Aweber vs GetResponse Review

Hi folks, in this post I’ll compare the two leading email marketing services to give you a short but comprehensive Aweber vs GetReponse review covering the main core features that you need from email marketing tool. I’m guessing that by the time you reach this post you might be already exhausted from other reviews that give a very detailed comparison of every feature and every service plan level, leaving you more confused than you started and clueless about which one to choose…

In the following post, I intend to do the opposite than other Aweber vs GetResponse reviews you might already read – I will cover only the main important core features that you need from an email marketing solution, which will help you decide which one suit your needs better.

If you like just the bottom line – which one to choose, I’ve good news and bad news 🙂 …

The bad news is that this time there is no short answer, there is no knockout of one tool over the other. While one tool is slightly better in one feature the other one is better in the other feature. And you need to decide which feature is more important to you.

The good news is that if you don’t have special demands and needs only the basic features, each tool will give you what you need, so you might want to choose according to price (next section).

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Price comparison

• Free trial

  Both offer free 30 days trial. While in GetResponse there is no need for credit card, Aweber will ask for your credit card also for the 30 days free trial.

• Plans

  As you can see from the table below there is a slight advantage to GetResponse being a bit cheaper.

• Discount

  As you can see in the table below also for the discount there is a slight advantage to GetResponse:

Price verdict

If the price is your only factor for deciding, you might want to choose GetResponse since it is slightly cheaper and also offer greater discounts for subscribing to longer periods.

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Email Deliverability

I know this is not an interesting subject to discuss and most of us just take it for granted. But with the stunning fact* that on average, globally, 20%! of the emails (which is 1 in every 5 emails!) are not getting to the inbox you want to make sure that your email marketing service provider is doing the best from his side. Luckily for you, if you are comparing Aweber vs GetResponse you can rest assured that both have a high score of 99 (out of 100).

*According to Return Path Sender Score 2017 deliverability report

A Disclaimer

with Email Deliverability, YOU DO NOT want to count on comments on blogs. You don’t need to search too hard in order to find comments saying they had deliverability problems with both services. What is more likely is that their emails were filtered by the email service providers (and not Aweber or GetResponse) due to their content which might look fine to the unskilled writer, but contradict some strict rules of the email providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.)

In fact, both Aweber and GetResponse have a series of posts guiding you how to write and format your email in order not to be filtered by spam detectors. You might want to check it out.

Email deliverability verdict

It’s a tie

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Support

Both offer live customer support and online chat support with slight differences on the service hours.

• Live customer support

Aweber: 4 AM-8 PM ET Mon-Fri and 9 AM-5 PM ET Sat-Sun.

Get response: 9 AM – 5 PM ET Mon – Fri

• Online Chat

Aweber: during service hours

GetResponse: 24/7

Support verdict

If you prefer live support go with Aweber since they have longer live support hours and also live support on the weekend (which GetResponse don’t provide). If you prefer (or get by) with chat support, go with GetResponse, since they have 24/7 chat support while Aweber has it only on service hours.

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Email design tools

Obviously, both platforms offer ready-made email templates and also a drag-and-drop email editor to build your own custom email. There is a slight advantage to Aweber who offer 700+ responsive templates while GetResponse offers 500+ responsive templates

Both also offer free stock images to use in your email. With this service, there is a clear advantage to Aweber who offer 6000+ images while GetResponse offers 1000+ images.

Another important utility is ‘RSS to email’, which both provides. I chose to include the ‘RSS to email’ feature as part of the core features in order to emphasize this feature importance. Not all email marketing providers provide this feature, and I’ve noticed that on other Aweber vs GetResponse reviews it’s a bit overlooked…But once you start using this feature, you won’t be able to live without it.

A great feature that GetResponse has and Aweber doesn’t is the ‘Mobile email preview’ which is available inside the email creator in real-time.

Email design tools verdict

Although Aweber has a clear advantage over GetResponse with the number of email templates and free stock photos. I’ll go with GetResponse in this category due to the ‘mobile email preview’ feature.

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List management

While doing the research for this post I’ve noticed that on other Aweber vs GetResponse reviews it was mentioned that Aweber does not support tagging. As for writing this post (Sep 2017), this is not true anymore. Aweber DO SUPPORT tagging. Both platforms support segmentation and tagging.

Another correction that needs to be made (with regard to what is written in other reviews on the internet) is that Aweber is no longer demanding your list members to opt-in again while importing your list.

List management verdict

with regard to the two main features of list management which are the segmentation and importing of an existing list, it’s a tie.

