When doing comparison shopping for email marketing tools, chances are you’re going to come across these 2 popular brands: ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.
I feel I would do you a disservice if I don’t mention my own email marketing tool — BirdSend.
Why?
Because who knows it could be a more suitable choice for your needs?
That’s why I put together a set of 20 email marketing questions to see which tool is a better fit for your business.
If you’re short on time and want to save 80% in email tool expenses every month while still enjoying high email opens, try BirdSend free here.
Table of Contents
Main differences between ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse vs BirdSend
BirdSend
BirdSend is for content creators who don’t have a lot of budget for an email marketing tool but still want to have high email opens / good email deliverability.
Typically, affordability and good email opens don’t go hand in hand. You can only have one but not both.
Or is it?
The reason BirdSend is so affordable is because we don’t use any kind of paid ads to get new customers. The majority of our customers are gotten via word-of-mouth recommendations from our existing customers.
We save a lot of money by not using paid acquisition methods → we pass the savings to our customers by offering affordable pricing plans.
BirdSend is also suitable for businesses that are run by solopreneurs or a tiny team of less than 10 members.
However… if you need a landing page tool inside an email marketing tool, BirdSend is not for you. We’re bent on creating a simple, lightweight “email marketing focused” tool and believe in letting dedicated landing page tools do their best at creating great landing pages.
In short, we believe in doing 1 thing really well (email marketing) instead of trying to be a bit of everything (Jack of all trades).
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer any kind of refunds (whether partial or full).
It’s suitable if you need very complex marketing automation. Notice I say “marketing” automation, not “email” automation.
This is because ActiveCampaign can do a lot than just email marketing. You can send marketing messages via their native SMS feature and also manage high touch sales processes to close deals via their CRM functionality.
With regards to business size, it welcome all sizes to use them. From solopreneurs to small business to big corporations, it targets everyone.
However, since it’s an all-in-one platform, you need to be “digital marketing tech“-savvy to use the software to its maximum.
For general folks who aren’t that savvy, you’d need someone or a team (if you’re a big company) to effectively set up and manage your marketing automation.
Furthermore, it seems ActiveCampaign wants to serve all business types — e-com online stores, course creators, bloggers, podcasters, writers, authors, local physical brick and mortar shops, restaurants, consultants, enterprise companies, etc.
GetResponse
GetResponse, also an all-in-one marketing platform, has pretty advanced automation features too.
The difference with ActiveCampaign is that GetResponse has built-in webinar functionality — allowing you to run webinars without needing a 3rd party tool.
It also has an extensive suite of landing page templates (180 of them) you can use to create landing pages.
In addition, GetResponse has the Autofunnel feature where you can quickly build full-fledged sales & marketing funnels. From the creation of lead pages to capturing people’s email address, to creating sales pages and letting them buy your offer, to setting up upsells and downsells — you can do all these within the platform.
GetResponse targets everyone and anyone to use them — regardless if it’s business types of sizes.
How content creators save 80% every month in email tool expenses while still getting good email deliverability
Content creators refer to bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, course creators, coaches, consultants, authors, trainers, educators, etc.
Basically anyone who shares their knowledge through content — whether it’s in text, audio, or video. If you share or teach knowledge, you’re a content creator.
They use BirdSend to send 30 million emails each month.
As you’ve probably heard of the phrase: “money is attracted to speed”.
In BirdSend, setting up email drips / sequences is super quick via The 1-Page Sequence Builder. If you can find a tool that’s faster, let me know (contact icon on bottom right of this page) and I’ll give you a paid BirdSend account.
Now let’s dive into the ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse vs BirdSend comparison by faring them against these email marketing questions…
ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse vs BirdSend — how do they fare against these 20 questions
BirdSend
Does it offer a free migration service?
Yes. We’ll move everything (contacts, forms, automation, sequences, integrations, etc) from your current email marketing software to us.
Everything is moved over manually by one of our teammates. We don’t use scripts or software to move over your data, which is why we’re able to provide such a high quality migration service.
