GetResponse Alternatives – The Top 5 [2022]

In this article, let’s discuss 5 GetResponse alternatives.

One of which is my own email marketing tool called BirdSend.

(yes call me biased — but I’ll also list our cons instead of only saying good things)

I’m also writing this post from the lens of a content creator.

If you’re in a hurry and want to save 80% in email tool expenses every month, yet still enjoy high email deliverability, check out BirdSend here.

Why you might be looking for a GetResponse Alternative

GetResponse is a good email marketing platform, and then some.

It not only can do email marketing activities; it can also do a bunch of other things like webinars, building websites, chat and support tool, selling your products online, etc.

Could the following be some of the reasons why you’re looking to switch away from GetResponse?

• So-so email open rates
• An all-in-one marketing tool → a jack of all trades is a master of none
• The UI is buggy
  • While the email editor has improved, it’s still clunky and buggy.
• It’s cumbersome to set up simple automated email sequences
  • Say you have 10 emails in the sequence. You’d need to load 10 different pages and go back and forth 10 different times, to write and set up each email.
• Their primary way of organizing subscribers is via “lists”. Then to keep up with times, they introduced “tags”.
  • So should you use lists or tags or both? It can be confusing, especially if you’re not that savvy..
• They charge you multiple times when the same subscriber is on different lists.
  • E.g. Jeremy is on 5 different lists. You pay for 5 subscribers.

Now, let’s take a look at the 5 GetResponse competitors.

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GetResponse Alternatives: #1 – BirdSend

Overview

BirdSend is an affordable email marketing tool for content creators, that my small team and I run.

It sends around 30 million emails every month.

And it saves you 80% every month in email tool expenses.

You must be thinking, “If it’s so cheap, the deliverability and customer support must suck!”

The pricing is currently so affordable because of 2 reasons:

1/ We primarily rely on word of mouth to get new customers.

• Our customers spread the word for us because they enjoy using BirdSend.
• Even though we have an affiliate program, most folks recommend us to their network without using their affiliate link.
• This means our budget for ads is a resounding zero dollar. We pass the savings to our customers.

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2/ We’re affordable NOW because we are not as popular as our competitors in the marketplace (yet). We’ll be sure to increase our pricing as we grow.

Here’s a quick summary of BirdSend:

• Free migration provided.
  
  
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• For content creators who runs a one-man show or whose team members are less than 10.
• It only does 1 thing — email marketing.
  • No features for webinars, customer ticketing / support chat, online order taking, sales funnels, CRM, website builders, SMS marketing, chat bots, etc.
• Good open rates / deliverability.
  
  
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• Responsive and empathetic customer support.
  • Unlike big companies, the customer service we provide is personable and actually give you real, human solutions instead of “canned replies” that just “close the ticket” so “you don’t bother them”.
  • We can afford to do this because we’re a small and nimble team without office politics. We move fast, and all teammates are knowledgeable about the product — even 1st-level support. Team members don’t need “managers” to “approve” things. [insert camila testi – already have] [alt text: How BirdSend listens to their customer]
    
    
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• Very quick to set up automated email drips / sequences.
  • It’s all done on 1 single page. If you have 20 emails in the sequence, you write everything on this single page. No need to load 20 different pages (and waiting 20 different times). [insert screenshot – already have] [alt text: GetResponse competitor – BirdSend’s fast 1-page sequence creation and editing] [insert dennis testi – already have] [alt text: BirdSend’s user Dennis raves about how fast and lightweight BirdSend is]
    
    
    
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    (click here for full image)

Features

• Resend email to contacts who haven’t opened, in 1-click (both sequences and broadcasts).
  
  
  • This maximizes the number of people opening your emails.
• Contacts can unsubscribe from certain topics instead of unsubscribing completely.
  • This is a big deal because people change their mind all the time. If they decide they want to subscribe only to topic X but no longer want topic Y and Z, you should provide them a way to do so. Some email tools don’t provide this option and the consequence is they unsubscribe completely from all emails → you lose a subscriber that you shouldn’t have.
• Email marketing automation
  • Email sequences
  • Behavioral automation like open or link triggers (if this happens, do that)
    • E.g. If contact opens email X or clicks link Y → tag with [Hot Lead] and subscribe to [Hot Lead Sequence].
    • E.g. If customer buys product A, tag with [Customer A] and subscribe to [Customer A Sequence].
• Send real-time broadcasts now or schedule it to be sent at a later time.
• Easily accessible stats to review your campaigns’ performance.
  • Earnings / revenue, number of sales, conversions.
  • Opens, clicks, bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes.
  • You can quickly save all these as segments.
• Out-of-the-box sales and revenue tracking.
  
