Head to head · Marketing profiles · October 2026 research run
ActiveCampaign vs Iterable
Iterable scores 55.2 (C) on agent readiness against ActiveCampaign's 50.5 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. ActiveCampaign leads on payments & pricing. Both do marketing profiles.
Which one, for what
Good for Small and mid-sized teams already on ActiveCampaign that want an agent to maintain contacts, segments and campaign drafts and enrol contacts in automations.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 0
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
Three critical incidents on status.activecampaign.com between 27 July and 28 September 2026, one of about 24 hours 41 minutes on EU segmented campaigns
Iterable C
Good for A team already on Iterable that wants an agent to read campaigns, templates and metrics, or to update profiles, track events and trigger sends under review.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 57 against 52
- Security & auth, 55 against 33
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 57
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
No public price, trial or self-serve signup. iterable.com/pricing redirects to the home page, which asks for a demo
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | ActiveCampaign | Iterable | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 67 | 66 | ActiveCampaign +1 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 68 | 65 | ActiveCampaign +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 52 | 57 | Iterable +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 33 | 55 | Iterable +22 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 0 | ActiveCampaign +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 35 | 75 | Iterable +40 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 57 | 68 | Iterable +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 50.5 · D | 55.2 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | ActiveCampaign | Iterable |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | ActiveCampaign, LLC | Iterable, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.iterable.com |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Paid | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under ActiveCampaign's terms of service and API licence agreement | Proprietary service under Iterable's Master Services Agreement. The MCP server (@iterable/mcp) and the TypeScript API client (@iterable/api) are MIT |
| Tools exposed | 50 | 118 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-02 | 2026-09-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-12-23 | 2021-05-06 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2023-01-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | none | 15 stars, 4.2k npm/wk |
Verdicts
ActiveCampaign
The v3 REST API covers contacts, segments, campaign scheduling and bulk import, with OpenAPI 3.1 definitions inside public Markdown reference pages and documented Retry-After on 429s. Each user has one unscoped API key, the limit is 5 requests a second, and no changelog was found. The status page shows three critical incidents between 27 July and 28 September 2026.
Iterable
The REST API publishes a Swagger 2.0 contract with 159 operations, typed API keys including a read-only type, and per-endpoint rate limits. The MCP server starts read-only, with PII, writes and sends each switched on separately. No price, trial or self-serve signup is published, and the support centre, which holds the API guides, refused automated readers.
Before you call either
ActiveCampaign
- Take the base URL from Settings, Developer in the account. Do not build it from the account name, because non-US accounts may not sit on api-us1.com
- Use POST /contact/sync to upsert by email, and POST /import/bulk_import for up to 250 contacts, then read each row's outcome from GET /import/info
- Page large contact sets with
orders[id]=ASCandid_greater, notoffset. Unsupported filter and order keys are silently ignored - Check
succeededin the body after scheduling, pausing or stopping a campaign. Business-rule failures return 200 withsucceededset to 0 - Stay under 5 requests a second per account and wait for the Retry-After value on a 429
Iterable
- Send the key in the
Api-Keyheader, and use api.eu.iterable.com for projects in the EU data centre - Wait at least 60 seconds after
POST /api/users/updatebefore a dependent call such asPOST /api/email/target, as the specification advises - Keep the MCP server on its default read-only setup unless a person reviews each call. Writes and sends act on real users and can't be undone
- Pass
suppressionListIdstoPOST /api/campaigns/create. Global suppression lists aren't added automatically - Read
rateLimitResetin the 429paramson user update calls for the seconds to wait. List member reads allow 5 requests a minute per project
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, ActiveCampaign or Iterable?
Iterable scores 55.2 (C) on agent readiness against ActiveCampaign's 50.5 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. ActiveCampaign leads on payments & pricing.
Do ActiveCampaign and Iterable need an API key?
ActiveCampaign takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Iterable needs an API key.
Can an agent call ActiveCampaign and Iterable without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for ActiveCampaign. Iterable has a hosted endpoint at https://api.iterable.com.
Other comparisons with ActiveCampaign or Iterable
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/activecampaign-vs-iterable.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/activecampaign.json·/api/v1/tools/iterable.json - From a terminal
anchor compare activecampaign iterable(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "activecampaign", "b": "iterable"}at/mcp, no key