Does it charge the same contact / subscriber multiple times?
We only charge you for unique contacts. Even if someone is in multiple different sequences and has multiple tags, you’re only charged for 1 contact.
Does it charge for unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts?
We only charge you for subscribed contacts that you can emails to.
Can subscribers choose the types of emails they want to receive?
Yes. With The Subscriber Preferences Page, subscribers can easily choose which email topics they want to receive and which ones they no longer want to hear (i.e. unsubscribe).
Is the setup quick and easy?
BirdSend is very focused in being a simple and lightweight tool. As such, it’s easy and intuitive to navigate around the tool.
As shown above, with the 1-Page Sequence Builder, even a beginner can quickly create email sequences with ease. This is not the case with most email tools, where you need to navigate back and forth a lot of times just to create simple sequences.
Is there a way to resend emails to unopened?
Yes, and this is stupidly-simple to do in BirdSend.
You simply 1-click a checkbox to activate this feature. The best thing is you can set this up beforehand (set it and forget it) instead of manually setting up the resend after the fact.
Plus, you can resend to unopened for both broadcasts and email sequences.
Does it have email drip / autoresponders / sequences capability?
Of course, that’s what the 1-Page Sequence Builder is for.
What about A/B testing? Does the tool have this capability?
Yes, you can easily set up A/B or split testing. You’re able to control the email ratios that go out to the original, variation, and winner segment.
You can also set the criteria for the winner — whether it’s higher open rates, click rates, or sales revenue.
Finally, you can resend the winner email to non-openers, thereby gaining more eyeballs to your emails. As far as I know, BirdSend is the only email tool that can do this.
Can it send one-off “broadcast / newsletter” type emails?
Yes. Doing this only involves 3 steps:
1/ Select the recipients based on filters or segments (or you can send to everyone)
2/ Write the email
3/ Send immediately or schedule it at a later date
What about email automation based on subscriber behavior?
Yes, you can easily achieve this. For example, if subscriber opens or clicks a particular link →
- tag with X and Y
- subscribe to sequence X
- unsubscribe from sequence Y
- etc
Can the tool create forms and landing pages?
Forms yes, but not landing pages.
I’ve mentioned the reasons above. But to summarize… BirdSend is a very focused and lightweight “email marketing” tool. It doesn’t try to do a bit of everything.
Though we don’t have dedicated landing page features, we have a form type called the “welcome screen” — which can be used as a very simple landing page.
How is the email editor?
There’s no fancy drag and drop elements like you typically find in other email marketing tools. It’s a simple WYSIWYG email editor like you’d find in Google Docs or Microsoft Word.
If you’re looking to send beautifully-designed emails, BirdSend is not for you. We believe people sign up for a content creator’s email list because of how the content is going too help them, not because of how “beautiful looking” the emails are going to be.
Seriously, do you really think people sign up for your email list because of your design?
But you can still include images / banners / gifs / emojis though.
Who is the target audience and business size?
Budget-tight content creators who want good email deliverability.
These content creators run a “one-man show” business or have a tiny team of less than 10.
Does it have segmentation features?
Yes. BirdSend is a subscriber-centric tool, meaning you can easily segment contacts via tags.
And you can create as many tags as you want on the fly — without configuring settings for each like you typically would for a list-centric tool. Imagine the countless hours saved.
How are the stats / reports?
You can easily view the opens, clicks, bounces, spam-complaints, and unsubscribes — both the numbers and percentages.
Number of sales and sales revenue are also reported for easy viewing.
In addition, we give you the LTV (lifetime value) of each of your contacts and also the ALTV (average lifetime value) of your contacts based on your entire account or a specific campaign (e.g. based on your free book giveaway Facebook ads campaign).
This way, you’ll know how valuable a certain traffic source is — and you can double down on this channel.
Does it support abandoned cart emails?
