7 Act-On Alternatives for B2B Teams [2026]

Act-On has earned a solid reputation as a marketing automation platform for mid-market B2B organizations. It combines email marketing, lead scoring, multichannel campaigns, and CRM integrations into a package that balances sophistication with usability, earning praise for its customer support and Active Contact pricing model that charges only for contacts you actually email.

But as your go-to-market strategy matures, you may find that marketing automation alone isn't enough. Act-On focuses on campaign execution and lead nurturing, but it doesn't provide upstream data intelligence, buyer intent signals, or sales execution tools. You might also find its $900/month starting price steep for your current stage, or its reporting and interface lacking compared to newer platforms.

That's where this guide comes in. Whether you're looking to:

• Power your entire go-to-market motion with B2B data and AI-driven intelligence

• Consolidate marketing, sales, and service under one platform

• Build automation workflows with an integrated CRM at a lower price point

• Launch multichannel campaigns across email, SMS, and WhatsApp without enterprise budgets

• Trigger real-time messages based on product usage events for SaaS onboarding

• Run professional email marketing and automation without annual contract commitments

• Unify customer data and campaign execution with a native CDP

We'll explore alternatives that excel in these specific areas.

This isn't about finding a "better" platform. It's about finding the right fit for your needs and growth stage. Some teams will complement Act-On with a specialized tool, while others will replace it entirely with a platform better suited to their go-to-market motion.

Let's look at the Act-On alternatives and find the right solution for your B2B team.

The Best Act-On Alternatives

What is Act-On?

Source: Act-On

Act-On is a marketing automation platform designed for mid-market and enterprise B2B organizations that need campaign execution without the complexity of larger enterprise tools. Founded in 2008 by Raghu Raghavan (co-founder of Responsys), the platform serves over 4,000 customers globally across industries including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and insurance.

Its key features include:

• Email marketing and multichannel campaigns across email, SMS, social media, landing pages, and direct mail

• Automated Journey Builder for multi-step nurture programs with behavioral triggers and conditional branching

• Lead scoring with both manual rule-based systems and AI Predictive Lead Score

• CRM integrations with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SugarCRM, Oracle NetSuite, and Zendesk Sell

• Analytics and reporting with AI-powered natural language queries and SpotIQ automated analysis

• AI features including AI Create for email content generation and InSite web agents for personalized web content

Act-On's Active Contact pricing model charges only for contacts you actually email within a given month, not your entire database. This can save money compared to competitors that bill based on total database size. The platform earns consistent praise for its customer support and its bidirectional CRM integrations that sync lead scores, engagement data, and contact records between marketing and sales.

However, as your B2B go-to-market strategy scales, you might need capabilities beyond what a marketing automation platform provides: buyer data to identify the right accounts, intent signals to prioritize outreach, or a platform that handles sales execution alongside marketing. That's why we've focused on alternatives that cover specific areas where Act-On falls short.

Looking for a platform that powers your entire go-to-market motion with B2B data intelligence and AI-driven insights? Learn more about ZoomInfo.

How We Curated Our List of Act-On Alternatives

After testing Act-On and researching the marketing automation and GTM platform market, we focused on tools that address needs beyond what Act-On's marketing automation core delivers. While Act-On handles campaign execution and lead nurturing well, B2B teams often need more:

• Identifying and reaching the right buyers with verified B2B contact data and intent signals

• Running marketing, sales, and service from a single shared database

• Building automation workflows with an integrated CRM at accessible price points

• Executing multichannel campaigns across email, SMS, and WhatsApp without enterprise budgets

• Triggering real-time messages based on product usage events for SaaS onboarding and retention

• Launching professional email marketing without annual contracts or steep learning curves

• Unifying customer data and campaign execution with a native CDP and account-based marketing

Each tool on this list leads in one of these areas. You might use them alongside Act-On or switch entirely; it depends on what your growing business needs most.

1. ZoomInfo - Best Alternative for B2B Data Intelligence and Go-to-Market Execution

Source: ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is an AI GTM platform built on a large B2B data foundation: 500M contacts, 100M companies, 135M+ verified phone numbers, and 200M+ verified business email addresses. Its GTM Context Graph, which processes 1.5B+ data points daily, unifies this data with your CRM records, conversation transcripts, and behavioral signals to reveal the full context of your accounts.