  
  
  • Know who are the high spenders in your business (VIP customers).
  • Know which emails result in the most sales (high performing).
  • Identify which traffic source generates the highest ROI.
• A/B (split) test
  
  
  
  • Can set the email ratios for the Original email, the Variation email, and the Winner email.
  • Able to specify the duration of the test (e.g. 1 hour, 3 hours, 1 day, 2 days, etc).
  • 1-click resend to non-openers.
• Preview text
  • When this feature is activated, you can specify a “2nd subject line” right after the subject line — to further tease folks to open your emails.
  • E.g. Subject line: 3 simple steps to getting a beach body Preview text: Step 2 is totally unexpected. Discover why.
• Incentive emails
  • For double opt-in, automatically confirm people when they download your lead magnet. No need to say, “Click here to confirm your email”. You can just say, “Access your lead magnet here”.
• Abandoned cart emails
  • Automatically follow up with leads who almost bought your product, but didn’t. Follow up to close the sale for more revenue.
• Understand why your contacts unsubscribe.
  • When they unsubscribe, they have the option to tell you the reason: is it because of too many emails, content no longer relevant, or something else?
• Subscribers can easily unsubscribe from some types of email messages but still stay subscribed to others. Other “subscriber-centric” tools (e.g. ConvertKit) force people to either subscribe to all emails or unsubscribe entirely from you.
  
  This is bad because you’re guaranteed to lose more subscribers than you should.
  
  
  
• Mobile responsive emails and opt-in forms.
• Built-in spam testing for better deliverability.
  • Easily test how spammy your email is. If the score is too high, adjust the content to lower the score.
• WordPress plugin without touching any code.
  • Simply install the BirdSend WordPress plugin to display opt-in forms on your site, without touching any code.

Cons

• Simple email editor is not everyone’s cup of tea (but it helps with deliverability).
  • BirdSend provides a simple and minimalistic email editor to write emails.
  • There’s no fancy design. No drag and drop feature.
  • Although this could be a problem for folks who want to design fancy emails, it does help with deliverability since the backend html code for simple emails is cleaner and lighter.
  • It also portrays a personal vibe — where recipients feel your email is personal (friends email to friends without any design), compared to emails coming from companies (with fancy design).
• Not suitable for e-commerce (physical product) businesses.
• Run by a small team.
  • Currently, we’re a nimble team of 7 — consisting email deliverability experts, engineers, and customer support reps.
• Relatively new compared to other established email marketing tools.
  • We’ve only been around since 2018 in the email space, though we’ve been developing software since 2010.

Pricing

• No free plan but there is a free 14-day trial.
• Doesn’t charge unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts.
• Only charge you for unique contacts.
  • The same person on multiple sequences and with different tags is only charged as 1 contact.
• Locked-in pricing.
  • Your pricing will be locked at the rate at which you joined, for all contacts tier.
  • This means as the number of contacts in your account grow, you’ll use the rate for the relevant contacts tier at the time of joining.
• All features are unlocked on all contacts tier level.
• Pricing starts and grows affordably as you grow the number of contacts.
  • Some tools start with a free plan but scales expensively.

GetResponse vs BirdSend At A Glance

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GetResponse Alternatives: #2 – Mailchimp

The 2nd alternative to GetResponse needs no introduction.

Overview

• Founded in 2001, Mailchimp is the grandaddy of email marketing tools.
  • They’re the 2nd oldest email marketing tool (behind Aweber), and is now the biggest player.
• In September 2021, Intuit bought Mailchimp for $12 billion USD.
  
  
  
• Over the years, they have evolved into an “everything under one roof” marketing platform that can do a myriad of different things.
• Because it has such a long track record, it’s a trusted brand with thousands of employees.
• Good deliverability.

