Marketers use Customer.io to create automated messaging campaigns based on real-time data. The campaigns target customers across different messaging channels at a time when they are most likely to respond.
Customer.io is a powerful and intuitive platform that may not suit everyone.
Some find the dashboard challenging, some complain about the lack of integrations, while others feel the analytics could have been better.
So, we went the extra mile in our research and found the top Customer.io alternatives for marketing automation.
As a bonus, we also discuss a platform that irons out the kinks in your daily workflows and aligns you with the bigger marketing scenario.
So, let’s dive in!
10 Customer.io Alternatives for Marketing Automation in 2024
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Should You Look for in Customer.io Alternatives?
Here are some key features that set apart a great customer engagement platform from an ordinary one:
- User-friendly interface: Choose a tool with an intuitive interface that’s easy to navigate for users with little or no technical knowledge
- Integration capabilities: Ensure the tool integrates seamlessly with your existing tech stack, such as CRM or project management software
- Automation features: Look for robust automation capabilities, including lead nurturing, drip campaigns, and workflow automation to streamline marketing processes
- Scalability: Select a tool that can grow with your business, accommodating evolving complexity and larger contact lists
- Analytics and reporting: Prioritize tools with comprehensive analytics to measure campaign performance, track KPIs, and provide insights for future marketing campaigns
- Omnichannel support: Ensure the tool supports various marketing channels, such as email, social media, and SMS, to grow your reach further
- A/B testing: Look for A/B testing features to experiment with different elements in your campaigns and optimize for better results
- Customer support and training: Evaluate the level of customer support and available training resources to ensure your team can effectively use the platform
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe 10 Best Customer.io Alternatives to Use
These are the top Customer.io alternatives that made it to our 2024 list:
1. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an intelligent marketing automation software that analyzes customer behavior, sends automated messages to customers at the right time, and boosts conversion.
The platform manages all customer data under one roof. This data helps automate workflows across channels like emails, SMS, and mobile push notifications.
From sending welcome messages and addressing cart abandonment to boosting sales through cross-selling, Klaviyo makes it simple to design hyper-personalized campaigns of any scale.
Klaviyo best features
- Create comprehensive customer profiles with past data and predictive analytics using Klaviyo AI
- Deliver segmented customer experience based on data such as location proximity and average order value (AOV)
- Automate review requests and showcase them on your website
- Visualize campaign performance with an advanced reporting tool
Klaviyo limitations
- High pricing
- It has a learning curve
Klaviyo pricing
- Free
- Email: Starts at $45/month
- Email and SMS: Starts at $60/month
Klaviyo ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (1,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (400+ reviews)
2. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign extracts customer data from social media, landing pages, text messages, and other possible sources to help you automate your marketing workflow.
Segmentation becomes easy when you know your customers’ likes, dislikes, and buying behavior. ActiveCampaign allows you to automate your segments and personalize customer interactions without manual effort.
The tool lays out the entire customer lifecycle while keeping you updated on campaign performance with streamlined reports. Based on these reports, tailor your drip campaigns to maximize conversions.
ActiveCampaign best features
- Automate emails, find customer engagement scores, and trigger automatic notifications to remind customers of important dates
- Create personalized email marketing content and A/B test flows using an advanced segmentation tool
- Get a bird’s eye view of your automatons, see what’s working, and tweak strategies based on real-time insights
- Get help from ActiveCampaign’s online resources or live one-on-one support when you get stuck
ActiveCampaign limitation
- It has a learning curve
- Price bumps up as your audience grows
ActiveCampaign pricing
- Lite: $39/month
- Plus: $70/month
- Professional: $187/month
- Enterprise: $323/month
ActiveCampaign ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (10,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (2,000+ reviews)
Check out these ActiveCampaign alternatives!
3. CleverTap
As a top-rated marketing automation and engagement platform, CleverTap analyzes customer data, creates automated segments, and fine-tunes the entire customer lifecycle.
It gives you the inside scoop on different demographics, their behavioral patterns, and real-life actions. This data lets you whip up customer journeys without coding skills.
The tool covers all your messaging needs in a single platform. Whether in-app chats, SMS, WhatsApp, emails, web push notifications, or even a friendly voice call, you can set up automation and connect with your customers wherever they’re most active.
CleverTap best features
- Deliver 1:1 customer experience based on accurate data
- Maximize sign-ups with omnichannel onboarding
- Provide tailored product recommendations to bump up engagement
- Set up email automation with customizable templates and stay on top of customer lifecycle marketing
- Track campaign analytics and deliverability reports regularly to stay aligned with your marketing goals
CleverTap limitations
- Cannot track app uninstall data
- The user interface can feel confusing for beginners
CleverTap pricing
- Essentials: $75/month for up to 5000 monthly active users (MAU)
- Advanced: Custom pricing
- Cutting Edge: Custom pricing
CleverTap ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (400+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (50+ reviews)
4. Emarsys
Designed to automate omnichannel campaigns, Emarsys helps you scale your marketing efforts with no manual work.