Its key features include:

• B2B data covering identity data, company context, technographics, org charts, and buying signals

• GTM Context Graph that captures not just what happened in a deal, but why it happened

• Buyer Intent signals tracking 210 million IP-to-Organization pairings and 6 trillion+ new keyword-to-device pairings sourced monthly

• GTM Workspace for sellers and GTM Studio for marketers, RevOps, and GTM engineers

• APIs and MCP delivering ZoomInfo's intelligence into any tool, workflow, or AI agent

While Act-On helps you execute marketing campaigns and nurture leads, ZoomInfo addresses the upstream question: which accounts should you target, who are the decision-makers, and when are they actively in-market?

For B2B teams that need more than campaign execution, ZoomInfo provides the data intelligence that makes every marketing and sales motion more effective.

Why Choose ZoomInfo Over Act-On for B2B Go-to-Market

Act-On excels at marketing automation for mid-market organizations. ZoomInfo operates at a different level of the go-to-market stack, providing the data foundation, intelligence layer, and execution tools that power the entire revenue engine.

Here's where ZoomInfo steps up.

Comprehensive B2B Data: Know Exactly Who to Target and How to Reach Them

Act-On captures and nurtures leads that come to you through forms, landing pages, and campaign responses. But it doesn't tell you which companies to target in the first place, who the decision-makers are, or how to reach them with verified direct dials and business email addresses.

ZoomInfo's data platform covers three dimensions at once: identity data (who buyers are, where they work, how to reach them), company context (100M companies, org charts, and technographics), and signals that reveal when accounts are actively in-market. This data is verified through a multi-source pipeline backed by 300+ human researchers reaching up to 95% accuracy on first-party data.

Source: ZoomInfo

The practical difference: instead of waiting for prospects to find you through Act-On campaigns, ZoomInfo lets you identify your total addressable market, build targeted prospect lists using 300+ company attributes, and reach buyers through verified contact information.

When a Fortune 500 company analyzed 25 million contacts across vendors in a competitive RFP, the independent consultant concluded that "no other competitor came even close."

⚡ZoomInfo in Action: Your marketing team is planning an ABM campaign targeting enterprise financial services companies evaluating compliance technology. Instead of casting a wide net with Act-On campaigns and hoping the right people respond, ZoomInfo lets you identify every company in your ICP, map the buying committee (compliance officers, CTOs, procurement leads), verify their direct phone numbers and emails, and execute targeted outreach. You know who to contact before the first email is sent.

ZoomInfo's data enabled Vensure to scale prospecting: "ZoomInfo gives us the information we need to execute. We don't have to go through and spend our time digging. It's already there, so we can be three steps ahead." (Vensure Case Study)

GTM Context Graph: Understand Why Deals Move, Not Just That They Moved

Act-On tracks marketing engagement: email opens, form submissions, landing page visits, and lead scores. This tells you what happened in your campaigns.

But it doesn't capture the context behind deal progression (why a prospect went quiet, what a competitive mention in a sales call means for deal risk, or which signal combinations predict closed-won deals in your segment).

ZoomInfo's GTM Context Graph unifies your CRM records, conversation transcripts from Chorus (ZoomInfo's conversation intelligence), email interactions, and product usage signals with ZoomInfo's third-party intelligence. The result is an intelligence layer that captures why outcomes happened and which actions to take next.

As ZoomInfo's Chief Product Officer Dominik Facher writes: "The CRM recorded the state change. It has no record of why it happened." The GTM Context Graph makes this decision context machine-readable, connecting people and their relationships, actions and their outcomes, patterns and predictions, and exceptions and explanations into one intelligence layer.

Source: ZoomInfo

⚡ZoomInfo in Action: Your sales team is working on a mid-market deal that just moved to Stage 4. Act-On can tell you the contact opened three emails and downloaded a whitepaper. ZoomInfo's GTM Context Graph tells you that the CFO joined the last call and asked about six-month ROI (a pattern that correlates with 73% close rates in your segment), the company just hired two new VPs (indicating growth investment), and they're researching your competitor based on intent signals. That context changes how your team follows up, and the follow-up email addresses the specific concern the CFO raised because the system understands why it matters now.

Seismic attributed 39% of active pipeline to opportunities identified or influenced by ZoomInfo signals, reported 54% more productivity, and saved 11.5 hours per week per seller. (Seismic Case Study)

Universal Access: Power Any Tool, Any Workflow, Any AI Agent

Act-On integrates with CRMs and marketing tools through native connectors and iPaaS middleware. ZoomInfo takes a different approach: its intelligence is accessible through three channels that deliver the same data and reasoning to every team, tool, and workflow.

GTM Workspace gives sellers a single surface where prioritized accounts, AI-drafted outreach, and deal execution converge. GTM Studio gives marketers and RevOps an AI-powered orchestration canvas where audience definition, campaign orchestration, and pipeline measurement happen in natural language.

