Podia and ActiveCampaign are both tools for managing and automating your email marketing, but while ActiveCampaign focuses on enterprise-level automation, CRM, and sales engagement, Podia gives you a wide range of tools for running your entire business.

Every creator business is unique, so to help you make the best choice for your situation, let’s see how Podia vs. ActiveCampaign compare.

Pricing and plan limits for Podia and ActiveCampaign

Podia and ActiveCampaign have different plans and pricing based on the number of email subscribers you have. As you grow your list, you must upgrade to continue contacting your audience members.

With Podia, you’ll start by choosing a base plan:

• Free: $0/month (10% transaction fee)
  • Includes your full website, a membership community, and the ability to sell one digital download and one coaching product
• Starter: $9/month or $4/month when paid annually (8% transaction fee)
  • Includes everything on the Free plan plus a custom domain, integration with Google Analytics, and live chat support
• Mover: $39/month or $33/month when paid annually (5% transaction fee)
  • Everything on the Starter plan plus unlimited digital products, unlimited online courses, and our easier-than-drag-and-drop online course builder
• Shaker: $89/month or $75/month when paid annually
  • Everything in Mover plus affiliates and embeddable checkout

All plans include your first 100 email subscribers for free. You can add more subscribers for an additional fee.

• Up to 100 subscribers: Free
• Up to 500 subscribers: $9/month
• Up to 1500 subscribers: $17/month
• Up to 2500 subscribers: $25/month
• Up to 5000 subscribers: $42/month
• Up to 10000 subscribers: $63/month
• See pricing for more subscribers

There are no email send limits with Podia, so you can send as many messages as you like on all plans.

Also, Podia’s free plan makes it easy to get started without any upfront investment. The free plan includes up to 100 email subscribers, segmenting, templates, email scheduling, and email campaigns with up to three emails. It’s perfect for building a welcome sequence, following up after delivering a lead magnet, or creating simple sales funnels to earn money on autopilot.

ActiveCampaign has four plans that each increase in price as you add more contacts. You get unlimited email sends on all plans as long as your total subscriber count is below 250,000.

ActiveCampaign plans:

• Lite: Good for individuals who need email and marketing automations, includes one user seat
  • $39/month for 1,000 contacts
  • $61/month for 2,500 contacts
  • $99/month for 5,000 contacts
• Plus: Good for small teams, includes landing pages, Facebook custom audiences, conditional content, and three user seats
  • $70/month for 1,000 contacts
  • $125/month for 2,500 contacts
  • $168/month for 5,000 contacts
• Professional: Good for teams, includes predictive sending, split automations, accounts, advanced integrations, and five user seats
  • $187/month for 2,500 contacts
  • $262/month for 5,000 contacts
• Enterprise: Good for larger organizations, includes more customizations and ten user seats
  • Custom pricing

To illustrate, let’s say you have a list with about 2,500 subscribers.

With Podia, you could use the free plan with the email add-on and your total cost per month would be $25. You’d get unlimited email sends to those 2,500 subscribers, and a free website, community, digital download, and coaching product.

If you wanted more features like unlimited online courses, you could upgrade to Podia’s Mover plan for $39/month. Your monthly total would be $39/month for the Mover plan + $25/month for the email add-on, for a total of $64/month.

With ActiveCampaign, you’d pay $61/month for 2,500 subscribers on the Lite plan, $125/month on the Plus plan, and $187/month on the Professional plan, but that doesn’t include your website, landing pages, or any digital products. If you wanted those tools, you’d need to use an additional platform which could have extra fees.

Can I create different audiences and segments?

As your audience grows, you might need a way to contact certain people on your list but not others. You can do this by creating different segments within your list.

With Podia, you can customize your audience segments based on filters. You can make segments based on when people were last active, which products they have purchased, how much they’ve spent with you, or which tags are associated with them.

Tags are labels you can manually add to audience members based on shared characteristics. You can send a campaign or broadcast email to a specific tag or segment, or to your entire list.

