GetResponse Review (2024) — All the Pros and Cons

This content has been independently produced in adherence to a strict honesty policy, but note that it contains affiliate links. When you buy via these, we may receive a commission.

Written by Chris Singleton | Researched and reviewed by Matt Walsh

The quick verdict

GetResponse is one of the most fully-featured email apps we’ve tested — in addition to letting you create email campaigns, it facilitates ecommerce, sales funnels, live chat, push notifications, webinars and web design. But its key strength lies in its email marketing features, which are superb — especially where automation and autoresponders are concerned.

In terms of the downsides of GetResponse, its website builder is very basic and not terribly well suited to ecommerce applications; its webinar recording storage limit is ungenerous; and its landing page creator could benefit from an easier-to-use interface.

Key pros and cons

ProsCons
✔️ Cheaper than many key competitors❌ Landing page editor could be better
✔️ Fantastic email automation tools❌ No phone support
✔️ Very flexible data segmentation options❌ Split testing features are limited
✔️ Powerful webinar hosting features included❌ Website building features are pretty basic
✔️ Well-specced landing page creator❌ Webinar recording storage limits are not generous

GetResponse video review

Key alternatives

AWeber or Mailchimp

Our overall rating

4.5 out of 5 | ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

How to get started with GetResponse

In this in-depth GetResponse review, I take a look at a well-known email marketing solution and drill down into all its key pros and cons. Is it right for your business — or should you use an alternative?

Let’s kick things off with a key question…

What is GetResponse?

GetResponse is an email marketing app that allows you to:

  • create a mailing list and capture data onto it
  • send e-newsletters to the subscribers on your list
  • automate your email marketing using ‘autoresponders’
  • view and analyse statistics related to your email campaigns — open rate, click through, forwards etc.

Founded in Poland in 1998, the company’s initial focus was firmly on making it easy to send e-newsletters. In recent years however, GetResponse has shifted its emphasis considerably — the product now aims to be more of an ‘all-in-one’ ecommerce and online marketing solution, rather than a ‘traditional’ email marketing tool.

Accordingly, in addition to email marketing features, GetResponse now provides a website builder, chat features, ecommerce features, webinar hosting, landing pages and automated sales funnels.

Conversion funnel in GetResponse
Over the years,GetResponse has introduced features, including conversion funnels and webinar hosting, that aim to make it more of an ‘all in one’ marketing platform.

But how much does all this cost?

GetResponse pricing

There are six GetResponse pricing plans available.

In order of expense, these are:

  • Getresponse Free — this free plan lets you use a cut-down version of Getresponse indefinitely, so long as your list remains under 500 records in size.
  • Email Marketing — this starts at $19 per month and lets you send an unlimited number of emails to up to 1,000 subscribers.
  • Marketing Automation — starts at $59 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.
  • Ecommerce Marketing — starts at $119 per month for up to 1,000 subscribers.
  • Max – starts at $999 per month.
  • Max2 — starts at $999 per month.

As you add more subscribers to your list, your costs increase. At the top end of the scale, you can expect to pay $539, $599 or $699 per month to use GetResponse with a list containing 100,000 subscribers on the ‘Email Marketing,’ ‘Marketing Automation’ and ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plans respectively.

GetResponse pricing.
GetResponse pricing (2024)

With regard to the ‘Max’ and ‘Max2‘ plans, these are more ‘enterprise level’ offerings that provide advanced features (more on these shortly).

Pricing for these plans starts at $999 per month, with exact pricing depending on requirements and list size — if you’re interested in using either of them, you’ll need to contact GetResponse to schedule a demo, discuss your needs and negotiate pricing.

GetResponse 'Max'
GetResponse ‘Max’

Discounts are available if you pay upfront for 1 or 2 years of service —18% and 30% respectively.

You can try the paid-for plans out for 30 days for free, via a trial that you can access here.

Key differences between plans

The core features common to all paid-for GetResponse plans are as follows:

  • the ability to import and host a subscriber list
  • a range of e-newsletter templates
  • autoresponder functionality
  • landing page builder
  • leads funnels
  • Facebook and Google Ad management tools
  • a website builder tool

Now, there are a number of differences between the ‘Email Marketing’, ‘Marketing Automation’ and ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plans, but for me the key ones are as follows:

  • The automation builder — arguably GetResponse’s standout feature, the automation builder (which allows you to build complex autoresponder sequences based on user behaviour) is only fully available on the ‘Marketing Automation’ plan or higher.
  • Conversion funnels  you get access to more automated sales funnels as you go up the pricing ladder.
  • Live webinars — this functionality is not available at all on the ‘Email Marketing’ plan and the number of webinar attendees is capped on the ‘Marketing Automation’, ‘Ecommerce Marketing’, ‘Max’ and ‘Max2′ plans at 100, 300, 500 and 1,000 respectively.
  • Paid webinars — you can only charge for webinar access on a ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plan or higher.
  • On-demand webinars (access to pre-recorded content) — you can only offer these to users if you are on an ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plan or higher.
  • Team management — you can only have one user account on the ‘Email Marketing’ plan, but you get three on ‘Marketing Automation,’ five on ‘Ecommerce Marketing’, 10 on ‘Max’ and 500 on ‘Max2.‘
  • Transactional emails — the abandoned order recovery feature (which automatically sends reminder emails to your site visitors who don’t complete an order) is only available on the ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plan or higher. The same goes for order confirmation emails.
  • SMS marketing — the option to send marketing text messages is only available on the ‘Max’ plans.
  • Support — phone support is only available on the Max2 plan, which also gives you access to a dedicated account manager (a ‘Customer Experience Manager’, to use the GetResponse term).