And for teams building beyond ZoomInfo's own products, APIs and MCP expose the same intelligence to any custom agent, internal tool, or partner platform.

Source: ZoomInfo

The key architectural point: all three channels draw from one GTM Context Graph. A buying signal one team detects is immediately actionable by every other team. Expansion plays that used to take 3 weeks now launch in 30 minutes without technical support.

⚡ZoomInfo in Action: A marketer in GTM Studio describes an audience in plain language: "Enterprise SaaS companies with 500+ employees that are researching marketing automation tools and have had a leadership change in the past 90 days." GTM Studio builds the audience from ZoomInfo's data, launches a multi-channel play targeting those accounts, and delivers hot accounts into GTM Workspace where sellers see prioritized accounts with AI-drafted outreach ready to go. Meanwhile, an engineering team uses ZoomInfo's MCP server to power a custom internal tool with the same intelligence. One data layer, three access points, zero duplication.

Redwood Logistics achieved a 99% reduction in CPC, 310% increase in CTR, and saved 20-25 hours per week: "It's not just the data itself. It's more about the right data at the right time to help us reach out with the right message across that full buyer journey." (Redwood Logistics Case Study)

🏅 NOTE: We looked into other B2B data and intelligence platforms and found that while competitors offer partial solutions (contact databases, intent signals, or sales engagement separately), ZoomInfo combines a broad B2B data platform, the GTM Context Graph intelligence layer, and access through native products and APIs/MCP. This three-pillar architecture is why ZoomInfo is recognized as a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader for ABM Platforms and holds 133 No. 1 rankings on G2.

ZoomInfo Pricing

ZoomInfo uses a custom-quoted, seat-and-credit-based subscription model organized into three product lines: Sales, Marketing, and Operations. Each line offers tiered plans (Professional, Advanced, Enterprise) with increasing capabilities.

Sales plans range from Professional (contact and company data, CRM integrations, Chrome extension, AI-powered email generation) to Advanced (buyer intent signals, account prioritization, website visitors, champion tracking) to Enterprise (real-time intent, AI-generated account summaries, custom integrations, dedicated support).

Marketing plans include Marketing Demand (75K credits, intent topics, audience targeting, CRM and MAP integrations), ABM Lite (display advertising, LinkedIn/Facebook/Google ads, AI-driven buying-group identification), and ABM Enterprise (150K credits, unlimited intent topics, AI recommendations, predictive account scoring).

ZoomInfo also offers ZoomInfo Lite, a permanent free tier with access to 100M+ verified profiles, 10 monthly export credits, individual and company searches, contact information, the ReachOut Chrome Extension, and WebSights Lite. No credit card or time limit required.

A 7-day free trial is also available with access to core platform features including contact and company search, intent signals, and email outreach.

Source: ZoomInfo

Who Should Use ZoomInfo?

Choose ZoomInfo if:

• You need to identify and reach B2B buyers proactively with verified contact data and direct dials, rather than relying on inbound marketing campaigns to attract leads through Act-On's forms and landing pages.

• Your go-to-market strategy requires buyer intent signals, account prioritization, and AI-powered deal intelligence beyond what a marketing automation platform tracks, so your teams can focus on accounts most likely to buy.

• You want a platform that powers every team (sales, marketing, RevOps) and every tool (CRM, custom apps, AI agents) from a single intelligence layer through native products, APIs, and MCP, rather than managing a fragmented stack of point solutions.

Ready to see how B2B data changes your go-to-market? Start with ZoomInfo Lite for free or request a demo to explore the full platform.

2. HubSpot Marketing Hub - Best Alternative for Full-Ecosystem Enterprise Marketing

Source: HubSpot

HubSpot Marketing Hub is an AI-powered marketing automation platform that unifies marketing, sales, service, content management, and commerce under one shared database. Unlike Act-On, which requires connecting to external CRMs, HubSpot eliminates data silos by housing all customer interactions in a single platform.

Its key capabilities include:

• Unified CRM and marketing ecosystem where every email open, form submission, sales call, and support ticket writes to the same contact record without sync delays

• Breeze AI agents that handle end-to-end workflows autonomously, from blog research to social media management

• Up to 1,000 workflows on Enterprise with cross-object actions, behavioral triggers, and multi-touch revenue attribution

• 2,000+ app integrations via the App Marketplace and a native Salesforce sync

HubSpot is the strongest alternative for organizations that have outgrown point solutions and need marketing, sales, and service teams operating from a single source of truth.

Why Choose HubSpot Marketing Hub Over Act-On?

HubSpot stands out in the following areas:

• One Platform Eliminates Integration Complexity.

