GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign: Which Is The Best Email Marketing Platform 2022

Before we talk about GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign, let’s understand some concepts here. You see, when it comes to online promotion, there are countless options to choose from. Some people do search engine optimization (SEO), some focus on Pay-Per-Click ads, and others invest in social media marketing.

However, one of the oldest forms of promoting a product or service is email marketing, which uses email to get information about your company to potential customers. It’s the most profitable form of marketing currently.

Here are reasons why email marketing is still relevant today

It’s Cost-Effective

While many other forms of online advertising require hundreds or thousands of dollars before starting up, email marketing does not. Even if you have a flexible budget, you don’t have to start at the top. Most online marketing forms are price on a per-click or per-impression basis, but email marketing is different – emails are sent out, and then the recipients can take action (or not) accordingly.

It’s Direct

There are no middlemen between your company and the people interested in what you’re selling. You can even set up an autoresponder that sends out prewritten messages by bulk mail, which means you aren’t there to answer questions personally.

As a result, your chances of selling increase as potential customers receive several versions of the same message, each with its private link to take them directly to your site.

It’s Measurable

Email marketing can be measured accurately, which means you’ll always know exactly how many people are reading your emails. That is particularly essential when it comes to advertising – if you want to know whether an investment in email marketing will pay off, you have the numbers right there in front of you.

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign

These two are among the most popular email marketing tools today. They have features that solve most of your marketing needs. That’s why it’s hard to choose one as your marketing tool.

However, we will look at the features of both and help you decide in the end. Let’s start with GetResponse.

GetResponse

If you want one of the best email marketing platforms on the market, you should consider GetResponse. The company was established in Poland back in 2000 but only opened its doors for international clients in 2007. They have built an impressive client base with over 800,000 companies using their email marketing tools across more than 140 countries.

It helps entrepreneurs, small business owners, and marketers with their email newsletters by providing them tools like list building automation, autoresponders (email sequences), confirmation emails (welcome messages), and a lot more.

The whole system is user-friendly and easy to adapt. Not only that, but it’s also versatile, meaning you can use it for both small companies and large enterprises alike.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a powerful email marketing software that allows you to send emails and SMS messages. You can create forms, integrate with social sites like Facebook and Twitter to bring customers and clients back into your business using intelligent data (profiles).

You can use it as a simple contact manager or a full-fledged sales funnel to drive users through the process. The layout looks familiar if you’ve ever used Google’s Inbox by Gmail application. It’s said that Inbox was one of their initial inspirations when designing their user interface.

We will look at its features later.

Which One Should You Choose For Your Business Needs?

As an online marketer, there are several things I look for in my email solution. First, it has to deliver reasonable deliverability rates so that my emails get through. It needs to have extensive reporting features so I can analyze how my campaigns perform. It also has to be fast – who wants to wait 15 seconds for an email to load?

See?

It’s all about the features the tool offers. The features equal the solutions for your business. So, think about the tool’s solutions for your business, and you will find it easy to choose between the two.

The price will also matter. However, most of the time, focusing on the price will change your business model to fit the tool’s features while it should be the other way.

What’s The Main Difference Between ActiveCampaign And GetResponse?

There are several key differences between the two tools:

SMS Marketing

ActiveCampaign allows you to send short text messages to your prospects in addition to email marketing. That’s a great way to boost sales since you will be utilizing two channels. On the other hand, GetResponse only allows email marketing.

Landing Page Creation

You will need a landing page builder if you want your leads to convert to subscribers. GetResponse allows you to build landing pages leveraging a ton of templates right in the creator section.

ActiveCampaign doesn’t have this feature. But if you have a website, you will merely need to create a sales page and connect it with the tool.

Sell Digital Products

GetResponse allows you to sell digital products. That means you can upload products such as e-books, courses, and other valuable informational products. ActiveCampaign is yet to introduce this feature to its users.

