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Migration guide

How to move from ActiveCampaign to MailNesto

Export your contacts and designs from ActiveCampaign, bring them into MailNesto and send your first campaign — usually within a day.

Start freeMailNesto vs ActiveCampaign
Overview

Moving from ActiveCampaign to MailNesto

ActiveCampaign users are used to having email, automation and a sales pipeline in one place, and MailNesto keeps that shape: a visual automation builder with goals and up to eight paths, lead scoring with hot-lead alerts, and a deals board with tasks, reminders and companies. Teams usually move for plans billed in rupees with GST invoices, festival-ready templates and transactional email in the same account.

Contacts, tags, custom fields and list status export cleanly as CSV. Automations, deals, contact notes, site-tracking history and scores don’t; ActiveCampaign’s own help says contact notes can’t be exported, and no file format carries an automation from one tool to another. Expect to rebuild your main automations and re-enter open deals.

Step by step

Five steps to switch

  1. 1

    Export from ActiveCampaign

    Contacts > ellipsis (...) at top right > Export > select fields > Export; download from Contacts > Exports (link valid 7 days).

  2. 2

    Import into MailNesto

    Contacts → Import: upload the CSV or Excel file (or paste it), map the columns, choose a list. Import only subscribed people, then paste unsubscribed, bounced and complained addresses into Audience → Suppression list so they never get email again.

  3. 3

    Bring your designs

    Campaign HTML: Email > (draft or scheduled campaign) > Test and preview > Desktop preview > Format > HTML. Template export not documented. Then import the .html or .zip in Templates, or start from one of ours.

  4. 4

    Authenticate your domain

    Add the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records MailNesto shows you, then send a test. New senders ramp up gradually to protect your reputation.

  5. 5

    Rebuild automations

    Start from a recipe (welcome, birthday, win-back, abandoned cart) or build your own journey with branches and goals. Note: Personalisation tags use %FIRSTNAME% style. Automations, deals/CRM data and site-tracking history do not carry over.

Before you cancel ActiveCampaign

A short checklist

Keep ActiveCampaign running until your first campaigns from MailNesto look right.

  • Export unsubscribed, bounced and complained contacts too — they must stay suppressed
  • Note when and how people subscribed (consent) and keep it in a field
  • Download reports you want to keep; engagement history doesn’t move between tools
  • Replace merge tags — MailNesto uses {{first_name}} with optional fallbacks {{first_name|there}}
  • Update signup forms on your website to MailNesto’s forms or the WordPress plugin
  • Send to your most engaged people first while the new sender warms up
In ActiveCampaign

Exporting everything from ActiveCampaign

Menu names change from time to time — the steps below follow ActiveCampaign’s own help pages, linked at the bottom.

  1. 1

    Export all contacts. Go to Contacts, click the ellipsis (…) at the top right and choose Export. Give the export a name without special characters (otherwise it saves as a text file instead of a CSV), tick the fields you want and click Export. Tags come out in a single column.

  2. 2

    Export each list by status. Open Contacts → Lists and select a list. The Status drop-down is set to Active; export that, then switch to Unsubscribed and Bounced and export each one. Those two files are for the suppression list.

  3. 3

    Download within seven days. Exports run in the background. Use the link in the confirmation message or go to Contacts → Exports and click Download in the Actions column. Links stay valid for 7 days.

  4. 4

    Export campaign report data. Open Reports (or Campaigns → All Campaigns), pick a campaign and choose a section under Overview, such as Opens/Reads, Clicks or Unsubscribes, then click Export. Bounced contacts export from Bounces in the Summary box. The Campaign Overview page itself can’t be exported.

  5. 5

    Copy campaign HTML. ActiveCampaign doesn’t document a template export. For a draft or scheduled campaign, Test and preview → Desktop preview → Format → HTML shows the code to copy into a file.

Translation guide

ActiveCampaign terms and merge tags in MailNesto

In ActiveCampaignIn MailNestoNotes
ListsLists
TagsTags
Custom contact fieldsCustom fieldsField defaults move too: set a default value on the MailNesto field, or a fallback in the tag itself.
%FIRSTNAME%{{first_name|there}}
%LASTNAME% and %EMAIL%{{last_name}} and {{email}}
%UNSUBSCRIBELINK%{{unsubscribe_url}}
%UPDATELINK%{{preferences_url}}
Deal pipelines and stagesDeals boardStarts with New lead, Qualified, Proposal sent, Negotiation, Won and Lost; rename to match yours.
Contact scoringLead scoringPoints for opens, clicks, visits, forms, events and orders.
If/Else, split actions and goalsConditions, splits and goalsConditions and percentage splits with up to eight paths.
Automations

Rebuilding your ActiveCampaign automations

  • Score-based sales handover → Hot lead alert at 50 points, Hand over sales-ready leads at 80, and Turn hot leads into deals, which creates a deal and a call task.
  • Deal-stage automations → Follow up on proposals (a task after 3 days, an email after 5) and Welcome new customers when a deal is won.
  • Nurture sequence → Lead nurture series: four emails over two weeks, ending early when the lead turns hot.
  • Demo or contact-form follow-up → Demo or quote request, started by the “demo-request” tag your form adds.
  • Abandoned cart → Abandoned cart recovery for Shopify stores.
Watch out for

Common mistakes when leaving ActiveCampaign

  • In ActiveCampaign someone can be unsubscribed from one list and active on another. MailNesto’s suppression list blocks an address from every list, so only suppress people who are unsubscribed everywhere; otherwise just import them into the lists they’re still active on.
  • Old scores don’t trigger anything. Recreate your scoring rules under Audience → Lead scoring and let points build up again; keep the old score as a custom field only for reference.
  • Site-tracking history stays behind. Add MailNesto’s website tracking code to your site a couple of weeks before you rebuild page-visit automations, so segments like “visited the pricing page” already have data.
  • Custom field personalisation tags are generated from field names with hyphens removed. Search each template for “%” to catch every tag before you import it.
  • Deals, accounts and notes aren’t in the contact export. Rebuild open deals on the Deals board and accounts as Companies; keep closed deals as a spreadsheet.
FAQ

Questions about moving from ActiveCampaign

Can I keep my pipeline stages?

Yes. Rename the default stages to match yours. Automations can start when a deal enters a stage, and the Follow up on proposals recipe lets you pick which stage it watches.

Does MailNesto have split testing inside automations?

Yes. A split step sends people down paths by percentage, up to eight paths adding up to 100%, and the automation report shows live counts on every step.

Can my sales team get alerts?

A notify step alerts everyone on the team or only admins, with the contact’s name and score in the subject, and a create-task step puts a call or follow-up on someone’s task list with a due date.

What happens to people half-way through an ActiveCampaign automation?

They stop when you pause it there. When importing, tick “Don’t start automations for this import” for long-standing contacts, and start the new automation by hand for the group that should continue.

Where these facts come from (32 sources)

ActiveCampaign is a trademark of its owner. This comparison is our own, made from public information on each vendor’s website (checked November 2026); we aren’t affiliated with them. Plans and prices change — check the vendor’s site before you decide, and tell us if something here is out of date and we’ll fix it.