I’ll discuss these features in more depth as I progress through the review — but first, a quick word about GetResponse’s ‘free-forever’ plan.

The ‘GetResponse Free’ plan

GetResponse has traditionally differed from some of its key competitors’ offerings in that unlike some of them — notably Mailchimp and AWeber — it didn’t offer an entirely free plan.

With the launch of a ‘free-forever’ plan, GetResponse Free, that situation has changed — you now have the option of using the platform for free indefinitely.

The new 'Getresponse Free' plan.
The new ‘GetResponse Free’ plan

On the plus side, this free version of GetResponse comes with some pretty decent features — the plan lets you access core email marketing features, the full range of templates, a website builder and a landing page builder.

However, to use this plan your list must be smaller than 500 records in size, and your newsletters will feature GetResponse branding. Significantly, you won’t be able to use any autoresponders or automation features on this plan at all.

But even so, the free plan represents a good way to try the product out and to get going with email marketing — especially if you have a small list and just want to send newsletters occasionally to it.

How does GetResponse pricing compare to that of its competitors?

So long as you are happy to use the entry level ‘Email Marketing’ plan, you’ll find that GetResponse is on the whole, cheaper than many of its key competitors — particularly if you have a large number of email addresses on your database.

GetResponse’s starting price is competitive — you can host a database containing up to 1,000 email addresses for $19 per month with GetResponse, compared to $25 per month on AWeber or $39 per month with Campaign Monitor. The pricing for Mailchimp’s broadly comparable ‘Standard’ plan is $45 per month when used with 1,000 contacts.

As you go up the pricing ladder, GetResponse generally continues to come in cheaper than all these products.

A couple of other things to be aware of on the competitor pricing front are:

  • Some solutions (Mailchimp being a prime example) charge you to host both subscribed and unsubscribed contacts, which can become a significant hidden cost. GetResponse only charges you for your active subscribers.
  • If you are prepared to pay upfront for one or two years, you can avail of substantial discounts on any GetResponse plan (18% and 30% respectively). This is more generous than the discounts offered by key competing products.

So the bottom line is that GetResponse stacks up well against competitors in the pricing department.

But what about features?

Key GetResponse features

By comparison with other email marketing tools, GetResponse comes with an unusually large feature set — even on its entry-level plan.

The platform provides all the key stuff you’d expect from an email marketing platform — list hosting, templates, autoresponders, analytics and so on, but as mentioned above, it’s been expanding its feature set to the point where it has morphed into an all-in-one marketing and e-commerce solution.

The question is whether all this makes the product a jack of all trades and master of none.

Let’s drill down into its features and find out, starting with visuals.

Email templates

There are 222 GetResponse templates available — less than some competing email marketing solutions (notably AWeber, which offers over 600) — but they are varied in nature and the designs are contemporary and easily editable.

Some of the available GetResponse email newsletter templates.
Some examples of GetResponse templates

The email templates are grouped into a few categories focussed around core goals — promoting, educating, selling etc. — and their quality is generally high.

You can browse all the available templates here.

GetResponse newsletter template categories.
GetResponse template categories

There is one omission worth flagging up however — the option to set ‘global’ styles for headings and text.

As things stand, the template editor doesn’t let you define heading and paragraph styles that you can re-use throughout a message — this means more manual formatting of text as you compose emails, which is a bit of a pain.

Example of a GetResponse template.
Example of a GetResponse template

On the plus side, the GetResponse email creator allows you to make very extensive use of web fonts. A huge selection of Google Fonts can be used in your e-newsletters — more than any competing tool that I’ve personally tested to date.

This wide selection of web fonts is great, because — given the prevalence of Google fonts in corporate branding these days — it will let many users create email campaigns that align closely to their brand.

It’s important to remember that not all email programs support use of web fonts — you can specify a ‘fallback font’ in GetResponse to accommodate those — but in the ones that do, emails created via GetResponse tend to look very nice indeed.

A really wide range of web fonts is available in GetResponse’s new email creator.
A really wide range of web fonts is available in GetResponse’s new email creator.

Finally, the GetResponse templates are all responsive, meaning that they adjust themselves automatically to suit the device that an e-newsletter is being viewed on — mobile, tablet, desktop computer etc.

A preview function is available to see how your newsletter will appear on desktop and mobile.

(It would be nice if a tablet preview option was available too — although in truth, most tablet devices display emails in a fairly similar way to desktops).

AI tools in GetResponse

GetResponse recently added some new artificial intelligence tools to help you quickly create e-newsletters.

The first of these is its AI subject line generator.

This tool creates email subject lines based on your chosen keywords, providing you with 5 subject line suggestions to pick from. When you pick one, you can choose to leave it as is, or alternatively, edit it in the GetResponse email editor.

Subject Line Generator examples.
GetResponse’s AI subject line generator in action

GetResponse’s second artificial intelligence tool is an AI Email Generator.

Powered by Open AI’s ChatGPT-4 technology, this tool generates the full copy, layout and design for your email based on your prompts.

GetResponse's AI Email Generator.
GetResponse’s AI Email Generator

It lets you choose from a range of 6 ‘tones of voice’ for your email copy: ‘convincing,’ ‘formal,’ ‘inspirational,’ ‘informative,’ ‘friendly,’ and ‘neutral.’

Finally, GetRepsonse’s new AI Autoresponder Generator lets you quickly create industry-specific autoresponder messages for your subscribers, again by using ChatGPT-4.

Although these AI tools are in their infancy, they work well, and may radically change GetResponse’s email newsletter creation process as more functionality is added to them.