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Automation

• Autoresponder

  Autoresponder is the most basic form of automation. It allows you to automate the sending of a sequence of emails due to a certain event (like when someone registers to your newsletter) or due to a specific date or time intervals. Both Aweber and GetResponse offer autoresponders which are capable to provide these capabilities. While creating an autoresponder sequence in Aweber is slightly more simple and straightforward, GetResponse autoresponder is more robust with more options for triggering and scheduling the emails.

• Customer journey

  

  sometimes called ‘multi-step campaign’. This can be addressed as “autoresponder on steroids”. It will allow you to build a more sophisticated sequence of emails using filters to choose only the relevant subscribers from your list, tagging to mark subscribers that have passed the certain stage in the customer journey etc. Both Aweber and GetResponse are providing this capability but with a major difference.As for writing this post (Sep 2017) Aweber customer journey (called ‘campaign’ on Aweber) is very basic and rely on the autoresponder mechanism. While GetResponse customer journey (called ‘marketing automation’ on GetResponse) is far more robust allowing you to build very sophisticated journeys using more complicated rules and logic. But, only the basic logic is provided on the basic plan. If you like to take advantage of the complete marketing automation of GetResponse (like Scoring, Abandoned cart, Web event tracking, Automation segmentation) you need to upgrade to the higher plan which is about $4 more expensive than the basic plan and will put you on the same price level like Aweber corresponding plan.

Automation verdict

Due to the more robust automation capabilities of GetResponse, I’ll go with GetResponse on this point.

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Other tools/utilities

• Landing pages
  

  landing page (also called squeeze page) is a one-page signup form usually with some graphics and a little bit of text and solely designed to capture the reader contact details in exchange for a lucrative offer. While GetResponse offers the ability to design landing pages on their platform and also provide 150 templates of ready-made landing pages. Aweber does not provide such a utility. Yet, it is possible to build and share landing pages on Aweber using 3rd party tools.

• Webinars

  GetResponse let you do webinars directly from their platform. Aweber does not provide such an option.

• A/B testing

  More than once you won’t be sure about a certain title, color, graphics etc. that is where you use A/B testing – the provider will send the two options (or more) to a sample of your readers (same amount for each option) and the option that will perform better on the sample will be sent to all the other subscribers on your list. Both Aweber and GetResponse offer A/B testing with minor differences.

• Mobile app

  Both Aweber and GetResponse offer a mobile app to manage your list. Unlike is written on other Aweber vs GetResponse reviews, Aweber DO provides a mobile app and in fact, it is not one app but a suite of apps which is more comprehensive than GetResponse app. Both provide an app to manage your list but Aweber provides two more apps- ‘Atom’ that will allow you to register new subscribers on the spot and ‘Curata’ which will let you curate content and build an email newsletter with it directly from your mobile device!

• Email scheduling

  Obviously, both let you time the sending of emails but GetResponse has their hand on top with this feature due to their ‘Time Traveling’ feature which allows you to time the sending according to the recipient time zone.

Other Tools verdict

It is a close match. But for my needs, landing pages are a must. Hence, I’ll go with GetResponse on this category.

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Summary

• • Why choose AweberIf you prefer live support, more stock images and email templates, prefer doing most of your blogging from your mobile device, don’t need to design sophisticated campaigns and willing to work a bit harder for setting up a landing page – go with Aweber.
    
    

 

• Why choose GetResponseif you are on a budget and want to save a couple of dollars each month, want the ease of setting landing page directly from the platform, need more robust campaign capabilities and email scheduling, willing to settle for less stock images and email templates and want the option of conducting webinars directly from the platform – go with GetResponse.
  

 

• Other providers disclaimer

  Although this is an Aweber vs GetResponse review, I assume that most of you are probably also checking cheaper service providers especially on the starter plan (like MailChimp and Mailerlite). Indeed, those are fine providers as well and it is out of scope for this post to review them. Yet, one mild caution – make sure that you are checking thoroughly on their ‘Terms Of Service’ page if your content is allowed on their platform. For example, both Mailchimp and Mailerlite prohibit any content related to affiliate marketing, network marketing, and work from home. You don’t want to wake up one morning to find out that your account was shut down due to a violation of their terms of service.

I’ll do my best to keep this post up-to-date and will update it periodically. Yet, things change fast in this industry and if you found that something is out-of-date, please share in the comments below and I’ll correct it ASAP.

If you are already using one of these platforms and want to point the light on a feature that really made the difference for you, please share it in the comment below.

To your success!

Br,

Nahum