Yes we do. Currently we natively integrate with the following shopping cart tools:
- ThriveCart
- SendOwl
- Teachable
- WooCommerce
- aMember
- MemberPress
- SamCart
- Shopify
- Thinkific
When someone abandons their cart, BirdSend can automatically send emails to them to follow up and recoup the sale.
Is there a spam checker feature built inside the tool?
Yes, you can easily check the “spamminess” of your email message at the click of a button.
Is the customer service any good?
Here you go:
Is there a free plan?
We don’t offer a free plan because we only want legit users using the tool. With a free plan, a lot of spammers will try to game the system, causing deliverability problems for us.
Instead, with our limited small team (and hence limited resources), we want to focus only on serving paid customers who are serious about their business… who understand that email marketing is one of the most important revenue-generators in their business.
How is the value for money?
I’ll leave you with these:
Pros
- Very affordable (save 80% every month)
- Good email deliverability
- Super fast creating and editing of email sequences via The 1-Page Sequence Builder
Cons
- No drag and drop email editor (if you want fancy-designed emails, BirdSend is not for you)
- Not for folks who are looking for complex and advanced automation
- New player in the email marketing arena (only been around since 2018)
- Small, cohesive team of only 7 members (could be a problem if you want a huge company with hundreds / thousands of employees)
Now that you’ve seen BirdSend’s pros and cons, let’s go to the next part of this ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse vs BirdSend comparison article…
ActiveCampaign
Does it offer a free migration service?
Yes, it offers free migration for new customers.
Does it charge the same contact / subscriber multiple times?
No, only unique contacts are counted towards your billing.
Does it charge for unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts?
No, it only charges you for subscribed contacts.
Can subscribers choose the types of emails they want to receive?
Yes, they can choose which emails to unsubscribe from and which ones to keep subscribed to.
Is the setup quick and easy?
ActiveCampaign is an all-in-one platform that can do a lot of things. As expected of such a robust platform, the learning curve is steep.
Furthermore, ActiveCampaign targets businesses of all sizes and types. It has to take into consideration all kinds of use cases (used by different business types and sizes) and bake those into the platform.
All these result in a ton of menus and sub-menus in the UI — which can get overwhelming.
The UI is slow and clunky, most likely for the same reasons as above.
All-in-all, you can’t really fault the platform since it’s trying to become everything to everybody.
Is there a way to resend emails to unopened?
Yes, with the following inconvenience:
1/ You can’t set the resend beforehand.
You need to wait after the original email has been sent and then go inside your account and set up the resend.
2/ Once you’re in your account, there is no option to resend at a future time.
You can only resend it then and there. This means if you’re about to go on a trip and don’t have access to internet or your device… tough luck.
Does it have email drip / autoresponders / sequences capability?
Yes. ActiveCampaign can do this easily… although if you just want a simple drip campaign, it’s cumbersome to set up with the endless page loads and modals / popups that need to be configured.
What about A/B testing? Does the tool have this capability?
Yes. You can test subject lines, from names, and the email body content.
Can it send one-off “broadcast / newsletter” type emails?
Definitely.
What about email automation based on subscriber behavior?
Yes. As mentioned previously, ActiveCampaign’s strength is its advanced and deep automations. If you can visualize an automation, you can probably build it in ActiveCampaign.
Can the tool create forms and landing pages?
Forms yes. But there isn’t a “form specific opt-in incentive” feature — i.e. you are not able to automatically deliver a specific lead magnet based on specific forms people opt-in to.
For landing pages, it recently just released landing page capabilities (Plus plan).
How is the email editor?
The email editor is typical like other email marketing tools where you can “drag and drop” elements to build an email message. With the right skills, you can build a fancy-designed email if that’s what you’re after.
Who is the target audience and business size?
There isn’t really a specific target audience ActiveCampaign is trying to appease. It basically targets everyone and anyone who wants to do marketing automation (instead of just email marketing).
Same goes for business size. It targets solopreneurs, small businesses, medium businesses, and large organizations — basically businesses of all sizes.
Does it have segmentation features?