Autoresponders

Autoresponders are e-newsletters that are sent to your subscribers at intervals of your choosing.

For example, you can set autoresponders up so that…

  • immediately after somebody signs up to your contact list, they receive a welcome message from your business

  • a week later they receive a discount offer for some of your products or services

  • three weeks later they receive an encouragement to follow you on social media.

And so on.

An autoresponder cycle created with GetResponse.
An autoresponder cycle created with GetResponse

GetResponse’s autoresponder functionality is a key selling point — so long as you are on one of its paid plans, the product provides some of the most comprehensive autoresponder functionality available.

Example of a typical Getresponse autoresponder sequence.
Example of a typical Getresponse autoresponder sequence

You can use GetResponse autoresponders to send either time-based or action-based messages. Time-based options include cycles like the one highlighted in the example above, and action-based messages can be triggered by user actions or information, for example…

  • opens
  • clicks
  • subscriptions to particular lists
  • changes in contact preferences
  • completed transactions / goals
  • birthdays
  • changes in user data.

Marketing automation tools

In addition to the basic ‘drip’ style autoresponders mentioned above, GetResponse provides a more sophisticated option for sequencing emails automatically.

This is called ‘Marketing Automation,’ and is only fully available on ‘Marketing Automation’ plans or higher.

The feature allows you to create automation workflows using a drag and drop editor — you basically set up an ‘automation flowchart’ that instructs GetResponse what to do if a user opens a particular offer, clicks on a certain link etc.

GetResponse’s marketing automation tool — you can use a drag and drop builder to build extremely sophisticated user journeys.
GetResponse’s marketing automation tool — you can use a drag and drop editor to build extremely sophisticated user journeys.

The functionality on offer here goes far beyond what’s traditionally been available from autoresponders, and allows you to create a user journey that can be customized to an enormous degree.

For a quick visual overview of how all this works, you can take a look at GetResponse’s video walkthrough of its marketing automation features, below.

Split testing

Split testing involves sending variants of your e-newsletters to some of the people on your subscriber list, monitoring the performance of each, and sending the ‘best’ version to the remainder of your list.

GetResponse allows you to run split tests using up to five subject headers OR content variants.

However, you can only use one variable at a time during a split test — for example, you can test emails with different subject lines against each other, but both versions of the email must contain the same content (or vice versa).

Split testing in GetResponse.
Split testing in GetResponse

Some other email marketing tools are rather more flexible in this regard, allowing you to test using more variables (for example send time or sender name), or the option to mix variables during tests.

So, GetResponse could do better here.

Perfect timing?

Although GetResponse’s split testing options could be more comprehensive, it has some related sending features which makes up their shortcomings quite a bit — its ‘Perfect timing’ andTime traveltools.

The ‘Perfect timing’ tool automatically sends your email at the time at which it’s most likely to be opened (GetResponse examines your subscriber’s past email-opening habits to work this out).

And the ‘Time travel’ tool sends your message to subscribers in different time zones at a specific local time. So, for example, you can ensure your message gets delivered at 9am (local time) to all subscribers no matter where in the world they are located.

Landing page creator

When it comes to lead generation, GetResponse offers something very useful that many of its competitors don’t: a landing page creator.

There are currently 93 landing page templates to choose from — and as with GetResponse’s email templates, these are professional and contemporary in appearance (particularly the more recently-introduced ones).

Using landing pages is usually a core part of any online advertising campaign — online ads usually generate far more leads if, rather than simply directing people to an information-heavy web page, they point users to attractive ‘squeeze pages’ containing limited but clear information and a clean, well-designed data capture form.

Creating a landing page with a GetResponse template

GetResponse lets you build sophisticated squeeze pages out of the box. Significantly, you can test the conversion rate of these pages against each other in real time — and choose the best performing one for your ad campaigns.

This can have a very positive effect on the number of leads you capture, and improve the reach of your email campaign.

Subscribe on YouTube

Competing email marketing tools often require you to make use of a third-party landing page creator to attain this sort of functionality, so the inclusion of the landing page feature is a really useful — and cost-saving — piece of functionality to have in your email marketing toolbox.

Crucially, GetResponse’s landing page functionality is available on all plans — even the free one.

Given that leading landing page tools Unbounce and Instapage charge a minimum of $74 and $79 per month respectively, there are considerable savings to be made on squeeze pages by using GetResponse.

The landing pages you create can be hooked up to a wide range of analytics tools and cookies, such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Yandex Metrica and your Facebook pixel.

And significantly, the landing page builder is, broadly-speaking, GDPR compliant. In order to meet the EU’s GDPR requirements on cookies (and some US states’ data protection laws too), you have to give users a clear mechanism to opt in or out of cookie use before those cookies are run. And unlike many competing products, GetResponse lets you do this, giving you the option to provide users with a cookie notification that lets them accept or decline the analytics cookies mentioned above.

There are a couple of areas where the landing page creator could be improved, however.

First, the interface is not particularly intuitive — in fact, it’s pretty clunky.

Second, you don’t get much control over the mobile version of your landing page — you can’t do much more than tweak the font sizes and margins.

Mobile version of landing page in GetResponse.
Editing controls for the mobile version of your landing page are quite restrictive.

And finally, the landing pages could load a bit quicker — when I tested them in Google’s Page Speed Insights tool, it indicated that there’s room for improvement to their page loading times (the faster that pages load, the better they typically convert).

Overall though, the landing page creator is a good feature and one that adds a lot of value to GetResponse.

Webinars

GetResponse recently introduced the ability to host webinars on the platform.

Given that webinars can be used both as a lead-generation tactic and an important revenue-generating feature, the idea of having your email database and your webinar tool under the same roof is very appealing.

