Should You Use GetResponse for Email Marketing? Review of Features & Pricing

GetResponse is an email marketing service that has been helping businesses succeed for over 20 years. Their all-in-one approach offers email marketing, landing pages, pop-up forms, funnels, surveys, and more. Find out more in this Getresponse review to see if it’s the right fit for you.

So where does GetResponse shine, and where does it fall short? In this GetResponse review, I do a deep dive into its features and new additions and explore whether it’s worth the cost of a subscription.

TL;DR – GetResponse is an email marketing solution with a lot more than just email marketing to offer. It might seem a bit pricey at first glance, but considering the number of additional features and the convenience of having a full suite of marketing automation and e-commerce tools bundled in one platform, it’s a bargain that could be well worth the investment for your business.

Check out GetResponse’s website to sign up for a free 30-day trial of all of their features and explore whether it’s the right fit for you.

What is GetResponse?

Founded all the way back in 1998 with only a $200 startup budget, GetResponse has grown in the past two decades to become one of the top all-in-one online marketing solutions on the market.

It’s also expanded beyond just email marketing to give its customers an impressive array of eCommerce, website building, sales funnels, and social media marketing features.

GetResponse is an app designed to make email marketing streamlined and easy. In the company’s words, GetResponse is “a powerful, simplified tool to send emails, create pages, and automate your marketing.”

But what exactly can you do with GetResponse? And does it live up to its own hype?

In this GetResponse review, I explore in detail what GetResponse has to offer, its pros and cons, who it’s intended for, and whether it’s worth the price.

Plans & Pricing

GetResponse offers two general categories of plans: “For Everyone” and “Mid & Large Companies”. Since the latter requires a customized quote for pricing, here I will focus on the “For Everyone” plans.

GetResponse offers four separate plans at this level:

Plan	Monthly plan	12-month plan (-18% off)	24-month plan (-30% off)
Free plan	$0	$0	$0
Email Marketing plan	$19/month	$15.58/month	$13.24/month
Marketing Automation plan	$59/month	$48.38/month	$83.30/month
Ecommerce Marketing plan	$119/month	$97.58/month	$83.30/month

Free: This is a fully-functional free forever plan that includes unlimited newsletters, one landing page, Website Builder (a tool to create one website and access features like galleries, pop-ups, and forms), signup forms, and the ability to connect your custom domain name.

This is a fantastic deal for smaller businesses that are just getting started, but there are some limitations.

You can only have up to 500 contacts, and there are no autoresponder or automation features included with this plan. Additionally, your newsletters will all come with GetResponse branding.

GetResponse’s FOREVER-FREE plan lets you build your website, start generating leads, and send unlimited newsletters! Find out more here

Email Marketing plan: From $13.24/month, (30% off when paying for 24 months upfront). This plan gets you unlimited landing pages, autoresponders, unlimited website builder, email scheduling, AI tools, and basic segmentation.

Marketing Automation plan: From $41.30/month, (30% off when paying for 24 months upfront). This plan gets you all the features on the previous plans plus marketing and automation features, webinars, three team members, contact scoring and tagging, five sales funnels, and advanced segmentation.

Ecommerce Marketing plan: From $83.30/month, (30% off when paying for 24 months upfront). You get all the above features plus transactional emails, unlimited automations, paid webinars, five team members, eCommerce features, web push notifications, and unlimited funnels.

In addition to the free plan, you can try all features free for 30 days and see if you think it’s worth the investment. This is an excellent offer, considering that GetResponse is definitely not a cheap product. 

It’s important to note that these monthly prices are actually what you’d pay if you choose to pay one flat, yearly fee. In other words, if you choose the most popular plan, Marketing Automation, on a yearly payment schedule, you’ll pay $580.56 upfront. 

This is an 18% discounted rate if you choose to sign up for a whole year. If you want a 30% discounted rate, you can sign up for a two-year commitment. 

It’s also worth mentioning that the prices across all plans increase with the number of email contacts (this doesn’t apply to the free plan, which limits you to 500 contacts). All of the prices listed above are for up to 1,000 contacts.

If you choose more – let’s say, the Marketing Automation plan with 5,000 contacts—the price goes up to $77.90 a month.