Yes. This is also one of ActiveCampaign’s strong features. Being an advanced tool, you can filter almost any kind of attribute or behavior a contact has and segment them.
How are the stats / reports?
Typical stats like opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and spam complaints are available. If you sign up for the Professional plan, it also gives you sales and attribution reporting. This is a very expensive plan though. For example, for 2.5k contacts you’re looking at $187/month.
Does it support abandoned cart emails?
Yes, for the “Plus” plan and above. You can set up automations and sequences to automatically follow up with prospects to close the sale.
Is there a spam checker feature built inside the tool?
Yes.
Is the customer service any good?
The help docs and tutorials are pretty extensive. Should you need to get in touch with someone, you can click the bottom right icon on its page. Overall, the customer support is helpful, though it depends on the agent who is helping you.
If you want phone support, you’d need to sign up for the most expensive “Enterprise” plan which costs $323/month for 2.5 k contacts.
Is there a free plan?
No, but there is a free 14 days trial.
Make sure you thoroughly test the platform during the trial because ActiveCampaign doesn’t offer refund of any kind (not even partial refund).
How is the value for money?
ActiveCampaign’s pricing is on the more premium side. Even for its lowest “Lite” plan, it’ll cost you $30/month for 1k contacts. If you need more features, the cost is even steeper.
Plus, the price lock is only for 2 years. Typically when you sign up for a tool, it locks your price rate at the rate you joined — i.e. when the tool increases its price in the future, you still get to keep your lower rate.
At ActiveCampaign, you’re only protected from a price increase for 2 years.
Pros
- Supports complex and advanced automations
- It has this automation map tool that allows you to see at a high level how your various automations work and connect with one another — easier to spot opportunities for growth (Plus plan)
- A lot of marketing features (in addition to email marketing):
- SMS; sales & CRM; landing pages (Plus plan)
- Site messaging / customer support tool (Professional plan)
- Sales revenue tracking for BigCommerce, Square, Shopify, WooCommerce (Plus plan)
- Sales attribution tracking (Professional plan)
Cons
- No refunds at all (not even partial refunds)
- Price lock is only for 2 years
- Slow and clunky UI
- Steep learning curve
- A lot of mouse-clicking and back and forth page loads even when creating simple email sequences
GetResponse
Does it offer a free migration service?
No. You’d need to move all your data yourself or hire someone to do it for you.
Does it charge the same contact / subscriber multiple times?
Yes. For instance, Sam Subscriber is on 6 different lists → you’re charged for 6 contacts. Meaning, you bill can get expensive very quickly since it’s common for the same person to be subscribed to different lists.
Does it charge for unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts?
No. Only subscribed contacts are counted towards your bill.
Can subscribers choose the types of emails they want to receive?
Yes. Being a list-centric platform, GetResponse allows your subscribers to choose specific email types to unsubscribe from (and also specific email types to remain subscribed to).
Is the setup quick and easy?
GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform that can do a lot of things like e-com store builder, website builder, landing pages, shopping cart, chat / site messaging, CRM, webinars, email marketing, etc.
Building all these different features into the platform and trying to make it easy to use is almost an impossible task.
Because ease of use is inversely proportional to number of features.
More features = harder to use.
Less features = easier to use.
There are a lot of menus to choose from within the UI — which requires a steep learning curve.
Is there a way to resend emails to unopened?
There is no 1-click option to achieve this. You also can’t “set it and forget it” — i.e. setting beforehand is not possible.
You’d need to wait until the original email has been sent, and then manually logging in to your account to do the resend.
Does it have email drip / autoresponders / sequences capability?
Yes. Typical with most email marketing tools, you’d need to go back and forth to load multiple different pages in order to set up a sequence.
Say you have 10 emails in a sequence → you’d need to first create a “sequence overview” page. After that, you’d need to “create the 1st email” → then you go inside that individual email page to write the email.
After you’re done, you go back to the “sequence overview” page → then click to “create the 2nd email” → then go to the individual email page to write the 2nd email, etc.