The pricing is also very competitive too by comparison to established webinar solutions, especially when you factor in all the additional marketing features that Getresponse provides.

For example, one of the market-leading webinar hosting services, GoToWebinar, charges $59 per month just to host live webinars. You can do the same — and a whole lot more — with GetResponse for the same price.

That said, the GoToWebinar participant limit is more generous, allowing you to broadcast webinars to 250 participants — GetResponse’s limit on its $59 ‘Marketing Automation’ plan is 100.

The webinars interface.
The GetResponse webinars interface

If I’m honest, because I’ve found some aspects of the GetResponse interface — especially landing pages — a little bit clunky in the past, I wasn’t expecting that much from the webinars feature.

But I was pleasantly surprised: both the webinars interface and functionality are really excellent — and are generally up there in terms of quality with any dedicated platform I’ve used in the past for online meetings or webinars.

A few GetResponse webinar features worth flagging up as being particularly useful are:

  • the fact that your attendees don’t need to install any software to attend the webinars
  • one-click record of your webinars
  • screensharing functionality
  • the ability to host a webinar with up to three presenters
  • video sharing functionality (YouTube)
  • the option to upload Powerpoint presentations to GetResponse for use during a webinar
  • the option to use pre-recorded webinars or past events as part of a sales funnel (as part of GetResponse’s ‘on-demand webinars’ feature)
  • the ability to run ‘breakout rooms’ for attendees (available on GetResponse ‘Max’ plans).

The main thing to watch out for is that the on-demand webinars and paid-for webinars are only available on the ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plans or higher. This means that you’ll be paying a minimum of $119 per month to use the feature.

Another downside of the webinars feature is that the file storage limits for your recorded webinars aren’t particularly generous — you get 3 hours storage on the ‘Marketing Automation’ plan, 6 on ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ and up to 20 on the ‘Max2’ plan.

So, if your business is very much focused around webinar content, you may need to use a separate storage solution to share them with attendees, and this isn’t ideal.

But overall, the webinar functionality provided is a very useful feature to have in your email marketing arsenal, and its inclusion as a feature gives GetResponse a significant edge over its key competitors. The fact that your email list is fully integrated with your webinar broadcasting tool is a serious plus point, and the quality of this feature is surprisingly high.

You can learn more about GetResponse webinars here.

Let’s look at another feature now that is also pretty unique to GetResponse: “conversion funnels.”

Conversion funnels

Another feature that distinguishes GetResponse from competing products is its ‘conversion funnels.’

This is because — to a degree — it turns GetResponse from being an email marketing platform into something that you can use to run an entire ecommerce business.

The idea behind this feature is that you can do the following things without ever leaving the GetResponse environment:

  • Create a product catalogue
  • Create and run Facebook ad campaigns
  • Create landing pages
  • Add subscribers to an autoresponder cycle
  • Drive users to sales pages (also created in GetResponse)
  • Take payment for products
  • Send abandoned cart emails if necessary

You can access the conversion funnel feature on all paid-for plans — but you should note that the version available on the ‘Email Marketing’ plan doesn’t let you access any of the ecommerce features associated with it — i.e., on this plan, you can’t take payment using it, and you won’t be able to use the abandoned cart recovery feature.

Creating a sales funnel in GetResponse.
Creating a sales funnel in GetResponse

If you like, you can involve third party platforms with GetResponse conversion funnels — for example Shopify, BigCommerce and Etsy can all be integrated with GetResponse (in some cases via official integrations, in others via syncing tools like Zapier).

GetResponse in the Shopify App Store.
The official GetResponse app in the Shopify App Store

As things stand, this feature is probably best suited towards ‘solopreneurs’ or small businesses who want an all-in-one option for creating all the assets they need to produce a sales funnel.

Merchants with large product catalogues and extensive ecommerce requirements will still probably be better off using a dedicated ecommerce solution like BigCommerce or Shopify for the actual selling part of the mix, however.

Website builder

The latest addition to GetResponse’s feature set is a website builder.

This lets you create a website within the GetResponse interface and connect it to a domain you own (you can also, if you like, buy your domain through GetResponse).

The templates for the website builder are pretty good and there are a lot of them (around 133). But as things stand, the tool is a fairly basic affair, only letting you create simple, static pages.

You can create one website on the ‘Email Marketing’ plan, five on the ‘Marketing Automation’ and ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plans, and ten on the’Max2‘ plans let you create five.

Creating a site with the Getresponse website builder
Using the GetResponse website builder

You can add GetResponse forms very easily to these, which is helpful, but I couldn’t find an obvious way to add any products I had created in GetResponse to a test website that I put together with the builder.

So if you’re hoping to build an online store with this tool, you will be a bit disappointed. On the plus side however, GetResponse says that full ecommerce functionality is on the way.

As a means for creating a simple brochure website though, it will work pretty well for some (especially web design novices, who might find its automated ‘AI’ builder — which builds a website for you based on answers to some questions about your project — a fairly non-threatening way to get a website off the ground).

Example of a Getresponse website builder template.
Example of a GetResponse website builder template

One thing to note about GetResponse’s website builder is that the sites it creates aren’t terribly fast, and there is general room for improvement where Google’s new Core Web Vitals website speed and stability standards are concerned.

Based on my tests, the mobile versions of sites built with GetResponse didn’t score highly when it came to site speed or Core Web Vitals. That said, the desktop versions did perform reasonably well on both counts.

Core Web Vitals statistics for GetResponse (mobile)
Core Web Vitals statistics for GetResponse (mobile)

And to be fair to GetResponse, this tends to be an issue for a lot of other ‘hosted’ website building tools — well-known platforms like Wix and Squarespace can present problems in this area too.

