Marketing automation sounds simple until you actually try to choose a tool.

Some platforms focus on email journeys. Others connect CRM, sales, forms, and customer data. Some are built for complex workflow automation across dozens of apps.

For a small business, the real question is not:

Which platform has the most features?

It is:

Which one automates the work we actually repeat every week?

In this guide, we compare five marketing automation tools that fit different types of small businesses:

• HubSpot
• ActiveCampaign
• Brevo
• MailerLite
• Make

The goal is to help you choose based on workflow, complexity, budget, and how much automation you really need.

Quick Picks

If you want the short version:

HubSpot
Best for businesses that want marketing automation connected to CRM, sales, and customer data.

ActiveCampaign
Best for advanced email and customer journey automation.

Brevo
Best for affordable multichannel marketing with email, SMS, and CRM capabilities.

MailerLite
Best for simple email automation and smaller lists.

Make
Best for automating marketing workflows between different apps.

Quick Comparison

HubSpot currently offers free foundational automation features, while more advanced automation is available through paid Marketing Hub tiers. Its Marketing Hub Starter is listed at $20/month in its bundle pricing.

ActiveCampaign currently starts at $15/month for accounts with fewer than 1,000 contacts and offers a 14-day free trial.

MailerLite’s paid plans currently start at $12/month, while its Free plan includes up to 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails per month, and three active automations.

Make’s Core plan currently starts at $12/month for 10,000 credits, while its Free plan includes 1,000 credits per month.

What Marketing Automation Actually Means

Marketing automation is broader than scheduled email.

A business may use automation to:

• send welcome emails
• follow up with leads
• segment contacts
• recover abandoned carts
• score or qualify leads
• trigger campaigns from customer behavior
• send SMS or WhatsApp messages
• move data between CRM and marketing tools
• notify sales teams about important leads
• create reports automatically

Different tools solve different parts of this workflow.

That is why comparing only feature counts is not very useful.

1. HubSpot — Best for CRM + Marketing Automation

HubSpot is the best fit when marketing automation needs to work closely with:

• CRM
• sales
• forms
• customer service
• reporting

Instead of treating automation as a separate tool, HubSpot connects it to customer records.

That can make it much easier to answer:

Which campaigns generated leads?

Which leads became customers?

What should happen next?

Why HubSpot stands out

HubSpot supports automation across forms, marketing email, deal stages, ticket pipelines, workflows, and sequences depending on the subscription.

That makes it useful for businesses that want customer data and marketing workflows in one place.

What we like

• CRM and marketing live in the same ecosystem
• free starting point
• strong lead and contact management
• automation can connect directly to customer records
• useful reporting and segmentation
• broad integrations

What to consider

Advanced automation gets expensive.

HubSpot’s Professional marketing products are priced far above its entry plans, so a business can move from an affordable starting point to a much larger software bill as requirements grow.

HubSpot is best for

• small businesses that want CRM + marketing together
• teams with lead-generation funnels
• companies planning to scale marketing operations
• businesses that need sales and marketing data connected

Skip HubSpot if

• you only need simple email sequences
• you do not need CRM
• your budget is very limited
• your automation mostly connects external apps

View HubSpot details

2. ActiveCampaign — Best for Advanced Customer Journeys

ActiveCampaign is much more automation-focused than many traditional email tools.

Its plans include:

• marketing automation
• segmentation
• email campaigns
• ecommerce integrations
• website tracking
• AI-assisted automation
• customer journey logic

The Starter tier currently allows up to five actions per automation, while higher plans add more advanced workflow capabilities.

Why ActiveCampaign stands out

The platform is strongest when marketing involves:

if this happens, then do that

For example:

• customer visits pricing page
• customer joins a segment
• lead opens several emails
• customer abandons cart
• subscriber completes a form

Those behaviors can trigger different journeys.

What we like

• strong visual automation
• advanced segmentation
• good ecommerce automation
• website and event tracking
• many prebuilt automation recipes
• AI-assisted automation tools
• 14-day trial

What to consider

It can become more complex than necessary for businesses that mainly send newsletters.

Pricing also increases with contact volume and plan level.

ActiveCampaign is best for

• ecommerce
• lead nurturing
• businesses with longer customer journeys
• teams that need behavior-based automation
• advanced email automation

Skip ActiveCampaign if

• you mainly send simple newsletters
• your list is very small
• you do not need behavioral automation
• you want the simplest possible setup

View ActiveCampaign details

3. Brevo — Best for Affordable Multichannel Marketing

Brevo makes sense for small businesses that want several communication channels without immediately paying for a large enterprise marketing platform.

It combines:

• email marketing
• automation
• transactional messaging
• SMS
• CRM features

That gives it a broader scope than a basic newsletter tool.

Why Brevo stands out

Brevo can be attractive when your business wants to manage email marketing and transactional communication in the same environment.

It is also relatively accessible for businesses that are still early in their automation journey.

What we like

• free plan
• affordable entry pricing
• email + SMS capabilities
• lightweight CRM
• transactional messaging
• useful for ecommerce and service businesses

What to consider

More advanced automation and reporting may require higher plans.

Its CRM is also not as deep as a dedicated platform like HubSpot.

Brevo is best for

• small businesses
• ecommerce
• transactional email
• email + SMS workflows
• businesses that want a low-cost starting point

Skip Brevo if

• you need very advanced customer journeys
• your CRM is central to your business
• you need deep attribution reporting

View Brevo details

4. MailerLite — Best for Simple Email Automation

MailerLite is a good example of why automation does not always need to be complicated.

