Move from ActiveCampaign to Relayly

Why teams leave ActiveCampaign

• Pricing per-contact + per-feature. ActiveCampaign's tier multipliers stack quickly. Relayly's flat send-based pricing is more predictable.
• Heavy CRM lean. If you're not using ActiveCampaign as a CRM, you're paying for it anyway.
• EU residency requires Enterprise. Lower tiers are US-only.
• Slow segment evaluation at scale. Common complaint above 100k contacts. Relayly evaluates predicates against indexed Postgres.

What carries across

ActiveCampaign concept	Relayly equivalent	Auto-migrates?
Contacts	contacts	Yes — including custom fields + tags.
Lists	lists	Yes — names + opt-in setting.
Tags	Contact tags	Yes — direct mapping.
Segments	Predicate-based segments	Most translate; deal-pipeline-based predicates need manual review.
Email templates	email_templates	HTML carries; drag-drop re-renders in our editor.
Automations	Flows	Linear automations translate well. Goal-based and split-test flows need engineering review.
Custom fields	Custom fields	Yes — type preservation (text, date, dropdown, etc.).

The codebase swap

API shapes are similar enough that find/replace handles most call sites. The key differences:

// ActiveCampaign API
await fetch(`${AC_URL}/api/3/contacts`, {
  method:  "POST",
  headers: { "Api-Token": process.env.AC_TOKEN },
  body:    JSON.stringify({
    contact: { email: "u@example.com" }
  })
});

// Relayly Node SDK
import Relayly from "@relayly/node";
const r = new Relayly({ apiKey: process.env.RELAYLY_API_KEY });

await r.contacts.upsert({
  email: "u@example.com"
});

Automation translation

ActiveCampaign automations have a richer node taxonomy than most ESPs. The migrator handles:

• Triggers (subscribed, tagged, field changed, abandoned cart, etc.) → flow triggers
• Send email → send actions with template references
• Wait (until time, until field, until tag) → delay nodes
• If/Else → branch nodes
• Tag / untag → tag mutations
• Update field → contact field mutation

Goal-based jumps and split-test nodes are flagged for manual conversion. Typical migration: 70% of nodes auto-translate, the remaining 30% take 5-10 min of manual review per automation.

The cutover playbook

1. Run the export script. It's read-only against ActiveCampaign and re-runnable.
2. Review the manifest. Anything flagged as "needs review" gets a copy-paste remediation snippet.
3. Apply to Relayly. Idempotent SQL + REST imports. Re-run safely.
4. Dual-send for a week. Compare inbox rates at Gmail / O365 / Yahoo through the dashboard.
5. Flip the API key. Search-and-replace your codebase, deploy, monitor 24h.
6. Pause ActiveCampaign. Don't delete the account — keep it for 30 days as an unsubscribe-list reciprocity reference.
7. After 30 quiet days, terminate ActiveCampaign. You're done.

Pricing-side check

Volume	ActiveCampaign	Relayly	Annual delta
5k contacts (Marketing Lite)	$49/mo	$25/mo	+ $288/year
25k contacts (Marketing Plus)	$169/mo	$100/mo	+ $828/year
100k contacts (Pro)	$406/mo	$130/mo	+ $3,312/year

ActiveCampaign Marketing pricing as of 2026-05 from activecampaign.com/pricing. Sales/CRM tiers are higher again.