By now, you’ve probably checked out hundreds of competitor websites, and you’re left with that all-important (and seemingly impossible) question… is there really a difference?
If the terms ‘landing pages’, ‘automated campaigns’, and ‘analytics’ are running rings around your head, and you’re not sure which competitor is worth the investment, you’re not alone.
GetResponse is just one of the names you may have heard of in your quest for a suitable tool. They’ve been around for some time, and if you’ve checked out their website recently, you’ll know they’ve had no trouble making a name for themselves.
If you’re considering choosing GetResponse to streamline your business, we’re here to break down its pricing plans, key features, and strengths and weaknesses, so you can determine if it’s the perfect match for you.
What Is GetResponse?
GetResponse is branded as an all-in-one marketing platform. Not only does it boast a collection of email marketing tools, but the software also offers a CRM, boasts an impressive set of advanced automations, and can even help you create landing pages.
GetResponse was founded in 1998 by CEO Simon Grabowski. His story is also quite an impressive one. Simon created GetResponse with just $200 to his name.
He needed a solution that could help him build an email marketing list in quick time, and feed content to his customers at specified intervals. As a result, GetResponse was born.
In its 23 years of operation, GetResponse has generated a staggering $102 million in revenue and in 2021, it was named the Best B2B Email Marketing Solution at the MarTech Breakthrough Awards Program.
It has also been recognized as The Best Webinar Software of 2021 and The Best Landing Page Builders of 2021 by digital.com. It’s an impressive selection of awards, and there’s plenty more where that came from.
It’s not hard to see why this Polish-based company rakes in around 1 billion subscribers each month and has a global reach of over 183 countries!
GetResponse offers pretty much everything you’d expect from an all-in-one marketing solution. From advanced reporting features to landing pages and webinar software, it’s actually pretty tough to list something they DON’T have.
GetResponse: The Key Features
Although GetResponse does offer many of the same features as its competitors, it also has some unique selling points that make it stand out from the crowd. Let’s look at some of its most popular features, including those all-important unique highlights.
Email Marketing
Even on its cheapest plan, GetResponse comes with a very wide range of email marketing tools. You’ll get all the goodies you’d expect from any major competitor, including analytics, list hosting, and autoresponders, but you’ll also get some extra bits, like:
Email Templates: GetResponse comes with a range of pre-built email templates that you can use for your email marketing campaigns. There’s a pretty large selection, around a few hundred, to choose from – what’s more, if you don’t like the look of them, you can simply create your own!
Integrations: You’ll also be able to integrate with an impressive range of online tools. These integrations include all of the favorites, like shopping cart integrations, social media sites, and landing pages. To name a few, these include Salesflare, WooCommerce, Shopify, Google Ads, and Gmail.
Intuitive User Interface: People’s perception of your business will determine its success. This is why an intuitive and attractive user interface is so important. With GetResponse, you’ll benefit from a simple, easy-to-use layout that’s uncluttered and easy on the eye. You can also do all the heavy-lifting, like importing contacts and creating email campaigns in just a few clicks.
These are just a few of GetResponse’s highlight features. If you’re not sure what the basics mean, let’s give you a quick run-through.
Analytics: With GetResponse, you’ll have access to an abundance of campaign data, and you can track all your important email activity in real-time. This included analyzing all the important information like open and click-through rates, monitoring the performance of campaigns on desktop vs. mobile, and the ability to compare campaigns in a side-by-side view.
Auto Responders: Autoresponders allow you to send automatic messages to contacts who join your lists. With GetResponse, you can choose to set up an autoresponder cycle. This means that you can create several messages to be set out in a cycle consecutively. These messages can be sent at specific sequences or intervals.
A/B Testing: A/B testing is one of the most critical aspects of an email marketing campaign. With this feature, you’ll be able to measure and track the success of your campaign’s performance by testing it with a type of broadcast. You’ll be able to measure specific elements of success by viewing it in terms of conversions, so you can determine what needs to be tweaked to improve your campaign performance.
Conversion Funnel
The conversion funnel is a relatively new feature introduced by GetResponse in 2020. With the conversion funnel, you’ll get access to a feature that can build your landing pages, automate your emails and even sell your products for you. There’s a huge variety of ‘optimized scenarios’ for specific conversion funnels.
Essentially, these scenarios and funnels have been constructed by industry experts, and they’re a kind of ‘cheat sheet’ to help you grow your business. This is a unique feature that you’re unlikely to find with other competitors, and it’s ideal for small businesses looking to scale up. In our opinion, this is one of the KEY selling points of GetResponse.
Webinar Software
The Webinar Builder is another unique feature that you’ll be hard-pressed to find from other competitors. With the webinar builder, GetResponse users can create and host webinars for their audience whenever they want.