At the higher end of things – for example, if you want to have up to 100,000 contacts – you can expect to be paying between $440 and $600 every month.

Key Features

Now that we’ve gotten the money talk out of the way, let’s get into what you actually get when you sign up for a GetResponse plan.

Compared to the other email marketing tools on the market (for example MailChimp or Aweber), GetResponse offers a remarkably wide range of features and extras, many of which really do set it apart from the competition. 

But which features are worth the money, and which fall flat?

Email Marketing Campaigns

This is what GetResponse is all about: giving you the tools to build and manage email marketing campaigns. But what exactly are these tools, and what can you do with them?

Drag-And-Drop Email Builder

GetResponse offers 155 pre-designed templates that you can choose from and then customize with your own content and logos.

This is a more limited number of templates than some of GetResponse’s competitors, but the wide variety and thoughtfully-designed details make it likely that most people will be able to find one that they like.

GetResponse had some trouble in the past with their email builder, which was difficult to edit and had a tendency to crash unexpectedly. However, it seems that they’ve fixed all of that, as their new drag-and-drop email builder runs smoothly and has a much less awkward editing tool.

Autoresponders

An autoresponder is a type of newsletter that you can send to your contact list at regular intervals. 

Chances are if you’ve ever made an online purchase or subscribed to an online service, you’ve received an autoresponder: one example is the welcome email you likely received immediately after your purchase.

Unless you unsubscribe, this welcome email could be followed a week later by another email offering you a discount or maybe just informing you of ongoing sales or new products. 

Autoresponders can be a very effective way to ensure that your customers stay engaged with your brand and consider you as more than a one-time purchase.

Autoresponders are an area where GetResponse really stands out from the competition. Their paid plans come with some of the most detailed and customizable autoresponder functions on the market.

GetResponse allows you to send both time-based (prescheduled) and action-based (triggered by the customer’s actions) autoresponders. Actions such as clicks, birthdays, changes in user data, subscriptions, or even email opens can be set as triggers for an autoresponder.

This is a seriously useful tool for any business trying to scale their customer base quickly and is definitely one of the best features GetResponse offers.

Best of all, autoresponders are included with all of GetResponse’s plans, including their forever-free plan.

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are a paid add-on that GetResponse offers to allow you to use API or SMTP (Simple Mail Triggered Protocol) triggered emails to send receipts or reminders. 

What this means is that you can send receipts, reminders, order confirmations, and shipping automatically to keep customers in the loop. When a product is purchased, your customer will get a confirmation email, and you’ll get an analytics report.

You can manage these emails, get reliable analytics, and adjust campaigns based on performance and feedback.

Funnel Builder

Based on its recent developments, it’s clear that GetResponse has set its sights on becoming more than just an email marketing platform. 

With tools like its website builder (more on that later) and its funnel builder, GetResponse is trying to turn itself into a sophisticated, comprehensive ecommerce management tool.

Create Sales Funnels

A sales funnel (or conversion funnel) is an all-in-one tool that simplifies the process of promoting and selling your products. The sales funnel builder is good, but competitors such as ClickFunnels still hold an advantage (for the time being)

As its name suggests, a sales funnel is a visual tool that’s shaped like a funnel that allows you to see statistics such as how many unique visits your website has received, how many purchases were made, how many link clicks your email campaigns got, and more.

Create Lead Magnet Funnels

Similarly, a lead magnet funnel helps your business identify new leads and generate new business. 

GetResponse makes the process easy: you start with a signup incentive (a reason why potential customers should give you their email address, i.e., in exchange for desirable content).

Then you send them to a predesigned landing page and follow up with an email matching your niche and content. 

Finally, you promote your lead magnet through targeted social media advertisements and use GetResponse’s analytical tools to keep an eye on your campaign’s performance at every stage.

Rather than staring at a jumble of numbers and analytics, GetResponse’s sales funnel makes it easy to understand how your website and marketing campaigns are performing. 

Marketing Automation

GetResponse’s marketing automation tool is similar to the autoresponders, but it’s a more advanced option for automatically sequencing emails.

With GetResponse’s marketing automation builder, you can use a drag-and-drop editing tool to create an automation workflow that instructs GetResponse on what to do in particular situations.

