Email Marketing

How To Build An Email List – A Quick Start-Guide

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a woman learning how to build an email list for affiliate marketing

Email marketing is an essential part of running an effective business online. If you aren’t currently using it then you’re certainly missing a trick – and potentially also missing out on a lot of money.

It can seem daunting to think about building an email list but it is a lot easier than you might think.

Both businesses and bloggers need to harness the power of email; despite claims that this form of marketing is past its prime, it’s still a key part of online marketing strategy.

5 Important Reasons To Build a List

  1. When you build and nurture an email list you are building a steady and reliable source of hot traffic that will be an asset to your business for years.
  2. If you decide to sell your business at any point in the future, having an active email list greatly increases the value of your business
  3. Cost – compared to other forms of marketing like direct mailshots, you can get started and set up an ongoing email marketing campaign with platforms like Aweber or ActiveCampaign for very little money.
  4. Gets those leads – no matter what industry or niche you’re working in, email marketing only requires a simple opt-in to get started. If someone is willing to at least look at what you are saying, then chances are they’ll also be interested in opt-in to receive free info, a giveaway offer, or a special discount from you.
  5. Mobile users – nowadays most people browse the internet via mobile. Studies have shown that the average mobile user now engages with email more than ever before.

Email marketing is alive and well and is the key to grabbing your audience before your competitors do.

Here’s a four-step approach to help you build your email list. This method also works well if you want to know how to build an email list for affiliate marketing.

How To Get Started Building Your Email List

Email marketing is something that is seen as a huge challenge for people just starting out.

If you doubt how effective email marketing is then you’ll need to shift your perspective on this first.

When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $21.8 billion, it was the user base ie the list that Zuckerburg was interested in.

All successful businesses today build an email list or a user base. While most of us don’t operate on the same level as Mark Zuckerburg, this is still applicable to every business.

Check out your competitors – what are they doing to grow their email marketing lists?

Do they have an opt-in form on their landing page?

Are they directing people to opt-in for free offers via their YouTube videos and social media posts?

What sort of marketing are they sending out?

Sign up for it and find out.

When you read their emails, if any, in particular, grab your attention, save them to a dedicated folder in your email account and collect some examples that you can use as templates when you start to form your own messages.

Don’t rip off their emails or copy them completely, but study them to see how they’re structured, what kind of message they are communicating. If the email is leading the reader to an offer, notice how they’re doing it.

Effective email marketing relies on well-known psychological triggers. However, you don’t need to spend years to become a professional copywriter.

I highly recommend grabbing a copy of a book called Copywriting Secrets. The book is currently being offered for free here, you just pay the shipping.

Considering it’s being given away for free, I was surprised at just how good this book is for teaching you effective copywriting techniques that are easy to apply.

So, to get a good email marketing campaign off the ground you just need to follow a few simple steps.

See also: 6 Evergreen Niches For Your Next Blog

4 Simple Steps To Build Your List

Choosing The Right Traffic Source

When looking at driving customers to your email list you have to make the decision of whether to go for free or paid for traffic.

Each option has its advantages and disadvantages to consider:

Paid Traffic

Paid traffic mainly involves paying for ads. There are quite a few forms this can take, but some of the most common are running PPC campaigns on Google, Facebook, and other social platforms, paying for ads on YouTube and paying for banner ads on other people’s websites.

Paid traffic has a big advantage in terms of speed – you don’t need to wait for a slow trickle of traffic, it tends to arrive all in one surge if you run a good campaign.

This can be appealing when starting from scratch when you don’t have the time or the patience to sit and wait for a list to develop organically.

The main disadvantage is, of course, cost.

Paid traffic can prove expensive and like with anything, the traffic doesn’t mean that every opt-in will convert to a sale.

Running new ads takes time as well as budget, so these things need to be weighed up against the potential advantages.

As simple as it sounds, there is a skill to paid traffic.

Unfortunately, a lot of newbie marketers are attracted to the allure of getting a quick ROI but instead end up burning through a lot of money.

If you know what you’re doing when it comes to paid traffic and you have the budget then this will certainly make sense to use this traffic source.

If you’ve never run paid ads before and you don’t know how well your funnel will convert then you’re probably better off starting with free traffic. However, if you really want to go the paid route then I highly recommend learning how to do it properly from someone with experience and a good track record before jumping in feet first.

Another effective way to grow your email list with paid traffic is through solo ads.

Solo ads are basically when you contact a person in your niche who already has a large list. You then pay them to email your landing page with your free lead magnet to their list.

While this can be a good way to build your list if you find a good vendor, you also need to bear in mind that, if the people on the vendor’s list don’t know you then they’ll only be opting in to receive your free offer.

The key then, to turn these subscribers into your fans is to have a good follow-up sequence that nurtures your subscribers and offers them a lot of value over time, which you should be doing anyway.

Free Traffic

Free traffic is the organic traffic you get from the time spent putting out a lot of good quality content.

This content can be in the form of blog posts, videos, podcasts, and social media posts.

While paid traffic is a lot quicker, free traffic often is of higher value because those people are actively engaging with you. After all, they like your content.

Free traffic does not cost you money but it does cost you time.

For traffic to build organically it can take a while especially if there is no one else pushing people to subscribe.

So while having a slow steady trickle of new organic leads is what you’re aiming for, it is not going to happen quickly, certainly not overnight.

If you decide to go the free traffic route then it’s also highly advisable to choose just one source first. Once that source is well established then you can think about building a new traffic source.

If you particularly enjoy reading and writing then start a blog.

If you don’t like reading but you love watching videos or listening to podcasts then think about establishing your first traffic source on YouTube or one of the popular podcast platforms.

If you don’t like any of those things but you enjoy networking with people then consider starting a Facebook group where you can build an audience.

Ultimately, it is best to use a combination of both paid and free traffic so you can strategically build your lists. However, your choices will depend on the product you’re selling, the niche you’re working in and, of course, your skill level as a marketer.

If you have a solid on-site marketing funnel and some financial back up then starting with some paid traffic might be the way forward. You will then rely on the quality of your marketing to drive in both paid and organic subscribers over time.

Whatever you choose – paid or organic – you will need to set up an email opt-in funnel.

This is also a lot easier than it sounds!

See also: How you can make money on Pinterest without needing a website

an email marketing campaign

Create an Email Opt-in Funnel

There are several ways you can go about this and there are a number of tools you can use to get this done.

How you go about it will also depend on your traffic source, which is why I spent more time on it in the section above.

Option If You Have a Blog

If you’re a blogger and already have your blog set up then the simplest way is to use a tool like OptinMonster or ThriveLeads to collect email subscribers and add them to your list.

With these tools, you can build a simple opt-in form that offers your lead magnet to your site visitors in exchange for their email.

Two great ways to use these tools on your site that I’ve had success with are by using popups and doing content upgrades in posts.

Option If You Don’t Have a Blog

If you don’t have a website, you hate blogging and you have no desire at all to build a site then don’t worry, you don’t need one to build a list.

All you need is a landing page where you can direct traffic to, and an autoresponder to collect your emails.

While there are quite a few landing page builders out there, the best one I’ve used so far is GrooveFunnels.

Their landing page builder, known as GroovePages, is very easy to use and it even comes with a large number of templates ready to go.

All you need to do is choose one and customize it to get it how you want, which is very easy to do.

If you want to know more about this platform then you can read my in-depth GrooveFunnels review here.

Impressively, this page builder even has a free plan that is comparable to the ClickFunnels standard plan, which includes GroovePages and GrooveSell completely free for life.

You can get a free GroovePages and GrooveSell account here.

Connect An Autoresponder

So whichever method you’re going with above, you’ll then need to connect your opt-in form to an autoresponder.

An autoresponder is a service you will need to use to collect and store your email list. It is also the place where you will run your email campaigns.

Through your autoresponder, you can create automated email campaigns that will send emails to your subscribers for you at the time intervals you set.

While it can take a bit of time initially writing out a few emails, once you have it set up, it will run on autopilot for you, which will save you a lot of time moving forward.

If you don’t want to write the emails yourself then you can do one of the following:

See also: More productivity hacks for solopreneurs

My favorite two autoresponders for both newbies and experienced marketers are Aweber and GetResponse.

Both are newbie and affiliate-friendly, however, I’d say Aweber is probably the easier one to use. I also like Aweber’s simple “how-to” videos that show you how to get everything set up step-by-step.

Aweber is also affiliate marketing friendly so if affiliate marketing is your main business model then I’d recommend using these guys, especially if you’re a newbie.

ActiveCampaign is also a good choice, however, they are not very affiliate-friendly. They do allow affiliate marketers to use their platform but they are much more strict when it comes to affiliate marketing.

For example, they don’t like you to put affiliate links directly in your email content, but with Aweber, you can do this. With ActiveCampaign, you will first need to create bridge pages to direct people to first that will then lead to the affiliate offer you are promoting.

This is one reason I’d recommend Aweber over ActiveCampaign for newbie affiliate marketers.

If you want more options or if you’re already using an autoresponder but you’d like to switch to a different one, then check out my article on the best autoresponders to choose from.

So, once you’ve got your landing page set up with your opt-in form and you’re connected to your autoresponder, you’re ready to start bringing the traffic.

See also: How you can make money on ClickBank as a newbie

Offer Value

Most people will want something of real value if they are going to opt-in to your email list.

We’re all constantly receiving marketing messages nowadays. The amount of time and attention we spend on each is limited so you need to try to make yours stand out.

Making them a valuable offer is an important key to doing this.

But what can you offer?

Where will that value come from?

People love getting free stuff, especially if it’s got high perceived value.

So, you can use freebies to incentivize your target audience to opt into your list.

Of course, your offer will relate directly to your niche, but some ideas are:

Digital products – this is my personal favorite. Things like eBooks, a video that shows them how to do something, an audio recording that tells them something valuable or other digital information that you can create are great freebies.

Samples and trials – if you have a product or service then you can give your potential customer a chance to try you out. This does take a little effort especially if you have a physical product that needs to be shipped. But by showing confidence in your product can help you to seal the deal.

Physical freebies – Offering a free copy of a book in return for some personal info and a postage and packing fee is a good example of this.

If you don’t have time to create a freebie offer then there are other things you can do.

Here are two options:

  • You can buy the rights to an ebook or a digital course that you can give away from somewhere like plr.me or the plrstore.com
  • You can pay someone on upwork.com to create something bespoke for you

When it comes to getting your subscribers, there are also other ways to increase the chances of them taking action and opting in.

A lot of marketing relates directly to psychology so it is worth considering some of the following methods that you can leverage to encourage your subscribers.

Some of the most effective techniques include:

Social Proof – success stories, testimonials, and reviews show that others have benefited from your product or service.

Exclusivity – makes your subscribers feel that you are giving them something that no one else has and are providing unique and exclusive information.

Urgency – Urge them to act quickly by emphasizing how wasting time or money can be detrimental to them. Tools like ThriveLeads, OptinMonster, and ClickFunnels give you the ability to add countdown timers to your forms and landing pages, which can encourage people to take action now.

You may also like: Morevago review – a simple tool to boost your conversion rate

4. Use Email To Continue To Build Your Relationship

To have the most success with your email campaigns you need to keep communicating with your customers and try to build a good positive relationship over time. This can’t be done with one-off messages.

Autoresponders are great to automate the whole process and will send out emails for you at the time intervals you set.

But what should you be emailing your list about..?

Newbies often make the mistake of just bombarding their list with offers regularly. This is not an effective strategy as your subscribers will feel like you’re only interested in selling them something.

Doing this will get a lot of people to unsubscribe 

Yes, you can and should send them offers that they will likely be interested in, but that’s not the only thing you should be emailing them about.

A more effective strategy is to offer a lot of valuable help and information, especially in your first several emails. Then, when you do present them with an offer they will be much more likely to be receptive to it.

Here are a few things you can email them about.

Useful info – add links in your emails to blog posts or other useful info that could help them out.

Storytelling – you can tell them about your own story and how you grew your business as well as any other stories that they may relate to.

Questions – ask them questions about what they’re struggling with or share some insightful Q&A’s you had with other subscribers (don’t mention the person’s name you had the Q&A with unless they’ve permitted you to include it)

Be creative but keep it short and sweet.

