The 2026 shortlist
We test AI marketing platforms on one question that pricing pages never answer: when you finish setting it up, what has actually been produced? We rank ten tools on it, and we show our scoring.
10
platforms scored
5
criteria, published in full
€0
paid to any vendor for a place on this list
The top five
Scored out of 10 across output, AI depth, time to first result, price clarity and ceiling. The full table has all ten.
Last reviewed 20 August 2026
| # | Tool | Best for | Starts at | Free tier | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ChattyPageGenerates the website, pages, articles and print, not just the emails | Small teams with no designer | Free, then €9/mo | Yes | 8.4 |
| 2 | KlaviyoPredictive segments and lifecycle flows for online stores | Ecommerce lifecycle | Free, then $20/mo | Yes | 7.1 |
| 3 | BrevoPriced on emails sent rather than contacts stored | Big lists, low send volume | Free, then $9/mo | Yes | 6.9 |
| 4 | ActiveCampaignThe deepest conditional journey builder in this price band | Complex branching journeys | $15/mo | Trial only | 6.8 |
| 5 | HubSpot Marketing HubOne record for marketing and sales, at a real cost | B2B teams that need CRM too | $20/seat/mo | Yes | 6.7 |
Why our order differs
Segmentation, deliverability, A/B testing, integrations, support. All real, all now table stakes, and none of them tell you whether you will still be staring at an empty campaign on Friday. So we score something else.
Does it produce finished marketing, a page, an article, a set of posts, a flyer, or does it only deliver work you already made?
Whether the AI makes decisions you would otherwise make, or just finishes your sentences and rewrites subject lines.
From signup to something a customer could actually see. Measured in hours, not in onboarding calls.
What you pay on day one, what triggers the next tier, and whether an onboarding fee is waiting behind the quote.
How long before you outgrow it. This is the criterion the enterprise platforms win, and we score it honestly.
No tool wins all five. Our number one has the lowest ceiling on the list. We say so in its entry.
Start from your situation
The right answer changes completely depending on who is doing the work and what already exists. Pick the row that sounds like you.
There is no page to send traffic to and no article to link. A sending platform will not fix that, because there is nothing yet to send. Start with a tool that produces the assets.
Our pick: ChattyPage, with Brevo underneath it once you have a list.
Purchase history is the most valuable data any of these tools can read. Pick on the quality of the predictive segments, not on the editor.
Our pick: Klaviyo, with Omnisend as the cheaper starting point.
The value is one shared record, not the automation. Budget for the jump from the starter tier, because it is much larger than the pricing page suggests.
Our pick: HubSpot, with ActiveCampaign if the CRM can stay separate.
You need a tool that treats a webhook as a first-class citizen. Most of this list treats behaviour as an afterthought bolted onto a list.
Our pick: Customer.io, with ActiveCampaign for a smaller budget.
News and analysis
Pricing moves, feature launches and the claims that did not survive a closer look.
The monthly note
No vendor news, no product launches we do not care about. Just what moved, and whether it should move your shortlist.
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