Act-On requires connecting to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SugarCRM, or other CRMs through bidirectional sync jobs that introduce data latency and field mapping maintenance. HubSpot eliminates this by housing marketing, sales, service, CMS, and commerce data in one shared database.

When a contact submits a form, sales sees it instantly; no sync, no API queue, no conflict resolution.

• AI Agents Execute Full Workflows, Not Just Content Assistance.

Act-On's AI features (AI Create for email content, AI Predictive Lead Score) accelerate individual tasks within human-managed workflows. HubSpot's Breeze Agents own entire workflows: the Blog Research Agent researches topics, drafts posts, and queues them for publication; the Social Agent develops multi-channel content strategies and schedules posts. A three-person marketing team can execute at a scale that would otherwise require six.

Source: HubSpot

• Enterprise Automation Depth with Published Pricing.

HubSpot publishes every feature, tier, and price on its website. Enterprise offers 1,000 workflows supporting cross-object actions (a contact workflow can simultaneously update the company, create a deal, and route a task to sales). Act-On's Enterprise tier requires custom pricing ("Let's talk"), and CRM integration is a paid add-on with undisclosed pricing.

🏅 NOTE: We also evaluated Marketo and Oracle Eloqua for enterprise marketing automation. While Marketo excels at complex lead lifecycle management and Eloqua offers deep Oracle ecosystem integrations, HubSpot offers the most complete ecosystem consolidation for teams that need marketing, sales, and service tools without the specialized MarOps resources that Marketo and Eloqua implementations require.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Pricing

HubSpot offers transparent, published pricing tiers:

• Free Tools: $0/month with up to 1,000 contacts, basic forms, ad management, and conversational bots.

• Starter: $20/month per seat with 1,000 marketing contacts, HubSpot branding removal, and email health insights.

• Professional: $890/month with 3 Core Seats, 2,000 contacts, 300 workflows, A/B testing, smart content, Salesforce integration, and a required $3,000 onboarding fee.

• Enterprise: $3,600/month with 5 Core Seats, 10,000 contacts, 1,000 workflows, predictive lead scoring, custom objects, SSO, and a required $7,000 onboarding fee.

Who Should Use HubSpot Marketing Hub?

Choose HubSpot Marketing Hub if:

• Your organization is outgrowing point solutions and needs marketing, sales, and service teams operating from a single shared database, eliminating the integration overhead of managing Act-On alongside a separate CRM.

• You need AI agents that execute full workflows autonomously rather than just assisting with content generation, enabling a small team to produce at scale.

• You require enterprise-grade automation with transparent published pricing and want to see exactly what capabilities cost before entering a sales conversation.

3. ActiveCampaign - Best Alternative for Automation Builder with Integrated CRM

Source: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform with an embedded CRM that serves 180,000+ businesses across 170+ countries. The platform processed 109 billion emails in 2025 with an average open rate of 40.4%.

Unlike Act-On, which requires separate CRM integrations, ActiveCampaign bundles marketing automation, CRM, pipeline management, email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging in one platform.

Key capabilities include:

• Visual automation builder with 135+ triggers and actions in a drag-and-drop flowchart-style builder

• Built-in CRM with customizable Kanban-style deal pipelines and deal-level scoring separate from contact-level scoring

• 750+ pre-built automation recipes organized by use case

• Strong email deliverability with 99.88% deliverability and independent testing showing 94%

Why Choose ActiveCampaign Over Act-On?

ActiveCampaign stands out in the following areas:

• Marketing and Sales in One Platform.

ActiveCampaign's Sales CRM is built into the marketing automation platform, so deal records, contact profiles, lead scores, and pipeline stages all live in the same database. When a contact opens an email, sales reps see it instantly without waiting for a sync job. Act-On requires connecting to an external CRM, introducing sync delays and field mapping maintenance.

• Active Intelligence AI Builds Campaigns Autonomously.

Active Intelligence, launched in May 2025 and described as the fastest-growing feature in ActiveCampaign's history, lets marketers describe a business goal in plain language, and AI agents handle strategy, execution, and optimization. According to ActiveCampaign, AI users save 13+ hours per week. Act-On's AI features function as point-in-time assistants rather than a continuous autonomous layer.

Source: ActiveCampaign

• Native Omnichannel with Email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

ActiveCampaign provides native WhatsApp messaging (acquired through Hilos in April 2025), SMS marketing, and email in unified workflows. Act-On does not offer WhatsApp as a native channel, limiting its reach for businesses targeting international markets.

