features) limited or excluded in Starter and Plus tiers; Advanced Intelligence only available in Pro and Enterprise
  • SSO and advanced CRM integrations only available in Pro and Enterprise tiers
  • Multiple users scaling limited: Starter allows 1 user, Plus allows 3, Enterprise allows 5 users

Sailthru

  • The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
  • On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
  • Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
  • It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

Pricing, plan by plan

ActiveCampaign

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the ActiveCampaign review.

Sailthru

On request
  • Sailthru$undefined/year
    • Priced on stored profiles and send volume
    • Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
    • Annual contract through Marigold

Which should you pick?

Choose ActiveCampaign if

  • You need contact management.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Cloud-based SaaS.
  • You also want sales pipeline.
ActiveCampaign review

Choose Sailthru if

  • You need interest profiles.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want personalisation engine.
Sailthru review

Questions people ask

Is ActiveCampaign or Sailthru better?
Neither clearly leads. ActiveCampaign starts at Free and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, ActiveCampaign or Sailthru?
ActiveCampaign has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for ActiveCampaign and On request for Sailthru.
Does ActiveCampaign or Sailthru run on more platforms?
ActiveCampaign runs on Cloud-based SaaS. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.
Can I use ActiveCampaign for free?
Yes. ActiveCampaign has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Sailthru starts at On request.
What is ActiveCampaign best used for?
ActiveCampaign is most often used for businesses automating cross-channel campaigns (email, sms, whatsapp), marketing teams needing ai-driven lead scoring and automation. Of those, businesses automating cross-channel campaigns (email, sms, whatsapp) and marketing teams needing ai-driven lead scoring and automation are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.
What can ActiveCampaign do that Sailthru cannot?
ActiveCampaign covers Contact management, Sales pipeline, Marketing automation, Email marketing. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

ActiveCampaign: Is there a free trial without providing a credit card?

Yes, ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial that requires only an email address for sign-up. No credit card is needed and setup is instant.

Source
Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

ActiveCampaign: How is pricing determined for my account?

Pricing is custom and based on your contact volume, which ranges from fewer than 500 to more than 250,000 contacts. ActiveCampaign states they will put together a pricing package specific to your needs after you submit the pricing request form.

Source
Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

ActiveCampaign: Do I need to talk to sales to access the platform?

No, the 14-day free trial provides full access to the autonomous marketing platform without requiring sales contact. After the trial ends, you must complete a pricing request form to move forward.

Source
Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

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