Features

• Email marketing automation.
  • To be even considered as an email marketing tool or email service provider, it needs to — at the very least — be able to do automated email drips.
  • You can certainly do that with Mailchimp.
  • Open / link triggers.
    • “If X happens, do Y” type of automation.
    • E.g. If subscriber opens email X, tag with [X].
    • E.g. If subscriber clicks link Y, tag with [Y] and subscribe to [Y] sequence.
• Send one-off emails (broadcasts).
• Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that can do many things.
  • Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and Google ads management; domain registration, postcard marketing, SMS, online stores, CRM.
• A/B test emails.
  • Can test subject line, from name, content, and send time.
• Preview text.
  • You can specify a preview text — a short text snippet right after the subject line — to act as an additional teaser to get subscribers to open your email.
• Online store.
  • Sell your products online and get paid.
  • They take a percentage from your sales revenue, in addition to Stripe / payment processing fees.

Cons

• No free migration provided.
  • You’d need to spend time to migrate everything yourself, or fork out money to hire someone to do it for you.
• Don’t take data privacy seriously.
  • Some time ago, they almost disabled double opt-in functionality for all their users. After many EU users protested, they canceled this decision.
• Typically the support experience provided by a company of this size (1,200 employees) is subpar, and bureaucracy is rampant.
  
  
  
  • If your problem is not so clear-cut, first-level support is typically not knowledgeable enough and give robotic canned replies that don’t empathize with customers.
  • Every little decision has to be approved by their managers.
  • Result = slow moving, unresponsive, and they don’t hear customer’s feedback.
• Being an all-in-one marketing platform, Mailchimp caters to everyone and anyone.
  • All-in-one platforms like this are typically hard to use because they have to consider all kinds of use cases for different businesses and personas and put those into the software.
• Mailchimp also caters to all business sizes — whether it’s small, medium, or big companies.
  • This could also pose a problem. If you’re a one-man band or runs a tiny team, the features and UI might not suit you — again, because they have to accommodate large corporations too.
  • Frankly speaking, it makes more sense to prefer large corporations as they pay much more money.
• It’s slow and inconvenient to set up automated drip emails.
  • If you have 10 emails in the drip automation, you’d have to set them up in 10 different pages, which means loading back and forth 10 different times.
• Mailchimp uses lists, but can also do tags.
  • New users could be confused as to which one to use.
  • You also need to set up each list for each interest, which is inconvenient.
• If an all-in-one marketing platform suffers an outage, all your marketing operations go down.

Pricing

• Free plan is available with the following limitations:
  • Their logo on your every email.
  • Can only send 2k emails/day with a monthly limit of 10k emails.
  • No automation at all.
  • Support is only available for the first 30 days.
• Mailchimp charges you for unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts.
• All plans have a sending limit.
  
  
  
  • Essentials — 10x limit
  • Standard — 12x limit
  • Premium — 15x limit
• There’s a cap on the number of contacts you can have in each plan
  • E.g. Standard plan — 100k contacts

GetResponse vs Mailchimp At A Glance

Alternative to GetResponse #3 – Aweber

Overview

• Founded in 1998 by Tom Kulzer, Aweber — like Mailchimp — is one of the long-standing email service providers.
  
  
  
• Having been in business for so many years, their brand is quite well-known.
• They reportedly have 120k users.
• Good deliverability.

Features

• Auto detect the color theme on your site simply by entering your site URL.
  • After detection, you can then use the same color theme in your emails.
• Email automation
  • Set up autoresponders / automated follow up emails / sequences.
  • Though Aweber has “if this happens, do that” automation, it’s limited in what it can do (see more under Cons).
• One-off broadcasts (send now or at a later date).
• Sell your products/services via their online selling feature.
  • They take a percentage from every sale, in addition to Stripe / payment processing fees you pay.

Cons

• This GetResponse alternative used to be very popular during 2005-ish – 2015-ish.
  • I’ve even used them before creating BirdSend.
  • After 2015-ish, new email marketing automation tools keep surfacing with better functionalities, while Aweber stayed relatively the same with no significant new updates.
  • Aweber customers started looking elsewhere and a lot jumped ship to competitors.
  • Only recently did Aweber rolled out major improvements to their platform.
  • But it was a little too late as they have already lost a significant market share.
• A/B testing is flawed and cumbersome.
  • There’s no automated testing. Everything has to be manually checked and reviewed.
  • For example, instead of simply creating an email message and choosing an “A/B test” option, you’d need to manually create 3 separate emails — the original, variation, and winner.
  • Then, to check which one is the winner, you’d need to login and use your eyes to determine.
  • After that, you have to manually send the winner to the rest of the recipients.
    
