Marketing automation
Every marketing email is still sent by hand
Onboarding, re-engagement and renewal reminders are all somebody remembering to press send. The sequences you designed last year were never built.
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Recognise this?
What it looks like from the inside
If three of these are true, the tool has stopped fitting the team. If one is, it is probably worth waiting.
- 01
Onboarding emails are sent manually, or not at all
- 02
Segments are rebuilt by exporting a CSV every time
- 03
Nobody can say which campaign produced which revenue
- 04
The automation you are paying for was never actually configured
What separates the options
The questions that actually decide a automation platform
Everyone asks about price and seat count. These are the ones specific to this category — and the ones our questionnaire asks you.
- 01
Which channels do you need to reach people on?
Email · SMS · Mobile push · Inside the product
- 02
What should trigger a message?
Someone joining a list or filling a form · A lead reaching a score threshold · What they actually did in the product
- 03
Who will build and maintain the journeys?
Marketing, with no engineering help · Marketing, with engineering for setup · Engineering, in code
- 04
Do you need to prove which campaign produced revenue?
Yes, across the whole journey · Last touch is good enough · Not a requirement
5 options
What you could move to
Every credible automation platform we have done the work on. The questionnaire ranks them against your answers.
ActiveCampaign
Serious automation depth at small-business prices, with a light CRM attached.
no seat cost
Braze
Enterprise cross-channel engagement for consumer apps with very large user bases.
no seat cost
Customer.io
Behavioural messaging driven by product events, built for teams with engineers.
no seat cost
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Marketing automation welded to a CRM, so sales and marketing argue over one contact record.
no seat cost
Marketo Engage
Adobe’s B2B automation platform, built around lead scoring and long sales cycles.
no seat cost
Prices are unverified estimates — useful for comparing orders of magnitude, not for budgeting. Confirm the current figure with the vendor before you commit to anything.
Questions
Before you move
Is switching automation platform actually the fix?
Sometimes, and sometimes not. If the symptoms are about a capability the tool does not have — retention controls it cannot enforce, a price that scales the wrong way, an integration that does not exist — then switching solves it. If they are about how your team uses the tool, a new one will reproduce the same mess in a fresh interface within six months. The questionnaire asks what is driving the change precisely to separate those two cases.
Which automation platform should we move to?
The credible options are ActiveCampaign, Braze, Customer.io, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Marketo Engage. Which is right depends on your team size, budget and non-negotiables — a 12-person team with no compliance requirement and a 400-person team that needs EU data residency should not end up with the same answer. The questionnaire ranks all 5 against your specific situation.
What does it cost to fix?
Two numbers matter: the licence difference and the cost of the move itself. This category is priced on usage or a flat fee rather than seats, so the licence difference depends on volume rather than headcount. The migration is the bigger number, and it scales with history, integrations and headcount rather than with the tool you pick. The questionnaire estimates both.
How long does a switch like this take?
For a team under 50 with a handful of integrations, a few weeks of elapsed time and one to two weeks of actual work. Above 200 people, or with compliance in scope, plan a quarter. The single biggest variable is not the tool — it is how much history has to come with you, and how many other systems are wired into the one you are leaving.
Get the 5 options ranked for your team
About a dozen questions — team size, budget, timeline, what is non-negotiable — and you get a shortlist with the reasoning shown, plus what the move would cost.
Get my shortlist