Overview

Marketo and ActiveCampaign represent different philosophies in marketing automation. Marketo is enterprise-grade with enterprise pricing. ActiveCampaign focuses on doing automation exceptionally well at prices SMBs can afford. For our take on each, see our Marketo comparison and ActiveCampaign comparison.

ActiveCampaign's Automation Advantage

ActiveCampaign's visual automation builder is widely considered the best in the industry. You can split-test entire automation paths, use predictive sending to optimize delivery times, and build complex conditional workflows — all for $79/month. Marketo's program builder is capable but requires more technical knowledge and costs 11x more. For most businesses, ActiveCampaign's automation is more than sufficient.

When You Actually Need Marketo

Marketo earns its price in specific scenarios: enterprise B2B companies with 6-12 month sales cycles, large buying committees, and complex multi-touch attribution needs. If your CMO needs to prove which marketing touchpoints drove a $500K deal across 50 interactions over 9 months, Marketo does that. ActiveCampaign doesn't.

The 11x Price Question

At 10,000 contacts, ActiveCampaign Pro costs $79/month. Marketo Select costs $895/month — and that's before adding Salesforce CRM and implementation. The question every marketing team should ask: are we actually using features that justify 11x the cost? Most aren't.

The Sequenzy Alternative

For SaaS founders, neither platform is built for subscription businesses. Sequenzy combines transactional email and marketing campaigns with native Stripe integration — at $49/month, cheaper than both.