Be personable in your messages and write like you’re talking to a friend.

If you’re collecting their name when they first subscribe, then personalize the emails by putting their name in the subject line and at the start of the email.

When you do present an offer, use calls to action and make sure the link goes to the right landing page. It’s wise to send yourself a test email to make sure everything’s working properly before sending it out for real.

Final Thoughts

Email traffic is highly targeted and so it makes sense that it’s also highly valuable!

It’s wise to get started building your list sooner rather than later. Although it can seem intimidating at first, it’s a lot easier than most people think to get it all set up.

Don’t just spam your list with a load of offers or you’ll burn your list out pretty quickly.

Nurture your list, treat them well and give them loads of valuable info for free. Build rapport with them and get them to look forward to opening your emails.

Then, when you do send your offers you’ll have a much better conversion rate and you won’t piss off your subscribers.

Looking For More Articles On Email Marketing?

I’ve written several other articles that can help you build your online business, including email marketing. You can find them on my Entrepreneur Nut homepage.

GetResponse vs ConvertKit: Which Is Best For Your Business In 2021?

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GetResponse vs ConvertKit on a laptop background

GetResponse vs ConvertKit can be a tricky choice because they both have such similar features at first glance. However, there are some key differences between them, which means that one might be more suited to you than the other.

And choosing the wrong one could limit your business growth or lead you to waste a lot of money. That’s why this article will be a complete comparison between the two to help you make the right choice for your business.

Also, I found it interesting that both options are affiliate-friendly, which isn’t always the case. But I’ll cover that in more detail later on.

GetResponse vs ConvertKit Overview

In this article, we will take a complete look at what both of these pieces of software have to offer. This includes their features, pricing, and much more.

Introducing GetResponse

GetResponse has been around for what feels like forever. The founder, Simon Grabowski, founded it in 1999, but it has become one of the most popular email marketing tools on the internet since then.

The funny thing about GetResponse is that when Simon first founded the software, it was just meant to be an internal solution for one of his other businesses. Later on, he realized that GetResponse could be a business itself and started turning it into a product.

Today GetResponse has a whopping 350,000 customers.

  • GetResponses’ core features include:
  • Newsletter
  • Behavior-based automation sequences/Workflows
  • Email autoresponders
  • Landing and Sales page builder
  • Forms and pop-ups
  • List management
  • CRM
  • Sales funnels
  • Webinars

GetResponse is one of the best choices for business owners and marketers looking for an all-in-one platform.

It allows its users to build an entire marketing system that they can use to generate, convert and engage their leads. How it does that, I’ll talk about in more detail later on.

Introducing ConvertKit

ConvertKit hasn’t been around for anywhere near the amount GetResponse has. Nathan Barry founded the platform in 2013, but it has also gained popularity fast in recent years.

And although not quite as popular as GetResponse, the platform still has an impressive 34,000 customers. Not bad.

One of the reasons why it grew in popularity so fast is because of its usability. When it was founded, it was one of the first autoresponders that were particularly easy to use. However, since then, most autoresponders (including GetResponse) have caught up on the trend, and therefore, also invested a lot of time and money into making their platforms more user-friendly also.

ConvertKit’s core features include:

  • Email marketing
  • Automations
  • Commerce
  • Creator Pro
  • Email Designer
  • Email sign up forms
  • Integrations

It brands itself as the go-to email marketing platform for digital creators and bloggers. Some of the ways it does this is through specialized templates for these particular business types, and also providing the core tools they will need.

GetResponse Features and Benefits

Let’s start with GetResponse, and look at what features the platform offers.

What GetResponse Has That ConvertKit Does Not Have

GetResponse has been around for almost 14 years longer. Therefore, it’s to be expected that it has some features that ConvertKit doesn’t have.

And, GetResponse doesn’t disappoint, as you can see below.

Webinars

The first feature that GetResponse has that ConvertKit doesn’t is webinars.

GetResponse has a truly complete webinar feature built-in that lets you host pre-recorded and live webinars. ConvertKit doesn’t have this feature at all, so you’d have to integrate several software pieces to get it.

In my opinion, this is slightly surprising because I would have thought that a lot of “bloggers and digital creators” would also want to run webinars for their audience.

Better Landing Page Builder and More Templates

GetResponse has a landing page builder that offers more flexibility. This is because it has more elements, i.e., functions, and is drag and drop, while ConvertKit isn’t.

Plus, it also has many more templates with a lot more variety in styles. This means that it appeals to a wider range of businesses.

That’s not all… GetResponse also offers more customization when it comes to structuring your pages and customizing the SEO settings.

The only part where GetResponse’s landing page builder can improve in my opinion is the mobile optimization. While it’s perfectly capable of optimizing the pages for visitors on mobile devices, I find that the process isn’t the easiest.

Still, in terms of landing pages, it’s a win for GetResponse.

Better Email and Automation Builder

While they both have similar functionality, GetResponse also is superior when it comes to the email and automation builder.

Again, one of the main reasons for this is that GetResponse has a drag and drop builder for the emails and automation workflows. This makes it easier to use and visualize what exactly you’re building.

ConvertKit, on the other hand, has some nice templates for emails too, but no drag and drop editor. The same goes for the automation sequences, which also makes it a little harder to edit them. Plus, GetResponse also has more triggers to help you send more targeted emails.

Conversion Funnel

One of the features where GetResponse outdoes pretty much every other autoresponder on the market, is their conversion funnel feature.

This feature allows you to visualize your entire sales funnel from the point where they first visit your landing page, to them making purchases and becoming repeat customers. The cool thing is that GetResponse gives you a huge selection of templates for every step of the process to make your life easier.

You can also manage your entire sales funnel from this feature which is pretty cool too.

Plus, another excellent thing about GetResponse’s conversion funnel is that it gives you detailed analytics. For example, it shows you the ROI of the entire sales funnel, which you can use to make better management decisions.

GetResponse CRM

GetResponse isn’t only a monster when it comes to helping you generate leads. It also helps you manage and convert them with a dedicated CRM feature that ConvertKit doesn’t have. Again, the cool thing about its CRM is how visual it is; you can drag leads from one phase to another to easily keep an overview.

Plus, with tools like contact scoring, GetResponse helps you make the best decisions.

Other Features

GetResponse really does have an impressive number of features.

It would take too long to explain them all, but here’s a list of everything else that is only available in GetResponse:

  • Web Push Notifications
  • Google ads creator and management
  • Facebook ads creator and management
  • Social ads creator
  • Done for you lead magnets (Marketing niche)
  • Live chat support

You can find out more about all the GetResponse features in my article here.

GetResponse Pros

  • Landing pages, sales funnels, and webinars help you generate leads
  • Powerful CRM and Marketing automation to help you convert your leads
  • Very easy to use as all features are visual and drag and drop
  • A rich selection of templates
  • An impressive all-in-one marketing system

GetResponse Cons

  • It can be a little overwhelming because of the number of features
  • Landing page mobile optimization isn’t the easiest

What GetResponse Is Particularly Good At

GetResponse is particularly good at helping customers build an entire marketing funnel that promotes their business.

There isn’t any other autoresponder that comes with so many tools to help you generate leads.

Plus, with the average ROI of email marketing being around $44 for every $1 spent, you’ll want to funnel as many leads as you can into your list. And GetResponse helps you do exactly that.

GetResponse Ease of Use

GetResponse is one of the easiest to use autoresponders out there.

Every single feature inside of GetResponse is drag and drop and laid out visually with bright colors to make everything easy for you.

That being said, it does have a bit of a learning curve, due to the large amount of features it comes with. However, you’ll likely soon get the hang of it quickly, then have a huge list of very useful features at your fingertips.

GetResponse Deliverability Rates

Deliverability rates are another area where GetResponse performs incredibly well.

Studies have shown that GetRespnse has industry-leading deliverability rates with around 99% of emails sent through their system actually getting delivered.

Who Is GetResponse Good For

GetResponse is great for the following businesses:

  • Ecommerce stores
  • Service-based businesses
  • Info-product vendors
  • Affiliate marketers (GetResponse has no problems with users participating in affiliate marketing)

I also think it can work especially well for service-based businesses with high-value leads. This is because they can use the sales funnel, CRM, and marketing automation to convert their customers.

However, GetResponse’s tools can also be used for a wide range of other businesses, particularly any that fall into the categories I listed above.

If you want to see a visual walk-through of the GetResponse platform then check out the video below.

ConvertKit Features and Benefits

GetResponse set the standard pretty high, but let’s take a look at how ConvertKit compares.

What ConvertKit Has That GetResponse Does Not Have

ConvertKit doesn’t actually have too many features, which GetResponse doesn’t. This is because it aims to be a simpler solution for a smaller market instead of an all-in-one software targeting most small businesses.

However, I still managed to pick out a few, which I have explained below.

Some Ease Of Use Benefits

The key word here is “some.”  GetResponse, of course, is a lot more visual.

However, ConvertKit has a straightforward dashboard and automations. This may make it easier for you to keep an overview, and you will feel less overwhelmed. Plus, ConvertKit also lets you create tags anywhere inside of the app, which is pretty cool.

GetResponse, on the other hand, only lets you create those in the automation workflows section.

Newsletter Referral System

This is only available on ConvertKit’s highest plan, but it’s basically a free SparkLoop account. Using it, you can create referral campaigns for your email list and let your audience grow it for you. This is quite a cool feature/add-on because SparkLoop costs like $29 per month by itself. However, you only get this on the $59 per month plan.

Still, it’s pretty nice and something that GetResponse doesn’t have.

Better WordPress Plugin

ConvertKit has a brilliant WordPress plugin that you can also use to add tags, integrate forms, etc.

GetResponse’s plugin, on the other hand, is basic and even has quite a lot of bugs. This is also reflected in the WordPress plugin store reviews, and I would not recommend using it.

Doesn’t Charge For Duplicate Email Signups

GetResponse most other autoresponders that I know of, except SendLane, charge you twice if someone signs up two times with the same email address. This can happen if you have multiple lists with different optin forms, and a person subscribes to more than one of your lists with the same email address.

I had an issue with this at one point when I was using Aweber and I had a number of different offers on my blog. A lot of my site visitors were interested in more than one of my free lead-magnets, so they were opting to get my freebies. I set things up in this way as I wanted to keep and monitor different lists based on my free offers.

In this case, I needed to then also monitor my subscribers and every few weeks clear out the duplicate email addresses manually so I wouldn’t get charged twice for them. It’s a bit of a pain, but not the end of the world.

ConvertKit Pros

  • Has a free plan
  • Great WordPress plugin
  • Simple, easy to use interface
  • Good features for bloggers and digital creators
  • Doesn’t Charge For Duplicate Email Signups

ConvertKit Cons

  •  No webinars
  • No conversion funnel feature
  • Not as good landing pages, automation sequences, email creators, templates, etc.
  • No CRM

What ConvertKit Is Particularly Good At

ConvertKit is particularly good at simplicity and ease of use. Despite it not having the same drag and drop functionality, it helps users that might lack technical knowledge, but who will benefit by using email marketing.

ConvertKit does this by offering the most essential tools in an easy-to-use interface that almost anyone can understand.

ConvertKit Ease of Use

ConvertKit is easy to use because of how simple it is. It simply doesn’t have as many options as GetResponse, so you don’t have as many buttons on your screen. The options you do have on your screen are also bigger, so they are easier to recognize and move around the dashboard quickly.

You may prefer ConvertKit because of this, and if you don’t need all the features that GetResponse provides. Personally, I think that most businesses would be able to do a lot more with GetResponse, but that’s just my opinion.

ConvertKit Deliverability Rates

According to their website, ConvertKit also has a 99% deliverability rate. Or, at least they mention, “Last month ConvertKit has sent over 1 billion emails with a deliverability of over 99%”.

I wasn’t able to find other studies on ConvertKit’s deliverability to share with you in this article. But, they seem to have a lot of resources to help you get your emails delivered and in the right place.

Who Is ConvertKit Good For

ConvertKit’s tools are indeed pretty well suited for bloggers and digital creators.

If you look at those groups’ needs, you’ll find that ConvertKit meets most of them. Plus, it is also easy to use because of the simplicity.

So, ConvertKit is great for bloggers looking for simplicity and don’t want to use a more comprehensive tool like GetResponse. Based on my assumptions, I could imagine ConvertKit working well for digital creators in niches like food, fashion, interior design, etc.