It focuses on practical workflows such as:

• welcome sequences
• lead nurturing
• re-engagement
• abandoned carts
• renewal reminders
• product recommendations

Its Free plan currently includes three active automations with up to five automation steps, while paid plans increase those limits.

Why MailerLite stands out

For many small businesses, the most important automation is still email.

MailerLite keeps that workflow relatively simple.

You can create:

subscriber joins list
→ send welcome email
→ wait
→ send follow-up
→ move subscriber to segment

without needing a large marketing platform.

What we like

• easy to use
• free plan available
• good for newsletters and sequences
• simple visual automation
• landing pages and forms included
• affordable paid plans

What to consider

It is not designed to replace a CRM or a full marketing operations platform.

Advanced cross-channel workflows are also more limited.

MailerLite is best for

• solopreneurs
• creators
• small businesses
• newsletter-based marketing
• simple customer journeys

Skip MailerLite if

• you need complex CRM automation
• you need sophisticated lead scoring
• your marketing spans many channels and systems

View MailerLite details

5. Make — Best for Connecting Your Marketing Stack

Make is different from the other tools in this list.

It is not primarily an email marketing platform.

It is a workflow automation platform.

That means it can connect different tools and automate what happens between them.

For example:

New Facebook Lead
→ add to CRM
→ add to email list
→ notify sales team
→ update spreadsheet

That type of workflow can be extremely useful for a small marketing team.

Why Make stands out

Make currently supports thousands of apps and uses a visual workflow builder with routers, filters, APIs, AI tools, and custom logic.

This makes it useful when your marketing stack is already spread across several tools.

What we like

• visual workflow builder
• large integration ecosystem
• free plan
• flexible logic
• powerful cross-app automation
• good value for more complex workflows
• AI and API capabilities

What to consider

Make does not replace:

• an email marketing platform
• a CRM
• an analytics system

It connects those systems.

Complex scenarios can also become difficult to maintain.

Make is best for

• marketing operations
• connecting several SaaS tools
• lead routing
• repetitive admin work
• custom workflows

Skip Make if

• all your automation already happens inside one platform
• you only need a simple welcome email
• nobody on your team wants to maintain workflows

View Make details

Which Marketing Automation Tool Should You Choose?

Start by deciding what you actually want to automate.

Choose HubSpot if your customer data is central

Use HubSpot when:

CRM

• marketing
• sales
• reporting

need to work together.

Choose ActiveCampaign if customer journeys are central

Use ActiveCampaign when:

behavior
→ segmentation
→ automated journey
→ conversion

is the main workflow.

Choose Brevo if you want affordable multichannel marketing

Brevo makes sense when your needs are:

email

• SMS
• transactional messaging
• lightweight CRM.

Choose MailerLite if email is enough

If most of your automation looks like:

subscriber joins → send sequence

you probably do not need a large marketing automation platform.

Choose Make if the problem is between tools

If your team is manually copying data between:

CRM
→ spreadsheet
→ email
→ Slack
→ ecommerce

then a workflow automation platform may create more value than another marketing suite.

Best Marketing Automation Tool by Situation

This is not a universal ranking.

The right choice depends on what you actually need automated.

Email Automation vs Marketing Automation

These are often treated as the same thing, but they are not.

Email automation

Usually focuses on:

• welcome sequences
• newsletters
• abandoned carts
• drip campaigns
• re-engagement

MailerLite and Brevo are strong examples.

Marketing automation

Can also include:

• CRM updates
• lead scoring
• sales notifications
• channel coordination
• customer segmentation
• workflow automation
• data synchronization

HubSpot and ActiveCampaign go much further in that direction.

Workflow automation

Tools such as Make operate at another layer:

connecting the marketing tools themselves.

Understanding this difference can stop you from buying software that is much more complicated than you need.

Do Small Businesses Really Need Marketing Automation?

Not always.

If you have:

• a very small customer list
• only occasional campaigns
• no repeatable lead process

manual work may still be manageable.

Automation becomes more valuable when the same tasks happen repeatedly.

Examples:

• every new lead receives the same follow-up
• every purchase triggers several actions
• leads are copied manually between systems
• customers need different messages based on behavior
• marketers spend hours preparing repetitive reports

A useful rule is:

Automate repeated decisions, not random tasks.

Common Marketing Automation Mistakes

Automating a Broken Process

Automation makes a process faster.

It does not make a bad process good.

Define the workflow first.

Then automate it.

Building Too Many Automations

A complicated automation library can become difficult to maintain.

Start with workflows that:

• happen frequently
• consume significant time
• have clear rules

Ignoring Data Quality

Automation depends on data.

If contact fields, tags, or CRM records are inconsistent, automated campaigns can easily send the wrong message.

Choosing Software Before Defining the Workflow

Instead of asking:

Which automation software is best?

write down:

Trigger → condition → action

Example:

New customer → purchased Product A → send onboarding sequence.

Then choose software capable of running that workflow.

Final Thoughts

The best marketing automation platform is not necessarily the one with the most features.

It is the one that removes the most repetitive work from your actual marketing process.

HubSpot makes sense when CRM and marketing need to work together.

ActiveCampaign is better suited to advanced customer journeys.

Brevo offers a practical multichannel starting point.

MailerLite keeps email automation simple.

Make is the strongest choice when the main problem is connecting different systems.

Before subscribing, ask:

What manual marketing task do we want to stop doing every week?

That answer usually makes the software decision much easier.

Explore all Automation software, compare tools using the WiseTechList Compare Tool, or use the Software Finder if you are still unsure.