Aweber vs GetResponse Review
This article isn’t strictly an Aweber Review or a GetResponse Review. Instead it compares the two leading e-mail autoresponders, Aweber and GetResponse, so that you can make an informed decision on which of these email creation and sending tools is best for your business.
I own use both Aweber and GetResponse so that I can teach how to use both. That gives me a perspective on each that I would like to share.
Why Use An Autoresponder Like Aweber or GetResponse?
Ever wonder “how to send emails to multiple people easily and monitor who on your email list is active?”
Aweber and GetResponse are both great tools for hosting an email distribution list. You can use them to create attractive e-newsletter templates and for sending e-newsletters out to your subscribers. They also allow you automate your communications to subscribers via ‘autoresponders’.
Autoresponders are great tools that are used to provide subscribers with e-newsletters from you at pre-defined intervals. As an example, you can designate emails to be sent:
- A welcome message from your business could be sent immediately after someone signs up.
- A series of 7 emails sent out after sign up, one a day, to help remind the subscriber that they expressed an interest in your business. In them you can try to convince them to follow up using a different angle. This series of emails is called a sales funnel.
- Two weeks later they could receive an invite to follow you on social media etc.
That’s just a start because e-newsletter tools like these allow you to do a lot more than this. Some of these features are describe below.
UPDATE (September 2016): I recently ran some testing on Aweber vs Getresponse. Click HERE to check out the results in this blog post: Grudge Match: Getresponse Review vs Aweber Review
Pricing
GetResponse easily beats Aweber in the pricing arena. At the least expensive package (the starter plan), using a mailing list of up to 1000 email addresses costs $12.75/month with GetResponse. On the other hand it is $29/month with Aweber.
For the most expensive packages, hosting 25,000 email addresses with GetResponse will cost $123/month while Aweber is $149/month for the same quantity.
GetResponse also beats Aweber for the intermediate plans as well.
Even though both systems offer various discounts if you pay on a yearly basis (Aweber offer discounts for quarterly payments as well), ultimately based purely on cost GetResponse is the easy winner over Aweber.
Free Trials
GetResponse give you a 30 day free trial and they don’t ask for your credit card details in advance.
Aweber also has a free trial for a month before upgrading to a proper plan.
GetResponse Review and Aweber Review of Key Features
GetResponse and Aweber offer very similar features. These key features are:
- Ability to capture data and host mailing lists using forms. You get a little bit of HTML code that you can insert into your website or social media profiles to help you capture emails.
- Since they have autoresponder features, they allow you to send automated emails (e-newsletters) at pre-defined intervals to subscribers after they sign up.
- Statistics on how many subscribers are opening your emails, clicking links or unsubscribing.
- A wide range of predesigned e-newsletter templates.
- Easy-to-use user interfaces for message building that allow you to create and edit e-newsletters without having to code HTML.
- Integration with a lot of third-party sites/tools. This includes Paypal, and other similar tools. This is great because you can automatically add people to your mailing list once they make a purchase.
- Use the RSS feed to create an e-newsletter functionality (this is very useful for automatically sending your blog posts to subscribers on your mailing list).
Templates
To be honest, I don’t use the templates for either GetResponse or Aweber. I prefer to make my own layout, but having gone through the exercise of this review I may be changing this in the near future.
Having looked over the templates, in my opinion Aweber’s templates look a marginally better than GetResponse’s. Overall, there are roughly 600 Aweber templates and 500 GetResponse templates. And there are more of them (about 600 vs 500 respectively). Getresponse’s templates are fine. It is just that Aweber’s templates are a bit more cosmetic. There really is a very small gap in quality between the two systems. I think you can find what you need from either autoresponder.
What I like is that GetResponse’s templates are that they are designed to work ‘responsively’ both on desktop computers and smartphones. The recipient is presented an optimised version of the e-newsletter for their device. That is pretty cool. On the other hand, Aweber’s templates look the same across all devices. And my favorite part is that GetResponse will provide you previews of your emails as desktop versions and mobile versions before sending… for a variety of different platforms. This means you can tweak your e-newsletters to make sure they look good on a bunch of different platforms. I am sure you have seen emails looking really off on your mobile device. GetResponse gives you previews to help prevent this.
The Main Differences Between Aweber and GetResponse
There are three main areas that I feel GetResponse have a significant advantage over Aweber.
Get Response Responsive E-Newsletters
This was covered previously in the Templates section of this comparison report. This is not a huge deal because smartphone displays are getting bigger all the time.
Contact Importing With GetResponse or Aweber
This is where GetResponse has a significant advantage over Aweber. If you try to manually add an email to an Aweber mailing list it will send an email to the subscriber to make sure they reconfirm their subscription. If they don’t reconfirm, none of the data will be added to your list. This approach is being done to make sure that spammers are not using scraped or bought lists. I understand their good intent here, but if you have been building a list for years and want to switch to Aweber you may lose a significant number of your subscribers since they have to reconfirm they want to be on your list. They only get sent one email, and if they miss it you lose the contact.
On the other hand, GetResponse allows you to upload and use your existing contacts after a list review process (to help make sure the list is clean/legit). Therefore GetResponse is a better tool to switch to if you are looking to move an existing list.
Integration With Third Part Sites
Aweber has an advantage over GetResponse when it comes to integration with third party sites. Aweber has a good range of integrations with sites such as PayPal, Amazon Payment, etc. This is not completely necessary unless you are new to e-newsletters and don’t have the time to figure out how to do this on your own.
Which Autoresponder for Blog?
Both work for a blog. I have tried both, so I have no preference when people ask me for advice on “which autoresponder for blog.”
So What is the Better AutoResponder? Aweber or GetResponse?
Both GetResponse and Aweber have a nice range of tools to help you build, maintain, and communicate with your email list. These tools are pretty simple to use, and are good even if you aren’t really that technically incline. They are both great tools for building and managing your email list.
If you are on the fence on which on you want to use, I recommend taking advantage of the trial’s offered by either company.
Personally I prefer to use GetResponse for the management of my main email list. It’s significantly cheaper than Aweber, it has the various previews, and it allows you to import contacts without your subscribers having to opt in to a list all over again.
Best Autoresponder for Beginners?
My answer is different here. My personal opinion that Aweber is the easier autoresponder for beginners by a small margin. My opinion may be slightly biased because I started with Aweber, but I find that the new people to the industry that I mentor have fewer issues figuring out Aweber on their own.
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Author: Mike Marko
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