If you want to see ConvertKit in action then take a look at the video below.

GetResponse vs ConvertKit – Pricing

Now that we have taken a look at the features let’s look at the cost they come at.

GetResponse Cost

GetResponse comes with flexible pricing plans ranging from $15 to $99 per month for 1,000 subscribers. Plus, if you need something more custom, you can contact GetResponse’s support team for the “Max” plan.

The prices below are based on 1,000 subscribers. If you want to know the prices based on more subscribers then please see their pricing page here.

Basic ($15 per month)

This plan is perfect for beginners and includes:

  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Chats
  • Basic email marketing (Non-behavior automation, newsletters, etc.)
  • 1 Sales funnel
  • Unlimited lead generation funnels
  • Facebook and Google ad creator

For a $15 per month plan, this plan is solid as it comes with basic email tools, and you can even sell your products.

Plus ($49 per month)

This plan has everything the previous one has, plus:

  • Contact scoring and tagging
  • Webinars with up to 100 attendees
  • Work with a team (up to 3 members)
  • 5 Sales Funnels
  • 5 Behavior-based automation workflows
  • 5 webinar funnels

The $49 per month plan will be suited for more businesses. It comes with more sales funnels, better email marketing tools, and even webinars. Pretty impressive for a $49 per month plan.

Professional ($99 per month)

Everything in the previous plan, plus:

  • Work with 5 users
  • On-demand webinars
  • Paid webinars
  • Up to 300 attendees inside of the webinar
  • Unlimited sales funnels
  • Unlimited email automation workflows
  • Website push notifications

GetResponse Professional comes with almost everything that the platform has to offer. This plan is perfect if you want to create many sales funnels, webinars, automation sequences, etc.

GetResponse Max (Custom pricing)

Everything in PRO and:

  • Manage teams and roles
  • Single-sign on (SSO)
  • 500 webinar attendants
  • Transactional emails (only as a paid add on)
  • Dedicated support (including for Migrations)
  • Several accounts and users
The GetResponse pricing table

ConvertKit Cost

ConvertKit has three main pricing plans; free, creator, and creator pro. Below, I’ve explained them all, but keep in mind the prices named are for up to 1,000 subscribers.

 Free ($0 per month)

ConvertKit’s free plan is pretty limited. While you can use their basic landing page builder and send email broadcasts, you can’t use automation sequences.

While this plan may be enough to get you started, it probably won’t be the best choice because you can’t even automate the process.

 Creator ($29 Per Month)

ConvertKit’s creator plan is what I’d assume to be the most popular plan.

Here you can get everything in free, plus:

  • Sell digital products
  • Automation sequences/Workflows (or funnels, as ConvertKit calls them)
  • Get a free migration from any other tool.

This is pretty decent for a $29 per month plan, although it still doesn’t quite offer the number of features that GetResponse has.

Creator Pro ($59 Per Month)

Finally, ConvertKit’s creator pro plan comes with everything the platform has to offer.

That means everything in creator plus:

  • Facebook custom audiences
  • Newsletter referral system
  • Subscriber scoring
  • Advanced reporting
ConvertKit pricing

Final Thoughts – GetResponse vs ConvertKit – Which Is Best?

As you have seen throughout this article, both GetResponse and ConvertKit have an impressive list of features.

However, GetResponse does have quite a few more, and their pricing is a little more flexible to suit more types of businesses. Therefore, if I would pick a winner overall, it would have to be GetResponse, because of the significant differences in features.

GetResponse have also been around for a lot longer, and have also piled a considerable amount of money into improving the usability of their products a few years ago. To me, this shows that the company is committed to evolving their business and they do actually care about their customers.If you want to try them out for yourself then you can get a free 30-day GetResponse trial here, no credit card required.

SendLane vs GetResponse – Which One Is Best?

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A person looking at SendLane vs GetResponse on a laptop

Choosing an autoresponder is not as straightforward as you might think. They can differ greatly from platform to platform.

Some are better suited to large corporations, while others are specifically targeted at small businesses, eCommerce merchants, and bloggers.

Beyond this, you also need to consider the features that you will need to use.

In today’s article, I’m gonna be comparing SendLane vs GetResponse. If you’re a solopreneur or a small-medium-sized business owner who needs advanced automation capabilities and you can’t compromise on deliverability, then either of these platforms can work for you.

Both platforms, however, have different features that can benefit you in a number of ways.

So, which is best?

Let’s find out.

SendLane Vs GetResponse Overview

To kick-off, I’m gonna first give you a little background on each of the companies so you know who you’re getting into bed with if you decide to sign up with either of them.

After, I’ll be diving straight into the unique features, benefits, capabilities, and differences between the two.

Introducing SendLane

Jimmy Kim founded Sendlane in 2013. Since then, it has become one of the most popular email marketing tools on the market. On their homepage, it states that over 1700 companies use SendLane and that they send around 40+ million emails daily, which is an impressive figure.

Sendlane’s main features are:

  • Email marketing tools
  • SMS Marketing tools
  • Intelligent features
  • Marketing Automation
  • Multivariable segmentation
  • Sendlane beacon
  • Real-time analytics
  • Deep-data integrations
  • Experiments

SendLane is known for focusing on comprehensive email tools that help its users generate more revenue. An example of this is their advanced personalization and analytics capabilities.

Leading with their foot forward in the email marketing arena, they advocate that “email marketing should be your #1 source of revenue for your business”.

SendLane’s email automation and segmentation features have particularly been widely praised by all types of eCommerce stores, affiliates, and other online businesses, as well as their deliverability scores.

Introducing GetResponse

GetResponse has been around for much longer than SendLane and was founded by Simon Grabowski in 1999.

Initially, Simon just meant to create GetResponse for his own personal use to solve a few problems for his other business. However, he quickly realized the power and potential of the platform, and eventually, the email marketing software became the business.

Fast forward to now, it’s one of the most popular email tools on the planet.

GetResponse’s main features are:

  • Newsletters
  •  Behavior-based email automation sequences/Workflows
  • Email Autoresponders (This is what GetResponse calls basic non-behavior-based automations)
  • Landing page builder
  • Forms and Pop-ups
  • List Management
  • CRM
  • Sales Funnels
  • Webinars

GetResponse is best for those who want a powerful email marketing platform that also has additional tools like funnel builders, webinars, and CRM built-in.

Since it started as an autoresponder many years ago, it has now evolved into much more. Today, you can build your entire marketing funnel using only GetResponse, and it’s a powerful lead-generating machine.

 SendLane Features and Benefits

Now that we have covered some basic information about both companies, let’s look at what Sendlane offers in more detail.

What SendLane Has That GetResponse Does Not Have

SendLane really puts a lot of effort into helping you send more personalized emails. This is mostly where it outperforms Getresponse.

Emails Based on Your Visitor’s Behaviour

SendLane has many tools that allow you to use your visitors’ behavior info to personalize the emails and send them at exactly the right time. You can track every visit from the first time to the moment they purchase and beyond. All of this data is available to you so you can use it with your automation sequences.

GetResponse does have a similar trigger in their automation workflows, but it’s not quite as comprehensive as SendLane’s feature.

SendLane has a special “beacon” that follows your visitor through the website so that you can target them based on what they’re most likely to purchase.

As you can imagine, this is a pretty powerful feature that helps you increase your conversions and sales.

More Detailed Financial Analytics

GetResponse and Sendlane’s analytics are different.

SendLane’s email analytics give you a few more financial metrics than GetResponse does. For example, things like the average order value, or ROI of a single email, can be very beneficial to see how well they are working.

GetResponse has a similar metric in their funnel ROI, but we’ll talk about that a little later.

For the emails only, though, SendLane has better analytics. They’ll be a lot more helpful in your decisions, thanks to the financial metrics mentioned above.

Intelligent Pop-Ups

SendLane’s pop-ups also slightly outperform GetResponse’s.

You have a few more options in terms of types of pop-ups, and you also have a bit more flexibility in where and how they should appear. For example, you can choose what web pages and devices you want your forms to pop-up on, and go into the details of the timing, etc.

GetResponse has a standard form that you can embed. Or, you can use their pop-ups on pages within GetResponse, which do have some decent options. However, it’s not quite the same as this feature from SendLane.

SMS Marketing

Another cool thing about SendLane is that you can send your customers SMS messages.

SMS messages are extremely effective, as you probably know because most people don’t miss texts. This allows you to engage and notify your customers at any point.

SendLane also allows you to add these easily into your email sequences so that you can combine them well together.

SendLane Pros

  • Great support
  • Lots of great automation features
  • Hyper-personalized emails for higher conversions
  • Very detailed analytics with lots of financial metrics
  • SMS marketing helps you engage your customers any time, anywhere

SendLane Cons

  • Tools can be a little complicated for a beginner
  • No landing page builder or anything else besides email and SMS marketing

What SendLane Is Particularly Good At

One word; Personalization.

I don’t think I could name many autoresponders that have this level of personalization. It has a powerful tracking pixel and the “beacon” that gives you a lot more information than most of its competitors.

Using this data, you can drive more sales because you know what your visitors are interested in.

SendLane Ease of Use

On the whole, SendLane is very easy to use. The automation builder is drag and drop, and everything is extremely visual. For example, even the triggers have little logos next to them, and it’s just overall quite easy to use.

The only thing I think is where a lot of beginners would trip up when using the platform is all the personalization that you can use (if you want to). I think there are many tools that the platform has, so that it may be a little overwhelming at first.

SendLane Deliverability Rates

The average email open rate is around 15-25%. However, if most of your emails aren’t getting delivered in the first place then that number could rapidly drop to 10, 5, or even 0%. So, it’s important to choose an autoresponder with good deliverability rates.

According to SendLane’s website, they claim that they have one of the best deliverability rates around.

They go onto say that they have in-house deliverability experts, whereas many autoresponders outsource their deliverability management.

Here is an interesting video that shows you SendLane’s deliverability.

Who Is SendLane Good For

SendLane is great for people and businesses that want to make good use of the personalization tools to increase conversions. This is applicable to almost any type of business really.

With SendLane, businesses can use advanced personalization tools to target their customers much more efficiently.

SendLane is also an affiliate marketing-friendly autoresponder, so affiliates can use it too to help increase conversions.

For example, someone with an affiliate site could track which pages (and the products on those pages) the visitor has been looking at. From there, they can send an email with those products, some social proof, discounts, etc., to push sales.

Although affiliates wouldn’t have full control over their tracking codes, I still think these features are can be very useful.

In fact, ClickFunnels’ number one affiliate, Spencer Mecham, claims that SendLane is the best autoresponder for affiliate marketers, as you can see in the video below.

If you still want even more detailed info on this autoresponder platform then I recommend you read my SendLane review.

GetResponse Features and Benefits

SendLane has some pretty impressive features. Now let’s look at how GetResponse compares.

What GetResponse Has That SendLane Does Not Have

GetResponse also has some features of its own that Sendlane doesn’t have. Below, I’ve explained all of them in a little more detail.

Landing Page Builder

If you’re looking to create any email marketing campaign, you’ll likely need a landing page. GetResponse comes with a great built-in drag-and-drop landing page builder, which makes it very easy to create them.

It’s easy to use and also allows you to integrate payment processors to collect payments.

Having this built-in will definitely save you some money as you won’t need an external tool.

Webinars

GetResponse has a comprehensive webinar feature. It allows you to host both live and pre-recorded (evergreen) webinars, which can be a great way to sell high-ticket products or engage your audience.

It even has some engagement tools such as surveys, which is pretty cool too.

Plus, as it’s in the same platform as your landing page builder, your automation sequences, etc., it’s straightforward to connect all the dots to get things set up smoothly.

Conversion Funnel

GetRespone has a conversion funnel feature that lets you visualize your marketing funnel. This makes the building process and keeping an overview of all your processes a lot easier. Plus, it might also spark some ideas that could help you generate more sales, so it’s definitely extremely beneficial.

The conversion funnel feature inside GetResponse has some great analytics, which is similar to those in SendLane. For example, ROI of the funnel overall or the value per lead.

CRM and List Management

GetResponse also allows you to track all your leads and manage them with a CRM feature.