According to their website, users can customize their own webinar URL and even host directly from their mobile. Attendees can join directly from their browsers, too, so there’s no need to download an app. You could even use pre-recorded webinars to create more leads – simply allow attendees access at any time in exchange for their email address.
Analytics
You’ll be able to view email analytics directly from your account dashboard. You can even choose which widgets are displayed here, so you’ll only have to see the stats that are most important to you. You can choose from the following statistics:
Survey Statistics
Webinar Statistics
Form Statistics
Landing Page Conversion Stats
Newsletter Send Stats
You can also choose to view more detailed analytics. To do this, you can work your way over to the ‘reports’ section. Here, you’ll see more detailed analytics such as:
Open Rate
Complaint Rate
Bounce Rate
Click Rate
Unsubscribe Rate
You can choose to view these statistics for individual emails and compare them side-by-side or see the statistics for a preferred list. If you’ve set up any autoresponders, you can also view separate analytics from these directly from the dashboard.
Landing Pages
This isn’t a unique feature, but it’s a convenient one. With GetResponse, you can create your very own landing pages and even set up A/B testing on them.
GetRespone offers users a broad range of free, mobile-optimized templates to create landing pages of all shapes and sizes, including:
Opt-In Pages
Sales Pages
Promotional Pages
Download Pages
Video Landing Pages
Thank You Pages
Webinar Pages
About Me Pages
All landing pages are mobile-optimized, full-responsive, and use drag-and-drop editors. This provides a more hands-off approach that eliminates the need for coding.
All landing pages offered by GetResponse are fully customizable, too – so you’ll still be able to express your creative side without starting from scratch.
Marketing Automation Features
In addition to autoresponders, GetResponse also has some more sophisticated features to sequence automatic emails. This is called a ‘marketing automation’ feature, but unfortunately, it’s only available on the Plus plan (or higher).
With this feature, you can generate your very own automated workflows in a drag-and-drop editor. Essentially, you’ll be building an ‘automation flowchart’ that tells GetResponse EXACTLY what to do when one of your users follows a specific link or selects a particular offer.
For example, if someone subscribed to your webinars, you could instruct GetResponse to send them an email with relevant downloads. For example, suppose they follow these links and download the content.
In that case, GetResponse will note it, keep an eye on their follow-up behavior, and assign them to a different category such as ‘qualified,’ so you know they expressed interest. If they didn’t download the links, you could instruct GetResponse to send them an automatic reminder email.
This system is FAR more complex and sophisticated than the simple autoresponder feature. It’s also unique and incredibly convenient for business.
Website Builder
GetResponse promises to help you build a website in LESS than 15 minutes. The all-in-one marketing solution has its very own website builder, which uses advanced artificial intelligence to generate your very own website.
What’s more, this process is COMPLETELY code-free. Minimal fuss and minimal hassle – the website builder makes this process simpler than ever.
You can choose from a range of pre-designed templates for your website, each of which is fully customizable, and you’ll have access to a range of creative tools so you’ll have complete freedom over your design.
With the AI building wizard, simply answer a few questions about your business needs, and GetResponse will offer you the templates and design choices most suited to your needs. You can even import all the texts, files, and images you want to use for your site and let the builder do the rest.
Your website will be created in quick time, with minimal work on your part.
Ecommerce Store Support
GetRespone works hard to empower existing eCommerce stores. If you have an existing store, you can connect it directly to GetResponse. From here, you can decide to add new contacts and tell GetResponse how you want them to track your customers.
There’s also a range of eCommerce integrations to choose from, so you can help drive up subscriptions and give customers opportunities to subscribe to your mailing lists. You can do this in a number of ways, including:
Prompting at the Checkout
Encouraging sign-up when they create an account
Using forms and exit pop-ups
You can also use these methods to learn more about your customers and help plan your marketing strategies more effectively.
For example, you can enable eCommerce tracking to collect information about the customers your products view and buy, and even track your site visits to keep a close eye on what products your customers are interested in.
If you want to add an extra edge to your strategy, you can even implement abandoned cart workflow templates to keep tabs on abandoned carts and send reminder emails to your customers to encourage more sales.
These are the key features offered by GetResponse. To view a complete list of the services on offer, you can check out their website for more information.
To give you a brief idea of what else you get, here’s a quick look at some of their other notable features.
Paid Ads
SMS Marketing
Web Push Notifications
Live Chat
Domain Management
Call-to-action button for Webinars
Pricing Plans: A Close Look
If you’re considering using GetResponse, then like any good investor, you’re probably considering your budget.
Although price shouldn’t be the deciding factor, it’s a pretty important one to consider. Let’s take a closer look at the pricing plans GetResponse offers.
GetResponse has several pricing plans, including a free package. Note: You can pay for GetRespone monthly, annually, or every two years. We’ll be showing prices according to their monthly fees.