🏅 NOTE: We also evaluated Brevo and HubSpot Marketing Hub for this category. While Brevo excels at affordable email and SMS for small businesses and HubSpot offers a full CRM ecosystem, ActiveCampaign offers the best combination of automation, embedded CRM, and omnichannel orchestration for growing B2B teams at accessible pricing ($15-$145/month for 1,000 contacts).

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign uses contact-based pricing. Prices below are for 1,000 contacts with annual billing:

• Starter: $15/month with email marketing automation, third-party integrations, and A/B testing (capped at 5 actions per automation).

• Plus: $49/month adding unlimited automation actions, multichannel marketing, landing pages, and AI content generation.

• Professional: $79/month adding advanced segmentation, predictive sending, revenue attribution, and 3 user seats.

• Enterprise: $145/month with HIPAA support, SSO, premium CRM integrations (Salesforce, Dynamics 365), and 5 user seats.

ActiveCampaign offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Who Should Use ActiveCampaign?

Choose ActiveCampaign if:

• You're building your GTM stack from scratch or consolidating tools and want marketing automation and CRM in one platform without external integration overhead.

• Your team needs automation depth (750+ recipes, unlimited actions, behavioral triggers) without enterprise complexity or Act-On's $900/month starting price.

• You need native omnichannel orchestration across email, SMS, and WhatsApp within unified workflows, particularly for international markets.

4. Brevo - Best Alternative for Affordable Multichannel Marketing

Source: Brevo

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a customer engagement platform delivering marketing automation, transactional messaging, CRM, and multichannel campaigns at price points accessible to small and mid-market businesses. The platform serves over 600,000 customers globally and includes email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, push notifications, and loyalty programs under a single vendor.

Key capabilities include:

• Permanent free plan with 300 emails per day and unlimited contact storage for up to 100,000 contacts

• Native WhatsApp messaging as a certified WhatsApp Business Solution Provider

• Send-volume pricing that charges by emails sent, not contacts stored

• Transactional email infrastructure with 99.8% API request rate

Why Choose Brevo Over Act-On?

Brevo stands out in the following areas:

• Price Accessibility.

Act-On starts at $900/month for 2,500 active contacts with annual contracts required. Brevo offers a permanent free plan, with paid plans starting at $9/month for 5,000 emails. Even Brevo's Professional plan at $499/month sits below Act-On's entry price while including WhatsApp campaigns, push notifications, and a dedicated Deliverability Specialist.

• Native Multichannel in Unified Workflows.

Brevo integrates email, SMS, and WhatsApp into a single workflow editor where marketers design sequences across channels without switching tools. Act-On does not natively support WhatsApp, and its SMS operates on a credit-based system billed separately.

Source: Brevo

• Zero-Friction Entry.

Brevo's permanent free plan requires no credit card, no time limit, and no annual contract. A business can operate indefinitely on the free tier, then scale to paid plans on month-to-month billing. Act-On requires annual contracts with automatic 5% annual price increases.

🏅 NOTE: We also evaluated Mailchimp and Constant Contact. While Mailchimp excels at ease of use for very small businesses and Constant Contact offers strong nonprofit pricing, Brevo delivers the broadest multichannel capabilities with native WhatsApp, a generous free plan, and send-volume pricing that makes Act-On-level automation accessible at small business price points.

Brevo Pricing

Brevo uses send-volume pricing with unlimited contacts on all plans:

• Free: $0/month with 300 emails/day, unlimited contacts, drag-and-drop editor, segmentation, and transactional email via SMTP/API.

• Starter: From $9/month for 5,000 emails/month with email and SMS access.

• Standard: From $18/month for 5,000 emails/month adding marketing automation, A/B testing, AI send-time optimization, and advanced reporting.

• Professional: From $499/month for 150,000 emails/month adding WhatsApp campaigns, push notifications, contact scoring, and dedicated Deliverability Specialist.

Who Should Use Brevo?

Choose Brevo if:

• Act-On's $900/month entry point and annual contract strain your budget, and you need marketing automation with workflow builders and behavioral triggers at accessible pricing.

• Your strategy involves SMS and WhatsApp alongside email, and you want all three channels in unified automation workflows rather than managing separate tools.

• You want a platform you can start using today at zero cost with a permanent free plan, then scale on month-to-month billing as your business grows.

5. Customer.io - Best Alternative for Behavior-Driven SaaS Messaging

Source: Customer.io

Customer.io is a customer engagement platform that replaces Act-On's list-based campaign model with real-time behavioral event triggering designed for product-led growth companies.

Rather than relying on scheduled batch sends to static segments, Customer.io ingests product usage events as they happen and fires messages in response to what users actually do inside the application.