GetResponse Features Review

Let’s see what features would make you want to go for GetResponse.

Landing Pages Creator

Need a compelling landing page to convert leads? Well, you can do so with ease using GetResponse. The tool has a ton of templates to help you get started. Most email marketing tools don’t have this feature, yet it’s essential in online marketing.

A/B Testing

The tool has an A/B testing feature that allows you to test multiple types of content within an email campaign to determine which gets the most response from your subscribers. You can even have several people try different versions against each other, so you know the best-performing message.

Sales Funnels

Do you want to create a simple sales funnel to sell your offers? GetResponse can help. The tool has a simple sales funnel process that anyone can follow and have a funnel in minutes. Yes, it rivals big sales funnel tools out there like ClickFunnels.

It’s even in the basic plan. You may be limited to the number of templates to use, but you can always find one to customize.

Built-In Tracking & Stats

GetResponse offers an advanced tracking service with real-time reporting – one of the critical factors for business success is measuring your marketing efforts. The GetResponse platform makes this easy for you with tracking and reporting built into the service.

You can understand how well each campaign performs, what times deliver the most opens, which links people click on, and more.

Flexible Drip Campaign

GetResponse provides users with a simple way to conduct drip campaigns through its more extensive email marketing features.

The feature makes it easy for you automatically deliver follow-up messages over time based on what subscribers do or don’t do when they receive an initial email from you.

For example, if someone does not open your first order confirmation email, GetResponse will automatically remind them what they need to do.

Optimize Delivery & Open Rates  

The GetResponse platform tracks each campaign’s performance and analyzes open rates as part of its built-in tracking features.

All that information is in a simple, intuitive interface, so you know exactly how well your campaigns are working. With that information, you can make adjustments on the fly to ensure that each of them is as successful as possible.

ActiveCampaign Features Review

Here are some of the features you need to know about if you consider this software for your business.

Customizable Templates

If you are sending newsletters, announcements, or other correspondence, this feature alone is worth signing up for ActiveCampaign. While many tools will help send mass emails, each tool has its pre-determined templates, which cannot change without hiring a web developer.

The templates available in ActiveCampaign allow you to fully customize your template with HTML and CSS coding to look professional. And to save time, you can create templates using drag and drop editing functionality.

Lead Tracking

While you can use many different tools to track your emails and who opens them, ActiveCampaign also keeps a log of past messages sent out. That is another form of tracking, which helps make it easier for you or your business to do email marketing or newsletters, but it does more than record what was sent out and when.

Lead tracking in ActiveCampaign is an effective way of managing which customers read their messages, the time it takes for somebody to open certain emails from you, the amount of time that goes by before somebody responds to particular campaign messages, and whether or not they click on any links contained inside the email.

Scheduling Emails And Campaigns

Setting up email campaigns is easy with ActiveCampaign. Still, the real magic comes when you set up automatic campaign sequences that send out triggered messages based on time or actions taken by somebody.

While you can easily create timed emails to send out at different times of day – like one in the morning and another at night – there’s also the option of setting up action-based triggers. That means particular messaging will go out if somebody doesn’t open an email or click a link contained within it. Using this feature, you can cut down on manually sending these types of messages yourself.

Lead Ads

The feature automatically turns website visitors into subscribers by creating pop-up windows containing opt-in forms that take up most of the window.

There are many customizable options when using lead ads, including how large (or small) the conversion box should appear when somebody visits certain parts of your website or other content online.

You can also tell ActiveCampaign whether or not to track information separate from emails (like what someone does once they opts-in through the lead ad itself) – all the data is then used to help you create more effective campaigns that yield better results.

Split Testing

Split testing means testing different messages, subject lines, writing styles, etc., until you find something that appeals to most subscribers.

While you can do small tests to see what works best when sending out messages, ActiveCampaign also allows you to conduct larger-scale A/B testing efficiently. You will get more accurate measurements of results whenever somebody subscribes to your mailing lists or responds well to a particular marketing campaign that has been sent out.