So if you have 10 emails in the sequence, you’d need to go back and forth and load 20 different pages.
What about A/B testing? Does the tool have this capability?
Yes.
Can it send one-off “broadcast / newsletter” type emails?
Definitely.
What about email automation based on subscriber behavior?
Yes. GetResponse has pretty advanced automation capabilities using its visual builder.
E.g. Subscriber opens an email or clicks a specific link → tag with A, subscribe to sequence A, and unsubscribe from sequence X.
Can the tool create forms and landing pages?
Yes. It provides a huge selection of 180 landing page templates that you can choose from. You can also create forms.
How is the email editor?
Though the email editor has improved, it’s still a bit buggy.
It uses the typical “drag and drop” style for the email editor — meaning you can easily add images / banners / logos to your emails.
Who is the target audience and business size?
Like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse has grown to become so big that it currently targets everyone and anyone who wants to do email marketing (and more).
No matter if you’re running the business as a one-man show… or if you run a small, medium, or big company… it wants you to become its customer.
Similarly, no matter the types of business you run — online stores, bloggers, course creators, writers, agencies, coaches, local businesses with physical stores — it welcomes you with open arms.
Does it have segmentation features?
Yes, via lists and tags (tags only available in Plus plan).
There are 3 downfalls though:
1/ Tags can only be added to contacts via automation (can’t be added manually by the user)
2/ Using lists and tags together could cause confusion
Which one should you use based on what circumstance?
3/ In a list-centric tool, it’s somewhat a hassle to set up “lists” because you’d need to create a different list for each interest, together with configuring the settings for each list.
How are the stats / reports?
Open rates, click rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, and spam-complaint rates are easily viewable.
Does it support abandoned cart emails?
Only if you’re in the Pro plan.
Is there a spam checker feature built inside the tool?
Yes.
Is the customer service any good?
Customer service is responsive and knowledgeable. It also has an extensive knowledge base where you can search for instant answers.
Is there a free plan?
Yes, with the following caveats:
- Clickable GetResponse logo in every email you send
- No sequences / drips / autoresponders
- No automation at all
- Max 500 contacts
How is the value for money?
GetResponse’s value for money is better than ActiveCampaign’s (see pricing table comparison near the end of this article).
It provides different plans to cater to different needs. Make sure to choose one that suits your needs and don’t overpay for features you’re not going to use.
Pros
- It has a customizable dashboard — you can choose which stats to display there so you can easily view them at a glance
- It has webinar features built-in (Plus plan)
- Able to build pretty advanced automation
Cons
- No free migration
- Email deliverability could be improved
- Has to leave automation builder screen to work on email campaigns (destroys momentum)
- Resend to unopened is cumbersome (done manually after the fact instead of beforehand)
ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse vs BirdSend Pricing Table
(price per month)
| Brand | 1k Contacts | 2.5k | 5k | 10k | 25k | 50k | 100k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign (Lite) | $30 | $61 | $99 | $174 | $286 | $424 | $687 |
| GetResponse (Plus) | $49 | $59 | $79 | $95 | $179 | $299 | $499 |
| BirdSend | $9 | $14 | $19 | $29 | $69 | $109 | $209 |
Note:
Some of the features mentioned above might not be included in the plan shown in the pricing table. For example, [Lite] is ActiveCampaign’s entry-level plan and [Plus] is GetResponse’s middle-level plan.
For BirdSend though, all features are included since there’s only 1 plan.
Which is better: ActiveCampaign or GetResponse?
It’s important to realize that more features do not mean you’ll be more successful.
More features are useless unless you actually use them effectively in your business.
That said…
If you’re a content creator looking for a lightweight email marketing tool that has good email deliverability but doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg, it’s hard to find one better than BirdSend.
Go for ActiveCampaign if you need email and SMS automations inside the same tool, or if you run a high-touch sales process where your offers are more expensive and requires lead nurturing.
Try GetResponse if you want to host webinars, do email marketing, create websites and landing pages, and sell products all in the same tool.