Again, this feature is also very visual as you can drag leads names in the sales process and get any info you may need about them.

SendLane also has some decent list management tools, but it’s not quite like the built-in CRM tool that GetResponse has.

Ad Creator

GetResponse also helps you create and manage your Facebook ads and Google ads from inside your account. So, you won’t have to even open Facebook’s (often confusing) business manager to create an ad, which is pretty cool.

GetResponse even allows you to create and design professional-looking ads, even if you don’t have any design skills. If you are looking to run ads into your funnels, webinars, landing pages, etc., this feature is definitely nice to have.

GetResponse Pros

  • GetResponse allows you to create a powerful marketing system
  • Easy-to-use landing page builder with beautiful templates
  • Comprehensive webinar tool to help you sell your products and engage your audience
  • Great CRM and List management to help you manage and engage your contacts
  • Powerful Marketing automation tools for your business
  • Great conversion funnel feature with detailed analytics

GetResponse Cons

  • Compared to SendLane, not as good personalization, but still pretty solid and better than the majority of autoresponders
  • No SMS marketing

What GetResponse Is Particularly Good At

GetResponse is particularly good at helping you build an entire marketing funnel.

This marketing funnel takes your visitor from not knowing you to becoming a loyal customer. And, GetResponse has an outstanding tool for every step of the process including generating leads and converting them into paying customers.

With a combination of them, you have everything you need to build your online business.

If you want to compare GetResponse’s funnel features to other top funnel builders on the market, or if you prefer to use SendLane as your autoresponder but still need a sales funnel builder, then I recommend you read my article here on the best funnel builder software.

Get Response Ease of Use

GetResponse had a big update a couple of years ago, making it now one of the easiest autoresponder platforms to use. Now everything is drag and drop; the emails, the automation workflows, the landing pages, the webinars… Everything.

It’s also effortless to keep an overview of everything thanks to the analytics and conversion funnel features.

GetResponse Deliverability Rates

GetResponse sheds a little more light on their exact percentages than SendLane. According to their website, their overall deliverability is 99%.

They also have various resources to help you make sure your emails land in the inbox. One of them is a little scoring system when you are writing emails, which is pretty helpful.

So, in terms of Deliverability, GetResponse wins overall, as it has industry-leading deliverability rates and also shares its percentage info with you.

Who Is GetResponse Good For

GetResponse can work well for almost any business;

  • Ecommerce stores
  • Affiliates
  • Info-product vendors
  • Service-businesses (Consultants, agencies, etc.)

All of these types of businesses can use GetResponse’s tools effectively to grow. But, I think GetResponse could work exceptionally well for service-based businesses, info-product vendors, and affiliates.

These types of businesses can make good use of the landing page tools, sales funnels, and webinar tools. Then, they can combine these with marketing automation tools to engage and convert their audience.

If you want more info on this automation platform then I recommend you read my in-depth GetResponse review here.

 SendLane Vs GetResponse – Pricing

Now that we have taken a look at the value these platforms provide, let’s look at the cost they come at.

SendLane Pricing

Even though SendLane doesn’t offer a low-priced starter plan like most of the competition, it’s actually good value considering what you get for your money, despite their plans starting at $99 per month.

Below, I’ve explained SendLane’s their plans in more detail.

SendLane Growth – $99 Per Month ($79 p/m if paid annually)

SendLane’s growth plan comes with a whopping 5,000 subscribers, which is pretty solid for $99 per month.

It also comes with all of the features that are offered on the platform, so I think this plan would suit a large number of businesses that want to use SendLane. This plan offers a lot of value for a reasonable price. Although, if you are starting your business, $99 per month for an autoresponder can be a little steep.

SendLane Professional Plus – $249 per month (208 p/m if paid annually)

SendLane’s professional plus plan is for anyone with over 10,000 contacts. Here, you also get access to all the features, plus:

  • White glove custom onboarding
  • Dedicated customer success manager
  • Program reviews, once a month
  • Proactive Deliverability monitoring

Another pretty solid plan, as it has a lot of value, especially for businesses with, let’s say, 50,000 contacts, as the costs with competitors, could be quite a lot higher.

SendLane pricing table

GetResponse Pricing

Now let’s look at GetResponse’s pricing.

The prices below are based on 1,000 contacts. There are also annual discounts available; 18% for 12-months and 30% for 24 months.

Basic – $15 per month

The GetResponse Basic plan is perfect for new businesses and includes:

  • Facebook and Google ad creator
  • Chats
  • Basic email marketing (Non-behavior automation, newsletters, etc.)
  • Unlimited landing pages
  • 1 Sales funnel
  • Unlimited lead generation funnels

Plus – $49 per month

The GetResponse Plus plan has everything the previous one has, plus:

  • Contact scoring and tagging
  • 5 Sales Funnels
  • 5 Behavior-based automation workflows
  • Webinars with up to 100 attendees
  • Work with a team (up to 3 members)
  • 5 webinar funnels

This plan would be suited for most businesses as it gives you a lot of what GetResponse has to offer at an affordable price.

Professional $99 per month

The GetResponse Professional plan has everything in the previous plan, plus:

  • Work with 5 users
  • On-demand webinars
  • Paid webinars
  • Up to 300 attendees inside of the webinar
  • Unlimited sales funnels
  • Unlimited email automation workflows
  • Website push notifications
The GetResponse pricing table

Final Thoughts – SendLane Vs GetResponse – Which Is Best?

I hope my SendLane vs GetResponse comparison has helped you make a good decision. If you’re still stuck, then consider what you value more, the personalization of SendLane vs the comprehensive marketing tools that come with GetResponse.

The reason I say this is because SendLane’s strongest point is personalization and targeting. While GetResponse helps you build an entire marketing system for your business that converts visitors into loyal customers.

SendLane Review – Does It Live Up To The Hype?

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a computer showing SendLane review features

Email marketing — love it or hate it, it’s a necessity for any online business that wants to thrive.

A lot of small-time and beginner marketers avoid using email in the beginning. It can seem daunting, time-consuming and expensive. But take it from the, the earlier you can start building a list, the better off you will be further down the line.

If you’re gonna incorporate email marketing into your business (and you definitely should if you want to build a scalable, long-term asset) then you will need to use an autoresponder service.

Besides now being a legal requirement for email marketing, using an autoresponder will also make your list building efforts considerably easier. Unfortunately, many fall short, in my opinion — I’ve tried quite a few of them.

In the past, I’ve found myself settling for “good enough,” but since this is such an important part of my business, I am always on the look-out for the next best autoresponder to test out.

It’s a marketer’s dream to find that holy grail solution — something that’s easy to use and affiliate marketing friendly with exceptional deliverability rates.

The latest contender for the cup? SendLane. Is it a good fit for your online business, too? Let’s find out. This SendLane review will cover everything you need to know about this up-and-coming automated marketing solution.

If you’d prefer to watch a video demo of SendLane so you can see everything it can do in real-time then you can watch this SendLane demo here.

Things to Consider Before Buying an Autoresponder

Like most things in business — and life — finding the right option for you depends heavily on your preferences and needs.

Where SendLane really shines is in its simplicity of use and exceptional deliverability rates.

However, if you’re a marketer who handles massive campaigns for large organizations, then SendLane may not provide all the features you need. In this case, you may be better off with a higher-priced service that offers more automation, analytics, and bells and whistles, such as HubSpot.

However, if you’re looking for a powerful tool that’s easy to use and excels at its core features — email broadcasts, automation, and outstanding deliverability rates — SendLane might be perfect for you.

It’s an excellent fit for small to medium-sized businesses, and affiliate marketers looking for a simple user interface with plenty of automation options.

Yes, SendLane is affiliate marketing friendly! I heard this directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

This is a big consideration if affiliate marketing is a core part of your business. Unfortunately, most autoresponder services don’t like affiliates and will shut you down for simply including an affiliate link in your emails. It’s happened to me…

Still not sure if SendLane autoresponder is right for you? Consider the following while you read through the rest of this SendLane review.

  • The number of customers: How many emails will you be sending out, and how often?
  • The complexity of the rules: Are you satisfied with basic features like timed sending, or do you need to get fancier?
  • Analytics: Make sure you choose an autoresponder that provides you with focused analytics reports, instead of overwhelming you with unnecessary stats.
  • GDPR-compliant: Make sure that you stay on the right side of the law and protect your customers’ privacy.
SendLane logo

SendLane: A Closer Look

SendLane is an easy-to-use autoresponder with some very high-end tools. It features advanced contact tagging, which allows the system to automatically group subscribers by geographic region, or pretty much any other criteria you desire.

Advanced list-building options such as this are fantastic to give your marketing efforts a laser-focus with precise market targeting.

These features alone can considerably improve both your open and your conversion rates.

Its simple interface also makes it a fantastic option for novice marketers or people running their own businesses who need to handle the marketing on their own.

In my opinion, it does take a bit of time to fully understand the system, but the results are well worth it. Having said that, all the autoresponder services I have used to date do have a bit of a learning curve.

SendLane Pros and Cons

Here’s a quick overview of the pro’s and con’s of using SendLane to give you a flavor.

SendLane Pros:

  • Intuitive design
  • Exceptional deliverability rates
  • Excellent support
  • Plenty of automation options with tons of triggers to choose from
  • High-end landing page and email editors
  • Simple to use drag-and-drop editor
  • Integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Zapier, and ClickBank available, with more coming in the future

SendLane Cons:

  • Can be spendy as your subscriber list grows
  • No onboarding process when you first install the software
  • Some aspects feel clunky

SendLane Features and Benefits

Sendlane features

By now, you probably want to know more detailed info on SendLane’s features and benefits. So here goes…

Drag and Drop Editor

One of the features I like the most about SendLane is its simple to use drag and drop editor. It makes creating visually ravishing emails simple and hassle-free, which I find fun, and a big time-saver.

You can choose from a wide variety of email elements and customize them in any way you see fit to best represent your brand and help your conversions.

There are currently about 20 templates, which is about standard among popular autoresponders in 2020.

While you can customize these, I do wish SendLane offered a slightly more extensive catalog of options. It’s not a deal-breaker though as you can also create your own templates from scratch if you want to.

Landing Page Creator

If you want more than just an email editor, you’ll appreciate SendLane’s landing page creator. Unlike the email editor, you get over 50 templates to choose from with an impressive range of designs.

This is a great feature as it can save you money on third-party page builders like ClickFunnels, depending on your needs, of course.

Some templates even include countdown timers, videos, and pop-ups, which is really cool. However, I struggled to figure out how to add them to other templates.

Some people may appreciate this feature, but if you’re looking strictly for an email tool, chances are you won’t use this feature at all.

Advanced Contact Tagging and Automation

SendLane goes well beyond ‘drip-feed’ email functionality and lets you set up workflows that change your email delivery depending on what your subscribers do.

You can also tag subscribers based on where they live, their sign-up source, the device they use, and pretty much any other custom tag you can think of.

Even better, this incredibly powerful functionality is very simple to set up and use, even if you’re new to the world of marketing.

For me, this is one of the most important considerations when it comes to choosing an autoresponder. If it’s intuitive and easy to use then it’s a big plus in my book.

SendLane automation

Standard Reporting and Analytics

Most marketing software gives you plenty of analytics to chew over, and SendLane is no different, offering data on:

  • Open rates
  • Click through rates
  • Bounce rates
  • Your most active subscribers with the highest open rates
  • People who unsubscribed, and their stated reason

Most of these analytics work in real-time, so you’ll always have an up-to-date view of what’s going on in your marketing campaign — without being overwhelmed.

SendLane provides a manageable amount of data presented in an easy-to-read format. Because of this, it is so much easier to act on your data to make improvements where you need to.

Data analytics

What I particularly like about the data the SendLane provides is that you can set up all your different campaigns and have it track all the clicks and conversions on your website as well as the conversions that come directly from your emails, as you can see below.

SendLane’s data can even help you track all the clicks and sales that are coming from each of your email campaigns, and report on how much each subscriber has spent with you.

As you can see from the screenshot below, this subscriber made a purchase via email of $99.

This is super powerful, especially if you run an eCom business or if you create your own digital products!

Automatically Optimized Send Times

Unlike many autoresponders that ask you to figure out the best time to send your emails, SendLane will optimize the process for you, which is awesome!