Key capabilities include:

• Real-time behavioral event triggers based on feature adoption, billing events, and onboarding milestones

• Multi-channel messaging across email, push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, WhatsApp, and LINE from a single workflow builder

• Advanced segmentation with Liquid templating for personalized messages based on any data point

• Data Pipelines as a lightweight CDP unifying mobile, web, and backend events

Why Choose Customer.io Over Act-On?

Customer.io stands out in the following areas:

• Real-Time Event Architecture.

Act-On's Automated Programs trigger based on list operations (form submissions, list additions, score thresholds). Customer.io triggers based on any custom event your engineering team sends, enabling messages within minutes of a user action.

• Native Multi-Channel Orchestration.

Customer.io supports email, SMS, mobile push, web and mobile in-app messages, WhatsApp, LINE, and webhooks in a single visual workflow builder. Act-On focuses primarily on email, with SMS as a bolt-on and no native in-app messaging or push notifications.

Source: Customer.io

• Developer-Friendly API-First Design.

Customer.io exposes four distinct APIs with unlimited API calls on all plans. Act-On provides an Open API but charges overage fees for excessive API usage and was not designed for API-first use.

🏅 NOTE: We also evaluated Drip and Klaviyo. While Drip excels at ecommerce lifecycle automation and Klaviyo dominates Shopify-based DTC brands, Customer.io offers the best event-driven architecture for SaaS companies needing real-time product usage triggers and a developer-friendly data model.

Customer.io Pricing

Customer.io uses usage-based pricing with unlimited user seats:

• Essentials: Starts at $100/month (billed monthly) for 5,000 profiles and 1 million emails/month, including visual workflow builder, cross-channel automation, A/B testing, and AI Agent.

• Premium: Starts at $1,000/month (billed annually) adding WhatsApp, LINE, data warehouse destinations, HIPAA compliance, and managed deliverability.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing with dedicated hardware, priority support, and migration assistance.

Customer.io offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Who Should Use Customer.io?

Choose Customer.io if:

• Your SaaS onboarding, activation, and retention strategies require responding to in-product behavior in real time (not days), and Act-On's list-based model can't match the responsiveness your product-led growth motion demands.

• You need native multi-channel orchestration (email, push, SMS, in-app, WhatsApp) in a single workflow without stitching together separate vendors.

• Your team has technical marketing capability or close marketing-engineering collaboration, and you value API-first design with unlimited API calls.

6. MailerLite - Best Alternative for Cost-Effective Email Marketing

Source: MailerLite

MailerLite is a digital marketing platform built around simplicity, offering email marketing, automation workflows, landing pages, and website building at price points accessible to solopreneurs and small businesses. It earned G2 Easiest to Use 2025 recognition and serves over 1 million creators and businesses.

Key capabilities include:

• Permanent free plan with up to 500 subscribers, 12,000 emails/month, automation workflows (up to 100 steps), and 10 landing pages

• Paid plans starting at $10/month with unlimited emails, dynamic content, and A/B testing

• Modern interface rebuilt in March 2022 with drag-and-drop editors

• Website and landing page builder with custom domains and SEO settings included

Why Choose MailerLite Over Act-On?

MailerLite stands out in the following areas:

• Zero Financial Commitment Entry Point.

Act-On requires $900/month with annual contracts and automatic 5% annual price increases. MailerLite's free plan includes real automation workflows, landing pages, and a website builder at zero cost with no time limit. At 2,500 contacts, MailerLite's Growing Business plan costs $10/month, 90 times less than Act-On's baseline.

• Modern Interface and Immediate Usability.

Act-On users report that the interface feels outdated and that the UI is being overhauled slowly. MailerLite's clean-slate redesign delivers a modern, intuitive experience with a 97% support satisfaction rate and 5-minute average live chat response time.

• All-Inclusive Pricing Without Hidden Costs.

Act-On's pricing includes potential overage fees, storage charges beyond 4GB, paid add-ons for CRM integration and ABM, and undisclosed premium support pricing. MailerLite includes its full feature set within each tier with no surprise add-ons: unlimited emails, templates, landing pages, websites, and MailerLite branding removal.

🏅 NOTE: We also evaluated Brevo and Mailchimp. While Brevo offers a free plan with send-volume pricing and Mailchimp provides brand recognition for very small teams, MailerLite offers the most complete set of marketing tools at no cost, including automation workflows, landing pages, a website builder, and the ability to sell digital products, all without time limits or forced upgrades.

MailerLite Pricing

MailerLite uses subscriber-count pricing with unlimited email sends on paid plans:

• Free: $0/month with 500 subscribers, 12,000 emails/month, automation builder, 1 website, 10 landing pages, and email support for the first 14 days.

