Move my mailing list from ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is built for people running branching automations. Most small businesses on it are sending a newsletter, a welcome email and the occasional announcement, and paying automation prices for it. If that is you, this page is the honest version of what moving looks like.
The one thing that decides it
Your people can come. Your robots cannot.
Contacts, names, phone numbers, tags and list membership all export cleanly. Automations do not export at all, in any form, to anywhere except another ActiveCampaign account. 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.
What to export
Do this in ActiveCampaign before you start.
- Your contacts, per list. Export each list you actually use, filtered to Active. Repeat for Unconfirmed if you have people sitting there.
- Your do-not-email side. For each list, export it again filtered to Unsubscribed, and again filtered to Bounced.
- 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:
- 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.
- Then the people, with their tags, and their list becoming a tag so you can still find them.
- 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 custom field values do come across and are kept on each contact, but bernard has no way to filter or segment on them yet, so treat them as notes rather than as a tool.
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.
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), importing an automation recipe, which is the only route an automation has out of an account (218788797), 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.
The prompt
“I pay for ActiveCampaign and want to move my mailing list to [my site]. Tell me which files to export and what will not come with me.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Which files do I export from ActiveCampaign?
- Two kinds. Your contacts, exported per list; and your do-not-email side, which is a separate export per list filtered to Unsubscribed and to Bounced, plus your account exclusion list. ActiveCampaign lets you export a list filtered to Active, Unconfirmed, Unsubscribed, Bounced or Any, so one download per list and status is the shape to aim for. The exclusion list has no export button we can find, so copy those addresses into a plain text file, one per line.
- Do my automations come across?
- No, and nothing can bring them. ActiveCampaign does not let you export an automation you own; you can only share one into another ActiveCampaign account. Bernard has journeys, which cover a welcome email, course delivery and a thank-you, but not branching workflows with goals and scoring. If those are the reason you pay ActiveCampaign, this is the wrong move and we would rather say so now.
- What else stays behind?
- Dynamic segments, lead and deal scores, contact notes (which ActiveCampaign does not export at all), who opened or clicked which campaign, your site tracking script and WordPress plugin, landing pages, SMS and your integrations. Your old campaign reports stay in ActiveCampaign.
- Will anyone be emailed twice?
- Not by bernard. Bernard sends nothing during an import, a report or an undo. The first bernard email anybody gets is a campaign you approved yourself, with the recipient count in front of you. Keep ActiveCampaign switched on while you settle in, and pause its scheduled campaigns and automations before you send your first bernard one, because we cannot see what ActiveCampaign is about to do.
- How long should I run both?
- Two weeks is a sensible settling-in period, not a rule. Send one small campaign from bernard first, check it arrived, then the full one. Any unsubscribes you collect on the ActiveCampaign side during that time should be exported again and brought over before you switch it off.
- Can I change my mind?
- Yes, at any time. Every import can be undone in one step: the contacts, tags and permission it created are removed. What it put on your do-not-email list stays, because somebody's no is not yours to undo.