The beauty of this feature is that you don’t have to manually try different writing styles and subject lines to figure out what works best with the customers who sign up for your mailing lists.

The software does all of this automatically by splitting up subscribers into two categories based on how they respond. Then, it will send out two completely separate messages – one being the old campaign and the other being the new one.

The Benefits of Each Service

GetResponse Pros

Here are reasons why you need to try out GetResponse:

Webinar Tools

Most people nowadays host webinars to interact with their subscribers and convert them in the end. Webinars have high conversion rates because they are mainly geared to inform, educate, and instill FOMO among those attending them.

GetResponse has this feature. So, once you have it, you can host webinars and convert your subscribers more easily.

Easy To Use

What’s more, the GetResponse interface makes it easy to create beautiful and professional emails and landing pages without any IT or design knowledge. You can choose from over 250 email template designs and customize them with your logo, colors, and fonts in just a few clicks.

Don’t worry about set-up either. The software integrates with the most popular apps like WordPress, Shopify, Joomla, Drupal, ZenCart, etc.

30-Day Free Trial

GetResponse has a 30-day free trial without obligations. That’s slightly different from other tools, which either have a 14-day trial or no trial at all. There is no need to put in your card details to get started; you need to sign up and enjoy most of its features. They may limit some essential ones during the trial, but you should get some traction within 30 days.

Also, unlike other tools that only allow you up to 500 subscribers (and charge $9 after that), Getresponse allows you unlimited subscribers at no extra cost. So, whether you have one subscriber or 100,000, you can utilize the tool for 30 days and pay them afterward.

There are other features that you will certainly like about GetResponse.

ActiveCampaign Pros

Provide Machine Learning Tools

Machine learning tools help you to focus more on leads that can convert rather than spending time on those that might never convert. You can make profitable decisions and grow faster than when you have analyzed data with customer data.

ActiveCampaign gives you access to machine learning tools to collect, analyze, and present data for easier and faster decision-making.

Flexibility

ActiveCampaign gives you all sorts of options for designing automated marketing campaigns; these range from easy-to-use dashboards to having access to unlimited accounts (meaning you can run different websites, blogs, newsletters, etc.) inside the ActiveCampaign platform.

You can do all that without running into any problems or limitations in how much data or subscribers each account can hold at one time.

They Have A Web-Based Support

Different from GetResponse, you can communicate with an agent right there on their website. Ask them questions about their services, and they will reply promptly. You can also reach them via their phone number or email.

They have all these to make their support team solid if there is an issue with your account.

GetResponse Cons

GetResponse has many promising features that may make you decide that this is the email marketing provider for you. But these perks are somewhat overblown, as there are some considerable disadvantages too.

Here are some of them:

No Live Chat Support

GetResponse has an extensive knowledge base and many tutorials and guides on their website, but they don’t have live chat support.

They do have email support 24/7, though. So, if you would rather wait for an answer instead of asking someone immediately, this is not too bad at all.

Lack Of Rich Text Editing In The Email Campaign Editor

If you wish to make any changes in the template, prepare HTML code yourself and paste it into the email campaign editor. That is not convenient at all – your time will get wasted on making changes in HTML code rather than writing fresh content! Also, it is not suitable to use if you wish to edit the code in Outlook or Gmail.

Sky-High Pricing After Trial Ends

When I see the words “Free Forever” on some service, I get all excited and sign up right away without giving it a lot of thought (I don’t know about you).

Well, the tool doesn’t have it. Once the 30 days are over, they expect you to have already gotten a good ROI from your email marketing efforts and hence need you to pay them. There are no freebie or discount offers for new sign-ups – like what ActiveCampaign is doing currently.

In addition, their plans are a little expensive as compared to their competitors.