The program analyses previous email open rates and suggests the perfect time to send the next one.

Best of all, you can set up this functionality on an individual email basis, tailoring every single person’s experience to their particular habits, if you want to go that deep. Alternatively, you can save time and just let SendLane optimize the whole sending process for you.

Creating a List of Contracts

Lists are key to customizing your email campaigns.

SendLane lets you add contacts to as many lists as you like, and duplicates don’t count towards your contact limit.

This is important to be aware of as some autoresponders like Aweber will count contacts multiple times if they are subscribed to more than one of your lists. This means that you will quickly reach your subscriber limit and then need to upgrade to a higher priced plan. But with SendLane, you don’t need to worry about this.

You can even set different rules for each list, giving you granular control over your entire subscriber base.

Once you’ve set up your lists, you can also automate adding new subscribers to each particular list as they sign up.

SendLane allows you to create a form for new sign-ups or integrate your existing website API in some cases.

Email Broadcasts in SendLane

Email broadcasts are the bread and butter of email marketing, and SendLane’s process is streamlined and simple.

The broadcast tool gives you over 20 marketing templates along with customization for when to send out the email.

Email Automation in SendLane

We’ve touched upon this briefly when discussing automation, but SendLane offers a very powerful workflow tool that allows you to send emails in a very focused manner.

Workflow setup is pretty simple — you can either start with a template or from scratch.

Not only does SendLane have a comprehensive list of triggers, but it also allows for if/else functionality, which is pretty powerful.

If/else workflows let you customize your workflow even further. The simple flow-chart layout makes understanding the process significantly easier for people just starting in marketing.

advanced automation in SendLane

API and Integrations

API, or ‘application programming interface,’ is a method for a particular program to talk with other programs.

If you want to integrate SendLane functionality with another program, you can use their well-documented API to do so quite easily.

SendLane also allows other programs to talk to it, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and ClickBank.

They are still working on adding more integrations with other common platforms, like WordPress, which is surprisingly still missing. However, if you use Zapier then you can integrate SendLane with pretty much anything.

Onboarding

SendLane takes the ‘throw them in the deep end’ approach to onboarding, in that they don’t offer any form of tutorial, which is a shame.

Luckily, the user interface is simple to use, and the processes streamlined enough that you should be able to figure it out by yourself.

If you feel entirely lost, then you can click the red help button to contact customer support or check out some SendLane tutorials on YouTube.

Automation

Naturally, an autoresponder has to hit automation out of the park.

SendLane provides plenty of robust automation tools with a simple user interface to make your life easier.

The platform’s workflows are clear and effective. In my opinion, it provides everything that most digital marketers will need.

Deliverability

SendLane has a very aggressive list culling and hygiene processes in place to reduce the number of dead or false email addresses you have to deal with and pay for during a campaign.

The program also generates easy-to-follow deliverability reports, allowing you to see how many of your emails are actually delivered.

You can see exactly how SendLane’s deliverability compares to its competitors in this SendLane comparison chart here.

Ease of Use

Despite the lack of onboarding, SendLane is surprisingly easy to use. Even its most powerful features are simple to figure out.

With plenty of click-and-drag functionality and clear visuals, most users, even beginner marketers will probably get the hang of things on the first use.

Social Proof

While I could go on about the features I liked and didn’t like about SendLane, it’s also worthwhile to find out what other people think.

I scoured the internet to find out what people on the ground, such as entrepreneurs and small business owners, think of SendLane.

Most people overall seemed to like it a lot.

The reviews weren’t glowing across the board — I’d question their authenticity if they were — but, overall, SendLane reviews are quite positive.

Here are some of the SendLane reviews I found from business owners and marketers:

SendLane customer review
SenDlane customer testimonial
Another customer testimonial for SendLane

Customer reviews from launchspace.net.

SendLane Pricing

As you no doubt understand by now, SendLane offers way above average functionality and provides several ways to help you increase your subscriber base and generate higher revenue from your campaigns.

Due to this, and the additional new features that SendLane have added to their service, they have recently changed their pricing structure.

Perviously, SendLane’s starting price was $25 per month, which was about middle of the road compared to its competitors.

While SendLane’s new pricing structure is higher, they do offer a very attractive starter bundle for new members, which is $497 for the year. This works out at just over $41 per month.

While this can seem like a lot to beginner marketers, those who have been in business for a while and understand the importance of the features that SendLane offer will likely see this as a great deal.

On the starter plan you get everything on SendLane’s more expensive growth plan for your first 6 months.

Below is a screenshot of their pricing table.

SendLane pricing table

You can see SendLane’s full pricing page here.

SendLane Alternatives

SendLane offers a heaping plate of appealing features, but if it doesn’t meet your needs, there are plenty of other more time-tested autoresponders out there.

Here are some alternatives that you may also want to consider.

Aweber

The main difference between the two is the presentation and price.

While SendLane definitely has more advanced automation features, Aweber offers quite a few more templates, as well as a more competitive starting cost. This can be appealing for beginners who don’t need fancy automation processes.

It is a superb option for small businesses who want to dip their toe into email marketing without spending too much money.

SendLane, however, is a better option for marketers who want more powerful automation and a few nice extras that Aweber doesn’t have.

Aweber:

  • More affordable–starts at $19/month
  • Larger support team
  • More standard email templates
  • Affiliate marketing friendly

SendLane:

  • Comes with a landing page builder
  • Better automation features
  • $25/month starting price

If you’re looking for an email-focused product with plenty of support and a more affordable starting price, check out Aweber here.

GetResponse

GetResponse is an industry leader when it comes to email marketing. It’s the ideal solution for large-scale operations that handle thousands of emails per day and companies that want an all-in-one solution.

SendLane is a more customized tool that’s perfect for smaller businesses, e-commerce owners, and digital agencies that need powerful automation without many other marketing tools.

GetResponse:

  • High deliverability
  • Customized plans for added flexibility and scalability
  • GetResponse has been on the market for years, with the track record to prove it
  • Affiliate marketing friendly

SendLane:

  • Approachable and user-friendly interface
  • Email timing optimization
  • Tagging and list-based automation

If you want a cheaper starting price option than SendLane with similar functionality, GetResponse may be the right choice for you. Check out GetResponse here or read my GetResponse review.

Mailer Lite

If you want an autoresponder that is very low priced and even has a free forever plan, but with good functionality then Mailer Lite is a good option.

It’s important to note that it’s not affiliate marketing friendly, but if your business does not revolve around promoting affiliate offers then this is not a problem.

One work-around to using an autoresponder that does not allow you to put affiliate links directly in the emails is to create a landing page with your affiliate link, and then link to the landing page from your emails.

As mentioned earlier, autoresponder service offers a free forever plan with limited functionality. However, when you do start paying, it is considerably cheaper than many other options on the market.

Pricing starts at just $15 per month for up to 2,500 subs! This starting plan also comes with unlimited user accounts and you can send an unlimited number of emails. It is also easy to use, which makes it a great choice for beginners.

Mailer Lite:

  • Free forever plan
  • Easy to use
  • Send unlimited emails on the lowest price plan
  • Not affiliate friendly

SendLane:

  • Better automation for personalized email marketing
  • Primarily built for affiliates and B2C businesses
  • Provides useful analytics data and web activity tracking

If you run an eCommerce, drop-ship, or digital product business, you’ll appreciate the powerful features that Mailer Lite brings. You can check out Mailer Lite here.

If you want to check out the top 7 autoresponders I recommend, you can see them here.

Summing It Up: SendLane in Review

Email marketing is a highly valuable lead generation tool, and is a cornerstone of any successful online business. However, if you’re using a sub-par, or even just the wrong autoresponder for your needs then email marketing can become a headache.

As you can see from the features that SendLane has to offer, it can simplify your digital marketing efforts, free up your time, and help you to generate more customers, and increase profits.

In my opinion, SendLane offers an excellent solution for small to medium businesses. It is intuitive and easy to work with that anyone can use it effectively in a short space of time. It also has plenty of powerful features that are usually only available on superior autoresponder services at higher prices.

If you’re interested in trying out SendLane then you will be pleased to know that they do have a 14-day free trial. While you will need to enter your credit cart info to sign up for the free trial, you can cancel at any time before the end of the 14 days and you will not be charged.

If you’d like to try out this autoresponder service then you can get a 14-day free trial here.

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign – Which Is Best For Your Business In 2021?

by
A compater comparing GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign can be a tricky choice, as they both have some great features to offer.

In this article, I’m going to take a look at what both of these email marketing platforms have to offer to help you make the best-suited choice for your business.

I have used both of these platforms myself, so I’ll also give you my opinions on both from my own personal experience.

Both these email marketing platforms are great for all kinds of businesses, which I’ll get into a bit later in the article. However, one thing to note is that these two platforms have slightly different policies when it comes to affiliate marketing.

ActiveCampaign isn’t really affiliate-friendly and doesn’t like its members using affiliate links. However, there are ways around this if you have some experience, so it doesn’t rule out ActiveCampaign completely for affiliates. I’ll also discuss this in more detail later on.

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign Overview

If you have been looking for a complete comparison of GetResponse and ActiveCampaign, you’ve come to the right place. I’m going to take a deep-dive look at what both of these email marketing software products have to offer, what they’re good at, and a whole lot more.

Introducing GetResponse

GetResponse was created in 1998 by Simon Grabowski when he only had $200 in his pocket. He made it to solve a business problem that he had, but he later realized that the email marketing software could be a great business itself.

Since then, it has become one of the most popular email marketing software pieces globally and has evolved into an all-in-one marketing platform that does so much more. In fact, GetResponse has an impressive number of over 350,000 customers in 183 countries.

Over the years, it has also become significantly easier to use than it used to be.

Here are GetResponse’s main features:

  • Newsletters
  •  Behavior-based email automation sequences/Workflows
  • Email Autoresponders (This is what GetResponse calls basic non-behavior-based automations)
  • Landing page builder
  • Forms and Pop-ups
  • List Management
  • CRM
  • Sales Funnels
  • Webinars

GetResponse is known for helping businesses of all sizes generate more leads and connect with their customers. It does this through its unique and effective set of features beyond helping its customers with email marketing.

Introducing ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has also been around for quite some time, as it was founded in 2003 by Jason Vandeboom. Since then, it has also become extremely popular in the email marketing industry as it has over 100,000 customers.

The software offers a combination of email, sales, and marketing automation tools to help its customers convert more leads.

ActiveCampaigns main features include:

  • Email marketing
  • SMS and Email Marketing automation
  • CRM and Sales Automation

ActiveCampaign is known for having high deliverability rates and powerful CRM features that combine well with their email marketing tools. The software is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses that want to have the best possible tools on the back-end to convert their leads into sales.

GetResponse Features and Benefits

To give you a better idea of which software is best for your business, I’m going to run you through both platforms separately. This way, you can see which set of features suit your business best.

If you want a more detailed deep-dive on this autoresponder platform then I recommend you read my full GetResponse review.

What GetResponse Has That ActiveCampaign Does Not Have

The main advantage that GetResponse has over ActiveCampaign is that it is more of an all-in-one platform. It gives you tools for landing and sales pages, webinars, and sales funnels, whereas ActiveCampaign doesn’t have these features.

Below, I’ve described these in a little more detail, so you know what features you’ll have when you sign up for GetResponse.

(Better) Landing Page and Sales Page Builder

GetResponse has a built-in landing page builder, which lets you build your sales and landing pages. It’s an easy to use drag and drop builder that lets you create unlimited pages with checkouts.

It comes with a wide range of templates that you can use to create different types of landing or sales pages. They’re colorful and surprisingly load quite fast, which isn’t always the case with managed page builder platforms.

Having this feature is great, as it means you won’t have to spend money on an external landing page builder. It helps you save some money, and it also makes your business a little more efficient and easier to manage as you don’t need integrations.

Although ActiveCampaign lets you build basic landing pages, it doesn’t allow you to create sales pages. Plus, GetResponse’s builder has been around for a lot longer, so it has more templates and elements that you can use.

GetResponse Funnel Builder

This feature was recently called the auto funnel feature, but now it is called the “Conversion funnel.” Either way, it’s a useful feature that can definitely make growing your business a lot easier.