• Growing Business: From $10/month (500 subscribers) with unlimited emails, 3 user seats, dynamic content, A/B testing, and custom domains.

• Advanced: From $20/month (500 subscribers) adding Smart Sending, AI writing assistant, unlimited user seats, and Facebook custom audiences.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for 100,000+ subscribers with dedicated success manager and IP.

Nonprofit organizations receive a 30% discount on paid plans.

Who Should Use MailerLite?

Choose MailerLite if:

• You need to evaluate marketing automation without financial commitment, and the permanent free plan lets you test whether automation delivers ROI before committing to annual contracts.

• You prioritize a modern interface and immediate usability, and you're frustrated by outdated UIs or steep learning curves in legacy platforms.

• You want professional email marketing, automation, websites, and landing pages in one platform at a price point 90 times lower than Act-On's entry tier.

7. Ortto - Best Alternative for Unified Customer Data and Campaign Execution

Source: Ortto

Ortto is a marketing automation platform with a native customer data platform (CDP) that closes the gap between data collection and campaign execution.

Unlike Act-On, which requires external data sources to centralize customer information, Ortto consolidates contact profiles, behavioral tracking, journey automation, analytics, and customer support into a single system. Acquired by Canva on April 8, 2026, Ortto continues operating as a standalone product.

Key capabilities include:

• Native CDP unifying data from CRM, ecommerce, support, billing, and web activity into event-based contact profiles

• AI Filters that convert plain-language audience descriptions into segmentation rules

• Account-based marketing available across all paid tiers, not gated behind Enterprise pricing

• MCP Server enabling AI assistants to query and act on Ortto's CDP through natural language

Why Choose Ortto Over Act-On?

Ortto stands out in the following areas:

• Native CDP Eliminates the Data Integration Tax.

Act-On stores contact records and tracks email engagement, but it doesn't consolidate data from web sessions, product usage, billing, and support tickets into unified profiles unless external systems are connected.

Ortto treats its CDP as the foundation, storing time-stamped activities natively. This enables segmentation like "contacts who signed up more than 30 days ago, logged in once in week one, but haven't logged in within 14 days," without requiring batch exports or API calls.

• AI-Powered Natural Language Data Access.

Ortto's AI Filters let marketers type "people in Europe who haven't purchased in 90 days" and the AI generates the corresponding filter rules. AI Decision Shapes within journey builders evaluate contacts against custom prompts and route them accordingly. Act-On's AI features (AI Predictive Lead Score, AI Create) work as standalone tools rather than an intelligence layer woven through the platform.

Source: Ortto

• ABM Without an Enterprise Upgrade.

Act-On gates Account-Based Marketing to the Enterprise tier as a paid add-on. Ortto shipped ABM in December 2025 and made account-based journeys, activities, reports, and audiences available across all paid tiers. A team on Ortto's Starter plan ($237/month) gets ABM capabilities that Act-On reserves for its highest-paying customers.

🏅 NOTE: We also evaluated ActiveCampaign and HubSpot. While ActiveCampaign excels at email automation with its embedded CRM and HubSpot offers a full ecosystem, Ortto provides the tightest integration of customer data and campaign execution for teams that want both in one platform without maintaining external integrations or paying for Enterprise-tier ABM access.

Ortto Pricing

Ortto uses contact-count pricing with unlimited seats. Pricing below is for 10,000 contacts with annual billing:

• Starter: $237/month with visual journey builder, email and SMS, form builder, A/B testing, AI suggestions, reporting, and key integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Stripe, Shopify).

• Professional: $509/month adding mobile push, dynamic content, landing pages, lead scoring, dedicated email IPs, transactional messaging, and custom roles.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing with priority support, dedicated success manager, SLA, multiple workspaces, and not-for-profit pricing (20% discount).

Ortto offers a 14-day free trial with up to 10,000 contacts and 100 email sends, no credit card required.

Who Should Use Ortto?

Choose Ortto if:

• Your team needs a unified CDP and marketing automation platform, and you don't want to maintain integrations between separate data tools and campaign execution platforms.

• You want AI-powered data access (natural language queries, AI segmentation, AI journey routing) without requiring SQL, data warehouse experience, or developer support.

• You need account-based marketing capabilities but don't want to pay Enterprise pricing to access them, making Ortto's all-tier ABM a clear advantage over Act-On's gated approach.