In other words, you can create a visual chart that shows which email should be sent in response to which trigger.

For example, if a customer orders a particular product, you can use the marketing automation tool to mark this as a trigger that sends one specific email. A different product purchase might be accompanied by a different email, and so on.

You can even automate responses to particular clicks so that GetResponse will send a specific email based on user engagement with specific offers or links.

This tool also allows you to send personalized emails and targeted email campaigns that help you stay memorable and relevant to your customers.

Abandoned Cart Emails

GetResponse also enables you to send abandoned cart emails.

This means that if customers visit your website, add items to their cart, and then close the website or don’t finalize their purchase within a specified period of time, you can automate an email to send them a reminder that they forgot or “abandoned” their cart.

You can even turn this into a sequence of emails: for example, the first one could be a reminder, the second could be an offer of 15% off, etc.

Abandoned cart emails can help increase customer engagement (or just annoy your potential customers – there’s a fine line between marketing and harassment).

Product Recommendations

Based on your customer’s purchasing history, GetResponse’s marketing automation analyzes their tastes and enables you to send automated recommended product emails.

Similarly, you can use GetResponse’s analytics to track and rate customer activity on your website and use this data to send highly targeted emails.

When it comes to knowing what your customers are doing and following up with them, GetResponse is one of the best tools on the market.

Free Website Builder

Although GetResponse started out as just an email marketing tool, it has since expanded to be so much more. 

One of its newer features is its Free Website Builder, which lets you build a website using the GetResponse interface and either buy a domain name from GetResponse or connect it to your own custom domain.

Ready-Made Templates

GetResponse lets you choose from a wide range of 120 templates. The templates are aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly enough for beginners, even if the range of what you can do with them is pretty limited.

At present, you can use GetResponse’s website builder to make basic, static pages without much-advanced customizability or added features.

Additionally, there is still no eCommerce feature enabled with GetResponse’s website builder (a seemingly obvious oversight for a company that specializes in marketing), but the company has said that eCommerce templates are in the works.

Drag-And-Drop Editor

Once you’ve chosen a template, designing it is easy with GetResponse’s simple, drag-and-drop editor tool. Again, there isn’t a super-wide range that you can actually change about these templates, but you can fill in your own logos, text blocks, photos, color palettes, and other design features.

AI-Powered

To make building your website even easier, GetResponse offers an AI-powered no-code website builder option. This tool will design your website for you based on your responses to a few questions about your brand, your purposes for making a website, and so on.

This is a great option for anyone looking to build a simple, brochure-style website quickly and easily.

Again, the tool itself is nothing revolutionary, but the fact that you can have an AI-powered website builder bundled in with the price of your email marketing tool subscription is a pretty attractive offer.

Web Push Notifications

GetResponse also enables you to create web push notifications.

A web push notification is a notification that pops up on a desktop or mobile screen (usually in the bottom right corner) and can function as a reminder or advertisement for the user.

With GetResponse, you can send web push notifications to targeted browsers to advertise content, offer deals and discounts, or encourage viewers to subscribe.

You can even add your own logo to your push notifications to give them a personalized, memorable touch.

This is a great way to go beyond your existing email list, expand your audience, and draw potential customers into your website.

Live Chat

GetResponse has also recently added a live chat feature as part of their effort to be a more comprehensive, one-stop eCommerce management tool.

Although it’s only available on the Plus plan or higher, this feature allows you to add a live chat option to your website. 

As a cool added bonus, you can add a GetResponse live chat feature to either the website you build with their Web Builder tool or to your own pre-existing website.

There is a bit of a learning curve to figuring out how to enable this feature, but in essence, what you’re doing is adding a piece of code to your website via scripts that enable a live chat popup.

This feature also allows you to display your chat hours and current chat status to customers (because no one can be online for 24 hours a day), as well as provide auto-replies to tell customers when you’ll be back and set up notifications for incoming chats.

This is a cool addition to GetResponse’s growing suite of marketing and eCommerce tools, although it should be noted that the addition of a live chat option to your website could slow down its loading time a bit.