    
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• Some areas of the app isn’t obvious.
  • E.g. You have to make sure you’re on the correct “list” when making changes to the settings. Otherwise you’d mess up other lists unknowingly.
• Target everyone and anyone.
  • They have to include all kinds of businesses (digital, e-commerce online stores, offline shops) since they target everyone.
  • If you’re a content creator, you’d be better off using an email tool that’s specifically built for content creators.
• Aweber is a “list-centric” email platform, meaning everything is set up with the “list” as the centerpiece.
  • Though it later introduced the ability to tag contacts, you still need to have a “list” to base all your email sending and automation from.
  • You’d need to create a separate list for each interest, including configuring the settings for each list.
  • This can be cumbersome if you have a lot of lists.
• The automation is limited.
  • Yes you can set up basic link triggers like: if subscriber clicks link X, tag with [X] or remove from current list. But that’s about it. You can’t even auto subscribe to a different list.

Pricing

• Contacts who have unsubscribed are counted towards your billing.
• You also pay for unconfirmed contacts.
• The same contact in multiple lists are charged multiple times.
  • E.g. Jason is on 6 different lists, you get charged for 6 subscribers. Because it’s common to have a person subscribed to different lists, it can get expensive pretty fast.
• There’s a free plan, with caveats:
  • Their branding on your emails.
  • Maximum of 500 subscribers.
  • 3k emails/month.
  • No behavioral automation (i.e. no open and link triggers).
• They don’t offer a free trial for paid plans.

GetResponse vs Aweber At A Glance

GetResponse Alternative #4 – ConvertKit

Overview

• Founded in 2013, ConvertKit is a good email service provider (ESP).
• They initially targeted bloggers, but have since grown into targeting the wider “creators” audience.
• Good deliverability.
• They have recently ventured in e-commerce selling, enabling its users to sell their products and services.

Features

• Send one-time broadcasts.
• Set up email sequences / autoresponders / email drips.
• Set up “if this happens, do that” type of automation.
  • E.g. If subscribers opens or clicks email link, tag with [interested in X] and subscribe to [X] sequence.
• Incentive emails.
  • You can upload a pdf (lead magnet) into your ConvertKit account.
  • Inside the confirmation email, when people click to download this pdf, they’ll automatically be confirmed.
• E-commerce selling features.
  • You can sell your offer using their online selling features.
  • You pay ConvertKit a certain percentage for every product / service sold, in addition to Stripe processing fees.

Cons

• Auto resending emails to non-openers is not available in sequences.
  • You can only do so in broadcast emails.
• Subscribers can’t choose which topics to unsubscribe from.
  • They can only unsubscribe completely from you or subscribe to every topic you write about.
  • This poses a problem as it’s common for people to change interests.
  • Suppose you write about digital marketing that comprises of topics like SEO, social media marketing, and paid ads marketing.
  • Bob who initially liked all 3 sub-topics, is now interested only in social media marketing.
  • But there isn’t a way for him to unsubscribe from the other 2 topics. So he unsubscribed completely from all your emails.
  • Result: you lose more subscribers than you should.
• A/B test is very limited.
  • You can’t set the test duration.
  • You can’t set the email ratios for each of the segment (original email, variation, winner).
  • The above settings are preset by ConvertKit, which can’t be changed.
• Reporting is limited (and somewhat flawed).
  • No bounces and spam stats.
    • This is important for knowing how healthy your list is. High bounces and high spam rates suggest an unhealthy list.
  • Can’t find who has opened a particular email but hasn’t clicked.
  • Open stats is randomly sorted, which isn’t useful.
    
    
    
    • Typically you can sort stats by descending or ascending order, but in ConvertKit you can’t.
• No native abandoned cart automation.
  • You can’t do this natively within ConvertKit. You’d need to set up with a 3rd party tool like Zapier.
• No spam testing.
  • Checking your spam score before sending emails is a good practice. This ensures you keep your spam score low → better deliverability. Unfortunately, ConverKit does not have spam testing built-in.