You can select your campaign’s goal, and GetResponse will suggest the steps you need to take and give you templates for every part of the process. Or you can, of course, select your own if you prefer.

This feature helps you build your sales funnel and gives you a complete overview of it. I also like the GetResponse funnel builder because it shows you some excellent analytics like the ROI of your funnel as a whole or the value per lead, which can help you make better management decisions.

If you’re interested in funnel builders then I recommend you read my article on the best funnel builder software here.

GetResponse Webinars

The third feature that only GetResponse has is the webinar builder.

Surprisingly, GetResponse’s webinar builder lets you host both live webinars and pre-recorded webinars. I’ve come across quite a few platforms that don’t let you host pre-recorded webinars, so it’s pretty nice to see that GetResponse does allow this.

The GetResponse webinar feature also comes with some cool engagement tools like live chat and surveys.

These webinars can also be connected to your landing pages, sales pages, email automation workflows, and sales funnels easily. This makes running your marketing campaigns a lot easier, as you won’t need to integrate with a ton of different platforms and can easily manage everything from one dashboard.

ActiveCampaign, on the other hand, doesn’t have this feature, so if you do want to run webinars, you’ll need external software unless you use GetResponse.

GetResponse Pros

  • Powerful landing page and sales funnel builder let you convert leads effectively
  • Webinar builder gives you a great way to sell medium to high-ticket products and services
  • Great automation features to help you engage your audience and sell to them
  • Affordable pricing for all sized businesses
  • Easy to use for any skill level

GetResponse Cons

  • It has a little learning curve due to the large number of features it comes with
  • CRM is a little limited and doesn’t let you automate as much as ActiveCampaign’s

What GetResponse Is Particularly Good At

GetResponse is particularly good at giving its users an easy-to-use, all-in-one marketing system that is highly effective.

Whereas most autoresponders focus on helping their customers convert their leads into sales, GetResponse focuses on converting your visitors into sales, meaning they guide you through the entire process.

It’s becoming increasingly popular for email marketing platforms to offer landing pages, but GetResponse goes one step further and gives you webinars and sales funnels. All the features combined work extremely well to create a highly effective marketing sales machine, which no other email marketing software can create the same way.

GetResponse Ease of Use

GetResponse had a major update a few years ago and has since then been really easy to use. Even the automation workflow builder is drag and drop, just like everything else inside of the platform.

Before the update, GetResponse was quite hard to use and a little overwhelming, but that is no longer the case.

The only thing which I think could be slightly easier to use is the landing page builder for mobile. When you create the page and then switch the builder to mobile, it can be a little hard to optimize it. Then again, that might just be me.

Apart from that, though, GetResponse seems to be excellent in terms of usability. I also like the interactive tutorials for almost any feature to help beginners use the platform more effectively.

GetResponse Deliverability Rates

Deliverability is always a little tricky to review, as there are so many factors that affect it. However, according to their website, their overall deliverability rate stands at an impressive 99% success. However, 3rd party tests indicate GetResponse has a slightly lower deliverability rate of only 86%. Still, that’s pretty solid and not to spoil this article, but it’s also better than ActiveCampaign!

From my personal experience, I can tell you that I have never had any issues with GetResponse’s deliverability. Although it does always depend on your emails’ content, if you follow the usual deliverability best practices, you shouldn’t run into any issues.

GetResponse actually has a spam scoring system, which you can easily use on every email to avoid them going to spam. It will give you some suggestions as well to help you prevent your emails from going to spam.

Who Is GetResponse Good For

GetResponse offers a wide range of features that suit most modern businesses.

There are hardly any businesses out there that don’t need a great landing page builder with powerful automation features. It’s also highly likely that you will need a comprehensive sales funnel feature and a webinar builder to help you convert as many leads as possible.

Plus, as we also briefly mentioned earlier, GetResponse is affiliate-friendly. This, combined with the features and strong deliverability rates, make it a solid choice for affiliate marketers. If you are an affiliate, you’ll have everything you need to collect emails and promote affiliate offers effectively to your audience.

Overall, I think the GetResponse’s set of features can work incredibly well for:

  • Service-based businesses
  • Affiliate marketers
  • Info-product vendors
  • SaaS tools (assuming the back-end site is somewhere else)
  • E-commerce stores

GetResponse also has transactional emails, which can be especially beneficial for eCommerce businesses.

Plus, the pricing plans are also suited for businesses of all sizes, so it’s likely to fit yours too. If you need most of the tools that GetResponse offers, you’re unlikely to find a more cost-effective solution than it.

ActiveCampaign Features and Benefits

Now that we have taken a look at what GetResponse has let’s take a look at what ActiveCampaign has to offer.

What ActiveCampaign Has That GetResponse Does Not Have

The main advantage that ActiveCampaign has over GetResponse is its features on the back-end, such as the CRM, SMS, and a few additional email features. Below I’ve described them in a little more detail to help you get a better understanding.

A Better and More Automated CRM/Sales System

While GetResponse has a CRM system, it isn’t quite as advanced as ActiveCampaign’s. For example, if your lead activates specific triggers, ActiveCampaign can go as far as contacting your sales team, while GetResponse lets you manage your leads from an easy overview.

Both also come with lead scoring to help you determine the actions suited best for your business.

However, if your business does need a comprehensive CRM to help you manage your sales and automate tasks like contacting your sales team, it may be worth considering ActiveCampaign. That being said, you can also integrate some of the best CRM tools on the market with GetResponse.

A Slightly Better Email Automation System

This difference is minimal, but ActiveCampaign has a slightly better email marketing system. The reason for this is that it has a few more triggers than GetResponse. However, this difference is tiny and shouldn’t even affect most businesses.

Still, I thought I’d mention it just in case it is important to you.

SMS Marketing

ActiveCampaign also has SMS marketing features.

Have you ever received those SMS messages from Dominos or any other pizza place?

That’s exactly what this feature allows your business to do. You can also build it into the automation sequences with your emails, which is pretty cool.

Admittedly, I don’t think most businesses use SMS marketing, but I still thought it’s quite a cool feature. And it can be quite effective as well.

ActiveCampaign Pros

  • Brilliant email automations with many triggers to engage your audience
  • Powerful CRM that is comparable to a regular comprehensive CRM
  • It has a SMS marketing feature
  • You can get automation sequences on the lowest plan starting at just $15 per month ($9 if paid annually)

ActiveCampaign Cons

  • The landing page builder isn’t as good as GetResponse’s
  • No Webinar feature
  • No funnel feature

What ActiveCampaign Is Particularly Good At

ActiveCampaign is particularly good at giving its customers a sales system that lets them convert their leads into sales.

Using ActiveCampaign, you are equipped with some excellent features like the comprehensive CRM, powerful automation sequences, and SMS messaging to help you make more sales.

I think that these little tweaks and features can work wonders for the right type of businesses, mainly when used in combination. If you feel that your business could use the unique set of tools ActiveCampaign offers, it may be worth giving the platform a shot.

ActiveCampaign Ease of Use

Compared to GetResponse, I must say that ActiveCampaign is a little harder to use. The email creation process is fairly similar, but I find that GetResponse’s dashboard just looks a lot cleaner and is a lot easier to keep an overview of.

Plus, with ActiveCampaign, you need to integrate with a lot more software as it doesn’t have webinars or sales funnels. This can be quite confusing, especially if you have to connect the software pieces through API or Zapier.

However, ActiveCampaign also has a visual automation builder that is easy to use. It works the same way GetResponse’s builder does through drag and drop.

The CRM feature also has quite a learning curve, but this is due to the number of things it does.

Overall, ActiveCampaign is fairly easy to use, but compared to GetResponse, it loses out.

ActiveCampaign Deliverability Rates

ActiveCampaign used to be known for its good deliverability rates, at least in most Facebook communities. However, the recent study where GetResponse scored 86%, ActiveCampaign only scores 73%. That’s not a huge difference, but it is notable, to say the least.

Before this test, ActiveCampaign scored at least 90% in the previous ones, which shows why this result is a little strange. Still, the study is considered to be pretty reliable.

However, as we mentioned earlier in the GetResponse section, as long as you follow the best practices, you shouldn’t run into any issues. Plus, their support team is also happy to offer advice on getting your emails delivered.

Overall though, GetResponse surprisingly also wins the deliverability battle. The reason I chose GetResponse as the winner is because they published their overall deliverability rate, and in a 3rd party study, it also outperforms ActiveCampaign.

Who Is ActiveCampaign Good For

ActiveCampaign can work great for a wide range of businesses such as:

  • Ecommerce stores
  • Service-based businesses
  • Info-product vendors

It really depends on what the business needs.

I think ActiveCampaign is best suited for small and mid-sized businesses that could make great use of the CRM/Sales tools. For example, if a company needs to send out SMS reminders. Or if they have high-value leads and would like to automate tasks like contacting the sales team, then ActiveCampaign could be a great choice.

A more specific example of a business where tools like this could come in handy would be small and medium-sized marketing agencies.

However, if you own a business that doesn’t really need those features, I wouldn’t recommend ActiveCampaign.

Can You Use ActiveCampaign For Affiliate Marketing?

The short answer to that is no, not directly at least. But, there are ways around it if you have an affiliate marketing business.

ActiveCampaign says they do not like affiliate links being used in their emails, as affiliate links can often harm the deliverability.

However, they have also stated that their users can send affiliate links if they do not:

  • Send messages about make money online, getting rich, affiliate marketing, or work from from
  • Send emails that purely just focus on promoting affiliate links
  • Send emails that are only created to promote other businesses/products
  • Do not send emails related to getting rich, making money online, etc.

Even if you follow these guidelines, I would still be careful when using ActiveCampaign for affiliate marketing. You could get around this consistently by building a brand yourself that helps its users find the right product.

You could do this by:

  • Using landing pages as bridge pages between your emails and your affiliate offers
  • Creating eBooks or video courses that contain affiliate links, so your emails send users to those instead
  • Creating a blog post or YouTube video containing affiliate links, which can also be used as a bridge page

I personally think that GetResponse is better suited for affiliate marketing anyway. However, I wanted to give you a guideline for using ActiveCampaign if you still wanted to use it as an affiliate.

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign – Pricing

So far, I’ve looked at the key differences between GetResponse and ActiveCampaign are. Now let’s take a look at what costs they come at.

GetResponse Cost

Below, I’ve explained each GetResponse pricing plan and how much it costs at 1,000 subscribers. If you need more contacts, just head over to the official GetResponse pricing table here and take a look.

If you pay monthly, there are annual discounts available too; 30% for 12-months, and 40% for 24 months.

GetResponse Basic ($15 Per Month)

This plan includes:

  • Email marketing basic features (Newsletters, email creators)
  • Autoresponders (Again, this is GetResponse’s name for non-behavior automations)
  • Unlimited automation templates
  • Unlimited lead funnels
  • 1 Sales Funnel
  • Chats
  • 1,000 subscribers (need more subs, click here)

I think this plan is pretty solid for beginners. You won’t find many $15 plans that offer more value than this one, as it also has email marketing, landing pages, and funnels included.

GetResponse Plus ($49 per month)

GetResponse Plus has everything mentioned in basic and:

  • Automation builder with 5 sequences
  • Contact scoring and tagging
  • 5 Sales funnels
  • 3 Sub-users/partners
  • Webinars with up to 100 attendees
  • 5 webinar funnels
  • 1,000 subscribers (need more subs, click here)

GetResponse Professional ($99 Per Month)

  • Unlimited automation workflows and builder
  • Push notifications
  • Paid webinars
  • Up to 300 Webinar attendees
  • Unlimited sales funnels
  • Unlimited webinar funnels
  • 5 sub-users/partners
  • On-demand/pre-recorded webinars
  • 1,000 subscribers (need more subs, click here)

I think this is the plan that will suit most businesses. It has everything you need to create a powerful marketing system that converts visitors into sales. There aren’t many limits on it either, which is pretty nice too.

GetResponse Max (Custom)

Lastly, there is the GetResponse Max plan, which has everything in professional plus:

  • Transactional emails (available as an add-on)
  • Dedicated support
  • Dedicated IP address
  • Single sign-on (SSO)
  • Webinars (max 500 attendees)
  • Email marketing campaign consulting
  • Microsoft Dynamics integration
  • Deliverability consulting
  • 1,000 subscribers (need more subs, click here)

This plan is, of course, the custom/enterprise plan, so if you’d like more info on that, you can get in contact with GetResponse here.