ActiveCampaign includes segmentation and custom audience lists. On the Plus plan and above, you can also add conditional content, which is information only displayed to people in a particular segment or group.

Email scheduling and automation can make your business run on autopilot

Ever wish you could deliver content, engage with followers, and make sales without having to spend countless hours in front of the computer screen? Scheduling and automation can help.

Email scheduling allows you to write an email whenever you have time and send it to our audience at a later date. Automations are pre-written emails or campaigns that are sent to audience members whenever they take a certain action, like purchasing a product, opting into a newsletter, or downloading a lead magnet.

With Podia, you can schedule and send as many broadcasts as you like on all plans. You can create unlimited automated campaigns on paid plans, and campaigns with up to three emails on the free plan.

ActiveCampaign allows you to build automated email campaigns and schedule your newsletters. You get access to marketing and email automations on all plans, and ecommerce automations on the Plus plan and above.

Will my emails look pretty?

The emails you send should look cohesive with your brand, and both Podia and ActiveCampaign have an email builder and pre-made templates that can jumpstart your creativity.

Here are some design features you get with Podia:

• Endless design options: You can change the background color, width, vertical padding, typeface, font color, headings, and more
• Customize your dividers, buttons, and sections: You can even style individual sections how you want. Yes, you can set global options, but you can also completely adjust each section to your heart’s content.
• Style the header and footer: Adjust the colors, logos, and links you want to highlight in your header and footer sections.
• Templates: You’ll be able to select a starting pre-made template that we’ve designed for you or choose one of the recent ones you’ve made yourself.

ActiveCampaign has a drag-and-drop email designer and a large library of templates you can use. Reviews mention that there are a lot of customizations you can make, but it might require a bit of coding knowledge to get your emails to look exactly the way you want.

Making websites and landing pages that feel like yours

In addition to email marketing tools, Podia allows you to build a website and landing pages for free. Third-party website tools can get complicated and pricey fast. Connecting your email list with the rest of your online presence keeps things simple.

Podia’s point-and-click website builder is so simple that you can set up your website in an afternoon, with a totally customized style. Podia includes over a dozen pre-designed sections so you know your page heroes, images, grids, testimonials, FAQs, and products look amazing.

There are native integrations for your Google Analytics code, Facebook Pixel, and Pinterest tag so you can track how users are interacting with your website.

ActiveCampaign does not include a website feature. You can make landing pages, but only on the Plus, Professional, and Enterprise plans. If you’re on the Lite plan, you’ll need to use a third-party landing page tool that might come at an extra cost.

Selling products and managing your email marketing go hand in hand

Podia gives creators the option to sell digital products in the same place you run your email.

Earn money selling digital products like courses, digital downloads, community memberships, webinars, and coaching sessions. Because Podia products tie directly into your email list, you can easily deliver files, run drip courses, create product waitlists, offer upsells, and send community notifications to your members.

Podia’s all-in-one platform also includes affiliate program management, so you can incentivize happy customers to promote your products for you. You can use Paypal or Stripe as your payment processor with Podia.

ActiveCampaign has a CRM feature so you can keep track of leads and potential clients. It’s not possible to sell digital products directly through ActiveCampaign, but you can integrate with WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, and Square on the Plus plan and above.

Support is one of the most important features of any platform

We all get stumped by our tech from time to time, and it’s important to be able to get answers when you need them.

Podia users get expert email support, help docs, free training courses, guides, video tutorials, and access to our welcoming Creator Community on all plans. Paid users also get quick chat support.

ActiveCampaign gives users live chat and email support on all plans. They also offer free resources and courses about how to use the software.

While ActiveCampaign is well suited for larger businesses with complex email marketing needs and bigger budgets, Podia is the best choice for individual creators and small businesses who want a simple, effective, and beautiful email marketing tool that connects with the rest of their work.

If you’re ready to launch your dream online business, complete with courses, digital products, community, coaching, and beautiful email campaigns, Podia is the platform for you.