So overall, this new website builder feature is currently a bit underwhelming — but to be fair, it is in its infancy, so you can expect improvements to it to be made. And the idea of having everything in one place — website, email marketing, webinars — is definitely an attractive one, particularly if you run a small business.

But as things stand, the feature needs a bit of work if it’s going to compete against more established website and online store builders like Big Cartel, Squarespace or Wix.

Don’t miss out on our free Business Growth E-Kit

For a limited time only, we’re offering our readers some excellent free tools to help them grow their business. Sign up free to immediately receive:

  • downloadable cheatsheets on how to grow an online business
  • an exclusive discount code for email marketing app GetResponse
  • a 30-day free trial of Canva Pro
  • extended free trials of essential growth-hacking apps
  • ongoing free tips and advice on digital marketing
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

We respect your privacy, and you can unsubscribe any time. View privacy notice.

Live chat

In the spirit of trying to be an ‘all-in-one’ marketing solution, GetResponse has now added a ‘chat’ feature that adds live chat functionality to your website (either one you’ve created via GetResponse’s new website builder feature, or your own existing site).

This feature is available on all paid-for plans, but you can only use it on external websites (i.e., those not built with the GetResponse website builder) if you’re on a $59 per month ‘Marketing Automation’ plan or higher.

To enable GetResponse Chats, you add a snippet of code to your site which then displays a live chat option to your visitors.

GetResponse Chats.
GetResponse Chats

This is a pretty nifty little feature, which used correctly can help you increase conversion and subscription rates. And thanks to recent updates

However, as with all features like this there is a trade-off — adding more interactive tools like this to your site via scripts can have a negative impact on page loading times (which in turn can affect your site’s performance in search results).

But there are lots of contexts where this sort of functionality will come in very useful, so it’s definitely a nice addition to GetResponse’s feature set, and one that will bring real value to users.

Web push notifications

Another GetResponse feature that is not strictly related to email marketing is the facility it gives you to create web push notifications.

By adding a snippet of GetResponse code to your site, you can let visitors to your site opt in to browser-based notifications (which you can display to your site visitors in future regardless of the website they’re browsing).

GetResponse web push notifications.
GetResponse web push notifications

You can use these notifications as part of an automated subscriber journey too — for example, 30 minutes after a subscriber clicks on a link in an email about a promotion you’re running, you could display a push notification in their web browser about that particular offer.

This is pretty sophisticated stuff — but some people find push notifications annoying, so it’s a feature that should be used judiciously.

The web push notifications feature is fully available on the ‘Ecommerce Marketing’ plans or higher.

Apps and integrations

If you want to integrate GetResponse with another platform or tool, there are around 240 integrations to help you do so.

You can use these to hook GetResponse up to popular ecommerce solutions and content management systems, including WooCommerce, Shopify and WordPress, as well as some CRM systems, like Capsule and Zoho.

There are quite a few useful Google integrations too. These allow you to import contacts; add Google Analytics tags to an email campaign; and link your landing pages to Google Ads in a way that helps you better measure the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.

Google integrations in GetResponse.
Google integrations in GetResponse

GetResponse also works with the syncing tool Zapier, which can help you connect it to other tools via ‘zaps’ based on ‘if this, then do that’ rules.

And, assuming you have the development skills to do so, you can also integrate GetResponse with other software by using the platform’s API (Application Programming Interface). This lets you send and receive data to and from GetResponse in whatever way suits your application.

Analytics

GetResponse offers a good range of analytics and reporting options.

You get all the basics of course — open rate, click-through, unsubscribe rates and so on — but in addition to that, there are some very nifty reporting features that are worth a particular mention, namely:

  • one-click retargeting‘: a way to easily identify people who engaged or didn’t engage with a particular newsletter, and send them an appropriate follow-up
  • email ROI‘: by adding some tracking code to your post-sales page on your site, you can find out how effectively (or not!) your email campaigns are driving sales, and work out your return on investment in email marketing.
  • per-user information — you can click on one of your subscribers and see where they signed up from, where they’re located and which emails they’ve opened in the past.
  • e-newsletter performance comparison — you can compare the performance of two e-newsletters side-by-side really easily.

Mailchimp and AWeber offer some similar reporting functionality — particularly where sales tracking is concerned— but GetResponse’s reporting tool is definitely one of the more fully-featured available.

GetResponse analytics
GetResponse analytics

Data management and deliverability

Data capture and forms

There are two ways to use forms in GetResponse — you can either add a HTML form that you style yourself, or you can design your form in GetResponse itself, choosing from a decent range of templates and configuring them so that they match your site’s design.

GetResponse form templates
GetResponse form templates: 139 popup and 48 embedded form templates are currently available.

If you go down the latter route, you can add the form to your site using a snippet of Javascript code to display your form; this form can be presented in a range of different formats (for example bar, full-screen, pop-up box or slide-up).

You can use both the HTML forms and the javascript ones to capture data into standard GetResponse fields, or, if you prefer, populate custom fields.

And you get the option to send users an opt-in confirmation message or add users to an autoresponder cycle too.

Subscription settings for GetResponse forms.
Subscription settings for GetResponse forms

Possibly the best aspect of the form creation tools is the level of control you get over how your popup forms are triggered — and the audience you’d like to display them to.

Form controls in GetResponse.
Form controls in GetResponse

You get the option to specify what triggers your popups (timing, scroll events, page exits or inactivity); how many seconds to wait before showing them; and the devices you’d like to display them on.

(Not only can GetResponse popups capture email addresses, they can also be used to display promo codes or encourage site visitors to follow your business on social media).