ActiveCampaign Cost

The prices below are for 500 subscribers, which is what ActiveCampaign’s plans start at. There are also discounts of around 20% if you choose to pay annually.

I find that ActiveCampaign’s pricing plans are quite expensive compared to GetResponse unless you truly need all the features they offer.

ActiveCampaign Lite ($15 per month)

  • Email marketing automation
  • Email marketing tools (Newsletters, Creator, etc.)
  • Forms
  • Segmentation
  • The site and Event tracking
  • Reporting
  • Up to 3 Users
  • Mobile CRM and Marketing Access
  • APIs, Webhooks, and Integrations

What I like about this plan is that it has behavior-based automation workflows. Overall, it’s a solid plan, although it doesn’t quite compare to the tools that GetReponse offers.

ActiveCampaign Plus ($70 Per Month)

ActiveCampain’s next plan up is lite, and it comes with everything in Lite+ plus:

  • Landing pages
  • Custom Facebook Audiences
  • Scoring
  • Automations Map
  • Conditional Content
  • Advanced Reporting
  • Advanced CRM
  • Salesforce integrations
  • SMS follow-up

ActiveCampaign Professional ($159 Per Month)

Everything in plus and:

  • Website personalization
  • Predictive sending and content
  • Marketing attribution
  • Conversion reporting
  • Site Message
  • Win probability
  • Deal path reporting
  • Split automations
  • Personalized product experience
  • In-app messaging
  • 50 Users
  • 1:1 Onboarding
  • Strategy consulting
  • 3x 1:1 Training per month

ActiveCampaign Enterprise ($279 Per Month)

  • Custom Mailserver domain
  • Custom Domain
  • Free design services
  • Email design testing
  • Social Data enrichment
  • Custom reporting
  • Contact enrichment
  • Unlimited users
  • Dedicated account rep
  • Phone support
  • Customize your application URL
  • Custom branding within the application
  • HIPAA support
  • Single sign-on

Final Thoughts – GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign – Which Is Best?

As you have seen throughout this article, both GetResponse and ActiveCampaign have some excellent features.

ActiveCampaign has a better CRM and slightly more triggers for automation sequences. However, overall I am going to call GetResponse the winner.

This is because it simply offers many more significant features and even does so at a better price. It has a better landing page builder, a sales funnel feature, and a great webinar platform, which combined significantly outweigh the few benefits of ActiveCamapaign for the majority of businesses.

With ActiveCampaign, you’ll need to spend additional money on all of these tools that GetResponse has built-in.

Plus, GetResponse has also been around longer, so it has a better track record and has built up more trust.

If you would like to try GetResponse, you can click the button below to get access to a 30-day free trial (NO Credit Card Required).

GetResponse Review – Is This Autoresponder Worth It?

by
my GetResponse review image with logo and envelopes

GetResponse is one of the most popular pieces of email marketing software out there.

It goes without saying, there’s quite a bit of hype about it.

I personally also use to use GetResponse several years ago. I didn’t have a problem with it, but I moved away as I needed a more cost-effective solution at the time.

Interestingly, GetResponse have not only added more features to their service, they’ve also re-adjusted their pricing, and it is now far more competitive that it was when I use to use it.

This got me curious…

How can they ADD more tools, and reduce the entry price?

If you have some experience working online yourself as an affiliate, you’ll know that it can be quite hard to find the right autoresponder.

While some have powerful features but aren’t affiliate marketing-friendly, others just don’t perform well.

It can be quite a task to find an autoresponder that can provide everything you need, be easy to use, AND have great deliverability rates.

As you’ll see later in this GetResponse review though, it is by no means a platform only for affiliates. In fact, most GetResponse users are regular business owners. They just also happen to be affiliate-marketing friendly.

GetResponse Review Summary: GetResponse has evolved over the years and has now become much more than an autoresponder. It also offers a CRM, landing pages, and other marketing automation features like their conversion funnel feature. All of these features combine extremely well to help you build high-converting funnels and improve your online presence. Overall, GetResponse is a solid marketing tool.
The GetResponse logo

GetResponse: Pros and Cons

GetResponse Pros:

  • Powerful marketing automation
  • Exclusive features like the conversion funnel can’t be found anywhere else
  • Great support available in several languages
  • Incredibly easy to use – especially the visual automation builder
  • Long list of automation triggers
  • Affiliate-friendly
  • Free resources to help you get started
  • Comprehensive reporting
  • 30 Day Trial (No credit card required)
  • Good deliverability in most tests

GetResponse Cons:

  • Limit of 300 attendees on Webinars (1000 on custom/enterprise pricing)
  • Phone support only available on “Max” plan

What’s Unique About GetResponse?

GetResponse promises to be an all-in-one marketing solution for all kinds of businesses, large and small.

Compared to another market leader Mailchimp, it claims to have more advanced marketing automation features, as well as fairer pricing and more flexibility.

Interestingly, GetResponse has avoided being pigeonholed as “just another autoresponder”, by providing additional features like their conversion funnels and hosted webinars, which I will go into more detail on later in this article.

It can help you to do a lot more than just build an email list.

From my own experience using GetResponse, I also found it very easy to use, which is a big plus in my book.

Who Is GetResponse Best For?

GetResponse serves businesses in a huge number of categories. However, it seems that a lot of people from the following industries are drawn to GetResponse:

  • Agencies
  • Affiliate marketers
  • Ecommerce businesses
  • Content creators
  • Info-product sellers
  • Service-based businesses

The reason it works so well for all of these businesses is that it allows them to stay connected with their customers. All industries benefit from staying connected with people who have previously purchased from them, as it helps them generate repeat sales.

GetResponse helps its users do this with its advanced automation and CRM features.

Plus, nowadays, GetResponse also helps its customers much more with front-end tasks like collecting emails, for example, through their landing page feature.

To add the icing on the cake, it’s also very affordable and has great deliverability rates.

Who Is GetResponse Not For?

GetResponse can be used for a huge variety of online businesses. It would be quite hard to pick a type of business where GetResponse wouldn’t be a good fit, in my opinion.

What I will say is that, if you’re just looking to send broadcast emails, then there are probably more cost-effective solutions out there, like Aweber.

While you can send broadcast emails with GetResponse, I feel like paying for all the other features it has (even on the lowest plan) is not your best option, if you’re purely looking for the newsletter function only.

How Does GetResponse Compare To The Competition?

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign
GetResponse vs Aweber
GetResponse vs ConvertKit
GetResponse vs Send In Blue
SendLane vs GetResponse

Ease of Use

GetResponse didn’t used to be as user-friendly as it is now.

They had a huge update to their user interface a few years ago, and since then the user dashboard has become much more easy to navigate.

The intuitive functioning that GetResponse provides means that you will be able to save time on tasks, and actually enjoy the process of working with the dashboard.

This is one thing I particularly like about GetResponse.

If you have a VA working for you and you want them to manage the email marketing side of your business, you should be able to train them pretty quickly on the tasks you need them to do.

“As an online entrepreneur, anything that will save use time always gets extra plus points!”

Creating Webforms & Landing Pages:

Creating web forms and landing pages with GetResponse is very easy and there isn’t really a learning curve at all.

It’s actually pretty self-explanatory and my cat could probably do it. Well, that’s just silly, but you get what I mean. It’s dead easy.

http://gph.is/2c530WC

The forms and landing pages can easily be edited with the drag and drop editor, meaning you can simply select the elements and change them to how you want them to look.

If there is one thing that could be a little easier it’s editing forms and landing pages in the mobile view.

I’m not sure if it’s just me, but when I edit the pages for mobiles, I find it a little harder to edit.

Adding Contacts

Adding contacts on GetResponse is also as easy as it gets.

You can add them manually by adding in the fields like name, email, etc. or you can simply upload a .csv file to bulk upload your contacts.

And of course, you can also collect emails using forms or landing pages which then automatically get added to the list you select.

Creating Automated Campaigns

Creating automation workflows with GetResponse is also easy, probably the easiest from all autoresponders I have used so far.

You select the trigger and drag the next steps into the campaign. There are even some templates available, so if those suit the goals of your campaign, you can use those too.

I find it quite fun and easy to build these from scratch as this way I have more control over my campaigns.

List Segmentation

List segmentation is something that I also love about GetResponse.

Not only are the segmentation features extremely advanced, but they are also very easy to use.

You shouldn’t run into any trouble with list segmentation, as the features are quite easy to understand.

GetResponse Features & Benefits

GetResponse was originally just an autoresponder when it first launched in the very early 2000s.

Today, it’s more of an all-in-one marketing suite for businesses of all sizes.

They cover such a huge list of features that help marketers and entrepreneurs with various marketing tasks that are needed in most businesses.

Autoresponders

The first and probably one of the most basic features of GetResponse is the autoresponder.

It’s a basic autoresponder that lets you send emails on days of your choice after the lead has joined your email list.

Make sure that you are not confusing this feature with automation workflows though.

The autoresponder is the function that lets you send certain emails on days that you choose after the lead has joined your list. Automation workflows, on the other hand, let you segment your list based on the actions of your subscribers, but we’ll talk more about that in a moment.

GetResponse has both of these features anyway.

All you need to do is select an email template, write up the email, and choose the day on which you want the email sent. The process is quick and easy.

Marketing Automation

The second feature inside of GetResponse is a big one, marketing automation, and includes the following important features.

Automation Workflows

Let’s start with the email automation sequences or workflows.

GetResponse comes with a visual automation builder and a huge selection of triggers as we have discussed earlier.

You can build custom automation workflows that put your leads through sequences with custom emails.

There aren’t any limits on what types of sequences you can build and I have not found any type of trigger that is missing.

To give you an idea of some of the triggers, here are just some that you will find in GetResponse:

  • If visited page you configure using pixel
  • Purchased
  • If abandoned cart
  • If contact was added to pipeline
  • If link clicked, message opened, etc

There are many more as well, I just wanted to give you an idea of some of the triggers that you will find inside of GetResponse.

GetResponse automation

CRM Automation

The automation workflows also combine well with the CRM, as using them together you can see exactly how close you are to converting your leads.

Using this tool inside of GetResponse you can also have a clear overview of your contacts and sales in your pipeline.

Of course, not everyone will need a tool like this, but it’s still nice to have the option available to you in case you ever need it.

It’s also nice that you won’t need an external piece of software, as you can manage your sales processes straight from your GetResponse dashboard.

You can also add notes to each lead which is pretty cool, as it can remind you of any special requirements for each lead.

And, you can also sort the importance or activate triggers based on the deal value which could be useful, as it allows you to only focus on the deals that matter the most.

Recap of GetResponse Marketing Automation

Overall, GetResponse has some pretty good marketing automation features.

Here’s a quick recap of what GetResponse marketing automation has to offer:

  • Advanced, yet easy to use automation workflows
  • Advanced Triggers
  • CRM with easy to use sales pipelines and automated tasks

GetResponse Email Templates

As you would probably expect from an autoresponder with the caliber of GetResponse, you also get some sweet email templates too.

GetResponse comes with a huge selection of templates, and by huge I mean… over 500 email templates. That’s the most I’ve ever come across in an autoresponder service.

The templates also have a nice variety and range, from templates tailored towards cooking, to B2B templates.

“The template selection does not disappoint, to say the least.”

Having said this, I often avoid using colorful templates with complex structures. These can sometimes have heavy picture HTML code which can cause the email to get syphoned into the promotions folder.

Of course, that is not always the case, but it is worth noting if you are going to use templates.

This is the case for all autoresponders by the way, not just GetResponse.

Analytics

GetResponse has comprehensive analytics, not just for the broadcasts, but also for pretty much any feature you can think of.

They also have this cool feature which allows you to track the ROI of an email.

I like this feature because it just saves so much time when counting the numbers of your email marketing campaigns.

Another thing that I like about the analytics of GetResponse is that the data it displays is very visual which makes it much easier to gain a clear overview of how your emails are performing.

Again, overall GetResponse performs quite strongly in this aspect as it gives you a lot of data in a clear overview.

Split-Testing

When using GetResponse, you can split-test almost any component of your campaign. Thi is a very important feature if you want to improve your open and conversion rates.

