Move my mailing list from ActiveCampaign

The whole move, in order

This page is the map. Each step has its own page when you get to it.

1. Decide whether to move at all. The next section is the honest test. If your business runs on a branching automation, stop here.
2. Start your sending address, before anything else. How does email sending work, and do I need my own address? is the one step that is not instant: you add some records at your registrar, they have to verify, and on most sites somebody here finishes the setup afterwards and emails you when your address is ready. Nothing you do to your list matters until this is done, because a campaign will not send without it. Start it first and let it run in the background while you get on with the rest of this list.
3. Export your files. Export my mailing list out of ActiveCampaign gives the exact clicks, the filters and the one list ActiveCampaign has no export button for.
4. Hand them over and read the report. Bring my mailing list across from another email tool is the panel and the buttons; What does my mailing list import report mean? takes the report line by line.
5. Decide about your tags. What happens to my lists and tags when I bring my list across? explains how each list becomes a tag and which ones are worth keeping.
6. Understand what you can and cannot send yet. When can I email the people I just imported? is the one people are surprised by, so read it before you import rather than after.
7. Send your first campaign. Send an email campaign to my audience and Who will receive my email campaign?. If something still stands in the way, Why can’t I send my email campaign? names each blocker in order.
8. Change your mind if you need to. Undo a mailing list import takes the import back at any time.
9. Turn ActiveCampaign off, which is the last section here.

Steps 2 and 3 are deliberately in that order and they run at the same time. The sending address involves a wait you do not control. Bringing your list over does not, and the clock on when your imported people become emailable starts when you import them. Do both early and the two waits overlap instead of queueing.

If you want to know what bernard does with the list before you upload any of it, What will bernard do with my mailing list if I hand it over? is that, in six promises.

The one thing that decides it

Your people can come. Your robots cannot.

Contacts, names, phone numbers, tags and list membership all export cleanly. Bernard does not import automations from anywhere, and has no workflow builder to put one in. If your business genuinely runs on a multi-step automation with branches, goals and lead scoring, stop here: bernard has journeys, not a workflow builder, and pretending otherwise would waste your week.

To check the rest of what you use, What does bernard have for each thing I use in ActiveCampaign? puts bernard’s answer beside each ActiveCampaign feature, from lists to deals, and says plainly where there is none.

What to export

Do this in ActiveCampaign before you start.

1. Your contacts, per list. Export each list you actually use, filtered to Active. Repeat for Unconfirmed if you have people sitting there.
2. Your do-not-email side. For each list, export it again filtered to Unsubscribed, and again filtered to Bounced.
3. Your exclusion list. This is the account-wide block that stops sending whatever a list says. There is no export button for it, so open it and copy the addresses into a plain text file, one per line.

Give bernard all of them together. The do-not-email files are not optional housekeeping; they are the first thing that gets written.

What happens when you hand them over

Bernard reads every file and shows you a report before anything is written. Bring my mailing list across from another email tool walks through the report and the buttons. The order it works in never changes:

1. Everyone who unsubscribed, bounced or sits on your exclusion list goes on your do-not-email list first, before a single contact is created. If one address is Active on one list and Unsubscribed on another, the no wins.
2. Then the people, with their tags, and their list becoming a tag so you can still find them.
3. Then permission, only for the lists where you have confirmed in your own words that these people asked to hear from you.

What does not come with you

• Automations, with their triggers, branches and goals
• Dynamic segments, lead scores and deal scores
• Contact notes, which ActiveCampaign does not export
• Who opened or clicked which campaign
• Site tracking, the WordPress plugin, landing pages, SMS and integrations
• Your ActiveCampaign campaign reports, which stay there

Your integrations do not move, but you can connect the common ones to bernard again. A ThriveCart purchase can enrol the buyer (Enrol my ThriveCart buyers on my course automatically), and Zapier can send Calendly bookings, Typeform answers and Facebook lead ads into your contacts (Get my Calendly bookings, Typeform answers or Facebook leads into bernard).

Your custom field values come across as contact fields you can use: filter and send by them, and set them on people yourself. Dynamic segments do not import, but the same result can be rebuilt on the other side as a saved audience with conditions - see Can I send only to people with a certain field, or who opened recently?.

Your automations can often be matched to one of bernard’s automatic emails, as long as they do not branch. Can I rebuild my ActiveCampaign automation in bernard? is how.

Settling in without double sending

Keep ActiveCampaign running while you find your feet. The rule that keeps anybody from getting the same thing twice is simple: one sender per message. Before your first full bernard campaign, pause the ActiveCampaign automations and scheduled campaigns that reach these people. Bernard cannot see the other side of the fence, so this part is yours.

Send a small bernard campaign first, to one tag, and check it arrived. Then the full one. A good first campaign says you have moved and puts the unsubscribe link in the first paragraph.

If an ActiveCampaign automation still starts from a tag while your students already learn in bernard, bernard can send their progress across through Zapier so the tag still goes on: Keep ActiveCampaign up to date with my students while I move to bernard.

Turning ActiveCampaign off

When you are ready, export the Unsubscribed lists one more time and bring them over, so anything collected during the changeover is honoured here too. Replace any ActiveCampaign forms on your site with bernard forms. Remove its tracking script and WordPress plugin, and its sending records from your DNS. Then cancel. A cancelled ActiveCampaign account is archived and its data is kept for a year, after which it cannot be recovered, so do not rush the last export.

Where this comes from

Everything on this page about what ActiveCampaign does is taken from ActiveCampaign’s own documentation, read on 3 September 2026: exporting all contacts (help article 221393808), exporting a list filtered by status (360000055810), the exclusion list (207362110), setting up a sending domain (360015584680), and cancelling (218790117) with the one-year archive (12660329109532). ActiveCampaign does not publish an export button for the exclusion list, which is why this page tells you to copy it out by hand rather than promising one.