Pricing

• Free plan is available. However do note the following limitations:
  • No automation whatsoever.
  • No sequences.
  • Max 1k contacts.
  • Their branding on your emails.
• For their paid plans, they offer a 14-day free trial.
• Doesn’t charge you for unsubscribed and unconfirmed contacts.
• Counts only unique contacts towards your billing.
  • If the same person is subscribed to multiple sequences, you still only get charged for 1 contact

GetResponse vs ConvertKit At A Glance

GetResponse Alternatives: #5 – ActiveCampaign

The last on this list of GetResponse alternative is ActiveCampaign.

Overview

• ActiveCampaign, like many on this page, is an all-in-one marketing platform for all kinds of business types and sizes.
  • No matter if you’re a small, medium, or big company.
  • No matter the kind of business you run — whether it’s digital, online stores selling physical products (e-commerce), or traditional mom-and-pop shops — all are welcome to use them.
• It seems they’ve only been in the industry not so long ago and have suddenly sprung up to the forefront… but they’ve actually been around since 2003. They’ve been staying quiet under the radar for so many years. It wasn’t until these past few years that they’ve made quite a name for themselves.
  
  
  
• Good deliverability.
• Very advanced automation.
  • If you have an automation in mind, you can probably build it in ActiveCampaign.

Features

• Send ad-hoc broadcast emails to subscribers.
• Email marketing automation.
  • Simple email drip campaigns / sequences.
  • Automation based on subscriber behavior — e.g. If subscriber clicks email link, subscribe to a new list or tag him, etc.
  • Can also do advanced marketing automation.
• A/B test emails.
  • Test between subject lines, from names, and body content.
• Preview text.
  • This is the short text that follows right after the subject line. You’re able to set a short text to further entice folks to open your emails.
• Sales & CRM features (Plus plan).
  • Plan and manage your sales pipeline.
• Lead scoring (Plus plan).
  • Award points to folks who take certain actions, then segment them based on their behavior.
• Site and chat messaging / support tool (Professional plan).
• Can do SMS marketing (Plus plan).

Cons

• Resend to folks who non-openers is inconvenient.
  • You can only resend MANUALLY, after the original email has been sent. There isn’t a way to set this up beforehand. For example, if you’re on vacation, you’d have to login to your account (during the vacation) and manually do the resend — which your family might not be happy about.
  • When inside the account, you’re also not able to set the resend at a later time. You’d have to do resend it then.
  • This means you’d need to login to your account at the exact date and time when you want to resend the email.
• Setting up simple email drips require a lot of back and forth mouse-clicking.
  • E.g. If you have 10 emails in the drip sequence, you’d have go back and forth and load 10 different pages.
• Slow and clunky UI.
• Sales REVENUE tracking is only available in Plus plan (1k contacts for $70/m).
  • Additionally, it’s only available for BigCommerce, Square, Shopify, and WooCommerce.
• Sales ATTRIBUTION tracking is only available in Professional plan (1k contacts – $159/m).
  • Even at this price, there’s no Average Lifetime Value (ALTV) stats.
• Because it has so many different features, navigating through the plethora of menus is challenging. This is especially true for new users.
• ActiveCampaign is primarily a list-based platform — i.e. all contacts are stored in buckets called lists. But later, they also introduced tags.
  • This could confuse users. So which one should they use? Lists or tags or both?
  • It’s also somewhat of a hassle when using lists as you’d need to create a separate list (including configuring the settings) for each interest.

Pricing

• The pricing rate at which you signed up is only locked for 2 years. [insert screenshot – already have] [alt text: The pricing plans for this alternative to GetResponse – ActiveCampaign]
  
  
  
  • This means when they increases their price in the future, you’ll need to pay for the higher prices after your 2-year price lock has ended.
• No free plan, but they offer a free 14-day trial.
• Does not charge you for unsubscribers and unconfirmed contacts.
• Charges you only for unique contacts, regardless of how many lists they’re on.

GetResponse vs ActiveCampaign At A Glance

GetResponse Alternatives Price Comparison (price per month)

Which GetResponse alternative should you choose?

If you want to save 80% every month + you want good email deliverability, go for BirdSend.

For those of you looking for webinar capabilities together with an email marketing platform, go for GetResponse.

If you want an all-in-one marketing tool with advanced automation, but don’t mind their expensive pricing, go for ActiveCampaign.