Marketing automation platforms run nurture campaigns, score leads and sync with your CRM so the right message reaches the right person at the right time. Compare them by contact-based pricing, channels covered and how much setup they need.
B2B lead generation and nurture programmes with website activity tracking
Best for: B2B lead generation teams
Act-On provides nurture programmes, lead scoring, website activity tracking and CRM workflows for B2B lead generation teams. Pricing is by quote or contact-based. Validate…
Behaviour-based email automation with built-in CRM workflows
Best for: SMBs needing behavioural automation
ActiveCampaign is known for visual automation builders that trigger email and other messages based on subscriber behaviour. It combines segmentation, lead scoring and a…
Enterprise B2B marketing automation and lead management
Best for: Enterprise B2B demand generation
Marketo Engage handles lead management, scoring, nurture programmes, account-based marketing and attribution for large B2B organisations. It supports complex campaign logic and CRM alignment.…
Enterprise cross-channel customer engagement and lifecycle messaging
Best for: Enterprise consumer brands and apps
Braze orchestrates cross-channel messaging across email, push, SMS and in-app, with personalisation and experimentation for consumer brands and apps. Pricing is by custom quote…
Email, SMS and automation with a generous contact allowance
Best for: Budget-conscious teams and businesses with large lists
Brevo combines email marketing, SMS, chat and automation in one platform. Its free plan stores up to 100,000 contacts with a 300 emails per…
Event-driven messaging for SaaS and product-led teams
Best for: SaaS and product-led teams
Customer.io lets teams send email, push, SMS and in-app messages triggered by customer events. Visual journeys, behavioural segments and data pipelines make it popular…
Ecommerce-focused email and SMS automation with revenue attribution
Best for: Online stores that want revenue-focused email and SMS automations
Ecommerce email and SMS automation with a single plan priced by contacts, from $39 per month for 2,500 contacts.
Behaviour-based email marketing automation for SaaS companies
Best for: SaaS companies sending behaviour-triggered onboarding and lifecycle emails
Behaviour-based email automation for SaaS. Plans listed at $49 and $59 per month with unlimited emails and flows.
Combined CRM, marketing and service suite with a limited free tier
Best for: Small businesses wanting sales and marketing in one
EngageBay combines CRM, marketing automation, live chat and help desk tools in one suite. A free plan with a limited contact allowance lets small…
Email marketing with funnels and landing pages
Best for: Small businesses wanting funnels and email
GetResponse combines email marketing, landing pages, funnels and webinars. Starter is listed from $19 a month with a limited workflow allowance, and higher plans…
CRM-connected marketing automation for B2B and inbound teams
Best for: Growing B2B teams that want marketing and CRM aligned
HubSpot Marketing Hub runs email, landing pages, forms, lead nurturing and campaign reporting on top of the HubSpot CRM. Because marketing and sales share…
Enterprise personalisation and journey orchestration
Best for: Enterprise personalisation teams
Insider One provides journey orchestration and personalisation for enterprise customer experience teams. Pricing is quote-based. Insider One is aimed at enterprise personalisation programmes. Ask…
Listings marked Sponsored are paid placements. Ratings come from user reviews, or from our editorial rating where no reviews exist yet.
Name the messages you want to send automatically. "Welcome new sign-ups", "chase abandoned carts" and "warm up leads before a sales call" are three very different projects. Write yours as a list of triggers and outcomes before you look at any tool. Vendors sell the same word, automation, for products that share almost nothing.
Match the tool to your kind of business. B2B teams with long sales cycles look at HubSpot Marketing Hub, Act-On, Adobe Marketo Engage and Salesforce Account Engagement. Product and app teams that message users based on behaviour look at Braze, Iterable and Customer.io. Small businesses that want email, CRM and automation under one login look at ActiveCampaign, Brevo or EngageBay. Online shops lean towards Klaviyo and Omnisend.
Check your data first. Automation runs on what you know about people: purchases, page visits, plan type, last login. If that data lives in four systems, ask how each tool pulls it in. A native connector to your CRM, shop or product database beats a spreadsheet upload every time. Teams that skip this step end up sending clever messages to the wrong people.
Look at how you build journeys. Some tools give you a visual canvas where you drag steps and branches. Others use a simple if-then list. Canvases show complex logic clearly. Lists are faster for simple flows. Try building one real journey in a trial. Pick a flow with a delay, a branch and an exit rule, since that's where weak builders show.
Plan who runs it. A tool that needs an engineer for every change stalls fast. A tool marketers run themselves needs a clean editor, reusable templates and sensible permission levels. Ask who will own it day to day and choose around that person.
Prices vary more here than in almost any other category. Of the 26 tools in our directory, 15 publish a starting price and 11 ask you to request a quote, including Adobe Marketo Engage, Oracle Eloqua, Act-On, Braze, Iterable and MoEngage. We checked figures on vendor pages in November 2026. Prices change, so confirm before you buy.
Small-business tools start low. Brevo begins at $9, ActiveCampaign at $15, Moosend at $16, GetResponse at $19 and Encharge at $49. MailerLite, Omnisend, Klaviyo and EngageBay have free plans with tight limits. Mid-market tools cost more: Customer.io starts at $100 a month, Userlist at $149 and Keap at $249. At the top, Salesforce Account Engagement starts at $1,250 a month on annual billing for its Growth plan, and rises to $2,750 on Plus and $4,400 on Advanced.
Contacts drive the bill almost everywhere. Customer.io charges by profile and adds overages. Userlist and Salesforce Account Engagement price by contact count. A plan that looks cheap at 2,000 contacts can cost far more at 50,000. Ask each vendor for a quote at your list size now and at double that.
Budget for more than the licence. Enterprise tools often need an implementation partner. Ask about onboarding fees, SMS credits, and add-ons for extra sending domains or dedicated IPs. Mautic is open source and free to download, but you pay for hosting, upkeep and someone who knows how to run it.
Buying too much software is the big one. A twelve-step lifecycle program needs different tools than a welcome email and a re-engagement nudge. Start with the five automations that move revenue, and add more later.
Skipping data quality comes second. Duplicate contacts, missing consent flags and inconsistent tags break automations quietly, and you only notice when a customer gets the wrong email. Clean up before you build.
Don't ignore consent and unsubscribes. Check how each tool stores consent, handles opt-outs across channels and supports the rules that apply to your audience, such as GDPR.
Last: don't automate before you've tested manually. Send a version by hand first. If it doesn't work as a one-off, a workflow won't fix it.
Email marketing sends campaigns to a list. Marketing automation sends messages triggered by behaviour or data, across email and often SMS, push or in-app. Many email tools include some automation. If you mostly send newsletters, start with our email marketing category.
ActiveCampaign, Brevo and EngageBay give small teams automation without enterprise pricing. Compare plans at your list size, because that's where prices diverge.
A small-business tool runs in days. An enterprise platform with CRM sync, scoring and approval flows takes weeks or months. Plan for data cleanup and testing as well as configuration.
Not always. Many tools have a built-in contact database. B2B teams usually want a connection to a CRM, so sales sees what marketing sends.
Yes, though workflows rarely transfer. Export contacts, tags and consent records, and rebuild journeys in the new tool. Ask about export formats before you sign.
Ready to compare? Put two or three tools side by side and check plans at your real contact count.
