ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse: Which One’s Better?

ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse Comparison Overview

In order to get a clear picture on which autoresponder to go with, it always helps to get an overview.

That’s why I’m going to list out what I believe to be the pros and cons of both ActiveCampaign and GetResponse.

ActiveCampaign Pros & Cons

Here’s a quick look at the pros and cons of ActiveCampaign.

Pros:

• Next-Level Email Marketing Automation Capabilities
• Highest Deliverability Rates Of Any Email Autoresponder
• Customizable Contact Tagging
• 24/7 Customer Support
• 14-Day Free Trial
• Detailed Contact Profiles For Each Contact
• Free Expert Migration Service If Switching Email Autoresponders

Cons:

• Difficult To Learn Out Of The Gate (can be overwhelming)

GetResponse Pros & Cons

Here’s a quick look at the pros and cons of GetResponse.

Pros:

• 30 Day Free Trial
• 24/7 Customer Support
• Landing Pages Creation
• Webinar Creation
• 99% Deliverability Rate

Cons:

• Custom automations not available on lowest plan (need to get $99/month plan)
• Can only create 1 sales funnel on Basic plan (need to get $99/month plan for unlimited sales funnels)

ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse – Email Marketing Automation Capabilities

When it comes to the email marketing automation capabilities, GetResponse has email templates you can use to start building out your email sequences.

There’s a total of 43 available templates inside that can be used to start an automation workflow.

This number might seem like quite a lot but the problem is that you can’t customize the workflows by adding in any additional widgets.

ActiveCampaign on the other hand offers complete customizable automation workflows right out of the gate on the cheapest plan.

Plus, you can build an unlimited number of workflows with ActiveCampaign as opposed to GetResponse which requires you to get the Professional plan for $99/month. 😳

Both ActiveCampaign and GetResponse have easy-to-use drag and drop interfaces to build

If you’re like me, you typically like to start with a blank canvas when you’re creating something.

I feel like for a lot of people it’s the same way.

That’s why I recommend ActiveCampaign for its automation capabilities ahead of GetResponse if you’re starting out and don’t want to pay more per month than you need to be.

Automation Capabilities Winner: ActiveCampaign 

ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse – Are both autoresponders affiliate friendly?

If you’re doing affiliate marketing as your main source of revenue for your business, having the ability to send out affiliate links inside of emails might be something you would want to have.

Taking a look at GetResponse, they allow affiliate links inside of your email campaigns.

There’s two things you want to follow as a good practices:

1. Don’t direct affiliate link to offers (use a tracking software)
2. Disclose your affiliate links in your emails (state somewhere within the email that you may earn a commission if it contains affiliate links)

Those two points are things you want to be doing for any email autoresponder in order to avoid hitting the spam folder or improperly disclosing an affiliate relationship.

But what about ActiveCampaign?  Do they allow affiliate links in the same way that GetResponse does?

The short answer is no.  However, as an affiliate marketer myself and end user of ActiveCampaign I still send out affiliate links.

I do this by directing people to helpful blog posts that I’ve made or other content which contains affiliate links.

Additionally, if I want to take a more streamlined approach then I would create a simple landing page with a picture of me, the affiliate product I’m promoting, and a button that contains my affiliate link.

In doing so, I instill a sense of trust with my audience and develop further brand recognition along the way.

Overall, the affiliate friendly autoresponder winner goes to GetResponse in this case since it has much less restrictions.

Affiliate Friendliness Winner: GetResponse

ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse – Which one has better reporting functionality?

There’s two main questions that I think of when it comes to analyzing reports for email marketing:

1. How did a certain email do in terms of open rates and click through rates in comparison to others?
2. What week day and hour of the day to most of my subscribers open emails and engage by replying or clicking on a link?

The good news is that both ActiveCampaign and GetResponse allow you to answer these questions easily with dedicated reports tabs.

You can easily see the percentage of opens and the CTR on emails that you send as campaigns or inside an automation workflow for both ActiveCampaign GetResponse.