This enterprise marketing software utilizes historical and real-life customer data to create targeted campaigns based on their lifecycle stage. You can send time-sensitive messages with real-time automated triggers, ensuring customers never miss a crucial update.
Emarsys’s Revenue Analytics allows revenue attribution tracking to help you understand how your initiatives lead to revenue generation.
Emarsys best features
- Create segments based on where a customer stands on the lifecycle
- Use customer data AI to design targeted campaigns
- Communicate with customers in real-time
- Use AI-powered analytics to measure the impact of your campaigns on revenue
Emarsys limitations
- It takes time to set up the tool
- Customer support is available in limited regions
Emarsys pricing
- Custom pricing
Emarsys ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (400+ reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
5. Iterable
Iterable is a customer engagement platform that refines cross-channel communication and delivers a thoughtful experience at scale.
The tool goes beyond usual segmentation systems to ensure top-tier personalized communication. It empowers you to optimize, measure, and tweak interactions throughout the customer journey based on real-time behavioral data.
Implementing automation is seamless. Thanks to its easy-to-navigate interface, you don’t need to rely on coders or engineers to set up your workflows.
Iterable best features
- Build one-on-one relationships with customers with Iterable’s AI Suite
- Utilize advanced segmentation features to deliver a meaningful experience
- Orchestrate communication across channels, including web, SMS, email, and in-app notifications
- Create automated journeys and respond to customers promptly
- Adapt to changing customer preferences with dynamic, always-on journeys
Iterable limitations
- Analytics and reporting need improvement
- A steep learning curve makes it a necessity to attend the training program
Iterable pricing
- Custom pricing
Iterable ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (40+ reviews)
6. Omnisend
Omnisend is an e-commerce tool that uses automated SMS and email campaigns to collect, convert, and retain customers.
The platform segments customers based on shopping behavior and preferences, enabling you to create well-targeted, personalized emails and texts. It also offers pre-built workflows for cart abandonment, welcome series, and transactional emails designed to win back lost sales.
This tool integrates emails with SMS and other channels, ensuring a consistent omnichannel experience, reduced expenses, and more efficiency.
Omnisend best features
- Master customer lifecycle marketing to promote retention and increase sales
- Customize campaigns to make them on-brand
- Save time with pre-built automation and drive sales
- Segment customers based on their purchase history, average order value (AOV), and purchase recency
Omnisend limitations
- The backend interface is not user-friendly for design teams
- Limited integrations as compared to other tools
Omnisend pricing
- Free
- Standard: $16/month
- Pro: $59/month
Omnisend ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (800+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (700+ reviews)
7. Braze
This AI-powered customer engagement platform helps you switch from running siloed campaigns to creating orchestrated journeys.
Braze collects and activates customer data from different touchpoints to build comprehensive user profiles. This step lets you personalize your campaigns, resulting in top-notch customer engagement.
With the quick drag-and-drop editor, ready-to-use templates, and the gentle push of AI, crafting personalized messages becomes a breeze.
Braze best features
- Use first-party data to build holistic customer profiles
- Streamline journey orchestration with no-code tools
- Expand your reach and communicate with customers on every channel they use
- Predict customer behavior, craft on-brand messages, personalize journeys, and drive better outcomes with Sage AI by Braze™
- Visualize engagement and measure business metrics with custom reports and dashboards
Braze limitations
- Some users complain about the limited reporting function
- It takes time to load
Braze pricing
- Custom pricing
Braze ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (900+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (90+ reviews)
8. Freshsales Suite
Freshsales Suite is a comprehensive CRM that aligns sales and marketing teams to stay on top of customer engagement.
The tool gives you a full-circle view of your customers. It empowers you to understand their intent, nurture customer relationships better, and send contextual messages that drive sales.
This marketing CRM software also allows automating sales action sequences, business workflows, and task management to help teams run smoothly and do more in less time.
Freshsales Suite’s best features
- Create custom lifecycle stages for your contacts
- Deliver personalized engagement with Sales Sequences
- Cut down manual dependency by automating emails, phone calls, chats, SMSes, and more
- Use Freddy AI to generate leads, assign scores to contacts, and analyze historical data
Freshsales Suite limitations
- Complex report creation process
- Exporting data is a hassle
Freshsales Suite pricing
- Free: Up to 3 users
- Growth: $18/user per month
- Pro: $47/user per month
- Enterprise: $83/user per month
Freshsales Suite ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (1000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (600+ reviews)
9. Ortto
Deploying powerful campaigns at scale becomes easy with Ortto, a popular Customer.io alternative.