Form trigger options.
Form trigger options in GetResponse

These new controls give you a lot of flexibility over form implementation and represent a big improvement over GetResponse’s old form designer (especially where form audiences are concerned – the old designer didn’t give you any device-level controls at all).

Tip: remember to use pop-ups judiciously. There are certain situations where they can be a fantastic driver of sign-ups, but they can also impact negatively on your SEO – Google is not a fan of overly intrusive popups.

Data segmentation options

One of the things I like most about GetResponse is the way you can send emails to multiple segments of subscribers at once (or indeed exclude multiple segments). This is something that is not always faciliated by competing solutions, even well-known tools like Aweber.

Say you have a subscriber list in GetResponse that you’ve divided up into four segments:

  • Segment A
  • Segment B
  • Segment C
  • Segment D

With GetResponse, it’s really easy to message segment A, B and C all at once (you just tick three relevant checkboxes). You could also message segment B and C and exclude segment D.

Not only can you message or exclude multiple segments at once, you can also do the same with individual lists — for example, if you had three separate mailing lists on GetResponse, you could mail individuals across all three of them.

This sort of flexibility marks GetResponse out from its competitors and lets you really tailor your email campaign audience to the nth degree — of the similar products I’ve reviewed to date, only Campaign Monitor offers a comparable level of flexibility (and one that comes at a much higher price).

The only downside to watch out here for is that some segmentation options (based on scoring, tags, ecommerce and events) are only available on GetResponse’s ‘Marketing Automation’ plan or higher.

GetResponse deliverability

Email deliverability rate — the percentage of e-newsletters sent that successfully reach your subscribers’ inboxes — is obviously an important thing to look at when choosing an email marketing tool.

Not all email marketing providers are that transparent about their deliverability rates, but GetResponse seems reasonably open about this, with this to say about it on their website:

We are frequently asked about the quality of our deliverability rate. Because deliverability depends on many factors, including the content of your messages, the deliverability rate could vary for each mailing. For all our customers collectively, however, we are proud to say our overall deliverability rate currently stands at 99%.

GetResponse

(For the record, our own tests of the platform suggest that users can expect a deliverability rate of 98.5% or higher, which chimes with the above statement).

Furthermore, GetResponse actually gives you the deliverability rate of each message on your email analytics — this is something I haven’t encountered on a lot of competing products’ metrics.

Finally, Custom DKIM — an authentication technique designed to enhance security for the senders and receivers of email — is also available on all GetResponse plans (even the ‘Getresponse Free’ one). This can further improve deliverability.

GDPR

When GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws were introduced, email marketing got rather more complicated. GDPR specifies stricter rules about what constitutes consent to receive e-newsletters (and requirements about how that consent is logged).

GetResponse is to be commended for providing users with clear information about what their GDPR responsibilities are, along with special GDPR fields that make it easier to log consent and comply with relevant regulations.

Additionally, you can enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for GetResponse login. This ensures that a user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more pieces of information — for example, a password and a code generated by an authentication smartphone app.

Given that data security is a key aspect of GDPR, this is a good feature to have in place.

Ease of use / interface

On the whole, GetResponse is pretty user-friendly. This wasn’t always the case, but its interface has been significantly improved in recent years and it is now easy to use, with key features easily accessible.

GetResponse menu.
GetResponse menu containing its core features

A fairly conventional drop-down menu gives you access to all the core features; and, thanks to an editable ‘widget library’ (pictured below), you can customize the GetResponse dashboard so that your most regularly used tools and reports are easily accessible.

The GetResponse widget library.
The GetResponse widget library

It is also easy to keep all of your uploaded images nicely organized thanks to a folder management system, which is accessible from the main GetResponse menu.

As for using the product, it’s certainly easy enough to do all the basics in GetResponse — import contacts, create an email campaign, set up autoresponders and check statistics. In particular, and as mentioned above, the segment management is excellent.

And when it comes to GetResponse’s more advanced features, like its marketing automation tools, the learning curve isn’t too steep.

In terms of how the GetResponse interface stacks up against those of its competitors, I would argue that Campaign Monitor is a bit more user friendly, and that the Mailchimp interface features a cleaner design. AWeber’s interface probably comes closest in terms of look and feel.

Traditionally, GetResponse’s main usability failing involved its email editor — it was clunky and buggy.

The email creator.
GetResponse’s new email creator is much improved on its predecessor

However, the new version of the email creator has improved things considerably — it’s got a cleaner, more intuitive drag and drop interface; it doesn’t crash; and it is easy to use.

It’s probably not quite as good as those offered by some competing apps, but it’s perfectly acceptable.

Customer support

GetResponse customer support used to be amongst the most comprehensive available for email marketing tools — the company offered phone support alongside live chat support, email support and various online tutorials and resources.

Sadly, the phone support has now been discontinued (unless you’re on the enterprise level “Max2” plan). If you need to contact the company, you’ll have to use live chat (24/7) or email support.

On the plus side, I have had extremely good experiences with GetResponse’s chat service — I’ve never had to wait long to chat with an agent, and anyone I’ve dealt with has had a really robust technical knowledge of the platform.

Customer support languages.
Although no phone support is available for GetResponse (unless you’re on a ‘Max’ plan), the email support provided does come in a lot of different languages.

And the email support provided by GetResponse is available in 8 languages, which is commendable. These are: English, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Portuguese.

Note: in the light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, GetResponse has paused sales of its products in Russia and Belarus.

I’ve sometimes found the response time via email support to be a bit longer than I’d like, however.

