What does bernard have for each thing I use in ActiveCampaign?

Read it before you move, not after. Move my mailing list from ActiveCampaign is the move itself, step by step.

Your people

Lists. Bernard has no lists. People are grouped three ways instead:

• Tags you give them yourself, one at a time or up to 200 people at once from the contacts page.
• Fixed audiences that fill themselves: everyone who has said yes to your email, your buyers, your students, and the people who came in through each kind of form.
• Saved audiences: a fixed audience narrowed by tags, saved under a name so you can pick it again.

When you import from ActiveCampaign, each list becomes a tag called list: and its name. What happens to my lists and tags when I bring my list across? explains why bernard holds permission once per person rather than once per list.

Tags. Yes, and they are the main way to split up your people. You, or Bernard on your say, can tag people, and a step in an automatic email can add or remove a tag, as an ActiveCampaign automation can. A tag can also start a set of automatic emails: Start automatic emails when I give someone a tag.

Custom fields. Bernard has its own contact fields, up to 50 in use per site: text, date, number, choice or web address. The values come across and stay on each contact. You can filter, segment and send on a field, and set one on a person or on up to 200 people at once - see Can I keep my own details on a contact, like a membership level or a renewal date?. A field can also start a course email tied to a date, such as an attendance date, and a step in an automatic email can fill one in for you.

Segments. A saved audience can narrow by up to 20 tags, and now also by up to 10 conditions: a contact field, a date, a number, or whether somebody opened, clicked or has not opened lately. You cannot yet build a segment from “opened campaign X” specifically - see Can I send only to people with a certain field, or who opened recently?.

Import and bulk changes. Bring your ActiveCampaign exports across with a report you approve first (Bring my mailing list across from another email tool), or bring in any spreadsheet from the contacts page. You can tag and untag in bulk, and set a contact field on up to 200 people at once.

Automations

Automations and triggers. Bernard has eight ready-made automatic emails. Each one is started by one event, and only that event:

What starts it	The automatic email
Someone signs up on a form but does not confirm	A reminder to confirm
Someone confirms their sign-up	A welcome sequence
Someone buys from your shop	Thank-you and aftercare
Someone enrols on a course	Course onboarding, or a course delivered by email
Someone sends an enquiry	A follow-up to the enquiry
Someone joins your waiting list	Waiting-list emails, then the doors-open announcement you send
Someone finishes a course	A request for a review

You write the words, choose the timing within limits, and switch each one on or off. How do automatic emails work? covers all eight.

Course emails that follow progress. For each course, a set of up to 20 emails, each started when a student enrols, finishes a lesson or a module, passes a quiz, passes every required quiz, finishes the course or gets a certificate. An email can be skipped when a condition is true (a tag, something finished), and the set can stop at a goal. That covers most “wait until” and if/else steps in a course automation. Email my students when they reach each point in my course explains it.

Course emails can also go a set number of days before or after each student’s own deadline, and to a student who has gone quiet on a course (no progress, or not opened the course, for a number of days): Remind my students before their deadline and Nudge students who have stopped working through my course.

Tag added and list sign-up. A tag can start a set of up to 20 emails, each a number of days after the tag is put on. Lists are tags here, so “subscribed to a list” is this. Start automatic emails when I give someone a tag explains it, and how to add someone to an automatic email by hand, or take them out.

Steps that change a contact. A step can add or remove a tag, fill in a contact field, or tell you, instead of emailing: Get told when a student reaches a point in my course.

What does not exist: a trigger on a field changing, an anniversary for anyone who is not a student, an open or a click, a page visit or a deal. There is no free branching into separate paths, no condition outside a tag, a contact field or a student’s course progress, and no automation that starts another. A person goes through each automatic email once.

Can I rebuild my ActiveCampaign automation in bernard? shows how to take one of your ActiveCampaign automations and find its nearest match.

Internal notifications. Every active member of your account gets an email each time somebody fills in a form on your site. An automatic email can also have a “tell me” step, which emails you, or one team member you name, when a student reaches it.

Campaigns

Broadcasts. Yes. Pick an audience, narrow it by tag, preview it, send one test, and schedule it. You approve the exact version and the number of people before it goes. Send an email campaign to my audience is the whole path.

Templates and copying a campaign. Yes. Reusable templates, starters Bernard designs in your site’s colours, and “start from a campaign I already sent”.

A/B split tests. No.

More than one sender address. Each site sends from one address of its own. If you run several sites on one account, each site can have its own.

Unsubscribes. One unsubscribe covers everything that site sends. It does not reach your other sites, because each site keeps its own permission record. How does unsubscribing from my emails work? has the detail.

Reports

Every campaign shows how many were delivered, which addresses bounced, who unsubscribed and who complained. What happened after I sent my email campaign? explains each line.

Opens and clicks are recorded only for the readers who agreed to it, and only on sites we have switched on for it. Today we do that for a site when its owner asks us, and the site must already send campaigns from its own email address. Nobody who has not agreed is ever counted, so the numbers are a count of those readers and never a rate over your whole list. Can I see who opened my email? explains the switch and the numbers.

Keeping your list tidy

Sunsetting. Bernard can show you the people who have gone quiet for more than a year, and you choose whether to stop emailing them with your own click. How do I tidy my mailing list once a year? explains the rules it uses. You can also switch on a nightly rule that stops emailing people who never open, only among people who agreed to their opens being recorded: Stop emailing people who never open my emails.

Clean-up. Every new address is checked when it arrives, duplicates are merged on import, and your do-not-email list travels with every export.

Sales

Deals, pipelines, stages, deal values and owners. None. Bernard has no deals.

Tasks. None. Each contact has a free-text notes box.

Connections to other tools

• ThriveCart. Yes. A purchase enrols the buyer on the course you matched to that product, and a refund, a cancelled subscription or a failed payment can add a tag: Enrol my ThriveCart buyers on my course automatically. Cart abandonment stays in ThriveCart. You can still enrol a student by hand (Enrol a student myself - they paid elsewhere).
• Typeform and other form tools. Through Zapier, a new answer can add the person to your contacts with a tag, or start an automatic email: Get my Calendly bookings, Typeform answers or Facebook leads into bernard. The answers themselves stay in Typeform. Move my Typeform (or other form) sign-ups into bernard explains how to move the form itself.
• Calendly. A booking calendar can sit on one of your pages, and through Zapier a booking or a cancellation can add a tag to the person or start an automatic email (Get my Calendly bookings, Typeform answers or Facebook leads into bernard).
• Facebook. Lead ads come in through Zapier, the same way. To show ads to people already on your list, download your contacts and upload the file to Facebook yourself: Upload your buyers or students to Facebook.
• Zapier. Both ways. Outgoing: bernard can tell Zapier (or Make, or your own system) when a student joins, finishes a lesson, a module or the course, passes a quiz or gets a certificate, when someone new arrives in your contacts, when a tag goes on, or when someone fills in a form on your site. That is how an ActiveCampaign automation can keep running while you move (Keep ActiveCampaign up to date with my students while I move to bernard). Incoming: another tool can add or update a contact, add a tag, start an automatic email or enrol a student (Let another tool add people to my contacts, tag them or enrol them). People who arrive this way are not signed up for your marketing emails, because bernard did not see them agree.
• SMS and WhatsApp. None.

The honest test

If most of this page reads “yes” for the things you use, the move is worth making, and Move my mailing list from ActiveCampaign is where to start. If the things you rely on are in the “none” lines, stay where you are. That is a better answer than a move you regret in a month.