Free Landing Page Builder

If you don’t need a full website but still want to have a place to direct clicks from your emails, a landing page might be what you’re looking for. Luckily, GetResponse now offers a free landing page builder tool.

You can choose from over 200 templates and edit them easily with GetResponse’s drag-and-drop editor tool.

All of GetResponse’s landing page templates are mobile-responsive (meaning they’ll look great on just about any screen) and are categorized according to specific business goals.

Although there’s not a ton of room for customization, you can move, resize, group, and color elements on the page as well as insert GIFs and photos (or choose from GetResponse’s library of free stock photos).

In other words, you can build a functional, SEO-optimized landing page with minimal effort.

Host Webinars

GetResponse is also expanding into the webinar game with its new webinar creator tool.

Businesses use webinars both as a means to earn revenue and to engage new and existing customers, and the ability to have your email marketing campaigns and webinar builder provided by the same service is an attractive option for many.

GetResponse’s webinar tool is easy to use, with a one-click recording option, screen and video sharing functionality, and the ability to upload PowerPoint presentations to GetResponse in order to use them during webinars. 

Your customers won’t have to download any additional software to access your webinars, and you can use already-created webinars in a sales funnel with GetResponse’s “On-Demand Webinars” feature.

Webinar is only available with the Plus plan and above, and the number of participants you can broadcast to is limited on each plan (for example, webinar attendance is limited to 100 participants with the Plus plan but goes up to 300 with the Professional plan and 1,000 with the Max² Plan).

Although these plans are definitely on the expensive side, it’s worth remembering that building a webinar using a different solution would also cost money and wouldn’t include all of the other great marketing and eCommerce features that come bundled with GetResponse’s plans.

Create Signup Forms

Signup forms are a pretty standard email marketing tool, but nevertheless a very important one.

Paid Ads Creator

Brand awareness is everything, and social media has become one of the primary ways that brands can engage with new customers and grow their base.

Accordingly, GetResponse now offers a paid ads creator tool that allows you to build targeted ad campaigns on some of the biggest social media sites.

Facebook Ads

GetResponse enables you to use targeted Facebook advertising to stay connected to your customer base and reach new potential customers as well.

Using Facebook Pixel, you can analyze what people respond well to and craft your campaign accordingly. 

Another neat feature is that GetResponse allows you to set an advertising budget per period of time—say, $500 over seven days—and will run your ads accordingly without letting you exceed your budget.

This is a particularly great tool since, as any small business owner knows, budgeting is everything, and it’s easy to accidentally exceed your limits.

Google Ads

GetResponse also comes with a Google Ads builder built into your account. Google Ads is a pay-per-click advertising platform that helps your brand connect to customers based on their searches for related terms.

And, just like with the Facebook advertising feature, you can set your budget and only pay for successful clicks and form submissions – in other words, you only pay when your ad campaign is working.

Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest Ads

If you want to build brand awareness on other social media sites, GetResponse offers a Social Ads Creator tool for just that purpose. 

This is a largely automated tool, so you have more time to focus on other things. You can simply upload pictures of your products along with their names and prices, and GetResponse will automatically create a few different posts for you to choose from.

As I’ve said before, GetResponse is clearly trying to turn itself into a one-stop shop for all of your eCommerce needs.

Although some of their tools are still a little simple, there’s nevertheless a seriously impressive range of things you can do with your GetResponse account, and their Social Ads Creator feature is yet another example of this.

Third-Party Integrations

With over 100 third-party integrations, GetResponse doesn’t disappoint on this front. You can connect and integrate GetResponse with other eCommerce tools like Shopify and WooCommerce, as well as WordPress.

GetResponse is also integrated with a slew of Google products like Google Ads and Google Analytics.

If you have a decent level of web development experience, you can also use GetResponse’s Application Programming Interface (API) to connect GetResponse to other software.

The one major negative with the third-party integrations is that you’ll need Zapier (an automation tool for connecting APIs between websites and apps).

Customer Service

If you find yourself in need of assistance, GetResponse has a comprehensive range of customer service options. In addition to their numerous online tutorials and knowledge bases, they offer 24/7 live chat support and email support.

Unfortunately, although they used to offer phone support, that option has been removed. This may not be exactly a deal-breaker, but it’s certainly a disappointment for anyone who appreciates the ability to have a real conversation with a customer service representative.