In terms of visual appeal, I feel like GetResponse takes a slight edge with reports since they have nicer graphics to visualize data.

Reporting Functionality Winner: GetResponse

ActiveCampaign vs GetResponse – Is there one that allows for easier forms creation?

I’d say in terms of the number of forms available to choose from that both GetResponse and ActiveCampaign have a small selection.

I personally never used the actual forms in either autoresponder but instead used a different software such as ClickFunnels, Elementor, or Thrive Leads to create the forms.

Consequently, this factor was never a big deal to me.  Since both autoresponders allow you to create a form for someone to put an their contact info easily, I’d have to give this a tie between the two.

Forms Creation Winner: Tie   

Do both autoresponders have sales funnels and webinar creation capability?

ActiveCampaign focuses on email automation and marketing.  So, they don’t have the additional capabilities of creating sales funnels and webinars.

GetResponse on the other hand gives you the ability to create sales funnels if you get a high enough plan.

On the Basic plan with GetResponse you can create 1 funnel and on the Plus plan you can create 5 funnels.  In order to create more than that and get unlimited sales funnels, you’d need to upgrade to the Professional plan for GetResponse.

In terms of webinars, GetResponse starts allowing you to create and host webinars if you get the Plus plan for $49 per month.  However, the big drawback here is that they only allow you to have 100 attendees which is hardly enough.

When it comes down to it, I’d have to give a slight edge to GetResponse for sales funnels and webinar creation.  Although, I personally would rather use other stand-alone software to get the job done instead of being restricted on the number of sales funnels and attendess I can have.

Sales Funnels And Webinars Creation Winner: GetResponse    

Do both autoresponders have SMS messaging capability?

GetResponse does not offer the ability to send out SMS messages to subscribers which is unfortunate.

ActiveCampaign on the other hand allows you to start sending out SMS messages to any of your subscribers where you’ve captured their phone number.

This functionality is unlocked once you get the Plus plan for $49 per month.  If you need to be collecting phone numbers for your business, then ActiveCampaign has the built-in functionality to do it.

Plus, you’re not limited by pricing plan for the number of text or SMS messages you can send out.

SMS Messaging Winner: ActiveCampaign

Do both autoresponders have expert migration services for free?

One thing that’s intriguing about ActiveCampaign is that they offer free expert migration service for you to switch to ActiveCampaign.

This means you save hours upon hours of time and potentially making mistakes by letter the experts at ActiveCampaign migrate your complete email marketing system over for free.

Here’s what is included with ActiveCampaign’s free expert migration service when you sign up:

• Import your lists, contacts, custom fields, and tags
• Recreate opt-in forms
• Recreate your automation workflows
• Recreate email templates

This service is huge if you’ve got a large email list.  The more campaigns and automations you’ve built in a different email autoresponder, the more likely this aspect will appeal to you.

In contrast, GetResponse doesn’t offer any sort of migration service.  You’ll need to manually import your lists, recreate your optin forms, email automation workflows, etc.

The clear winner here in my opinion is ActiveCampaign.

Expert Migration Service Winner: ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign & GetResponse Pricing

Now, it’s finally time to take a look at the cost of ActiveCampaign and the cost of GetResponse for email marketing.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampagin has the following four pricing plans available when you pay yearly for 500 contacts:

• Lite Plan: $9/month
• Plus Plan: $49/month
• Professional Plan: $129/month
• Enterprise Plan: $229/month

GetResponse Pricing

GetResponse has the following four pricing plans when you pay yearly for up to 1,000 contacts:

• Basic Plan: $15/month
• Plus Plan: $49/month
• Professional Plan: $99/month
• Enterprise Plan: $1,199/month

As far as pricing goes, if you’re looking to get started with as little invested as possible then you’d want to go with ActiveCampagin.

GetResponse on the other hand gives you double the contacts for the same price when you take a look at the Plus plan.

In terms of the winner for pricing, I’d have to give this one a close tie.

Pricing Winner: Tie

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