Free (500 Contacts)
GetResponse offers a FREE plan, which really makes them stand out from their competitors. With the free plan (up to 500 contacts), you’ll get access to the following:
Unlimited Newsletters
Create and host one landing page with a monthly limit of 1000 visitors
Create and host one website, and have access to all the essential features (5GB Bandwidth)
Custom Domain
Sign-Up Forms to get new leads
SSL Certificates
The free-forever plan is quite a new addition from GetResponse, but it’s already proving incredibly popular with its users.
Basic – $12.30 – 1000 Contacts
With the basic plan, you’ll get everything included on the free plan, plus:
Autoresponders
Unlimited Landing Pages
Unlimited Website Builder (This means unrestricted access to all features in the builder, plus a bigger bandwidth)
Basic Segmentation
Email Scheduling
Plus – $40.18 – 1000 Contacts
The plus plan includes all the free and basic features, plus:
Marketing automation
Webinars
Capacity for 3 team members
Advanced Segmentation
Contact Scoring and Tagging
Create and publish 5 Sales Funnels so you can sell your products and services
Professional – $81.18 – 1000 Contacts
With the professional plan, you’ll get the free, basic, and plus package features, plus:
Paid Webinars
5 Team Members
Web Push Notifications
Unlimited Funnels to generate leads, sell products, and more
Built-in Ecommerce features and integrations
Max (Custom Pricing)
The Max Plan works on a customized pricing basis. You’ll get the features from all the main plans, plus:
Website Builder
Webinars for 500+ participants
Team and Roles management system
Transactional emails
Single sign-on (SSO)
Note: The Max Plan is recommended for larger organizations only.
Pricing: A Quick Note
You’ll notice that each plan has a specified number of contacts. For the free plan, it’s 500, and for the others, it’s 1000. Each plan can support up to 100,000 contacts.
However, prices increase rapidly. You can expect to pay almost $500 a month on the professional plan for 100,000 contacts. For big businesses, this is a VERY steep price tag.
GetResponse: The Pros And Cons
Now we’ve had a look at the key features and pricing, let’s dive into the pros and cons of GetResponse.
Pros
The free version has great features and can be used indefinitely
The ‘Basic’ plan is cheaper than other competitors
Features like Conversion Funnel and Webinar are unique, and you’ll struggle to find these elsewhere
The landing page generator is packed with templates, and it’s all drag-and-drop, so if you’re not tech-savvy, it’s ideal
The marketing automation features and unique and intuitive
List automation is intelligent and sophisticated. You can segment subscriber lists automatically based on your range of conditions.
Cons
The pricing plans may be too expensive for bigger businesses with lots of contacts
The unique features and selling points (like Webinar) are not available on the cheaper plans
Sign-up forms are an excellent addition. However, users don’t have the option to switch them on and off on mobile devices, which may deter visitors
The GetResponse interface is functional but fiddly. It’s also not as attractive as its competitors.
Automation Workflows (one of the BEST features from GetResponse) is only available on the more expensive plans. This actually makes GetResponse more expensive than some of its other competitors.
Is GetResponse Worth It?
Now it’s time for the all-important question – is GetResponse worth it? This all-in-one marketing solution offers some incredible features for its users, and the free plan makes it one to watch. However, this doesn’t make it suitable for all businesses. Here’s our honest, unbiased opinion.
We Recommend GetResponse If…
You’re a small business or eCommerce store: If you’re looking to kick-start your business with a hands-off approach, GetResponse is loaded with features to get things moving. It has an impressive range of integrations, and the Conversion Funnel feature gives you everything you need to get going, from landing pages to webinars and much more.
You Want to Nurture or Capture Leads: We’re about to praise the conversion funnel feature again here. If you want to nurture and develop new leads with tools SPECIFICALLY developed for inbound marketing, GetResponse is perfect for you. You can automate and segment emails, integrate with Google Analytics, and build your own landing pages – GetResponse is, in many ways, the one-stop shop for lead generation and nurturing.
We Don’t Recommend GetResponse If…
You’re a large business with a small budget: If you need a marketing solution to target multiple contacts, GetResponse isn’t the best. Unfortunately, like many other marketing solutions, its pricing structure has room for improvement. Prices rise significantly the more contacts you add to your plan, and you don’t benefit from any additional features with the rise.
You want an easy interface: Although GetResponse’s interface is easy to navigate, it could be better. Some settings and widgets can be challenging to find, and the drag and drop editors, in particular, can be a little fiddly to navigate.
Hi, my name is Mark Matthews, and I help to run several businesses through managing their mailing services.
I have a clear and good understanding of what a company or person should consider when choosing between options. I also have a lot of experience when it comes to managing businesses in general, from the best organizational and scheduling apps to use, to teaching owners how to create engaging emails.