GetResponse review conclusion

Overall, GetResponse gives you a very cost-effective way to create email marketing campaigns. It’s priced very competitively in its marketplace, and is also one of the more interesting email marketing products that we’ve tested, in that it’s not just about e-newsletters — it also facilitates ecommerce, sales funnels, live chat, push notifications, webinars and web design.

It’s hard to think of any competing email marketing solution that represents quite as much of an ‘all round’ proposition; this makes it a particularly good fit for new business owners without a budget to invest in multiple tools.

I’ve been particularly impressed by GetResponse’s webinar functionality — it’s feature packed, and very good value for what it is.

Some improvements to GetResponse do need to be made however. In particular, the website builder could do with some additional features, especially where ecommerce is concerned.

The landing page creator, while a really useful feature to have, would benefit from an easier-to-use interface.

And finally, GetResponse’s webinar storage limits are not generous.

I’ll sum up this GetResponse review with a rundown of the key pros and cons of using the product.

Pros and cons of GetResponse: summary

Pros of using GetResponse

  • There’s a totally free version of the platform available, which can be used indefinitely.
  • So long as you are happy to use its ‘Email Marketing’ plan, GetResponse is cheaper than many of its key competitors (in certain cases, significantly so) whilst offering just as much, if not more, functionality as them.
  • The discounts you receive when paying upfront for one or two years of service are extremely generous — you’ll be hard pressed to find similar discounts from key competitors.
  • It gives you extremely sophisticated tools for marketing automation.
  • Its flexible approach to data segmentation makes list management really straightforward — it outshines many competing products on this front.
  • GetResponse’s webinar functionality is great, and represents a genuine USP — I haven’t come across this functionality on similar products.
  • The ‘Chats’ feature will prove to be a really useful addition to a lot of websites and used well can improve conversion rate significantly.
  • All GetResponse plans come with a useful, GDPR compliant landing page creator that facilitates A/B testing — something that could potentially save you a lot of money.
  • The new form designer gives you a lot of flexibility over popup forms and the data they capture.
  • Custom DKIM is provided on all plans, even the free one.
  • Support is provided in a wide variety of languages.
  • GDPR compliance is good.
  • The ‘all-in-one’ approach will appeal to small business owners on a budget — it saves them having to invest in multiple tools.
  • Its widget-based approach to customizing your dashboard makes it easy to see key marketing data in one place.
  • No credit card details are asked for when you sign up for the

    GetResponse trial.

Cons of using GetResponse

  • The drag and drop interfaces for creating landing pages and forms are a bit fiddly — they need improvement from a user experience point of view.

  • No phone support is provided (unless you’re on a “Max2” plan).
  • Split testing functionality is limited to subject lines and content — it would be good if you could test using sender and send time as well.
  • The website builder needs improvement to truly compete with more established solutions.
  • Although the webinar features are very useful, the recording limits aren’t terribly generous and you can only run paid-for webinars on the most expensive GetResponse plans.

GetResponse alternatives

No GetResponse review would be complete without a mention of some of the alternatives!

Well-known ‘traditional’ email marketing solutions that compete with GetResponse include AWeber, Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor.

AWeber is probably the most basic tool of the three mentioned above, but it is a solid and reliable offering. Its key advantage over GetResponse is that it comes with phone support. You can read our AWeber review here.

With the exception of webinars, Mailchimp offers a broadly similar feature set to GetResponse — the main advantage it offers over GetResponse is that it tends to integrate more easily with other services.

But it is very expensive by comparison, charging you for every contact on your list — even the unsubscribed ones! Check out our GetResponse vs Mailchimp post for a full comparison of the two tools.

Campaign Monitor is another pretty expensive option — but it does come with some lovely templates and a super user-friendly interface. Check out our Campaign Monitor review for more details.

Interestingly, a lot of online store builders are now bundling email and other online marketing features into their offering — for example, Shopify and Squarespace now provide built-in email marketing tools, as does Wix. Given this, and that GetResponse is now technically a hybrid website building and email marketing platform these days, those products have technically now become alternatives to GetResponse, albeit ones with less sophisticated email marketing features.

You can learn more about all these platforms in our Shopify review, Squarespace review and Wix review, and our Shopify vs Squarespace video (above) might also prove useful. Check out our guide to Wix vs Shopify too.

Any questions?

Have you got any queries about that we can help with? Or any GetResponse reviews of your own? Just leave a comment below — we’d love to get your thoughts, and will do our best to answer any questions you have.

GetResponse review FAQs

Can I use GetResponse for free?

The ‘Getresponse Free’ plan gives you indefinite free access to a cut-down version of GetResponse, which works with mailing lists up to 500 subscribers in size. Alternatively, a fully-functional 30-day free trial is available (this can be used for lists containing up to 500 subscribers).

Is GetResponse easy to use?

On the whole, yes. However certain features aren’t quite as intuitive as they could be — the landing page creator and the form designer in particular.

How much does GetResponse cost?

There are six GetResponse plans: Free, Email Marketing, Marketing Automation, Ecommerce Marketing, Max and Max2. To host a list with 1,000 contacts on the first three premium of these plan respectively costs $19, $59 and $119. The pricing for both the ‘Max’ plans is negotiable. As your list size increases, so does the pricing.

Which is better, Mailchimp or GetResponse?

Mailchimp’s interface is arguably a bit slicker and easier to use than GetResponse’s, but overall we feel that GetResponse is better value, as it doesn’t charge you to host unsubscribed contacts on your account, and comes with a wide range of features that are not currently available in Mailchimp (notable examples include webinars and live chat). Our GetResponse versus Mailchimp comparison spells out the key differences between these two products.

Is the GetResponse website builder good?