The Final Verdict

Act-On delivers effective marketing automation for mid-market B2B organizations, but growing businesses often need capabilities beyond campaign execution and lead nurturing. Based on our research, here are the best alternatives:

• ZoomInfo for B2B data intelligence, buyer intent signals, and AI-powered go-to-market execution across sales, marketing, and RevOps

• HubSpot Marketing Hub for full-ecosystem consolidation where marketing, sales, and service operate from a single shared database

• ActiveCampaign for automation workflows with an embedded CRM at accessible price points

• Brevo for affordable multichannel marketing across email, SMS, and WhatsApp with a permanent free plan

• Customer.io for real-time behavior-driven messaging in product-led SaaS companies

• MailerLite for professional email marketing and automation without annual contracts or enterprise budgets

• Ortto for unified customer data and campaign execution with account-based marketing on all tiers

You don't have to choose between Act-On and these alternatives exclusively. Many businesses use Act-On alongside specialized tools to create their ideal tech stack. Consider your needs, team structure, and growth plans when deciding which solution works best.

Ready to power your go-to-market with B2B data? Start with ZoomInfo Lite for free, or request a demo to see how ZoomInfo's data intelligence, GTM Context Graph, and universal access help your team find, win, and grow customers.

Act-On Alternatives FAQ

Why do businesses look for Act-On alternatives?

Act-On works well as a mid-market marketing automation platform, but businesses often outgrow its capabilities in specific areas.

Common reasons include needing upstream B2B data intelligence to identify the right accounts before running campaigns, wanting a platform that handles sales and service alongside marketing instead of requiring separate CRM integrations, finding the $900/month starting price prohibitive for early-stage teams, or needing real-time event-driven messaging for product-led SaaS that Act-On's list-based model can't support.

What is the best overall Act-On alternative?

There is no single best alternative because Act-On covers marketing automation broadly and teams have different priorities.

ZoomInfo is the top choice for B2B data intelligence and go-to-market execution, HubSpot leads for full-ecosystem platform consolidation, and ActiveCampaign is the strongest option for automation with an integrated CRM at accessible pricing.

Is there a free alternative to Act-On?

Yes. Brevo offers a permanent free plan with 300 emails per day and unlimited contact storage. MailerLite provides a free plan with 500 subscribers, 12,000 emails per month, and automation workflows.

ZoomInfo Lite offers permanent free access to 100M+ verified B2B profiles with 10 monthly export credits. HubSpot has free CRM and marketing tools for up to 1,000 contacts. Customer.io and Ortto both offer 14-day free trials.

Which Act-On alternative is best for small businesses on a budget?

MailerLite at $10/month for 500 subscribers delivers professional email marketing with automation, landing pages, and websites at 90 times less than Act-On's $900/month entry point. Brevo's Standard plan at $18/month adds marketing automation with A/B testing and AI send-time optimization. ActiveCampaign starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts with automation and integrated CRM.

The right choice depends on whether you prioritize simplicity (MailerLite), multichannel reach (Brevo), or CRM integration (ActiveCampaign).

How does ZoomInfo compare to Act-On?

ZoomInfo and Act-On operate at different levels of the go-to-market stack.

Act-On is a marketing automation platform for executing campaigns and nurturing leads. ZoomInfo is an AI GTM platform that provides data intelligence (500M contacts, 100M companies, buyer intent signals), the GTM Context Graph (understanding why deals move), and access through GTM Workspace, GTM Studio, APIs, and MCP that power the entire revenue engine.

Teams that need both marketing automation and B2B data intelligence often use ZoomInfo alongside or instead of Act-On.

Which alternative is best for SaaS companies with product-led growth?

Customer.io is designed for product-led SaaS, offering real-time behavioral event triggers, multi-channel orchestration (email, push, SMS, in-app), and a developer-friendly API-first design with unlimited API calls. Ortto is also strong for SaaS teams that want a native CDP combined with marketing automation.

Act-On's list-based campaign model is less suited for messaging that needs to respond to in-product behavior within minutes.

Is it difficult to migrate from Act-On to one of these alternatives?

Migration complexity depends on what you use Act-On for.

Replacing email marketing with MailerLite or Brevo is straightforward since the core workflow (building emails, segments, and automations) transfers naturally. Moving to a platform like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign requires more planning since you may also be consolidating CRM and sales tools.

Adding ZoomInfo as an intelligence layer alongside or instead of Act-On can be done incrementally, starting with ZoomInfo Lite at no cost to evaluate the data before committing.

Which Act-On alternative offers the best CRM integration?

HubSpot eliminates the need for CRM integration entirely by housing marketing, sales, and service in one shared database. ActiveCampaign includes a built-in CRM with pipeline management and deal scoring.

For teams that want to keep their existing CRM (Salesforce, Dynamics), ZoomInfo offers native integrations plus API and MCP access that power any tool in the stack, while Act-On's native CRM connectors remain a viable option for marketing automation needs.