Compare GetResponse Competitors

Find out how GetResponse compares against Brevo, MailerLite, MailChimp, and ActiveCampaign when it comes to; ease of use, design flexibility, automation capabilities, and customer support.

Features	Get Response	Brevo	Mailer Lite	MailChimp	Active Campaign
Pricing	Starts at $13 for 1,000 subscribers, Free plan for up to 500	Affordable, pay per email. Free plan with 300 daily emails	Free plan, then tiered pricing	Free plan, then tiered pricing	Starts at $39 for 1,000 subscribers
Ease of Use	Intuitive with modern editor	User-friendly with drag and drop editor	Beginner-friendly with drag and drop editor	User-friendly but can be complex for beginners	Easy-to-use with a comprehensive interface
Design & Flexibility	Modern templates, highly customizable	Limited templates but free	Over 100 templates, highly customizable	Over 100 templates, highly customizable	Hundreds of templates, highly customizable
Email Automation	Advanced with built-in CRM for higher plans	Basic automation features	Basic automations like welcome emails	Extensive automation options	Advanced automation and CRM capabilities
Customer Support	24/7 support dedicated account manager for higher plans	24/7 support dedicated account manager for higher plans	24/7 support in multiple languages	Email support, extensive online resources	24/7 support in multiple languages
Notable Features	Powerful marketing automation, webinar hosting	Affordable solution, great for startups	Beginner-friendly email marketing perfect for bloggres	Comprehensive marketing platform, large integration library	Detailed CRM integration, dynamic content options

1. GetResponse:
   • Key Standout: Offers advanced features such as marketing automation, segmentation, a landing page builder, and built-in CRM capabilities for higher plans. Unique for its webinar hosting capability.
   • Suitable For: Businesses seeking an all-in-one marketing platform with a focus on automation and CRM integration.
2. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue):
   • Key Standout: Known for its very affordable, comprehensive solutions. Charges per email rather than per contact, making it budget-friendly for businesses with large numbers of contacts but lower email volumes.
   • Suitable For: Startups and small businesses looking for a cost-effective email marketing tool with basic features.
3. MailerLite:
   • Key Standout: Focuses on basic automation tools suitable for straightforward email marketing campaigns. Lacks some of the advanced features of its competitors.
   • Suitable For: Small businesses or individuals needing simple, user-friendly email marketing tools without advanced features.
4. MailChimp:
   • Key Standout: A comprehensive marketing platform offering a wide array of features from email marketing to ad campaigns. Known for its extensive library of integrations.
   • Suitable For: Businesses of all sizes seeking a comprehensive marketing tool with a broad range of features and integrations.
5. ActiveCampaign:
   • Key Standout: Renowned for its advanced CRM capabilities and sophisticated email automation. Offers dynamic content options for personalized customer experiences.
   • Suitable For: Businesses focusing on detailed CRM integration and seeking advanced email automation capabilities.

• GetResponse excels in automation and CRM integration, making it ideal for businesses looking for an all-in-one solution.
• Brevo is budget-friendly with essential features, suitable for startups.
• MailerLite is great for basic automation needs.
• MailChimp offers a comprehensive set of tools for a broader marketing approach.
• ActiveCampaign is best for advanced CRM and email automation needs.

Questions & Answers

Our Verdict ⭐

Overall, GetResponse has successfully turned itself into more than just an email marketing tool (although it still performs well in that area, too). 

GetResponse is highly regarded for its blend of advanced features, AI integration, and affordability, making it a strong contender in the email marketing space.

What we like about GetResponse:

1. User-Friendly: Intuitive design, easy to navigate.
2. Feature-Rich: Extensive tools for automation, reporting, and landing pages.
3. Integrated Solutions: Unique features like webinars and CRM tools.
4. AI Enhancements: Personalized recommendations and email content generation.
5. Cost-Effective: Affordable pricing, including a useful free plan.

With awesome added features like its website, landing page, webinar builders, AI-powered email writer, and paid ads creators that allow you to easily design advertising content for some of the biggest social media platforms around.