For example, this includes your landing page, your subject lines, and the content of your emails. You can configure an automatic winner based on percentages to help you save time.

For example, you can split-test an email with 3 variants and configure an automatic winner based on the number of your contacts who have opened the email. You can also set up custom percentages to pick winners.

This is extremely useful to help you pick a clear winner. Doing so will help you tweak to make you email campaign convert at its best.

Landing Page Creator

The landing page creator inside of GetResponse is quite slick too.

It comes with over 150 landing page templates that can easily be edited through the drag and drop builder.

The builder itself also has a lot of elements allowing users to build many types of pages.

Some examples of elements include:

  • Videos/Images
  • Carts
  • Paypal buy buttons
  • Share buttons
  • Custom HTML

I was also really surprised to see that the GetResponse page builder also allows you to use important conversion tools such as countdown timers and even one-click-upsell pages!

Usually, a person would need to also invest in a third party page builder like ClickFunnels or SamCart to get these types of features.

Having said that, I haven’t tested the conversion capabilities of a GetResponse landing page compared to one of these third party services, but it’d be a great test to find out how it performs!

With engaging templates, an easy to use drag & drop builder, and a great selection of templates, I think it’s fair to say that GetResponse has a solid page builder.

You can see more info about the GetResponse landing page creator here.

Webinar Hosting

GetResponse also lets you host both free and paid webinars.

As I did mention in the cons section at the start of this review, there is a limit of 300 webinar viewers, unless you are on the max plan, which is the plan with custom pricing.

On the max plan, this limit is between 500 and 1000 viewers.

Either way, it’s likely that even 300 viewers will be enough for most small businesses.

What I like about GetResponse webinars is that they also have built-in polls and tests which make it easy for your webinars to get a little more engagement.

You can also promote your products or services and add files to the webinars for your attendees to interact with. This would be useful if you are selling your higher-ticket products on the back end of the webinar.

Another thing that’s cool about the GetResponse webinars is that you can set it to stream on YouTube or Facebook as well which will help you expand your reach.

There is also a range of other cool webinar features including:

  • Screen sharing
  • Interactive white-boards
  • Storage up to 20 hours
  • Multiple presenters
  • Add Facebook pixels for retargeting
  • Automated nurturing campaigns

The GetResponse webinar feature offers everything a normal webinar software would do too.

Having this available on the same dashboard as your email marketing and CRM tools is pretty nice, and gives you an easy way to integrate your webinars with your autoresponder.

GetResponse hosted webinars

Conversion Funnel

Finally, we’re onto probably my favorite feature inside of GetResponse, the conversion funnel feature.

This feature was also formerly known as the “auto funnel” feature. This GetResponse feature is a template to help you build your entire marketing funnel.

Basically, it takes all of the other GetResponse features, and structures them in a way that makes it easy for you to get a clear overview of what you need to.

Not only that, but you can also track the ROI of your funnel which is also very important. Afterall, if you don’t have clarity on what’s working for you in your business then it can be hard to scale.

This has been one of my favorite new features, as it can help you to have both a clear overview of how you need to have things structured and a deeper insight into what’s working the best for you.

Funnel builders can be expensive, so having this feature built into your autoresponder is a huge bonus, in my opinion.

If you want to compare the GetResponse conversion funnel with other builders in the marketplace then you can take a look at my comparison article of the best sales funnel builders here.

GetResponse Deliverability

When I used GetResponse, I found their deliverability to be very good. In fact, it has one of the better deliverability rates among all the autoresponders I have tried so far.

Of course, deliverability is important for all types of businesses, and should be one of the main concerns when choosing an autoresponder.

When it comes to affiliate-friendly autoresponders though, sometimes their deliverability rates can suffer just because some of your emails contain affiliate links. However, in my experience, this didn’t seem to be the case with GetResponse.

According to SenderScore.org, GetResponse has a 99% deliverability rate across all tests. You can find more information on that here.

However, I did also find another 3rd party test by emailtoolstester.com (1) where GetResponse only performed around the average with a 75.6% rate, which is about an industry average.

Given my personal experiences with GetResponse, and this other test by emailtooltester.com, I’m not sure how accurate the SenderScore.org test is, but I thought I would mention it just to give you a full picture.

Plus, if you follow the best practices for getting your emails delivered you shouldn’t run into any issues.

Web Forms

Just like most pieces of email marketing software, you can also create web forms directly in your GetResponse dashboard.

If you use WordPress, then you’ll be happy to know that these forms are also very easy to integrate with this content management system. However, you can also just as easily grab the HTML code of the forms to embed them into any page you wish.

The forms are nice and easy to create using the drag and drop editor as we did mention earlier. Other than that, there isn’t too much to say about them, as they are quite standard for autoresponders.

Segmentation

GetResponse lets you segment your list in numerous ways to help you send more targeted emails.

This includes:

  • Custom fields (i.e basically anything that you configure)
  • Behavior (in automation sequences)
  • Demographics
  • Product preferences
  • Engagement
  • Geography
  • Website Activity
  • Purchase frequency

By segmenting based on these factors, you can send much more targeted emails to your customers.

For example, if it’s thanksgiving, you can send everyone from the US, who visited your thank you page but didn’t purchase, an email with a discount offer.

That’s just an example, but there are some really creative ways you can use the segmentation feature that GetResponse has to offer.

If you were to think about how you could use this feature in your own business, I’m sure you, like me, can easily see how you could leverage this feature to send more targeted offers to your list and increase your revenue.

Tags & Custom Fields

Tags also help you segment your list. You can apply them at the start of a campaign, or further down the line. They’re a great way to split your list based on whether the customer has a certain tag.

For example, you can apply a tag named “purchased X product” to every customer who has purchased from you.

Then, later on, you can send everyone who doesn’t have that tag an offer with a bonus without annoying the people who have already purchased this particular product from you.

This is a basic example of this feature, and GetResponse lets you tag on many more events including abandoned carts.

Of course, it goes without saying that using tags in this way is another great way to increase your revenue by getting some of your customers to return to their shopping cart and complete a purchase.

Custom fields are what you use when you need your customer to submit custom requirements on their orders. For example, if you are selling T-shirts using GetResponse, you might need your customer to submit their T-shirt size which they can do with this feature.

Integrations

GetResponse also has a pretty big list of integrations.

This list includes over 140 external software apps including the most popular E-commerce platforms, landing page builders, membership area platforms, and so forth.

If an app that you want to integrate with is not on the list then GetResponse also integrates with Zapier. Once you’ve connected to Zapier, you can pretty much connect to anything you want to.

For advertising, you can also hook up your GetResponse account with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Besides YouTube, it also directly integrates with Vimeo and Wistia, too. This can be useful if you want to assign tags based on video watch time, and see clearly exactly how much of a particular video your leads have watched.

For example, you can set these tags on a sales video and find out exactly how much of the video gets watched. If you discover that a lot of people seem to switch off at a certain point, then you know you need to make a change to that video to improve the watch time, and ultimately, the conversion of that particular video.

GDPR

If your business operates out of the EU, or if you serve EU customers, then you’ll be pleased to hear that GetResponse is also committed to having a GDPR-compliant platform. They do this by providing you with special fields that help their users stay compliant.

If you want to know more about GetResponse and GDPR, you can check this resource on their site here.

Support

GetResponse support is quick and easy from my experience. Even though they don’t offer phone support unless you are on the max plan, they do have a very responsive team on the other end of live chat 24/7, 365 days of the year.

Personally, whenever I needed to reach out to their support team, I never needed to wait more than a minute or two for someone to jump on and help me out.

While having the option of phone support is nice, it’s not a big deal not to have it in my opinion if they have 24/7 live chat support in place.

Basically, whatever plan you’re on, you do always have access to help, and you can get it quickly if you need it.

What Other Users Say About GetResponse

It’s all very well reading my opinion here in this GetResponse review, but I’m sure you, like me, also want to hear about what other people have to say as well.

From what I have seen, they are mostly positive overall, with an average Capterra (a review site) rating of 4.1/5. Some of the 1-star reviews seem quite questionable in my opinion, as many of the users state themselves that their actions went against the T&C’s.

Other than that, there are mostly just 5-star reviews of users explaining what’s great about the software.

Besides reading customer reviews, you also get the additional safety net of the GetResponse 30 day free trial without needing to enter your credit card details if you do decide to try them out for yourself.

What I Like About GetResponse

What I like about GetResponse is that it offers an all-in-one marketing platform for businesses of all sizes.

It’s not the cheapest autoresponder you can find, but it’s also by no means the most expensive. It’s actually very affordable, especially considering all the features they offer.

GetResponse also has a solid deliverability rate, so you know that the majority of your emails will actually end up where they’re supposed to.

I also really like the fact that GetResponse is affiliate-friendly. There are not many autoresponders that are high caliber, that provide such great features, are affordable, and also allow you to place affiliate links directly in your emails.

What I Don’t Like About GetResponse

There isn’t a lot to complain about GetResponse, in my opinion. Overall, it does what it does extremely well.

The two cons that I mentioned at the beginning of the article (300 webinar attendees & no phone support on the lower plans) are not things that matter to me.

Other than that, the only thing that I would say is the editing of landing pages in mobile view. I feel like it could just be a little easier to use, but then again, maybe that’s just me.

GetResponse Pricing

The GetResponse pricing mainly varies based on the number of contacts that you have.

It’s a sliding scale, so for the full pricing details based on your number of subs, you can check out their website here.

Below, are the plans for up to 1,000 subscribers, if you pay monthly.

On the [official website], you will also find annual discounts for up to 30% if you don’t mind paying up front.

Personally, I’d use them for a few months first on the monthly plan, then, if you’re happy to stay with them, opt to pay for the year up front and get the additional discount.

Basic, $15 per month

Included in the basic plan are the following features:

The GetResponse pricing table

GetResponse Alternatives

To give you a better choice, I also want to cover a few GetResponse alternatives that might be better for you.

Aweber

First of all, you might also choose Aweber which is another popular autoresponder, but compared to GetResponse, it’s quite basic.

It has basic automation workflows, basic landing pages, forms, and segmentation.

Aweber is also affiliate marketing-friendly and they even have a free plan.

If you’re on a budget or are just looking for basic email automation features, it may be an option to consider.

I’ve used Aweber before and have been very happy with them. They’re cheaper than GetResponse and they also have excellent support.

You can check out Aweber’s pricing here.

SendLane

SendLane is another affiliate-friendly autoresponder.

It’s quite similar to GetResponse as it offers features like ROI and conversion tracking.

The pricing plans start at $99 per month (5K contacts), so it’s a bit more expensive than Get Response. Having said that, they do have an attractively priced starter plan for new customers.

That being said, the cost of the plans are pretty reasonable considering the value they offer.

If you want to know more about this platform then you can read my in-depth review of SendLane here.

Alternatively, you can check out SendLane’s page here.

MailerLite

Lastly, we have MailerLite which is NOT affiliate marketing-friendly, so make sure to keep that in mind if affiliate is a core part of your business.

MailerLite probably has the best free plan on the market, as even the free plan comes with automation sequences. That’s pretty rare.

It doesn’t have quite as advanced features as GetResponse or SendLane, but it does have the basics.

I think MailerLite could be a good option if you perhaps have an eCom business, promoting affiliate offers is not a core part of what you do, and if you don’t need the advanced features that GetResponse and SendLane offer.

You can check out MailerLite’s pricing here.

If you still want to check out more email marketing solutions then I recommend you read my article on the best email autoresponder services next.

Final Thoughts

Finding an autoresponder that is powerful, low-cost, and has a good deliverability rate can be quite hard. Depending on the complexity of your business, there can be a ton of things to consider.

This is especially the case if you’re in the affiliate marketing business as you also need to make sure that the platform you choose will not shut you down for including affiliate offers in some of your emails.

The problem is that if you don’t have an autoresponder that fits the bill, your business will probably not reach its full potential as email marketing is so important.

GetResponse doesn’t only fit the bill for most businesses, it also does what it does extremely well. It has arguably the most powerful automation features on the market, strong deliverability, and also comes at an affordable price.

I must admit I’m a big fan of it and so are 350,000 other customers. If you would like to check it out for yourself, you can get a 30-day free trial here.

Entrepreneur Nut