ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation platform that combines email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tools to help you create personalized customer journeys and scale your business growth effectively.
Gleam
Gleam is a growth marketing platform that helps you run engaging competitions, rewards, and email captures to grow your audience and increase user interaction across your digital channels.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | ActiveCampaign | Gleam |
|---|---|---|
| Website | activecampaign.com | gleam.io |
| Pricing Model | Freemium | |
| Starting Price | Custom Pricing | Free |
| FREE Trial | ✓ 14 days free trial | ✘ No free trial |
| Free Plan | ✘ No free plan | ✓ Has free plan |
| Product Demo | ✓ Request demo here | ✓ Request demo here |
| Deployment | ||
| Integrations | ||
| Target Users | ||
| Target Industries | ||
| Customer Count | 0 | 0 |
| Founded Year | 2026 | 2013 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, USA | Melbourne, Australia |
Overview
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign helps you move beyond basic email blasts by automating your entire customer experience. You can track every interaction a lead has with your brand and trigger personalized follow-ups based on their specific behavior. Whether you are sending a welcome series or managing a complex sales pipeline, the platform ensures you reach the right person with the right message at exactly the right time.
You can manage your contacts through a built-in CRM that updates automatically as leads engage with your marketing campaigns. This integration between marketing and sales helps you identify your most qualified leads and close deals faster. The platform is designed for growing businesses that need sophisticated automation without the technical overhead of enterprise-level systems, offering a scalable solution for your marketing and sales teams.
Gleam
Gleam is a versatile growth marketing platform designed to help you build an engaged audience through interactive campaigns. Instead of static lead forms, you can create dynamic competitions, instant-win rewards, and social media galleries that encourage specific user actions like following your brand or sharing content.
You can manage four distinct apps—Competitions, Rewards, Galleries, and Captures—all from a single dashboard to drive traffic and sales. The platform works for businesses of all sizes, from solo creators to global brands, by providing verified social actions and seamless integrations with major platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Shopify.
Overview
ActiveCampaign Features
- Visual Automation Builder Create complex automated workflows with a drag-and-drop interface to send emails, update CRM records, and segment your contacts.
- Site Tracking See exactly what your contacts are doing on your website so you can trigger personalized follow-ups based on their interests.
- Integrated Sales CRM Automate your sales pipeline by moving deals between stages and notifying your team when it is time to follow up.
- Predictive Sending Use machine learning to send your emails at the specific time each individual contact is most likely to open them.
- Dynamic Content Change the text and images within your emails based on what you know about each subscriber for a truly personalized experience.
- Lead Scoring Assign points to your leads based on their engagement so your sales team can focus on the most promising opportunities.
Gleam Features
- Verified Social Actions. Ensure your growth is real by automatically verifying that users have actually followed, liked, or subscribed to your channels.
- Viral Share Loops. Give your campaigns a boost by rewarding users with extra entries when they refer their friends to your competition.
- Smart Email Captures. Display targeted popups and opt-in forms based on user behavior to grow your mailing list without being intrusive.
- Instant Rewards. Drive immediate sales by giving users coupons, downloads, or access codes in exchange for completing specific marketing tasks.
- Responsive Widgets. Embed beautiful, mobile-friendly campaign widgets directly on your website or host them on dedicated landing pages.
- Fraud Protection. Keep your contests fair with built-in security features that detect and block suspicious activity or duplicate entries.
Pricing Comparison
ActiveCampaign Pricing
Gleam Pricing
- Unlimited total entries
- Basic entry methods
- Random winner selection
- Mobile responsive widgets
- Standard reporting
- Everything in Free, plus:
- Additional entry types
- Up to 500 monthly captures
- Basic email integrations
- Remove Gleam branding on Captures
Pros & Cons
ActiveCampaign
Pros
- Extremely powerful and flexible automation builder
- Excellent deliverability rates for email campaigns
- Seamless integration between marketing and CRM
- Detailed reporting on campaign performance
- Large library of pre-built automation recipes
Cons
- Steep learning curve for new users
- Pricing increases significantly as list grows
- Interface can feel slow with large datasets
- No forever-free plan available
Gleam
Pros
- Extremely easy to set up and launch campaigns
- Wide variety of social media entry methods
- Verified actions prevent fake contest entries
- Reliable free version for basic giveaways
Cons
- Full suite pricing is relatively expensive
- Interface feels slightly dated to some users
- Steep learning curve for complex logic