Although GetResponse has had some issues with user-friendliness in the past, it seems those days are behind it, as it’s redesigned many of its products with more intuitive interfaces and editing tools that are simple enough for almost anyone to use with a pretty minimal learning curve.

If you’re ready to give GetResponse a try, you can check out their plans and sign up to try all features free for 30 days, or just sign up for the forever-free plan and then upgrade whenever you’re ready.

With so many ambitious products already bundled with every plan (not to mention a pretty decent free forever plan), I’ll definitely be watching to see what GetResponse does in the future.

Recent Improvements & Updates

GetResponse constantly updates and enhances its email marketing platform to provide users with cutting-edge tools and features that streamline marketing efforts and improve campaign effectiveness. Their most recent updates (as of November 2024) are:

• AI Subject Line and Email Generator: Utilizing OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, GetResponse introduced an AI Email Generator and AI Subject Line Generator. These tools assist users in creating high-converting emails and captivating subject lines quickly and efficiently.
• Acquired Recostream, an AI/ML personalized recommendations technology: Recostream is an AI-powered recommendations engine. The personalized product recommendations now appear in GetResponse emails and web pages.
• Shutterstock Images Integration: GetResponse integrated 2 million free stock images from Shutterstock into its platform, accessible across various tools like email editors and landing page builders.
• Ecommerce Reports: New e-commerce reports were introduced to provide insights into store performance, helping users make data-driven decisions for targeted marketing strategies.
• Quick Transactional Emails: This feature simplifies the setup of automated order confirmations and abandoned cart emails, enhancing user experience and driving revenue.
• Forms and Popups Makeover: The forms and popups feature received a significant update with a new creator tool, including smart targeting and various popup types for enhanced user engagement.
• YouTube Shorts in Email Creator: GetResponse now supports embedding YouTube Shorts in emails, offering new ways for dynamic and engaging content delivery.
• Promo Codes Feature: The introduction of promo codes in emails, quick transactional emails, and forms enhances marketing campaigns with targeted discounts and offers.
• Ad Audiences for Google Ads: This new feature enables more precise targeting for Google Ads, optimizing advertising campaigns and reducing costs.
• A/B Test Reports: Enhanced A/B test reports provide deeper insights into subscriber behavior and campaign performance optimization.

Reviewing GetResponse: Our Methodology

Choosing the right email marketing service is more than just picking a tool for sending emails. It’s about finding a solution that enhances your marketing strategy, streamlines communication, and drives engagement. Here’s how we evaluate and review email marketing tools to ensure you get only the best information before you make a decision:

1. User-Friendly Interface: We prioritize tools that offer a drag-and-drop editor. This feature is crucial for crafting unique email templates effortlessly, eliminating the need for extensive coding knowledge.
2. Versatility in Campaign Types: The ability to support various email formats is key. Whether it’s standard newsletters, A/B testing capabilities, or setting up autoresponders, versatility is a significant factor in our evaluation.
3. Advanced Marketing Automation: From basic autoresponders to more complex features like targeted campaigns and contact tagging, we assess how well a tool can automate and tailor your email marketing efforts.
4. Efficient Sign-up Form Integration: A top-tier email marketing tool should allow easy integration of sign-up forms on your website or dedicated landing pages, simplifying the process of growing your subscriber list.
5. Autonomy in Subscription Management: We look for tools that empower users with self-managed opt-in and opt-out processes, reducing the need for manual oversight and enhancing user experience.
6. Seamless Integrations: The ability to seamlessly connect with other essential platforms – such as your blog, e-commerce site, CRM, or analytics tools – is a critical aspect we examine.
7. Email Deliverability: A great tool is one that ensures your emails actually reach your audience. We assess the effectiveness of each tool in bypassing spam filters and ensuring high deliverability rates.
8. Comprehensive Support Options: We believe in tools that offer robust support through various channels, be it a detailed knowledge base, email, live chat, or phone support, to assist you whenever needed.
9. In-depth Reporting: Understanding the impact of your email campaigns is vital. We delve into the kind of data and analytics provided by each tool, focusing on the depth and usefulness of the insights offered.

Learn more about our review methodology.

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References

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/getresponse
• https://www.trustpilot.com/review/getresponse.com