The GetResponse website builder is fine for simple web design applications, and in some contexts will let you avoid paying for a separate website building platform — but if you have sophisticated needs regarding content marketing, SEO or ecommerce, a more professional solution will usually be required.

Does GetResponse have a mobile app?

Yes, there is a mobile app for GetResponse. Available for iOS and Android, it gives you access to a lot of key GetResponse functionality on either a smartphone or a tablet — this includes managing contacts, sending e-newsletters and accessing analytics.

How we tested this product — and why you can trust this review

We tested this product via independent research and, more importantly, hands-on experience of it.

We regularly help clients with email marketing campaigns, and have extensive knowledge of how the GetResponse platform works (we use the tool regularly on many projects). So this GetResponse review is based on building many lists from scratch, creating e-newsletters, and automating e-communications with it.

Additionally, we have a strict honesty policy — while we do make use of affiliate links to fund our research and testing, we strive to be 100% impartial in all our conclusions.

More email marketing resources from Style Factory

Comments (21)

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I am currently a customer of Clickfunnels, and I am considering switching or integrating with Getresponse or Mailchimp for the email side of things. Clickfunnels is great at funnels (of course) but the email side really lacks in quality. I was really considering Mailchimp but I got interested in GetRepsonse for the automation features. Do you feel that Mailchimp or Getresponse will work well with Clickfunnels and let me do email marketing after my sales funnel more easily?

Thanks Jarod – to be honest, you may find that Getresponse lets you do most if not all of what ClickFunnels currently does. Its feature set has definitely been moving in that direction over the past few years, so you may find it easier to use one product and keep everything in one place. That said, if you want to integrate ClickFunnels with Getresponse, an integration is available – details here: https://help.clickfunnels.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006269434-Integrating-ClickFunnels-with-GetResponse

Firstly, let me start by commending you for an article that overflows with [precise] information and is extremely well written. Of course, that’s just my opinion. The only head-scratcher that stands out for me didn’t happen until I reached the comments. I had to wonder how an article published on Jan 14th, 2020 was able to also include comments from users/readers from 8 months to 2 years ago?Current date = Feb 5th, 2020. 🙂

Thanks for the kind words about the review, DKampa. The post is regularly updated and republished to account for new Getresponse features or pricing changes, so that’s why some of the comments seem to predate the publishing date 🙂

Thanks for this info Mike – I’m going to follow this up with Getresponse as I’d be interested to hear what they have to say about this.

Great article! In addition to this tool, I also like uCalc – a very simple form constructor. The code does not even need to be used to do something. Everything in the settings can be found.

TBH this reads like a detailed marketing doc of what GetResponse can/claims to do, albeit detailed and well written. As a small biz owner needing a website, landing page and emailing tool (and likely webinar course as well), and now GetResponse customer for three weeks, I cannot begin to detail the frustrations of getting what I thought was a simple job completed on time; 3w later, and still no website up. Their 24/7 chat service is helpful up to a point, but agents have limited knowledge and cut you off before you know it to get to another query, and you have to start all over again. The HAS to be better than this?!?

Thanks for your feedback JNT and sorry to hear you had some issues with Getresponse. I’d respectfully disagree with you regarding the ‘marketing doc’ comment – if you look carefully at the review it does provide an honest appraisal of Getresponse’s strengths and weaknesses. This is particularly true of the pros and cons section – we don’t hold back at all from spelling out some of the negative features of the product.

I see older reviews as being awful, but some newer ones showing improvement, a client of mine wants to test it out so now I am nervous, humm

Great review. I think that GetResponse’s marketing automation is pretty cool too. I like the design – it makes things look so much easier and clear.

Is getresponse good for blogs i have a blog and have a decent visitors and i also want to know did they also offer signup forms

I didn’t recommend it, too. Because:– drag and drop is horrible with a lot of bugs– landing page creator is extremly slow– form in my site on mobile device is problematic– a lot of illogical steps inside workflow– form design is other on mobile as on on laptop

and only problems, problems with it.

i don’t recommend getresponse. I used it more time as Pro user. I haven’t other email marketing software what I recommend.

Nice review! I’ll give GetResponse a try. Sounds pretty cool and thanks to this post I won’t have a problem in setting it up. Thanks!

Absolutely – the best help I’ve received on how to "get started" in this mad world of Internet marketing! Because you’ve taken the time to research, compare and advise I’ve subscribed to your blog.

Thanks for reviewing Get Response – the thing I most wanted to learn about was the ability to setup rules to automagically take someone off a ‘prospect list’ and place them on a ‘buyer’s’ list. Aweber does this out of the box, but Mailchimp doesn’t seem to do it at all – how about Get Response?Also – the pricing is a little off in your review. Mailchimp is 100% free for the first 2,000 names in the database or $15/month for an unlimited amount of sends to 1,000 people – not $20 (just checked a minute ago).Lastly – one of the big advantages that I heard about Get Response is that you pay them according to each unique email address you have in the database. So if you had 500 names on 3 lists, you’d pay for only 500 names whereas Aweber would charge you 500 x 3. I don’t use Get Response – but this is part of the reason I’m giving it some thought in the near future…It would be awesome if you were able to verify this.

Hi Mike, cheers for your comments! I suspect the Mailchimp pricing has changed post-my-review, but thanks for flagging up and I’ll update the review shortly. Regarding the ability to switch people from one list to another after they purchase something, this is definitely doable: see http://www.getresponse.co.uk/email-marketing/gb-features/automation.html. As far as I’m aware Aweber charges per unique number of email addresses, yes, but I’ll need to do some further investigation on that one – when I have an answer I’ll let you know!