This tool’s USP is Journeys, a marketing automation solution that helps you create a memorable experience throughout the customer lifecycle.
Ortto gives you access to customer data from its customer data platform (CDP), enabling you to create personalized, timely, and relevant messages for targeted segments across various channels.
It comes with a robust reporting tool for tracking marketing KPIs, identifying trends, and making changes to automation if necessary.
Ortto best features
- Send automated transactional emails for important updates to both subscribers and non-subscribers
- Check the version history of the automation
- Segment customers with Ortto CDP’s intuitive filters
- Use AI for predicting open rates, generating content ideas, or brainstorming subject lines
- Auto-generate replies based on past tickets, support documents, and web content
Ortto limitations
- The platform could have been more intuitive
- Limited integrations
Ortto pricing
- Professional: $599/month
- Business: $999/month
- Enterprise: $1,999/month
Ortto ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (100+ reviews)
10. Hubspot Marketing Hub
HubSpot Marketing Hub unifies marketing tools, customer data, and teams under one platform.
From automating lead nurturing, lead scoring, and follow-ups to creating targeted workflows, this ActiveCampaign alternative handles mundane routine tasks so you don’t have to.
The tool deploys advanced segmentation processes to enroll customers into specific workflows. Once this is done, it’s time to build personalized drip campaigns based on your CRM data and run them on auto-pilot.
Hubspot Marketing Hub’s best features
- Automate email and SMS campaigns with workflows and bot builders
- Use email triggers and chatbots to create personalized messages that appeal to your target audience
- Set up triggers, conditions, and actions to make your messages on time and relevant
- Visualize workflows for different segments of customers
- Track campaign performance with real-time reporting
Hubspot Marketing Hub limitations
- Steep learning curve
Hubspot Marketing Hub pricing
- Free
- Professional: $890/month
- Enterprise: $3,600/month (billed annually)
Hubspot Marketing Hub ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (10,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (5,000+ reviews)
Summarize this article for me pleaseOther Customer Marketing Tools
Customer.io and its competitors take care of omnichannel messaging automation, a significant aspect of marketing and planning.
However, the broader picture of marketing involves way more complex processes, including project planning, campaign creation, project management, task automation, collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, and analyzing customer insights, to mention a few.
To manage all of these processes without losing your mind, you need powerful marketing planning software like ClickUp by your side.
ClickUp
Rated as the #1 CRM in the world, ClickUp’s CRM is the real MVP in marketing. This comprehensive tool empowers teams of all sizes and industries to manage daily work from a single platform.
As a CRM software, it helps you track and manage accounts, communicate with team members, and streamline customer workflows to maximize client satisfaction.
ClickUp doubles up as a marketing project management platform where you plan your marketing strategy, manage campaigns, integrate your favorite tools, manage resources, and stay up-to-date with high-level reporting.
The tool also automates business processes through ClickUp’s Automation and workflows, allowing for more strategic work and fewer repetitive tasks.
If you’re struggling with efficiency, ClickUp has a vast library of templates to speed up your work. For instance, while creating a marketing plan for your business, you may take ideas from ClickUp’s marketing plan templates, such as ClickUp’s Marketing Plan Template, and customize them to fit your requirements.
This template will help you set marketing goals, organize tasks, and track progress. It gives you complete control over marketing tasks.
Leverage ClickUp’s Marketing Project Management Software to brainstorm, plan, and execute your marketing plans in one place. This platform allows you to fast-track your marketing campaigns and content creation.
ClickUp best features
- Track and manage client relationships with 10+ flexible views, including List, Kanban, and Board View on ClickUp CRM
- Analyze customer data and visualize insights with agile dashboards
- Automate routine tasks and project handoffs using 100+ pre-built ClickUp Automation
- Build custom no-code automation to boost your team’s productivity
- Ideate on marketing project plans, create content briefs, and write blogs, emails, and case studies with AI-powered ClickUp Brain
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams and stakeholders with ClickUp Docs and ClickUp Whiteboards
- Use ClickUp as a customer database software and store contacts, customer details, and deals in a single platform
ClickUp limitations
- It has a slight learning curve, especially for non-tech teams
ClickUp pricing
- Free Forever
- Unlimited: $7/user per month
- Business: $12/user per month
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
- ClickUp Brain is available on any paid plan for $5/member per month
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (9,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (4,000+ reviews)
Summarize this article for me pleaseMake the Most of Automation in Your Marketing Workflow
Customer io alternatives automate messaging and keep customers engaged, while work management tools like ClickUp automate tedious project tasks and optimize internal workflows.
When you empower your team with the right tools and automation, the quality of work and efficiency improve.
And with top-quality deliverables, customers are likelier to stick with you and refer you to others. The result? You scale faster without compromising on customer satisfaction.
Sign up to ClickUp today and scale your customer satisfaction with ease!
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