Limited User Management Features

Suppose you want to manage any social media accounts or multiple user clients from one dashboard. In that case, GetResponse won’t be a good solution because there are no bulk actions available in the software. If you need to change quotas for a list of users at once, you’ll have to do it one by one, which can take a lot of time.

Luckily, Ganttic helps with this issue as it integrates with GetResponse perfectly and adds those much-needed bulk-action features.

ActiveCampaign Cons

Overall, ActiveCampaign is an excellent platform for online marketing. However, it also has some areas it could improve.

Let’s look at some of these areas:

No Free Account

They do not offer a free account, only a 14-day trial on any of their plans. Thus, you can’t test out the tool before giving total commitment to it. That’s a challenge for most new marketers who want to see results before giving out their credit card information.

They Sometimes Limit Integrations

You cannot integrate ActiveCampaign with other marketing automation tools. If you want to, e.g., import leads or contacts from another system into ActiveCampaign, or if you’re going to move your existing customers over, you will need to do this by hand.

In addition, you cannot integrate ActiveCampaign with an external CRM, only with their CRM (ActiveCampaign Ascend).

Limited Website Analytics

At the moment, ActiveCampaign does not offer any analytics for your website or mobile apps. You can track events and clicks via JavaScript code, but that’s it. For example, you cannot see which pages a customer has visited on your website.

ActiveCampaign does not offer any SEO features, e.g., automatic generation of Meta titles and descriptions for your contacts or an option to add rich snippets. They have stated that these are planned for the near future, however.

GetResponse Pricing

Being a popular online email marketing service, it caters to everyone from beginners to advanced marketers. It works on a freemium model, where you can get started quickly without paying anything upfront.

Here are its pricing plans at a glance:

Basic ($15 / month)

As the name suggests, it’s the best fit for beginners who want to do essential email marketing and don’t require any advanced features or additional tools and services.

Plus ($49/ month)

This plan includes everything from the starter package and some more advanced mailings types such as RSS subscription forms, integration with Survey Monkey, etc. It also includes Analytics, integrations with other services, and a few extra features.

Professional ($99 / month)

This plan is for those who need advanced functionalities such as creating a membership site through GetResponse, import/export tools to manage large subscriber lists, etc.

Max (custom pricing)

The ultimate plan includes everything from the basic, plus, and professional packages plus other advanced functionalities such as advanced segmentation rules, email scheduling, social media integration, etc.

Is there a free trial period For Getresponse?

Yes, they have a 30-day free trial that requires you to enter your credit card details. They will hence bill you after the 30 days are over. That means you can pick any plan and utilize all the features fully for 30 days. Before the end, you will have collected 10x that amount from your email list.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

The ActiveCampaign pricing plans give you access to advanced marketing automation features without hidden fees or overages.

The more you grow, the more value you’ll see in additional capabilities and robust features set. Here’s how each plan works:

The lite plan ($7.88 per month)

It includes three users for up to 500 contacts per campaign (you can send unlimited campaigns) and a wide range of other features.  

The plus plan ($42.88 per month)

The plan allows up to 25 users and includes all that’s in the lite plan and additional reporting tools that let you track campaign

performance throughout the life cycle of your marketing efforts.

The professional plan ($112.88 per month)

It allows up to 50 users. You can schedule major campaigns ahead of time, and it gives you complete visibility into upcoming project deadlines. It also gives you complete-featured analytics reports for all aspects of your business (not just email). If multiple people are using the account, then all of them have access to the reports.

The Enterprise level ($200.38 per month)

It allows unlimited users. You will have access to predictive touchpoint technology that provides insight into how consumers interact with your business and enable you to reach out at just the right time for a higher conversion rate.

Here is a screenshot of all their plans

Is there a free trial period For ActiveCampaign?

Yes, they have a 14-day trial after entering your credit card details. That means you can try out any of their plans for free until the 14 days are over. It’s a bit low compared to GetResponse’s 30 days trial, but the prices are affordable, as well.

ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse: Conclusion